David Pogue’s PBS NOVA Science NOW featured the work of UW CSE Ph.D. alum Adrien Treuille – now a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University – as the final segment of the episode “What Will the Future Be Like?”
Watch this terrific 12-minute PBS NOVA Science NOW segment!
There’s lot of other great Computer Science content in the full 52-minute show – watch the entire show here.
(Last month, UW CSE professor Yoshi Kohn and his students were featured by Pogue – information here. Work on Foldit – the topic of Pogue’s interview with Adrien Treuille, continues in UW CSE’s Center for Game Science; the Director of the Center for Game Science, Seth Cooper, won the 2011 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award for work related to Foldit.) Read more →
“Every Black Friday, retailers lure shoppers in the cold, predawn hours to wait in long lines with the promise of one-day-only deals that can’t be beat. And every year, shoppers ask themselves, Is this really worth it?’
“The answer, it turns out, often is, ‘No.’
“An analysis by pricing research firm Decide Inc. and The Wall Street Journal of this year’s most-touted Black Friday deals found that many of the bargains advertised as ‘doorbusters’ were available at lower prices at other times of the year—sometimes even at the same retailer.”
Jeannette Wing – head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University and former Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation for Computer and Information Science and Engineering – will move to Seattle on January 1 as Microsoft’s Vice President and Head of Microsoft Research International, reporting to Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid.
Congratulations to MSR, and warm welcome to Jeannette!
In 2010, with leadership from Congressman Vernon Ehlers and Congressman Jared Polis, the US House of Representatives endorsed the week of Grace Hopper’s birthday (December 9, 1906) as Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) to recognize the critical role of computing in today’s society and the imperative to bolster computer science education at all levels. UW CSE is an active participant!
Join us for an Open House on Saturday December 8 from 1:00-3:30. Participate in hands-on activities and research lab visits to find out what computer science is all about! UW Computer Science & Engineering students, faculty and academic advisors along with representatives from local technology companies will introduce you to the broad range of problems computer science can address. (250 students are already registered as of today!)
Participate in the UW/TEALS Programming Competition on Saturday December 15 from 8:30-2:30. Can you code? Do you want to build up your programming skills? Come discover the fun of speed and accuracy programming by competing! Students compete in teams of 1-3 members. Each team brings 1 computer (1 mouse, 1 monitor, 1 keyboard max) with the team’s choice of development tools (IDE/compiler/programming language) already installed. Students get three hours to complete as many of the supplied programming problems as they can. In the mean time, teachers will have their monthly CSTA meeting.
On Tuesday, Stanford economist Susan Athey delivered the third UW CSE Distinguished Lecture of the year, “Game Theory Meets Machine Learning: Designing Auction-Based Markets for Online Advertising,” co-sponsored with the Department of Economics.
Previous talks in this year’s CSE Distinguished Lecture Series: Maria Klawe (President of Harvey Mudd College) and Brad Smith (Microsoft General Counsel and Executive Vice President).
Next talk in the series: MIT professor Regina Barzilay, January 8.
Information on the talk, and video archive, here. Bruce Hemingway photographs of the event here. Read more →
GeekWire excerpts a portion of the forthcoming book “Mastery” by Robert Greene which profiles former UW CSE professor Yoky Matsuoka, now VP of Technology at Nest:
“Her mind naturally works better on a larger scale, continually pondering the connections between things on high levels— what makes the human hand so weirdly perfect, how the hand has influenced who we are and how we think. With these large questions governing her research, she avoids becoming narrowly focused on technical issues without understanding the bigger picture. Thinking on such a high level frees the mind up to investigate from all different angles: Why are the bones of the hand this way? What makes the palm so malleable? How does the sense of touch influence our thinking in general? It allows her to go deeply into the details without losing a sense of the why.”
On Saturday, the middle school cohort re-connected at UW, where Cheryl Platz from Microsoft provided an overview of interaction design, followed by a workshop and an activity fair coordinated by UW CSE undergraduate Emily Harmell and UW ACMS undergraduate Patricia McKenzie. (Thanks also to UW CSE undergraduates Rachel Sobel, Kevin Wallace, Nicole Ford, and Kaida Masaki – and especially to Hélène Martin, our DawgBytes coordinator.)
Services were held today for Neil Eney, father of long-time UW CSE undergraduate advisor (and her father’s daughter) Crystal Eney, who passed away on October 27.
Anna Karlin, Microsoft Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, has been named a Fellow of the ACM “for contributions to algorithms and to the boundary with systems, networking, data mining, and microeconomics.”
Anna is known for contributions in the area of algorithms, especially online and randomized algorithms, and for high-impact work at the boundary between algorithms and other areas of computer science. She combines mathematical prowess with a long-standing interest and experience in building and analyzing advanced computer systems. Areas of focus have included competitive analysis of online algorithms; probabilistic algorithms and probabilistic analysis of algorithms; topics at the intersection of theory with systems, networking, and data mining; and, most recently, problems at the intersection of game theory, economics, and algorithms.
