Allen School News

After enrolling at the University of Washington, Ayan Gupta found himself fielding questions about getting into college. Family and friends who had children in high school often asked him for advice. A few were using college counselors, while most were not. Gupta saw how the use of a counselor could make or break an application. 

“The difference in preparedness and outcomes was evident,” he said. “Even though we live in a pretty affluent area, access to college advising is sparse and often difficult to come by.”

That gave Gupta, a Redmond native, and his fellow Allen School student and co-founder Faraz Qureshi the idea for Cledge, a college advising platform that uses artificial intelligence to help students plan their path forward — without the need to hire an expensive private advisor. The platform gathers data on areas such as career goals, extracurriculars and scholarships, and provides recommendations on how to improve one’s chances in the application process. 

In just two years since Cledge’s founding, their idea has borne fruit. The team, which also includes Allen School junior Ricky Liao and sophomores Scott Wynn and Joe Sluis, recently won the Herbert B. Jones Foundation Grand Prize of $25,000 at the 26th annual Dempsey Startup Competition organized by the UW Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship. In last year’s competition, Cledge had made the Sweet 16 round. Following the startup’s success, Gupta said that Cledge is looking to expand its team and bring on other interested students across the university.

Not bad for a young startup for which there was no shortage of challenges. 

“We have had to be scrappy since we don’t have much money to work with as students,” Gupta said. “We have learned to create connections and network to get the resources we need.”

During the competition, the team members received plenty of advice, from changing their business model to modifying the website. But they found success when zeroing in on ideas that aligned with their broader mission statement. 

“The competition helped Ayan and me really focus on what we needed to improve with Cledge’s pitch and not someone else’s dream for what the company could be,” said Qureshi, who, like Gupta, was a junior at the time of the event.

Liao, one of the lead developers for Cledge, agreed that the competition brought out the best in the team and its product. With members dealing with exams and homework on the side, he recalled, it was difficult to collaborate at times. But eventually they found a workflow that clicked, and the outcome was more than he could have hoped for, he said. 

“I remember walking into the pitching hall and being blown away by all the amazing innovative ideas that were being showcased, and I was proud to have been among them with Cledge,” Liao added. “I had learned a lot more about the problem that Cledge is here to tackle after many encounters trying to pitch the product as well as facing questions. Throughout the entire competition, my confidence in our technology had only grown.”

For Wynn, whose background is in theoretical computer science and mathematics, the competition was an opportunity to take his skills from the classroom and apply them to a real-world endeavor. 

“With the competition, I realized that through algorithms, mathematics could form the foundation for countless groundbreaking innovations in technology,” Wynn said. “Which I hope to contribute to through leading Cledge’s Student Metrics team and much of the algorithm development.”

The Allen School was well-represented at the competition. In addition to Cledge, the fourth-place team, Waltz, featured students from the Allen School’s 2023 Entrepreneurship course. Waltz built a platform for media companies and content creators to easily translate and dub content into more than 100 languages, while also maintaining the emotion and intonation of the speaker.

“It’s exciting to see entrepreneurship blossoming among Allen School undergraduates,” said professor Ed Lazowska, the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair Emeritus at the Allen School and one of the instructors for the Entrepreneurship course. 

Gupta had been a student in the course in 2022, Lazowska added, and was a teaching assistant for the course in 2023. Read more about Cledge in a related GeekWire story here. Read more →

On Friday, June 9, more than 4,000 family and friends from near and far gathered on the University of Washington campus to celebrate the Allen School’s 2023 graduates. The celebration commenced with a casual open house and meet-and-greet with faculty and staff in the Paul G. Allen Center and Bill & Melinda Gates Center. It culminated in a formal event in the Hec Edmundson Pavilion at the Alaskan Airlines Arena, where graduates made the brief journey across the stage to mark the start of a new journey as Allen School alumni.

‘Remember tonight‘

In her remarks opening the evening’s program, Magdalena Balazinska, professor and director of the Allen School, observed that most of those seated before her in their caps and gowns started their Allen School education prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Balazinska congratulated them for overcoming the challenges and isolation of the intervening years to emerge victorious. She also noted that, while this milestone is cause for celebration, still more challenges — as well as opportunities — await them. And they should fear neither.

“When opportunities arise, take them. If you hesitate because opportunities are often scary and they often look like a lot of work, remember tonight. Remember how loud your families, your friends, the faculty, the staff have cheered for you, how much they believe in you, and take the opportunity,” Balazinska advised them. “Like generations that preceded you, you will face personal challenges, and the world around you will face challenges. Remember: you have a very strong education. Use that education, your passion, your kindness, your cleverness to have an impact on the people and the world around you.”

Recognizing the impact of those who came before

As if to illustrate the point, the Allen School welcomed back two graduates who have applied their education, along with their passion, kindness and cleverness, in very different ways: 2023 Alumni Impact Award recipients Janet Davis (Ph.D., ‘06) and Paul Mikesell (B.S., ‘96).

Allen School professor and Bill & Melinda Gates Chair Emeritus Ed Lazowska noted that the award is not only intended to honor outstanding alumni for their contributions throughout their careers, but also to remind the new graduates that they are joining a long and distinguished line of former Allen School students who have built on their education to change the world. Davis’ contributions include building Whitman College’s computer science program from the ground up to reflect that institution’s liberal arts traditions. Mikesell helped build scalable data storage company Isilon Systems into a multi-billion dollar company before expanding into agricultural technology by founding Carbon Robotics, a Seattle-based startup whose LaserWeeder provides farmers with a cost-effective, environmentally friendly alternative to pesticides.

‘Take advantage of the doors that open’

This year’s graduation speaker, Barbara Liskov, traveled from Boston to share her wisdom and encouragement with the newly minted graduates. Liskov is an Institute Professor of MIT — the highest institutional honor bestowed upon faculty — and received the A.M. Turing Award from the Association of Computing Machinery for her contributions to the theory and practice of programming language and systems design. She is also, as Lazowska noted in welcoming her to the stage, ”a wonderful human being — an example of what we should all strive to be.”

Before she touched down in Seattle, Liskov was asked what message she hoped the newly minted graduates would take away from their big day. 

“One thing that strikes me when I look back on my career is the importance of the unexpected,” Liskov explained. “Doors close and doors open. It’s important in your career not to be discouraged when doors close and to take advantage of the doors that open. You may end up doing something quite different from where you started, and this is absolutely ok.”

Liskov delivered that message and more to those gathered in the arena, drawing from a career spanning six decades. As the first woman in computer science at MIT — at a time when there were only 10 women on the entire faculty numbering nearly 1,000 — Liskov was a trailblazer in more ways than one. Having reluctantly accepted a position with industry when she couldn’t land a faculty position following her own graduation with a Ph.D. from Stanford, she relayed how she turned that disappointment into opportunity by transitioning her research from artificial intelligence to systems. 

Noting that where she ended up “was not at all where I might have predicted when I got started,” Liskov suggested that many of the graduates seated before her are likely to experience the same. And while they should not be deterred by detours, they should remain true to themselves.

“There will be setbacks, and there will be opportunities,” she said. “When there are setbacks, you want to persevere. When there are opportunities, you want to decide whether it’s a good idea for you to accept them. And these decisions that you make, you need to make by thinking about what’s going to work for you.”

Liskov also hoped the graduates would think about what that work will mean for the world at large. Pointing to technologies that enabled remote learning during the pandemic, computer-assisted surgery, and other contributions, she noted that computer science has created “marvelous opportunities.” But it also has created problems like fake news, bias stemming from the naive use of machine learning, and potential misuse of recent developments in AI.

