Columns, the University of Washington alumni magazine, reports on data science activities at UW:
“Lazowska describes several challenges. Researchers are confronted with a tsunami of data that is rapidly growing in volume, velocity and variety. Even the best researchers often lack the expertise to effectively move ‘from data to knowledge to action.’ The tools and techniques are evolving rapidly. New partnerships are required. New approaches to educating the next generation of researchers, too – facilitated by a new major Interdisciplinary Graduate Education (IGERT) award to UW from the National Science Foundation. Finally, new career paths must be created for the individuals who build the tools that enable this new approach to discovery. The grant and partnership with Cal, NYU and the foundations, plus the NSF IGERT award, are allowing the UW to take a big step in enabling this ‘fourth paradigm’ and ensuring a future in which the UW will expand its role as one of the world’s powerhouse research universities.”
Read more in Columns here. Learn more about UW’s data science activities here. Read more →
In honor of International Women’s Day, March 8, Microsoft is celebrating “five dynamic Microsoft women inspiring change in technology” – including Microsoft software developer and UW CSE Professional Masters Program student Steph Burg:
“She says she hopes her efforts at outreach will help middle- and high-school girls realize that they can be in her shoes someday. ‘If I can show them this exists, and it’s fun, maybe I’ll be for them what that friend was for me when he said, ‘You have the right brain to do this.””
Read this and the four other profiles (including one of Harvey Mudd College President, Microsoft Board of Directors member, and UW CSE friend Maria Klawe) here. Read more →
Brad Fitzpatrick, UW CSE ’02, will receive the 2014 UW College of Engineering Diamond Award for Early Career Achievement.
Brad is a widely respected leader in the open-source community, improving software development culture and creating open source projects used by millions of web sites around the world. He is perhaps best known as the creator of LiveJournal, an Internet tool that helped popularize blogging and was one of the earliest social networks. His Memcached technology, created to support LiveJournal’s exploding user community, is used today by most web-scale services including YouTube, Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Wikipedia and Craigslist.
Brad and this year’s other Diamond Award recipients will be honored at an awards dinner on June 5.
Congratulations Brad! Learn more here. Read more →
The UW Daily reports on our new graduate program in Data Science, funded by an NSF IGERT (interdisciplinary graduate education) award:
“The big data Ph.D. track is a new interdisciplinary program at the UW … Five departments are participating in the track: computer science and engineering, statistics, astronomy, oceanography, and chemical engineering. Students who are accepted into the program take courses in data management, data visualization, statistics, and machine learning, in addition to the degree requirements laid out by their home department.”
Magda Balazinska, Carlos Guestrin, and Emily Fox are quoted.
“‘The key to discovery … is increasingly centered around data analysis,’ Balazinska said.”
Read more here. Learn about our Data Science activities here. Read more →
The CloudPress team in 2007 (top) and 2014 (bottom)
TechCrunch reports:
“CloudPress is a year-old startup which has emerged from the chaos of the Egyptian revolution, only to be acquired by one of the world’s biggest media companies: News Corp. Indeed, the media giant was so impressed with the team and the product, that it scooped it up in a fast acqui-hire …
“The three founders of CloudPress – Allen Chen (UW CSE ’07), Mohamed El-Zohairy (UW CSE ’07), and Bobby Mathews (UW CSE ’08) – started the company in Egypt early 2013 and were incubated by Flat6Labs, one of the very few tech accelerators in the Middle East and the only one we’re aware of that is based in Cairo.
“The idea behind CloudPress is pretty clever. It’s a cloud platform designed to easily create and share rich visual content, in particular: visual storybooks, recipes, how-to-guides, buying guides and similar kinds of content.”
Read more in TechCrunch here. Check out CloudPress here. GeekWire article here. Read more →
The goal of the Access Facebook Award is to reward innovative projects using the Facebook platform to deliver a human rights or social good outcome.
At this week’s RightsCon, IVR Junction – a free and open-source tool that enables marginalized communities to be heard on the Internet through phone-based reporting and automated content updating and sharing on Facebook – was named the winner of the 2014 Access Facebook Award.
IVR Junction was developed in the Technology for Emerging Markets group at Microsoft Research India by Microsoft researcher Bill Thies and UW CSE Ph.D. student Aditya Vashistha.
Congratulations to Bill and Aditya! Learn more about IVR Junction here. Read more →
“A new technology … may give users a new way of providing … interactivity … a gesture recognition system that can control a wide range of devices.
“The ‘AllSee’ system uses wireless signals for both power and gesture recognition. Sensors in the system read changes in the signals created by the gestures, and transforms them into specific commands. The UW team’s prototype is now using TV and RFID (radio frequency identification) signals for showing off AllSee’s capabilities, but they hope one day to use WiFi signals as a source of power.”
Watch the segment here. Learn more about AllSee here. Read more →
UW CSE hosts annual “happy hours” at a number of companies where our alums have a significant presence. Yesterday, CSE faculty (Tom Anderson, Dan Grossman, Ed Lazowska, Hal Perkins, and Zach Tatlock), advising staff (Crystal Eney, Jen Pesicka, and Dave Rispoli) and outreach staff (Kay Beck-Benton, Karen Howard, and Sergey Smirnov) joined a big crowd of alums at Amazon.com.
We have a number of alums who’ve been at Amazon.com for more than a decade (they get cool colored employee badges!), and Amazon.com is currently the largest recruiter of new UW CSE graduates (and we are their largest supplier of new graduates).
It’s great to be in Seattle! Read more →
UW CSE professor Dan Grossman has been elected to the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA).
CRA is an association of more than 200 North American academic departments of computer science, computer engineering, and related fields; laboratories and centers in industry, government, and academia engaging in basic computing research; and affiliated professional societies.
CRA’s mission is to enhance innovation by joining with industry, government and academia to strengthen research and advanced education in computing. CRA executes this mission by leading the computing research community, informing policymakers and the public, and facilitating the development of strong, diverse talent in the field.
UW CSE has a long history of close involvement with CRA:
- Ed Lazowska, Board member 1992-2004, Chair 1997-2001
- David Notkin, Board member 2005-12
- Bob Ritchie, Board member 1987-96, Chair 1981-83
- Larry Snyder, Board member 1996-2005
- Paul Young, Board member 1983-92, Chair 1989-91
UW CSE Ph.D. alums who have been members of the Board include:
- Greg Andrews, Board member 1991-98
- Anne Condon, Board member 2005-08, 2013-16
- Carla Ellis, Board member 2003-09
Biographies of Dan and the other newly-elected CRA Board members here. Read more →
Front Porch – UW’s publication for U-District neighbors – features UW CSE’s DawgBytes K-12 outreach program as this month’s cover story.
Read the article here. Learn more about DawgBytes here. Read more →
