Allen School News

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.

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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 →

We reported recently on the fact that the University of California has changed its logo from an institutional seal, which had served it well for more than a century, to a pull-tab.

Not to be left in the dust, Stanford has decided to modernize its wordmark, changing the font from “appropriate” to “bleh.”

The California Department of Health has launched an investigation in an attempt to learn what the hell is in the water they’re drinking in the Bay Area.

In an attempt to be helpful, we offer a compromise – a wordmark that preserves the original font but better reflects modern times.

In related news, the Daily Californian – Berkeley’s student newspaper – has picked up our post regarding the University of California logo update. 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.

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We trumpet the studies whose results we like, and bury the others.  This one we like!  The Information Technology & Innovation Foundation, led by Rob Atkinson, has released the 2012 edition of their State New Economy Index.

The 2012 State New Economy Index builds on prior State New Economy Indexes published in 1999, 2002, 2007, 2008 and 2010.  The report uses 26 indicators, divided into five areas that capture what is new about the New Economy:  knowledge jobs, globalization, economic dynamism, the digital economy, and innovation capacity.

Washington was ranked third, behind Massachusetts and (somewhat inexplicably) Delaware, and followed by, in order, California, Maryland, Virginia, Colorado, Utah, Connecticut, New Jersey, and New York:

“Washington state, in third place, scores high due not only to its strength in software and aviation, but also because of the entrepreneurial hotbed of activity that has developed in the Puget Sound region, and heavy use of digital technologies in all its sectors.”

(Last week, in a study that we liked even more, the Bay Area Council Economic Institute ranked Washington first among the states in technology job concentration.)

Read more here. Read more →

This week marks the 2012 edition of G-Give, an innovative giving campaign at Google’s Seattle and Kirkland offices launched last year by Googler alums Jessan Hutchison-Quillan and Krista Davis, assisted by Googler alum Jeff Prouty and others.

During a one-week period, gifts by Googlers to a set of non-profits are tripled – they’re matched by Google, and also by Googler sponsor(s) for each non-profit.

It’s a great way to encourage philanthropy by Googlers to a wide range of good causes.

UW CSE is honored to once again be included in G-Give.  Last year, including matches, more than $100,000 was raised for the Google Endowed Scholarship in Computer Science & Engineering – helping to keep a UW CSE education accessible.

Learn more here. Read more →