Allen School News

Allen School Ph.D. students Vivek Jayaram and John Thickstun have been named 2020 Qualcomm Innovation Fellows for their work in signal processing, computer vision and machine learning using the latest in generative modeling to improve source separation. In their paper, “Source Separation with Deep Generative Priors,” published at the 2020 International Conference on Machine Learning, the team addresses perceptible artifacts that are often found in source separation algorithms. Jayaram and Thickstun… Read more →

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Our latest Allen School student spotlight features Jenny Liang, a Kenmore, Washington native and recent UW graduate who majored in computer science and informatics. Liang was named among the Husky 100 and earned the Allen School’s Undergraduate Service Award for her leadership, compassion, and focus on developing technology for social good in her work with the Information and Communication Technology for Development Lab (ICTD).  This summer, Liang started an internship at the Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence (AI2) after… Read more →

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Researchers at the University of Washington will lead a team of universities in creating the Institute for Foundations of Data Science (IFDS) to tackle important theoretical and technical questions in the field. Supported by a $12.5 million, five-year grant from National Science Foundation, IFDS is one of two institutes nationwide to receive funding from the latest phase of the agency’s Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science (TRIPODS) program. The IFDS — a collaboration between UW and the Universities… Read more →

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Allen School postdoctoral researcher Joseph Jaeger and visiting researcher Nirvan Tyagi, a Ph.D. student at Cornell Tech, received the Best Paper by Early Career Researchers Award at the 40th Annual International Cryptology Conference (Crypto 2020) organized by the International Association for Cryptologic Research (IACR). Jaeger and Tyagi, who have been working with professor Stefano Tessaro of the Allen School’s Theory and Cryptography groups, earned the award for presenting a new approach to proving… Read more →

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The University of Washington is among the recipients of a five-year, $100 million investment announced today by the National Science Foundation (NSF) aimed at driving major advances in artificial intelligence research and education. The NSF AI Institute for Foundations of Machine Learning (IFML) — one of five new NSF AI Institutes around the country — will tap into the expertise of faculty in the Allen School’s Machine Learning group and the UW Department of Statistics in collaboration with the University… Read more →

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In July, the Allen School kicked off its inaugural AI4ALL summer program, online. Created to introduce artificial intelligence (AI) to underrepresented pre-college students, AI4ALL is a national program that works to diversify AI by recruiting students who identify with other groups underrepresented in AI. The University of Washington’s debut this summer is the first instance of AI4ALL to focus on students with disabilities and their representation in AI. The University of Washington joined the program this year, offering a free,… Read more →

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A team of researchers that includes Allen School professor Carlos Guestrin, Ph.D. student Tongshuang Wu and alumnus and affiliate professor Marco Tulio Ribeiro (Ph.D. ’18) of Microsoft captured the Best Paper Award at the 58th annual meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL 2020). In the winning paper, “Beyond Accuracy: Behavioral Testing of NLP Models with CheckList,” they and… Read more →

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Allen School professor emeritus Richard Ladner, a leading researcher in accessible technology and a leading voice for expanding access to computer science for students with disabilities, has been named the 2020 recipient of the Public Service Award for an individual from the National Science Board (NSB). Each year, the NSB recognizes groups and individuals who have made significant contributions to the public’s understanding of science and engineering. In recognizing Ladner, the board cited his exemplary science communication, diversity advocacy,… Read more →

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Allen School professor and alumnus Michael Ernst (Ph.D., ‘00) has had a distinguished research career that spans more than two decades and includes multiple, influential contributions to programmer productivity through software analysis, testing and verification. In recognition of his impressive body of work, Ernst was recently recognized with the 2020 Outstanding Research Award from the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Software Engineering (ACM SIGSOFT).  Since he returned to his alma mater in 2009 to take up a… Read more →

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No one could accuse Ph.D. student Vikram Iyer of just winging it. Since his arrival at the University of Washington, Iyer has advanced ground-breaking innovations in low-power wireless communication and computation to expand the Internet of Things, from 3D-printable wireless objects capable of storing and transmitting data, to insect-scale platforms that provide a bug’s eye view of the world. As a sign of just how his ideas have taken flight, today Iyer was named one of three recipients of the… Read more →

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