GeekWire: “UW computer science department wins high praise in NYT”
UW’s Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering (Ed LaCasse photo)
“A few weeks ago, I interviewed Madrona Venture Group’s Matt McIlwain and asked him pointedly to name one missing ingredient that’s holding back Seattle’s technology community. The veteran venture capitalist didn’t hesitate, suggesting that outsiders (and even Seattleites to some degree) don’t fully appreciate what’s being built around them …
“Well, at least some in New York City are paying attention. The New York Times published a fabulous piece today on The University of Washington’s computer science and engineering department, raising the profile of a department that often lurks in the shadows of MIT and Stanford.
“Reporter Nick Wingfield, who is based in Seattle, writes that the computer science department – through the leadership of professors Oren Etzioni, Ed Lazowska, Hank Levy and others – has ‘quietly established itself as the other West Coast nexus of the information economy.’
“That’s pretty high praise, and it comes at a time when the UW CSE department is gaining momentum. It recently hired a number of highly-regarded faculty members, including Carlos Guestrin from Carnegie Mellon University; Ben Taskar from The University of Pennsylvania; and Jeff Heer from Stanford University. Tech leaders, including Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen; Amazon.com founder Jeff Bezos and many others, have stepped up to help with financial support.”
Read the rest of the post here. Read more →
The New York Times profiles UW CSE
Microsoft Atrium in UW’s Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering (Stuart Isett photo)
Hank Levy, Ed Lazowska, and Oren Etzioni (Stuart Isett photo)
“Some budding entrepreneurs and computer whizzes based here in the Pacific Northwest are starting to turn heads down in Silicon Valley.
“They are professors and students at the University of Washington, home to what may be the best computer science department you’ve never heard of.
Graduate students Franzi Roesner and Sidhant Gupta (Stuart Isett photo)
“Although Stanford is considered the Hogwarts of techdom, U.W. has quietly established itself as the other West Coast nexus of the information economy. And while Seattle-area tech icons like Microsoft and Amazon have long relied on U.W. – pronounced “U-dub” by locals – as an incubator of talent and ideas, the Valley’s hottest companies have been getting the message, too.
“Their executives have begun streaming up the coast to Seattle, fueled by a talent arms race for programmers. Facebook, Zynga and Google have opened offices in the area, trying to woo U.W. engineers who’d rather live here, where taxes and home prices are lower, even if mist and dark skies envelop the scenery for much of the year …
“In a conference room at the university, overlooking the sparkling waters of Lake Washington, Christophe Bisciglia told a crowd of dozens of students what his secret weapon was: them.
UW CSE undergraduate lab (Stuart Isett photo)
“Mr. Bisciglia, 31, an entrepreneur and former star Google engineer, was visiting during the spring to speak on a panel about start-ups to computer science students. He said he has gained an ‘unfair advantage’ for WibiData, his new San Francisco-based company, by recruiting from the university’s computer science department, where two-thirds of his employees once studied.
“‘Down in the Valley, it’s all Stanford this and that,’ said Mr. Bisciglia, himself a U.W. graduate. ‘While they turn out students that are good, U.W. turns out students that are every bit as good.’ …
“Sidhant Gupta, a Ph.D. student in computer science, is working on low-cost sensing technologies that can help people monitor their energy use. Mr. Gupta, who received his master’s degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, said U.W. is a collegial environment where experts in different computer science disciplines are encouraged to collaborate.
“‘It feels like one big family,’ said Mr. Gupta, who passed up offers at M.I.T. and other schools to study at Washington. ‘No one is trying to back-stab you to get ahead of you. That’s really different than other programs.'”
Read the article here. More Stuart Isett photos here. Read more →
Middle school girls visit UW CSE
On Friday June 29, a group of middle school girls spent the morning in UW CSE, followed by an afternoon visit to Amazon.com. In UW CSE, the students were hosted by Crystal Eney, Caitlin Harding, and Victoria Wagner, and participated in activities including “Computer Science Unplugged” (Allison Obourn), sustainability sensing (Eric Larson), and computer security (Karl Koscher).
The girls were participating in G2CS – Girls Gather for Computer Science – a 4-week summer program. Read more →
Shwetak Patel wins India Abroad “Face Of The Future Award”
Since its inception in 2002, the awards presented by India Abroad – the oldest and most widely-circulated Indian-American weekly newspaper – have become the most coveted community honor in the country, celebrating achievements across a wide spectrum.
