UW CSE Ph.D. alum Ed Felten is getting a lot of coverage for his latest foray into the legal realm: filing a legal brief in support of an ACLU lawsuit against the NSA, in which Felten argues that phone call metadata can be more revealing than content, and that the NSA is building a database that could reveal some of the most intimate secrets of American citizens.
(Felten is Professor of Computer Science and of Public Policy at Princeton University, and recently spent 18 months on leave as the first Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission. He is a Member of the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and – the capper – co-recipient (with Anne C. Dinning of D. E. Shaw) of the 2013 UW CSE Alumni Achievement Award.)
Business Insider here. New York Times here. Washington Post here.
You go, guy! Read more →
As usual, we only publicize the rankings where we rock …
Quoth GeekWire:
“UBM’s Future Cities, a blog that focuses on how cities are developing, just put together a list of its ten best Internet cities in the world and the findings may surprise you.
“The only U.S. city to make the cut was not New York City, San Francisco, Boston or Austin — it was Seattle …
“In its description of Seattle, UBM actually didn’t have great things to say about Internet speed [Editorial note: thank you, Comcast and CenturyLink, you morons!] and public WiFi. But they noted the growing startup scene and also loved two aspects of the city: Plans to bring fiber Internet to Seattle and the city’s Startup Seattle program [Editorial note: both are recent initiatives of the Mayor’s Office!].”
Read more here. Read more →
UW CSE researchers have performed what they believe is the first noninvasive human-to-human brain interface, with one researcher able to send a brain signal via the Internet to control the hand motions of a fellow researcher.
Using electrical brain recordings and a form of magnetic stimulation, Rajesh Rao sent a brain signal to Andrea Stocco on the other side of the UW campus, causing Stocco’s finger to move on a keyboard.
While researchers at Duke University have demonstrated brain-to-brain communication between two rats, and Harvard researchers have demonstrated it between a human and a rat, Rao and Stocco believe this is the first demonstration of human-to-human brain interfacing.
Read the UW News article, and watch an amazing video, here.
Press coverage: NBC News, San Francisco Chronicle, Popular Science, GeekWire, Q13 FOX, NY Times, USA Today, Bloomberg (video) … we’re tired, find the rest on your own … Read more →
The Tech Policy Lab is a unique interdisciplinary collaboration between UW Computer Science & Engineering, the UW School of Law, and the UW Information School. It aims to enhance technology policy through research, education, and thought leadership. The Tech Policy Lab is being established with a generous gift from Microsoft.
A launch event will be held in the Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering at 5:30 on Thursday September 12. Welcoming remarks will be provided by UW President Michael K. Young, Microsoft Executive Vice President and General Counsel Brad Smith, and Microsoft Corporate Vice President and Head of Research Peter Lee. Brief overview talks describing the thrusts of the Tech Policy Lab will be provided by the Directors: Ryan Calo from the School of Law, Batya Friedman from the Information School, and Yoshi Kohno from CSE. A reception will follow. Read more →
“For our ‘Better Know an Intern’ post, meet Zorah Fung, a software engineering intern on the Google Docs Team in New York. Zorah is a rising senior at the University of Washington, double majoring in computer science and interdisciplinary visual arts. Fun fact about Zorah: one of her life goals is to own and be able to play every musical instrument in the world. She’s already accumulated about 20!”
Read the full interview here. Read more →
Washington Monthly rates schools based on their “contribution to the public good” in three broad categories: Social Mobility (recruiting and graduating low-income students), Research (producing cutting-edge scholarship and Ph.D.s), and Service (encouraging students to give something back to their country).
The rankings are dominated by the nation’s great public universities, which comprise 11 of the top 15 schools.
Washington Monthly also ranks schools in terms of “Best Bang for the Buck” – the economic value students receive per dollar. The top 50 schools are all publics.
See the overall rankings of National Universities here. See the “Best Bang for the Buck” rankings here. Read more →
“There are talented, hard-working, young people doing good work all over the planet.
“And then there are the MIT Technology Review’s 35 innovators under the age of 35 that are simply on another level.
“Julie Kientz [UW HCDE professor and CSE adjunct professor, and wife of UW CSE and EE professor Shwetak Patel] is one of those visionaries.”
Read more here. Read more →
Julie Kientz, a faculty member in UW Human Centered Design & Engineering and an adjunct faculty member in CSE, has won a TR35 Award from MIT Technology Review, which annually recognizes the top 35 innovators under the age of 35. Julie was honored for her work in computer software. Her research looks at how technology can be used to support health and education. In particular, she has developed prototype applications to monitor sleep disorders, assist parents in tracking early developmental progress, and help special-education teachers who work with autistic children.
Julie is married to Shwetak Patel, a faculty member in UW CSE and EE who was recognized with a TR35 several years ago. Disappointingly, their daughter Maya has not yet been recognized with a TR35 … but she has another 34 years of eligibility. “All in the family.”
Congratulations, Julie!
TR35 profile of Julie here. See also: UW Today, HCDE article. Read more →
UW CSE’s OneBusAway transit app goes national! Tampa (and several other cities) are rolling it out with great fanfare and commitment!
Here’s a news story from Tampa’s WTSP Channel 10, which credits UW. Read more →
Slate has a nice video describing UW CSE’s Ambient Backscatter technology. Watch the video here. Learn more about Ambient Backscatter here. Read more →
