Allen School News

“Look, I’m not trying to freak you out here. Well, OK, maybe a little. But think about it: We have computers all over the place. Your laptop or desktop PC; maybe you have a tablet too, maybe a smartphone. And it doesn’t stop there. Your car might be computerized, your kitchen, the toys your kids got for Christmas. If any of those computers are connected to any kind of network, there exists an issue of security …

“Yoshi Kohno is an associate professor of computer science and engineering at the University of Washington. He and his team figured out how to break into a car’s internal, computer network. They were able to control the brakes and turn the car on and off. They also fiddled around with a commercially available toy robot. ‘One of the things we found is that as soon as we turned this toy robot on, it advertises a wireless ad hoc network that anyone can connect to,’ Kohno says …

“Kohno’s team has been looking into something far more serious than a toy robot: implanted medical devices. ‘We found that a person using their own equipment could wirelessly communicate with a pacemaker or defibrillator and change its settings, turn on and off therapies, and in fact make it issue a large shock,’ he says.”

Listen to the full story here. Read more →

GeekWire honors UW CSE’s Hélène Martin in their “Geeks Who Give Back” feature:

“Hélène Martin taught hundreds of high-school students the power of computer programming during her two years teaching computer science at Garfield High in Seattle, inspiring many to pursue degrees in technology. Now a lecturer in the UW’s Computer Science & Engineering Department, she continues to shape the next generation of geeks.”

Read more here. Read more →

UW CSE alumnus Kevin Ross, a long-time Microsoft employee who is also the founder of Washington FIRST Robotics, is celebrated by GeekWire in their 2012 “Geeks Who Give Back” calendar.

“The founder of Washington FIRST Robotics has spent has spent countless hours building one of the largest statewide networks of robotics competitions, giving students from kindergarten through high school an exciting new way to learn science, math and programming, and to experience first-hand the potential of technology and teamwork.”

Congratulations Kevin! Read more here. Read more →

Forbes highlights 30 superstars under the age of 30 in each of 12 fields:  Art & Design, Energy, Entertainment, Finance, etc.

In the “Technology” field, two of the 30 are UW CSE’s Jake Appelbaum and Sidhant Gupta.

Jake is highlighted as “Digital anonymity and crypto expert gained fame finding security bugs in software and consulting to WikiLeaks.”

Sidhant is highlighted as “Developing new sensors and software for the home that conserve electricity, heat and gas.”

Forbes also recognized Cloudera’s Jeff Hammerbacher in the “Technology” field; Jeff co-founded Cloudera with UW CSE bachelors alumnus Christophe Bisciglia.

In “Science,” Forbes highlighted UW Biostatistics professor Daniela Witten, wife of Facebook Seattle director Ari Steinberg.  Also UW Genome Science graduate student Sara Ng.

  Read more →

But that didn’t keep them from celebrating Shwetak Patel‘s EE472, “Embedded Microcomputer Systems”:

On the 12th day of lab, Patel gave to me …

• 12 shattered spirits
• 11 sleepless nights
• 10 colored papers
• 9 dented rotors
• 8 cracked hulls
• 7 missing tags
• 6 red LEDs
• 5 broken drones
• 4 rusty motors
• 3 frozen makeboards
• 2 crappy routers
• And some code that was written in C!

Watch the video here (be sure to turn captions on)!

Also, don’t miss “Geeks can’t dance” from a previous offering of this class, here!

Many photos from the class here.

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Jeff Bezos spent several hours in UW CSE labs on December 16 – discussing ubiquitous computing and sensing with Shwetak Patel and students; the future of search with Oren Etzioni; and the security of computer-controlled personal devices (such as automobiles) with Yoshi Kohno and students; as well as discussing future directions for the computer science field with Ed Lazowska and Hank Levy.

Photos from the Ubicomp lab here.

Our friends at GeekWire picked it up, here. Read more →

From The New York Times:

“The Internet likes you, really likes you. It offers you so much, just a mouse click or finger tap away. Go Christmas shopping, find restaurants, locate partying friends, tell the world what you’re up to. Some of the finest minds in computer science, working at start-ups and big companies, are obsessed with tracking your online habits to offer targeted ads and coupons, just for you …

“But now — nothing personal, mind you — the Internet is growing up and lifting its gaze to the wider world … the protean Internet technologies of computing and communications are rapidly spreading beyond the lucrative consumer bailiwick. Low-cost sensors, clever software and advancing computer firepower are opening the door to new uses in energy conservation, transportation, health care and food distribution. The consumer Internet can be seen as the warm-up act for these technologies

“The concept has been around for years, sometimes called the Internet of Things or the Industrial Internet. Yet it takes time for the economics and engineering to catch up with the predictions. And that moment is upon us.

