Skip to main content

UW CSE + PATH: “Banking breast milk for babies”

PATH_HumanMilkBanking_Infant[1]One project resulting from a collaboration between UW CSE and Seattle-based global health organization PATH is a lifesaving low-cost intervention to save newborn babies using mobile phones and donated breast milk.

Each year, more than 3.3 million newborns die within their first month of life.  Working with UW CSE Ph.D. student Rohit Chaudhri, PATH has developed a unique, low-cost system that uses mobile phones to manage safe pasteurization of breast milk.

Heat pasteurization kills potential pathogens in donated milk, such as HIV and hepatitis, while retaining the milk’s nutritional and immunological benefits.  It is a critical but expensive step in human milk banking.  Commercial-grade pasteurizers can cost up to $60,000, preventing many hospitals from establishing a milk bank.  The UW/PATH system allows health care providers in neonatal units to monitor the pasteurization process in real-time on their mobile phones, ensuring that the milk is heated safely and consistently every time even when commercial-grade equipment is not available.

See a recent PATH press release (which, er, doesn’t bother to mention UW) here.  Learn about Rohit Chaudhri and his work here – his FoneAstra project, supported by a Gates Grand Challenge award, is the key to the breast milk pasteurization effort. Read more →

“New tech tools aim to bring health care home”

Julie01-620x456The Seattle Times profiles Julie Kientz – UW professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering, adjunct professor of Computer Science & Engineering, and wife of UW CSE professor Shwetak Patel.

“Kientz … is setting out to improve public health by giving people tools to track their own habits and share more complete data with their doctors.

“More than that, she’s one of a growing number of researchers and entrepreneurs working to bridge the increasingly conspicuous gap between the centralized, tightly regulated world of health care and the open, free-flowing possibilities of personal tech.”

Read the article here. Read more →

UW tech-related Professional Masters Programs in GeekWire

uwpcegwUW offers a host of Professional Masters Programs in technology fields – programs geared to the needs of fully-employed professionals.

An ad in today’s GeekWire highlights these programs.  Check out the full list here.  Learn more about UW CSE’s Professional Masters Program – one of these offerings – here.

Why would you seek a professional masters degree from a different institution when you can benefit from UW’s top-ranked programs? Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. alum Stefan Savage describes his experiences with Viagra on NPR

savageWell, sort of …  In Episode 430, “Black Market Pharmacies And The Spam Empire Behind Them,” NPR’s “Planet Money” features UW CSE Ph.D. alum and UCSD professor Stefan Savage:

“Chances are you’ve received an email with a subject line like this ‘The hottest method to please your beloved one’ …

“You’ve probably wondered — who is sending these emails? Does anyone actually click on these links? What happens when they do?

“On today’s show, we go deep inside the world of spam to answer these questions with the help of cyber-security reporter Brian Krebs and researcher Stefan Savage.”

Listen here. Read more →

Google X showcase at UW CSE: January 28, 6 p.m., and February 1, 2 p.m.

Google talksFriends from Google X – Google’s “skunkworks” – will speak in UW CSE on January 28th from 6:00-7:30 p.m. in room EEB 125, and on February 1 from 2:00-2:30 p.m. in room CSE 403.

On January 28, UW CSE Ph.D. alum Adrien Treuille, a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon on leave at Google X, will begin by providing an overview of activities at Google X.

Then Nick Hobbs, a graduate of Olin College and a PM at Google X, will discuss the Driverless Car Project.

Plan on roughly 60 minutes of presentation and 30 minutes of Q&A.

Please RSVP here!

On February 1, UW alum and former UW EE professor Babak Parviz, co-creator of Google’s Project Glass, will describe that project.  Babak’s Google colleagues Nirmal Patel and Bob Ryskamp also will participate.

Note:  This post has been updated to reflect schedule and content changes! Read more →

Continued record enrollment in introductory Computer Science courses

Students are busting down the doors at all of the nation’s top computer science programs.

At UW, Winter Quarter enrollment in CSE 142 (“CS-1,” the first introductory course) is 810; the previous all-time high was 659.  And 1/3 of the students are women, also an all-time high.  Enrollment in CSE 143 (“CS-2,” the second introductory course) is 530, also an all-time high.

Enrollment varies from quarter to quarter.  One way to understand the long-term picture is to graph a 1-year rolling total.  CSE 142 enrolled 2,070 students in the past year; CSE 143 enrolled 1,340; for a total of 3,410 students in these two courses during the past year.

Wowzers!

14xnew Read more →

KOMO TV news: “New tech allows computers to sense gestures without camera”

sw1SoundWave – research by UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel and Sidhant Gupta, and Microsoft Research’s Dan Morris and Desney Tan.

Thrill to the KOMO TV weather guy attempting to explain the Doppler effect!  Watch it here. Read more →

UW CSE launches Coursera MOOCs

courseraimagesTwo UW CSE MOOCs launch this week on Coursera.

Programming Languages, taught by UW CSE professor Dan Grossman, has roughly 60,000 registered students.  This course is roughly equivalent to CSE 341.

Introduction to Computer Networks, taught by UW CSE professors Arvind Krishnamurthy, David Wetherall, and John Zahorjan, has roughly 50,000 registered students.  This course is roughly equivalent to CSE 461.

Hey, what can possibly go wrong?? Read more →

Geoff Voelker teaches UCSD CSE221 in chain mail and gauntlets

photo (16) photoI mean, how high can your IQ possibly be if you say to Stefan Savage, “Buy me whatever you want for Christmas and I’ll wear it on the first day of my Winter Quarter OS class”?

(Josh Smith adds:  “At least Stefan doesn’t shop at Victoria’s Secret … could have been worse.”) Read more →

UW CSE launches “Levytown” effort

In late 1999, UW CSE launched the fundraising effort for a marvelous facility that eventually became known as the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.  Early progress is chronicled here.

Today, less than a decade after we abandoned Beautiful Sieg Hall for the Allen Center, we’re again bursting at the seams.

As a result, we have launched the fundraising effort for Levytown.

Concept drawing:Levytown



Progress thus far:

David Notkin (who also kicked off the Allen Center campaign):  

Hal Perkins:  

James Landay:  

Carlos Guestrin:  

Dan Halperin:  

Luis Ceze:  

Ed Lazowska:  

Dieter Fox:  

Marc Fiuczynski:   

Shyam Gollakota:    

Gaetano Borriello:   

Eric Rudder:

Johnson Apacible:

Yaw Anokwa & Hélène Martin:

Sunil Garg:

Ratul Mahajan & Marta Penas Centeno:

Jeff & Carolyn (Holmes) Hughes:

CSE Faculty:

Only 18 17 16 15 14 13 12 11 more gifts to go! You can be next! Help put us over the top! Read more →

« Newer PostsOlder Posts »