“As you do your job, think about what’s ethical to do. If you develop tools, think about tools that will be good for humanity,” Liskov advised, noting that the entire field has an obligation to contribute its technical knowledge to mitigating such problems.

“I had a wonderful career. I had a lot of fun,” she concluded, “and I hope all of you have the same in your careers.”

Celebrating scholarship and service

Outstanding Senior Awards

Liskov’s words would have resonated with the recipients of the Allen School’s Outstanding Senior Awards, which recognize superior scholarship, potential for leadership and the ability to both apply and create new knowledge. While it is a nearly impossible task to choose from among the outstanding graduates each year — all of whom would have demonstrated some combination of those qualities to be admitted in the first place — five were singled out for their extraordinary contributions.

Maggie Jiang distinguished herself as an insightful and creative researcher in the Allen School’s Security and Privacy Research Lab who wasn’t afraid to ask questions about technology and scientific methodology. Operating at a level associated with experienced Ph.D. students, Jiang contributed to the publication of a longitudinal study of public opinion around the use of contact tracing apps to slow the spread of COVID-19 and concerns over individual privacy. She will continue on at the Allen School as a student in the combined B.S./M.S. program.

Sarah Khan was honored for her contributions as a teaching assistant for CSE Startup, a course for first-year students focused on problem solving, communication and computational thinking skills. In that role, Khan contributed to the development of curriculum for the Allen School Scholars Program and STARS with an emphasis on interdisciplinarity and the diversity of student experiences. Khan, who double-majored in computer science and education, communities and organizations, will continue her studies in the Allen School’s B.S./M.S. program.

Lansong (Ryan) Li was recognized for his remarkable contributions to interdisciplinary research projects bridging natural language processing and social computing. As a member of the Social Futures Lab, Li worked with UW and external collaborators to develop a harm-reduction framework for assessing and triaging misinformation online. He also explored how to leverage state-of-the-art neural network models to assess misinformation believability. Li will pursue a master’s degree at Stanford University following his graduation from the Allen School.

Alex Mallen is known as an ambitious and talented researcher with a passion for AI safety. As a member of the H2Lab, he spearheaded a project that sought to identify when large language models’ outputs can become untrustworthy — revealing his skills at building diagnostic datasets and running experiments in the process. Mallen, who is an active member of the grassroots research collective EleutherAI, previously earned a prestigious Goldwater Scholarship on his way to earning his undergraduate degree in just three years at the Allen School. 

Katherine Murphy earned recognition as an outstanding leader as a teaching assistant for Software Design and Implementation for nine quarters. Having taken over the course software infrastructure when many experienced TAs were about to graduate, she worked with the rest of the teaching team to keep the course running smoothly and ensure continuity across multiple instructors and offerings. Although many of her contributions were behind the scenes, Murphy was responsible for the positive experiences many of her fellow graduates had in the course.

Best Senior Thesis Award

Each year, the school recognizes an undergraduate student for original research contributions through the Best Senior Thesis Award. The recipient of this award has completed an independent research project under the supervision of one or more faculty members culminating in a thesis presenting their results. The school received eight nominations this year, from which it selected one award winner and one honorable mention recipient.

Ximing Lu received the 2023 Best Senior Thesis Award for “The Art of Algorithm and Knowledge in the Era of Extreme-Scale Neural Models.” In her thesis, Lu demonstrated how to empower small to moderate sized neural language models to work competitively against industry-scale models. A prolific researcher working under the supervision of Yejin Choi, the Brett Helsel Career Development Professor in the Allen School and Senior Research Director at AI2, Lu has already published multiple papers in the preeminent venues for natural language processing. She is currently pursuing her Ph.D. at the Allen School.

Matt Deitke earned an honorable mention for his thesis, “Scaling Embodied Artificial Intelligence: Massive 3D Simulations to Real-World Distributional Robustness.” That work, which Deitke completed under the supervision of professor Ali Farhadi, explored ways to improve robots’ abilities to generalize to novel scenarios.

Undergraduate Service Awards

Since 2011, the Allen School has recognized graduating seniors who devoted their time and energy to building community and benefiting their fellow students through various events and activities throughout their time on campus. This year, the school recognized five outstanding graduates with Undergraduate Service Awards.

Camila Christensen (B.S., ‘22) has been “an amazing Allen School ambassador” — particularly to transfer students. Christensen served as a teaching assistant for the school’s transfer seminar, which supports newly arrived students to acclimate to the program, in addition to supporting various outreach efforts and serving as a frequent volunteer for Allen School events.

Described as “an incredible leader,” Hayoung Jung has been an engaged member of the student group Computing Community (COM^2) throughout his time on campus. He applied his leadership skills during the pandemic to analyzing and reporting on how COVID-19 was impacting his fellow students. Jung, who double-majored in computer science and political science, was recognized in the Husky 100 last year.

Samuel Levy has served as a developer for Impact++, a student group focused on the intersection of computing and social good, and as an Allen School peer adviser, assisting his fellow students with advice and resources. For the past year, Levy has served as a lead peer adviser and is known as “an exceptional leader, advocate, and student employee.”

Eman Mustefa co-founded GEN1, a student group focused on building community among Allen School students who are the first in their families to pursue a four-year degree. Passionate about supporting women of color in computing, Mustefa has also “generously stepped up, time and time again” to share her experiences with K-12 students as an Allen School Ambassador.

Earning a reputation as an “outreach and recruitment rockstar,” Lynn Nguyen volunteered for more high school visits and information sessions than any other member of the Allen School Ambassadors team. A community-minded leader who is exceptional at supporting students, Nguyen is also described as the glue that held various events and activities together.

A tip of the hat to great teaching

Bob Bandes Memorial Awards

Teaching assistants play a vital role in the Allen School’s educational mission, serving not only its own majors but also thousands more students across campus who enroll in computing courses. More than 750 students served as Allen school TA’s in 2022-2023, supporting student learning through office hours, tutoring and review sessions while assisting instructors with various course administration duties. As teaching professor Justin Hsia observed, “We could not do what we do without you.” During the annual graduation celebration, the school recognizes outstanding TA’s from the preceding academic year with the Bob Bandes Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching. Out of over 700 total nominations spread out over 200 individual TA’s, the school selected three winners and three runners up who went above and beyond to provide a supportive student experience.

Winner Anthony Chung has supported six different courses over nine quarters as an undergraduate TA, including multiple courses in the Allen School’s Introduction to Computer Programming series, Data Structures and Algorithms, and Distributed Systems. Chung was lauded for his “clear intent to do right by all of his students” through his diligence in providing them with clear feedback and consistent grading. He was also proactive in identifying areas where students were struggling, offering solutions such as the creation of alternative visualizations to assigned problems and hosting one-on-one Zoom calls with students outside of office hours.

Fellow winner Wen Qiu has been a TA for 12 quarters, first as an undergraduate and then as a graduate student in the Allen School’s B.S./M.S. program, for Web Programming, Data Programming and Intermediate Data Programming. In addition, she served as the instructor for the latter course last summer. Known for her going to “tremendous lengths” to share her expertise not only with students in her courses but also her fellow TA’s, Qiu earned accolades for “seeing something needed to be done and jumping in and doing it.” One student nominator noted, “She would be an amazing professor!” Qiu also founded and served as president of the Association for Computing Education (ACE).

The final winner, Sylvia Wang, served as a TA or head TA for nine quarters across five different courses, including Intermediate Data Programming, Data Structures and Parallelism, Systems Programming and Database System Internals. Wang’s teaching style resonated with her students, who described her as kind, encouraging, supportive, patient and helpful. “She stays with each student until they understand the concepts they’re struggling with and does not let any student leave with any confusion.” She was also an excellent advocate for both students and other TA’s, including being proactive in identifying how an assignment that multiple students struggled with could be adjusted to improve the experience of everyone in the class.

