The Seattle Times wakes up to Will Johnson’s Putnam Fellowship.
“The University of Washington has its first Putnam Fellow since the elite college-math competition began some 72 years ago.
“Will Johnson, 21, was one of five students from more than 4,000 who competed this year to win a fellowship. The other students came from MIT (which had two winners), Harvard and Yale.”
Read the complete article here. Read our post from two weeks ago on the superb performance of Will and other CSE and UW students here. Read more →
CSE graduate students Chloe Kiddon, Franzi Roesner, and Todd Schiller have won prestigious NSF Graduate Fellowships, along with CSE research staff member Justin Samuel.
Morgan Dixon, Sunil Garg, Peter Hornyack, Yun-En Liu, and Nell O’Rourke received Honorable Mention.
Congratulations! Read more →
Each year, roughly 1,000 3-person undergraduate teams from across the nation compete in the Mathematical Contest in Modeling. This year, a UW team including CSE’s Mark Bun was named “Outstanding Winner.” Additionally, two UW teams, one including CSE’s Dan Gnanapragasam and one including CSE’s Milda Zizyte, were declared “Meritorious.”
Congratulations to Mark, Dan, Milda, their UW teammates, and long-time team coach and professor of Mathematics Jim Morrow. Read more →
April Fools Day in CSE dawned to a stuffed Husky trapped inside the museum-piece VAX-11/780 that graces our atrium.
(Computer Engineer Barbie also joined the rogues’ gallery of former CSE chairs.) Read more →
Mark Bun, Will Johnson
Hank Levy, Dave Bacon, Mark Bun, Will Johnson, Richard Ladner
Each year the University of Washington recognizes the top student (of roughly 7,000) in the previous year’s Freshman, Sophomore, and Junior classes as class Medalists.
In January, in a double-header, CSE’s Mark Bun was named the University of Washington Sophomore Medalist, and CSE’s Will Johnson was named the University of Washington Junior Medalist.
Will and Mark were honored on Wednesday March 31 at the home of University of Washington President Mark Emmert. CSE faculty members Dave Bacon, Richard Ladner, and Hank Levy attended as their guests.
In the past decade, 12 CSE students have been recognized as University of Washington Medalists — an extraordinary record. Johnson was recently in the news for being named a Putnam Fellow for finishing among the top five students in the nation — from among 4,036 competitors — in this year’s William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Read more →
PhotoCity, a virtual capture-the-flag game devised by UW and Cornell computer scientists, starts this week. Says University Week:
“It’s an intercollegiate challenge that’s a little bit different. No balls, sticks or stadiums are involved. Any number of people can participate. The playing field is the entire campus. And the only equipment you need is a digital camera. The goal is to capture the campus, one photo at a time.
“Starting today, anybody is invited to snap digital photos of the University of Washington campus in a game of virtual capture-the-flag. Students, faculty, staff and community members are all invited to participate.
“To play, go to http://photocitygame.com to sign up. There you’ll find a campus map showing white flags that have yet to be captured, as well as colored flags that have already been claimed by one of four teams.
“Next take your camera or other device and snap photos at the flag’s location. You can submit photos instantly using the game’s iPhone application or upload photos to the game’s Web site. Points are awarded for the number of photos, the resolution and quality of the images and, most importantly, whether a player was the first to capture a flag.
“The game, PhotoCity, is a project by computer scientists looking at ways to make 3-D models of neighborhoods or cities. Reconstructions have been started at the UW and Cornell campuses, New York City, San Francisco and Seattle. The game is being organized by researchers who are using their own campuses to test a new strategy to acquire images for their models.”
See the article here. Play the game here. Learn about the phenomenal work in UW’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory here. Read more →
Greg Huang reports on a terrific Xconomy Forum, held on March 29 in the Microsoft Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering.
See Greg’s report on the top ideas here. See a terrific slideshow of the event here. Read more →
UW CSE undergraduate Rita Sodt will travel to Washington DC on April 13th to participate in the 14th annual “Posters on the Hill” program sponsored by the Council on Undergraduate Research. The goal is to expose Members of Congress to the importance of undergraduate research.
Rita works with UW Pathology professor Kristin Swanson on mathematical models to simulate brain tumor growth. The models make it possible to make predictions about how a tumor will spread, leading to improved tumor treatments. Read more →
The Seattle PI features Prefab, a breakthrough user interface customization system developed by UW CSE’s James Fogarty and Morgan Dixon.
Prefab “gives you customization by analyzing not the source code of different applications, but the pixels they display on your screen.” It “can identify text, buttons, progress bars, sliders and many other graphical elements that we’re used to seeing in user interfaces. It then can modify what is actually displayed on your monitor.”
The article includes a great video, and a link to the Prefab paper, which will receive a Best Paper Award at CHI in April.
TechFlash post here.
Computing Research Highlight of the Week here. Read more →
Will Johnson, a senior majoring in Computer Science and Mathematics, has been named a Putnam Fellow for finishing among the top five students in the nation — from among 4,036 competitors — in this year’s William Lowell Putnam Mathematical Competition. Will is the first University of Washington student to win a Putnam Fellowship since the competition was initiated in 1938.
Four other UW students finished among the top 500 in this year’s Putnam Competition, including Computer Science senior Keyun Tong and Computer Engineering freshman Steve Rutherford.
Johnson also participated in last year’s competition, where he finished sixth — “just out of the money.” Keyun finished in the top 500 last year. Steve’s older brother Michael also competed last year — he was a CSE senior at the time. (There must be something in the water in Wenatchee!)
Congratulations to these students on this remarkable achievement. Congratulations also to the other UW participants, and to the outstanding coaches — UW Mathematics professors Ioana Dumitriu and Julia Pevtsova. Read more →
