The lead article in Sunday’s New York Times is about the movement to teach computer science, computational thinking, and computer programming in K-12, driven by Seattle’s Code.org:
“It is a stark change for computer science, which for decades was treated like a stepchild, equated with trade classes like wood shop …
“Computer programming should be taught in every school, said Hadi Partovi, the founder of Code.org and a former executive at Microsoft. He called it as essential as ‘learning about… Read more →
UW CSE’s Shayan Oveis Gharan is Honorable Mention in 2013 ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award competition
Each year, ACM recognizes a winner and one or two honorable mentions in its Doctoral Dissertation Award competition – the highest-impact dissertations among roughly 2,000 Ph.D.s granted.
UW CSE professor Shayan Oveis Gharan is one of two Honorable Mentions in the 2013 competition, announced this week.
Shayan received his Ph.D. from Stanford last year. He is spending the current year as a Miller Fellow at UC Berkeley and will join UW CSE during the 2014-15 academic year. His research involves… Read more →
Madrona scores at GeekWire Awards
CSE’s Oren Etzioni, GeekWire‘s “Hire of the Year,” is a long-time Venture Partner at Madrona Venture Group, which has backed several of his startups and more than a dozen UW CSE startups in all.
Additionally, our friend Julie Sandler, Principal at Madrona, is GeekWire‘s “Geek of the Year.”
And Rover.com, created by our friend Greg Gottesman, Managing Director at Madrona, is GeekWire‘s “Startup of the Year.”
Read about all the GeekWire Awards here.… Read more →
CSE’s Oren Etzioni is GeekWire’s “Hire of the Year”
Long-time CSE professor Oren Etzioni, recently departed to lead Paul Allen’s new Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence, is GeekWire‘s “Hire of the Year”:
“Perhaps no one has been more synonymous with the startup ethos at the University of Washington than computer science professor Oren Etzioni, a mainstay on campus for more than two decades and an inspiration for budding entrepreneurs in academia.
“Etzioni moved on from academia after nearly 30 years this past September after Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen… Read more →
NSF highlights student projects from UW Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering
The National Science Foundation highlights games created by students in UW’s NSF Engineering Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering:
“Tech Sandbox: The playground of neural engineering. University of Washington students compete in creating projects that demonstrate the core principles of neural engineering.”
Read more here. Learn about CSNE here.… Read more →
What will you look like when you grow old?
The Seattle Times gushes over UW CSE’s age progression software, created by Ira Kemelmacher-Schlizerman, Supasorn Suwajanakorn, and Steve Seitz:
“We also asked the program to age a number of others – from Miley Cyrus to Russell Wilson to Macklemore – to show them in their 60s. It showed us what Jimi Hendrix and Kurt Cobain would have looked like had they lived, to 71 and 47 this year, respectively.
“No wonder so many plastic surgeons get rich.”
Read… Read more →
Code.org @ UW
This evening UW welcomed Hadi Partovi of Code.org at the Washington Education Innovation Forum, organized by the Center for Reinventing Public Education. UW CSE, the UW College of Education, and Washington STEM co-sponsored the event.
State Representative Reuven Carlyle – known for advocating policies that pass the common sense sniff test – emceed a panel that included two Seattle-area high school students in addition to Hadi: Ifrah Abshir, a sophomore at Rainier Beach High School, and Megan Fu, a junior… Read more →
CSE’s Karl Koscher on WXXI/NPR Connections “Science Roundtable”
Today’s monthly “Science Roundtable” on WXXI/NPR Connections featured UW CSE Ph.D. student Karl Koscher discussing online security in the wake of Heartbleed, former UW CSE faculty member (and current University of Rochester department chair) Henry Kautz discussing artificial intelligence, and Henry’s Ph.D. alum (and current Google[x] data scientist) Adam Sadilek discussing trend-tracking via Twitter.
Listen here.… Read more →
Seattle: Top of the tech cities for recent college grads
NerdWallet set about to identify the best cities for recent college graduates. Seattle, at #2 behind Washington DC, beat out San Francisco (#4), Austin (#5), Atlanta (#6), Raleigh (#7), Boston (#8), San Diego (#11), and San Jose (#13). New York didn’t make the top 20.
Admission: If we hadn’t ranked at the top, our reaction to this survey would have been “Who the hell is NerdWallet?” But since we did, check out the survey here!… Read more →
Code.org founder Hadi Partovi to speak at UW on May 8
In December, more than 20 million students around the globe participated in the Hour of Code, organized by Code.org – a Seattle-based non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science. The event allowed students to try their hand at coding and prompted discussions among policymakers and educators about how to provide students with greater access to computer science education.
That discussion – and Hadi Partovi, co-founder and CEO of Code.org – will come to the University of Washington’s Seattle… Read more →