Honorable mentions went to Melissa Lin, Sudheesh Singanamalla and Ben Zhang.

Lin, a student in the B.S./M.S. program, has served as a TA for eight quarters spanning the introductory series, Foundations of Computing I and II, and Data Structures and Algorithms and earning students’ appreciation for giving 110% to her students — even at 8:30 in the morning.

Singanamalla, a Ph.D. student, served as a TA for graduate-level courses in Computer Systems and Computer Security and Privacy, where his wisdom and compassion for students “shined brightly in all aspects of his work.”

Zhang, an undergraduate, TA’ed for multiple offerings of the Foundations of Computing series, earning plaudits for being thorough and proactive, making his sections “very welcoming and open” and responding to questions that seem ambiguous with examples generated from his own understanding.

Undergraduate Teaching Awards

Each year, student leaders in COM^2 — formerly the UW chapter of the Association for Computing Machinery — recognize selected faculty members for contributing to the Allen School’s educational mission and enriching the student experience through the Undergraduate Teaching Awards. This year, the group highlighted two professors for their role in “shaping our minds and inspiring our achievements.”

Andrea Coladangelo, a professor in the Allen School’s Cryptography and Theory of Computation groups, was honored for his first quarter of teaching. “He has worked tirelessly this quarter to build up the quantum computing course, expanding the frontiers of knowledge for his students,” COM^2 Chair Vidisha Gupta said.

“What distinguishes him, however, is his ability to discern the ‘real’ question behind the question.” 

Known not only for his technical expertise but also for his kindness and generosity with his time, Coladangelo earned students’ admiration for his willingness to provide one-on-one help and to modify his teaching to better accommodate his class.

Teaching professor Ryan Maas (M.S.’18) was recognized for his impact that reaches far beyond the classroom.

Maas is known for his “captivating lectures” that make challenging concepts seem easy. But what truly sets him apart, Gupta noted, is his extraordinary care and dedication to his students.

“No question is too repetitive or silly for him, as he treats each inquiry with patience and thoughtfulness,” she said. “Ryan’s commitment to his students’ success extends beyond teaching, as he provides guidance and support to help them excel academically and grow as individuals.”

Congratulations to all of our Allen School graduates! And remember — our doors will always be open to you! Read more →

When the applause faded, Michael Gu sat down, shook his sleeves from his wrists and nodded to the conductor. Violins rose around him, waiting. After another pause, he began to play. 

About 20 minutes later, following an energetic account of Franz Liszt’s Piano Concerto No.1 in E-flat major, he stood up, shook the conductor’s hand and bowed. Applause greeted him once again, this time accompanied by cheers. 

It’s a sound that Gu, a first-year Allen School student, has become well acquainted with during his brief time at UW. Gu, who also studies piano performance, won the UW School of Music’s annual concerto competition in February. His rendition of Liszt’s Piano Concerto No. 1, performed with the UW Symphony in April, celebrated that victory. The concert also featured performances from the other concerto competition winners. 

Does he ever get nervous out there? For the precocious Gu, who has been playing piano since he was little, performing music has become second nature, a chance to enter “a zone of clarity and focus.” When he lifts his hands over the keys, he said, everything — actions, thoughts, sounds — simply flows. The scenery melts away and there’s just the music left. 

These days, he’s focused on finding that same level of comfort when he lifts his hands over a computer keyboard. Liszt, at least right now, comes easier than lines of code. 

“Although I’ve had my fair share of terrifyingly difficult experiences with piano,” he said, smiling, “I would have to say that coding is harder.”

But Gu has jumped at opportunities to improve his skills. In 2021, he studied a surface modeling technique at Oregon State University in a graduate computer graphics lab. He then implemented the technique, which maintains a model’s natural movements while minimizing stretching, into a program that creates a hierarchical skeletal system for a 2-D mesh model, eventually presenting his findings to a panel of mentors, graduate students and local professionals. 

“This was my first real introduction to the world of computer science,” he said. “It really inspired me to delve deeper into the field and ultimately settle on it as a major.”

At UW, he’s combined his passions and notes that art and science overlap in more ways than one. 

“While music and computer science may seem to be different, they’re actually quite similar in that they involve creative ability,” he said. “I find it to be quite an interesting pair, as you have a combination of the classical and the modern.”

He’s used both to broaden his horizons and strengthen the communities around him. Early in his UW career, for instance, he founded DEV[0], a student organization focused on app and software development, and is currently an acting co-chair. 

During the pandemic in 2020, Gu saw the impact that music could have on communities in need. He started Musicians for Humanity, a nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness for global humanitarian causes through music and art, helping raise hundreds of dollars to support the World Health Organization’s COVID-19 Relief Fund as well as for high school music programs in his home state of Oregon. 

This past year, the organization opened a second branch at another high school in Gu’s hometown. Gu, who also organizes and performs in benefit concerts, said he has plans to expand Musicians for Humanity to other locations along the West Coast and use donations to provide free music instruction to underserved populations. He hopes the organization’s efforts will help make music education more accessible. 

“I’ve always been a proponent of the fact that music can heal and bring together groups of people,” he said. “As a musician, I felt that I could use my years of experience to try and make a difference.”

For Gu, making a difference is worth more than a round of applause. 

“The ability to have a creative mindset helps us become better coders, artists and people,” he said. “It has been such a great experience to share my passion for music with others and give back to the community that shaped who I am today.”  Read more →

“There is not one area of the school that she does not touch in some way.”

“She” is Jennifer Worrell, the Allen School’s director of finance and administration. And that observation was made by a colleague advancing her successful nomination for a 2023 Professional Staff Award from the University of Washington College of Engineering. Each year, the College of Engineering Awards honor faculty, research and teaching assistants, and staff like Worrell whose extraordinary contributions benefit the college community.

Now approaching two decades of service at the Allen School, Worrell started out as an office manager and moved into successively more complex roles — event coordinator, grants manager, lead grants manager — before stepping into her current position in 2017. In highlighting her achievements since taking over as the school’s first new DFA in more than 30 years, the College noted that Worrell’s “combination of warmth and organizational know-how contributes to a culture that benefits her team and the Allen School as a whole.” 

That combination makes Worrell so effective at her job, some in the school are convinced that she possesses special powers. 

“Jen is like the great and powerful Oz,” said Kellus Stone, operations analyst at the Allen School and author of the aforementioned letter. “She’s the woman behind the curtain who makes sure everything runs smoothly as folks go about their business without giving a second thought as to how it all works.”

“How it all works” has only become more complex in recent years owing to the roll-out of new systems for managing everything from payroll to print jobs that coincided with a period of rapid growth. That growth has led to the school doubling its degree production, doubling its physical space, and surpassing $75 million in yearly expenditures — with roughly half going toward research.

“Jen has been a key contributor to the Allen School’s success and why it is thriving and growing,” said Megan Russell, assistant director of human resources. “Any time there is a need for someone to fill a gap, Jen raises her hand and says, ‘I’ll do it.’ When an employee says they’re overwhelmed, she responds with, ‘What can I do to help?’ 

“She will never take any credit for it, but she deserves it,” Russell continued. “We are all better for her presence here.”

Despite her can-do attitude and willingness to fill any gap, Worrell would have been forgiven for questioning her presence here after enduring a trial by fire immediately upon ascending to her position. When she took the reins of the school’s Business Office, her first task was to implement and train her team on a new online payroll system, Workday, that was being rolled out across the University. If that wasn’t sufficiently daunting, her second task was to fill two open positions responsible for entering Allen School payroll into this same system after the incumbents left shortly after the big roll-out.

