A careful analysis of national data that cuts through the bull concerning escalating tuition at public research-intensive universities:
“The Real Culprit: Cuts in State Support
“If neither rising spending nor increased aid is primarily driving tuition increases, what is? If we turn to the revenue side of the balance sheet, the answer becomes clear: declining state support.”
Read it and weep … here. Read more →
The Seattle Times captures the essence of why UW CSE was recognized by the National Center for Women & Information Technology with the inaugural Excellence in Promoting Women in Undergraduate Computing Award. (Thank you Katherine Long!)
“UW CSE’s Siena Dumas Ang never thought she would come to love computer science.
“What she loved was dance – ballet and, later, modern – as well as math, and she was planning to major in both at the University of Washington. But then she took a few computer science classes as electives, and found a new subject to embrace …
“When she graduates this spring, the Seattle resident will have three majors: math, dance and computer science …
“Student Jasmine Singh always planned to major in computer science, and when she entered the UW, the computer science department paired her with a female upperclassman majoring in the field. Her mentor helped Singh adjust to college and gave her advice on classes to take. Singh, who grew up in Washington, is a senior double-majoring in computer science and electrical engineering.
“‘There are female professors, tech talks performed by successful and intelligent women, coding competitions with plenty of female participants and hosts, and sports teams (such as CSE Frisbee) that encourage women to join,’ Singh said by email.
“Dumas Ang said she thinks too few women go into computer science because of the perception that the field is a ‘combative, aggressive, male-dominated environment.’ But at least at the UW, that’s not what she found.
“‘Here, there’s much more open discussion about the way women are treated,’ she said. ‘There are always going to be people who have a gender bias, but overall the experience in this department is really pleasant.’
“[UW CSE professor Ed] Lazowska said he’s pleased by one statistic in particular: Of the UW women who enroll in an introductory computer science course, and later decide to major in the field, 58 percent said they were not initially interested in majoring in computer science.
“In other words, the introductory course changed their minds. The women who took the class ‘discovered they loved computer science and were great at it,’ he said by email.”
Read more here.
Learn more about our NCWIT Excellence in Promoting Women in Undergraduate Computing Award – the Grand Prize in the organization’s inaugural NEXT Awards – here. And see additional coverage in the New York Times, Xconomy, GeekWire, UW Today, and KIRO Radio. Read more →
CSE senior Sonja Khan – New York Times photo
A phenomenal article by Claire Cain Miller in the New York Times, stimulated by UW CSE’s receipt today of the NCWIT Excellence in Promoting Women in Undergraduate Computing Award – the Grand Prize in the organization’s inaugural NEXT Awards:
“When Sonja Khan started college, she’d never thought of studying computer science. But when she heard from friends that the intro class was good, she decided to give it a try – and then ended up majoring in it.
“Four years later, she has just graduated with a computer science degree, is pursuing a master’s degree and is headed to a summer internship at Facebook.
“‘I didn’t even know anything about the field before; I had never considered it,’ she said. ‘I signed up for it pretty much on a whim and really enjoyed it.’
“Ms. Khan’s story reads like a dream for universities and technology companies – where only about 15 percent of computer science graduates and technical workers are women. The industry has been under pressure to recruit more. The difficult question, though, is how to encourage more women on paths like Ms. Khan’s.
“Some colleges have made significant strides, including the University of Washington, where Ms. Khan is a student. Their methods offer lessons for other colleges and companies hoping to increase the number of women in fields where they remain underrepresented.”
Read more in the New York Times here.
Learn more about our NCWIT Excellence in Promoting Women in Undergraduate Computing Award – the Grand Prize in the organization’s inaugural NEXT Awards – here. And see additional coverage in the Seattle Times, Xconomy, GeekWire, UW Today, and KIRO Radio. Read more →
CSE senior Dan Radion (on the grand staircase at Suzzalo Library ) – Seattle Times photo
The Seattle Times writes:
“Vivian Yu, a 21-year-old computer-science major at the University of Washington, is graduating this June with a job already lined up – and four other offers she turned down.
“Jessica Ramirez, a UW American ethnic studies major with a concentration in labor studies who is also graduating next month, is having a tougher go of it …
“Similarly, Sarah Croft, 21, a UW biology major, said she was finding it hard to land a job related to biology or chemistry with only a bachelor’s degree …
“Within the UW’s highly ranked computer-science and engineering program, many of the graduating students had lined up jobs by last fall …
“Dan Radion, a 21-year-old UW computer-engineering major, also fielded about five job offers before deciding to work for New York City-based Analytics Media Group starting in July.”
