Young women from Washington recognized by the National Center for Women in Information Technology in the 2015 “Aspirations in Computing” award competition were honored today at a symposium at Google Seattle co-hosted by UW CSE and Google.
Congratulations to these phenomenal students for showing what’s possible!
Learn more about the honorees here.
UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska’s shameless plug to the parents on why their daughters should continue to pursue computer science and should do it at the University of Washington is here. Read more →
Dottie Smith – long-time University of Washington reference librarian and wife of UW CSE affiliate professor and Microsoft Technical Fellow Burton Smith – was remembered today at a service at the University Congregational United Church of Christ attended by family, neighbors, and friends from UW CSE, UW Libraries, Microsoft, Tera/Cray, and the church.
Dottie passed away on February 11 after a valiant fight with cancer. Her generosity, sense of humor, positive attitude, and intellect inspired us all.
Our thoughts are with Burt and the family.
Read more →
This evening, ten alumni and friends participated in a “big data and machine learning” lab tour.
Many thanks to Magda Balazinska, Shumo Chu, Carlos Guestrin, Dan Halperin, Bill Howe, and Jennifer Ortiz for terrific presentations and demos, to Sergey Smirnov for organizing, and to Neal Fachan, Peter Godman, Joe Heitzeberg, Amnon Horowitz, Steve Jang, Dan Kerns, Kevin McCall, Lee Smith, Scott Tennican, and Kim Tennican for attending. Read more →
The Open Technology Fund has selected 11 individuals to receive Information Controls Fellowships, including UW CSE Ph.D. student Will Scott.
The new Information Controls Fellowship recipients will be working to create solutions and remedies to online censorship and surveillance. They are students, lawyers, and hackers well-established in their respected fields of computer science, software development, social science, and more.
Will’s UW CSE research has included a large number of high-impact projects in this vein. With his Information Control Felowship, he will continue his work on Activist.js, a tool that helps publishers resist censorship by maintaining strong websites that are more resilient to network interference. Learn more about Will’s research here. And learn about all of the Information Controls Fellowship recipients here.
Congratulations Will! Read more →
A lovely report on KING5 TV News tonight, reporting on UW CSE’s Stuart Reges, who each quarter bakes chocolate chip cookies as a final exam treat for his class … which had nearly 1,000 students this quarter!
“In the days leading up to this semester’s final exam in Computer Programming 1 at the University of Washington, students spent hours studying over their laptops, while their teacher was slaving over a hot oven.
“‘I just love this,’ said Stuart Reges. ‘I think Toll House should hire me.’
“For the past two days when he hasn’t been teaching his class, Reges has been home baking handmade chocolate chip cookies.
“‘This recipe calls for 25 pounds of flour, 27 pounds of sugar, 7 dozen eggs and 54 sticks of butter,’ he said from his North Seattle kitchen.”
Watch the video here! Read more →
Let’s hear it for Seattle’s Hadi Partovi and Code.org!
After tens of millions of students learned their first Hour of Code in December, how many have kept learning?
Code.org’s online learning platform Code Studio just passed 5 million students enrolled, together with almost 115,000 teachers around the world!
10,000 new teachers are signing up to teach introductory CS with Code Studio every month. 10,000 new students are enrolling in courses every day!
10% of all elementary and middle school students across the United States are enrolled in an introductory computer science course on Code Studio!
Overall enrollment on the platform is 43% girls. Of course, an intro course is a long way from a university degree, but most girls never even try computer science. These new students now have the opportunity to get inspired and delve deeper.
Learn more here. Read more →
The Seattle Times writes:
“Gaetano Borriello wanted to marry technology with humanity. He believed that computer science wasn’t about creating the next app, but about helping and enriching lives around the world.
“Those beliefs led him to develop the Open Data Kit, an open-source mobile-data collection tool used around the world to address issues in public health, human rights and the environment.
“Professor Borriello, the leader and visionary behind the Open Data Kit and professor in the University of Washington Department of Computer Science & Engineering, died Feb. 1 after a six-year battle with colon cancer. He was 56.
“A month after his death, nearly $350,000 has been raised toward the Gaetano Borriello Endowed Fellowship for Change, which was established by his UW department. The fellowship will support UW students whose work explores how technology can improve the lives of underserved populations.”
Gaetano was remembered at a service for family and close friends on Saturday.
Read more in the Seattle Times here. Learn about the Gaetano Borriello Endowed Fellowship for Change here. Read more →
Check out this great new infographic from the Washington Technology Industry Association:
1. Higher education now
2. Adult education over the next 2-3 years
3. K-12 over the next 10 years
Download and share the infographic here. Read more →
On the day of their launch, co-founders Kenny Daniel and Diego Oppenheimer of Madrona-backed startup Algorithmia took an hour off from fighting fires to talk with the UW CSE faculty.
Quoting Diego, “Algorithmia gives developers the ability to turn algorithms into scalable web services with a single click. Application developers can then integrate the algorithm into their own applications with under 10 lines of code. Algorithmia hosts the web services, makes them discoverable and enables algorithm developers to get paid for usage.” Incredibly cool, and a great way to increase the impact of academic research.
GeekWire here. Xconomy here. InfoWorld here. Company here. Read more →
The UW Daily writes:
“Twenty-three tech leaders recently sent a letter to the Washington State Legislature endorsing the funding of a new computer science and engineering (CSE) building on campus …
“[Jeremy] Jaech is the CEO of SNUPI Technologies, a UW spin-off that makes in-home sensors that detect issues like flooding. He said that newer companies like his need local talent …
“‘Companies like Google, Amazon, and Microsoft have the wherewithal to hire people from all around the world and bring them in,’ Jaech said. ‘But companies like ours, well, we can’t do that. We can’t afford to relocate people from across the country.’
“‘When we invest in our kids, they get educated here, they find great jobs here, and raise their families here,’ [Technology Alliance Executive Director Susannah] Malarkey said. ‘So there is no reason not to be really ramping up the public investment in Computer Science & Engineering.’
“Expanding the opportunities to major in computer science at the UW would prepare students for this new local economy, [UW CSE’s Ed] Lazowska said.
“‘Washington state kids ought to have the opportunity to get an education to be a first-tier participant in this information economy, and that’s what we’re trying to do.'”
Read more in the UW Daily here.
Check out the legislative letter here.
And learn the compelling case in our legislative handout here. Read more →
