Allen School News

Among the 15 2015 North American Google PhD Fellows announced to day are UW’s Aaron Parks and Kyle Rector.

Aaron, a Ph.D. student in Electrical Engineering, works with CSE and EE professor Josh Smith on the design of ultra-low-power hardware and software systems, and RF energy harvesting for ubiquitous computing applications.

Kyle, a Ph.D. student in CSE, works with HCDE professor (and CSE affiliate professor) Julie Kientz and CSE professor Richard Ladner on research at the intersection of human-computer interaction and accessibility, such as designing accessible exergames for people who are blind or low-vision.

Congratulations to Aaron and Kyle, and thanks to Google! Read the Google announcement here.

UW CSE alumni may be revolutionary in technology terms, but Mohamed El-Zohairy (BS, ’07) took it to a new level when he joined the political revolution in his home nation of Egypt. Yesterday, Mohamed returned to the Allen Center to share his experiences with a group of undergraduates as part of CSE’s Leadership Seminar Series.

Mohamed opened his talk by urging students to “live outside of your comfort zone” – words he certainly lived by during his unconventional journey from high school student in Egypt captivated by UW CSE’s robotic soccer dogs, to UW CSE graduate, startup founder, and director of product engineering at News Corp.

Mohamed was in graduate school at the University of British Columbia when the protests against the government of President Hosni Mubarak began in early 2011. He took a leave of absence from his studies to join his compatriots in Tahrir Square – but not before reaching out to TechCrunch to alert the Western media about the Internet blackout instigated by Egypt’s government in response to the protests.

After the revolution, Mohamed remained in Egypt, where he was joined by fellow UW CSE alums Allen Chen and Bobby Mathews in building the content creation platform CloudPress. One year later, News Corp. acquired CloudPress – and with it, the team. Mohamed then departed Egypt for New York to join News Corp. to help build the company’s mobile publishing platform.

Even with all he has experienced after CSE, Mohamed made sure to share practical advice to help students make the most of their time in the department. Among his pearls of wisdom: “If you procrastinate, do it right!” and, “Know your most productive time of day.” And, drawing from his entrepreneurial heritage, he urged them to not be afraid of failing, because “failing doesn’t make you a failure.”

Read the TechCrunch article on the Egyptian revolution and Mohamed’s role in bringing the government’s Internet shutdown to the attention of the media here.

Read about News Corp.’s acquisition of CloudPress on TechCrunch here and on GeekWire here.

See Mohamed’s presentation slides – great advice for students – here. Read more →

Zoran Popovic, director of UW CSE’s Center for Game Science, is featured in a recent Crosscut article about Enlearn, software developed by the non-profit of the same name that is designed to provide a more personalized, adaptive learning experience to students.

Zoran is founder and chief scientist at Enlearn, where he put his experience developing the Center for Game Science’s wildly popular protein folding game, FoldIt, to good use in tackling another massive challenge: improving K-12 math education.

From the article:

” ‘Enlearn very much evolved out of Foldit. That’s where I realized there could be completely alternative pathways to learning,’ says Popovic. Enlearn is designed to capture the entire gamut by being responsive to each student, and hitting the sweet spot of addictive entertainment normally reserved for triple-A Xbox titles.”

Zoran and his team have set a goal to “achieve mastery by 95 percent of the kids in any classroom, with any teacher, in any school.”

Read the Crosscut article here.

Learn more about Enlearn here.

  Read more →

Congratulations to UW CSE professors Magda Balazinska, Luis Ceze, and Yoshi Kohno, who have been appointed by the Provost to Career Development Professorships – endowed positions that are awarded for a fixed period of time (typically three years) to extraordinary Associate Professors.

Magda has been appointed as the Jean-Loup Baer Career Development Professor of Computer Science & Engineering. This professorship was established by UW CSE Bachelors alumna Anne Dinning and her husband Michael Wolf in honor of UW CSE professor emeritus Jean-Loup Baer. Magda joined the University of Washington in 2006 after receiving her Ph.D. from MIT. Her MIT thesis work concerned distributed stream processing and sensor data management – leading-edge topics in “traditional” data management. Shortly after arriving at UW she decided to take a significant risk: embed herself with some of UW’s leading scientists (most especially Andrew Connolly in Astronomy) and derive her research agenda from their needs. This has paid off phenomenally for Magda, for CSE, and for UW: Magda has become a world leader in “big data” management, scientific data management, and cloud computing.

Luis has been appointed as the Torode Family Career Development Professor of Computer Science & Engineering. This professorship was established by UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus John Torode and his wife Patti. Luis is widely regarded as the most creative and most productive early-career faculty member working in the broad and rich field of computer architecture. Luis joined UW CSE in September 2007, after completing his Ph.D. at the University of Illinois. He holds more than a half dozen patents, co-founded the startup company Corensic, and is a superb citizen of CSE and of the national and international research communities in his field.

