GeekWire reports on today’s State of Technology luncheon. More than 1,000 attendees heard from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, preceded by 3 tech startup CEOs: Clayton Lewis (Arivale), Forest Key (Pixvana), and Chris Diorio (Impinj). Our favorite excerpts from the GeekWire article:
“Cost of living . A competitive talent pool. The University of Washington …
“Lewis also credited the University of Washington as an important part of the technology ecosystem in Seattle. That was echoed by Diorio, who co-founded RFID-maker Impinj 16 years ago in Seattle. Diorio noted that he originally came to Seattle to work at the UW’s nationally-recognized computer science department.
“‘It was really the draw of the university and the entire ecosystem that a large prestigious university creates, and how it draws students and industries and people and faculty,’ he said. ‘The bandwidth of the community here as a consequence of that university is transformational.'”
Thanks, guys! Read more here. Read more →
Please take a minute to sign Code.org’s #CSforAll petition – launched yesterday by America’s top leaders from business, politics, and education:
“As business leaders, elected officials, educators, and members of the public, we join forces to deliver a bipartisan message about opportunity and the American Dream. Technology is transforming society at an unprecedented rate. Whether it’s smartphones or social networks, self-driving cars or personalized medicine, nothing embodies the American Dream so much as the opportunity to change or even reinvent the world with technology. And participating in this world requires access to computer science in our schools. We ask you to provide funding for every student in every school to have an opportunity to learn computer science.”
Read more (and sign!) here! Read more →
On Thursday UW CSE hosted an alumni event at Amazon’s still-under-construction new buildings on 7th Avenue in downtown Seattle. Amazon is one of the largest employers of UW CSE graduates, and UW CSE is one of the largest sources of new graduates to Amazon.
Can’t wait for those domes to be finished! Read more →
More Hall Annex interior
GeekWire reports on a King County Superior Court ruling that UW may replace More Hall Annex – an abandoned research nuclear reactor building that a local preservation group has tried to nominate as a landmark under a city ordinance – with a facility that will enable the expansion of UW Computer Science & Engineering.
“On Thursday, Judge Suzanne Parisien ruled that the ordinance does not apply to the UW, adding that ‘public purpose requires that the campus continue to be developed to meet the growing and changing education needs of the State’ …
“Ed Lazowska, the computer science department’s Bill & Melinda Gates Chair, told GeekWire that the having the second building across the street from the existing space is ‘essential.’
More Hall Annex exterior
“The [new building] won’t merely duplicate spaces we already have — it will provide spaces that we currently lack and that all of us will use, such as a large lecture theater, several large classrooms, many dedicated undergraduate labs and project spaces, and a large robotics lab,’ Lazowska said. ‘So the space currently occupied by More Hall Annex is the only practical site.
“Added Lazowska: ‘The [new building] is essential if we’re to continue to grow, allowing us to prepare more of Washington’s kids for Washington’s top tech jobs.'”
Read more here. Read more →
The 2016 NSF Science & Engineering Indicators have recently been released, including data on the numbers of degrees granted in various fields of science and engineering.
Similarly, the 2016 US Bureau of Labor Statistics job projections have recently been released, covering the decade 2014-2024.
The Tale of the Tape: A chart of “annualized jobs available” (from BLS) vs. “annual degrees granted” (from NSF) for various fields.
The story in Washington State is the same. Three state educational agencies looked across all fields (not just STEM fields) for those with any appreciable gap between “degrees granted” and “jobs available.” They found only four at the bachelors or graduate level. Computer science was #1, with a gap 2.5X as great as the second-place field – which was all fields of engineering added together (electrical, mechanical, civil, aeronautical, materials, etc.). (Of course, not all of those computer science jobs are in Washington’s vibrant software industry. For example, Washington’s aerospace industry employs roughly 3X as many computer scientists as aeronautical engineers!)
Wowsers! Read more →
Mesosphere, a “data center operating system” company derived from a course project by UW CSE bachelors alum Ben Hindman when he was a Ph.D. student at UC Berkeley, has raised $73.5 million in Series C funding.
Ben will receive the University of Washington College of Engineering Diamond Award for Early Career Achievement in May.
Check it out in TechCrunch here. Read more →
Google announced today a plan to lease more than 600,000 square feet of space in South Lake Union, dramatically expanding their presence in Seattle. (The Kirkland WA site – across Lake Washington from Seattle – was expanded last year. Expansion space for the current Seattle engineering office in the Fremont neighborhood at the north end of Lake Union was constrained.)
In addition to home-grown companies of all sizes – from Amazon and Microsoft to startups – Seattle is home to more than 70 engineering centers of companies headquartered elsewhere.
Excellent GeekWire coverage here. Read more →
Today UW CSE’s Mark Oskin brought his graduate computer architecture class plus computer architecture faculty colleagues on an end-of-the-quarter expedition to Paul G. Allen’s phenomenal Living Computer Museum.
Student Amrita Mazumdar sends this photo documenting Luis Ceze’s downfall in the retro game Oregon Trail.
(A bit less than 2 years ago, Luis actually broke his leg, with a bit of help from CSE chair Hank Levy – check it out here.) Read more →
