Allen School News Archive

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“Today’s event will also include the announcement of the Jim Gray Chair, which drew contributions from up and down the West Coast.

“Microsoft Chairman Bill Gates, Google Chief Executive Eric Schmidt, and Marc Benioff, CEO of Microsoft rival Salesforce.com, each donated $250,000 within a few hours of being asked, according to Ed Lazowska, a University of Washington computer science professor who helped with the fundraising. A fourth donor, Mike Stonebraker, also donated $250,000. He is a Berkeley professor and founder of Ingres, a database system.

“Their donations are being matched by $1 million from the Hewlett Foundation, as in Hewlett-Packard. A mix of additional gifts includes $75,000 from Google and $200,000 from Microsoft, which is passing on a prize that Gray won.

“‘It’s another indication of how Jim spans all kinds of differences and brings people together,’ Lazowska said.”

Brier Dudley blog posts (excellent!): here, here, here, here, and here.

Joseph Joy blog post here.

O’Reilly Radar blog post here. Read more →

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“‘He was one of the world’s great listeners,’ said Ed Lazowska, a University of Washington computer scientist who in recent years had collaborated with Dr. Gray on a series of projects designed to provide powerful computational tools to scientists. ‘I thought we had a special relationship,’ he said, only to realize that there were 500 special relationships of the same kind.

“Several speakers quoted Jimi Hendrix, who once noted, ‘Knowledge speaks, but wisdom listens,’ to try to explain Jim Gray’s special qualities.

“The object lesson taught by Dr. Gray, said Dr. Lazowska, was that while there is nothing you can do about improving your I.Q., it is possible to work at becoming a terrific human being.

“‘Jim was the world’s greatest connector,’ he said. ‘He connected ideas and people and he didn’t understand boundaries, either corporate or national.'” Read more →

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“Farecast‘s sale to an unknown buyer is the latest score for superstar University of Washington computer scientist Oren Etzioni, who has watched several of his Internet companies gobbled up at attractive valuations over the past 15 years.

“Those include comparison shopping service NetBot, which was acquired by Excite in 1997, and MetaCrawler, a search engine that is now part of InfoSpace.”

Farecast, like many other UW CSE startups, included Madrona Venture Group and the WRF Capital as early investors. Read more →

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“University of Washington President Mark Emmert and UW Computer Science & Engineering host Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates for the final stop of his six-university tour, as Gates transitions from Microsoft to the Bill amp; Melinda Gates Foundation.”

A UWTV web archive of Gates’s UW speech and Q&A session. Read more →

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Bill Gates visits UW CSE and speaks to a packed house of students in the final stop on his 2008 tour of six universities.

“With his father and two sisters watching from the front row, Gates recounted for the overflow crowd the well-known story of roaming the University of Washington campus as a boy with Paul Allen, who would become the Microsoft co-founder, looking for research computers that they could use in off-hours. They were ‘stealing computer time, and now I’m giving it back,’ Gates said, to laughter.”

Seattle PI article (vs. blog) here Read more →

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CSE graduate students Alan Ritter and Tom Lin, both working with Professor Oren Etzioni in the Turing Center, have received 2008 National Defense Science & Engineering Graduate Fellowships. Read more →

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“As teenagers, Paul Allen and Bill Gates wandered the University of Washington campus, trying to pilfer free computer time. They let their minds wander to a future when computing power would essentially be free.

“Gates, in the final stop of his last university-speaking circuit as a full-time Microsoft employee, told students and faculty at the UW on Friday about what they imagined then and how much of what they dreamed of is becoming reality …

“A common thread is the UW itself. Gates acknowledged the important relationship he, Microsoft and the Foundation have with the university. It starts with his parents, who met there as students, he said. He took an algebra class there, but the main benefit was finding time to practice his skills on unused mainframe and minicomputers around the campus – before the PC era he helped create … He said the UW has received more Gates Foundation grants than any other university. Microsoft, in a typical year, hires about 100 people from the UW, making it the top source of talent for the company, Gates said … He also highlighted work at the UW on collaboration software and an innovative photo-viewing technology that became a Microsoft product called Photosynth.”

Read more →

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Three UW CSE graduate students and three recent UW CSE bachelors alums have been named recipients of 2008 National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships, the top award for graduate students in engineering and the sciences. UW CSE graduate student recipients are Laura Effinger-Dean, Brian DeRenzi, and Jessica Chang. UW CSE bachelors alum recipients are Annie Liu (now a graduate student at Caltech), Gabriel Maganis (now applying to graduate schools), and Kurtis Heimerl (now a graduate student at UC Berkeley). Read more →

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UW CSE students Julie Letchner and Kate Everitt are among 23 nationwide winners of 2008 Google Anita Borg Scholarships. Google established the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships “to honor the work of Dr. Anita Borg, a computer scientist who dedicated her professional career to increasing the participation of women and other under-represented minorities in the field of technology.” Read more →

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CSE undergraduates Julia Moore and Kathy Wei have been awarded 2008 Goldwater Scholarships. Goldwater Scholarships are the premier award for undergraduates majoring in engineering and the sciences. Read more →