Allen School News Archive

The University of Washington has won three recent awards from the National Science Foundation related to cloud computing.  Two of the grants will fund projects examining ocean climate simulations and analyzing astronomical images.  Both provide tools so researchers can use cloud computing to easily interact with the massive datasets that are becoming more and more common in science.  A third grant to the UW provides curriculum and training to teach cloud computing.  The awards are to eScience Institute research scientist and CSE affiliate professor Bill Howe, Astronomy professor Andy Connolly, and CSE professor and eScience Institute director Ed Lazowska.  See the full story here. Read more →

An Xconomy post describes UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska‘s take on the recent reorganization of Microsoft Live Labs, the organization that (among other things) created Photosynth by combing Seadragon’s streaming technology with UW and Microsoft Research’s PhotoTourism photo navigation technology.  See the full post here. Read more →

When asked by Xconomy to name five young talents in the UW College of Engineering who are shaping the future of information technology, biotechnology, and clean technology, UW Dean of Engineering Matt O’Donnell’s list included UW CSE’s Yoshi Kohno and Magda Balazinska.  Yoshi’s cybersecurity research has a number of potential applications, including helping people find stolen laptop computers, and protecting wireless signals given off by implantable medical devices.  Magda’s research focuses on the use of the databases for science in cloud computing environments.

In his haste and myopia (the poor guy is a bioengineer), Matt neglected to note the many other equally extraordinary young faculty in CSE; take a look here.

Read the full Xconomy article here. Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. student Raphael Hoffman is one of 20 students nationwide who have been recognized in Yahoo!’s “Key Scientific Challenges” program, which provides unrestricted research funds and the opportunity to interact with Yahoo! scientists.

Raphael, who is working with UW CSE professors Dan Weld and James Fogarty, is attempting to make computers easier to use by combining ideas from Information Extraction, Machine Learning, and Human Computer Interaction. Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. student Eytan Adar‘s research is among the projects described in this Technology Review article. Read more →

The Putnam Mathematical Competition, offered each year by the Mathematical Association of America, began in 1938, and is open to undergraduate students in the United States and Canada.  The six-hour test is administered on the first Saturday in December.  Roughly 4,000 students typically participate.

In this year’s competition, UW CSE junior Will Johnson finished sixth – an extraordinary performance.   (In a typical year, more than half of the competitors earn a grand total of zero points.  Will scored 99 – the top score of any student at a public university.)

Two other University of Washington students finished in the top 500, including UW CSE freshman Keyun Tong.

Each institution also selects three students to compete as a team.  The UW team, which included UW CSE junior Igor Tolkov as well as Johnson, finished 15th out of 405 teams.

UW CSE senior Michael Rutherford also competed.

Great coaching makes a big difference; UW Putnam participants were coached by Mathematics professors Ioana Dumitriu and Julia Pevtsova.

See a University Week article here. Read more →

Yoshi Kohno

Luis Ceze

We are pleased to announce that UW CSE faculty members Yoshi Kohno and Luis Ceze have both won 2009 NSF Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Awards.  Yoshi’s award is for his work to develop the framework and applications to enhance the security and privacy of records such as email (home or business) and electronic voting audit logs.  Luis’ award will fund his research to make it easier to program  multicore processors. His  work will improve software reliability and lead to energy savings in computer systems.

Luis and Yoshi are UW CSE’s 25th and 26th current faculty members who have won NSF CAREER Awards. Read more →

An Xconomy post by UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska – see full post here.

“In Washington, higher education is slated for far deeper cuts than in any other high-tech state.  In other words, a system that already disadvantages smaller companies and kids who grow up here is going to get far worse.

“This craziness could be addressed by making different budgetary choices (as all other high-tech states seem to be doing), and/or by allowing tuition to rise in order to avoid reducing capacity (UW tuition, even with an increase double what the Governor and the State Senate have proposed to allow, would still be the lowest among Global Challenge State peer institutions – less than $8,000 per year for a top-tier education; federal and institutional financial aid increases would maintain affordability).

“You’ve got to decide what sort of future you want for your kids and your state.  And then tell your legislators.”

See the full post here. Read more →

The Seattle Times profiles UW CSE professor Yoky Matsuoka in Pacific Northwest magazine.

“At the University of Washington, MacArthur ‘genius’ award-winner Yoky Matsuoka is leading the effort to build robotic hands and other devices that will take commands directly from the human brain — and revolutionizing the opportunities for people with disabilities to function more fully.”

See the complete Seattle Times article here, and a great set of 10 accompanying photographs here.

See Yoky’s web page here, the UW Neurobotics Laboratory web page here, and the new YokyWorks web page here. Read more →

Xconomy profiles, yet again, UW CSE startup Skytap.  “‘One of the key attributes of Skytap is that they give you cloud computing with your existing apps, whereas the others require you to develop specially for their restricted model of computing,’ says Ignition partner Brad Silverberg.  ‘It means you can go cloud computing right now.'”  Read the full post here. Read more →