News

For the 668 UC Berkeley students who received their Data Science bachelor’s degrees on Saturday, May 15, it was a graduation day like no other, coming on the heels of an academic year like no other. Due to pandemic restrictions, students and their families celebrated their graduation via the program’s first-ever virtual commencement premiering on YouTube. The ceremony featured commencement speakers, student and faculty awards, and a surprise appearance by Cal mascot Oski the Bear.

David Culler, the Friesen Professor of Computer Science, Emeritus at UC Berkeley is the recipient of the Berkeley Citation Award -- one of the university's highest honors. Culler was presented with the award during the online commencement ceremony for Data Sciences Undergraduate Studies on Saturday, May 15.

UC Berkeley Statistics Department Chair and Professor Sandrine Dudoit has been named a Fellow of the Institute of Mathematical Statistics (IMS). She was one of 41 IMS Fellows selected in 2021.

John DeNero, an Associate Teaching Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences (EECS), has been named the new Associate Dean for Undergraduate Studies for the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society at UC Berkeley. He takes on the position with the retirement of Professor Deb Nolan.

This time around, Deb Nolan is definitely going through with her plans to retire. She had been planning to go out in June 2020. In preparation she was taking a class in landscape horticulture at Merritt College in Oakland, with plans to do some serious gardening in retirement. Instead, she was asked to stay on as the Associate Dean for Undergraduate Education in the nascent Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) by Jennifer Chayes, the then-newly hired Associate Provost for CDSS. So instead of continuing to learn the Latin names for landscaping plants, Nolan withdrew from the class -- the first biology course she had ever taken --- and agreed to stay on at Berkeley.

Michael I. Jordan, the Pehong Chen Distinguished Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science and the Department of Statistics at the University of California, Berkeley, has been named one of 10 Foreign Members to the Royal Society. In all, just 62 scientists from around the world were named Royal Society members this year.

The UC Berkeley Academic Senate’s Committee on Teaching has presented five Extraordinary Teaching in Extraordinary Times Awards to instructors in the Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society in recognition of their innovative work to keep students engaged while learning remotely during the pandemic.

We’re excited that the Harvard Data Science Review (HDSR), an award-winning journal and a leading voice for data science, is spotlighting the UC Berkeley Division of Computing, Data Science, and Society (CDSS) and its leadership of data science at Berkeley and throughout the UC system. 

Emily Smith, a double major in Data Science and Applied Mathematics, has been voted the 2021 Pac-12 Women's Soccer Scholar Athlete of the Year. Smith is California's captain and senior defender. The award, which is presented in each of the 24 sports sponsored by the Pac-12, was established to honor collegiate student-athletes that are standouts both academically and in their respective sports disciplines. 

Data science, given its scale at Berkeley, can be tricky to navigate: which data science courses should you take? What are the major requirements? How can you get help with Jupyter Notebook issues? To accommodate such data science needs, the Data Science Undergraduate Studies (DSUS) program provides peer support⁠—trained undergraduate students who assist with both the technical (Data Peer Consultants) and academic (Data Peer Advisors) sides of data science at Berkeley.