BERKELEY, Calif.—An electrical engineering and computer sciences Ph.D. candidate at the University of California–Berkeley is facing felony charges accusing him of intentionally damaging electronic equipment at Cory Hall over a period of two years, causing an estimated $46,855 in direct damage, according to the University of California Police Department.
A professor reported that the student had vandalized another student’s personal computer as well as computer equipment belonging to the university, causing at least $2,119 in damage, the department said in an emailed statement to The Epoch Times. The total damage was likely far more than that, according to the statement.
Jiarui Zou, 26, was arrested on Nov. 12 for burglary and vandalism, the department stated. Detectives authored search warrants for the suspect’s office, his home in Richmond, and his vehicle, and they gathered evidence, according to the statement.
Zou was charged with one count of second-degree felony burglary and three counts of felony vandalism.
He will be arraigned on Dec. 15, according to the Alameda Superior Court.
Zou was briefly booked in Berkeley’s city jail before he was bailed out.
The series of mysterious equipment incidents at the lab started on May 26, 2023, according to UCPD Berkeley’s crime log (case number 25-03505). The most recent incident was on Nov. 10 this year.
The investigation is ongoing, and the motivation is not yet known, according to UCPD. The police department didn’t reveal the name of the professor who allegedly caught Zou in the act.
The Epoch Times was unable to reach Zou for comment, and no defense attorney was listed on Zou’s behalf in Alameda Superior Court records.
Zou was a student in electrical engineering Professor Robert Pilawa-Podgurski’s Research Group at UC Berkeley, according to an archived page of the team’s official website captured on Sept. 9.
Zou, along with two fellow graduate students and Pilawa-Podgurski, won a First Best Place Demo Award at the 2024 IEEE Energy Conversion Congress & Expo, according to an archived page captured on July 24.
“Their innovative thermal test vehicle design provides a dynamic platform that simulates the heat generation of high-performance GPUs and CPUs,” the archived page stated.
It stated that this will allow engineers to evaluate the effectiveness of cooling technologies more precisely and will contribute to energy savings for data centers.
Zou’s name has since been taken down from the research group’s official web pages, but he appears in a few group photos that remain.
His LinkedIn page highlighted his high scholarly distinction in high school on the SAT and the Test of English as a Foreign Language (TOEFL).
UCPD declined to reveal Zou’s nationality.
Zou has two presentations scheduled for the Applied Power Electronics Conference (APEC) in March 2026, according to a conference memo.
