Each year, the University of Washington recognizes the top student (of roughly 7,500) in the previous year’s Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior classes as class Medalists.
This year’s UW Freshman Medalist is CSE’s Eric Lei. Eric entered the UW after 10th grade through the Robinson Center’s UW Academy.
CSE has an extraordinary record of UW Medalists: Eric is the fifteenth CSE student to be recognized as a University of Washington medalist since 2000.
Congratulations, Eric!
Announcement from the office of Undergraduate Academic Affairs here. Read more →
“Photo Tours” is a spectacular addition to Google Maps, created by the Google Seattle computer vision group led by UW CSE’s Steve Seitz, and inspired by Photo Tourism (Seitz, Noah Snavely, and Rick Szeliski).
“Every year, millions of people pack their bags and head to far-off places to enjoy sites and cultures different from their own. While there, they snap photos to document their trip and share their excursions online. Yet none of these individual photos captures the experience of actually being immersed in a specific location. With today’s introduction of photo tours, a feature of Google Maps that guides you through a 3D photo scene, we’re one step closer.
“Photo tours are available for more than 15,000 popular sites around the world, from famous landmarks such as St. Mark’s Basilica in Italy to scenic treasures like Half Dome in Yosemite …
“To produce these photo tours, we use advanced computer vision techniques to create a 3D experience from public, user-contributed Picasa and Panaromio photos. We start by finding clusters of overlapping photos around major landmarks. From the photos, our system derives the 3D shape of each landmark and computes the location and orientation of each photo. Google Maps then selects a path through the best images, and adds 3D transitions to seamlessly guide you from photo to photo as if you’re literally flying around the landmark and viewing it from different perspectives.”
Learn more and try it out here. Read more →
Nationally, Computer Science is projected to be responsible for 70% of all new jobs in all fields of science and engineering during the current decade. Washington State projections are consistent with this.
The UW Daily reports on an anticipated enrollment increase of roughly 80 degrees per year in CSE.
“Hank Levy, UW CSE department chair, explained the significance … ‘There’s really extreme demand from our students,’ he said. ‘We have not been able to expand our program since 1999. Think about how much has changed in tech since then. So this is enormous.’ …
“In addition to growing the computer science major, Levy is looking to develop more courses for students outside the department.
“‘It’s increasingly important for everyone to know something about computing,’ he said. ‘Lots of students need exposure to it, not just computer science students. By doing both, I think we can make a big impact.'” Read more →
Kate will be a professor of Human Centered Design and Engineering, and an adjunct professor of Computer Science & Engineering. Nice Seattle Times article here. Read more →
From the book In The Plex: How Google Thinks, Works, and Shapes Our Lives by Steven Levy:
“Google profiled people by which college they had attended. As Page said, ‘We hired people like us’ … Google sought its employees from Stanford, Berkeley, University of Washington, MIT – the regulars.” Read more →
UW CSE has just won the 2012 National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, repeating 2011’s performance.
Team members Mick Ayzenberg, Henry Baba-Weiss, Ian Finder, Karl Koscher, Landon Meernik, Miles Sackler, Cullen Walsh, and Lars Zornes – coached by Jake Appelbaum and advised by Melody Kadenko – qualified for the National competition by winning the Pacific Rim Regionals last month. Hearty congratulations to these folks, and also to Barbara Endicott-Popovsky of UW’s iSchool for encouraging a UW-wide focus on cybersecurity.
See an excellent UW News article here. See a Seattle Times article previewing the competition here. Wall Street Journal MarketWatch article on the competition here. Seattle Times article on the competition here. Other press, out the wazoo: Sacramento Bee; PR Newswire; Infosec Island; Sys-Con Media; KHQ Spokane; KFVS Eklville; KYTX Tylor Longview; splunk. Read more →
UW CSE students competing this weekend in Texas: Ian Finder is center front; back from left: Henry Baba-Weiss, Lars Zornes, Cullen Walsh, adviser Melody Kadenko, Miles Sackler, Karl Koscher, Landon Meernik and Mick Ayzenberg.
The Seattle Times previews the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition:
“Somewhere in Texas right now, 30 hackers known as the Red Team are attacking a computer network called Go Mommy, using every trick to try to bring it to its knees.
“Among the defenders: Eight computer-science students from the University of Washington, working to repel the attack — quite possibly while humming the ‘Angry Birds’ theme song.
“This is the world of college cybersecurity competitions, where a dose of black humor underscores an atmosphere of extreme suspicion, and the hackers dish out clever pop-culture references while trying to break the student networks with a bag of dirty tricks.
“The UW team is one of the best in the country. It’s one of 10 teams competing in the National Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition in San Antonio this weekend as the defending champs, having won the competition for the first time last year.”
Read more here. Read more →
Greenpeace is releasing today its ratings on how clean or dirty tech companies’ clouds are. The Seattle Times quotes UW CSE Ph.D. student Adrian Sampson in their article on the Greenpeace report:
“‘Only in the last few years have we started using more energy in the cloud than we are on the devices we have,’ said Adrian Sampson, a Ph.D. student at the University of Washington who specializes in energy-efficient computing.
“Energy-conscious consumers should be aware that when they operate, say, a smartphone or a tablet, the battery is not the only energy they’re using, Sampson said. ‘Especially for things like iPhones and iPads, which are extremely energy-efficient, and they’re only able to be that efficient because they use so much energy in the cloud, in data centers,’ he said.”
Read the Seattle Times article here. Read more →
On June 15 and 16, 34 ACM A.M. Turing Award Winners come together for the first time, to honor the 100th Anniversary of Alan Turing and reflect on his contributions, as well as on the past and future of computing.
Three UW CSE programming languages and software engineering graduate students – Ivan Beschastnikh, Brian Burg, and Stephanie Dietzel – have been awarded scholarships by ACM SIGSOFT (the ACM Special Interest Group on Software Engineering) to attend this extraordinary event.
Congratulations to Ivan, Brian, and Stephanie! Read more →
CSE's Helene Martin, Emily Harmell, Zorah Fung, and Rachel Sobel at NWrWIC 2012
NWrWIC is a Northwest regional Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing, including tech-oriented women from Oregon and Washington colleges and universities, professional organizations, and the high school women and teachers from the NCWIT Oregon and SW Washington Regional Awards.
NWrWIC 2012 was held on Saturday in Portland OR. UW CSE was represented by faculty member Helene Martin and students Zorah Fung, Emily Harmell and Rachel Sobel. Read more →
