Allen School News

2006 UW CSE alum Jason Tan, co-founder and CEO of Sift Science, packed the house on Tuesday at 7 p.m. for a great discussion with students about career paths. (Was it Jason, or was it the Dick’s burgers? Probably both …) UW CSE Industry Affiliates continues today … Read more →

And it’s crazy! Read more →

UW CSE enthusiastically joins in supporting the K-12 Computer Science Framework, announced on October 17.

The Association for Computing Machinery, Code.org, the Computer Science Teachers Association, the Cyber Innovation Center, and the National Math and Science Initiative partnered with states, school districts, and the computer science education community in creating the Framework, which promotes a vision in which all students critically engage in computer science issues, approach problems in innovative ways, and create computational artifacts with a personal, practical, or community purpose.

Learn more from the new K12CS website here. Check out the video here. One-pager here.

Also check out this great article in GeekWire about the new framework, which will make computer science — a “life skill in the 21st century,” as UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska calls it — more accessible and welcoming to all students. Read more →

GeekWire writes:

“Not many startups launch out of university research, endure two economic recessions, persevere through a slow-to-develop market, and finally file for a successful initial public offering — all while maintaining 75 percent of its original founding team 16 years later.

“But that’s the Impinj story.

“Founder and CEO Chris Diorio spoke at the 9Mile Labs Demo Day on Thursday afternoon in Seattle, discussing how Impinj got off the ground and sharing some leadership advice he’s picked up after helping lead the Seattle-based maker of Radio Frequency Identification technology since 2000…

“It’s been quite the journey for Diorio, who founded Impinj in 2000 with fellow researcher Carver Mead. He recounted traveling to California to meet Mead in Silicon Valley and taking the startup leap. After the founders decided to launch a company, Diorio told Mead he was worried about his job as a computer science professor at the University of Washington.

“‘Don’t worry, you’ll get a company started in 18 months and be back at the university — just take a short leave, nothing to it,’ Mead told Diorio.

“’16 years later, we IPO’d,’ Diorio, who is still an associate professor at the UW, recalled on Thursday. ‘Carver was at the ceremony and I asked him about those 18 months. He said, ‘what’s an order of magnitude among friends?””

Read more here. Read more →

On Thursday evening, UW CSE women faculty, staff, alumni, and friends celebrated ~30 UW CSE women students headed to the 2016 Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing – the world’s largest gathering of women technologists.

UW CSE Ph.D. alumna Lauren Bricker, who has taught computer science for the past decade at Seattle’s Lakeside School following a career in the tech industry, spoke to the students about her experience working in the field, her experience opening the eyes of young women to the wonders of the field, and her experience attending the Grace Hopper conference. UW CSE’s Raven Alexander, Elise deGoede Dorough, and Ed Lazowska also addressed the group.

UW CSE is recognized as a leader in encouraging women to pursue bachelors degrees in computer science – winner, in 2015, of the inaugural NCWIT Award for Excellence in Promoting Women in Undergraduate Computing. Read more →

Thomas Rothvoss, who holds a joint appointment in the UW Department of Computer Science & Engineering and the Department of Mathematics, has been named a 2016 Packard Fellow in Science and Engineering. This prestigious fellowship administered by the David & Lucile Packard Foundation recognizes and supports the most innovative early-career scientists and engineers in the nation.

Rothvoss’ research focuses on the intersection of mathematics and computer science and the development of techniques to find approximate solutions to computationally hard problems. He is one of only two researchers recognized by the Packard Foundation this year in the Computer/Information Sciences category—and one of 18 fellows in total.

Rothvoss joined UW CSE in 2015—the same year another rising talent in theoretical computer science, Shayan Oveis Gharan, arrived at the department. The Packard Fellowship is the latest in an impressive list of recent honors earned by members of UW CSE’s Theory group, including Oveis Gharan’s selection as one of Science News’ 10 Scientists to Watch and Anna Karlin’s election to the American Academy of Arts & Sciences. The group continues to grow in both size and stature as we look forward to welcoming new faculty member Yin Tat Lee, an expert in designing fast algorithms, next year.

The Packard Fellowship program was inspired by Hewlett-Packard co-founder David Packard’s recognition that his company’s success derived in large part from university research and development. Each year, the honorees are selected from among 100 faculty members nominated by universities across the United States. A panel of internationally recognized scientists evaluates the nominees and forwards its recommendations to the foundation’s board of trustees. The winners each receive a grant worth $875,000 over five years, which is intended to provide them with the freedom to explore new frontiers in their respective fields.

