Georg Seelig
Anup Rao
CSE’s Anup Rao and Georg Seelig have been selected to receive 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships, among the most selective awards for young scientists.
Rao, an expert in the theory of computation, joined CSE in 2010, following graduate work at the University of Texas and postdocs at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton. His interests include finding mathematical explanations for why some computational problems are fundamentally harder than others, and discovering the limitations of efficient computational processes. These kinds of questions can sometimes lead to strange and unexpected revelations – for example, a recent sequence of work that he was involved with led to the discovery of the most economical shape for soap bubbles.
Seelig, a synthetic biologist, joined CSE and EE in 2009. He received a Diploma in Physics from the University of Basel in 1999 and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from the University of Geneva in 2003. Before coming to UW he was a postdoc at Caltech working with Erik Winfree and Michael Elowitz. He is interested in understanding how biological organisms process information using complex biochemical networks, and how such networks can be engineered to program cellular behavior. Engineered circuits and circuit elements are being applied to problems in disease diagnostics and therapy.
Hakim Weatherspoon
Rao and Seelig are the sixteenth and seventeenth UW CSE faculty members to be honored with Sloan Research Fellowships.
UW CSE Bachelors alumnus Hakim Weatherspoon, now a faculty member at Cornell University, also received a Sloan today.
See the UW press release here. Read more →
UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni was interviewed today on NPR’s “Morning Edition” regarding the forthcoming Jeopardy match pitting IBM’s Watson AI system against two human champions.
“Artificial intelligence experts say that even with the occasional error, Watson has what it takes to perform very well against humanity’s best. Etzioni expects to see a Watson win in the competition, which will air Feb. 14, 15 and 16. ‘Does that mean that it’s ‘Game Over’ for humans, that robots will keep us as pets? Absolutely not,’ Etzioni says. ‘But it does mean it’s a demonstration that we’ve significantly expanded the envelope of what computers can really achieve.'”
Listen to the interview here. Read a transcript here. (Former UW CSE faculty member Henry Kautz is also quoted.)
Related: An interesting New York Times article by John Markoff on “Artificial Intelligence” vs. “Intelligence Augmentation,” dating back to John McCarthy vs. Doug Engelbart, mentions UW CSE’s Foldit protein folding game. Read more →
UW CSE undergraduate Golf Sinteppadon, in collaboration with KEXP’s Rachel Ratner and musician Keith Whiteman, has released Seattle Band Map, an interactive website that showcases the Pacific Northwest’s vibrant music scene by documenting the thousands of bands who have performed throughout the decades, and exploring how these bands are interconnected through personal relationships and collaborations. Read more →
A recent TechCrunch post describes UW CSE 2007 alum Mohamed El-Zohairy‘s return to Egypt to participate in the revolution with his family. Mohamed’s Facebook page contains fascinating posts from before and after his return to Egypt. Read more →
Hank Levy, Wissner-Slivka Chair in Computer Science & Engineering and CSE department chair, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineering, one of 9 leading computer scientists and computer engineers elected in the NAE class of 2011, announced today.
Hank was recognized “For contributions to the design, implementation, and evaluation of operating systems, distributed systems, and processor architectures.”
Quoting from the NAE: “Members are elected to NAE by their peers (current NAE members). Election to membership is one of the highest professional honors accorded an engineer. Members have distinguished themselves in business and academic management, in technical positions, as university faculty, and as leaders in government and private engineering organizations.”
Hank joins Susan Eggers and Ed Lazowska as UW CSE members of NAE.
See UW press release here; NAE press release here. Read more →
SNUPI (Sensor Nodes Utilizing Powerline Infrastructure) nodes are ultra-low-power, general-purpose wireless sensor nodes that transmit their data by coupling over the powerline to a single receiver attached to the powerline in the home. SNUPI nodes provide whole-home coverage while consuming less than 1 mW of power when transmitting (one order of magnitude lower than existing nodes), and a new custom CMOS transmitter consumes only 65 µW (two orders of magnitude lower than existing nodes). SNUPI was one of five technologies features at the Technology Alliance “Innovation Showcase.” Read more →
In 1997, an IBM Artificial Intelligence system named Deep Blue defeated the human world champion in a chess match.
The game of Jeopardy! – which requires 3-second responses and the understanding of English questions, puns, and a massive knowledge base of facts – is a much harder challenge. On February 14th, 15th, and 16th, an IBM AI system named Watson will be pitted against two human champions.
UW CSE will host a viewing event on the second of these nights – Tuesday February 15th. The event will take place from 7:00-8:15 in EE105. Professors from UW Computer Science & Engineering and experts from IBM and Microsoft will be on hand to provide commentary.
Please join us! Win, lose, or draw, this is a monumental step for computer science.
Here’s an announcement of the viewing event. Read more →
The January issue of New Scientist features an article on the resurgence of artificial intelligence. Key to the renaissance is
combining probabalistic programming with classical AI techniques. UW CSE Professor Pedro Domingos is quoted and UW AI research is featured.
Read the full article here. Read more →
At the 2011 Computers, Privacy & Data Protection conference in Brussels, Belgium, UW CSE PhD students had a strong showing, winning both the Multidisciplinary Privacy Award award and an honorable mention.
The goal of the CPDP multi-disciplinary privacy research award is to promote the need for and reward the results of multidisciplinary research, with the participation of the representative of diverse constituencies engaged in the investigation of the new ideas in data protection. Any paper published or accepted for publication in 2010 was eligible to win.
UW CSE grad student Alexei Czeskis and alumni Iva Dermendjieva and Hussein Yapit won the award for their work on balancing privacy and value tensions in mobile parenting technologies (published at SOUPS 2010 with co-authors Alan Borning, Batya Friedman, Brian Gill, and Tadayoshi Kohno). UW CSE PhD student Tamara Denning won an honorable mention for her work on analyzing human values and security for wireless implantable medical devices (published at CHI 2010 with co-authors Alan Borning, Batya Friedman, Brian Gill, Tadayoshi Kohno, and William Maisel).
Congratulations! Read more →
This video, from Paul Kulchenko and Emo Todorov in UW CSE’s Movement Control Laboratory, is pretty amazing. The accompanying text provides background. Read more →
