“Every Black Friday, retailers lure shoppers in the cold, predawn hours to wait in long lines with the promise of one-day-only deals that can’t be beat. And every year, shoppers ask themselves, Is this really worth it?’
“The answer, it turns out, often is, ‘No.’
“An analysis by pricing research firm Decide Inc. and The Wall Street Journal of this year’s most-touted Black Friday deals found that many of the bargains advertised as ‘doorbusters’ were available at lower prices at… Read more →
Nation’s computer science landscape continues its leftward tilt
Jeannette Wing – head of the Computer Science Department at Carnegie Mellon University and former Assistant Director of the National Science Foundation for Computer and Information Science and Engineering – will move to Seattle on January 1 as Microsoft’s Vice President and Head of Microsoft Research International, reporting to Chief Research Officer Rick Rashid.
Congratulations to MSR, and warm welcome to Jeannette!
Read the Microsoft announcement here.… Read more →
UW CSE alum happy hour at The Outlander
Nearly 50 UW CSE alums met Thursday evening at The Outlander in Fremont for happy hour. Interested in future events? Keep your eye on the UW CSE Facebook page or the UW CSE Alumni Facebook group!… Read more →
CSEdWeek – Computer Science Education Week – December 9-15 2012
In 2010, with leadership from Congressman Vernon Ehlers and Congressman Jared Polis, the US House of Representatives endorsed the week of Grace Hopper’s birthday (December 9, 1906) as Computer Science Education Week (CSEdWeek) to recognize the critical role of computing in today’s society and the imperative to bolster computer science education at all levels. UW CSE is an active participant!
Join us for an Open House on Saturday December 8 from 1:00-3:30. Participate in hands-on activities and research lab… Read more →
SRO for Susan Athey
On Tuesday, Stanford economist Susan Athey delivered the third UW CSE Distinguished Lecture of the year, “Game Theory Meets Machine Learning: Designing Auction-Based Markets for Online Advertising,” co-sponsored with the Department of Economics.
Previous talks in this year’s CSE Distinguished Lecture Series: Maria Klawe (President of Harvey Mudd College) and Brad Smith (Microsoft General Counsel and Executive Vice President).
Next talk in the series: MIT professor Regina Barzilay, January 8.
Information on the talk, and video archive, here. … Read more →
“How Yoky Matsuoka created the modern robotic hand, and what the rest of us can learn from her”
GeekWire excerpts a portion of the forthcoming book “Mastery” by Robert Greene which profiles former UW CSE professor Yoky Matsuoka, now VP of Technology at Nest:
“Her mind naturally works better on a larger scale, continually pondering the connections between things on high levels— what makes the human hand so weirdly perfect, how the hand has influenced who we are and how we think. With these large questions governing her research, she avoids becoming narrowly focused on… Read more →
DawgBytes summer daycamp reunion at UW
This past summer, UW CSE hosted three week-long summer daycamps for secondary school students under the umbrella of our DawgBytes (“a taste of UW CSE”) outreach initiative.
On Saturday, the middle school cohort re-connected at UW, where Cheryl Platz from Microsoft provided an overview of interaction design, followed by a workshop and an activity fair coordinated by UW CSE undergraduate Emily Harmell and UW ACMS undergraduate Patricia McKenzie. (Thanks also to UW CSE undergraduates Rachel Sobel, Kevin Wallace, Nicole Ford,… Read more →
Neil Eney
Services were held today for Neil Eney, father of long-time UW CSE undergraduate advisor (and her father’s daughter) Crystal Eney, who passed away on October 27.
A summary of Neil’s life appears here.
Our thoughts are with Crystal, her brother Neilson, and Neil’s wife of 43 years, Page.… Read more →
UW CSE’s Anna Karlin named ACM Fellow
Anna Karlin, Microsoft Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, has been named a Fellow of the ACM “for contributions to algorithms and to the boundary with systems, networking, data mining, and microeconomics.”
Anna is known for contributions in the area of algorithms, especially online and randomized algorithms, and for high-impact work at the boundary between algorithms and other areas of computer science. She combines mathematical prowess with a long-standing interest and experience in building and analyzing advanced computer systems. … Read more →
CSE’s Emo Todorov: responding to disasters with a guitar-playing robot hand
OK, we don’t get it either, but it’s the UW Daily – a report on the selection of a team led by CSE professor Emo Todorov to participate in the DARPA Robotics Challenge.
Read the UW Daily article here. Read a previous CSE News post here.… Read more →