“‘We’re going to put the digital ‘smarts’ into everything,’ said Edward D. Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of Washington. These abundant smart devices, Dr. Lazowska added, will ‘interact intelligently with people and with the physical world.’

“The role of sensors — once costly and clunky, now inexpensive and tiny — was described this month in an essay in The New York Times by Larry Smarr, founding director of the California Institute for Telecommunications and Information Technology; he said the ultimate goal was ‘the sensor-aware planetary computer.’  That may sound like blue-sky futurism, but evidence shows that the vision is beginning to be realized on the ground, in recent investments, products and services, coming from large industrial and technology corporations and some ambitious start-ups.

“One of the hot new ventures in Silicon Valley is Nest Labs … Its product, introduced in late October, is a digital thermostat, combining sensors, machine learning and Web technology. It senses not just air temperature, but the movements of people in a house, their comings and goings, and adjusts room temperatures accordingly to save energy.

“At the Nest offices in Palo Alto, Calif., there is a lot of talk of helping the planet, as well as the thrill of creating cool technology. [UW CSE’s] Yoky Matsuoka, a former Google computer scientist and winner of a MacArthur ‘genius’ grant, said, ‘This is the next wave for me.'”

Excellent article!  Read it here. Read more →

“At 34 years old, Chris Kemp has a resume that many would call a career — Silicon Graphics systems engineer, Classmates.com chief architect, founder of online grocery technology company Netran and online travel company Escapia, CIO at NASA’s Ames Research Center and most recently the space agency’s first CTO for information technology …

“Now Kemp is back in the private sector, taking more risks and applying the lessons he’s learned along the way … Kemp is the CEO and co-founder of Nebula, a company developing an IT appliance that aims to make it easier and cheaper for companies to run ‘private clouds’ … The company is based in Palo Alto, with funding from some of the major players in the Silicon Valley investment community …

“Nebula also has a sizable presence in Seattle … ‘The tech community is phenomenal. There are a lot of really smart engineers here … the University of Washington is a little like Stanford.  They’ve got a fantastic CS program.'”

Read the full interview here. Read more →

Xconomy interviews UW CSE Ph.D. alum Stefan Savage, Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at UC San Diego, as “Xconomist of the Week”:

“Last year, a team led by Savage and UW’s Tadayoshi Kohno showed that a hacker with physical access to an automotive electronic control unit could alter software to stop the engine, disable the brakes, and carry out other nefarious tasks. In follow-up research published earlier this year, Savage and company said they had succeeded in performing similar tasks remotely—using the cellular phone in a car to insert malicious software that enabled them to override various vehicle controls. (Their findings can be found at the website of the Center for Automotive Embedded Systems Security, a UW-UCSD collaboration.)

“Savage also has helped lead wide-ranging studies of Internet spam, outlining the global ‘ecosystem’ that supports compromised accounts, spam mailers, credit cards, e-mail lists, and other tools of the trade. This work led to a comprehensive study of just how much revenue spam advertising can generate, even when most of the spam is blocked.”

Read the rest of the interview here.

  Read more →

On Saturday December 10th, the Atrium of the Allen Center was the scene of delightful bedlam as more than 150 students from 43 teams representing 15 high schools competed in a day-long programming contest sponsored by UW CSE as the regional finale to the national Computer Science Education Week.

Results and photos can be found on the Puget Sound Computer Science Teachers Association (PSCSTA) website here.  Additional photos on the Garfield High School Computer Science website here and here, and in Helene Martin’s Picasa album here.

Congratulations to all 150 participants, and particularly to the winners:

• Novice – 1st Place – Lakeside School – Alex Tong, Nat Mayer, Hannah Ruggiero
• Novice – 2nd Place – Garfield High School – Caitlin Rochlin, William Zhou, Lucy Spain
• Novice – 3rd Place – Lakeside School – Nikhil Khanna, Aran Khanna

• Advanced – 1st Place – Garfield High School – Lane Aasen, Eamon Gaffney, Dylan Swiggett
• Advanced – 2nd Place – Garfield High School – Jenny Lin, Grant Bronsdon, Isabel Suhr
• Advanced – 3rd Place – Issaquah High School – Jason Walker, Patrick Violette

Also, thanks to the many volunteers who made the contest a success, and to the phenomenal high school computer science teachers in the Puget Sound region.  (We can’t resist noting that our alum Lauren Bricker is the computer science teacher at Lakeside School, and that our alum Helene Martin was the computer science teacher at Garfield High School for the past two years (Helene has now returned to UW CSE to teach and participate in K-12 outreach)!) Read more →