Allen School News Archive

UW CSE startup GraphLab is one of four Startup Showcase Winners at Strata+Hadoop World, part of NYC Data Week.

It’s the first cut in getting selected to compete as the “best of the best” at Strata.

Go GraphLab! Read more →

We’ve been wondering why CSE professor Zach Tatlock gets along so well with graduate students.  Turns out it’s because he still was one!  Not any longer, though … Zach has marked the second year of his UW faculty appointment by returning to UCSD to defend his thesis.

And this year’s winner of the Stefan Savage Better Late Than Never award is … Read more →

University of Washington President Michael K. Young, in the Seattle Times:

“In the Puget Sound, we consider ourselves leaders and innovators. After all, we designed and built the planes that revolutionized the aerospace industry and changed the world; gave birth to culture-defining companies like Microsoft, Nordstrom and Starbucks; pioneered the online experience through Amazon.com and Expedia; and advanced global development through organizations such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and PATH. Seattle set the standard in the field of technology and demonstrated the value of living lives with corporate and social purpose.

“It is in this innovative and thriving Northwest environment that we in higher education must stay relevant, continue driving our region forward and lead through innovation. At the University of Washington, we are building on our long-standing work in this arena through our ‘Innovation Agenda,’ which I am outlining Friday at the Seattle Metropolitan Chamber of Commerce Regional Leadership Conference …

“It is unacceptable that Washington students are not filling more of the jobs our technological companies now offer. At the UW, we plan to build a new computer science facility that would double our degree capacity and ensure that students in non-computer science disciplines get an opportunity to take classes in this field. In the coming legislative session, the UW will ask the state Legislature as well as the private sector to help fund this new 130,000-square-foot building for our nationally ranked computer science and engineering program, allowing us to address the critical workforce shortage for our region’s technology sector.”

Read more here. Read more →

Many dozens of UW CSE students participated in tonight’s “technical interview coaching” session in the Allen Center Atrium, in advance of next week’s CSE Industry Affiliates recruiting sessions. Many thanks to the coaches – many of whom were UW CSE alums:

• Amazon
  • Sheng Bi
  • Jill Edwards
  • Rishi Goutam
• Google
  • Myles Jordan
  • Alyssa Pittman
• Marchex
  • Chris Kolbegger
  • Jos Van Schagen
  • Andrew Furdell
• Microsoft
  • Nikhil Barthwal
  • Robin Giese
  • Andy Howe
  • Brannan Matherson
  • Bayo Olatunji
• Qumulo
  • Josh Snyder
• Redfin
  • Dane Brandon
  • Galen Knapp
• Whitepages
  • Paul Kohan
  • Paul Sutton

The local qualifying event for the ACM International Collegiate Programming Contest (ICPC) was held this Saturday, organized by Whitaker Brand and I. 31 teams of three undergraduates competed, with the top 5 teams advancing to the regional contest scheduled for November 15th.

The top 5 teams advancing are:

• Eternal Flame (Siwakorn Srisakaokul, Jasper Hagunin, & Vladimir Korakov)
• Amgems (Jeremy Teo, Sherman Pay, & Zachary Iqbal)
• superluminal (Zehao Sun, Wenbo Cui, & Jingchen Hu)
• House Lannister (Yingkai Wang, Gurwinder S. Gulati, & Chenfan Sun)
• Olia in UW (Aleksandev Holynski, Hessam Bagherinezhad, & Adireza Rezaei)

The full report of the contest is available here. Congratulations to everyone who participated! Read more →

Nanocrafter , a synthetic biology game from UW CSE’s Center for Game Science, has been selected as a finalist in the 2014 Serious Games Showcase & Challenge (SGS&C). Qualifying as a finalist allows Nanocrafter to be placed at pavilion booth (#2663) at December’s Interservice/Industry Training Simulation and Education Conference (I/ITSEC) in Orlando, Florida.

At the conference, Nanocrafter is now eligible to win distinction as “2014 Best Serious Game” in the Business category as judged by the SGS&C evaluators, the “2014 Students’ Choice Award” which is determined by middle and high school students, the “2014 Best Game Special Emphasis Topic Social Media Crowdsourcing for Peer Learning Award” which is determined by a special panel, and the coveted “2014 People’s Choice Award” which is determined by conference attendees (so if you happen to be going, be sure to vote for Nanocrafter).

Read more here. Read more →

VillageReach, a Seattle-based non-profit that develops, tests, implements and scales global health innovations, has received a $470,000 grant from the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation to further develop and enhance ODK scan, part of the Open Data Kit suite of data tools, in partnership with the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering. ODK Scan is an Android application that digitizes data on paper forms, using a device’s built-in camera and image-processing technology.

Read more here. Read more →

UW undergraduate and graduate students at last week’s Grace Hopper Conference

GeekWire writes:

“Satya Nadella set off a firestorm last week after advising women to not explicitly ask for a raise, but rather rely on “good karma” …

“We caught up with some University of Washington computer science students who were representing their school at the conference (read how the UW is trying to increase women representation in computing here). Read on to hear what they had to say about Nadella’s comments and women in technology as a whole.”

UW CSE undergraduates Jennifer Kang and Karolina Pyszkiewicz,and UW CSE graduate student Amrita Mazumdar are interviewed. Topics include:

• On Nadella’s comments and what it says about the tech industry
• On why it is important to get more females interested in computer science

Read it here!

Read a related Crosscut article by UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska here. Read more →

An article in Crosscut by CSE’s Ed Lazowska:

“Let’s use Satya Nadella’s remarks at the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing as a learning experience – for all of us.

“When Larry Summers made the comments about women in academia that led to the termination of his presidency at Harvard, the issue was not “inarticulateness” – it was that his comments betrayed a lack of familiarity with a rich scholarly literature regarding discrimination against women in academia: literature that should be deeply familiar to any person in an academic administrative role, from department chair to dean to provost to president.

“Similarly, the issue with Satya Nadella’s remarks was not “inarticulateness” (as his first Twitter apology stated). It was that his remarks betrayed a lack of familiarity with a rich scholarly literature regarding discrimination against women in the tech workplace, and suggested a degree of faith in the personnel systems at Microsoft and other tech companies that is contradicted by data and experience …

“Diversity matters. The playing field is not level. Today’s biases are sometimes more subtle than yesterday’s biases. This makes them more difficult to identify and tackle. Leaders – at every level – must be held accountable for recognizing and tackling these biases.”

Read the entire article here.

Previous post on Nadella’s comments, with links to worthwhile background reading, here. Read more →

We’re #1!

An article in CIO Magazine, citing data from PayScale, reports that Washington leads the nation when it comes to average salaries for Ruby on Rails developers.

Check it out here. Read more →