There were times, in those early days, that Worrell wasn’t sure how she would make it past lunch, let alone to the end of the day. But make it she did, repeatedly rising to the occasion while overseeing not only the Business Office, but also Research Administration and Human Resources. Two more teams, Facilities & Operations and Events, would be added to her portfolio later. Each time she was called upon for advice or assistance in response to a crisis, she would answer with a genuine smile on her face — and a genuine concern for the wellbeing of her colleagues.

“Jen leads the entire business administration team, and yet when I have meetings with her, she is fully present and engaged, offering helpful solutions and encouragement,” said Amber Cochran, assistant director of events for the Allen School. “She has the ability to make each staff member feel seen and valued.”

She also leads by example as the de facto head of the Staff Executive Committee, a group that comprises staff directors and assistant directors responsible for various functions that make up the administrative and operational side of the school. This group, which encompasses not only Worrell’s functional teams but also Undergraduate Student Services, Graduate Student Services, Technical Support, External Relations and Communications, engages in high-level organizational planning and develops unified policies and procedures along with consistent messaging across the entire school.

The role is challenging enough on a good day; it reached a whole new level when COVID-induced remote working scattered those directors, assistant directors and their teams across the region — and sometimes even farther afield. And yet, Worrell worked with her colleagues to quickly adapt, taking steps to ensure staff maintained a sense of connection and had the resources they needed remain both agile and resilient in the face of uncertainty.

“Jen is the linchpin — she is the central pillar of our school,” said Magdalena Balazinska, professor and director of the Allen School. “She has very deep expertise and can answer any question on almost any topic. We couldn’t have achieved our current growth without her help and leadership.”

Worrell is extending that help and leadership to assist with the latest overhaul of campus-wide systems known as the University of Washington Finance Transformation (UWFT). Her colleague Debbie Carnes, who serves with her on the Process Transformation Team, has witnessed firsthand how Worrell has employed her professional skills and personal empathy to assist UWFT program staff in understanding how changes to the administration of research grants and other fiscal processes are likely to impact operational staff college-wide.

”Jen’s longtime service to the College, ability to come up with innovative and creative solutions, resourcefulness and positivity are an asset to us all,” said Carnes, administrator for the UW Department of Chemical Engineering. “I cannot think of anyone more deserving of this award than Jen.”

Aside from her well-earned reputation as a skilled leader and a veritable fountain of knowledge about how the University works, perhaps the greatest endorsement Worrell has collected is that of colleagues who point to the time and care that she gives them — even when she is busy. Make that especially when she is busy.

“Not long ago, I ran into Jen in the hallway as she was rushing from one meeting to the next. Despite that, she stopped and asked me how I was doing,” recalled Stone. “I started to answer and then stopped myself and apologized, as I could see she was in a hurry. ‘It’s okay,’ she replied with a smile. ‘You are important, too.’

“I believe that encapsulates who Jen is at her core,” continued Stone. “She is one of a kind.”

Members of the Allen School will gather to celebrate Worrell’s recognition, and that of UW Distinguished Staff Award recipient Chloe Dolese Mandeville, at a reception on June 14. 

Learn more about the College of Engineering Awards here.

Read more →

Champion, advocate, role model…based on her colleagues’ descriptions, Chloe Dolese Mandeville sounds like a regular Girl Scout. Which, it so happens, she is: for the past two and a half years, the Allen School’s Assistant Director for Diversity & Access has volunteered as a troop leader for the Girl Scouts of Western Washington, hosting activities on campus and inspiring girls to see computing as a potential career path.

It is but one example of the many ways in which Dolese Mandeville has helped students to engage with the field — efforts that have now earned her a 2023 Distinguished Staff Award from the University of Washington. Part of the UW Awards of Excellence, the Distinguished Staff Award is the highest honor bestowed upon staff by the University. 

As the saying goes, not all heroes wear capes.

“Chloe’s responsibilities are enormous — hers is definitely not a job for a mere mortal,” said professor Dan Grossman, Vice Director of the Allen School. “But she built a strong team to help her get it done, and she is a phenomenal leader. People love working with her.”

After graduating from UW with a bachelor’s in psychology with a minor in education, Dolese Mandeville joined the Allen School’s undergraduate advising team in 2016 to assist students in charting their own educational journeys. She took a particular interest in transfer students and the unique challenges they face in acclimating to the UW, teaching a seminar designed to help ease the transition. She simultaneously worked on a transition of her own as she pursued a master’s degree in leadership in higher education. 

That degree would come in handy when, a mere two months after completing it, she took the reins of the school’s Diversity & Access program.

At the time, the Allen School’s undergraduate program had earned a national reputation for its success in recruiting and retaining women in computer science. But gender was the only area in which the school seemed to be making headway when it came to the breadth of students it serves. Not long before Dolese Mandeville assumed her present role, Jeff Dean (Ph.D., ‘96), Google Senior Fellow and Chief Scientist, and his wife Heidi Hopper approached school leaders with a challenge to extend the same energy and fervor they had devoted to growing the school’s gender diversity to other underrepresented groups. 

Dolese Mandeville embraced that challenge — and ran with it. Among her first priorities was morphing the school’s K-12 outreach programs from “broad and shallow” to “narrow and deep” by building substantive, sustainable partnerships with a set of schools and community organizations that directly served student populations the school was trying — and to that point, largely failing — to reach. With this new approach, the school soon surpassed the Seattle campus-wide average in the proportion of students who are Black or African American, from economically disadvantaged backgrounds, or among the first in their families to pursue a four-year degree. Previously, the share of the school’s students who identified with these groups was half, or less, than that of the campus as a whole.

“We are serving an increasingly diverse undergraduate population that is more reflective of the face of Washington and of technology users around the world,” said professor Ed Lazowska, Bill & Melinda Gates Chair Emeritus in Computer Science & Engineering in the Allen School. “Chloe has been instrumental in this remarkable transformation. We wouldn’t have made this progress without her.”

The notion of transformation comes up repeatedly in conversations about Dolese Mandeville’s impact. It is among the many superlatives offered by members of the Allen School’s undergraduate student services team who work alongside her every day.

“Chloe’s compassion, skill, talent and hard work have truly had a transformational effect on the Allen School student experience,” said Crystal Eney, director of undergraduate student services. “Chloe’s tenacity and creativity are among her greatest strengths, and the Diversity & Access team has risen leaps and bounds from where it started under her leadership.”

Another word that is mentioned in connection with Dolese Mandeville is “fierce” — but her peers are quick to point out that such fierceness is accompanied by compassion and kindness. And, they note, her leadership is paying dividends not only for UW but also for the broader field of computing.

“Chloe’s impact on the Allen School and computing is vast and unparalleled. Her leadership in building equitable, justice-oriented programs and systems while centering the student experience is one of Chloe’s greatest strengths.” observed Leslie Ikeda, who manages the Allen School Scholars Program, “If anyone can transform the work we are doing to support our field’s most vulnerable populations, it’s Chloe.”

The program Ikeda manages, formerly known as Allen School Startup, was initially conceived as an immersive, four-week summer experience to assist incoming first-year students who are first-generation, low-income and/or from underserved communities in their transition to college. It has since evolved under Dolese Mandeville’s direction into a comprehensive, year-long cohort-based program with wraparound support. The summer bridge course remains, but that is now accompanied by increased staff support, one-to-one mentorship, workshops that supplement students’ first-year coursework, a new study hall course and community-building events throughout the year.

“Our mission is to educate the next generation of outstanding computer scientists and computer engineers who reflect the diverse needs, backgrounds and experiences of people in society at large,” said Juliet Quebatay, senior program manager for K-12 outreach programs. “Chloe supports us all with time, energy, constructive feedback and a clear vision of where we want to go — all while creating realistic, sustainable collaborations and programming that will help the school get there.”