Read more here. Read more →
Unfortunately, this may be the last instance of an extraordinary annual event: Yun-En Liu, the graduate student instigator, is graduating. (You’d think something could be done about that …)
Today’s menu:
Real Food
Breads
Charcuterie
Cheeses and bread add-ons
Appetizers
Tea sandwiches
Canapés
Quickbreads
Vienoisserie
Tarts
Desserts
Petit-fours
Breads
Quickbreads
Vienoisserie
Tarts
Cakes
Confections
UW CSE’s Professional Masters Program – a part-time evening/distance program designed for fully-employed professionals who wish to continue on their career paths while acquiring critical skills to move them into positions and projects of greater responsibility and impact – has awarded 699 degrees in the 19 years since it was introduced.
Yesterday evening, nearly 100 of these alums (including Steve Thomas, PMP graduate #1, in 1997) joined UW CSE faculty and staff at a reunion hosted at the Microsoft Visitor Center. CSE professor Yoshi Kohno provided a bit of technical content, discussing his work on computer security and privacy.
Learn more about our Professional Masters Program here. Read more →
UW CSE computational biology Ph.D. student Daniel Jones is second author on a paper that has just appeared in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. The paper, “Let-7 family of microRNA is required for maturation and adult-like metabolism in stem cell-derived cardiomyocytes,” (abstract here), blends wet-lab biology, biochemistry, bioengineering, genomics and computer science.
Stem cell research shows enormous promise for both basic science and, ultimately, for therapy, e.g., potentially repairing tissue damage after a heart attack. Human trials of such therapies are on the horizon, but much remains unknown, and understanding these biological systems increasingly relies on “Big Data” biotechnologies including “RNAseq” – sequencing of millions of RNA molecules. RNAseq provides an unprecedented microscope into the inner workings of cells, but the massive scale, complexity, and pervasive technical biases intrinsic to these data sets demand careful algorithmic and statistical analyses to separate biological truth from technical artifact. Daniel has been driven to develop general methodologies and software for just such analyses.
Embryonic heart muscle cells implanted in a damaged adult heart may not be able to “pull their weight,” and waiting years for them to mature naturally is not an option. Hence, both monitoring and controlling the developmental trajectories of stem cells are key goals of stem cell research – what drives them to become, say, heart muscles, what markers unambiguously flag arrival to that state, and how can we both influence and measure their “maturity.”
The PNAS paper identifies a critical molecular driver of maturation of cardiomyocytes (heart muscle cells), an important step towards answering these basic questions, and of potential therapeutic significance. Daniel’s analysis of RNAseq data generated by his collaborators added strong support for the biologists’ insightful hypothesis. As expected, he also identified hundreds of genes whose activity levels change systematically during cardiomyocyte maturation. Intriguingly, he also identified ~80 more subtle, previously unrecognized, molecular markers of maturation, specifically “alternatively spliced” genes, where, like calling a common subroutine with different parameters to achieve a related but different result, the cardiomyocytes make related but distinctly different proteins as they mature. This robust signal of maturation was unexpected, and its significance is still not fully understood, but the ability of sophisticated computational tools such as Daniel’s Isolator program to discern such patterns from large, complex, noisy data sets such as these is at the leading edge of modern biology.
(Thanks to UW CSE professor Larry Ruzzo, one of Daniel’s co-authors, for the above translation!) Read more →
A lengthy and fascinating article in today’s New York Times fingers 1989 UW CSE alum Nick Szabo as Satoshi Nakamoto, the elusive creator of Bitcoin:
“Mr. Szabo denied that he was Satoshi … But he acknowledged that his history left little question that he was among a small group of people who, over decades, working sometimes cooperatively and sometimes in competition, laid the foundation for Bitcoin and created many parts that later went into the virtual currency. Mr. Szabo’s most notable contribution was a Bitcoin predecessor known as bit gold that achieved many of the same goals using similar tools of advanced math and cryptography.”
Intriguing. Read more here. Read more →
2015 Diamond Award honorees Alan Miller (’77 Ph.D. Materials Science & Engineering), Milt Zeutschel (’60 B.S. Electrical Engineering), Christophe Bisciglia (’03 B.S. CSE) and Yaw Anokwa (’12 Ph.D. CSE)
2012 UW CSE Ph.D. alum Yaw Anokwa and 2003 UW CSE Bachelors alum Christophe Bisciglia were two of the four alums honored at the 2015 UW College of Engineering Diamond Awards gala on Friday night.
Yaw received the Diamond Award for Distinguished Service. Christophe received the Diamond Award for Early Career Achievement.
Read more about the accomplishments of Yaw and Christophe here. Learn about the other 2015 Diamond Award honorees here. Read more →
Today the UW CSE community gathered to dedicate a bench in Sylvan Grove – adjacent to the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering – to our beloved colleague Gaetano Borriello.
The plaques read:
In memory of Gaetano Borriello, Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, 1988-2015.
Dedicated educator, valued mentor, scientist, and colleague. The innovative work of Gaetano and his students changed lives around the world.
Read some of the many tributes to Gaetano and his work:
