Foldit, the massive multiplayer protein folding game created by UW CSE’s Center for Game Science, has been named by TechFlash as the 2011 “Innovation of the Year” for its role in cracking an AIDS-related problem whose solution had eluded scientists for a decade. Read more →
Foldit is TechFlash 2011 “Innovation of the Year”
GeekWire reprises Yoky Matsuoka as a “GeekWire Newsmaker of 2011″
We love John and Todd at GeekWire! A third UW CSE family member has been singled out as a “GeekWire Newsmaker of 2011”: Yoky Matsuoka.
“Yoky Matsuoka has long been interested in the frontiers of human interaction with machines, exploring new ways for the nervous system to work in conjunction with robotics and other mechanical devices …
“Matsuoka, a past MacArthur Genius award winner from UW Computer Science & Engineering, this year became the director of a new Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, funded with an $18.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.
“She’s also vice president of technology at Nest, a Palo Alto-based startup marketing an intelligent, connected home thermostat that learns from the user’s habits as a means of programming itself.”
Read the rest here.
And see GeekWire on CSE 2011 Newsmakers Shwetak Patel and Daniil Kulchenko.
Brossard, Bryan, Dietzel, and Worden recognized in 2012 CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award competition
The Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award competition recognizes undergraduates in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research. Universities may nominate as many as four students annually.
In the 2012 competition (results announced today), all four UW CSE nominees were recognized – extending UW CSE’s record of having the largest number of students recognized in the most recent ten years of this competition!
Congratulations to Elliott Brossard, Matt Bryan, Stephanie Dietzel, and Hilary Worden! Read more →
NPR interviews Oren Etzioni on “big data”
As the lead-off for a series on “big data,” NPR features UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni:
“Oren Etzioni, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington, says this trend is fueling intense demand for mathematics and computing talent.
“‘We have seen the industrial revolution, and we are witnessing a data revolution,’ Etzioni says.
“He has started three big-data companies. One of them, Decide.com, employs four Ph.D.s to design better programs to forecast prices on consumer electronics.”
Check out this terrific story here. Read more →
“UW Students Developing Bus App For The Blind”
The UW Daily apparently watches KING5 News (see post from a week ago here) to get their campus information … but hey, we’ll take it:
“OneBusAway, a smartphone application developed by students in the UW’s Department of Computer Science and Engineering (CSE), provides public transit riders with bus schedules, maps, and real-time updates as to when buses arrive at stops. But now, another team of CSE students are developing a similar app for blind transit riders.”
Read the article here. Read more →
Andrew Sullivan does Decide.com
“‘Decide,’ just in time for Black Friday, helps you learn whether the price of a product is about to fall. How does it accomplish this magic? The five Ph.D.’s on its staff don’t hurt. Together they’ve created an algorithm that predicts a gadget’s future price based, among other factors, on the historical price data of other gadgets in its class. Along with a suggestion of whether to buy a product now or wait for a better price or new model, the app supplies a confidence score, a price and model history, and new-product rumors from around the web. So far, CEO Mike Fridgen says it has predicted price with 77% accuracy.”
(Decide.com, founded by UW CSE professor Oren Etzioni and four UW alums, today is 80% staffed by UW alums.) Read more →
New York Times on Oren Etzioni and Decide.com
“Oren Etzioni writes articles about artificial intelligence for scholarly journals, is a renowned expert on data mining, and gained fame when Microsoft paid $115 million for Farecast, an airline-ticket price predictor he founded.
“Now, Professor Etzioni, who teaches computer science at the University of Washington, has directed his considerable intellect at the American ritual of shopping for bargains on Black Friday. After examining billions of prices of consumer electronics, he has decided to spend the busiest shopping day of the year scuba-diving in Bali.
“Why? It is not until early December, Professor Etzioni’s research shows, that prices are likely to be the lowest for electronics, products that are among the biggest sellers on the Friday after Thanksgiving.
“‘The bottom line is, Black Friday is for the retailers to go from the red into the black,’ he said. ‘It’s not really for people to get great deals on the most popular products.’ …
“The added value Professor Etzioni brings to price discussions is the computer crunching of the trove of data provided by online prices — and specific recommendations about when to make a purchase.
“Following the approach of Farecast, now part of Microsoft’s Bing search engine, the professor’s start-up company, Decide.com, studies current and historical prices, information about new models and rumors about new product introductions to figure out the best time to buy.”
Read the rest here. Visit Decide.com here. Read more →
Michael Nielsen on “Reinventing Discovery,” December 8
Michael Nielsen will deliver the UW CSE Distinguished Lecture on December 8 at 3:30 in EEB 105.
Michael is one of the pioneers of quantum computation. Together with Ike Chuang of MIT, he wrote the standard text on quantum computation. This is the most highly cited physics publication of the last 25 years. Several years ago he left a position as Senior Faculty Member at the Perimeter Institute for Theoretical Physics to write a book entitled Reinventing Discovery – published in October. The book describes a major shift now occurring in how scientific discoveries are made, a shift driven by online tools for collaboration and sharing of scientific information. This will be the theme of Michael’s talk, “Doing Science in the Open.”
“‘Hello, computer!’ UW prof and students search outside the box”
UW CSE graduate students Jeff Huang and Alan Ritter
GeekWire reports on research by UW CSE professor Oren Etzioni and his students:
“Like Scotty in Star Trek, the day is coming soon when we’ll talk with our computers instead of just typing at them, according to a prominent UW computer scientist and his team of researchers …
“In an essay penned for Nature, Dr. Etzioni reiterated what computer scientists have known for several years: it’s high time we thought outside of the old text box.
“Highlighting what he says is a ‘curious lack of ambition and imagination,’ Etzioni says that the software industry’s momentum has been behind what has worked, and not on new methods.”
Read the rest of the GeekWire post here. Read more →
GeekWire reprises Shwetak Patel as a “GeekWire Newsmaker of 2011″
Shwetak Patel, Sidhant Gupta, Art Rosenfeld
Two days ago, GeekWire‘s highlighted “Newsmaker of 2011” was UW CSE offspring Daniil Kulchenko (son of Ph.D. student Paul Kulchenko).
Today it’s UW CSE faculty member Shwetak Patel – the photo at left, from yesterday, shows Shwetak and Ph.D. student Sidhant Gupta describing the ElectriSense technology to Art Rosenfeld, Distinguished Scientist Emeritus at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab, Professor Emeritus of Physics at UC Berkeley, the impetus behind California’s extraordinary energy efficiency efforts, and father-in-law of UW CSE professor Dan Weld.
“Is there anything Shwetak Patel can’t do with a home electrical system? We’re often left pondering that question after hearing about the latest high-tech exploits of the University of Washington assistant professor and his collaborators.”
Read the GeekWire post here. Read more →