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Congratulations to UW CSE’s 2014 NSF Graduate Research Fellowship recipients!

imagesNSF Graduate Research Fellowships are among the most prestigious awards available to graduate students in the STEM fields.  The 2014 NSF GSRFs were announced today, and UW CSE has a bumper crop!

  • UW CSE Ph.D. student Camille Cobb
  • UW CSE Ph.D. student Scott Lundberg
  • UW CSE Ph.D. student Lauren Milne
  • UW CSE Ph.D. student Greg Nelson
  • UW CSE Ph.D. student Trevor Perrier
  • UW EE Ph.D. student Edward Wang, who works with CSE/EE faculty member Shwetak Patel
  • UW CSE Bachelors alum Michael Lam (now a Ph.D. student at Oregon State)
  • UW CSE Bachelors alum Jerry Li (now a Ph.D. student at MIT)
  • UW CSE Bachelors alum Grace Muzny
  • UW CSE Bachelors alum Laure Thompson (now a Ph.D. student at Cornell)

In addition, Honorable Mentions were received by UW CSE Ph.D. students Meg Campbell, Pavel Panchekha, and Doug Woos.

Go team! Read more →

Microsoft highlights UW CSE Ph.D. student Kyle Rector

1781147_10152029454208721_1133944543_oKyle Rector, a fourth-year UW CSE Ph.D. student, has developed Eyes-Free Yoga, which uses Microsoft Kinect to track body movements and quickly offer verbal feedback for various yoga poses. A mix of a video game and exercise, Eyes-Free yoga makes a typically visual exercise accessible to people without sight.

Kyle is featured on the Microsoft Facebook Page and in Microsoft’s “The Fire Hose” news blog.

Learn more about Kyle and her work here. Read more →

UW CSE welcomes new graduate students at the “Pit Party”

IMG_1861This evening, UW CSE faculty, staff, and graduate students welcomed the incoming class of graduate students at our annual “Pit Party” potluck dinner, held this year at the Burke Museum on the UW campus.

The name “Pit Party” is … a bit obscure. Of our currently active faculty, only Richard Ladner ever spent time in the actual “pit.”

In the 1960’s, CSE (then called “the Computer Science Group”) was partially housed in the basement of Roberts Hall – once the home of UW’s College of Mines.  You guessed it – there was a facsimile mine in the basement, where our annual welcoming party was held!

Here’s a 1970 letter from CSE professor Jean-Loup Baer to the Dean of the Graduate School describing housing conditions for junior faculty. Makes Sieg Hall look like heaven!

A bit more history:

A School of Mining Engineering was established at UW in 1898. Milnor Roberts, after whom Roberts Hall is named, became Dean in 1901.  The School began its life in Denny Hall, then moved to Parrington Hall (at that time called Science Hall), and in 1910 moved to a brick powerhouse which had been constructed for 1909’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition (held on the UW campus), which was re-named Mines Hall. The School was re-named the College of Mines, and moved to the new Mines Laboratory (the south half of the current Roberts Hall) in 1921. In 1947, reflecting decreased interest in mining engineering, the College was re-named the School of Mineral Engineering and given departmental status in UW’s College of Engineering. In 1968, reflecting decreased interest in mineral engineering and increased prominence of ceramic engineering, the School became the Department of Mining, Metallurgical, and Ceramic Engineering, and in 1983 it became the Department of Materials Science and Engineering.

A working model of the Cripple Creek Gold Mine in Colorado was constructed as an exhibit for 1909’s Alaska-Yukon-Pacific Exposition. It later went to the World’s Fair in Belgium, and then to the basement of Roberts Hall – the pit! It ultimately was donated to Seattle’s Museum of History and Industry.

The Department of Computer Science & Engineering was established as an inter-college graduate program – the Computer Science Group – in 1967, and was housed in Roberts Hall. Jerre Noe was hired from SRI as CSE’s first chair in 1968; was succeeded by Hellmut Golde (1976), Bob Ritchie (1977), Paul Young (1983), Jean-Loup Baer (1988), Ed Lazowska (1993), David Notkin (2001), and Hank Levy (2006). In 1975 an undergraduate program in Computer Science was added, departmental status was conferred within the College of Arts & Sciences, and Sieg Hall became our home. A second undergraduate program, in Computer Engineering, was added in 1989 when the department moved to the College of Engineering and was re-named the Department of Computer Science & Engineering. The Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering was dedicated in 2003.

