Since its inception, UW CSE researchers have raised concerns regarding the security and privacy aspects of Seattle’s ORCA (“One Regional Card for All”) regional transit smartcard.
Now “there’s an app for that” – FareBot, which enables any NFC-equipped Android phone to extract the data from ORCA (and similar transit smartcards in San Francisco, Singapore, and Japan).
FareBot, created by Seattle software developer Eric Butler, builds upon work by UW CSE’s Karl Koscher.
Crosscut reports on the app today in two articles – one headed “Can you say ‘security breach?'”
“The Geeks Who Cracked the ORCA Card”
“Smart card: What your ORCA never forgets”
FareBot Read more →
On Saturday, UW CSE once again hosted STEM Out!, a terrific event to get young women excited about STEM careers. We had more than 50 participants from grades 7-12 representing schools from all over the area. The event was organized primarily by women engineers from Amazon.com led by 2004 UW CSE alumna Margaux Eng. Google engineers also assisted, as did a UW CSE DawgBytes team including outreach coordinator Hélène Martin and students Nicole Ford, Caitlin Bonnar, and Patricia McKenzie
The girls heard from three speakers: Jennifer Schleit (UW Medicine), Laura Grit (Amazon.com) and Serena Loftus (UW Foster School of Business). They participated in activities including sequencing strawberry DNA, solving puzzles and building several structures.
Photos here. Learn more about UW CSE’s outreach activities here. Read more →
“Sometimes you have to sit to take a stand.” That’s the slogan of the “Sit With Me” campaign of the National Center for Women & Information Technology:
- “We sit to inspire women in computing and IT.
- “We sit to recognize the value of women’s technical contributions.
- “We sit to embrace women’s important perspectives and increase their participation.
- “Imagine designing technology that is as broad and creative as the people it serves.
- “We won’t stand for anything less.”
CSE’s David Notkin is one of 8 national leaders featured on the sitwithme.org home page. Write’s NCWIT’s Jill Ross:
“Thank you for your amazing contributions to the field of computer science and being such a passionate advocate for technical women. We can’t think of anyone better to be sitting in (or hugging) our red chair!”
(Learn about Notkinfest, a recent celebration honoring David, here.)
April 22 2013: David Notkin succumbed to cancer at 3:30 a.m. Read more →
“For years — and especially since 2005, when Lawrence H. Summers, then president of Harvard, made his notorious comments about women’s aptitude — researchers have been searching for ways to explain why there are so many more men than women in the top ranks of science.
“Now comes an intriguing clue, in the form of a test given in 65 developed countries by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development. It finds that among a representative sample of 15-year-olds around the world, girls generally outperform boys in science — but not in the United States.”
Read it and weep (and explore the fascinating interactive graphic) – here. Read more →
The Microsoft Research Graduate Women’s Scholarship is a one-year scholarship program for outstanding women graduate students, designed to help increase the number of women pursuing a Ph.D. This program supports women in the second year of their graduate studies.
Lilian de Greef, a Harvey Mudd College undergraduate in her first year as a UW CSE Ph.D. student in Shwetak Patel’s Ubiquitous Computing Lab, has been named one of 10 recipients of 2013 Microsoft Graduate Women’s Scholarships.
Lilian joins past UW CSE recipients Katie Kuksenok, Nell O’Rourke, and Tamara Denning, plus UW CSE bachelors alum Justine Sherry who received the scholarship as a graduate student at UC Berkeley.
Congratulations to Lilian, and thanks to Microsoft! Read more →
GeekWire ran a great story today on a map of tech companies in the Pioneer Square area, produced by Bryan Rush and Stephen Cugier of Colliers. Pretty impressive! Take a look at the map, and read the GeekWire post. And, hats off to Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn for his successful efforts to revitalize Pioneer Square! Read more →
Seattle Times columnist Jerry Large interviews UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska regarding STEM education in Washington State:
“A document Lazowska gave me has a statement from Washington’s Strategic Master Plan for Higher Education: ‘We will reduce employers’ need to import people with advanced degrees or specialized skills from other states and countries. The best jobs in Washington will go to Washingtonians educated in our colleges and universities.’
“A different report last week found Washington among top 10 states in cuts to higher education.
“We know there’s a problem. What are we going to do about it?”
Read the article here. Learn more about STEM education in Washington State here. Read more →
Ed Felten, Professor of Computer Science and of Public Affairs and Director of the Center for Information Technology Policy at Princeton University, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering “for contributions to the privacy and security of computer systems, and for impact on public policy.” Election to NAE – which has roughly 2,000 members across a dozen fields – is one of the highest professional honors accorded to engineers in academia, industry and government.
Ed received his Ph.D. from UW CSE in 1993, co-advised by Ed Lazowska and John Zahorjan. A distinguished researcher in computer security and privacy, he recently returned to Princeton after a two-year leave-of-absence to serve as the first Chief Technologist of the U.S. Federal Trade Commission.
Ed will return to UW in June to receive the 2013 Computer Science & Engineering Alumni Achievement Award, along with 1984 Bachelors alumna Anne Dinning.
CSE Affiliate Professor Eric Horvitz, Distinguished Scientist and Co-Director of Microsoft Research Redmond, also was elected to NAE in the 69-member Class of 2013, announced today, “for computational mechanisms for decision making under uncertainty and with bounded resources.”
Congratulations to Ed and Eric! Read the NAE announcement here. Read more →
In this terrific new video, Microsoft’s Roger Barga discusses UW’s Certificate Program in “Data Science.”
The certificate, offered in both online and face-to-face versions, is comprised of three courses:
Roger is one of the instructors. Creation of the program was driven by Bill Howe of UW CSE and the eScience Institute. Learn more and watch the video here. Read more →
The TerraSwarm Research Center is addressing the huge potential (and the associated risks) of pervasive integration of smart, networked sensors and actuators into our connected world. The center is funded at $27.5 million over five years by the STARnet phase of the Focus Center Research Program (FCRP) administered by the Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). Funding comes from the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) and the SRC industry partners, including Applied Materials, GLOBALFOUNDRIES, IBM, Intel Corporation, Micron Technology, Raytheon, Texas Instruments, and United Technologies.
Director of the Center is Edward Lee of UC Berkeley. UW CSE’s Carlos Guestrin and Ben Taskar are the machine learning experts on the Investigator team.
TerraSwarm website here. Press release here. White paper here. Read more →
