Allen School News

UW CSE’s Raj Rao, whose research focus is computational neuroscience, undertook a “labor of love” project to decipher ancient Indus script.  A recent article in IEEE Computer presents a nice overview of this incredibly interesting project. Read more →

Yoky Matsuoka, Anne Proctor (Ciara's mom), Ciara Proctor, Jill Ross (NCWIT), Lucy Sanders (NCWIT), and Lauren Dougherty (Mattel, back to camera) in the Atrium of the Allen Center

Yoky Matsuoka and Ciara Proctor in the UW CSE Neurobotics Laboratory with graduate student Brian Dellon

UW CSE’s Yoky Matsuoka was selected as one of “10 Women to Watch in 2010” by Mattel, in connection with a Barbie promotion.  (You’ll recall that Mattel is rolling out “Computer Engineer Barbie” later this year.)  The 10 are an amazing group — check it out here.

In connection with this, and in support of “Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work® Day,” Yoky mentored Illinois high school student Ciara Proctor on April 14.  Representatives of the National Center for Women & Information Technology (NCWIT), who nominated Ciara, participated.

Congratulations to Yoky and Ciara!

See a KCPQ-13 video news segment on Ciara’s visit to UW here. Read more →

Ed Lazowska

UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska has received the 2009 ACM Distinguished Service Award “for his wide-ranging service to the computing community and his long-standing advocacy for this community at the national level.”

ACM’s press release goes on to note:  “Lazowska served as co-chair of the President’s Information Technology Advisory Committee (PITAC) from 2003-05, where he championed the importance of computing in achieving federal priorities. He served for six years on the National Research Council’s Computer Science and Telecommunications Board (CSTB) and made major contributions to NRC and CSTB studies involving the information technology innovation ecosystem, the role of information technology in improving learning and in countering terrorism, and the management of university intellectual property.

“Lazowska also chaired the Board of Directors of the Computing Research Association (CRA), the NSF CISE Advisory Committee, and the DARPA Information Science And Technology (ISAT) Study Group. Recently, he was instrumental in creating and chairing the Computing Community Consortium, an NSF-sponsored effort to engage the computing research community in envisioning more audacious research challenges.”

For his technical accomplishments, Lazowska has been elected a Member the National Academy of Engineering, a Fellow of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, and a Fellow of ACM, the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS).  For his service contributions, Lazowska has previously received the Computing Research Association Distinguished Service Award, the ACM Presidential Award, and the University of Washington Outstanding Public Service Award. Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. students Yaw Anokwa and Yingyi Bu are among twenty-two exceptional Ph.D. students from across the nation selected to be part of Yahoo!’s 2010 Key Scientific Challenges (KSC) Program.

Congratulations to Yaw and Yingyi!

Addendum:  It has been observed that Yahoo! appears to favor students whose names begin with Y.  In future years we will adjust our nomination process accordingly. Read more →

UW CSE’s Yoky Matsuoka has been highlighted as one of “The Barbie® ’10 Women to Watch in 2010.'”  In connection with this, Yoky will mentor high school student Ciara Proctor in support of “Take Our Daughters And Sons To Work® Day” on April 14. Read more →

On Monday April 12, the Washington State Senate took a few minutes away from cutting the University of Washington’s budget to honor UW CSE and mathematics senior Will Johnson for his extraordinary performance in this year’s William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.

Congratulations, once again, to Will, to the other UW Putnam competitors, and to the team coaches, UW Mathematics professors Ioana Dumitriu and Julia Pevtsova.

And many thanks to Senators Rosemary McAuliffe, Ed Murray, Jeanne Kohl-Welles, Margarita Prentice, Joe McDermott, Adam Kline, Randy Gordon, Tracey Eide, Karen Keiser, Dale Brandland, Bob Morton, Randi Becker, and Ken Jacobsen for sponsoring Senate Resolution 8725 honoring Will.

Read the resolution here.

(Will has been recognized many times recently, both for his Putnam achievement and for being named the University of Washington Junior Medalist.  All have been chronicled on these pages, using the same photo.  Will’s mom probably wishes he’d worn a fancier t-shirt for his mug shot when he became a Computer Science major …) Read more →

This weekend’s lead editorial in the Seattle Times celebrates UW CSE and Mathematics senior Will Johnson’s remarkable accomplishment in being named a Putnam Fellow, for finishing among the top 5 of 4,036 competitors in this year’s William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition.

“William Johnson, a University of Washington mathematics and computer science major, is the pride of the university, his hometown Kenmore, and Inglemoor High School.  He is the absolute, undisguised envy of a lot of very smart people around the globe.

“Johnson will be known forever and all time as a Putnam Fellow, a winner of The William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition, hosted every December by The Mathematical Association of America.

“This is an extraordinary achievement with the capacity to delight the rest of us …”

Once again, hearty congratulations to Will!

Read the editorial here.  Read about the amazing accomplishments of Will and many other UW CSE students here.  Learn why you should major in computer science or computer engineering here. Read more →

UW CSE Ph.D. student Yaw Anokwa today received the 2010 Antonio Pizzigati Prize for Software in the Public Interest for his work on Open Data Kit.

“This year’s Pizzigati Prize winner, Yaw Anokwa, will be accepting the award on behalf of a team of University of Washington doctoral students who have crafted, in Open Data Kit, an open source application that unleashes the mobile phone’s social change potential.

“The 28-year-old Anokwa and his fellow developers Carl Hartung and Waylon Brunette began their work on Open Data Kit in 2008. Released last spring, the software turns cell phones into tools for collecting data ‘in the field’ and moving that data, with just a few finger swipes, to central Web-based servers or local computers.

“With Open Data Kit, grassroots activists can capture and export text, photos, video, audio, barcodes — even location. This imaginative software, observes one of this year’s Pizzigati Prize judges, ’empowers anyone with a little technical acumen, anywhere in the world, to collect data in regions where it’s hard to assess needs or document injustices.'”

Congratulations to Yaw and the entire ODK team, led by UW CSE faculty member Gaetano Borriello.  The ODK project was incubated at Google Seattle – a hugely successful and high-impact collaboration, and a great demonstration “the power of the right platform.”

Read the announcement here.  Learn more about Open Data Kit here. Read more →

Eric Arendt

Franzi Roesner

UW CSE celebrated the donors and recipients of 27 endowed undergraduate scholarships and 17 endowed graduate fellowships at a luncheon on April 7.  In the photos at right, graduate student Franzi Roesner and undergraduate student Eric Arendt address the throng.

See more photographs of the event here.  Commemorative brochure here. Read more →

Carnegie Mellon Today, the CMU alumni magazine, has run a wonderful profile on UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus Adrien Treuille, now a faculty member in CMU’s School of Computer Science.

“Steam evaporating. A shirt creasing. Hair mussed up. Wind blowing. Crowds moving. These are physical minutiae of the human experience that go largely unnoticed in our daily lives. Yet, what if you are trying to recreate those experiences on a computer so the virtual world you construct seems absolutely faithful to our perception of everyday reality? In that case, getting these small, deceivingly complex details right takes on huge importance.

“There’s a whole lot of math, physics, and computer theory inherent in that challenge. For Treuille, there’s poetry, and maybe even some magic involved, too. ‘It’s totally enchanting to look out your window and see all of these things happening—snow falling, plants bending in the wind—and to ask yourself not only how does it work, but how would I build these things?’ says Treuille, who joined the faculty of the School of Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon one year ago as an assistant professor in the computer graphics group.”

Read the full article here. Read more →