Allen School News

Sergey Levine, who will join the UW CSE faculty this spring, has been recognized with a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research.

Sergey’s research focuses on the intersection between control and machine learning, with the aim of developing algorithms and techniques that can endow machines with the ability to autonomously acquire the skills for executing complex tasks. In particular, he is interested in how learning can be used to acquire complex behavioral skills, in order to endow machines with greater autonomy and intelligence.

Sergey received his Ph.D. from Stanford in 2014. He is spending the current year as a post-doctoral researcher at UC Berkeley working with Pieter Abbeel, and as a research scientist at Google.

Congratulations Sergey! Read more →

UW faculty members David Baker (Biochemistry; Director of UW’s Institute for Protein Design), Tom Daniel (Biology; Co-Director of the Institute of Neuroengineering), Ed Lazowska (CSE; Director of the eScience Institute) and Dan Schwartz (Chemical Engineering; Director of the Clean Energy Institute) discuss the role of institutes at universities:

“University research institutes such as ours eliminate sclerotic silos and bureaucratic boundaries by deftly blending teams of super-smart students, faculty, and research scientists from interconnected subject areas. As a result, these institutions stand the best chance of identifying and solving the toughest scientific and technological challenges of our age – they are confronting tomorrow today….

“These institutes stand in stark contrast to the traditional university structures of schools, colleges, and departments, which take years to create and decades — if not centuries — to eliminate. Success in the 21st Century depends upon agility. When an opportunity presents itself, bring together the optimal set of individuals to respond. When another opportunity succeeds it, restructure.”

Read more here. Read more →

Photo by UW CSE professor and hands-free driver Mark Oskin

We in UW CSE have been pretty laid back about the migration of Californians to Seattle. Sure, they drive up our housing prices, crowd our roads, and take our jobs, but what’s not to like?

What’s not to like is this license plate! We send many of our best Ph.D. alums to UCSD to build a world class computer science department, and they respond with propaganda like this?

We’re with Donald! It’s time to close the borders!

(OK, maybe it’s payback for the paver we purchased in front of UCSD CSE’s new building 9 years ago …) Read more →

Better late than never, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its workforce projections for the decade 2014-2024.

We focus here on STEM jobs – jobs in computer science, engineering, the life sciences, the physical sciences, the social sciences, and the mathematical sciences.

BLS projects both job growth (newly-created jobs) and job openings (all available jobs, whether newly-created or available due to retirements).

BLS projects that 73% of all job growth in STEM between 2014 and 2024 will be in computer occupations. (This is up from 71% in the 2012-2022 projections. Engineering fields are down to 10% from 15%.)

BLS projects that 55% of all available jobs in STEM between 2014 and 2024, whether newly-created or available due to retirements, will be in computer occupations – 1,083,800 jobs during the decade, more than 100,000 per year. (We’re a younger field – fewer retirements.)

Whoaboy!

(BLS data from Table 1.2 here.) Read more →

Washington state – and particularly King County Washington, Seattle’s home – is a leader in aerospace and in information technology. There’s no news there.

What is news comes from an ongoing study of King County’s aerospace industry talent pipeline by Community Attributes Inc. working with the Workforce Development Council of Seattle – King County:

• What field has the largest total number of current employees in King County’s aerospace industry? COMPUTER SCIENCE

• What field has the greatest predicted number of new employees needed by King County’s aerospace industry from 2013-2023? COMPUTER SCIENCE

• What field has the greatest predicted compound annual growth rate for King County’s aerospace industry from 2013-2023? COMPUTER SCIENCE

• What field has the greatest predicted annual gap between supply and demand for King County’s aerospace industry from 2013-2023 (where “supply” is not “degrees granted” but rather the industry’s current ability to hire)? COMPUTER SCIENCE

The bottom line: the importance of computer science extends far beyond Washington’s world-leading software industry – for example, it powers Washington’s world-leading aerospace industry. Every field is becoming an information field. Computer science is increasingly central to everything – great preparation for any career.

Check it out here. And check out an excellent related GeekWire post here.

(In this context, it’s also worth noting that more people are employed in Washington state’s software industry than in our aerospace industry.) Read more →

UW’s Animation Research Labs, led by CSE’s Barbara Mones, brings students from CSE, Art, Music, and other programs together each year for an intensive set of capstone courses in digital animation, culminating in the production of an animated short shown at our graduation ceremony (and often at major festivals).

On Monday, UW CSE / ARL alum Kira Lehtomaki, who joined Walt Disney Animation Studios in 2007, enthralled current students with a special behind-the-scenes Q&A.

See a subsequent interview with Kira here.

Read more →

Election to the National Academy of Engineering is one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer. Today the NAE announced its Class of 2016. Two UW CSE Ph.D. alums, Tom Anderson and Albert Greenberg, are among the eight new members elected in Computer Science & Engineering.

Tom is “one of our own” in two ways: he received his Ph.D. from UW CSE in 1991 (working with Ed Lazowska and Hank Levy), and after joining the faculty at UC Berkeley and being promoted to tenure there, he returned to join the UW CSE faculty, where he is the Warren Francis and Wilma Kolm Bradley Chair in Computer Science & Engineering. Tom – who has made fundamental contributions to the design, analysis, and instrumentation of computer systems, computer networks, and distributed systems – has previously been honored with the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers & Communication Award, the ACM SIGOPS Mark Weiser Award, the USENIX Lifetime Achievement Award, more than 20 Best Paper and Test-of-Time awards, and election as an ACM Fellow. He was elected to NAE “for contributions to the design of resilient and efficient distributed computer systems.”

Albert received his Ph.D. from UW CSE in 1983 (working with Richard Ladner and Martin Tompa). He spent 13 years at AT&T Research in network research. In 2007 he returned to Seattle to join Microsoft Research, and 3 years later he moved from research to the engineering organization as Distinguished Engineer and Director of Development for Microsoft Azure Networking. Albert has been honored with the SIGCOMM award for lifetime contributions to the field of communication networks, and, like Tom, the IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers & Communication Award, multiple Test-of-Time awards, and election as an ACM Fellow. He was elected to NAE “for contributions to the theory and practice of operating large carrier and data center networks.”

Tom joins UW CSE faculty members Susan Eggers, Ed Lazowska, and Hank Levy as Members of the National Academy of Engineering.

Tom and Albert join UW CSE graduate program alums Jeff Dean (Google Senior Fellow), Ed Felten (Professor of Computer Science and of Public Affairs at Princeton), and Hank Levy as NAE Members.

Congratulations to Tom and Albert!

NAE announcement here. UW News article here. Read more →

DawgBytes – “A Taste of CSE,” UW CSE’s K-12 outreach program – will be hosting one-day midwinter break workshops for high school students on February 16 and 20.

Learn more here.

Learn more about the wide range of DawgBytes here.; lots of news on the DawgBytes Facebook page here. Read more →

Qi Lu and Harry Shum, two of the four engineering members of Microsoft’s Senior Leadership Team, spent the day at UW CSE today participating in a wide variety of research interactions.

In the photo, Qi and Harry join Ed Lazowska in the wetlab housing a joint project between UW (principally Luis Ceze and Georg Seelig) and Microsoft Research (principally Doug Carmean and Karin Strauss) concerning extremely high density DNA-based data storage. Read more →

A belated post celebrating the second annual UW CSE Women’s Research Day, held on Saturday January 23.

Undergraduate, graduate, postdoctoral, and faculty women from UW CSE, as well as colleagues from regional companies, spent the day in research presentations, panel discussions, lab tours, and a poster session – all celebrating the role of women in the computing research ecosystem in UW CSE and the region.

Facebook page here. Read more →