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PhD Students with advisor Alice Agogino: Celeste Roschuni, Lora Oehlberg, Ryan Shelby, Yael Perez	Some of our BEST Lab graduate men; Ryan Paulson graduating with MS degree	Stephanie Scott, graduating Drake Scholar and CARES Undergraduate researcher, with Alice Agogino and Ryan Shelby	Derek Tat, undergraduate researcher on Smart Lighting, at graduation ceremonies

The Graduation Celebration is an event that honors all graduating underrepresented graduate students at UC Berkeley - including students of color, women, LGBTQ students, DSP students, students with children, transfer students, international students, and reentry students. The committee selected Ryan Shelby due to his academic accomplishments and commitment to underrepresented students. The event is hosted by the Graduate Minority Student Project. It commences at 6:00pm and ends at 8:00pm on Wednesday, May 9, 2012 at the Morrison Library.

Omoju Miller was featured in the What is TEDx? video. "You can do the Impossible. You don't need to wait for someone else to do it. . . I can do it!"

"After attending the summit, I realized just how powerful ideas can be. This might sound like a cliche, but when you are in the throws of everyday life, you forget just how life changing an idea can be. Here at Berkeley, we have an amazing heritage of change, our research activities have changed the course of the modern world for better(Protest and Resistance) and for worse (Atom Bomb). We at TEDxEuclidAve, are committed to harnessing the power of ideas. I will end by restating what I have being reminded of : An inspirational idea will eventually lead to action. Seize the day, change the world, that is the power of X." See more at the TEDx Euclid that Omju organized. The topic was Achieving Social Impact through Entrepreneurship.

Their paper titled "Leadership and Service Learning Improves Confidence of Engineering Skills in Women" has been selected to receive the 2012 Denice D. Denton Best Paper Award for our division. Congratulations!
 
The 2012 Best Paper authors (Jennifer Wang, Eli Patten, Ryan Shelby, Farzana Ansari and Lisa Pruitt)  will receive a $250 cash award  (to be divided among the authors) and the paper will go forward for evaluation as a candidate for the 2012 ASEE National Conference Best Paper Award. The Denice D. Denton Best Paper award will be announced at the WIED Business Meeting and the Joint K-12/Minorities/Women in Engineering Reception both of which occur on Monday June 11 at the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition in San Antonio, TX.
 
Denice Dee Denton (27 August 1959 - 24 June 2006) was a professor of electrical engineering and an academic administrator. She held academic appointments at both the University of Massachusetts and the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Zürich. In 1996, Denice became the first women engineering dean at a major research institution with her appointment to lead the College of Engineering at the University of Washington. In 2003 at the age of 45, Denice D. Denton became the youngest person to be appointed chancellor in the University of California system at UC-Santa Cruz.
 
Women engineering faculty will forever remember Denice for what she achieved as she paved the way for acceptance of women as engineering academic leaders.

BEST Labbers Alice Agogino and Mark Fuge are excited to be co-organizing a workshop with Julie Linsey (Texas A&M) and Rob Stone (Oregon State) entitled:

"Analogies and Metaphors in Design Cognition: Theory and Tools for Design Practice"

It will be held at the 5th International Conference on Design Computing and Cognition on June 5th at Texas A&M in College Station, Texas. The workshop will include a mixture of discussion, short talks, software demos, and an interactive design portion where participants will be able to use and discuss various techniques and computing tools that apply analogies, metaphors, and bio-mimicry to solving design problems.

Do you know anyone who is doing research or practicing in this area? If so, encourage them to apply by 4/22/2012 for a chance to join us! Follow the link below for more detail:
http://bit.ly/dcc12-workshop

The CARES project has announced its 2012 Design Challenge: Design an off-grid living-culture center for the Pinoleville Pomo Nation
(PPN), a Native American nation in Northern California. The emphasis will be on a zero-energy building which is sensitive to the local culture and place. The community is in the final process of re-purchasing ancestors lands where they hope to build the Living Culture Center to become a place to practice, preserve, and revive their culture for generations to come.

Schedule:
March 20: Competition opens
April 21: Site visit and workshop at the PPN (will be documented online for those who cannot attend)
June 10: Submissions due
September 4: Winners announced

View/download the announcement poster (PDF)

Yao-Jung Wen and Alice M. Agogino won the Leon Gaster Award for Lighting Technology for 2011 (Society of Light and Lighting) for the paper 'Control of wireless-networked lighting in open-plan offices" published in Volume 43 Issue 2  of Lighting Research & Technology. The award will be presented at the Society of Light and Lighting's Annual General Meeting and Awards evening on 29 May at ZSL, Regent's Park, London.