Allen School News

OK, we don’t get it either, but it’s the UW Daily – a report on the selection of a team led by CSE professor Emo Todorov to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.

Read the UW Daily article here.  Read a previous CSE News post here. Read more →

Congratulations to UW CSE emeritus professor Larry Snyder, who was named a 2012 Alumni Fellow by the University of Iowa College of Liberal Arts & Sciences.  Snyder received his B.A. in 1968 in Mathematics and Economics.  Snyder’s award citation reads, in part:

“Larry Snyder, Professor Emeritus of Computer Science at the University of Washington, is best known for his work to promote the discipline of computer science and expand computer science education, particularly during the 1990s – a time of critical transition for the discipline … His accolades and achievements are numerous … Still, he describes the most important and rewarding accomplishment of his 46-year career as having mentored 21 doctoral students.”

Congratulations Larry!  Read the citation here. Read more →

A wonderful AP article featuring UW CSE Professional Masters Program alum Ian King:

“For tourists with an interest in Seattle’s role as a high-tech hub, there hasn’t been much here to see, other than driving over to Microsoft headquarters in suburban Redmond to take pictures of a bunch of boring buildings.

“But Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen has just opened the Living Computer Museum, with displays of old machines — all in working order — along with a geeky wish list of items he’d like to add, just in case anybody out there has an old tape drive or super-computer sitting around.”

The Living Computer Museum’s #2 geek – Paul certainly deserves the #1 ranking – is UW CSE Professional Masters Program alum Ian King, whose title is “Senior Vintage Systems Engineer.”

Read this super-interesting article, and see lots of great photos, here.

Renowned economist Susan Athey will deliver the third CSE Distinguished Lecture of the year on Tuesday November 13 at 3:30 in the Atrium of the Allen Center.  The title of her talk is “Machine Learning meets Economics: Using Theory, Data, and Experiments to Design Markets.”

Athey is a professor of economics at the Stanford Graduate School of Business.  She earned her Ph.D. from Stanford in 1995 and taught at MIT for six years, at Stanford for five years, and at Harvard for six years, before returning to Stanford this fall.  Her current research focuses on the economics of the Internet, online advertising and media markets, auctions, and marketplace design.  She is the first female recipient of the John Bates Clark Medal, awarded to the American economist under the age of 40 who is judged to have made the most significant contribution to economic thought and knowledge.  In 2012 she was elected to the National Academy of Sciences.

Further information here.  Please join us! Read more →

This past summer, UW CSE hosted three week-long summer daycamps for secondary school girls under the umbrella of our DawgBytes (“a taste of UW CSE”) outreach initiative.

On Saturday, the girls re-connected at the Seattle Facebook office, where engineers Peter Brook, Cullen Walsh and Denise Noyes showed them around the office, taught them how to incorporate the Facebook API in their Processing programs, and participated in a panel where the girls asked phenomenal questions.

Thanks to Peter, Cullen, and Denise for a wonderful event!  Photographs here. Read more →

Read more →

Shwetak Patel – UW professor of CSE and EE, and Georgia Tech alumnus – was honored this week with an “Impact Award” commemorating the 20th Anniversary of Georgia Tech’s Graphics, Visualization, and Usability Center.

“Shwetak Patel … has been an Assistant Professor at the University of Washington since 2008, where he … holds a dual appointment in Electrical Engineering and Computer Science & Engineering, and he studies everything from low-power sensors to novel interaction techniques.  In 2011, Patel was recognized for is work by the MacArthur Foundation – the so-called ‘genius grant.'”

Read the full citation here.

Congratulations Shwetak! Read more →

Heidi Dlubac (CSE)

Christophe Bisciglia (WibiData)

Yin Lu (Google)

  Read more →

Brad Smith, Microsoft’s General Counsel and Executive Vice President for Legal and Corporate Affairs, delivered the second UW CSE Distinguished Lecture of the 2012-13 academic year today – “Creating an Environment for Innovation.”

And Christmas came early – Brad surprised the first two students to ask post-talk questions with the gift of a Microsoft Surface!

The next CSE Distinguished Lecture will be on November 13 – renowned economist Susan Athey on “Machine Learning meets Economics: Using Theory, Data, and Experiments to Design Markets.”

Please join us! Read more →

Vision Systems Design reports on a recent paper by Ankit Gupta and Brian Curless (UW CSE) and Robert T. Held and Maneesh Agrawala (UC Berkeley), “3D Puppetry: A Kinect-based Interface for 3D Animation.”

“Researchers at the University of Washington (Seattle, WA, USA) and the University of California, Berkeley (Berkeley, CA, USA) have created a system that can enable even inexperienced puppeteers to produce 3-D animations.

“To use the system, a puppeteer physically manipulates objects in front of a Kinect depth sensor. The system then uses a combination of image-feature matching and 3-D shape matching to identify and track the objects. It then renders the corresponding 3-D models into a virtual set.

“The system operates in real time so that a puppeteer can immediately see the resulting animation and make adjustments on the fly. It also provides 6-D virtual camera and lighting controls, which the puppeteer can adjust before, during, or after a performance. Layered animations can be used to help puppeteers produce animations in which several characters move at the same time.”

Read the post here.  Read the technical paper here.  Watch the cool video here. Read more →