Rothvoss is one of two current faculty members to have received this coveted award, the other being 2002 fellow Raj Rao. Learn more about the Packard Fellowships here, and read Rothvoss’ citation here.

This is a tremendous honor not just for Thomas, but for UW CSE, UW Mathematics, and the whole of the University.

Congratulations, Thomas! Read more →

A team from UW CSE’s Natural Language Processing group has earned Best Paper accolades at EMNLP 2016, the conference on empirical methods in natural language processing. CSE Ph.D. student Kenton Lee, postdoc Mike Lewis, and professor Luke Zettlemoyer won for their paper Global Neural CCG Parsing with Optimality Guarantees.

The winning paper describes an approach for learning a recursive neural network for CCG parsing — a core subproblem in broad coverage semantic analysis of text. The model is not only state of the art in terms of accuracy but also provides optimality certificates, nearly always proving a proof that the best parse was found under the learned model. It is the first neural parser of any kind to provide such guarantees.

The paper is one of only two selected for Best Paper recognition from more than 900 submissions. The team will present its findings at the EMNLP conference in Austin, Texas early next month. This is the second year in a row that the UW NLP group has won at EMNLP, with Lee and Zettlemoyer repeating their feat from 2015.

Go team! Read more →

More than 200 students attended our career panel

Each fall, UW CSE organizes a series of events aimed at current undergraduates hoping to snag an internship to gain practical experience or to line up their first job looking ahead to graduation. To help them put their best foot forward and get the most out of the recruitment process, we ask UW CSE alums to pass on the wisdom they have gained from years in gainful employment, and local recruiters to share their insights and advice for students experiencing the process for the first time.

Last week, three alums – Victoria Wagner (B.S., ’14), Allison Wilbur (B.S., ’12), and Albert Wong (B.S., ’04) – joined Facebook recruiter Vince Sison in front of a packed house of more than 200 students for a panel discussion on how to land the job or internship of their dreams. Wagner completed internships at LinkedIn and Facebook while a student at UW CSE and has spent the past two and half years as a software engineer at Tableau. Wilbur began her career with the Fulfillment by Amazon team before moving on to positions at Zulily and Madrona Venture Labs; this past summer, she joined local startup ReplyYes as a software engineer. Wong began his career as a software developer at Amazon before joining Google. There, he spent 10 years working with various teams in the Kirkland, Beijing and Seattle offices, mentoring several engineers along the way. In 2014, Wong made the move from private to public sector, becoming a consultant for the United States Digital Service. All three offered a wealth of insights to students who are about to embark on their own career paths.

Students speak with volunteers at our résumé review workshop.

This week, 27 volunteers, including another proud UW CSE alum, Babak Dabagh (B.S., ’14), took over the atrium of the Allen Center for our résumé review workshop. Roughly 200 students went through the process — some of them multiple times! — to obtain feedback from recruiters and tech leaders from more than a dozen local companies, including Amazon, Ericsson, Facebook, Google, Indeed, Marchex, Microsoft, Qualtrics, Qumulo, RealSelf, Redfin, RetailMeNot, Whitepages, and Zillow.

Both events are designed to prepare our students to put their best foot forward at our fall recruiting fairs next week — one for startups and one for established companies — that are among the highlights of our annual Industry Affiliates meeting.

Sandwiched between the two fairs is UW CSE’s annual research day and open house on Wednesday, October 19th. That day, we invite members of the community to learn more about the people and projects that make UW CSE great. If you haven’t marked your calendars to join us next Wednesday, please do! You can RSVP to the open house here.

Thank you to our terrific alumni and volunteers who have spent time with our students the past two weeks! Read more →

Mark Zuckerberg writes (on Facebook, naturally):

“Priscilla and I are excited to share that Brian Pinkerton is joining the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative as Chief Technology Officer... Bringing engineering to social change is the basic idea of our work, and one of the unique capabilities we can provide.”

Brian was most recently the Vice President & General Manager of A9, Amazon’s product search and advertising technology subsidiary, located in Palo Alto.

He received his UW CSE Ph.D. in 2000 – working with Ed Lazowska and John Zahorjan – for the design and evolution of WebCrawler, the first successful full-text web search engine.

Recode article here. Read more →

UW CSE alumni and friends are encouraged to register and join us for the 2016 UW CSE Open House, held in conjunction with our annual Industry Affiliates Meeting. Food, drink, lab tours, posters, demos, the Madrona Prize, the People’s Choice Award, and a preview of the CSE2 project – a second building that will provide the space for us to double our enrollment.

Information here! We hope to see you on Wednesday October 19, 5:00-7:45 p.m., in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering! Read more →