Yoshi has been appointed as the Short-Dooley Career Development Professor of  Computer Science & Engineering. This professorship was established by UW CSE Masters alumnus Rob Short and his partner Emer Dooley. Yoshi joined the University of Washington in 2006, following receipt of his Ph.D. from UCSD. He has almost single-handedly established the University of Washington as a major force in computer security and privacy – an extraordinary accomplishment. He excels in research, in education, and in civic engagement.

Congratulations to Magda, Luis, and Yoshi! And many thanks to Anne Dinning & Michael Wolf, John & Patti Torode, and Rob Short & Emer Dooley for making it possible for us to recognize these superb UW CSE faculty members! Read more →

There’s a new kind of researcher on campus, one who doesn’t fit into the usual nooks and crannies at a university.

They are data scientists – students, faculty members and professional scientific staff – who are building the tools and crafting the methods to help researchers analyze the vast amounts of data now abundant in every field. The very nature of their skill set is interdisciplinary, and the university system doesn’t always reward them for the time they spend developing techniques and software to advance discovery.

This dilemma, and what universities can do to change it, is the topic of a symposium Feb. 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Jose, California. The session, “Advancing University Career Paths in Interdisciplinary Data-Intensive Science,” was organized by UW’s Cecilia Aragon and Bill Howe, and also includes UW’s Ed Lazowska, Berkeley’s Joshua Bloom and Fernando Perez, and NYU’s Juliana Freire – partners in the Data Science Environments project supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.

Read a UW News post here.  See Ed Lazowska’s introductory slides here. Read more →

UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska and Carlos Guestrin will be featured speakers at an event next month that will examine the impact of big data in Washington State. “Insight to Impact: Transforming Washington’s Industries Through Big Data” will provide a comprehensive look at ground-breaking developments in big data and explore how this rapidly growing field will shape Washington’s industries and economy.

Ed, the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at UW CSE, will provide the audience with a comprehensive overview of the big data opportunity for Washington – examining our current assets and a looking ahead to what big data might enable in the future.

Carlos, the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning at UW CSE and co-founder and CEO of big data startup Dato (formerly known as GraphLab), will participate in a panel discussion alongside Bloomberg News correspondent Dina Bass; Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of Machine Learning at Microsoft; and Madrona Venture Group’s Matt McIlwain.

In addition, the event will feature a keynote address by Inrix CEO Bryan Mistele and a showcase of big data-driven innovations and companies that are helping to transform health care, government, retail and other industries.

“Insight to Impact,” which is co-presented by the Technology Alliance, will take place on Tuesday, March 3rd, 7:30 am to 6:00 pm at the Renaissance Seattle Hotel. An early-bird registration rate is available until February 20th. Find more information and register to attend here. Read more →

George Nychis writes:

In the Bay Area, when I put recruiting ads out I would get a ton of applications from Stanford and Berkeley.  In Boston, I am getting no applications from those schools.  At first I questioned whether my recruiting ad sucked, but then I thought … maybe nobody from those schools want to leave the Bay.

So I thought I’d use LinkedIn to gather some data on where recent graduates from the top schools go after they graduate.  I did this by filtering for software engineers with less than 2 years of experience.  The numbers are:  the total number of people who graduated from school Y with less than 2 years experience, living in city X (who are on LinkedIn).

UW is a public university. Our job is to educate Washington State’s top students for Washington State’s top jobs.  It seems to be working!  (See the table to the right.) Read more →

Where but at today’s UW CSE ACM Winterfest would you see Paul Beame in a tuxedo?  (Well, there’s always Halloween …)

A zillion thanks to our ACM Student Chapter for this great contribution to UW CSE community spirit!!!!!

Read more →

University of Washington Provost and Executive Vice President Ana Mari Cauce – a friend of all of us who strive to make UW the best that it can be – was named interim president by the Board of Regents at their regular meeting on Thursday. Her appointment will be effective March 2, 2015. She succeeds President Michael K. Young, who is leaving the UW for Texas A&M University.

Read more about Cauce here. Read more about A&M here. Read more →

Teams working with PATH’s MACEPA program in Zambia use Android smartphones equipped with Open Data Kit software to collect demographic information as they go house-to-house testing and treating for malaria. Photo: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki.

“On February 1, PATH and the entire global health community lost a great friend and innovator …

“Dr. Borriello’s work has positively impacted the lives of many thousands of children and mothers in developing countries. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.”

Read more here. Read more →