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S. Shankar Sastry takes over directorship of the Berkeley-based CITRIS.
PEG SKORPINSKI PHOTO
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Sastry named new director of Berkeley-based CITRIS
S. Shankar Sastry has been named the new director of CITRIS, the Center for Information Technology Research in the Interest of Society. He succeeds founding director and EECS professor Ruzena Bajcsy.
A professor of EECS and bioengineering, Sastry (M.S.’79, Ph.D.’81 EECS) has been on the faculty since 1983. His areas of research include embedded and autonomous software, computer vision, robotic telesurgery, cybersecurity and network infrastructure, sensor networks, and hybrid and embedded systems.
He has served as director of DARPA’s Information Technology Office, director of Berkeley’s Electronic Research Laboratory and, most recently, chairman of the very department where he earned his Ph.D.
“CITRIS has already done a fantastic job addressing a wide number of societal-scale challenges and systems,” Sastry said, “and I’d like to expand upon those successes. As CITRIS enters its fourth year, I plan to offer a new palette of challenges for us to take on.”
His focus for the next three years, he says, will be on information technology applications to improve health care delivery at a lower price, advancing multimedia search technology, and improving security and trustworthiness in societal-scale information systems.
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The new CITRIS headquarters begins to take shape on the old Davis Hall North site, seen here from atop Cory Hall.
AARON WALBURG PHOTO
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CITRIS is one of four California Institutes for Science and Innovation established in 2001 to keep the state on the cutting edge of new technologies. The center currently unites more than 200 researchers from four UC campuses—Berkeley, Davis, Merced, and Santa Cruz—on more than 150 projects in areas such as disaster preparedness, environmental monitoring, energy management, and health care.
Sastry steps into the job as the center’s new headquarters are under construction on the north side of campus. Building plans have been altered since excavation began last November to adjust for dramatic price increases in concrete and steel during the past two years. The new design will go out for bids this fall, with construction scheduled to continue through 2008.
See a live view of the building site at http://observe.berkeley.edu.
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