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 →
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 →
The New York Times reports on a new report from the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology, including extensive comments from UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska.
“Priorities for computing research, according to the report, should include new techniques for exploring large-scale data sets, and algorithms for machine learning. Indeed, a section of the report states that progress in software algorithms has been more important than faster computers in applications like speech recognition, natural language translation and logistics planning.
“Others areas of emphasis, the report added, should include research on privacy, cybersecurity, and pioneering uses of computing in fields like transportation, energy conservation and health care.
“Many of these problems, Mr. Lazowska said, were less suited to supercomputers than machines and software designed to quickly plumb vast amounts of data, looking for patterns and insights.
“’It’s big-data computing,’ he said. ‘And it’s typically done on Google, Amazon and Microsoft-style computer clusters.’”
Read the New York Times article here. Learn more about the PCAST report here. Read more →
UW CSE’s Steve Seitz is quoted extensively. Article here. Read more →
The President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) this afternoon released a report – Designing a Digital Future: Federally Funded Research and Development in Networking and Information Technology — assessing the status and direction of the government’s 14-agency, $4.3 billion Networking and Information Technology Research and Development (NITRD) program.
The report was presented by UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska and his PCAST Working Group co-chair David E. Shaw. Also participating in the program – held at AAAS in Washington DC – were Federal CTO Aneesh Chopra, Federal CIO Vivek Kundra, Senior Advisor for Technology and Innovation to the National Economic Council Philip Weiser, Deputy Director for Policy of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Tom Kalil, President of the Information Technology and Innovation Foundation Rob Atkinson, and Co-Founder and Chief Scientist of Akamai Technologies and MIT Professor Tom Leighton. Working Group members Susan Graham (UC Berkeley) and Ed Felten (UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus, Princeton faculty member, in incoming Chief Technologist of the Federal Trade Commission) also were in attendance.
The Computing Community Consortium blog contains an excellent summary of the event and the report, as does the Computing Research Association computing research policy blog. The report, and a webcast of the event, are available on the PCAST web page. The Executive Summary of the report is available here.
Press coverage:
- New York Times: “Smarter, Not Faster, Is the Future of Computing Research”
- Federal Computer Week: “President’s Council seeks to accelerate government network advances”
- ExecutiveGov: “President’s Technology Advisers Want $1B Ramp-up in IT Spending”
Read more →
A TechFlash post by UW CSE alumna Hélène Martin, who teaches computer science at Seattle’s Garfield High School.
“What does it take to inspire teenagers to consider computing careers? RSA encryption, a large supply of fruit snacks and a healthy competitive atmosphere may be part of the answer.
“Last Saturday, students from around the Puget Sound gathered at the University of Washington for a battle of the minds: the Puget Sound Computer Science Teachers Association’s biannual programming competition. Over 70 students ages 12 to 18 piled into an auditorium to hear UW Computer Science & Engineering lecturer Stuart Reges describe Fermat’s Little Theorem and its role in cryptography before a three-hour problem solving marathon.”
Read the full post here. Learn more about the day’s activities here. Read about Hélène’s Garfield Computer Science program here. Read more →
Peter Brook and students at the FRC workshop
On Saturday December 11, the Allen Center was hopping with high school students and teachers.
UW CSE undergraduate Peter Brook, a FIRST Robotics Competition stalwart in high school, worked with undergraduate Ashoat Tevosyan, alumnus Kevin Ross, and a number of CSE undergraduate volunteers to present a FIRST Robotics Competition programming workshop for about 70 team members from the region. A follow-on workshop, focused on autonomous mode, will take place on December 18.
UW CSE alum Hélène Martin, now the computer science teacher at Seattle’s Garfield high school, presented a Python programming workshop for high school teachers, under the auspices of the Puget Sound chapter of CSTA.
And UW CSE faculty member Stuart Reges hosted the annual Puget Sound CSTA programming contest, organized by Crystal Hess, a teacher at Tahoma High School. The competition gives students interested in programming an opportunity to meet each other and hone their skills. It also gives us an opportunity to expose students to UW CSE in the hopes that some will choose to pursue computer science in school and as a career.
Here’s a nice TechFlash article describing some of the goings-on. Read more →
