Shwetak Patel has been appointed as the Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Endowed Professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering.
Shwetak’s research interests are in the areas of Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, Sensor-Enabled Embedded Systems, and User Interface Software and Technology. He is particularly interested in developing new sensing technologies with an emphasis on energy monitoring and health applications for the home.
He was a founder of Zensi, Inc., a residential energy monitoring company, which was acquired by Belkin, Inc. in 2010. He is also a co-founder of SNUPI Technologies, a low-power wireless sensor company. He is the recipient of a MacArthur Fellowship (2011), Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship (2011), Sloan Research Fellowship (2012), TR-35 Award (2009), World Economic Forum Young Global Scientist Award (2013), and an NSF CAREER Award (2013). He was named Top Innovator of the Year by Seattle Business Magazine, and Newsmaker of the Year by Seattle Business Journal in 2011. Earlier work was also honored by the New York Times as a top technology of the year in 2005. He is a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Shapers Community, and was selected as a Seattle Shaper in 2012.
Congratulations, Shwetak. And many thanks to our friends at the Washington Research Foundation – WRF has supported UW CSE and UW as a whole in so many ways over so many years! Read more →
It’s becoming a welcome annual event: decorating the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering with multi-story banners celebrating the success of Paul’s Seattle Seahawks! Read more →
This evening the University of Washington community celebrated the life of Bill Gerberding, our longest-serving President and a very special human being.
More information in a previous post here. Read more →
UW CSE Ph.D. alum Brian Ferris and Ph.D. student Caitlin Bonnar take two of the region’s transit agencies to task in an op-ed in the Seattle Transit Blog for ongoing issues with the quality of the data they provide to OneBusAway, the Transit App, Google, and other transit information sources. (Brian wrote all the original code for OneBusAway, and Caitlin currently coordinates maintenance and development of the iPhone app.) Read it here, along with numerous comments from other riders. Read more →
A new study finds that the University of Washington generates $12.5 billion per year in economic activity, only one third of which is attributable to the salaries of athletic coaches and administrators. Read more here. Read more →
At Friday’s 2015 UW Computer Science & Engineering Symposium (CSES 2015), 18 graduate students from across the field presented 15-minute research talks to an audience of more than 100 UW CSE graduate students and faculty members.
The goal of CSES is to create a forum for interaction between the different fields of research in CSE. The Symposium organizers – graduate student Yoav Artzi and faculty members Franzi Roesner and Zach Tatlock – invited visionary talks that place current research within a wider research agenda and emphasize the importance of the problem, the originality of the approach, and the long-term vision of the researcher.
The presentations were spectacular in both form and content – amazingly impressive. In a tough field, the winner of the “best presentation” award was Adrian Sampson, shown here with the award. (Don’t let it go to your head, buddy …)
Bruce Hemingway photographs of the day here. Read more →
There are academic counselors … and then there is Lindsay Michimoto.
Lindsay joined the UW CSE family as our staff graduate advisor in November 2000. Since then, she has:
- processed 14,245 applications to the Ph.D. program,
- personally attended to the needs of 602 Ph.D. students,
- and provided more than 250,000 M&Ms (peanut and plain) to students, staff and faculty.
Current and former students, faculty, and staff gathered on Friday to thank her and wish her a wonderful retirement.
Many Bruce Hemingway photographs of the event here. Online tributes here.
Hilarious tribute video created by grad students here.
Read more →
For one, they’re all friends of UW CSE. But the real answer is that they’re among the Puget Sound Business Journal‘s “15 in 15: Here’s who to watch in 2015.”
“He may not be a household name, but Etzioni is a force to be reckoned with. Years ago, he developed and sold the technology Bing Travel uses to find fares, and then went on to found Decide.com, which was acquired in 2013 by eBay. In fact, Etzioni has co-founded six startups, all of which have been acquired. He’s currently the CEO of Paul Allen’s artificial intelligence research group, a professor at the University of Washington and a venture partner at Madrona Venture Group.”
Read more here. Read more →
On Thursday, the UW Board of Regents approved the hiring of Seattle’s LMN Architects to carry out pre-design for a new facility for UW CSE – a second building to complement the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering (which LMN also designed) and accommodate growth.
We’re firmly committed to responding to the ever-increasing demand for computer science education by students and by employers. This is the first step in a process to develop the physical capacity that will enable us to address many of the challenges we face in growing and evolving UW CSE.
UW has made this building its top capital project priority. The governor’s proposed budget includes $40M for the project. And, although private fundraising has not yet commenced (we anticipate the total cost will be roughly $100M), we received our first major gift at the end of the year.
We recently held a set of focus group sessions with CEOs and CTOs of leading employers in the region – Jeremy Jaech (SNUPI) and Brad Smith (Microsoft) were the convenors. We received extremely useful guidance from these sessions. The “high order bits” were that we need to grow (because computer science is of ever-increasing importance, and because public universities have a responsibility to the students and companies of their region), and we need to maintain the quality of our graduates (many CEOs and CTOs who participated in the focus groups said something along the lines of “When I hire a UW CSE graduate, I know I’m getting someone outstanding; maintaining this needs to be a top priority”).
We’re excited about the opportunities that lie ahead!
GeekWire post here. Xconomy post here. Two-pager on the status and direction of UW CSE here. Read more →
UW CSE professor Magda Balazinska has a child at Sand Point Elementary School. Last year, Magda encouraged the school to try out Scratch on the 5th grade class; CSE’s Allison Obourn provided some mini-lectures. This year Sand Point expanded Scratch to the 4th grade, and during CS Ed Week, the 2nd through 5th grades participated in the Hour of Code.
Comments from teachers:
About the Hour of Code: “The kids loved the coding activities with Frozen and Angry Birds. I’m starting in on very beginning Scratch today. Thanks for your support and encouragement. I would not have pursued this without your guidance.”
About Scratch: “All kinds of cool organic things are happening. Yesterday a 4th grader showed his class how he made a game on Scratch and everyone tried to make their own. Very fun!”
Three cheers for Sand Point teacher Julia Schumacher for her instrumental role in all of this! Read more →
