Magda “Lucy” Balazinska counsels Zack “Charlie Brown” Tatlock, as Luis “Snoopy” Ceze, Ras “Linus” Bodik, and Alvin “Schroeder” Cheung look on
The VAX – all dressed up with no place to go
Emina “Little Red-Haired Girl” Torlak, Zach “Charlie Brown” Tatlock, and Luis “Snoopy” Ceze during 5 minute “Rehearsal” in Hank “Pig-Pen” Levy’s office
Video here!
(The faculty skits weren’t always “family entertainment” – see, for example, here, in Hank Levy’s basement in the early 1980s.) Read more →
1994 UW CSE bachelors alum Skarpi Hedinsson has been named Chief Technology Officer of Disney|ABC Television Group.
Skarpi’s career path took him from Geoworks to Starwave to ESPN to Disney.
Congratulations Skarpi!
Read more here. Read more →
The Bell Labs Prize is a competition for innovators from around the globe that seeks to recognize proposals that “change the game” in the field of information and communications technologies by a factor of 10.
In the 2015 Bell Labs Prize competition, more than 250 applicants from 33 different contries submitted proposals for consideration. Of those applicants, 17 were selected to move on to the next stage of the competition and were given the chance to collaborate with Bell Labs research partners to strengthen their proposals. Following this, 7 were selected as finalists, and presented their ideas to a panel of judges, including Emmanuel Abbe, 2014 Bell Labs Prize winner and Assistant Professor at Princeton University; Al Aho, Lawrence Gussman professor at Columbia University; David Freeman, managing editor of The Huffington Post; Philippe Keryer, Chief Strategy and Innovation Office of Alcatel-Lucent; Marcus Weldon, president of Bell Labs and CTO of Alcatel-Lucent; and Robert Wilson, senior scientist at the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory of the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics.
And the winner (first prize and $100,000): 2013 UW CSE Ph.D. alum – now CMU ECE assistant professor – Brandon Lucia!
Read more here.
Congratulations Brandon! Read more →
UC San Diego Computer Science & Engineering Ph.D. student Neha Chachra defended her thesis today. In an effort to divert the attention of her thesis advisors – UW CSE star Ph.D. alums and long-time UCSD CSE star faculty members Geoff Voelker and Stefan Savage – she presented each with a hand-crafted bobblehead as a parting gift.
Stunning likenesses! (And Geoff and Stefan are probably easier to take in plastic form … at the very least, they can be made to nod “yes” …)
(Congratulations to Neha for sailing through her defense – based on terrific research, not bobbleheads. And thanks to Alex Snoeren for the photo.) Read more →
Seattle’s LMN Architects – the designers of UW CSE’s Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering, and of our second building (now halfway through design), as well as of UW’s PACCAR Hall, Seattle’s Benaroya Hall and McCaw Hall, and major projects across the nation – has been selected by the American Institute of Architects to receive its 2016 Architecture Firm Award.
AIA writes: “The 120-person firm blends the multidisciplinary backgrounds of its principals into an approach that serves people first, building communities around its civic projects … ‘LMN provides an altogether different vision of a fully sustainable and civic-minded future that embraces urban life,’ Stephen Kieran, FAIA, of 2008 AIA Architecture Firm Award recipient KieranTimberlake, wrote in a recommendation letter supporting LMN Architects’ nomination for the award.”
Congratulations LMN! Read more here. Read more →
In 2011, two UW CSE alums at Google, Jessan Hutchison-Quillan ’07 and Krista Davis ’05, created G-Give, a concept and a software platform through which Googlers’ gifts to select non-profits are matched twice: once by the company, and once by Googlers who serve as sponsors for the non-profits.
G-Give 2015 takes place this week – November 30 through December 4. We’re honored that UW CSE’s Google Endowed Scholarship will be included for the 5th consecutive year. Thanks to the generosity of friends and alumni at Google, our many G-Give sponsors over the years, and Google’s generous employee gift matching program, our Google Endowed Scholarship now is valued at more than $1 million – UW CSE’s largest undergraduate scholarship fund by far.
