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Allen School undergraduates recognized by the Computing Research Association for advancing health sensing, programming languages and systems research

W statue in sunshine The Allen School has a proud tradition of nurturing undergraduate student researchers whose work has the potential for real-world impact. This year, three of those students — Jerry Cao, Mike He and Yu Xin — earned honorable mentions from the Computing Research Association (CRA) as part of its 2022 Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards competition for their contributions in health sensing and fabrication, programming languages and machine learning, and building robust computer systems. Jerry Cao The CRA recognized senior Jerry… Read more →
February 22, 2022

Allen School alumni Maarten Sap and Ivan Evtimov earn dissertation awards for contributions to more socially aware and secure AI

Sylvan Grove During their time at the Allen School, recent alumni Maarten Sap (Ph.D., ‘21) and Ivan Evtimov (Ph.D., ‘21) tackled some of the thorniest issues raised by emerging natural language processing and machine learning technologies — from endowing NLP systems with social intelligence while combating inequity and bias, to addressing security vulnerabilities in the convolutional neural networks that fuel state-of-the-art computer vision systems. Recently, the faculty honored both for their contributions with the William Chan Memorial Dissertation Award, which was… Read more →
February 3, 2022

Richard Ladner elected AAAS Fellow for his leadership in making computing education and careers accessible to people with disabilities

Richard Ladner conversing in sign language with three students in a computer lab Allen School professor emeritus Richard Ladner has been elected a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) for his “distinguished contributions to the inclusion of persons with disabilities in the computing fields.” One of 26 leading scientists in the organization’s Information, Computing & Communications section to attain the rank of Fellow this year, Ladner has devoted the past two decades to research and advocacy aimed at making computing education and careers more accessible while designing technologies… Read more →
January 26, 2022

Allen School student Mohit Shridhar earns NVIDIA Fellowship for his work in grounding language for vision-based robots

Mohit in front of a mountain Mohit Shridhar, a Ph.D. student working with Allen School professor Dieter Fox, has been named a 2022-2023 NVIDIA Graduate Fellow for his research in building generalizable systems for human-robot collaboration. Shridhar’s work is focused on connecting language to perception and action for vision-based robotics. Shridhar aims to use deep learning to connect abstract concepts to concrete physical actions with long-term reasoning to develop robot butlers. The Fellowship will help him continue his work in building robots that learn… Read more →
January 19, 2022

Deserts, demographics and diet: UW and Stanford researchers reveal findings of nationwide study of the relationship between food environment and healthy eating

Grocery store shelves filled with fruit
Credit: gemma on Unsplash
“You are what you eat,” as the saying goes. But not everyone has the same degree of choice in the matter. An estimated 19 million people in the United States live in so-called food deserts, where they have lower access to healthy and nutritious food. More than 32 million people live below the poverty line — limiting their options to the cheapest food regardless of proximity to potentially healthier options. Meanwhile, numerous studies have pointed to… Read more →
January 18, 2022

Allen School Ph.D. student and data journalist Matthew Conlen develops interactive visualizations that help people understand what’s happening in the world

Photo of Matthew Conlen outside As the world watched COVID-19 grow from a mysterious virus in far-off places to a planetary pandemic, news outlets worked hard to keep the world informed on how, where and why it was spreading. At the start of the outbreak, Matthew Conlen, a Ph.D. student in the Allen School’s Interactive Data Lab, was working as a graphic/multimedia editor for the New York Times helping with their elections forecasting application, also known as “The Needle.” He switched gears… Read more →
December 21, 2021

Undergraduates Nayha Auradkar and Caiwei Tian recognized at Allen School’s annual celebration of diversity in computing

Gates Center atrium
Nayha Auradkar (left) and Caiwei Tan
Earlier this month, the Allen School held a virtual celebration showcasing efforts to increase diversity in computing and honoring members of our community who have demonstrated their commitment to diversity, excellence and leadership. An annual tradition, the event this year also offered Allen School leaders an opportunity to share highlights from its five-year strategic plan to increase diversity, equity, inclusion and access (DEIA), spanning curriculum and programs, professional development, policies and procedures, internal community… Read more →
December 13, 2021

Allen School affiliated researchers sweep the Best Paper category at SOSP 2021

W statue in sunshine Researchers affiliated with the Allen School took home all three Best Paper Awards at the Association for Computing Machinery’s 28th Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP). Current Ph.D. student Jacob Van Geffen, recent alumnus James Bornholt (Ph.D.,’19), former postdoc and incoming professor Simon Peter and affiliate professor Daniel Berger contributed to the winning papers that presented new advances in debugging, distributed computing and caching. 
Jacob Van Geffen (left) and James Bornholt
In the paper, “Using Lightweight Formal Methods Read more →
December 9, 2021

UW professor Joshua R. Smith elected Fellow of the National Academy of Inventors for his innovations in wireless power, communication, sensing and robotics

Professor Joshua R. Smith, who holds a joint appointment in the Allen School and the Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, was elected into the 2021 class of Fellows of the National Academy of Inventors for his impactful creations in the fields of wireless power, communication, sensing and robotics. Smith, who leads the Sensor Systems Lab, is one of only five University of Washington faculty members to have received this prestigious award that highlights the prolific spirit of… Read more →
December 7, 2021

Taskar Center launches first mobile version of AccessMap pedestrian trip planning tool for Android and iOS

Closeup of AccessMap app routing showing color-coded accessible route between Point A and Point B There are many options for mapping and route planning on a smartphone, but one thing they all have in common is their car-centric nature. Those apps that do support pedestrian navigation tend to make assumptions about a user that are at best inaccurate, and at worst dangerous. For residents and visitors in three western Washington cities, that changes today with the release of the AccessMap mobile app. The app, which was developed by the Taskar Center for Accessible TechnologyRead more →
December 3, 2021

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