Allen School News

Carlos Guestrin, Emily Fox, Ben Taskar, and Jeff Heer

The Seattle Times reports on UW’s recruiting of four mid-career stars in Machine Learning and “big data” from Carnegie Mellon, Penn and Stanford:

“They’re a kind of dream team of the computer science world:  Four of the brightest academics in the fields of “big data” and machine learning have been wooed away from top schools to join the University of Washington over the next year.

“It’s part of a push by the UW to develop expertise in a field of computer science that is already changing the way people use technology.  Their work has the potential to greatly expand the ability to make sense of reams of data, gain a better understanding of the world at large, and make technology more useful in everyday life.

“The UW has had ‘some stunning recruiting successes,’ said Peter Lee, corporate vice president of Microsoft Research. The new hires ‘are all very well-known. Let’s just say, in academic circles, this has made quite a buzz.'”

“The academics include Carlos Guestrin, a professor at Carnegie Mellon University; Emily Fox and Ben Taskar, both professors at the University of Pennsylvania; and Jeff Heer, a professor at Stanford University …

“Stanford University professor Daphne Koller, an expert on artificial intelligence, had both Guestrin and Taskar as students, and ‘they are both awesome,’ she wrote via email. ‘UW is to be congratulated on making such great acquisitions, which I believe will propel them into a leadership role (with a select number of other top institutions) in the areas of machine learning and artificial intelligence.'”

Read the article here.  See a related (subsequent) UW press release here. Read more →

UW CSE and EE professor Josh Smith was featured yesterday as the “Disruptor of the Day” in the Daily Disruption tech blog:

“Sensors are everywhere around us from smartphone touchscreens to elevator buttons to thermostats.  These sensor devices, which receive and respond to a signal, are a linchpin of the so-called “Internet of Things.”  As they become smaller, cheaper and require less power they are being deployed in more places that we encounter every day — whether we are aware of it or not.

“Joshua Smith is a researcher on the cutting edge of sensor technology. Smith holds nearly 20 patents, including a capacitive sensor he developed as part of his MIT doctoral thesis that detects passenger position for airbags — if the passenger’s head is too close to the side airbag, the sensor will disable it.  The technology has been deployed in Hondas since 2000.

“Today, Smith leads the Sensor Systems Laboratory and research group at the University of Washington, where he is an associate professor of Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering.  The former principal investigator at Intel Research Seattle, where he led robotics projects, is now focused on inventing sensor systems, devising new ways to power them and developing algorithms for using them.

“Recently, Smith discussed the state of sensors, current and future projects, and the concerns that arise as sensors become more commonplace.”

Read the interview here.

Josh’s research was featured in two Intel videos.  In each case, though, Josh was played by an actor:  in one, by a Chinese gentleman with fuzzy black hair and glasses, and in the other by a Caucasian with a buzz-cut.  We conclude that Intel’s PR firm doesn’t like ponytails … Read more →

Until today, receiving the 2012 University of Washington President’s Medal as the top student in UW’s 7,500-person senior class was the biggest feather in Melissa Winstanley’s cap.  But not any longer!  Now she has been named GeekWire‘s “Geek of the Week”!

This interview is so terrific that you really have to read the whole thing.  A few excerpts, though:

“My first computer science class was one I was required to take for another major.  I didn’t expect to like it …  Within a few weeks, however, I was in love …  I enjoyed every minute of the course, so I followed my heart and applied to Computer Science.  I have never regretted the choice.  I continue to love the mix of problem-solving and real, tangible results.  The fact that what I build can affect and benefit people all over the world — whether it’s back-end infrastructure or front-end web design — is incredibly exciting …

“The programmer takes a basic outline — a problem statement, a spec, or a vague idea understandable only by other engineers — and builds a system with meaning.  The exact implementation and design is where the creativity emerges.  I’ve heard from non-tech friends that they see engineering as an exclusively logical, deterministic field, which is not true at all.  The systems that we build can be just as beautiful, well-executed, and meaningful as a piece of music …

“Talk, talk, talk!  The conception of the software engineer as an antisocial individual is completely wrong, and the ability to communicate is vital to success in the workplace.  Talk is what sells your new idea for a feature; talk fixes conflicts between teams; talk determines the future of the product; talk helps you learn from your peers; and talk ameliorates problems when they inevitably arise …

“If you don’t try it, you don’t know if you like it!  I wish I could go back and tell my 18-year-old self to give computer science a chance.”

