The National Science Foundation (NSF), with support from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), today announced 8 awards totaling nearly $15 million in new Big Data fundamental research projects. These awards aim to develop new tools and methods to extract and use knowledge from collections of large data sets to accelerate progress in science and engineering research and innovation.
A UW CSE project led by Magda Balazinska, Bill Howe, and Dan Suciu was among the 8 awardees. In brief:
“The ability to analyze massive-scale datasets has become an important tool both in industry and in the sciences and many systems have recently emerged to support it. However, effective methods for deep data analytics are currently high-touch processes: they require a highly specialized expert who thoroughly understands the application domain and pertinent disparate data sources and who needs to perform repeatedly a series of data exploration, manipulation and transformation steps to prepare the data for querying, machine learning or data mining algorithms. This project explores the foundations of big data management with the ultimate goal of significantly improving the productivity in big data analytics by accelerating the bottleneck step of data exploration. The project integrates two thrusts: a theoretical study, which leads to new fundamental results regarding the complexity of various new (ad hoc) data transformations in modern massive-scale systems, and a systems study, which leads to a multi-platform software middleware for expressing and optimizing ad hoc data analytics techniques.”
Congratulations to Magda, Bill, and Dan! Learn about all 8 new Big Data awards here. Learn about the UW eScience Institute here. Read more →
Companion GeekWire essays by UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska and Madrona Venture Group’s Matt McIlwain explore the choice faced in the 2012 Presidential election by voters from the innovation sector.
“I have three principles that I hope you share. First, I try to be fact-based. Second, I try to be consistent – to display intellectual integrity. Third, I recognize that my success is due not only to my own efforts, but also to various advantages of circumstance with which I was blessed. These principles make America’s 2012 choice clear …
“Even ignoring issues of fairness, the idea that growth is stimulated by lowering taxes on the affluent and on corporations has no basis in reality … The ‘small businesses’ affected by increased high-end tax rates aren’t startups or neighborhood drycleaners – they’re S-Corps and LLCs that can well afford it! …
“If trickle-down economics worked, we’d be drowning in jobs and prosperity, given how rich the rich have become and how profitable corporations are. The rich getting richer doesn’t animate growth – a rising median wage and economic inclusion do! …
“If you care about technology and you care about growth, the choice is clear …”
Read Lazowska’s essay here. (Read McIlwain’s … if you must … here.) Read more →
An article on the mismatch between computer science jobs and educational capacity includes various University of Washington examples, including comments by CSE’s Ed Lazowska:
“Until recently, the University of Washington was only able to accommodate 25% of computer science applicants, though it will be expanding somewhat this year due to a recent funding increase …
“At other schools, the numbers are even starker. Carnegie Mellon, for example, enrolled just 130 of the 4,200 applicants this fall to its computer science school. Harvey Mudd College in Claremont, Calif. accepted only 21% of computer science applicants last year.
“And that’s a shame, with so many computer-related jobs going unfilled. But it gets worse — much worse, when you look at the demand that’s coming.
“A US Bureau of Labor Statistics report projects huge increases in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) jobs over the next decade, but not just any STEM jobs. The vast majority is in computer-related occupations …
“Of course, not every computer-related job requires a computer science degree, or any kind of college degree. Banking, insurance, and manufacturing all hire IT professionals who can do their jobs without one. But companies like Microsoft and Google that carve out new avenues in computing only hire degreed students from schools with strong programs, and they would rather leave a position vacant than fill it with someone they consider unqualified.”
Read more here. Read more →
GeekWire describes UW CSE alum Greg Linden’s Code Monster programming site for kids:
“Greg Linden is a veteran software engineer and startup entrepreneur in Seattle who developed Amazon.com’s recommendation engine, started the personalized news website Findory.com and worked for Microsoft’s Live Labs, among other tech ventures and companies.
“He’s also a parent who wants to make sure his kids learn a little about computer programming languages.
“But when he initially looked around for something helpful online, all he could find ‘was either tutorials designed for adults that overwhelm younger learners with their boring syntax and complexity, or games that didn’t teach an actual, valuable programming language.’
