The task of following Bill Gates falls to James Hamilton. James is a superb database, data center, and Internet-scale services R&D leader, as well as a superb speaker. Currently Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, he previously spent a decade with Microsoft, and before that a decade with IBM. James also maintains two extremely interesting blogs: one on all things related to technology (here), and one on all things related to cruising and living aboard (here). (Whether you’re a data center designer or a cruiser, it helps to know a lot about diesel engines – one of James’s many surprising fields of expertise.)
James’s CSE Distinguished Lecture – “Internet-Scale Storage” – will be Tuesday at 3:30 in EE 105, with a reception to follow in the Microsoft Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Please join us!
Talk abstract and speaker bio here. Read more →
A Seattle Times op-ed by State Senator Rosemary McAuliffe and UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska:
“But, we must do more to grow STEM programs in our schools. We must increase the focus on inquiry-based learning in all fields. We must increase the emphasis on “computational thinking”, which is changing every field. We must increase computer-science offerings in high schools — both here and nationally. The vast majority of job openings across all STEM fields are in computing. Let us not forget the importance of supporting our teachers to become certified to teach STEM.
“We also must increase access to bachelor’s programs at Washington’s universities in computer science and other engineering fields. When we turn qualified students away from these high-demand fields, we deny them the opportunity to be first-tier participants in our state’s innovation economy.”
To see the sad state of STEM education at all levels in Washington State, see the slideset here (a presentation by Ed Lazowska at the 2011 annual meeting of the Washington State Academy of Sciences). Read the Seattle Times op-ed here. Read more →
Bill Gates spent the afternoon at UW CSE, visiting labs and speaking to a hanging-room-only crowd.
Bill met with Gaetano Borriello, Yaw Anokwa, Rohit Chaudhri, and Nicola Dell concerning technology for health care in the developing world; with Oren Etzioni, Kevin Clark, and Alan Ritter concerning the future of search; and with Shwetak Patel, Eric Larson, Sidhant Gupta, and Gabe Cohn concerning sustainability sensing.
A web archive of Bill’s talk and Q&A (“The Opportunity Ahead: A Conversation with Bill Gates”) is available here.
GeekWire post (with many photos) here and here. Xconomy post here. Seattle Times here and here. TechFlash on the birthday cupcake here and other topics here. TechCrunch here. PC Magazine here. UW Daily here. Gizmodo here. Los Angeles Times here.
Here’s a nice reminiscence on Bill’s early days as a programmer, scamming computer time at the University of Washington with his high school pal Paul Allen – from the.gates.notes.
Many Bruce Hemingway photographs here. Read more →
UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska is featured in one of a series of articles on “Why I Chose UW Medicine.” Read it here. Read more →
Aruna Balasubramanian, a Computing Innovation Fellow postdoctoral researcher in UW CSE working with professor David Wetherall, has received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, her Ph.D. institution.
Congratulations Aruna! Read more →
Reminder: Bill Gates will deliver the UW CSE Distinguished Lecture on Thursday at 3:30 in the Microsoft Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Details (including live webcast information) here. Read more →
Nest Labs, a Palo Alto startup, announced its “Nest Learning Thermostat” today. UW CSE’s Yoky Matsuoka is currently on leave as Vice President for Technology at Nest.
“But probably the most sophisticated feature of the Nest is the artificial intelligence that helps it regulate the temperature to your liking — without your having to engage in complicated setup tasks.
“Included among Nest’s advisors is Stanford AI head and Google researcher Sebastian Thrun, who told Fadell and Rogers that the best person in the world to produce this complicated intelligence was Yoky Matsuoka, a 2007 MacArthur ‘genius’ fellow and MIT-trained computer scientist who heads a University of Washington lab, and also was working on futuristic projects for the top-secret Google X division. Rogers set up a meeting.
“When Matsuoka heard him utter the acronym HVAC, she pictured some guy in a blue shirt coming to her house and checking out some dirty spot in the basement to fix something. ‘But seven minutes later, I was captivated,’ she says. ‘I’d seen plenty of smart home projects in academia, beginning in the 1980s, but they just could not take off. When Matt presented the idea, I tried to poke holes in it, but he had answers for every problem I bought up. I realized that this could be the entry point — and that this was an opportunity I could not miss.'”
Read a terrific Wired article here. NY Times here. Forbes here. Slashdot here. Read more →
No problem placating the smaller conferences – you could pay >1,000 athletes out of the President’s salary.
“Emmert said the minimum Academic Progress Rates required for teams to compete in the postseason could be raised to 900 in time for this season’s N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. It could increase to 930 — essentially corresponding to a 50 percent graduation rate — in two years.” Heavens to Murgatroyd!
Read more from the NY Times here. Even better, read a damning article in The Atlantic here: “For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—’amateurism’ and the ‘student-athlete’—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes.” Read more →
Isilon CEO Sujal Patel, EMC CEO Joe Tucci, and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn
Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn reports on the Pioneer Square expansion of EMC Isilon, co-founded by Sujal Patel and UW CSE alumnus Paul Mikesell:
“The 200 new jobs over the next fifteen months signals a big investment in Seattle, said [EMC CEO Joe] Tucci, adding that EMC sees Seattle as a hub for data storage and cloud computing technology, with both Amazon.com and Microsoft as major players, along with Seattle’s excellent talent pool. ‘Bringing Isilon into the EMC family was a tremendous coup for us, but I think an equally tremendous coup will be how we can expand here in greater Seattle and tap into the talent, the connections that Isilon has with the University of Washington…it will be a double win for us.’ EMC said the hiring will increase Isilon’s Seattle team by 75 percent since the December acquisition.”
Read the rest here. Read more →
Communications of the ACM reports on UW CSE research concerning the vulnerability to hacking of modern automobiles:
“Researchers Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington and [UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus] Stefan Savage of the University of California at San Diego announced the startling results of a two-year investigation into potential vulnerabilities in modern automotive computer systems …”
Read the article here. Read more →
