We are thrilled to announce that Kurtis Heimerl will be joining the UW CSE faculty in early winter 2016. Kurtis’ research interests span information and communication technologies and development (ICTD), human-computer interaction, and networks and systems. He was recognized with a 2014 MIT Technology Review TR35 Award for his work on Community Cellular, a low-cost, low-power system for providing small-scale, locally-owned cellular networks to rural communities that lack existing cellular coverage. After building the first network in a small village in Papua, Indonesia in 2013, Kurtis co-founded Endaga, a startup company that brings independent cellular technology to remote regions of the world.
Kurtis joins UW CSE following an M.S., Ph.D., and postdoc at U.C. Berkeley, followed by 18 months at Endaga. His UW CSE connections are extensive. To note a few:
- Kurtis received his Bachelors degree in Computer Engineering from UW CSE in 2007.
- His Berkeley graduate co-advisor was 2007 UW CSE Ph.D. alum (and UC Berkeley Associate Professor) Tapan Parikh.
- His fellow UW CSE Bachelors recipient and Tapan Parikh Ph.D. advisee Kuang Chen – founder of ICTD startup Captricity – was also a 2014 TR35 recipient. (Tapan himself received a TR35 award and was named the TR35 “Humanitarian of the Year” in 2007.)
We’re excited to have Kurtis back home at UW CSE!
(We had previously announced the recruiting this year of Ras Bodik, Zorah Fung, Sham Kakade, Sergey Levine, Dan Ports, and Katharina Reinecke.)