Allen School News

A new study finds that the University of Washington generates $12.5 billion per year in economic activity, only one third of which is attributable to the salaries of athletic coaches and administrators. Read more here. Read more →

At Friday’s 2015 UW Computer Science & Engineering Symposium (CSES 2015), 18 graduate students from across the field presented 15-minute research talks to an audience of more than 100 UW CSE graduate students and faculty members.

The goal of CSES is to create a forum for interaction between the different fields of research in CSE. The Symposium organizers – graduate student Yoav Artzi and faculty members Franzi Roesner and Zach Tatlock – invited visionary talks that place current research within a wider research agenda and emphasize the importance of the problem, the originality of the approach, and the long-term vision of the researcher.

The presentations were spectacular in both form and content – amazingly impressive. In a tough field, the winner of the “best presentation” award was Adrian Sampson, shown here with the award. (Don’t let it go to your head, buddy …)

Bruce Hemingway photographs of the day here. Read more →

There are academic counselors … and then there is Lindsay Michimoto.

Lindsay joined the UW CSE family as our staff graduate advisor in November 2000. Since then, she has:

• processed 14,245 applications to the Ph.D. program,
• personally attended to the needs of 602 Ph.D. students,
• and provided more than 250,000 M&Ms (peanut and plain) to students, staff and faculty.

Current and former students, faculty, and staff gathered on Friday to thank her and wish her a wonderful retirement.

Many Bruce Hemingway photographs of the event here. Online tributes here.

Hilarious tribute video created by grad students here.

  Read more →

For one, they’re all friends of UW CSE. But the real answer is that they’re among the Puget Sound Business Journal‘s “15 in 15: Here’s who to watch in 2015.”

“He may not be a household name, but Etzioni is a force to be reckoned with. Years ago, he developed and sold the technology Bing Travel uses to find fares, and then went on to found Decide.com, which was acquired in 2013 by eBay. In fact, Etzioni has co-founded six startups, all of which have been acquired. He’s currently the CEO of Paul Allen’s artificial intelligence research group, a professor at the University of Washington and a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group.”

Read more here. Read more →

On Thursday, the UW Board of Regents approved the hiring of Seattle’s LMN Architects to carry out pre-design for a new facility for UW CSE – a second building to complement the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering (which LMN also designed) and accommodate growth.

We’re firmly committed to responding to the ever-increasing demand for computer science education by students and by employers. This is the first step in a process to develop the physical capacity that will enable us to address many of the challenges we face in growing and evolving UW CSE.

UW has made this building its top capital project priority. The governor’s proposed budget includes $40M for the project. And, although private fundraising has not yet commenced (we anticipate the total cost will be roughly $100M), we received our first major gift at the end of the year.

We recently held a set of focus group sessions with CEOs and CTOs of leading employers in the region – Jeremy Jaech (SNUPI) and Brad Smith (Microsoft) were the convenors. We received extremely useful guidance from these sessions. The “high order bits” were that we need to grow (because computer science is of ever-increasing importance, and because public universities have a responsibility to the students and companies of their region), and we need to maintain the quality of our graduates (many CEOs and CTOs who participated in the focus groups said something along the lines of “When I hire a UW CSE graduate, I know I’m getting someone outstanding; maintaining this needs to be a top priority”).

We’re excited about the opportunities that lie ahead!

GeekWire post here. Xconomy post here. Two-pager on the status and direction of UW CSE here. Read more →

UW CSE professor Magda Balazinska has a child at Sand Point Elementary School. Last year, Magda encouraged the school to try out Scratch on the 5th grade class; CSE’s Allison Obourn provided some mini-lectures. This year Sand Point expanded Scratch to the 4th grade, and during CS Ed Week, the 2nd through 5th grades participated in the Hour of Code.

Comments from teachers:

About the Hour of Code: “The kids loved the coding activities with Frozen and Angry Birds.  I’m starting in on very beginning Scratch today. Thanks for your support and encouragement. I would not have pursued this without your guidance.”

About Scratch: “All kinds of cool organic things are happening. Yesterday a 4th grader showed his class how he made a game on Scratch and everyone tried to make their own. Very fun!”

