Allen School News

UW CSE Ph.D. students Irene Zhang and Nell O’Rourke have received 2015 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships.

Irene works with professors Hank Levy and Arvind Krishnamurthy in the Computer Systems Lab.

Nell works with professor Zoran Popovic in the Center for Game Science.

The scholarship supports women in computing and encourages them to follow in Dr. Anita Borg’s footsteps by serving as leaders and role models in the field. In addition to collecting a financial award, Irene and her fellow scholars will have the opportunity to participate in a retreat at the Google headquarters in Mountain View, California in June.

Learn more about the scholarship and Dr. Borg’s extraordinary contributions to computer science here.

Past scholarship winners at UW CSE include Jenny Abrahamson and Nicki Dell in 2012, Janara Christensen and Katie Kuksenok in 2011, Lydia Chilton and Kristi Morton in 2010, Saleema Amershi in 2009, and Julie Letchner and Kate Everitt in 2008.

Congratulations, Irene and Nell! Read more →

Carlo del Mundo

Each year, Qualcomm provides Innovation Fellowships to a select handful of students nationwide to enable them to pursue their innovative research ideas. This year, UW CSE students Carlo del Mundo and Vincent Lee were one of eight winning teams selected from a highly competitive field for their proposal titled “Systems and Architecture Support for Large-scale Video Search.”

Carlo and Vincent, who were recommended by professors Luis Ceze and Mark Oskin, were one of 35 teams selected as finalists from among 146 initial proposals. Along with their fellow finalists, they were invited to visit Qualcomm in March for a two-day event in which they presented their ideas to a panel of judges and interacted with company researchers.

Vincent Lee

In its message to the winners, Qualcomm noted, “We recorded the highest number of proposals submitted this year with an acceptance rate lower than most prestigious conferences and journals. We think that this is a great testament to the quality and pedigree of the QInF program and of the continuing interest from faculty and students in the 7th year of the program!”

Each winner in this prestigious competition receives a $100,000 fellowship from the company along with mentorship from Qualcomm engineers. Read more about the 2015 QInF here.

UW CSE has made a strong showing in this competition in recent years: CSE’s Vincent Liu and EE’s Vamsi Talla won a 2014 QInF award, and CSE’s Adrian Sampson and Thierry Moreau won in 2013.

Congratulations, Carlo and Vincent! Read more →

Brad Smith’s entire interview with GeekWire‘s Todd Bishop and John Cook is outstanding. But we particularly like this part:

“One of the things ppeole often don’t appreciate is that the Univeristy of Washington Computer Science & Engineering Department is one of the foremost computer science departments in the world. But it’s not big enough. It’s turning students away because it doesn’t have the room to offer them the ability to major in that discipline …

“We need the money to build a second building at the University of Washington, we need the appropriations so that then the enrollment is expanded – you need a building but you need enrollment capacity as well. And we want to see other new steps taken by the University of Washington as well – there are some exciting things that we think are on the drawing board for the future.”

Listen to the entire interview here. Or go directly to our favorite part here.

Thanks Brad! Read more →

“It’s a branch of the city that’s become an urban jungle filled with a particular type of bird.

“‘Five yellow cranes right in the middle, four of them you can see from here,’ said Hellmut Golde, peering out a window at the Mirabella Retirement Community off of Denny Way.

“‘There’s development on every block, from Denny Way to Valley,’ said John Pehrson, who, along with Golde, has lived at Mirabella for the past six years. The men, aged 88 and 85 respectively, say they’ve been fascinated at the growth. But when they saw the plans for a new complex across the street, they weren’t smiling.

“‘There is very little green space,’ said Pehrson, as he pointed down to the small pocket park on Fairview. ‘It seems like a travesty to take down trees that are 70 years old in the middle of this development.’

“Those trees are part of a small private park near The Seattle Times old headquarters. A Canadian developer Onni had submitted plans to bulldoze the trees as part of a massive mixed use development. Pehrson, Golde and a group of Mirabella residents cried foul.

“‘It gives shelter to the birds and it’s important for ecological reasons,’ said Hellmut.

“The group has put together a photo book on the history of the park and the benefits to their neighborhood. They also vowed to take extreme measures, even for a pair of octogenarians.”

Read more and watch the KING 5 News video here. Read more →

According to GeekWire, Uber is the 51st company to open an engineering center in Seattle. (See GeekWire‘s interactive map of Seattle engineering centers here.)

At the Uber Seattle Engineering Center launch party last night, speakers included Uber’s new Head of Seattle Software Engineering Tim Prouty (a 2006 UW CSE alum), Tim’s Bay Area boss, Uber’s Director of Infrastructure Engineering Paul Mikesell (a 1996 UW CSE alum), and UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska. Uber Senior Software Engineer Sunil Garg, a 2010 UW CSE alum, came up from the Bay Area for the event.

