Allen School News

UW CSE graduate students Jenny Abrahamson and Nicki Dell are among 25 outstanding young women from across the U.S. named today as winners of 2012 Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships.

The Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship honors the memory of Dr. Anita Borg, who devoted her life to encouraging the presence of women in computing and founded the Institute for Women in Technology in 1997.  Anita passed away in 2003, and the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship was established in 2004 to honor her memory.  Anita’s legacy lives on today through this scholarship and the organization she created, which has since been re-named the Anita Borg Institute for Women in Technology.

Congratulations to Jenny and Nicki! Read more →

2011 UW CSE Ph.D. alum Seth Cooper, now Creative Director of UW CSE’s Center for Game Science, has been named the winner of the 2011 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award.

The award is presented annually to the top Ph.D. dissertation in the field.  (Roughly 1,500 Ph.D.s in computer science were awarded last year in the United States alone.)

Seth’s dissertation, “A Framework for Scientific Discovery through Video Games,” was advised by UW CSE professor Zoran Popovic.  The dissertation explores how the video game environment can be used for solving difficult scientific problems.  Seth is the co-creator and lead designer and developer of Foldit.  Employing the collective efforts of tens of thousands of gamers, Foldit players solved the structure of a key protein in the fight against HIV, putting the combined power of humans and computers toward solving problems that neither could solve alone.

UW CSE Ph.D. alum Noah Snavely, now a faculty member at Cornell, received Honorable Mention in the 2009 competition.  UW CSE Ph.D. alum Aseem Agarwala, now a principal scientist at Adobe Systems, received Honorable Mention in the 2007 competition.  (Noah and Aseem, like Seth, were members of GRAIL, UW CSE’s superb computer graphics and computer vision group.)  UW CSE Ph.D. alum AnHai Doan, now a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin – Madison, won the award in 2003.  UW CSE Ph.D. alums Mike Ernst (now returned to the UW CSE faculty after a period of exile at MIT) and William Chan (tragically deceased) were co-Honorable Mentions in 2000.  (UW CSE’s annual departmental dissertation award, which Seth, Noah, Aseem, AnHai, and Mike all received, is named in honor of William.)  UW CSE alum Anne Condon, now Head of the Department of Computer Science at the University of British Columbia, received Honorable Mention in the 1988 competition.

Congratulations to Seth, and to the long line of superb UW CSE Ph.D. students that he joins! Read more →

This past Saturday, the Puget Sound region Spring CSTA high school programming competition was hosted by Amazon.com – following the Winter competition, hosted at the University of Washington.

Andy Davidson, the computer science instructor at Roosevelt High School, says:

It’s instructive to look at the list of winners this year and see how many of their teachers got their CS pedagogical training from the UW CSE program:

 

For the past two years, the computer science instructor at Garfield HS was Hélène Martin, a UW CSE Bachelors alumna, now returned to UW CSE as an introductory course instructor and high school outreach coordinator.

Hélène was succeeded at Garfield by Earl Bergquist.  Earl participated in our Google-sponsored CS4HS summer workshop for high school teachers, interned under Andy Davidson at Roosevelt HS during the 2010-11 school year, and uses UW introductory course materials for his AP course.

Andy Davidson – the computer science instructor at Roosevelt HS for the past several years – participated in CS4HS, worked closely with Hélène when she was at Garfield, took UW CSE’s introductory courses, and uses UW introductory course materials for his AP course.  Andy says:

Having received my CS education back in the last millennium, well before the advent of object-oriented programming, being asked to teach the Java-based AP CS course presented a learning opportunity/necessity.  My solution was to take UW’s CSE 142 & 143 courses with Stuart Reges.  So I learned nearly everything I know about Java, and teaching Java effectively, from Stuart and his colleagues Marty Stepp and Hélène Martin, and their fleet of excellent teaching assistants.  With their continuing support, I have modeled my high school AP Computer Science course directly on their work.  I’d just like to acknowledge the incredible contribution that CSE has made to teaching CS in the Seattle Public School district.

At Lakeside School – Seattle’s premier independent school – the computer science instructor is UW CSE Ph.D. alumna Lauren Bricker, a close collaborator of Hélène’s, who also uses UW CSE introductory course materials.

At Issaquah high school, Brett Wortzman is the computer science instructor:  Brett has been both a teaching assistant and an instructor in UW CSE’s introductory computer science courses.

Crystal Hess, the computer science instructor at Tahoma high school, is the principal organizer of the CSTA programming competitions.

Congratulations to these superb teachers and their superb students!!

See the results of the spring competition here. Read more →

UW Dean of Engineering Matt O’Donnell has named CSE’s David Notkin as Acting Associate Dean of Research and Graduate Studies for the coming year.

