Allen School News

The Tech Policy Lab is a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between UW Computer Science & Engineering, the UW School of Law, and the UW Information School.  It aims to enhance technology policy through research, education, and thought leadership.  The Tech Policy Lab is being established with a generous gift from Microsoft.

A launch event will be held in the Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering at 5:30 on Thursday September 12.  Welcoming remarks will be provided by UW President Michael K. Young, Microsoft Executive Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith, and Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Head of Research Peter Lee.  Brief overview talks describing the thrusts of the Tech Policy Lab will be provided by the Directors:  Ryan Calo from the School of Law, Batya Friedman from the Information School, and Yoshi Kohno from CSE.  A reception will follow. Read more →

“For our ‘Better Know an Intern’ post, meet Zorah Fung, a software engineering intern on the Google Docs Team in New York. Zorah is a rising senior at the University of Washington, double majoring in computer science and interdisciplinary visual arts. Fun fact about Zorah: one of her life goals is to own and be able to play every musical instrument in the world. She’s already accumulated about 20!”

Read the full interview here. Read more →

Washington Monthly rates schools based on their “contribution to the public good” in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.s), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).

The rankings are dominated by the nation’s great public universities, which comprise 11 of the top 15 schools.

Washington Monthly also ranks schools in terms of “Best Bang for the Buck” – the economic value students receive per dollar.  The top 50 schools are all publics.

See the overall rankings of National Universities here.  See the “Best Bang for the Buck” rankings here. Read more →

“There are talented, hard-working, young people doing good work all over the planet.

“And then there are the MIT Technology Review’s 35 innovators under the age of 35 that are simply on another level.

“Julie Kientz [UW HCDE professor and CSE adjunct professor, and wife of UW CSE and EE professor Shwetak Patel] is one of those visionaries.”

Read more here. Read more →

Julie Kientz, a faculty member in UW Human Centered Design & Engineering and an adjunct faculty member in CSE, has won a TR35 Award from MIT Technology Review, which annually recognizes the top 35 innovators under the age of 35.  Julie was honored for her work in computer software. Her research looks at how technology can be used to support health and education. In particular, she has developed prototype applications to monitor sleep disorders, assist parents in tracking early developmental progress, and help special-education teachers who work with autistic children.

Julie is married to Shwetak Patel, a faculty member in UW CSE and EE who was recognized with a TR35 several years ago.  Disappointingly, their daughter Maya has not yet been recognized with a TR35 … but she has another 34 years of eligibility.  “All in the family.”

Congratulations, Julie!

TR35 profile of Julie here.  See also: UW Today, HCDE article. Read more →

UW CSE’s OneBusAway transit app goes national! Tampa (and several other cities) are rolling it out with great fanfare and commitment!

Here’s a news story from Tampa’s WTSP Channel 10, which credits UW. Read more →

Slate has a nice video describing UW CSE’s Ambient Backscatter technology.  Watch the video here.  Learn more about Ambient Backscatter here. Read more →

MIT Technology Review reports on UW CSE’s “Ambient Backscatter” innovation:

“A novel type of wireless device sends and receives data without a battery or other conventional power source. Instead, the devices harvest the energy they need from the radio waves that are all around us from TV, radio, and Wi-Fi broadcasts.

“These seemingly impossible devices could lead to a slew of new uses of computing, from better contactless payments to the spread of small, cheap sensors just about everywhere.

“‘Traditionally wireless communication has been about devices that generate radio frequency signals,’ says Shyam Gollakota, one of the University of Washington researchers who led the project. ‘But you have so many radio signals around you from TV, Wi-Fi, and cellular networks. Why not use them?'”

Read more (and watch the video demo) here. Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. alum Ed Felten – Director of Princeton University’s Center for Information Technology Policy, and Professor of Computer Science and of Public Affairs there, recently returned to Princeton after 18 months as the first Chief Technologist of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.

Today Ed delivered the keynote at the 22nd USENIX Security Symposium:  “Dr. Felten Goes To Washington: Lessons from 18 Months in Government.”

One of these days, the video will be online, presumably here.  Meanwhile, you’ll have to content yourself with the three photos here, as Ed progressively strips down from full DC battle armor to an audience-appropriate geeky T-shirt over the course of his presentation. Read more →

Doug Zongker

As a UW CSE Ph.D. student more than a decade ago, Doug Zongker (now a Google engineer) first delivered his now-famous parody of unintelligible scientific presentations: “Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken.” (No video of the presentation exists, but the 2002 slides are still on the web here, as is the companion paper here.)

Attention increased in 2007, when Doug presented the work at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science.  Fortunately, cameras were present to capture the moment, here.

Now, the dance radio station of Seattle’s Nathan Hale High School, C89.5, has picked up the mantle.  C89.5 is actually really good.  They have twice as many listeners as KEXP and just won a “Best Dance Station” industry award.  Apparently they were the first to start playing Lady Gaga and even got her to do a concert at Nathan Hale.

Karl Koscher

Of course, a long time ago the Seattle Schools largely de-funded the station, so C89.5 now does semiannual pledge drives. During their most recent pledge drive, they had a new “day sponsorship” option: for $1,000 individuals could get their message, up to 50 words in length, played throughout the day.

Current UW CSE Ph.D. student Karl Koscher sent them this tweet: “If I had $1,000 to spend I’d totally be a day sponsor and have all 50 words be ‘chicken'”.  (One of their DJs/instructors has a thing for farm animals …)

They thought it was hilarious, and apparently one of Karl’s friends did as well – without Karl’s knowledge, the friend plunked down the $1,000 to make it happen.

So last Friday, “Chicken Chicken Chicken: Chicken Chicken” took to the airwaves and the Internet on C89.5, here.

Repeat after me …

Landmark contributions to science live forever.  “That’s why we do what we do.” Read more →