NRC "Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs"
On April 21, NRC revised certain aspects of its disastrously flawed “Data-Based Assessment of Research-Doctorate Programs in the United States,” admitting to a broad range of errors. It’s still a shameful bust. In the words of the Computing Research Association:
The NRC has released “revised” rankings for Ph.D. programs. However, this “revision” does not address any of the substantive issues with both the data collection and the ranking methodology that have been raised by CRA and other organizations. This is regrettable. Accordingly our view must still stand: CRA does not consider the purported rankings that have been released by the NRC to be an accurate reflection of computing program strengths, will not use them in any of our activities and urges others interested in the field of computing to ignore them as well.
Read it and weep. And while you’re at it, read this article from the Chronicle of Higher Education by Jonathan R. Cole, University Professor and former Provost at Columbia University:
After more than seven years trying to improve the quality of the data in the recent study, I was alone in refusing to sign off on it. Rather than write a dissent, which would have further delayed an already late report, I resigned from the committee before the assessment’s publication. The report’s quality was not worthy of publication, nor, I believe, did it live up to the standards that the National Academy of Sciences, which sponsored it, should set. Read more →
Nearly 4,000 K-12 students visited the University of Washington for Engineering Discovery Days, April 22-23. And at times it seemed as if they were all simultaneously crammed into the Microsoft Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. See Bruce Hemingway’s photos here. Read more →
Urbandipity is a Seattle social networking startup that “enables you to find [real-world] serendipity more often.” It was launched by four long-time friends, including UW CSE 2007 alum Dustin Conrad. Read the GeekWire profile here. Read more →
Ed Lazowska in the KIRO-FM studios
GeekWire summarizes an interview with UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska: “Our guest this past week on the GeekWire Podcast was Ed Lazowska … We talked about tons of stuff … But perhaps no subject we talked about was more important than the demand for top engineers, and what it’s going to take for the supply to catch up in the form of increased capacity for computer science education in the state. He also talked about another outcome from the department, the transfer of technologies to startups and other tech companies in the region, and his general outlook on the Seattle tech community.”
Read more here. Read more →
UW CSE startup Impinj, the world’s leading innovator in UHF Gen 2 RFID solutions for both item-level and supply-chain tagging, has filed for an IPO.
Impinj was co-founded by UW CSE professor Chris Diorio and his Ph.D. mentor Carver Mead, the Gordon and Betty Moore Professor Emeritus of Engineering and Applied Science at Caltech, and was originally funded by our friends at Madrona Venture Group.
Read a GeekWire post here. Xconomy here. Read more →
UW CSE’s Stuart Reges has won this year’s University of Washington Distinguished Teaching Award, which is given to faculty who show “a mastery of their subject matter, intellectual rigor and a passion for teaching.” Stuart is the 5th CSE faculty member to receive this honor. A list of previous winners here.
This makes a hat trick for Stuart – adding to the teaching awards he has won at Stanford and Arizona.
Read the announcement here.
Congratulations Stuart! Read more →
A terrific interview regarding the UW CSE team’s recent win in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition. Listen to the story here. Read more about the competition here. Read more →
CSE Ph.D. student Yaw Anokwa is GeekWire‘s “Geek of the Week.”
“One of the goals of GeekWire’s ‘Geek of the Week’ feature is to shine is a light on extraordinary people in the Pacific Northwest technology community. Yaw Anokwa, a Ph.D. candidate in computer science at the University of Washington, certainly fits that profile — from his Open Data Kit research project to his work as a co-founder of the Change group at the UW.”
The Geek of the Week articles consist largely of the geek’s answers to a wide-ranging set of questions. Yaw gives some thoughtful and surprising answers to such questions as “If someone gave me $1 million to launch a startup, I would …”
Read the article here.
Congratulations, Yaw!! Read more →
UW CSE’s annual summer workshop for K-12 teachers, CS4HS, is open for registration! This year’s workshop, once again sponsored by our friends at Google, will be held from August 10-12 in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering on the UW campus.
CS4HS aims to:
- Earn you either 20 clock hours from WSTA OR 2 units of university credit from the University of Washington.
- Expose you to exciting examples of computer science operating in close relationships with other disciplines.
- Teach you the basics of computational problem solving and give you the vocabulary to relate these concepts to your students and your own subject material.
- Broaden your view of computer science and the way it is shaping Washington’s communities and people–and those of the entire world.
- Explore opportunities for you to help broaden your students’ interest in computer science and dispel myths about what computer science is and is not.
The workshop is targeted at teachers with no computer science or programming experience.
Information here. Registration here.
Read more →
Mark Zbikowski, a 25-year Microsoft employee now in the UW CSE Ph.D. program, is interviewed by the Seattle Times in connection with Paul Allen’s new book.
“‘Paul was pushing to take the state of the art and move it forward a bit.’ In the end, they devised a system that paved the way for future advances to give PCs much more storage. ‘It was prescient of Paul to see that we’d need this organizational ability so far in advance of the hardware,’ Zbikowski said.”
Read the interview here. Read more →
