Staff

Igor Mordatch he/him

Hello! In addition to being an instructor, I’m a research scientist at Google DeepMind and previously spent time at OpenAI, UC Berkeley, and Pixar. I think AI is a fascinating subject and am very excited to talk and think about it with you all. Any feedback is always appreciated!

Pieter Abbeel he/him

pabbeel@berkeley.edu

I have great memories from when I was a student taking my first AI class. I am very excited to hopefully give you a similar excitement about AI this semester. Aside from teaching AI, I spend a lot of my time on AI research (including: diffusion models, large world model, unisim, TRPO, SAC, ring attention, MAML, HER, decision transformer, inverse RL) and former students doing AI start-ups (including: Gradescope, Covariant, OpenAI, Perplexity, Ideogram, Genmo, Skilld, Reflection).

Matei Gardea Head TA DSP Data Access

matei.gardea@berkeley.edu

Hi! I’m a fourth year CS major. I enjoy skiing, mountain biking, and gradient descent in general.

Pranav Muralikrishnan he/him Head TA

pranavm@berkeley.edu

Hi! My name is Pranav and I’m a senior majoring in Math and CS from New Jersey. My interests are in applying both machine learning, as well as more traditional mathematical models to ecology. In my free time I like to run, bike, and play video games!

Xavier Yin he/him Head TA

nzxyin@berkeley.edu

Hi! I’m a EECS 5th year M.S. student from New Zealand. My research interests are in privacy-preserving speech synthesis, audio watermarking, and voice anonymization. Some of my hobbies include hiking, bouldering, and photography. Looking forward to meeting everyone!

Catherine Chu she/her DSP Data Access

catherine.chu@berkeley.edu

Hi! I’m Catherine, a 4th-year CS and DS major from New Jersey. I’m interested in AI in healthcare research, and my hobbies include music, painting and binge-watching detective TV shows. Excited to meet you all this semester!

Erin Tan she/her

tane@berkeley.edu

Hi hi! I’m a fourth-year majoring in CS and CogSci, and I’m originally from New Jersey. Come talk to me about any of the NYT minigames, New Girl, or food and cafe recs! I also do research on the generalizability of ML models in healthcare.

Fangchen Liu she/her

fangchen_liu@berkeley.edu

I’m a fifth-year Ph.D. advised by Prof. Pieter Abbeel, working on reinforcement learning, foundation models, and their application to robotics.

Jerry Sun he/him

qjsun@berkeley.edu

Hi, I’m Jerry and I’m excited to TA CS 188 this summer. I graduated from UC Berkeley in CS and Environmental Science. I think this class teaches you a lot and is a wonderful introduction to a lot of upper division classes. Outside of work, I like to play board games, cards, and bike. Looking forward to meeting you!

Joshua Liao he/him

joshua.liao@berkeley.edu

Hi, I’m Josh! I enjoy volleyball, composing piano pieces, and playing auto-battlers. I love board games— my current favorites are Root and Everdell. Somehow I haven’t played Wingspan yet, so that’s on my bucket list. Excited to meet you this semester!

Kenny Wang he/him

kwkw@berkeley.edu

Hey, I’m Kenny! I’m a fourth-year EECS student from the Bay. I like badminton, napping, incessantly whistling, playing the sproul piano, planes, and impersonating Peyrin. Who actually reads staff bios anyway?

Kevin Zakka

zakka@berkeley.edu

Hi! I’m Kevin, a third year CS PhD student. I’m passionate about all things robotics, physics simulation and teaching. Looking forward to meeting you all!

Michael Wu he/him DSP Data Access

michael.wu1@berkeley.edu

Hi! I’m Michael, a master’s student from San Diego. Fun facts about me: this is my fourth time TA’ing this course, I’ve watched The Office ~8 times, and I hit diamond over summer break - looking forward to meeting you all :)

Mustafa Mirza he/him

mustafa.mirza@berkeley.edu

Hi! I’m a senior studying CS and DS. I’m from Brunei Darussalam and I love futbol, running, hiking, music and martial arts! Don’t hesitate to reach out to me for anything - classes, life advice any movies, shows, food or music recommendations!

Philipp Wu

phil80301@berkeley.edu

Hi! I am a Ph.D. student at here UC Berkeley. I am interested in enabling general real world robots. My research falls at the intersection of reinforcement learning, unsupervised learning, and robotics.

Saathvik Selvan he/him

sselvan@berkeley.edu

Hi! I’m a 3rd year EECS major (and Math minor) from Florida. I enjoy researching about the applications of deep learning methods and tackling interesting algorithmic problems. Outside of school, I love playing the drums, cooking with friends, and recently started bouldering! Looking forward to a great semester and feel free to reach out!

Samantha Huang she/her DSP Data Access

samanthahuang@berkeley.edu

Hi, I’m Samantha! This will be my third time TAing and I’m so excited to help y’all with CS 188 this semester. In my free time, I enjoy windsurfing, drawing doodles, and eating yummy food (lmk if ya’ll know any secret spots ;)).

Wesley Zheng he/him

wzheng0302@berkeley.edu

Hey everyone! I’m a junior majoring in computer science and applied mathematics, and I’m TAing for CS 188 for the second time! In my free time, I like to drink boba (TP Tea is the best), play Genshin Impact, and watch anime.

Advika Bhike she/her

abhike@berkeley.edu

Hey everyone, I’m Advika! I’m a third year CS major and I like matcha, hiking, and watching good movies. Excited to meet y’all!

Danial Toktarbayev he/him

toktarbayev@berkeley.edu

forever reading…

Faith Dennis she/her

f.albao@berkeley.edu

Hi, my name is Faith and I am a 4th year Data Science and Cognitive Science double major with a Computer Science minor. In my free time, I enjoy learning new things, trying new hobbies, and returning to my old hobbies, like gym, cooking, and writing.

Tina Rong she/her

zitangrong26@berkeley.edu

Hi everyone! I’m a third year EECS student from Shenzhen China. Outside of 188 I like hiking and watercolor painting. More than happy to be a part of CS 188 staff team this fall and feel free to reach out!