News

Data scientists can improve the accuracy, speed and longevity of science by focusing on solving issues related to the “life cycle” of data, said Deb Agarwal, a Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory senior scientist, at the Women in Data Science at Berkeley conference this month.

A new research center at the University of California, Berkeley, funded by alumni Eric and Wendy Schmidt, will tackle major environmental challenges including climate change and biodiversity loss by combining data science and environmental science.

The public shouldn’t indiscriminately buy into big technology companies’ visions for the metaverse, a space being sold as the next digital frontier, experts said at a UC Berkeley panel.

Significant advances in artificial intelligence (AI) over the past decade have relied upon extensive training of algorithms using massive, open-source databases. But when such datasets are used “off label” and applied in unintended ways, the results are subject to machine learning bias that compromises the integrity of the AI algorithm, according to a new study by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Texas at Austin.

We need to urgently rethink how we create, use, communicate and educate around artificial intelligence, said a multidisciplinary group of experts during a recent UC Berkeley Tanner Lecture discussion.

UC Berkeley-led researchers used mobile phone data and machine learning to quickly and accurately direct the Togolese government’s COVID-19 cash assistance to its poorest residents in a first-of-its-kind study published March 16 in Nature. This breakthrough “phone-based approach” gives policymakers another tool to quickly target humanitarian aid in a crisis or where traditional poverty data isn’t available

UC Berkeley will launch this spring an interdisciplinary initiative to research and propose solutions for governing artificial intelligence, two prominent research institutions at UC Berkeley announced today.

Women, Black and Hispanic individuals are currently and have historically been underrepresented amongst science, technology, engineering and math college degree recipients and technology companies' workforces and leadership. Berkeley’s Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society is working to help solve that.

Marti Hearst is UC Berkeley School of Information’s new head of school, Jennifer Chayes, the school’s dean, recently announced.

Meet Ashish Sahni, the new executive director of the Berkeley Institute for Data Science (BIDS). Sahni joined the UC Berkeley research and training organization – and Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) affiliate – this month from UC San Francisco (UCSF), where he served as chief of staff for the Department of Surgery.