Hot on the heels of his Saturday night appearance on the field and scoreboard of Husky Stadium, UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel found his way to Washington DC to demonstrate his ElectriSense and HydroSense sustainability sensing technology to Secretary of Energy (and Nobel Laureate) Steven Chu.
Back-channel from a Department of Energy person at the meeting: “Had the Secretary interested – made him 15 minutes late for his next meeting! Good opportunity to discuss learning algorithms and other CS issues.”… Read more →
Shwetak Patel on the Husky Stadium scoreboard!
Huskies over Wildcats 42-30? Nice.
Shwetak Patel on the Husky Stadium scoreboard? Priceless!
UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel was recognized at this evening’s game as the University of Washington’s newest MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award” winner.
Congratulations Shwetak!
Additional photos here.
And a note from CMU MacArthur winner Luis von Ahn:
From: Luis von Ahn
Date: Sun, Oct 30, 2011 at 10:22 AM
Subject: Shwetak
To: Ed Lazowska
Husky stadium for Shwetak? Man, you guys do it right.
When I got… Read more →
James Hamilton in UW CSE Distinguished Lecturer Series, Tuesday
The task of following Bill Gates falls to James Hamilton. James is a superb database, data center, and Internet-scale services R&D leader, as well as a superb speaker. Currently Vice President and Distinguished Engineer at Amazon Web Services, he previously spent a decade with Microsoft, and before that a decade with IBM. James also maintains two extremely interesting blogs: one on all things related to technology (here), and one on all things related to cruising and living aboard… Read more →
STEM education in Washington State
A Seattle Times op-ed by State Senator Rosemary McAuliffe and UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska:
“But, we must do more to grow STEM programs in our schools. We must increase the focus on inquiry-based learning in all fields. We must increase the emphasis on “computational thinking”, which is changing every field. We must increase computer-science offerings in high schools — both here and nationally. The vast majority of job openings across all STEM fields are in computing. Let us not forget… Read more →
Bill Gates at UW CSE
Bill Gates spent the afternoon at UW CSE, visiting labs and speaking to a hanging-room-only crowd.
Bill met with Gaetano Borriello, Yaw Anokwa, Rohit Chaudhri, and Nicola Dell concerning technology for health care in the developing world; with Oren Etzioni, Kevin Clark, and Alan Ritter concerning the future of search; and with Shwetak Patel, Eric Larson, Sidhant Gupta, and Gabe Cohn concerning sustainability sensing.
A web archive of Bill’s talk and Q&A (“The Opportunity Ahead: A Conversation… Read more →
“If found down, take me to Harborview”
UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska is featured in one of a series of articles on “Why I Chose UW Medicine.” Read it here.… Read more →
Aruna Balasubramanian wins UMass Amherst Outstanding Dissertation Award
Aruna Balasubramanian, a Computing Innovation Fellow postdoctoral researcher in UW CSE working with professor David Wetherall, has received the Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Department of Computer Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, her Ph.D. institution.
Congratulations Aruna!… Read more →
Bill Gates on Thursday
Reminder: Bill Gates will deliver the UW CSE Distinguished Lecture on Thursday at 3:30 in the Microsoft Atrium of the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science & Engineering. Details (including live webcast information) here.… Read more →
“Brave New Thermostat: How the iPod’s Creator Is Making Home Heating Sexy”
Nest Labs, a Palo Alto startup, announced its “Nest Learning Thermostat” today. UW CSE’s Yoky Matsuoka is currently on leave as Vice President for Technology at Nest.
“But probably the most sophisticated feature of the Nest is the artificial intelligence that helps it regulate the temperature to your liking — without your having to engage in complicated setup tasks.
“Included among Nest’s advisors is Stanford AI head and Google researcher Sebastian Thrun, who told Fadell and Rogers that the… Read more →
“Bigger Grants for Athletes Are Discussed”
No problem placating the smaller conferences – you could pay >1,000 athletes out of the President’s salary.
“Emmert said the minimum Academic Progress Rates required for teams to compete in the postseason could be raised to 900 in time for this season’s N.C.A.A. men’s basketball tournament. It could increase to 930 — essentially corresponding to a 50 percent graduation rate — in two years.” Heavens to Murgatroyd!
Read more from the NY Times here. Even better, read a damning… Read more →