In announcing Notkin’s appointment to faculty in the College of Engineering, O’Donnell stated:   “He has won numerous awards including most recently, the ACM SIGSOFT Influential Educator Award in 2012. … In this role, David will foster multidisciplinary collaborations within and outside the college, work with new faculty to develop successful research programs, and strengthen programs to recruit and mentor top graduate students.”

Congratulations to David for his longstanding commitment to graduate education, and for becoming only the second CSE faculty member to keep his nose clean enough that he was able to rise above the level of department chair! Read more →

Carlos Guestrin and Emily Fox, experts in machine learning, will join the University of Washington in the fall, driving us to a new level of excellence and impact in this hugely important field.

Carlos is currently the Finmeccanica Associate Professor in the departments of Machine Learning and Computer Science in Carnegie Mellon University’s School of Computer Science, with courtesy appointments in Civil and Environmental Engineering and in the Robotics Institute.  He is widely regarded as one of the world’s leading researchers in machine learning for his GraphLab  parallel machine learning system and many other contributions.  He received his Ph.D. from Stanford Computer Science in 2003.  Carlos will join UW Computer Science & Engineering.  Learn more here.

Emily is currently an assistant professor in the Department of Statistics at The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania.  Her research interests include Bayesian and nonparametric Bayesian approaches to time-series and longitudinal data analysis, with an emphasis on extensions to high-dimensional data.  She received her Ph.D. from MIT EECS in 2009.  Emily will join UW Statistics, with an adjunct appointment in Computer Science & Engineering.  Learn more here.

Both Carlos and Emily will hold newly-created Amazon Professorships in Machine Learning.  Tremendous thanks to Amazon.com for this commitment to the future of computer science in our region!

We are thrilled to welcome Carlos and Emily to the University of Washington! Read more →

dub – short for “design … use … build” – is the University of Washington’s interdisciplinary effort in human-computer interaction and design, including faculty and students from across the campus.

Over 100 UW faculty, students, and industrial collaborators came out for the 4th annual dub retreat.  The meeting included a celebration of awards, short research talks, and poster sessions.  The excitement of the event was bolstered by the attendance of UW President Michael Young.  President Young saw talks on topics that included the relevance of dub to Microsoft Research collaborations, the collaborative design with Boeing of concepts for the future flight deck, and World Lab, a new joint institute with Tsinghua University in China to apply human-centered technologies to solving worldwide problems in the areas of environment, health, and education.  President Young’s extensive remarks concluded “This is something that is really important to the university.”

Learn more about dub here. Read more →

UW CSE and EE professor Georg Seelig, an expert in quantitative biology and DNA nanotechnology, has been named a recipient of a 2012 DARPA Young Faculty Award.

The objective of the DARPA Young Faculty Award program is to identify and engage rising research stars in junior faculty positions at U.S. academic institutions and expose them to Department of Defense needs as well as DARPA’s program development process.

Research in Seelig’s lab focuses on understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior, and particularly on the identification of systematic design rules for the de novo construction of biological control circuits with DNA and RNA components.  Engineered circuits and circuit elements are being applied to problems in disease diagnostics and therapy.

Congratulations Georg!

Learn more about Seelig’s research here   Learn about the DARPA Young Faculty Award program here. Read more →

The University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering department is running a workshop this summer targeted at high school or middle school teachers of math, science and computer science. This year we are also offering a one day option for school counselors or administrators who would like to learn a little more about the exciting field of Computer Science.

We’d love to have you join us!

Specifically, CS4HS aims to:

• Expose participants to exciting examples of computer science operating in close relationships with other disciplines.
• Broaden participant’s view of computer science and the way it is shaping Washington’s communities and people–and those of the entire world.
• Provide teachers with basic strategies for computational problem solving and give you the vocabulary to relate these concepts to students and subject material.
• Provide hands-on experience with visual and physical programming environments (No prior programming experience necessary).
• Explore opportunities to broaden students’ interest in computer science and dispel myths about what computer science.

We would love to welcome you to the workshop August 6th-8th.  More details on how to apply can be found at  http://cs4hs.cs.washington.edu/ and below.  Go to the Apply tab to fill out a brief application. Admission is on a rolling basis until the workshop fills.

Thank you for your interest–if you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us!

Workshop detail:

• When:  August 6-8th, 2012 (Monday – Wednesday approximately 830am – 5pm).
• Where:  UW campus (Seattle).
• Cost:  $35 registration includes lunch for three days, light breakfast, reception, parking, housing for out of town participants, clock hours ($10 for one day option for counselors and administrators).
• Clock hours:  20 clock hours (three day option), or 6 clock hours (one day option).
• Who:  Teachers of high school and middle school math, science, or computer science; administrators and counselors.
• What:  Learn what the field of computer science has to offer and take home some ideas of how to incorporate computational thinking into your classes.

Learn more here! Read more →

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 →