Allen School News

UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska is featured in one of a series of articles on “Why I Chose UW Medicine.”  Read it here. Read more →

Aruna Balasubramanian, a Computing Innovation Fellow postdoctoral researcher in UW CSE working with professor David Wetherall, has received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, her Ph.D. institution.

Congratulations Aruna! Read more →

Reminder:  Bill Gates will deliver the UW CSE Distinguished Lecture on Thursday at 3:30 in the Microsoft Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.  Details (including live webcast information) here. Read more →

Nest Labs, a Palo Alto startup, announced its “Nest Learning Thermostat” today.  UW CSE’s Yoky Matsuoka is currently on leave as Vice President for Technology at Nest.

“But probably the most sophisticated feature of the Nest is the artificial intelligence that helps it regulate the temperature to your liking — without your having to engage in complicated setup tasks.

“Included among Nest’s advisors is Stanford AI head and Google researcher Sebastian Thrun, who told Fadell and Rogers that the best person in the world to produce this complicated intelligence was Yoky Matsuoka, a 2007 MacArthur ‘genius’ fellow and MIT-trained computer scientist who heads a University of Washington lab, and also was working on futuristic projects for the top-secret Google X division. Rogers set up a meeting.

“When Matsuoka heard him utter the acronym HVAC, she pictured some guy in a blue shirt coming to her house and checking out some dirty spot in the basement to fix something. ‘But seven minutes later, I was captivated,’ she says. ‘I’d seen plenty of smart home projects in academia, beginning in the 1980s, but they just could not take off. When Matt presented the idea, I tried to poke holes in it, but he had answers for every problem I bought up. I realized that this could be the entry point — and that this was an opportunity I could not miss.'”

Read a terrific Wired article here.  NY Times here.  Forbes here. Slashdot here. Read more →

No problem placating the smaller conferences – you could pay >1,000 athletes out of the President’s salary.

“Emmert said the minimum Academic Progress Rates required for teams to compete in the postseason could be raised to 900 in time for this season’s N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament.  It could increase to 930 — essentially corresponding to a 50 percent graduation rate — in two years.”  Heavens to Murgatroyd!

Read more from the NY Times here.  Even better, read a damning article in The Atlantic here:  “For all the outrage, the real scandal is not that students are getting illegally paid or recruited, it’s that two of the noble principles on which the NCAA justifies its existence—’amateurism’ and the ‘student-athlete’—are cynical hoaxes, legalistic confections propagated by the universities so they can exploit the skills and fame of young athletes.” Read more →

Isilon CEO Sujal Patel, EMC CEO Joe Tucci, and Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn

Seattle Mayor Mike McGinn reports on the Pioneer Square expansion of EMC Isilon, co-founded by Sujal Patel and UW CSE alumnus Paul Mikesell:

“The 200 new jobs over the next fifteen months signals a big investment in Seattle, said [EMC CEO Joe] Tucci, adding that EMC sees Seattle as a hub for data storage and cloud computing technology, with both Amazon.com and Microsoft as major players, along with Seattle’s excellent talent pool. ‘Bringing Isilon into the EMC family was a tremendous coup for us, but I think an equally tremendous coup will be how we can expand here in greater Seattle and tap into the talent, the connections that Isilon has with the University of Washington…it will be a double win for us.’ EMC said the hiring will increase Isilon’s Seattle team by 75 percent since the December acquisition.”

Read the rest here. Read more →

Communications of the ACM reports on UW CSE research concerning the vulnerability to hacking of modern automobiles:

“Researchers Tadayoshi Kohno of the University of Washington and [UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus] Stefan Savage of the University of California at San Diego announced the startling results of a two-year investigation into potential vulnerabilities in modern automotive computer systems …”

Read the article here. Read more →

UW CSE is one of 24 academic programs and corporations that are members of the “NCWIT Pacesetters” program of the National Center for Women and Information Technology – committed to fundamental enhancements in their recruitment and retention of women.

At the Pacesetters Roundtable in Boulder CO on October 23 and 24, here’s what we said:

Here’s our philosophy at the University of Washington:

• Yes, including more women in the field is important as a matter of equity.
• And yes, it’s important from a workforce point of view.
• But it’s also important because of quality. We’re designing systems for the entire population to use, so the entire population needs to be involved in the design of those systems.

We’ve always worked hard to create a welcoming and supportive environment, and to get the word out. Our numbers are better than most. But we’re still not where we need to be.

Under the Pacesetters program, we committed to further gains. At the University of Washington, students enter as pre-majors and choose majors after fulfilling pre-requisites, so we’ve focused on freshmen. Here are some of the things we’ve added:

• We target freshman honors students with a new course called “Brave New World: Scientific, Economic and Social Impact of Computer Science” which has attracted significant numbers of female students.
• We created honors sections in our introductory programming courses which similarly have attracted significant numbers of female students.
• We focus on consistent, encouraging communication to students in Introductory Programming. This includes:
• Emails sent to high achievers in the course suggesting they consider applying to the major;
• Social events where we invite women to network with faculty, students and staff;
• And a special women’s seminar linked to our introductory courses in which women are introduced to the breadth and depth of the field by visiting local companies, listening to student panels, seeing research presentations, and talking about their experiences in the courses.

We’ve found that more than half of our new Computer Science and Computer Engineering majors had no intention of choosing these majors when they enrolled in the introductory course. So making this course welcoming and exciting is incredibly important.

We added these new initiatives to existing activities such as:

• Google-sponsored summer workshops for high school math and science teachers.
• “Inspirational teacher” recognition for high school teachers who send us great students.
• And videos dispelling myths and stereotypes about the field.

We have not yet fully met our Pacesetters goals, but we’re committed to these goals, and we’re well on the way.

See an NCWIT press release on Pacesetters here.  Learn about Computer Science and Computer Engineering as majors here. Read more →

Why are video games the key to modern science?  “Video gamers spend tons of time — for many it’s 10,000 hours by age 21 — battling mythic monsters, shooting aliens and rescuing princesses from digital castles.”

To harness these efforts, CMU faculty member (and UW CSE PhD alum) Adrien Treuille created two online games — Foldit and EteRNA — “that put video gamers to work solving epic scientific puzzles.”  And the results have been staggering.  For example, as reported in the journal Nature earlier this month, Foldit players helped solve a puzzle about proteins that could further research into HIV/AIDS.

“Treuille has high hopes for gaming’s potential to unlock good in humanity — and impact the real world.  ‘People can solve much more complex problems online at the edge of human knowledge, and I think we’ve just scratched the surface.'”

Read the full CNN article here. Read more →

Recent issues of Seattle Met magazine have included a feature on “The Perfect Party” – a group of five individuals who they’d love to invite for a meal.  UW CSE was included early-on in the person of computer security researcher Jake Appelbaum – part of a “Perfect Party” that included Rachel the Pig.  In the November issue, it’s UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel – part of a “Perfect Party” that includes Tom Brokaw.  (Sorry, Jake!) Read more →