Ken Goldberg, the craigslist Distinguished Professor of New Media and Professor in the College of Engineering and School of Information at UC Berkeley, has been appointed Faculty Director of the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative. Greg Niemeyer, Associate Professor of Art Practice at UC Berkeley, and Warren Sack, Associate Professor of Film and Digital Media at UC Santa Cruz, have both been named Associate Directors.
The mission of the CITRIS Data and Democracy Initiative is to advance information and communications technologies such as mobile applications and social media that will allow individuals of all backgrounds to enhance their individual and collective awareness, participation, discovery, and decision-making related to critical civic and societal issues. The Data and Democracy Initiative is collaborating with the UC Santa Cruz Center for Games and Playable Media, and UC Berkeley’s Center for New Media (BCNM), Human Rights Center, Social Apps Lab, and the Algorithms, Machines, and People (AMP) Lab among others along with companies, government and non-profit organizations. “This is exactly what governments need,” noted Alec Ross, Senior Advisor for Innovation to US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.
Ken Goldberg earned dual degrees in Electrical Engineering and Economics from the University of Pennsylvania in 1984 and the MS and PhD from Carnegie Mellon University in 1990. He joined the UC Berkeley faculty in 1995 and is Professor of Industrial Engineering and Operations Research, with secondary appointments in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the School of Information. Ken has published over 150 peer-reviewed technical papers on algorithms for robotics, automation, and social information filtering and holds eight US patents. He is Editor-in-Chief elect of the IEEE Transactions on Automation Science and Engineering (T-ASE), Co-Founder of the Berkeley Center for New Media, Co-Founder and CTO of Hybrid Wisdom Labs, Co-Founder of the Moxie Institute, and Founding Director of UC Berkeley’s Art, Technology, and Culture Lecture Series.
Ken’s art installations, based on his research, have been exhibited internationally at venues such as the Whitney Biennial, Pompidou Center in Paris, Buenos Aires Biennial, and the ICC in Tokyo. Goldberg was awarded the Presidential Faculty Fellowship in 1995 by President Clinton, the National Science Foundation Faculty Fellowship in 1994, the Joseph Engelberger Robotics Award in 2000, and elected IEEE Fellow in 2005. More on Ken’s research, art, and teaching is available at http://goldberg.berkeley.edu