“Us all” is the close-knit team of full-time professional staff that Dolese Mandeville has assembled to execute on that vision. In addition to Quebatay and Ikeda, the team includes Christina Huynh, academic adviser for the Allen Scholars; Kayla Shuster Sasaki, who focuses on high school and transfer student recruiting, and EJ Pinera, who works directly with Allen School student groups such as Ability, Women in Computing (WiC), GEN1, Minorities in Tech (MiT) and Q++ — to name only a few. Like much of the school’s current DEIA-focused initiatives, those groups got their start with Dolese Mandeville’s encouragement.

“Chloe championed the importance of student groups in building community and a sense of belonging for all students in the Allen School,” Pinera said. 

Dolese Mandeville also championed a mentorship initiative alongside undergraduate students called Changemakers in Computing. CiC is a summer program for rising juniors and seniors in Washington state high schools interested in exploring technology and its intersection with society and justice. Through a combination of culturally relevant project-based learning and networking opportunities, the program empowers students from marginalized backgrounds to engage with computing as a potential career while building a community of future computer scientists and engineers who will be changemakers in the field. Importantly, CiC is completely free to participants; meals, public transportation to campus and all activities are covered by the program, as is an education stipend, to ensure that a lack of financial resources is no barrier to student participation. 

The program has grown from serving roughly 20 high school students when it was launched in 2021 to 40 students in the most recent cohort. Encouraging students to lead the way, as she did with CiC — and backing them up with the tools and resources that will help them to succeed — is characteristic of Dolese Mandeville’s approach.

“Chloe prioritizes student voices,” said Chelsea Navarro, senior academic adviser. “She takes actions big and small to ensure that students of all backgrounds feel that they belong and can thrive here.”

Those actions include teaming up with Pinera, Assistant Director of Advising Jenifer Hiigli and Senior Academic Adviser Rakeb Million to push for the creation of physical spaces in the school’s buildings that reflect its values around DEIA. Spaces such as the Diversity & Access student lounge and a dedicated prayer/meditation room offer places where students can support each other, share experiences and honor their whole selves.

In addition to taking concrete steps that contribute to a more welcoming and inclusive culture, Dolese Mandeville is also committed to setting the school up for success over the long haul.

“Chloe is amazing and an incredible asset to the Allen School. Our entire community — students, staff and faculty — benefit from her presence,” said professor Tadayoshi Kohno, the Allen School’s associate director for diversity, equity, inclusion and access. “In summer 2020 Chloe and I started working on a 5-year strategic plan to guide our DEIA work, and her vision, leadership and wisdom have been instrumental in getting us to where we are today.”

“Where we are today” is a testament to how effective Dolese Mandeville has been in helping the Allen School rise to the challenge issued by Hopper and Dean since she stepped into her role.

“I see firsthand, every day, the amount of energy, compassion and thought Chloe puts into building out our DEIA efforts,” said Hiigli. “The Allen School would absolutely not be the same if she had not been here building these programs over the past several years. 

“Chloe’s work has benefited thousands of computer science students in countless ways.”

Two of Dolese Mandeville’s Allen School colleagues were also among the nominees for 2023 Distinguished Staff Awards: Senior Academic Adviser Chelsea Navarro, in the individual impact category, and Robotics Lab Manager Selest Nashef, in the individual collaboration category.

Dolese Mandeville and her fellow honorees will be formally recognized at a campus ceremony on June 8.

Learn more about the UW Awards of Excellence here. Read more →

The Allen School has selected Janet Davis and Paul Mikesell as the 2023 recipients of its Alumni Impact Award, which recognizes former students who have made significant contributions to the field of computing. Davis and Mikesell will be formally honored during the Allen School’s graduation celebration on June 9 — demonstrating for a new class of alumni what can be achieved with an Allen School education. 

Janet Davis (Ph.D., ‘06) shares “joy in making things” while teaching the next generation

Janet Davis’ path to earning her doctorate wasn’t straightforward. She changed research areas more than once, and got a taste of what it was like to be in front of a classroom giving a lecture, rather than behind a desk listening to one. Her first experience teaching didn’t go as planned. She discovered, she said, how her skills could evolve. 

“But I had a growth mindset,” Davis said. “If I was going to teach, I wanted to learn how to teach well, and I knew that with practice I could improve.”

It was a mindset that served her well during the remainder of her time at the University of Washington. She took a seminar on computer science education, registered for classes in undergraduate education, participated in several teaching workshops and continued to pursue teaching assistant opportunities when they appeared. When she graduated in 2006, she was familiar with several areas of study and felt more comfortable planning a class. So much so, that she decided she’d make a career out of teaching. 

“My time at UW was a challenging and transformative experience that cemented my commitment to undergraduate education,” she said. “Now it is tremendous fun to learn alongside my students.”

The 2023 Alumni Impact Award honoree continues to make a difference both in the classroom and beyond. She was recently awarded full professorship at Whitman College, where she created the institution’s computer science program. Before joining the liberal arts college in Walla Walla, Washington, she spent nine years teaching at Grinnell College in Iowa, honing her craft and preparing for a life dedicated to passing along knowledge to the next generation. 

“Janet is a true leader who embodies the character of Whitman College,” said professor Ed Lazowksa, the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair Emeritus at the Allen School. “When Whitman’s leadership approached me with the idea of launching a computer science program in 2012, I knew just the person who could build something really special.” 

Professor emeritus Alan Borning, Davis’ co-advisor during her time at UW, agreed. Borning recalled her enthusiasm participating in a reading group on the social aspects of informatics that he and her other co-advisor, Batya Friedman, led. It was a hint of what was to come.

“Janet has been a real leader in computer science education, particularly in liberal arts colleges,” Borning said, “and has been exceptionally effective in combining top-rate teaching with undergraduate research.”

Davis has taken the idea of a liberal arts education to heart, while combining it with her love for computer science and problem solving. At Whitman, for instance, students declare a major during their second year. It’s at that time that Davis asks the deep questions, prompting students to think more about a calling rather than just a career. 

“Some students talk about career prospects, and I encourage them to think twice about whether taking CS courses is how they want to spend the rest of their time at Whitman,” she said. “Others talk about their delight in solving puzzles, their triumphs over difficult problems or their hope for making a difference in the world. Those students make my day. But the ones with whom I feel a special sympathy are those who share their joy in making things.”

Davis shares her “joy in making things” across the liberal arts landscape. She’s a member of the Liberal Arts Computer Science Consortium (LACS), a co-leader of the SIGCSE Committee on Computing Education in Liberal Arts Colleges (SIGCSE-LAC) and a member of the Computing Research Association’s Committee on Education (CRA-E). 

“With SIGCSE-LAC, I’m part of a group developing a process for how liberal arts faculty can use national curricular guidelines to develop their own distinctive curriculum,” she said. “And as part of my work for CRA-E, I am co-organizing a summer workshop for graduate students considering teaching-oriented faculty careers.” 

Several of her students have gone on to academic careers themselves. When they’ve hit a roadblock, she shares some wisdom that can only come through experience and from mentors who have been there before. 

These days, she is the mentor. 

“You have to test your ideas to know if they are good or bad, and you can always iterate to make them better,” she said. “These ideas were important for me as the founder of a new academic program, and I share them with my students whenever the need arises. Beginning is the only way to discover what you have to say and what you still need to learn.”

Paul Mikesell (B.S., ‘96) stays ready for the future, without forgetting his roots

In the 1980s, a 9-year-old Paul Mikesell booted up his Commodore 64 and stared, transfixed by the message on the screen. Was it a declaration? A directive? Or something more? 