“So he came up with a solution: Code Monster from Crunchzilla. It’s a free site, designed for kids ages 9-14, that blends elements of a game and tutorial to teach basic Javascript skills.”
Read more here. Read more →
UW CSE Ph.D. student Tamara Denning, who works with professor Yoshi Kohno in UW’s Security and Privacy Research Lab, has been named on of 18 recipients of 2012 Intel Ph.D. Fellowships. Tamara was one of 3 of the 18 to win special recognition of her research at a technical poster session for all of the awardees.
Meet Tamara and the other 2012 Intel Ph.D. Fellowship winners here. Learn about Tamara’s work here.
Read more →
This summer, UW CSE hosted three week-long summer daycamps for secondary school students – two for middle schoolers and one for upper schoolers.
Here’s a terrific short video featuring one of the middle school daycamps.
Watch the video here. Learn about all of UW CSE’s K-12 outreach activities here. Read more →
GeekWire describes new UW CSE startup WatchFrog:
“WatchFrog, which is in the process of raising cash, is building off of Patel’s research as well as the research of Duke University assistant professor Matt Reynolds and UW PhD student Gabe Cohn. The first engineers will start at the company October 1.
“Jaech tells GeekWire that WatchFrog’s ultra-low-power sensing technologies, currently in the prototype phase, could be used to monitor conditions around the home; and detect home hazards such as radon or carbon monoxide. The sensors are designed to last up to 50 years, far longer than other technologies.
“Jaech, who was just named to the Board of Regents at the UW, has been hanging around the computer science department at his alma mater for about a year.”
Read more here. Read more →
UW CSE’s SpiroSmart is featured by Futurity.
SpiroSmart is a mobile phone platform that acoustically analyzes lip reverberation, making it possible to monitor pulmonary ailments such as asthma, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, and cystic fibrosis. Accuracy is within 5% of expensive purpose-built commercial devices, meeting the medical community’s standards for accuracy.
Read the Futurity post here. Learn more about SpiroSmart here. Read more →
UW CSE alum Jeremy Jaech has been named to the University of Washington Board of Regents by Governor Christine Gregoire, replacing Bill Gates Sr., whose term expires at the end of the month.
Jeremy is our region’s leading serial software entrepreneur. He co-founded Aldus Corporation – the inventor of desktop publishing – which was acquired by Adobe. He then co-founded Visio Corporation – constraint-based drawing – which was acquired by Microsoft. He currently serves as co-founder and CEO of WatchFrog, which uses sensor technology developed by UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel and his students to monitor home hazards.
Jeremy received the UW College of Engineering’s Diamond Award for Entrepreneurial Excellence in 2006, and the UW Computer Science & Engineering Alumni Achievement Award in 2011. He recently concluded a term as chair of the Technology Alliance, a civic organization formed by Bill Gates Sr. to encourage strategic approaches to education, research, and entrepreneurship in our state.
Read a Seattle Times article here. Read more →
On September 23-25, NBC News hosted its third “Education Nation” National Summit, convening more than 300 of the country’s thought leaders in education, government, business, philanthropy and media to discuss successful examples of innovation in education.
In an amazing feat, UW CSE’s Center for Game Science created and launched a brand new educational game in less than 48 hours, based on specifications provided by the audience at the Summit. NBC Nightly News anchor Brian Williams closed the Summit with a segment on the game.
“The Center for Game Science (CGS) at the University of Washington aims to revolutionize the educational and scientific discovery process by engaging learners to become experts through personalized learning games that adapt to each person. Recently, CGS games have enabled game-developed experts to solve biochemical structures that baffled scientists for 13 years. Led by Professor Zoran Popovic, the Center is currently working on applying the same techniques to address key bottlenecks in K-12 math and science education.”
Check out the game on the NBC News website here. Listen to the NBC News interview with UW CSE’s Zoran Popovic here. Learn more about the Center for Game Science here. Read more →