Three cheers for Sand Point teacher Julia Schumacher for her instrumental role in all of this! Read more →

WalletHub reports that Seattle is the best city in the U.S. in which to find a job.

The next six are Des Moines IA, Gilbert AZ, Sioux Falls SD, Fremont CA, Chandler AZ, and Omaha NE … which either says something about where you should head, or about the study’s methodology …

Remember … we highlight the studies where we look good, and categorically reject and bury the others … Read this highly authoritative study here. Read more →

ACM’s most prestigious member grade recognizes the top 1% of ACM members for their outstanding accomplishments in computing and information technology. ACM has just recognized 47 of its members as new ACM Fellows for their contributions to computing that are driving innovations across multiple domains and disciplines.

Among the new class of ACM Fellows:

• UW CSE professor Michael Ernst “For contributions to software analysis, testing, and verification”
• UW CSE Ph.D. alum (and Princeton professor) Adam Finkelstein “For contributions to non-photorealistic rendering, multi-resolution representations, and computer graphics”
• UW CSE affiliate professor (and Distinguished Scientist & Managing Director of Microsoft Research) Eric Horvitz “For contributions to artificial intelligence, and human-computer interaction”

Ernst’s research aims to make software more reliable, more secure, and easier (and more fun!) to produce. His primary technical interests are in software engineering, programming languages, type theory, security, program analysis, bug prediction, testing, and verification. Ernst’s research combines strong theoretical foundations with realistic experimentation, with an eye to changing the way that software developers work. Ernst’s other awards include the inaugural John Backus Award (2009) and the NSF CAREER Award (2002). His research has received an ACM SIGSOFT Impact Paper Award (2013), 8 ACM Distinguished Paper Awards (FSE 2014, ISSTA 2014, ESEC/FSE 2011, ISSTA 2009, ESEC/FSE 2007, ICSE 2007, ICSE 2004, ESEC/FSE 2003), an ECOOP 2011 Best Paper Award, honorable mention in the 2000 ACM doctoral dissertation competition, and other honors. In 2013, Microsoft Academic Search ranked Ernst #2 in the world, in software engineering research contributions over the past 10 years.

Congratulations to Mike, Adam, and Eric. (Mike is the 10th current UW CSE faculty member, and 19th overall, to be named an ACM Fellow.) Read more →

GeekWire writes:

“There are big changes afoot at GraphLab, the Seattle-based startup that aims to make it easier for small and medium businesses to make sense of mounds of data. First off, the company has rebranded to Dato, a move that it hopes will better encompass the breadth of its machine learning product.

“In addition, Dato announced today that it raised an $18.5 million Series B investment round. The round saw participation from NEA and Madrona Venture Group, two firms that have previously invested in Dato, along with investments from Vulcan Capital and Opus Capital Ventures. To date, the company has raised a total of $25.25 million.

“Dato’s product lets developers build apps with machine learning and artificial intelligence capabilities that automatically scale and tune so that a software maker can seamlessly take their product from a proof of concept to a fully functioning app.

“‘Our company was founded on a mission to create a more intelligent world,’ Dato CEO (and UW CSE’s Amazon Professor of Machine Learning) Carlos Guestrin said in a press release. ‘The investments made in Dato will help us empower many more data scientists, software developers and engineers to revolutionize industries and enhance our lives in ways we can’t imagine.'”

Read the GeekWire article here. Read the Data press release here. Read more →

E4C (Engineering for Change) writes:

“These are our picks for 10 promising technologies for global development that made headlines in 2014 …

“BiliCam is a smartphone application that diagnoses jaundice in newborns. It is still in development and available now only for clinicians, but in the future it could be a low-cost, powerful tool for parents and rural clinics in developing countries and anywhere in the world.”

BiliCam is the work of UbiComp lab members Lilian de Greef, Mayank Goel, Eric Larson, and Shwetak Patel.

Read the “Top Ten” article here. Read a more detailed October E4C profile of BiliCam here. Check out the BiliCam project web page here. Read more →