Sad news from Soda Hall:
Robert Wilensky, professor emeritus of computer science at the University of California, Berkeley, and one of the campus’s first faculty members in artificial intelligence when the field was just taking off, has died at age 61.
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During Wilensky’s tenure at UC Berkeley, he served as chair of the Computer Science Division, director of the Berkeley Cognitive Science Program, director of the Berkeley Artificial Intelligence Research Project, and board member of the International Computer Science Institute.
Even though I wasn’t an AI guy, Prof. Wilensky was chair for a significant part of my graduate career. While I didn’t have a plethora of interactions with him, I always found them enjoyable. He was great for the Computer Science Division, presiding over the department during The Great Migration (TM) from Evans Hall, or shortly thereafter (need to confirm). Whatever. I just remember him being one of the earliest occupants of that office on the first floor, and suavely striding out, being one of the few faculty to pull off a suit on a daily basis. Not necessarily business, but definitely a notch up from elbow patches.
Godspeed, kind sir.