“Last fall, when LearnSprout cofounder and one-time Facebooker Frank Chien called up his college buddies Joe Woo, previously with Microsoft, and Anthony Wu, a former Googler, he didn’t necessarily have an education startup in mind.
“The trio could have tackled healthcare or energy instead, he said. What mattered was that they go for something big — dent-the-universe, shake-up-the-system significant.
“‘I [told them], let’s do something crazy,’ he said. ‘We can stay at our jobs forever or we can swing for… Read more →
GigaOm features UW CSE alumni startup MemCachier
MemCachier, a “Memcached-in-the-cloud” startup created by UW CSE alum Alex Loddengaard working with UW CSE alum Amit Levy, was profiled today in GigaOm.
(MemCachier shares San Francisco space with WibiData, a data analytics startup created by UW CSE alum Christophe Bisciglia working with UW CSE alum Aaron Kimball. Christophe, Aaron, and Alex previously worked together at Cloudera, the first startup created by Christophe after he left Google. Memcached – the pre-cloud progenitor of MemCachier, used worldwide… Read more →
Washington leads the nation in concentration of tech jobs
John Cook in GeekWire has done a terrific analysis of the Washington State data from a new national study of where tech jobs are located in the United States. Some key observations:
Overall, Washington State was the top state for tech job concentration, at 11 percent.
Snohomish County (home to Boeing’s Everett plant and several biotechnology companies) leads the state with a 25 percent concentration, and a whopping tech job growth rate of 14 percent. King County isn’t too shabby… Read more →
UW, WSU are top two in new national football assessment
“College football teams in the six major conferences (Southeastern Conference, Big Ten, Big 12, Pac 12, Atlantic Coast Conference and Big East) spent an average of $2.46 million per victory over the three-year period.
“But some schools have got a lot more for their money than others …
“Then, there’s the other end of the spectrum. Washington State University spent an average of $5.4 million for its five victories between 2008 and 2010, narrowly edging its Apple Cup rival, the… Read more →
“New program joins computer science and design experts at UW, Tsinghua University”
UW News reports on CSE’s World Lab Summer Institute:
“Health care? Environmental sustainability? Education? There’s an app for that. At least there may be soon, thanks to a new collaboration between UW and Chinese students.
“The University of Washington this July and August hosted the first World Lab Summer Institute, which brings together computer science, human-computer interaction and design students from the UW and Beijing’s Tsinghua University. Together they spent seven weeks developing ways that technology could be used… Read more →
“Wireless Charging Technology – One Step Closer to Reality”
Intel today announced its intention to actively commercialize Wireless Charging Technology (WCT), which lets you charge your smartphone wirelessly from your notebook PC.
WCT was pioneered by UW CSE and EE professor Josh Smith and colleagues at the late Intel Labs Seattle.
Read the Intel announcement here.… Read more →
Inaugural AI Journal “Prominent Paper Award” goes to UW CSE authors
Artificial Intelligence, which commenced publication in 1970, is now the generally accepted premier international forum for the publication of results of current research in AI.
The journal has established two new awards for papers published in the journal:
The AIJ Prominent Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published not more than five years ago in the AI Journal that are exceptional in their significance and impact.
The AIJ Classic Paper Award recognizes outstanding papers published at least 15 calendar years ago… Read more →
“Stay Out of My Kitchen, Robots!”
The stodgy traditionalists at Slate lament the research of UW CSE Ph.D. student Jinna Lei:
“As a result, chefs are imagined not as autonomous virtuosi or gifted craftsmen but as enslaved robots who should never defy the commands of their operating systems.”
The good news for Jinna: the article describes other, related research as “even more degrading.”
Read the article here. Then … “Robot, bake me some brownies!”… Read more →
CSE’s Ed Lazowska receives Reed College Vollum Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Science and Technology
UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska received the 2012 Reed College Vollum Award for Distinguished Accomplishment in Science and Technology at Reed’s convocation ceremony on August 22.
Each year since 1975, Reed has selected an awardee who demonstrates “the perseverance, fresh approach to problem-solving, and creative imagination that characterized Howard Vollum’s career.”
Vollum graduated from Reed in 1936 with a degree in physics. For his senior project, he built an oscilloscope; he went on to co-found Tektronix, which revolutionized oscilloscope design… Read more →
“The vulnerability of high-tech cars”
American Public Media writes:
“Any computer hooked up to the Internet is a potential victim of malicious hackers.
“Of course, it’s one thing to be hacked on a desktop PC, it’s quite another to be hacked in your car, traveling at 70 miles an hour, with a computer that controls your brakes and steering.
“Yoshi Kohno is part of a research team studying car computer security at the University of Washington. He says don’t freak out. Yet. ‘Right now, my… Read more →