Allen School News

The Guardian reports on scientific advances in global health care, highlighting FoneAstra, a collaboration between UW CSE Ph.D. student Rohit Chaudhri, Microsoft Research India, and Seattle global health non-profit PATH.

“For thriving societies, you need healthy communities. But despite significant advances in global health over the past decade, millions of people are still without access to basic healthcare …

“In partnership with global health organisation PATH and the University of Washington’s department of computer science and engineering, the team developed a simple mobile phone app that could play a game-changing role in getting life-saving donated breast milk to newborns. The FoneAstra monitor is one of this year’s winners of GSK and Save the Children’s Healthcare Innovation Award, which aims to help support and scale-up innovations coming out of developing countries that reduce child deaths.”

Learn more about FoneAstra here and here. Read more in The Guardian here. Read more →

We’re celebrating our own version of March Madness after Team Hillarious*, a group of students from UW CSE, captured second place at the Pacific Rim Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition (PRCCDC) over the weekend. PRCCDC is an annual competition that serves as the regional semi-finals for the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, a.k.a. the “big dance of data defense.” Teams of college students from Washington, Oregon and Idaho do battle against teams of hackers composed of cybersecurity industry experts who volunteer their time to test the students’ mettle. Fourteen teams participated in this year’s regional competition, which took place at Highline College.

Congratulations to Team Hillarious captain Kristina Savelesky, co-captain Kevin Fan, teammates Daniel Arens, Matt Carver, Stanley Hsieh, Alex Kirchhoff, Spencer Walden and Bo Wang, and team advisor Melody Kadenko – way to go!

*If you are wondering if that is a typo, it isn’t. Team Hillarious got its name when, a few years ago, the UW students frustrated a team of hackers with their defensive prowess. In response, the hackers left a note on the door that said, “You think you’re so hillarious, don’t you?” We thought that was hilarious, and so the name stuck.

UW CSE’s Team Hillarious, left to right: Spencer Walden, Matt Carver, Stanley Hsieh, Kristina Savelesky, Melody Kadenko, Bo Wang, Dan Arens, Kevin Fan, and Alex Kirchhoff

UW CSE’s Shyam Gollakota has received an NSF CAREER Award – the 28th current UW CSE faculty member to have been recognized through this program and its predecessors.

The NSF CAREER Program “offers the National Science Foundation’s most prestigious awards in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education and the integration of education and research.”

Shyam leads UW CSE’s Networks and Mobile Systems Lab and works on various topics including computer networks, human-computer interaction and mobile health.  Recent topics have included battery-free computing and communication, and wireless gesture recognition and Wi-Fi imaging.

In addition to an NSF CAREER Award, Shyam has been recognized with an Alfred Sloan Research Fellowship, named one of Forbes 30 under 30, listed as a Next Generation Tech Influencer, named one of MIT Technology Review‘s Innovators Under 35, and received the 2012 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.

Congratulations Shyam! Read more →

Jeffrey Heer, director of UW CSE’s Interactive Data Lab and co-founder and chief experience officer of big data visualization company Trifacta, was a keynote speaker at the recent Strata + Hadoop World 2015 conference in San Jose, California.

Strata + Hadoop World gathers leading minds in data science and data-driven businesses to explore new developments and best practices in data management, visualization, security and other topics of importance in the growing field of big data. Jeff focused on the future of visualization tools – specifically, how we can move from tools that serve designers to tools that enable better decision making by businesses and governments. To help end users get the most out of their data, Jeff described how visualization tools need to “move from specification to exploration” so that they inspire users to consider new questions, exercise skepticism, and gain better insights.

Watch Jeff’s talk on YouTube here.

Read our recent blog post about big data in Washington State here. Read more →

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 →

Every March, UW CSE welcomes prospective Ph.D. candidates for two action-packed days of lab tours, social events, and one-on-one meetings with faculty. This week, a record-high 104 candidates spent two days at the Allen Center exploring what it means to be a UW CSE graduate student.

Now, thanks to a new video series, everyone can learn about the people and projects that make UW CSE one of the most innovative and forward-thinking computer science programs in the nation.

“I Am CSE” is a series of short clips in which students, postdocs and faculty describe their work addressing real-world challenges including consumer privacy, health care, and global development. They also depict how UW CSE researchers are advancing the field of computer science with breakthroughs in areas such as computer vision and mobile systems.

Learn how the UW CSE community engages in high-impact projects! Check out the “I Am CSE” series on YouTube here. 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 →

UW CSE’s Center for Game Science announced the next Washington State Algebra Challenge will take place April 27th to May 1st. This statewide contest challenges Washington’s K-12 students to solve 250,000 algebra equations in one week.

During the 2013 Algebra Challenge, students far exceeded expectations by solving nearly 391,000 equations in just one week. For the 2015 challenge, the Center for Game Science will provide participating classrooms with access to its new math learning game, Riddle Books. Previously only available to students who visited the center or through summer learning programs at selected libraries, Riddle Books teaches kids pre-algebra as they solve word problems in a friendly, game-based environment.

Registration will open soon at the Algebra Challenge website. Stay tuned for more details, and please help spread the word to classrooms around the state! Read more →