The University of Washington was established as the Territorial University of Washington in 1861, only 10 years after Seattle was settled and 18 years before Washington became a state. UW’s founder and first president, Asa Shinn Mercer, blazed the trail for a proud record of UW entrepreneurship and public service: he left his post after only two years, heading east to Massachusetts in 1863 and again in 1865 to recruit more than 100 young women – “The Mercer Girls” – to move to Seattle, funded by donations from eager men. In recognition of this contribution to civic life, he was elected to the Territorial Legislature. (Former UW President Bill Gerberding often remarked on the fact that one of his predecessors quit to run a brothel …)

Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. students Kyle Rector, Paris Koutris to attend Heidelberg Laureate Forum

logoThe 1st Heidelberg Laureate Forum  takes place September 22-27, 2013.

Forty Abel, Fields, Turing, and Nevanlinna Laureates – winners of the most prestigious awards in the computer and mathematical sciences – will spend a full week interacting with 200 selected young researchers from around the globe.

UW CSE Ph.D. students Kyle Rector and Paris Koutris are among the 200 invited attendees.  The Heidelberg Laureate Forum blog has a wonderful writeup on Kyle’s research.

Congratulations to Kyle and Paris on this tremendous honor – and tremendous opportunity! Read more →

UW CSE rocks at Ubicomp … again!

Proceedings-largeACM Ubicomp, the world’s top conference for pervasive and ubiquitous computing, was held Sept 8-12 in Zurich Switzerland.  For the seventh consecutive year, UW CSE took home a bundle of awards:

Congratulations one and all!  Check it all out here!

Read more →

CSE’s Adrian Sampson wins Google Global Ph.D. Fellowship

arGoogle has announced the 39 winners of their 2013 Global Ph.D. Fellowships:  2 from Australia, 4 from China, 13 from Europe, 5 from India, and 15 from the United States and Canada.  UW CSE’s Adrian Sampson is among the 15 winners from the United States and Canada.  UW CSE Ph.D. alumna Roxana Geambasu, now on the faculty at Columbia University, is highlighted in the Google press release as a previous winner of the award.

Congratulations to Adrian and Roxana! Read more →

ColdTrace wins Vodafone Wireless Innovation Competition

rohitColdTrace – research by Nexleaf Analytics and UW CSE Ph.D. student Rohit Chaudhri – has won this year’s Vodafone Wireless Innovation Competition.

ColdTrace is a low-cost wireless sensor designed to improve access to vaccines which protect thousands of children against diseases such as tuberculosis and polio. The sensor remotely monitors the temperature of vaccines. It also provides a better understanding of the vaccine cold storage, transportation and distribution infrastructures, particularly in areas where regular records are not maintained.

Nexleaf Analytics is a nonprofit technology company co-founded by UCLA Ph.D. alumna Nithya Ramanathan that provides lightweight sensor technologies for measuring the impact of critical public health and environmental interventions.

Watch a descriptive video here. Read more →

CSE’s Mike Hotan, Jim Youngquist win 2013 Google SVA Scholarships

MJThe newest addition to the Google scholarships family is the Google Student Veterans of America (SVA) Scholarship.  Google has partnered with the nonprofit Student Veterans of America to support their mission of providing veterans with the resources, support and advocacy they need to succeed in higher education and throughout their careers.

Incredibly, two of the eight winners of inaugural Google SVA Scholarships are UW CSE students:  undergraduate student Mike Hotan (USA Special Forces 2008-present) and graduate student Jim Youngquist (USAF, 2002-08).  (Interesting aside:  Jim is currently Mike’s TA in the undergraduate Operating Systems course.)

Congratulations to Mike and Jim! Read more →

UW CSE’s Dieter Fox in Seattle Weekly, UW Daily

df“In ‘The Jetsons,’ a cartoon about a space-age nuclear family, the robot Rosie seamlessly understands and performs the commands of the Jetson family, easily completes household chores like vacuuming and dusting, while effortlessly caring for the Jetson children.

“Although this sort of technology remains out of our reach, UW researchers are bringing us one step closer.”

Read more in The Daily here.  Read more in Seattle Weekly here. Read more →

7 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships to UW CSE students

nsfGraduate Research Fellowships from the National Science Foundation are among the most prestigious awards available to graduate students in the sciences and engineering.

Three UW CSE graduate students and four UW CSE undergraduates have just been announced as winners of 2013 NSF GRF’s:  graduate students Lilian de Greef, Ben Hixon, and Irene Zhang, undergraduate seniors Sam Hopkins and David Colmenares, and former CSE undergraduates Gabriel Pratt (currently a graduate student in Bioinformatics and Systems Biology at UC San Diego) and Ada Zhang (currently a graduate student in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon).

Congratulations! Read more →

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