CITRIS and the Banatao Institute

Creating information technology solutions for society's most pressing challenges

CITRIS Newsletter for February 2005

Dear Members and Friends of CITRIS,

Professor Ruzena Bajcsy, the Founding Director of CITRIS, stepped down on November 1, 2004, from her position to return to her research and teaching the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at Berkeley. Although the official date of her return to full-time teaching and research was November 1, she stayed on in her position until a new director is able to assume this role.

“Ruzena’s leadership of CITRIS throughout its critical start-up phase to the present has been outstanding. Her passion for the role that information technology can play in improving the lives of Californians, as well as people throughout the world, has set an important tone for the Institute,” said former UC Berkeley Chancellor Robert M. Berdahl.

In his role as Chancellor, Berdahl also served as the Director and Chairman of the CITRIS Governing Board, a position from which he gave strong support to CITRIS and which permitted careful observation of the launch phase and growth of the Institute.

“CITRIS has become a model for collaboration between UC campuses and industry,” said Chancellor Berdahl. Under Prof. Bajcsy’s leadership, more than 200 faculty from four campuses have become involved with CITRIS. She has aggressively sought and promoted collaborations with a growing list of international industrial partners, expanding that group well beyond its initial size. She has expanded the societal impact of the research in CITRIS by championing strong interactions with researchers in the social sciences, humanities, law, and business.

Prof. Bajcsy’s own research in real-time 3D visualization and image transmission (“tele-immersion”) is beginning to have enormous implications in the field of distance learning, medicine, and the arts.

All of her faculty colleagues, her industrial partners, and the staff of CITRIS extend to Prof. Bajcsy the fondest wishes for continued success in her teaching, research, and contributions to society. “We are fortunate that Ruzena will remain at Berkeley as a faculty member; she will still be very much involved in CITRIS as she provides continuity and continued counsel in the operation of the Institute,” said Gary Baldwin, the Executive Director of CITRIS. “Her contributions have been seminal. She will be sorely missed on a day-to-day basis, but we hope she knows that she won’t get off easily; we plan to call on her often for her continuing insights and guidance.”

We hope you enjoy this issue of the CITRIS newsletter.

February 2005

  • CITRIS is having an Open House as part of the Berkeley EECS Annual Research Symposium (BEARS) on Thursday, February 10th from 1:00-3:00 p.m. Our Open house will be in Room 475 of the Hearst Memorial Mining Building. We will have informational posters, demonstrations, and complimentary box lunches.

January 2005

  • CITRIS research highlighted in San Francisco Chronicle article by Thomas Kalil, special assistant to the chancellor for science and technology at UC Berkeley.
  • Axel Techmer, researcher at Infineon Technologies, presented “Embedded vision platform for video surveillance systems” at the UC Berkeley campus.
  • Laurence Clarke, Branch Chief for the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute, spoke at the UC Berkeley campus. He discussed the National Cancer Institute’s plans for Imaging Informatics and Data Integration.

December 2004

  • In cooperation with Berkeley’s Center for Health Research and Tekes, the National Technology Agency of Finland, CITRIS organized a one-day conference to discuss the future of wireless and embedded technology in health care.

November 2004

  • CITRIS, along with the three other California Institutes for Science and Innovation, received a permanent operating budget which ensured continued operations as we move forward with our building plans and research agenda.
  • Live web cameras activated to document the construction of the new Davis Hall North building, future headquarters for CITRIS at UC Berkeley: 1). The Co-Opticon Camera atop Cory Hall and 2). A camera located in Soda Hall is collecting high-resolution images for a Time-Lapse experience of the construction site.
  • A ribbon-cutting ceremony introduced the new Vodafone Laboratory, which will provide space for wireless education and research at the UC Berkeley campus.
  • CITRIS received the spotlight in a San Francisco Business Times article.
  • Sun’s High-Performance Computing Consortium: “Bridging Research Communities” took place in Pittsburgh, PA.

October 2004

  • CITRIS’s new Berkeley campus headquarters building had its Groundbreaking ceremony!
  • CITRIS had its Corporate Sponsor Day at UC Davis.
  • Tele-Immersion research was highlighted in The Daily Californian.
  • Prof. Ruzena Bajcsy presented at the Center for Research and Education in Aging’s daylong conference: “Enabling Technology for the Aging Population: From the Lab to the Home.”

September 2004

July 2004