“It greeted you with its iconic ‘READY’ prompt,” he said of the popular home computer, “and since that day I’ve been trying to answer the question ‘ready for what?’”

It’s a challenge that Mikesell, the founder and CEO of Carbon Robotics and 2023 Alumni Impact Award honoree, has met time and again. In 2001, he and a friend founded Isilon Systems, producing the world’s fastest scale-out clustered file system and storage platform. In the five years that followed, the startup grew to about 800 employees but neared the verge of collapse before its initial public offering in 2006. Then in 2010, EMC bought the company for $2.25 billion. 

Around the time of Isilon’s IPO, Mikesell left to co-found Clustrix, for which he helped invent a massively parallel scale-out clustered database system. Once again, he was at the heart of building something from the ground up. Again, he and his team took on considerable risk. 

And yet again, they succeeded. Clustrix was acquired by database giant MariaDB in 2018. 

“Every tech startup I’ve been at has almost died multiple times — and none of them have actually died,” Mikesell said. “It has always been the amazing people at the company that makes the company a success, and I’m incredibly grateful for everyone on these teams and that we managed to pull through.”

Carbon Robotics, which makes AI-enabled robotics for agriculture, is the latest of his ventures. Its main product, the LaserWeeder, allows farmers to kill weeds in their fields without relying on herbicides or hard-to-source farm labor. The AI-powered weeder, the first of its kind, launched early last year, with plans to be delivered to farms across 17 U.S. states and three Canadian provinces as well as internationally. Since its founding in 2018, Carbon Robotics has raised roughly $67 million in funding. 

“Carbon Robotics is one of Seattle’s most successful startups,” Lazowska said. “The LaserWeeder is tremendously cost-effective and it rides the wave of organic farming.”

Yet even more than his various companies and their financial success, Mikesell said he is most proud of the camaraderie he’s built over time. He’s worked with several of the same people on multiple ventures, for instance — relationships that have taken root and have only grown since. 

“I hope that means that they feel they were treated well, given trust and respect,” he said, “and were able to grow and hopefully make some nice economic compensation along the way.”

Mikesell adds the Alumni Impact Award to a growing collection of honors. At the recent GeekWire Awards ceremony in Seattle, Carbon Robotics won Hardware/Gadget/Robotics of the Year. 

He’s remained ready for whatever the vagaries of entrepreneurship have thrown at him. He credited his time at UW for giving him the skills and confidence to venture out, take risks and keep answering whatever questions the future has in store. 

“When the internet arrived it was immediately clear that everything was going to change, and I needed to be a part of it,” he said. “The promise of unexplored capabilities, tools, toys and efficiencies has kept me going ever since.” Read more →

The review of existing literature is an essential part of scientific research — and citations play a key role by enabling researchers to trace the origins of ideas, put the latest progress into context and identify potential directions for future research. In the course of their review, a researcher may encounter dozens, or even hundreds, of inline citations that may or may not be linked to papers that are directly relevant to their work. While there are tools that can predict how a cited paper contributed or weigh its influence on a particular work, those are one-size-fits-all approaches that do not reflect a reviewer’s personal interests and goals.

A team of researchers from the Allen School, Allen Institute for AI, and the University of Pennsylvania envisioned a more personalized experience. The resulting paper, “CiteSee: Augmenting Citations in Scientific Papers with Persistent and Personalized Historical Context,” recently earned a Best Paper Award at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2023).

CiteSee assists researchers with scientific literature reviews by creating personalized visual cues to contextualize previously encountered citations. These cues make it easier to identify potentially relevant papers which they have yet to consider — and keep tabs on those they encountered previously — based on their reading and saving history.

To inform their design of the tool, the team conducted exploratory interviews to understand how researchers make sense of inline citations as they read as well as what limitations and needs come up when completing literature reviews. 

”We discovered that researchers had trouble determining which citations were important,” explained co-author and Allen School professor Amy Zhang, director of the Social Futures Lab. “They also wanted to keep better track of the context around their saved citations, especially when those papers appeared as citations in multiple publications.”

Based on their findings, Zhang and her colleagues built three key features into CiteSee to personalize the reader’s experience. These included the means to augment known paper citations, discover unknown paper citations, and assist users in keeping track of and triaging how they had previously interacted with papers to make better sense of inline citations as they read. CiteSee applies visual cues to indicate to readers whether a particular citation is one they have previously encountered, such as a previously visited paper, a saved paper, a paper that the reader has cited in the past or the reader’s own paper. 

“A user can adjust the time frame around papers they have read to fine-tune CiteSee’s visual augmentation of inline citations,” noted Zhang. “They can also easily reference the citing sentence for that same citation across multiple papers, enabling them to truly customize the literature review experience.”

The research team assessed how useful CiteSee would be in practice through both a controlled laboratory study and a field deployment. In the lab study, the researchers aimed to validate CiteSee’s ability to identify relevant prior work during the literature review process. They found that leveraging personal reading history had a significant impact on CiteSee’s ability to identify relevant citations for the users.

The goal of the field deployment was to observe how CiteSee would perform in a real-world literature review setting. Based on their observations and subsequent interviews, the team found that participants actively engaged with augmented inline citations. They also found that having the ability to view the citations in context aided the participants to make connections across papers. In addition, when participants opened reencountered citations, they were three times more likely to discover relevant prior work than through other methods. Overall, participants found that CiteSee enabled them to keep better track of reencountered citations, process current papers for relevant citations, recall previously read papers and understand relationships through sensemaking across multiple papers. Two-thirds of the participants continued to engage with CiteSee following the research period.

Beyond this, the team identified a couple of features to potentially incorporate into CiteSee in the future, such as providing the means to specify the current literature review context and also to differentiate between multiple simultaneous literature searches.   

In addition to Zhang, co-authors of the paper include Allen School professor emeritus Daniel Weld, general manager and chief scientist for Semantic Scholar at AI2; Allen School alumni Jonathan Bragg (Ph.D., ‘18) and Doug Downey (Ph.D., ’08), who are both senior research scientists at AI2; lead author Joseph Chee Chang, senior research scientist at AI2; AI2 scientist Kyle Lo; and University of Pennsylvania professor Andrew Head.

Three additional papers by Allen School researchers received honorable mentions at this year’s CHI conference.

Amanda Baughan, a fifth-year Ph.D. student advised by Allen School adjunct professor Alexis Hiniker, a faculty member in the Information School, was lead author of “A Mixed-Methods Approach to Understanding User Trust after Voice Assistant Failures.” Baughan and her co-authors at Google Research developed a crowdsourced dataset of voice assistant failures to analyze how failures affect users’ trust in their voice assistants and approaches for regaining trust.

Allen School professor Katharina Reinecke, director of the Wildlab, co-authored “Why, When, and for Whom: Considerations for Collecting and Reporting Race and Ethnicity Data in HCI.” In an effort to improve the field’s engagement of diverse participants and generate safe, inclusive and equitable technology, Reinecke and her collaborators at Stanford University, University of Texas at Austin and Northeastern University investigated current approaches to the collection of race and ethnicity data and offered a set of principles for HCI researchers to consider concerning when and how to include such data in future.

Allen School professor Leilani Battle (B.S., ’11) co-director of the Interactive Data Lab, Allen School alumna and lead author Deepthi Raghunandan (M.S., ’16) and colleagues at the University of Maryland explored the iterative process of sensemaking in their paper, “Code Code Evolution: Understanding How People Change Data Science Notebooks Over Time.” The team analyzed over 2500 Jupyter notebooks from Github to determine how notebook authors participate in sensemaking activities such as branching analysis, annotation and documentation, and offered recommendations for extensions to notebook environments to better support such activities.

