Allen School News

Xconomy follows up in-depth on a previous article reporting on a new round of funding for UW CSE startup Skytap.

Read the article here. Read more →

UW CSE adjunct professor Leroy Hood, President of Seattle’s Institute for Systems Biology, today was named the recipient of the National Academy of Engineering’s Fritz J. and Delores H. Russ Prize.  The Russ Prize – a $500,000 biennial award “recognizing a bioengineering achievement that significantly improves the human condition” – was conferred on Hood “for automating DNA sequencing that revolutionized biomedicine and forensic science.”

The National Academy of Engineering announcement quotes UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska:  “No single person has done more to create the genomics era than Leroy Hood.  Lee is a visionary who integrated science and technology, creating instruments that allow us to tackle some of the most fundamental problems in modern biology and medicine.”  Read the announcement here. Read more →

“Kings,” a computer animation created in UW CSE’s undergraduate computer animation capstone course, has been selected for screening at the 2D OR NOT 2D Animation Festival – one of a dozen festival screenings of UW CSE undergraduate capstone animations in the past six months. Read more →

Greg Barnes and trophies

A team led by UW CSE Ph.D. alum Greg Barnes, and including UW CSE graduate program alums Elizabeth Walkup, Lauren Bricker, Franz Amador, Dorothy Neville, Erik Selberg, and Terry Farrah (as well as UW CSE course-taker (Eric Bone), has won the Canlis Restaurant “Light Up Seattle” scavenger hunt challenge – dinner for two, annually, for life, at Canlis, Seattle’s premier restaurant – plus a second dinner for two annually to be given away to someone who has helped the less fortunate.  Greg roamed Seattle with Eric and another friend, while wife Elizabeth and the rest of the team were camped around Lauren Bricker’s dining room table with 7 laptops deciphering clues.

KOMO News reports:

“As part of the Canlis restaurant’s 60th birthday celebration, [brothers Mark and Brian Canlis] created a mouthwatering contest for Seattle trivia and history buffs that would culminate in a grand prize that had to be given away.  The prize:  Dinner for two at Canlis, once a year, for the life of the winner.

“But because the Canlis brothers want to encourage philanthropy, the winner had to give away the dinner-for-life to someone who has helped the less fortunate.  Each year the winner would decide who would be the recipient of that dinner …

“Flash back to October:  The Canlis Brothers start a contest.  Every day, for 50 straight days, the brothers send out a clue via Facebook and Twitter, to the location of a Canlis menu from 1950.  The menu is hidden somewhere in Seattle … All the clues were witty and related to Seattle’s history.

“Find the menu, and you got dinner for two at Canlis at 1950’s prices …

The brain trust

“All 50 menus were found, but then came part two …

“On New Year’s Eve, the 50 menu winners … gathered at the restaurant on the eastern edge of Queen Anne Hill in a race for the grand prize.

“Everyone knew the rules.  If they found the grand prize they had to give it away, but that didn’t stop the enthusiasm.  Each winner was allow two others on the ground to solve the clues.  And they were allowed to have as much support as possible via cell phone and internet …

“Greg Barnes and his team ‘Teriyaki Donut’ figured it out …

“Barnes and his team found a small ‘X’ in the grass at the correct GPS coordinate and started digging with their hands.  Barnes found a muddy envelope.  Inside, a Canlis platinum card with the words ‘Dinner for Life.’  Barnes knew he had to give away [the card] but to his surprise, there was not one but two cards in the envelope.  He was allowed to keep the other for himself.”

Read the KOMO News article here.  Watch a KOMO News video here. Read more →

TechFlash writes:  “Skytap, which helps companies cut costs by testing software applications in the cloud, has raised $10 million in fresh funding, according to a filing with the SEC.   Founded in 2006 by University of Washington computer scientists Brian Bershad (now at Google); Hank Levy, David Richardson and Steve Gribble, Skytap has raised a total of about $23 million to date.

“Investors in the company – led by former iConclude and ADIC exec Scott Roza – include OpenView Venture Partners, Ignition Partners, Madrona Venture Group, WRF Capital and Bezos Expeditions.

“Skytap’s customers include Oracle, HP and WildBlue, with those organizations using the technology to create a ‘virtual lab’ in which software applications can be tested in various environments.”

Read the full post here.  Xconomy post here. Read more →

On Thursday, December 16, 2010, the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) released and discussed its report entitled “Designing a Digital Future:  Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology.”  This congressionally-mandated report assesses the status and direction of the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) Program.

Video excerpts from the event are now available here.  Of particular interest are the 5-minute segments by Tom Kalil (Deputy Director for Policy, White House Office of Science  and Technology Policy), Tom Leighton (Professor of Applied Mathematics, MIT, and Co-Founder and Chief Scientist, Akamai Technologies), and Rob Atkinson (President, Information Technology and Innovation Foundation).

Additional information regarding the report is available here. Read more →

TechFlash has named its Top 10 startup stories of 2010 – including “UW prof, 27, sells home-energy monitoring startup to Belkin.” Read more →

UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska gets a nod in the Christmas issue of Crosscut, in the same breath as UW CSE friends Tom Alberg, Jeremy Jaech, Paul Allen, Scott Oki, and the Gates family.  “There are way too few such bridge figures … but they are absolutely critical if we are to relocate our civic blueprints.” Read more →

Check out the latest issue of Most Significant Bits, the UW CSE alumni magazine.  Among the high points in this issue:

• Center for Game Science
• Mobile Midwives’ Ultrasound Project
• CRA Undergraduate Award Competition
• CSE Alumnus Ed Felten Named Chief Technologist of FTC
• Josh Smith joins CSE and EE faculty
• Gaetano Borriello, Steve Seitz, and Fran Berman are 2011 IEEE Fellows
• 2010 UW CSE Industrial Affiliates Meeting
• 2010 UW CSE Bay Area alumni event
• Larry Snyder’s valedictory lecture
• Introducing Ms. Sprocket

Read it here (pdf). Read more →

Communications of the ACM profiles UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska in January’s last byte feature.

“As an undergraduate student at Brown University, Ed Lazowska hardly seemed destined to become a leader in computer science.  Actually, he wasn’t sure what he wanted to do.  He started as an engineering student, switched to physics, and briefly considered chemistry.  Essentially, he was ‘adrift.’  (His description, not ours.)

“It wasn’t until he fell under the tutelage of computer science professor Andy van Dam that he discovered what really excited him:  the process of discovery.”

Read the article here. Read more →