47 top researchers from across the nation gathered last week for the 17th Summer Research Institute in Computer Science, co-organized each summer by University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering and Microsoft Research.
The goal of these Summer Research Institutes is to catalyze research in emerging areas. This year’s topic was “Crowdsourcing Personalized Online Education.” The organizers were Dan Weld (UW CSE), Mausam (UW CSE), Eric Horvitz (MSR), and Meredith Ringel Morris (MSR). Quoting from the overview:
“Strong recent enthusiasm… Read more →
Demo day at the UW CSE daycamp for middle schoolers
Twenty-one 7th, 8th, and 9th grade girls from fourteen Seattle-area schools spent the past week at UW CSE’s daycamp for middle schoolers – our first of three daycamps this summer.
During the week, participants heard from members of the UW CSE community, discussed big ideas in computer science, and completed projects in Processing, a Java-based programming environment for artists and designers. The first project was to design a face made of basic geometric shapes and then animate it based on… Read more →
UW CSE nominated for two Pwnie Awards
In what CNN calls “the Oscars for hard-core computer hackers,” UW CSE has been officially nominated in two categories for the upcoming 6th annual Pwnie Awards!
Most Innovative Research: Comprehensive Experimental Analyses of Automotive Attack Surfaces
“Many hackers have been complaining about the extinction of unmitigated vanilla stack buffer overflows. It turns out that they are not extinct at all, they have all just migrated to YOUR CAR. Stephen Checkoway and the rest of his team identified and exploited… Read more →
Carlos Guestrin leads First GraphLab Workshop on Large-scale Machine Learning
Carlos Guestrin, soon to join UW CSE from Carnegie Mellon, recently hosted the First GraphLab Workshop on Large-scale Machine Learning. A Computing Community Consortium blog post describes the landmark event:
“The scale and complexity of data on the web continues to grow at a tremendous rate. A recent New York Times article compared Big Data to an economic asset for companies, like currency and gold. But, in order to extract value from 6 billion Flickr images, 900 million Facebook… Read more →
UW CSE’s animation shorts at upcoming screenings
“Catch and Release,” UW CSE’s 2011 animation capstone film, has been selected for screening at th DC Shorts Film Festivals, the largest short film event on the East Coast. Catch and Release will be screened in the Family Friendly Showcase on September 8th and again on September 15th. More information may be viewed here.
“Catch and Release” and “Nebbish,” the 2010 animation capstone film, will be screened at Bumbershoot’s 1 Reel Film Festival curated by SIFF (September 1-3, 2012).… Read more →
Welcome to the UW CSE summer daycamp for middle school students!
UW CSE, in collaboration with UW’s Women in Computer Science & Engineering and Society of Women Engineers organizations, is sponsoring three weeklong daycamps for middle school and high school students. The first is underway this week.
Learn more about the daycamps here. Learn about DawgBytes, UW CSE’s K-12 outreach program, here.… Read more →
Bill Gates on ‘Game-based’ learning
The School Leadership 2.0 blog reports on an interview with Bill Gates and Vicki Philips (Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation) during a recent visit to Atlanta.
“Now the foundation is working with the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington on a free, online game called Refraction. As students play, their progress is visible to the teacher on his or her computer, allowing the educator to see instantly what concepts students understand.
“The idea is that in coming… Read more →
San Francisco Chronicle: “University of Washington a tech talent pipeline”
The San Francisco Chronicle picks up Nick Wingfield’s New York Times profile of UW Computer Science & Engineering:
“Some budding entrepreneurs and computer whizzes based in the Pacific Northwest are starting to turn heads down in Silicon Valley …
“Although Stanford is considered the Hogwarts of techdom, UW has quietly established itself as the other West Coast nexus of the information economy. And while Seattle-area tech icons like Microsoft and Amazon have long relied on UW – pronounced “U-dub” by… Read more →
Decide.com in New York Times
Decide.com, a Seattle startup created by UW CSE professor Oren Etzioni and four students, is featured in today’s New York Times:
“If you are thinking about buying a new laptop, stop thinking and do it. At least that’s what the algorithms at Decide.com say to do.
“Decide.com is a Web site created by artificial intelligence experts that tracks millions of price changes on consumer electronics and appliances and uses algorithms to to predict when buyers are most likely to… Read more →
Bill Gates praises UW CSE Center for Game Science at Education Commission of the States conference in Atlanta
“Imagine if kids poured their time and passion into a video game that taught them math concepts while they barely noticed because it was so enjoyable. We’ve been supporting the Center for Game Science at the University of Washington, which has developed a free, on-line game called Refraction. The goal of the game is to rescue animals whose ships are stuck in outer space. The ships require different amounts of fuel, powered by lasers. So the players have to manipulate… Read more →