It’s the role of America’s great public universities to provide socioeconomic upward mobility, through superb education, to smart, motivated students from their regions. To continue to fulfill this role – to remain accessible in the face of decreasing state support – UW must increasingly rely on scholarship endowments. UW CSE’s students are blessed by the loyalty and generosity of our many alumni and friends at Google and elsewhere.
Googlers: Download UW CSE’s G-Give 2015 poster here. Read more →
UW CSE Ph.D. alums Scott Hauck and Calton Pu have been named to the 2016 class of Fellows of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers.
Scott – the Gaetano Borriello Professor for Educational Excellence in the University of Washington’s Department of Electrical Engineering, an Adjunct Professor in CSE, and a 1995 UW CSE Ph.D. alum – was recognized “for contributions to Field-Programmable Gate Array based systems.”
Calton – the John P. Imlay, Jr., Chair in Software in the Georgia Institute of Technology’s College of Computing, and a 1986 UW CSE Ph.D. alum – was recognized “for 
contributions to system software specialization, information security, and services computing.”
Congratulations to Scott and Calton! Read more →
This year’s World Technology Summit & Awards Ceremony took place on November 19th-20th in New York City. Bringing together the most innovative people and organizations in science and technology from around the world, the Summit explored what is imminent, possible, and important in and around emerging technologies.
The culmination of the Summit was the 2015 World Technology Awards Gala. In the Communications Technology category, 39 nominees were culled to 6 finalists. And the winner, announced at the Gala, was UW CSE professor Shyam Gollakota.
This is the latest in a long string of honors for Shyam; others include an NSF CAREER Award, an Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowship, selection as one of Forbes “30 under 30,” selection as one of MIT Technology Review’s “TR35” (35 top innovators under the age of 35), and the 2012 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.
Learn about Shyam’s amazing – and amazingly diverse – research here.
Congratulations Shyam! Read more →
A new City of Seattle video highlights a “Smart Cities” urban data science partnership between the city and the University of Washington. UW CSE’s Anat Caspi, Bill Howe, and Ed Lazowska are featured in the video, as well as a host of researchers from the UW eScience Institute, which is spearheading the initiative on the UW end.
Watch the video here. Read more →
Can Washington State lead the nation in Hour of Code participation in 2015?
A message to the state’s students, parents, teachers, and superintendents from the Governor’s STEM Education Innovation Alliance, on which UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska serves, reads:
I’m contacting you with an exciting opportunity for Washington’s students – to lead the nation in Hour of Code participation. Students are guaranteed to have FUN while learning the building blocks of computer science.
WHY: Every time we check a text on our smartphone, play Minecraft or swipe our credit card at a store, we’re engaging with a product of computer science. In Washington State we’re going to have almost 50,000 unfilled jobs that require science, technology, education, and math skills by 2017, yet less than 10% of our schools currently offer computer science classes. In addition, computer science reinforces computational thinking, logical reasoning and creative problem solving – all 21st Century skillsets that set our kids up for opportunity and success.
HOW: We want to engage kids with computer science so they see themselves in these careers and learn exciting 21st Century skills. The Hour of Code makes that easy, engaging and fun.
HOW YOU CAN HELP: We’d like every student in Washington State to participate in the Hour of Code. Please help us reach that goal by encouraging your school, District, or community organization to spend one hour on the Hour of Code during Computer Science Education Week, December 7-13. Schools can register their participation here.
Join the hundreds of schools in Washington are already taking part! Join districts like Highline, Everett, Pasco, Bremerton, Spokane, South Kitsap and Pasco and many more that are promoting the Hour of Code across Washington state.
You don’t need any preparation or computer science experience to host an Hour of Code event. Students from kindergarten to high school learn from the Hour of Code. This year, the Hour of Code is partnering with Microsoft to feature a Minecraft lesson. The Hour of Code also features a fun lesson from Star Wars characters Princess Leia, Rey, R2D2, C3PO, and BB8.
Let’s make Washington State the leader in the Hour of Code in 2015. Get started here!
Let’s do it! And while you’re at it, kick off Computer Science Education Week at UW CSE’s Open House for K-12 students, 1:00-5:00 on Saturday December 5. Read more →