For more information on CiteSee, read a related AI2 blog post here. In addition to Best Paper honors, multiple UW and Allen School-affiliated researchers were individually recognized with SIGCHI Awards at this year’s conference. These include Nicola Dell (Ph.D., ‘15), now faculty at Cornell University, and Outstanding Dissertation Award recipient Dhruv Jain (Ph.D., ‘21), now a faculty member at the University of Michigan. For a comprehensive overview of all UW authors’ contributions at CHI 2023, read the DUB roundup here. Read more →

Before his Entrepreneurship class earlier this year, Lawrence Tan saw starting a business as byzantine, an endeavor fraught with pitfalls for potential newcomers. But that changed after the Allen School sophomore and his team began building their idea for a smart note-taking platform, fine-tuning their pitch to investors and learning from those who have been there before. 

“Going into the class, I viewed the process of starting a company as a nebulous, secretive practice reserved for well-connected businesspeople,” Tan said. “Hearing the instructors and the guests they invited speak about their personal startup experiences helped dispel this notion and showed me that there are many possible paths to entrepreneurship available for anyone who has an idea, regardless of what career path they come from.”

Taught by professor Ed Lazowska and Greg Gottesman, managing director for Pioneer Square Labs, along with professor emeritus Oren Etzioni, advisor and board member for the Allen Institute for AI (AI2) and a technical director of the AI2 Incubator, the entrepreneurship class has been a favorite of Allen School students for the past decade. Etzioni joined the class as an instructor this year. 

“Everyone I talked to said that it was the best class they had ever taken at the UW,” Tan said. “After taking it myself I absolutely share this sentiment and I find myself recommending the class to every fellow CSE student I meet.” 

Tan discovered it through word of mouth in the school’s undergraduate labs. The course requires students to form teams and develop a software startup idea, quickly putting them in the crucible and through their paces. Create, pitch, pivot and repeat. 

For the course, 75 students are selected from the Allen School’s undergraduate and graduate programs, the Foster School of Business MBA program, the Master of Human-Computer Interaction and Design program (MHCI+D) and other design programs.

“It was an incredible opportunity to grow my confidence and leadership skills,” Tan said. “While I had worked on group projects in other CSE classes, leading a team of nine members across business, design and computer science disciplines required a completely different level of coordination and planning.”

With each iteration, teams receive feedback from instructors, special guests and fellow students. At the end, the goal is to persuade a potential investor to offer a second meeting. 

When it came time to make the team’s final pitch, Tan stepped up and delivered the key points of the presentation that tied for the top performance in a class of eight amazing teams. It was the culmination of pushing the limits of his comfort zone, he said, a synthesis of learning how to pilot a project and keep it on track.

“Lawrence had the courage to demonstrate AutoNote ‘live’ to the assembled venture professionals by taking notes on another team’s presentation,” Lazowska said. “The demo was a triumph — to the extent that one of the VCs is talking with the team about pursuing the project as a startup. Lawrence is only a sophomore — he punches far, far, far above his weight!”

The course helped Tan see how to turn an abstract idea into a real business. Yet its ethos — create and collaborate — has been part and parcel of Tan’s experience from the start of his UW career. 

In just two years at the Allen School, the Vancouver native has already made his mark. As a freshman, he joined Advanced Robotics at the University of Washington (ARUW), picking things up quickly from the club’s seniors. They helped him learn everything from high-level code architecture to the intricacies of processing camera, motion sensor and wheel odometry data, all of which are crucial to a robotics computer vision system. 

They’ve also helped him grow as a leader. Worried about missing a week of classes during summer quarter, Tan had to be convinced to attend last year’s RoboMaster North America competition. They had their reasons — Tan led the design and implementation of a dual-camera system for the team’s robot fleet, which proved vital in attaining victory. At the competition last year, it was the only system of its kind. 

“Going into the competition, there was an element of anticipation and surprise, as each team had hidden their most advanced and innovative new developments for the entire year in order to gain a competitive advantage,” Tan said. “It was interesting to hear about the different approaches each team took to design their robots and the software architectures that supported them, and it was incredibly rewarding to see our secret dual-turret sentry rapidly defeat an opposing robot during the final match of the competition.”

For the ARUW team, it was déjà vu. The team had defended its title from 2021.

“Through my experience at ARUW, I have learned how exciting it is to work on new and challenging projects,” he said. “The projects I am the most proud of are the ones where I had to put a lot of thought and research into a feature that our team had never attempted before.”

Tan has also been a teaching assistant for two computer science courses and has worked on research in the Social Futures Lab with Allen School professor Amy Zhang and Human Centered Design & Engineering Ph.D. student Kevin Feng. There, he is working on new AI-powered interfaces to help users better curate their social media feeds. 

The research dovetails with his interest in human-computer interaction. Whether with people or computers, he sees working in concert — and remaining curious — as the solution to most challenges. 

“Nowadays, I feel like the more I learn, the more areas I realize I don’t know anything about,” he said, laughing. “I hope that wherever I go, I continue to meet new people and uncover new things to learn.” Read more →

Singing in the University Chorale helped Sidharth Lakshmanan, a student in the Allen School’s fifth-year master’s program, become a better coder. Finding the right key, he found, was all about teamwork.  

“Choir has helped me realize that when every part works together in harmony — no pun intended — the end result is often so much better than if only one of those parts is very strong,” he said. “This has improved me as a computer scientist because I find that I am learning to strike a balance between readability and performance in the code I write.”

The multitalented Lakshmanan has put collaboration center stage during his time at the University of Washington. Having obtained his bachelor’s degree from the Allen School in March, he was recently awarded the College of Engineering Dean’s Medal for Academic Excellence in recognition of both his scholarship and his contributions to the broader computer science and engineering community. 

“Receiving this award means a lot to me because this award represents all of the hard work I have put into each and every day at UW,” he said. “But I would not be where I am without the support of my amazing family, friends and mentors! Each and every one of them have been super supportive, carrying me through times of need. This award represents my thankfulness to those who supported me along the way.”

When he’s not singing in the choir, Lakshmanan directs his attention to a number of projects in computer science and mentorship. From the start of his research journey, he said, his goal was to make a positive impact in the lives of others. For instance, through his work with the Allen School’s Makeability Lab led by professor Jon Froehlich, he helped develop Project Sidewalk, a crowd-sourcing application that allows users to classify sidewalks and make cities more accessible. He implemented and deployed a validation schema to more than 10 cities that allowed users to vote on classifications, helping make the data more robust. 

Lakshmanan subsequently joined the Molecular Information Systems Lab, where he is currently leading a research project on the structural embedding for protein sequences using machine learning techniques in collaboration with MISL co-director Jeff Nivala and Ph.D. student Phil Leung. The team has submitted a paper to the 2023 International Conference on Learning Representations and is in the revision process.

“Though I do not come from a biology background,” Lakshmanan said, “the machine learning challenges of this application fascinate me.”

Lakshmanan also joined SAMPL where he contributed to a project led by professor Luis Ceze and Ph.D. student Zihao Ye on Sparse Tensor IR, a compilation abstraction that offers composable formats and composable transformations for deep learning workloads. As part of the research, Lakshmanan wrote data-dependent GPU kernels to be able to outperform current state-of-the-art libraries.

Besides his research efforts, Lakshmanan was also one of the first 10 members of the Husky Coding Project, a club on campus that gives people of all majors and academic backgrounds an opportunity to work on a large-scale, coding-related team project for an entire year. He is now an education and technology lead of the club and has helped it grow to more than 80 members. 

“We often hear ‘you need experience to gain experience,’ meaning that it is difficult for students early in their UW careers and non-computer science majors to get software internships,” he said. “I am really proud of the club’s mission to expand opportunities in this space, so this is one of my main extracurriculars that I spend my time on.”

