Allen School News

Pre-major freshman Nick Barnwell, CSE major Bill Cauchois, ACMS major Ryan Ewing, and math major Alex Juarez represented UW at the Facebook College Hackathon.

Read about their app and their plans in Geekwire here. Read more →

Today’s New York Times Science section consists of a bevy of essays on the future of computing.  One, on computer security, is by UW CSE Ph.D. alum Stefan Savage – here.  UW CSE’s Foldit protein folding game is prominently featured in an essay by Berkeley’s Dave Patterson on the role of computer scientists in tackling diseases – here.

All of the essays are terrific!  See:

• Drew Endy, “Taking Faster and Smarter to New Physical Frontiers”
• Sebastian Thrun, “Leave the Driving to the Car, and Reap Benefits in Safety and Mobility”
• Daphne Koller, “Death Knell for the Lecture: Technology as a Passport to Personalized Education”
• Scott Aaronson, “Quantum Computing Promises New Insights, Not Just Supermachines”
• Stefan Savage, “In Planning Digital Defenses, the Biggest Obstacle Is Human Ingenuity”
• Larry Smarr, “An Evolution Toward a Programmable Universe”
• Joichi Ito, “In an Open-Source Society, Innovating by the Seat of Our Pants”
• Dave Patterson, “Computer Scientists May Have What It Takes to Help Cure Cancer”
• Ted Nelson, “Full Speed Ahead, Without a Map, Into New Realms of Possibility”

A link to the entire December 6 Science section, which contains many excellent “Future of Computer Science” articles in addition to the essays above, is here. Read more →

The December issue of Seattle Business magazine identifies “The Good, The Bad, and The Stupid” for 2011.

“The Good” include:

• Oren Etzioni & Mike Fridgen, Decide.com.  The gurus behind Farecast have done it again …
• Luis Ceze, UW/Corensic.  Computer architect Luis Ceze is revamping the philosophy of computing by devising new programming techniques that save energy …
• Desney Tan, Microsoft [and UW CSE Affiliate Professor].  Driven by his varied background—aerospace engineer, philosopher, theologian, computer scientist—Desney Tan has been working with collaborators at Microsoft, Carnegie Mellon and the University of Washington to transform human-computer interactions …
• Yaw Anokwa, University of Washington.  As a Ph.D. candidate at the UW, Yaw Anokwa made waves by collaborating with colleagues to address technological “leapfrogging” …

Blessedly, we did not find ourselves cited among “The Bad” or “The Stupid.”

Read the key segment here.  Full article here. Read more →

Quoting from the article:

“Programmer … The Computer for the 21st Century … UbiComp … Xerox PARC … Mark Weiser … Scientific American … James Landay …”

After that, you’re on your own, here. Read more →

The United States House of Representatives has declared the week of Grace Murray Hopper’s birthday as Computer Science Education Week.  Given how little Congress can agree on these days, that’s a big deal!

The idea behind CSEdWeek is to spend some time reflecting on and celebrating existing K-12 computing programs while dreaming up new ways to support kids’ CS learning.

UW CSE will be hosting a programming competition for high school students on Saturday – more information here.  We’ll also be sending speakers to local schools.

Want to know more about what computer science is really like?  Check out the videos and other material here. Read more →

Today, a fourth UW CSE family member has been highlighted as a “GeekWire Newsmaker of 2011”:  UW CSE alumnus and Google engineer Steve Yegge, “the accidental newsmaker,” who ” made news this year by accident, when an exceptionally insightful rant that he intended for internal consumption was inadvertently made public through the Google+ social network — generating widespread headlines for its brutal candor …”

Read the rest here.

And see GeekWire on other CSE 2011 Newsmakers Yoky Matsuoka, Shwetak Patel and Daniil Kulchenko. Read more →

Magda Balazinska

Gaetano Borriello

Shwetak Patel

Luis Ceze

Oren Etzioni, Mike Ernst

Lucas Fogarty (who is far cuter in this hat than Ed Lazowska was)

More than 200 graduate students, staff, faculty, and family members gathered on Friday evening for the annual UW CSE Holiday Party.

The critics have already weighed in regarding the faculty skit (see photos):

• Mike Ernst’s 5-year-old:  “They’re not actually acting, they’re just standing there talking.”

• Steve Seitz’s 6-year-old:  “When does the real play start?”

Oren Etzioni has delivered the faculty response:

• “Years ago, my 6 year-old said the same thing when I took him to see Waiting for Godot.”

Foldit, the massive multiplayer protein folding game created by UW CSE’s Center for Game Science, has been named by TechFlash as the 2011 “Innovation of the Year” for its role in cracking an AIDS-related problem whose solution had eluded scientists for a decade. Read more →

We love John and Todd at GeekWire!  A third UW CSE family member has been singled out as a “GeekWire Newsmaker of 2011”:  Yoky Matsuoka.

“Yoky Matsuoka has long been interested in the frontiers of human interaction with machines, exploring new ways for the nervous system to work in conjunction with robotics and other mechanical devices …

“Matsuoka, a past MacArthur Genius award winner from UW Computer Science & Engineering, this year became the director of a new Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, funded with an $18.5 million grant from the National Science Foundation.

“She’s also vice president of technology at Nest, a Palo Alto-based startup marketing an intelligent, connected home thermostat that learns from the user’s habits as a means of programming itself.”

Read the rest here.

And see GeekWire on CSE 2011 Newsmakers Shwetak Patel and Daniil Kulchenko.

  Read more →

The Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Award competition recognizes undergraduates in North American colleges and universities who show outstanding research potential in an area of computing research.  Universities may nominate as many as four students annually.

In the 2012 competition (results announced today), all four UW CSE nominees were recognized – extending UW CSE’s record of having the largest number of students recognized in the most recent ten years of this competition!

Congratulations to Elliott Brossard, Matt Bryan, Stephanie Dietzel, and Hilary Worden! Read more →