(Since this was partly a recruiting event, we will refrain from mentioning the other UW CSE alums in the audience …)

  Read more →

Today, UW announced the results of a new study examining gender bias in online image search results associated with various occupations. The study, which will be presented at the Association for Computing Machinery’s CHI 2015 Conference later this month, raises interesting questions about how information systems influence behavior and whether search algorithms should be adjusted to counter occupational stereotypes when it comes to gender.

Co-authors Matt Kay (a UW CSE Ph.D. student), Cynthia Matuszek (a UW CSE Ph.D. alum and University of Maryland faculty member), and Sean Munson (a UW Human-Centered Design & Engineering faculty member) analyzed how well search results match reality when it comes to the gender ratio by comparing Google image search results to employment data for 45 occupations from the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. The researchers also explored how the genders are qualitatively represented in search results, and how those results influence people’s perceptions of gender in different fields.

Read the UW press release here.

Read the paper here.

Read coverage of the study’s findings by The Atlantic, The Verge, PC World, GeekWire and Business Insider. Read more →

Ras Bodik, an expert in programming languages and computer architecture, will join the UW CSE faculty this coming fall. Ras is currently Professor of Computer Science at the University of California, Berkeley.

Ras is widely known for groundbreaking work in programming languages, and for applying programming language ideas to a broad range of fields, such as biology, human-computer interaction, and computer architecture. His current research involves making it easier for both programmers and non-programmers to write computer programs using program synthesis, a technique for computer-aided construction of software. Ras developed the idea of algorithmic synthesis using sketches (partial programs) and constraint solving. At the application level, he has used this idea to develop novel compilers for low-power computing, parallel layout engines for Web browsers, and tools for generating explanatory hypotheses from biological experiments.

Ras’s arrival creates a truly world-class programming languages group in UW CSE that crosses into systems, databases, security, architecture, and other areas. Ras joins recent hires Emina Torlak, Alvin Cheung, Xi Wang, and Zach Tatlock, and senior faculty  members Dan Grossman and Mike Ernst.

Welcome to UW CSE, Ras! Read more →

Beginning today, K-12 classrooms across Washington State are invited to sign up for the 2015 Washington State Algebra Challenge. Participants will have access to Riddle Books, the new mathematics learning game from UW CSE’s Center for Game Science, as they attempt to solve 250,000 word problems during the school week of April 27-May 1.

Participation in the Algebra Challenge is free and only requires access to a PC, Mac or Chromebook. Encourage classrooms in your local school to sign up for the challenge here. Together, we can achieve it! Read more →

UW CSE’s Center for Game Science creates interactive games for scientific discovery and for learning.

Foldit – a revolutionary game for protein design and protein structure prediction – has received widespread acclaim. Gamers playing Foldit solved an AIDS-related protein structure problem that had baffled the scientific community for more than a decade!

The team’s next scientific discovery game – Nanocrafter – is on the same trajectory. Nanocrafter is a synthetic biology game in which players use pieces of DNA to build everything from computer circuits to nanoscale machines.

The first academic paper analyzing the design and outcomes of Nanocrafter has just been accepted by the Foundations of Digital Games Conference. The paper, “Nanocrafter: Design and Evaluation of a DNA Nanotechnology Game,” will be presented during the 2015 conference that will take place June 22-25 in Pacific Grove, California.

Nanocrafter aims to accelerate synthetic biology research by challenging players to construct and simulate nanoscale devices using DNA strand displacement. The game functions as a “citizen science platform,” tapping into players’ competitive natures to crowdsource scientific discovery – a strategy that has been shown to be effective by the center’s popular protein-folding game, Foldit.

The conference paper discusses Nanocrafter’s design in terms of visualizations, interactions, introductory levels and scoring, and evaluates preliminary results based on an analysis of players’ creations. The Foundations of Digital Games Conference focuses on the scientific underpinnings of digital game design and the technologies used to develop them. Learn more here.

Nanocrafter previously won the award for “Best Serious Game, Special Emphasis Category, Use of Social Media” at the Serious Games Showcase and Challenge in December.

Build your own nanoscale devices using Nanocrafter here. Read more →

UW CSE is thrilled to announce that we will once again offer elementary school students the opportunity to learn about computer science in a fun and inclusive environment as part of our DawgBytes summer camp lineup.

Scratch Adventures is a day camp open to students entering grades 3, 4 or 5 who have no previous experience using the visual programming language Scratch. During the sessions, which will take place June 29-July 2 on the University of Washington’s Seattle campus, participants will learn how to design and program their own interactive stories, games and art projects while practicing critical thinking, problem solving and collaboration skills. Campers will share their creations with friends and family on the final day of camp.

The priority registration period for Scratch Adventures opens Thursday, April 9^th. Learn more about this and our other DawgBytes summer camp offerings for middle and high school students here. And learn about our broad K-12 outreach program DawgBytes (“A Taste of CSE”) here. Read more →