Randy H. Katz

Biography

A world-class educator and research advisor at the University of California, Berkeley, Randy Howard Katz has made a profound impact on engineering education at Berkeley. Dr. Katz has graduated more Ph.D. students in computer science, and more female computer scientists, than any other Berkeley computer science faculty member. One third of his students have now become faculty members at other leading universities and institutions. Dr. Katz is well known at Berkeley for being a dynamic lecturer. He brings his passion for teaching to the undergraduate level with creative freshman seminars such as “From Smoke Signals to the Internet” and “IT Goes to War.” His freshman seminars offer an opportunity for faculty members and small groups of freshmen to engage in discussions on various computer science topics.

Katz also teaches a VLSI design course, and his lecture notes led to his very successful textbook, Contemporary Logic Design, that has been used by more than 200 universities worldwide and is considered the market-leading textbook for introductory hardware design courses. Dr. Katz was one of the first to revolutionize how logic design is taught by incorporating field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs). With FPGAs, the logic functions are programmed in small memories, making it ideal for teaching students how to design logic and making the labs more affordable. Today, most universities that teach logic design use the FPGA methods pioneered by Dr. Katz.

An IEEE Fellow, Dr. Katz is currently the United Microelectronics Corporation Distinguished Professor in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley, where he has taught since 1983.