Responding to pressure from the UW CSE News blog, subsequently echoed by the Daily Californian, the University of California has reversed course and abandoned its “flushing toilet” logo.
“While I believe the design element in question would win wide acceptance over time, it also is important that we listen to and respect the snarky response from UW Computer Science & Engineering” Daniel M. Dooley, UC’s senior vice president for external relations, said in a statement Friday morning. “There’s going to be hell to pay from the plumber’s union, but UCOP will stand firm.”
Will Stanford be next?
Read more here.
Update: Arnold Yeung, responding on the Daily Californian blog to questions regarding the cost of designing the new logo: “Well, it was inspired by some guy looking down while taking a piss in the toilet, so the total cost was a diet coke.” Read more →
Last summer, the University of Washington partnered with Coursera to make variants of some courses available for free. (In case you’ve been sleeping for the past year, these “MOOCs” have been widely discussed inside and outside of academia.)
CSE is excited about this opportunity and to date is responsible for about half of UW’s announced course offerings. The first two will begin in one month — on January 14, 2013. They are a programming-languages course similar to CSE341 taught by Dan Grossman, and a computer networks course similar to CSE461 taught by Arvind Krishnamurthy, David Wetherall, and John Zahorjan. There’s still plenty of time to have your friends and neighbors sign up at www.coursera.org.
We have three more courses planned for April 2013 and more for the next academic year.
Getting ready to teach online courses to tens of thousands of students is an ongoing adventure that began months ago. Particular thanks is due to staff members Fred Videon and Rodney Prieto for the audio-video functionality, and to students Max Forbes, Claire McQuin, Eric Mullen, Cody Schroeder, and Rachel Sobel for all sorts of course materials and grading infrastructure. Read more →
Blair Levin, Ed Lazowska, Mike McGinn, and Mark Ansboury announce Gigabit Seattle
UW CSE was the site of a press conference this morning at which Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn was joined by Gig.U Executive Director (and former author of the National Broadband Plan) Blair Levin, Gigabit Squared President and co-founder Mark Ansboury, and UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska, to announce a collaborative initiative – Gigabit Seattle – to develop and operate an ultra-high-speed fiber and wifi broadband network in Seattle.
Press release here. GeekWire article here. Xconomy post here. CivSource here. MyNorthwest.com here. Seattle Times article here. Gigabit Seattle website here.
Read more →
UW CSE alums Krista Davis, Jeff Prouty, and Jessan Hutchinson-Quillian – the G-Give team
GeekWire profiles Google Seattle’s G-Give initiative, created by UW CSE alums:
“Life can get hectic for a mid-twenties software engineer at a big company. You’re working long hours at an exciting, fast-paced job and when you’re not grinding away at the computer, eating and sleeping likely take up your remaining time.
“It’s only natural that there’s not much time to think about philanthropy and giving back. What two University of Washington alumni and Google Seattle engineers have done to fix that problem is pretty remarkable …
“Showcasing nine organizations that were chosen based on passionate advocacy of the employee sponsors, G-Give helped double Google Seattle and Google Kirkland’s philanthropy from the year before.”
UW CSE is honored to have been included in G-Give both years, and proud that it’s our alums at Google Seattle who conceived of the project and drove it forward.
Read more here. Read more →
We swear, we’re not making this up:
Season 2, Episode 10 of Showtime’s “Homeland,” titled “Broken Hearts,” was inspired by Yoshi Kohno’s research demonstrating that implantable pacemaker/defibrillators can be hacked.
Read all about it here. Read more →
You decide: a rehash of a 1968 IBM flowcharting template, a rain globe, or UW CSE’s Control-Alt-Hack computer security card game? Read all about it here. Read more →
David Grove . . . . . Hans Boehm
We had previously announced UW CSE professor Anna Karlin as a 2012 ACM Fellow.
The full list is out today, and in addition to Anna, we note UW CSE bachelors alumnus and one-time faculty member Hans Boehm (now at HP Labs), and UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus David Grove (now at IBM Research) – plus many friends of UW CSE.
Congratulations one and all! See the full list of new ACM Fellows here. Read more →
SNUPI (Sensor Network Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure) Technologies announced Tuesday that it has received $1.5 million in funding from venture capital firms Madrona Venture Group and Radar Partners, as well as several of the company’s founders.
The company’s key technology is a wireless sensor that can go decades before it needs a battery changed. The sensor can detect environmental hazards, such as mold, carbon monoxide and radon. It could also be used to monitor humidity or mechanical motion. It was developed by UW CSE professor Shwetak Patel, UW CSE graduate student Gabe Cohn, and Georgia Institute of Technology professor and Matt Reynolds. These three, along with UW CSE alumnus Jeremy Jaech (co-founder of Aldus and Visio), are the founders of the company; Jaech will serve as CEO.
Read about it in GeekWire, the Seattle Times, Puget Sound Business Journal, msn MONEY, … Read more →
The National Science Foundation celebrates Computer Science Education Week with a video profiling six high-impact computer scientists, including UW faculty member Shwetak Patel and UW Ph.D. alumna Fran Berman.
Read about it in NSF’s CS Bits & Bytes here.
Watch the video here.
Read more →
