There’s a new kind of researcher on campus, one who doesn’t fit into the usual nooks and crannies at a university.
They are data scientists – students, faculty members and professional scientific staff – who are building the tools and crafting the methods to help researchers analyze the vast amounts of data now abundant in every field. The very nature of their skill set is interdisciplinary, and the university system doesn’t always reward them for the time they spend developing techniques and software to advance discovery.
This dilemma, and what universities can do to change it, is the topic of a symposium Feb. 15 at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting in San Jose, California. The session, “Advancing University Career Paths in Interdisciplinary Data-Intensive Science,” was organized by UW’s Cecilia Aragon and Bill Howe, and also includes UW’s Ed Lazowska, Berkeley’s Joshua Bloom and Fernando Perez, and NYU’s Juliana Freire – partners in the Data Science Environments project supported by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation and the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation.
Read a UW News post here. See Ed Lazowska’s introductory slides here. Read more →
UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska and Carlos Guestrin will be featured speakers at an event next month that will examine the impact of big data in Washington State. “Insight to Impact: Transforming Washington’s Industries Through Big Data” will provide a comprehensive look at ground-breaking developments in big data and explore how this rapidly growing field will shape Washington’s industries and economy.
Ed, the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at UW CSE, will provide the audience with a comprehensive overview of the big data opportunity for Washington – examining our current assets and a looking ahead to what big data might enable in the future.
Carlos, the Amazon Professor of Machine Learning at UW CSE and co-founder and CEO of big data startup Dato (formerly known as GraphLab), will participate in a panel discussion alongside Bloomberg News correspondent Dina Bass; Joseph Sirosh, Corporate Vice President of Machine Learning at Microsoft; and Madrona Venture Group’s Matt McIlwain.
In addition, the event will feature a keynote address by Inrix CEO Bryan Mistele and a showcase of big data-driven innovations and companies that are helping to transform health care, government, retail and other industries.
“Insight to Impact,” which is co-presented by the Technology Alliance, will take place on Tuesday, March 3rd, 7:30 am to 6:00 pm at the Renaissance Seattle Hotel. An early-bird registration rate is available until February 20th. Find more information and register to attend here. Read more →
George Nychis writes:
In the Bay Area, when I put recruiting ads out I would get a ton of applications from Stanford and Berkeley. In Boston, I am getting no applications from those schools. At first I questioned whether my recruiting ad sucked, but then I thought … maybe nobody from those schools want to leave the Bay.
So I thought I’d use LinkedIn to gather some data on where recent graduates from the top schools go after they graduate. I did this by filtering for software engineers with less than 2 years of experience. The numbers are: the total number of people who graduated from school Y with less than 2 years experience, living in city X (who are on LinkedIn).
UW is a public university. Our job is to educate Washington State’s top students for Washington State’s top jobs. It seems to be working! (See the table to the right.) Read more →
Where but at today’s UW CSE ACM Winterfest would you see Paul Beame in a tuxedo? (Well, there’s always Halloween …)
A zillion thanks to our ACM Student Chapter for this great contribution to UW CSE community spirit!!!!!
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University of Washington Provost and Executive Vice President Ana Mari Cauce – a friend of all of us who strive to make UW the best that it can be – was named interim president by the Board of Regents at their regular meeting on Thursday. Her appointment will be effective March 2, 2015. She succeeds President Michael K. Young, who is leaving the UW for Texas A&M University.
Read more about Cauce here. Read more about A&M here. Read more →
Teams working with PATH’s MACEPA program in Zambia use Android smartphones equipped with Open Data Kit software to collect demographic information as they go house-to-house testing and treating for malaria. Photo: PATH/Gabe Bienczycki.
“On February 1, PATH and the entire global health community lost a great friend and innovator …
“Dr. Borriello’s work has positively impacted the lives of many thousands of children and mothers in developing countries. Our thoughts are with his family and friends.”
Read more here. Read more →
The UW Innovation Research Award supports unusually creative early and mid-career faculty in engineering, health, natural and social sciences.
The Provost has just announced an award to team of six investigators: Shwetak Patel and James Fogarty (Computer Science & Engineering); Julie Kientz and Sean Munson (Human-Centered Design & Engineering; both are also Adjunct faculty in CSE); Jasmine Zia (UW Medicine’s Division of Gastroenterology); and Roger Vilardaga (Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences). They are building tools used on a mobile device that allow patients to easily enter data about habits and behaviors related to a particular health problem. These data will help extend the reach of health care beyond the clinic, making it easier for physicians to make diagnoses and treatment plans.
Go team! Read more here. Read more →
The Puget Sound Business Journal reports on Paul G. Allen’s Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2), led by UW CSE”s Oren Etzioni:
“We are years, decades, possibly even centuries away from designing machines that are fully equipped with human intelligence.
“But a Seattle organization that launched only a year ago is playing a major role in creating the building blocks necessary to advance artificial intelligence …
“Seattle is known for its growing number of big data startups, as well as machine learning research done at the University of Washington. Along with AI2, those organizations have made the region a powerful player in the world of artificial intelligence.
“We don’t have a monopoly, Etzioni cautioned, but we do have many advantages that other locations in the country do not.
“One of them is Paul Allen.”
Read more here. Read more →
Look, Ma! No brakes!
Last night, 60 Minutes broadcast a segment called “DARPA Dan” in which Dan Kaufman, head of the agency’s Information Innovation Office, described the various ways DARPA is supporting research on cybersecurity and the Internet of Things. In one of the more dramatic demonstrations during the broadcast, Dan and UW CSE alum Karl Koscher hack into a car driven by 60 Minutes correspondent Lesley Stahl (with DARPA PM Kathleen Fisher riding shotgun). View the segment here – the car hacking demo begins at minute 6:40, and Yoshi and his team appear at 9:37.
The broadcast foreshadowed today’s release of a report by Senator Edward Markey (D-Mass.) on car hacking. Some of the media coverage refers to the 60 Minutes demonstration, which took place on the UW campus and was based on the work of UW CSE’s Yoshi Kohno and his students, in collaboration with colleagues at the University of California, San Diego.
Read more about today’s coverage here, here, and here, and delve into the history of UW and UCSD’s car hacking research, courtesy of The New York Times, here and here.
Read our previous blog post on this topic here.
Photo: CBS News Read more →
UW CSE old-timers gathered on Sunday to celebrate the 85th birthday of Hellmut Golde, one of the founders of our program.
Hellmut, a professor of Electrical Engineering, joined with colleagues from across the campus to establish the Computer Science Group as an inter-college graduate program in 1967. In 1975 an undergraduate program in Computer Science was added and departmental status was conferred. A second undergraduate program, in Computer Engineering, was added in 1989 when the department moved to the College of Engineering, and a Professional Masters Program was added in 1996. Jerre Noe was hired from SRI as CSE’s first chair in 1968. He was succeeded by Hellmut, Bob Ritchie, Paul Young, Jean-Loup Baer, Ed Lazowska, David Notkin, and Hank Levy.
Happy 85th, Hellmut! Thanks for launching UW CSE on a course that we strive to maintain today.
Read more →