Please read the rest of this terrific interview here.  Thanks to GeekWire‘s Todd Bishop for a great interview and Annie Laurie Malarkey for great photographs.  And thanks to Melissa Winstanley for being a phenomenal representative of UW CSE! Read more →

As a UW CSE undergraduate, Paul Javid spent six months in rural India under the supervision of Ed Lazowska and Tapan Parikh conducting field trials of information and communication technology for developing regions.  Subsequently, he received an MBA from Berkeley’s Haas School of Business, and worked at Microsoft.  He and Microsoft colleague Pejman Pour-Moezzi are now leading the startup Cody, profiled in GeekWire today:

“Would you take your fitness advice from a robotic looking character named Cody?  Some former Microsoft geeks hope so.

“That’s the name of the virtual personal coach that’s designed to get folks off their duffs, and start exercising.

“‘Think of Cody as a proactive Siri.  He collects data on your fitness activities, and provides encouragement, recommends activities, and organizes support,’ writes Pejman Pour-Moezzi, the former product manager at Bing who helped come up with the idea.”

Read more here.  Read a previous post on the partnership between Javid and Pour-Meozzi here. Read more →

A terrific Seattle Times op-ed by University of Washington regents Kristi Blake and Craig Cole:

“The cost of educating a student at the University of Washington is about $400 less today, in inflation adjusted dollars, than it was 20 years ago …  The next time anyone questions why public university tuition is rising faster than inflation, remember this:  Twenty years ago, the state government paid 80 percent of the cost of a student’s education and a student paid 20 percent.  Today, the state pays 30 percent of the cost, and the student pays 70 percent.  The state has systematically disinvested in our children’s future, and we view this trend with disappointment and alarm.”

Read it here.

  Read more →

When University of Texas faculty stars Doug Burger and Kathryn McKinley moved to Microsoft Research, they brought with them graduate student Hadi Esmaeilzadeh, who transferred to UW CSE and added CSE’s Luis Ceze as an advisor.

Hadi has had an amazing streak of high-profile results recently:

• A “Research Highlight” in CACM:  “Looking Back and Looking Forward: Power, Performance, and Upheaval” (full paper from ASPLOS here), July 2012.
•  Two “Research Highlights” in IEEE Micro:  “Dark Silicon and the End of Multicore Scaling” (full paper from ISCA here), and “What is Happening to Power, Performance, and Software?” (the “Looking Back …” paper), both May/June 2012.

Congratulations Hadi!  We’re fortunate to have you at UW! Read more →

UW Provost Ana Mari Cauce

Susan Eggers and Anna Karlin

Hank Levy

Time flies when you’re having fun … Hank Levy, CSE department chair and Wissner-Slivka Chair, celebrated his 60th today at a French-themed (don’t ask …) luncheon.

Happy birthday Hank, and thanks for all you’ve done for CSE and for your many friends!

Yum!

Yum!

More Bruce Hemingway photographs of the event here.

(One of the high points of the luncheon:  University of Washington Provost Ana Mari Cauce, ever a great friend of CSE and ever a good sport, drew herself a fake French mustache (the rest of us wore stick-ons) … and then discovered that the pen contained permanent ink.  We hope her afternoon meetings went well!) Read more →

“No. 1: Seattle-Tacoma-Bellevue.

“The Seattle metro area has posted 12% tech job growth over the past two years and 7.6% STEM growth, handily beating the performance of Silicon Valley.  More important still to potential job-seekers, the Puget Sound regions has grown consistently in good times and bad, boasting a remarkable 43% increase in tech employment from 2001 through 2011 and an 18% expansion in STEM.”

Read the Seattle page here.

Read the full article here. Read more →

Hearty congratulations to ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award winner Seth Cooper (CSE Ph.D. alum and Director of UW CSE’s Center for Game Science), and to new ACM Fellows Carl Ebeling (CSE faculty), Hugues Hoppe (CSE Ph.D. alum, now at Microsoft Research), Dan Suciu (CSE faculty), Dean Tullsen (CSE Ph.D. alum, now at UCSD), Amin Vahdat (CSE Ph.D. half-alum, now at UCSD and Google), and David “Where The Hell Was He?” Wetherall (CSE faculty). Read more →

UW CSE alums (plus Ed Lazowska) at the WibiData Office Warming Party

In 2011, UW CSE alums Christophe Bisciglia and Aaron Kimball left their hugely successful “big data” startup Cloudera to found WibiData.

This evening, WibiData held an office warming party at their new digs, 375 Alabama in San Francisco.  The UW CSE alumni turnout was extraordinary!  (Ed Lazowska was in town for the ACM Turing Centenary Celebration and dropped by.)

More photos here. Read more →