NetworkWorld has identified and profiled “25 of today’s coolest network and computing research projects.” Among them is Control-Alt-Hack, a card game created by UW CSE researchers to introduce computer security topics.
Read the article here. Learn more about Control-Alt-Hack here. Read more →
“Last fall, when LearnSprout cofounder and one-time Facebooker Frank Chien called up his college buddies Joe Woo, previously with Microsoft, and Anthony Wu, a former Googler, he didn’t necessarily have an education startup in mind.
“The trio could have tackled healthcare or energy instead, he said. What mattered was that they go for something big — dent-the-universe, shake-up-the-system significant.
“‘I [told them], let’s do something crazy,’ he said. ‘We can stay at our jobs forever or we can swing for the fences.’
“Not too much later, the three engineers, who met at the University of Washington, quit their jobs. Over the past ten months, they’ve built a startup taking on a major obstacle facing innovators interested in K-12 education: the siloed way in which student data is stored.”
Congratulations to UW alums Frank Chien (Business), Joe Woo (CSE), and Anthony Wu (CSE)!
Read the GigaOm article here. Learn more about LearnSprout here and here. Read more →
MemCachier, a “Memcached-in-the-cloud” startup created by UW CSE alum Alex Loddengaard working with UW CSE alum Amit Levy, was profiled today in GigaOm.
(MemCachier shares San Francisco space with WibiData, a data analytics startup created by UW CSE alum Christophe Bisciglia working with UW CSE alum Aaron Kimball. Christophe, Aaron, and Alex previously worked together at Cloudera, the first startup created by Christophe after he left Google. Memcached – the pre-cloud progenitor of MemCachier, used worldwide to speed up dynamic database-driven websites by caching data and objects in RAM – was originally created by UW CSE alum Brad Fitzpatrick at his startup Danga Interactive to support LiveJournal. Get the message?)
Read the GigaOm profile here. Learn more about MemCachier here. Read more →
John Cook in GeekWire has done a terrific analysis of the Washington State data from a new national study of where tech jobs are located in the United States. Some key observations:
Read John’s post here – it includes links to the national study. Read more →
“College football teams in the six major conferences (Southeastern Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East) spent an average of $2.46 million per victory over the three-year period.
“But some schools have got a lot more for their money than others …
“Then, there’s the other end of the spectrum. Washington State University spent an average of $5.4 million for its five victories between 2008 and 2010, narrowly edging its Apple Cup rival, the University of Washington, which spent $4.9 million.”
Read it here. Read more →
UW News reports on CSE’s World Lab Summer Institute:
“Health care? Environmental sustainability? Education? There’s an app for that. At least there may be soon, thanks to a new collaboration between UW and Chinese students.
“The University of Washington this July and August hosted the first World Lab Summer Institute, which brings together computer science, human-computer interaction and design students from the UW and Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Together they spent seven weeks developing ways that technology could be used to address global issues in health, environment and education.
“Students from China and the U.S. worked in teams of four to brainstorm ideas and develop apps.
“The summer exchange is the inaugural activity of the The World Lab, which aims to promote closer collaboration between the UW and Tsinghua, one of the top universities in mainland China, on issues of computer science and design.
“The World Lab was founded by James Landay, a UW professor of computer science, and colleagues at Tsinghua, after Landay spent a sabbatical year living in Beijing and working at Microsoft Research Asia.
“‘In China I saw a lot of excitement and rapid development in computing,’ Landay said. ‘I also saw ways that China and the U.S. could learn from one another.'”
Read more here. Read more →
Intel today announced its intention to actively commercialize Wireless Charging Technology (WCT), which lets you charge your smartphone wirelessly from your notebook PC.
WCT was pioneered by UW CSE and EE professor Josh Smith and colleagues at the late Intel Labs Seattle.
Read the Intel announcement here. Read more →
Artificial Intelligence, which commenced publication in 1970, is now the generally accepted premier international forum for the publication of results of current research in AI.
The journal has established two new awards for papers published in the journal:
The inaugural AI Journal Prominent Paper Award has been given to the paper Learning and Inferring Transportation Routines by Lin Liao (UW CSE Ph.D. alum, now at Google), Donald Patterson (UW CSE Ph.D. alum, now on the faculty at UC Irvine), Dieter Fox (UW CSE professor), and Henry Kautz (former UW CSE professor, now at the University of Rochester), Volume 171, Issues 5-6, April 2007, Pages 311-331.
Congratulations to Lin, Donald, Dieter, and Henry! Read more →
The stodgy traditionalists at Slate lament the research of UW CSE Ph.D. student Jinna Lei:
“As a result, chefs are imagined not as autonomous virtuosi or gifted craftsmen but as enslaved robots who should never defy the commands of their operating systems.”
The good news for Jinna: the article describes other, related research as “even more degrading.”
Read the article here. Then … “Robot, bake me some brownies!” Read more →
UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska received the 2012 Reed College Vollum Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Science and Technology at Reed’s convocation ceremony on August 22.
Each year since 1975, Reed has selected an awardee who demonstrates “the perseverance, fresh approach to problem-solving, and creative imagination that characterized Howard Vollum’s career.”
Vollum graduated from Reed in 1936 with a degree in physics. For his senior project, he built an oscilloscope; he went on to co-found Tektronix, which revolutionized oscilloscope design and became a world leader in test, measurement, and monitoring technology, launching the electronics technology industry in the Pacific Northwest.
Previous University of Washington recipients of the Vollum Award include Stanley Fields, Lee Hood, Victor Klee, and Ed Krebs. Previous computer science recipients of the award include Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and Linus Torvalds.
Reed College press release here. Lazowska’s convocation remarks here. Read more →