This year’s winner in the “Face Of The Future” category is UW CSE and EE professor Shwetak Patel, “For being a technological genius; for developing innovative sensor systems for improving daily life; and for being a brilliant, young visionary.”
Read a terrific article on Shwetak, his life, and his accomplishments here. Video of Shwetak’s acceptance speech here.
Congratulations Shwetak! Read more →
UW CSE’s Tom Anderson wins 2013 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award
Tom Anderson, Robert E. Dinning Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, has been named the recipient of the 2013 IEEE Koji Kobayashi Computers and Communications Award, “For contributions to understanding and improving the performance, reliability, and security of the Internet.”
The Kobayashi Award, established in 1986, is the top international award in the networking field, and its recipients are a “Who’s Who” of contributors – recently including Jean Walrand, Larry Peterson, Nick McKeown, Don Towsley, Nick Maxemchuk, Frank Kelly, and Van Jacobsen.
Congratulations Tom! Read more →
UW CSE in the Bay Area
On June 28, more than 100 UW CSE alums joined faculty members Gaetano Borriello, Luis Ceze, Steve Gribble, Dan Grossman, and Ed Lazowska for a reception at the California Academy of Sciences.
Bloomberg Businessweek: “Zoran Popović: Recruiting Gamers to Fight Disease”
“Proteins are the workhorses of our cells: They turn food into energy and determine our health. Each one is a chain of molecules—sometimes thousands of links long—that folds in a distinctive way. Understanding how they fold can help scientists block diseases, but there are so many variables involved that even powerful computers struggle to do it.
“Enter Zoran Popović.”
Read the post here.
Seattle named “America’s Top Tech Metro” by Richard Florida
We disavow all rankings except those where we come out smelling like a rose (no matter how implausible it may be).
Here’s a ranking that’s clearly authoritative: Richard Florida, a senior editor of The Atlantic, Director of the Martin Prosperity Institute at the University of Toronto, and author of Rise of the Creative Class, has released his latest index ranking the top tech hubs in the U.S. And Seattle is #1. (Silicon Valley is #2; San Francisco is #3.)
Read a GeekWire post here. Read the Richard Florida post here. Read more →
Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman joins UW CSE
We are thrilled to announce that Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman will be joining the UW CSE faculty this fall.
Ira works in computer vision and computer graphics, with a particular interest in developing computational tools to enable capturing, modeling and rendering a person’s appearance and behavior from the billions of photos that can be now found online or in personal photo collections. As a consultant to Google, she transitioned her recent work “Exploring Photobios” into “Face Movie,” the signature feature of the latest release of Picasa. Currently a Postdoctoral researcher in UW CSE, Ira received her B.Sc. with honors in computer science and mathematics at the Bar-Ilan University in 2001 and M.Sc. and Ph.D in computer science and applied mathematics at the Weizmann Institute of Science in 2004 and 2009 respectively.
The addition of Ira and of Ali Farhadi to the UW CSE faculty further enhances our already superb capabilities in computer graphics, computer vision, games, and animation. Here’s what the GRAIL team has accomplished in just the past few years:
Student recognition:
- Three Ph.D. students recognized in the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award competition in the past six years: Seth Cooper (winner, 2012), Noah Snavely (honorable mention, 2009), and Aseem Agarwala (honorable mention, 2006).
- TR35 awards to Ph.D. alums Noah Snavely (2011), Adrien Treuille (2009), and Karen Liu (2008).
- Sloan Research Fellowships to Noah Snavely (2012), Karen Liu (2010), and Li Zhang (2010). (Li Zhang also received a Packard Fellowship in 2010.)
- Technical Academy Awards to Ph.D. alums Brett Allen and Per Christensen, both in 2010.
Tech transfer:
- Microsoft Photosynth
- Microsoft Group Shot
- Google Picasa Face Movie
- Google Maps Photo Tours
- Electronic Arts continuum crowds and style-based inverse kinematics
- Adobe Photoshop Auto-Align vignette correction
- Adobe Photoshop Elements Photomerge
- Adobe After Effects Roto Brush
- ESPN/NASCAR/Sportvision Draft Track
Breakthrough games for science and for learning:
With the addition of Ira and Ali, there is even more to come! Read more →