Allen School News

Allen School Ph.D. student Kyle Deeds, who is part of the University of Washington’s Database Group, introduced partition constraints, an innovative approach to making conjunctive query executions in databases more efficient. Deeds and his collaborator presented the research at the 28th International Conference on Database Theory (ICDT) in Barcelona, Spain, where their work received the Best Student Paper and Best Paper Awards. Read more →

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Lee develops explainable AI techniques to gain new insights into complex biological systems and transform medicine. The International Society for Computational Biology recently honored her in its 2025 Class of Fellows for her groundbreaking work that is shaping the future of the field. Read more →

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Traditionally, the intricate process of designing illusion knit creations, where stitches of varying heights can produce different images depending on what angle you view the piece, was done by hand. Now, a team of Allen School researchers have introduced computational illusion knitting. The design framework helps automate the process by computationally generating knitting patterns for input designs, making illusion knitting more accessible and allowing for more complex and multi-view patterns that were previously impossible. Read more →

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Allen School Ph.D. student Shangbin Feng envisions the work of large language models (LLMs) as a collaborative endeavor, while fellow student Rock Yuren Pang is interested in advancing the conversation around unintended consequences of these and other emerging technologies. Both were recently honored among the 2024 class of IBM Ph.D. Fellows, which recognizes and supports students from around the world who pursue pioneering research in the company’s focus areas. Read more →

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As the head of the Allen School’s Social Futures Lab, professor Amy X. Zhang’s research draws on the design of offline public institutions and communities to then develop new social computing systems that can help online platforms become more democratic instead of top-down, and more customizable as opposed to one-size-fits-all. These efforts were commended by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which recognized Zhang among its 2025 class of Sloan Research Fellows. Read more →

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Each year, the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) recognizes the top 1 percent of its members who have made notable contributions to the field of computing science and technology as ACM Fellows. Allen School professors Brian Curless and Jeffrey Heer were among the 55 ACM fellows who will be recognized at a ceremony in June in San Francisco, California. Their work has helped transform how we use computing technologies today. Read more →

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Allen School professor Shayan Oveis Gharan and Ph.D. alumnus Kuikui Liu, now a professor at MIT, are part of a team of researchers that received this year’s Michael and Sheila Held Prize for introducing a new method for counting the bases of matroids. The annual prize from the National Academy of Sciences honors “outstanding, innovative, creative and influential research” in the field of combinatorial and discrete optimization published in the past eight years. Read more →

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The Computing Research Association (CRA) honored a group of undergraduate students from across the country who have made notable contributions to the computing research field. Four Allen School undergraduates received honorable mentions in the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards competition for their research ranging from improving farmers’ networks to help sell their products to developing innovative ways for children to interact with technology Read more →

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Despite their growing potential and increasing popularity, large language models (LLMs) often produce responses that are factually inaccurate or nonsensical, also known as hallucinations. Allen School Ph.D. student Akari Asai has dedicated her research to tackling these problems with the use of retrieval-augmented language models, a new class of LLMs that pull relevant information from an external datastore with a query that the LLM generates. For being a pioneer in Artificial Intelligence & Robotics, Asai was recognized as one of MIT Technology Review’s 2024 Innovators Under 35 Japan. The award honors young innovators from Japan who are “working to solve global problems.” Read more →

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About a quarter of all Allen School students are first-generation or first-gen, meaning that they are one of the first in their family to pursue a Bachelor's degree in the U.S., according to Allen School demographics data. In 2020, a group of first-gen Allen School students wanted to build a club to help support and recognize their fellow first-gen students. Today, the club called GEN1 has helped first-gen students find community, connect with resources at the Allen School and University of Washington and more — all with the goal of highlighting and celebrating the first-gen experience. Read more →

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