Among his schoolwork, his varied research projects and helping lead the Husky Coding Project, he’s found time to participate in the University Chorale. The UW choir gives him another creative outlet, he said, one that allows him to access a different part of his brain. But coding and choir connect in more ways than one, he added, especially when it comes to working together for a better outcome. 

“One of the things I love about choir is that every section is like its own team that needs to coordinate both internally and externally,” he said. “So often, it is not ‘how do I sound?’, it is more ‘how do we sound, and how am I a part of that sound?’ ”

Whether with chords or with code, Lakshmanan continues to seek harmony wherever he goes. He will take that mindset to internships with Palantir and SpaceX later this year, and continue with his master’s studies at UW, where time, he said, has flown by. 

“I loved that every time I would start translating my thoughts to code or singing with the choir, I would enter a flow state that would turn hours to minutes,” he said, smiling. “This is why I came to this field and to UW.” Read more →

After graduating with her doctorate from NYU in 1990, Anne Dinning (B.S., ‘84) was considering a career in academia when she met computer scientist David Shaw through a friend. She was intrigued by the opportunity to develop software for a small company operating in a pioneering field, and joined the D. E. Shaw group as one of the investment and technology firm’s first 20 employees. Shaw, the founder, had recruited individuals not afraid to take a nontraditional path, ones whose academic mindset led them to think differently about the financial industry and ultimately change how hedge funds did business.

“Similar to my experience in academia,” Dinning said, “I knew right away at the D. E. Shaw group that I was part of an environment filled with very smart people working together to invent new things.” 

As one of the trailblazers of quantitative investing, the D. E. Shaw group now has more than 2,000 employees worldwide and manages over $60 billion in capital. Dinning, the firm’s managing director, led many of its investment strategies, including energy, benchmark-relative equities and long-short equities. 

“Anne was one of the first people to join the firm and one of the top people who was managing the firm over the years as it grew,” Shaw said. “And she was a key mind who was involved in thinking out what the field of quantitative finance was going to mean, shaping the culture and the nature of the firm. She’s just remarkable in many dimensions, but in terms of raw brilliance and competence, she’s pretty much off the charts.”

Besides her role as managing director, Dinning is also a member of D. E. Shaw’s Executive Committee. As an Allen School alum, she’s remained engaged with her alma mater through her membership on the school’s Advisory Board and a professorship established in her father’s name. Along with Michael Wolf, Dinning also established two other professorships, one named for professor emeritus Richard Ladner, who advised her undergraduate research, and one named for professor emeritus Jean-Loup Baer, who taught the first computer science course she took at UW.

“The Ladner Professorship is now held by professor Jennifer Mankoff, who is a world expert on technology to benefit people with disabilities,” said Ladner, who noted Dinning’s commitment to supporting inclusion and accessibility efforts. “Anne’s history of giving goes back to her time as a student at UW.” 

Those efforts, Ladner recalled, included her senior thesis project on a text editor that would be useful for those who are DeafBlind and have little experience with technology. During her senior year, Dinning helped organize a fundraising event at her sorority Delta Gamma for the American Association of the DeafBlind Convention that was held at UW in 1984. 

“In the end the sorority raised $2,000,” said Ladner, an organizer of the convention, “which was one of the largest contributions we received.”

Dinning’s legacy of service has only grown since. She has served on the boards of several organizations, including Partners in Health, the Robin Hood Foundation and Code.org, among others. 

“I got to know Anne when she traveled to Haiti to visit some of the work that Partners in Health does there,” said Ophelia Dahl, co-founder of the global health nonprofit. “Anne came in full of curiosity and questions — there was no aspect of the work that she wasn’t interested in. PIH and I, as a friend, have lucked out by knowing Anne and knowing that she’s going to be connected to this work, and in it for the long haul.” 

The UW College of Engineering recently recognized Dinning with a 2023 Diamond Award, which honors alumni and friends who have made outstanding contributions to the field of engineering. Dinning received the Dean’s Award and was honored at the college’s Diamond Awards event held on May 18.

Learn more about the 2023 Diamond Award honorees here and read more about Dinning’s UW and professional experiences below. 

Allen School: Congratulations on being named a 2023 UW College of Engineering Diamond Award honoree. What does this distinction — and UW — mean to you? 

Anne Dinning: I grew up in the Seattle area, and I enrolled at the University of Washington in 1980, back when it was a much easier process to get into college. I’ve been fortunate to stay in close contact with UW now for four-plus decades, but my connection to the university goes back even further, as my dad got his B.S. and M.S. in electrical engineering from UW in the 1960s and has been a lifelong member of the UW community. So this award has a special significance for me and my family.

When I was in school, the computer science department was still relatively new and back then was part of the College of Arts & Sciences. It’s a thrill for me to see how much the department has grown, advancing to become a real powerhouse in the field. 

Allen School: Can you talk about your experiences at UW and how they helped inform where you are now? 

AD: I have so many memories from my time at UW, and I think about them frequently when I visit campus. I still have a pin that professor Ed Lazowska gave to students as a badge of honor for surviving his CS451 class on operating systems. I remember how hard that class was. I’ve carried that pin and that memory with me through a number of significant challenges over the course of my career. When I was a senior at UW, I had the opportunity to work with professor Richard Ladner and one of his graduate students on creating a text editor for the DeafBlind community, a large community in the Seattle area. That was the first time I remember contributing to something where I could see how my work in computer science could be used to meaningful effect in the real world. 

Allen School: I read that you became interested in computer science aboard a train while studying abroad. Can you talk a bit more about this experience and how it impacted your career path? 

AD: During my freshman year at UW, I studied abroad for a quarter in France. One day I was on a train and struck up a conversation with the person sitting next to me, who asked about my interests. I said I liked order and organization and was thinking about a future as a librarian or an accountant. He suggested I think about computer programming — a skill that was, even at the time, very portable and adaptable. 

I’d never had a computer at home and had never really interacted with one at all. That conversation with a stranger on a train sparked my interest: I was especially drawn to CS as a ticket to anywhere. I signed up for my first computer science class in my next quarter at UW with professor Jean-Loup Baer. 

Allen School: Any anecdotes from your early days at the firm? 

AD: For my first assignment, I was asked to research a market that was new to the firm. Upon reading some related academic work, I realized how much I didn’t know. I remember loading mag tapes, formatting and cleaning data, and figuring out how to conduct analysis on that data. It was a big opportunity for me, and I had the chance to learn from what went right and what went wrong along the way. (I even managed to crash the firm’s whole database one afternoon!) 

Allen School: What sparked your interest in computational finance? 

AD: It was such a thrill the first time I built my own forecasting algorithm, because I had the chance to see in real time if the model I’d built was working. We used simulations to assess how a forecast might work in real-life trading, and when I was running simulations on that first forecast, I would wake up every two hours over the weekend to check my simulations and launch a new batch. I was lucky enough to have a terminal at my house, and I can still hear the chirps and beeps of that modem dialing in every two hours. 

Allen School: What challenges in your career changed your perspective or helped you grow as a leader? 

AD: I’ve been in the financial industry since 1990, and while the D. E. Shaw group has had a lot of successes, we’ve also faced our share of challenging moments and market crises along the way. 

Those moments have taught me a lot about myself as a leader. When I think back on some of those times, it occurs to me that much of the value I provided wasn’t just in setting our strategic course with my senior colleagues, but rather, in doing things like sitting with our traders who trade overnight and making sure they had the support, the calm and the access they needed to execute what needed to get done. I’ve learned that my style of leadership is often best expressed with my sleeves rolled up. Read more →