Allen School News

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 →

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”