Allen School News

“Shwetak Patel, a UW assistant professor in Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering for the past three years, has been honored as one of this year’s MacArthur Fellows.  Patel is the 15th UW faculty member to receive the prestigious ‘genius grant,’ which comes with a no-strings-attached award of $500,000 …

“Besides his time teaching at the UW, Patel, 29, already founded and sold a start-up company, Zensi, Inc., a demand-side, energy-monitoring solutions provider; he has been named a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow; has been honored by The New York Times for developing the top technology of the year; was awarded MIT’s Technology Review TR-35 award for innovators under age 35; and completed his doctorate at the Georgia Institute of Technology before coming to UW in 2008.”

Read the article here. Read more →

Michael Nielsen, Dave Bacon, Scott Aaronson, Steve Flammia, and Aram Harrow relax in the Allen Center atrium following Michael’s UW CSE Distinguished Lecture on “open science.”

Photos of Michael’s UW CSE Distinguished Lecture, by Bruce Hemingway, here. Read more →

G-GIVE is an initiative by Google Seattle/Kirkland to encourage employee philanthropy.  During the first two weeks of December, gifts to nine different causes were matched not only by Google, but by a generous Googler.  Google Seattle/Kirkland already leads all Google sites in employee participation in the Google philanthropic matching program; the goal of G-GIVE is to drive participation even higher.

On the kickoff day – Tuesday December 6 – 100 Seattle/Kirkland Googlers made gifts to the UW CSE Google Endowed Scholarship, totaling more than $100,000 when matched!

G-GIVE is the brainchild of UW CSE alums Krista Davis and Jessan Hutchison-Quillian, shown here with UW CSE alum Jeff Prouty (in the middle) who served as the liaison for the UW CSE day.  Thanks to them, to the 100 Googlers who supported the UW CSE Google Endowed Scholarship, and to the many others who supported other causes during G-GIVE! Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. alum Greg Badros has emerged as one of five technical team leaders reporting to Facebook Founder, President, and CEO Mark Zuckerberg in a re-organization announced by Facebook today.  Read more here.

Congratulations Greg! Read more →

The New York Times profiles UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni and his most recent company, Decide.com:

“Perhaps the biggest consumer weapon arrived this year in the form of Decide.com.  It is a Web site, and more recently an app for mobile devices, that collects and mines billions of transactions to determine what the best price is and whether there will be an even better price soon …

“For example, Decide.com said last week with 81 percent confidence that the Panasonic Viera 50-inch plasma TV (model TC-P50S30), a popular model, would drop within the next two weeks.  It also predicted, with 62 percent confidence, that a new model would come along within three months.

“Scoff if you will, but a week before Thanksgiving, Decide.com was advising shoppers to hold off buying a 16-gigabyte iPad because it predicted a price drop.  Apple did lower the price of that model by $41 on Black Friday, the big shopping day that follows Thanksgiving …

“Decide is run by many of the same people who built Farecast, a site that gave consumers a fighting chance against the airlines, which are constantly changing prices to match demand.

“‘Consumers have no access to big data,’ said Mr. Etzioni, who also founded Farecast …

“‘What we really see, and I am very excited by this, is the increased transparency,’ Mr. Etzioni said. ‘The inexorable trend is towards transparency.'”

Read the rest here. Read more →

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 →