Explorer Categories: EECS

Sophie Koh (she/her) is a PhD student in Electrical Engineering researching sustainability and scalability of organic solar cell fabrication. She grew up in the Washington D.C. area. For undergrad, she attended Amherst College in Massachusetts and studied Physics and Computer Science. She is passionate about solar power, and loves utilizing her technical background to help develop solutions to combat climate change. She is also a strong advocate for underrepresented groups in STEM, and is involved in K-12 STEM outreach. Outside of STEM, she likes to dance, eat good food, shop at Costco, crochet, watch TV, and look after her two cats!

Jade is a second year PhD student in EECS at Berkeley advised by Professor Rikky Muller; he also holds a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from Cornell University, where he graduated at the top of his EE class. He is broadly interested in developing integrated circuits for biomedical applications, with a particular focus on neuromodulation and cancer therapy. His research aims to harness recent scientific discoveries in neuroscience to develop implantable devices to effectively diagnose and treat medical conditions, as well as to enable doctors and scientists to more easily understand the nervous system and its interactions with disease.

Lucas is a graduate student in Berkeley’s Electrical Engineering Department advised by Professor Ana Arias. He is interested in scalable electronics processing to create ultra-low cost, networked sensor nodes to enable environmental monitoring and modeling. Particularly he hopes to use the technology developed in his graduate studies to help inform future sustainable agricultural practices. Before moving to California, he lived in Michigan, where he studied the feasibility of integrating transparent solar panels onto the windows for energy generation in cities. Lucas joined H2H8 in the Fall of 2023 to connect with a broad group of students seeking to make a positive and lasting impact on challenges facing humanity with their research. For fun, he enjoys watching and playing soccer, road and trail running around the bay with friends, and reading.

Francesca is a fourth year graduate student in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science advised by Dr. Robert Pilawa-Podgurski. Prior to coming to Berkeley, Francesca graduated with a B.S. in Engineering Science and B.A. in Mathematics from Smith College in Northampton, Massachusetts. Francesca’s work involves AC-DC conversion at the residential scale, working on hardware design and control techniques for an inverter topology for use in solar applications, and looking at parallelized switch design for medium-voltage converters. Outside of the lab, Francesca is the current Chair for the IEEE Power and Energy Society at Berkeley, which seeks to build enthusiasm and understanding for energy issues and technology through organized talks and social events.

I am a Ph.D. student in EECS, co-advised by Nilah Ioannidis and Nir Yosef. My research is at the intersection of machine learning and computational biology. Specifically, I develop methods to predict the effects of human variants, to understand the role of noncoding DNA sequences, and to analyze data from single-cell technologies. During my undergrad, I primarily worked in computer vision, focusing on sustainability and healthcare applications. Outside of research, I enjoy playing pickleball and basketball and all things chess.

I’m a third year undergraduate student at UC Berkeley studying computer science with an interest in leveraging technology to address climate change challenges. I’m currently working in the Girotto lab where I run hydrological models to determine how restoring beaver populations could increase the water storage capacity of the Sierra Nevada mountains. In my free time, I enjoy hiking, playing tennis, and playing guitar.

Kelly is a 6th year PhD candidate in the Pilawa Power Electronics Research Group at UC Berkeley. She studies power converter design for grid-tied applications. Her circuit designs boost efficiency, enable volume reduction, and improve EMI performance. Her areas of interest include electric vehicle charging, solar inverters, and micro-grid applications. She has held power electronic internships at Tesla, Apple, and Texas Instruments.

I am a PhD student in EECS, advised by Professor Nilah Ioannidis. I study how machine learning methods can be applied to further our understanding of regulatory genomics. I grew up in the Bay Area and completed my undergraduate and master’s degrees in computer science at MIT. Before my PhD, I worked as a software engineer at a biotech company focused on early cancer detection in a clinical setting. As a graduate student, I am more interested in applying computational methods towards basic scientific understanding.

Sahana Krishnan received a B.S. in Electrical Engineering from the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin) in May of 2018. After graduating, she spent three years working at Texas Instruments (TI), architecting industry power solutions as part of TI’s commitment to making technology smaller, more efficient, and more reliable. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. in Electrical Engineering at the University of California, Berkeley (UC Berkeley) with a research emphasis on 48 V to point-of-load DC-DC hybrid switched-capacitor converters in automotive applications. This research has been motivated by her desire to utilize her industry experience to inform academic research direction and reduce the timeline from research investigation to industry adoption. Outside of research activities, Sahana enjoys singing and playing the piano, hiking in Northern California, and exploring the Bay Area through local coffee shops!

I am a fourth year Computer Science PhD student at UC Berkeley. I study ways to optimize and implement programs for noisy quantum computers. Specifically, my research focuses on uncovering ways that machine learning can be leveraged to do various quantum program compilation tasks. These tasks range from finding minimal representations of quantum circuits, to ensuring that programs conform to restrictive, modern hardware. I am originally from the state of North Carolina. In my free time, I enjoy reading, college basketball, and the sport of powerlifting.