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Bon voyage! Allen School Ph.D. student Gus Smith awarded 2023 Bonderman Fellowship for independent travel

Portrait of Gus Smith wearing a pale aqua button-down shirt and seated in a teal upholstered chair against a textured concrete wall. After a two-year hiatus, the University of Washington's Bonderman Travel Fellows are back, independently traveling the world and benefitting from the monumental growth that comes with immersing oneself in unfamiliar spaces. Since its inception in 1995, the fellowship has supported over 300 UW students on their travels based on their curiosity, openness, resilience and creativity. Soon, it will be Allen School Ph.D. student Gus Smith’s turn to hit the road, along with seven other graduate students who were named 2023 Bonderman Fellows. Read more →
September 26, 2023

Battery-free origami microfliers from UW researchers offer a new bio-inspired future of flying machines

A microflier in its folded position is set on a gray background and surrounded by maple and elm leaves. The device is golden with orange and black veins and four black squares spreading from the center. The maple and elm leaves are green and show their venation. On a cool afternoon at the heart of the University of Washington’s campus, autumn, for a few fleeting moments, appears to have arrived early. Tiny golden squares resembling leaves flutter then fall, switching from a frenzied tumble to a graceful descent with a snap. Aptly named “microfliers” and inspired by Miura-fold origami, these small robotic devices can fold closed during their descent after being dropped from a drone. This “snapping” action changes the way they disperse and may, in the future, help change the way scientists study agriculture, meteorology, climate change and more. Read more →
September 13, 2023

We come in PEACE: Allen School researchers offer a vision for addressing potential unintended consequences of technology

A partially open laptop with the screen illuminated in shades of blue, orange and red, which reflects off the keyboard and surrounding table. The laptop screen is the only source of light, with the background shrouded in darkness. Technology can have unforeseen, and ostensibly unintended, negative consequences in the real world. Allen School Ph.D. student Rock Yuren Pang and professors Katharina Reinecke, Dan Grossman and Tadayoshi Kohno are advancing a vision for PEACE — short for “Proactively Exploring and Addressing Consequences and Ethics” — that will empower researchers to anticipate those consequences “early, often, and across computer science.” The team’s work is supported by a five-year institutional transformation grant through the National Science Foundation’s Ethical and Responsible Research (ER2) program. Read more →
September 12, 2023

Robotics and reasoning: Allen School professor Dieter Fox receives IJCAI 2023 John McCarthy Award for pioneering work in building intelligent systems

Dieter Fox, wearing glasses and a blue shirt, smiles in front of a blurred background of trees. Allen School professor Dieter Fox will be honored at the 32nd International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI) with the 2023 John McCarthy Award. The award is named for the eponymous scientist, widely regarded as one of the founders of the field of artificial intelligence (AI), and recognizes established researchers who have built up a distinguished track record of research excellence in AI. Fox will receive his award this week and give a presentation on his work at the conference held in Macao, S.A.R. Read more →
August 22, 2023

Wiki Win: Allen School’s Yulia Tsvetkov and collaborators win 2023 Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year for novel approach to revealing biases in Wikipedia biographies

A photo shows a portion of a computer screen with the Wikipedia home page on the Safari browser. Behind the computer to the left is a table and the blurred background of a room with plants in pots on a stand and several windows behind it. With nearly a billion unique monthly users, Wikipedia has become one of the most trusted sources of information worldwide. But while it’s considered more reliable than other internet sources, it’s not immune to bias. Last year, a team led by Allen School professor Yulia Tsvetkov developed a new methodology for studying bias in English Wikipedia biographies, and this spring won the 2023 Wikimedia Foundation Research Award of the Year for its efforts. The team first presented its findings at The Web Conference 2022. Read more →
August 21, 2023

Model researchers: Allen School’s Gabriel Ilharco and Ashish Sharma earn 2023 J.P. Morgan AI Ph.D. Fellowships

A graphic shows side-by-side images of Gabriel Ilharco and Ashish Sharma. On the left, Gabriel Ilharco, wearing a blue shirt and glasses, smiles in front of a blurred background of green leaves. On the right, Ashish Sharma, wearing a brown shirt, smiles in front of a blurred background of a blue sky. The Allen School’s Gabriel Ilharco and Ashish Sharma are among 13 students across the U.S. and England to receive 2023 J.P. Morgan AI Ph.D. Fellowships. The fellowships are part of the J.P. Morgan AI Research Awards Program, which advances artificial intelligence (AI) research to solve real-world problems. Read more →
August 17, 2023

Can AI take a joke? Allen School researchers recognized at ACL 2023 for tackling this and other questions at the nexus of human and machine understanding

A nighttime view of Toronto. There is a pink and purple sky with clouds over the cityscape, and water in the foreground. The city is backlit from the setting sun, with the dark contours of the buildings visible. Dark outlines of birds are visible over the buildings on the right. Allen School researchers took home multiple Best Paper and Outstanding Paper Awards from the 61st Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) held in Toronto last month. Their research spanned a number of projects aimed at enhancing the performance and impact of natural language models, including how artificial intelligence (AI) processes humor, the impact of built-in political biases on model performance, AI-assisted cognitive reframing to support mental health, identifying “WEIRD” design biases in datasets and how to imbue language models with theory of mind capabilities. Read more →
August 15, 2023

Distinctions with a difference: Allen School researchers unveil ContrastiveVI, a deep generative model for gleaning additional insights from single-cell datasets

Scatterplot of multi-colored dots, with a large cluster of dots occupying roughly two-thirds of the frame, with smaller clusters aligned by color and scattered individual dots arranged along one side of the main cluster. In the days before single-cell RNA sequencing, researchers investigating the mechanisms and treatment of disease had to make do with running experiments on bulk cell profiles created by taking tissue samples and grinding them up. Nowadays, researchers can take measurements at the level of individual cells, enabling the exploration of such finer-grained distinctions and advancing our understanding of various biological functions. But without the right computational tools, even single-cell datasets can yield distinctions without a difference. In a paper published this week in Nature Methods, a team in the Allen School’s AIMS Lab led by professor Su-In Lee introduced ContrastiveVI, the first deep learning model designed for applying a powerful technique called contrastive analysis to single-cell data. Read more →
August 9, 2023

Allen School team earns ACM PODS Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award for helping scientists better understand complexity behind parallel database query processing

Sylvan Grove column against blue sky A chance encounter helped Paul Beame, Paris Koutris (Ph.D., ‘15) and Dan Suciu create a model that aids scientists in understanding some of the deeper nuances surrounding big data management. Their paper "Communication Steps for Parallel Query Processing" earned the 2023 ACM PODS Alberto O. Mendelzon Test-of-Time Award for providing a deeper understanding of the complexity behind database query evaluation. Read more →
July 20, 2023

Allen School professor and Smale Prize recipient Shayan Oveis Gharan on counting without counting, his drive to solve TSP and cooking up methods from scratch

Shayan Oveis Gharan, clad in a grey t-shirt and standing in front of a tall potted tree, holds up a shiny sphere-like object in one hand while smiling for the camera. Shayan Oveis Gharan, a professor in the Allen School’s Theory of Computation group, combines all the essential ingredients of a trailblazing researcher who, as his colleagues will attest, also happens to be a genuinely nice guy. The combination has proved to be a genuine recipe for success, as he has racked up a series of accolades in theoretical computer science. His most recent honor, the Stephen Smale Prize from the Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics (FoCM), celebrated Oveis Gharan’s “breakthrough results on the applications of algebraic and spectral methods to the design of algorithms and to combinatorial optimization.” Read more →
July 18, 2023

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