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 →
UW CSE professors Oren Etzioni and Shwetak Patel are featured in this article concerning University of Washington entrepreneurship in the latest issue of Columns, the UW alumni magazine.
The “best quote in the article” award goes to Oren – who has started multiple companies and holds the Washington Research Foundation Entrepreneurship Endowed Professorship in Computer Science & Engineering: “The obligation of venture capitalists is to make money. My professional obligation is to satisfy my curiosity. Curiosity-driven research – it’s a wonderful thing.”
Read the article here. Read more →
Among the 41 distinguished computer scientists named ACM Fellows today:
Affiliate professor Doug Burger, Microsoft Research, “For contributions to distributed microprocessor architectures and memory systems”
Ph.D. alumna Anne Condon, University of British Columbia, “For contributions to complexity theory and leadership in advancing women in computing”
Ph.D. stepchild Mike Dahlin, University of Texas at Austin, “For contributions to the science and engineering of large-scale distributed computer systems” (Mike was a student of Tom Anderson’s when Tom was a faculty member at UC Berkeley)
Ph.D. alumna Carla Ellis, Duke University, “For contributions to techniques for energy management in mobile devices, and for service to the computing community”
Ph.D. alumnus Stefan Savage, University of California, San Diego, “For contributions to large scale systems and network security”
And, in the “all in the family” category, Frank Tompa, University of Waterloo, brother of UW CSE faculty member Martin Tompa, “For contributions to text-dominated and semi-structured data management”
ACM announcement here. Read more →
US News has a new college ranking category this year: “Best Colleges for Shoppers.” We have only one thing to say: “Who Da Man?!?!”
(Actually, we have something else to say: The National Academies would have crapped this up.)
See here and here. Read more →
Siobhan Quinn
Kendal Sager
Dot Diva is a website built by WGBH Boston to expose high school women to the power of computer science to change the world.
Dot Diva has just rolled out fifteen great profiles of young women using their computer science education in interesting ways. Two of them are UW CSE alums: Siobhan Quinn and Kendal Sager.
Siobhan works at Foursquare in New York City, following several years at Google and Blogger.com. She says she didn’t think she’d be interested in computer science, but took our intro course as a requirement. “I was hooked after the first project, which had us build characters that walked across the screen. I wrote code to give my characters colorful clothes, which earned me extra credit.”
Kendal is a character technical director at DreamWorks. Kendal makes it possible for animated characters to have natural-looking moves and expressions. “I take a 3-D model of a character and put a ‘skeleton’ in it so that the animator can make it come to life.” Read more →
A good time was had by … even Pete. See Bruce Hemingway’s photographs here.
Twenty five years ago, the faculty skit was a lot funnier, mostly because it included things you wouldn’t attempt today. Read more →
