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March 6, 2006 Vol. 77, no. 8S
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EECS professor Jitendra Malik received a B.Tech degree in EE from
Indian Institute of Technology, Kanpur, in 1980 and a Ph.D.
in CS from Stanford in 1985. In 1986, he joined the Berkeley
faculty, where he is currently the Arthur J. Chick Professor
and Chair of the EECS Department. He is also on the faculty
of the Cognitive Science and Vision Science groups. His research
interests are in computer vision and computational modeling
of human vision.
(Peg Skorpinski photo)
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Professor Minute with EECS professor Jitendra Malik
What first inspired
you to go into engineering?
When I was young, kids who were good in math and science were naturally
drawn into electronics and computers; so much was happening in
these fields. It’s still true.
To date, what has been
the most memorable moment in your career?
Those Aha! moments of research — the sheer joy of seeing the
pieces of a puzzle fall into place, or when experimental results suggest
that a crazy idea actually works.
Whom do you most admire?
Hermann von Helmholtz, a 19th century scientist who was one of the
first to apply mathematical and physical reasoning to understand
biology: the nervous system, vision, audition, etc. I believe that
the greatest scientific challenge for the 21st century is understanding
the brain, and the kind of modeling techniques that we study in
electrical engineering and computer science will make it possible.
Helmholtz pioneered all this 150 years ago.
If you had a few extra
hours, what would you do?
Play with my young son.
What should engineering students make sure they do at Berkeley before
they graduate?
Get a broad education, not just a scientific and technical one.
Humanities and social sciences are equally important. You cannot be a
good engineer
if you don’t understand human beings. I also believe that, in order
to be truly creative, you must have lots of different kinds of knowledge
in your head — all the better to trigger interesting new connections.
The narrower you are, the less likely this is to happen.
If you would like us
to feature your favorite professor, please e-mail his or her name to
engnews@coe.berkeley.edu.
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