A terrific interview on CNN’s “The Big Idea” with UW CSE’s Zoran Popovic. Participants in the Foldit protein folding online game had recently solved a problem that had eluded scientists for a decade.
The GRAIL internal chatter following appearance of the video:
Zoran Popovic: “Disheveled hair and tired mumbling after staying up most of the night with a new grant proposal.”
Steve Seitz: “Great interview! Are you in a prison cell?”
Zoran: “No that’s my cleaned up office (or… Read more →
“Search needs regulation like the Pacific Ocean needs global warming”
In the context of Google chairman Eric Schmidt’s Capitol Hill testimony, UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni scores the One-Liner Of The Week Award on American Public Media’s “Marketplace”:
APM’s Steve Henn: “I talked to Oren Etzioni, who founded a startup called Farecast and sold it to Microsoft and just founded a new company called Decide, which is a search engine for shopping decisions. And I kind of expected him to have a bone to pick with Google, but instead he said,… Read more →
Shwetak: the postcard …
(See below for Shwetak: the TV show …)… Read more →
“UW professor awarded ‘genius grant’ of $500,000”
KING5 News interviews Shwetak Patel upon the announcement of his MacArthur Fellowship. Watch the interview here.
Shwetak is the second UW CSE faculty member, and the 14th University of Washington faculty member, to be recognized with a MacArthur Foundation “Genius Award.”… Read more →
Shwetak Patel wins MacArthur Foundation “Genius” Award
UW’s Shwetak Patel, a faculty member in Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering, has been named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow – colloquially known as the MacArthur “Genius” Award.
Each year, the MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships of $500,000 to roughly twenty “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on… Read more →
Unprecedented!
In our recent post about the recognition of OneBusAway with a VISION 2040 Award from the Puget Sound Regional Council, we failed to note the most amazing aspect of the ceremony: Alan Borning in a suit!
But, who is the guy in the pink shirt and tie?… Read more →
“Gamers solve molecular puzzle that baffled scientists”
An excellent MSNBC Cosmic Log article on UW’s Foldit game for protein folding and protein structure calculation.
“For more than a decade, an international team of scientists has been trying to figure out the detailed molecular structure of a protein-cutting enzyme from an AIDS-like virus found in rhesus monkeys. Such enzymes, known as retroviral proteases, play a key role in the virus’ spread — and if medical researchers can figure out their structure, they could conceivably design drugs to stop… Read more →
“If It Only Had a Brain”
The work of UW CSE professor Raj Rao is featured in the new book The Two-Second Advantage:
“The robots in Rajesh Rao’s lab at the University of Washington could be the cousins of the robot from Lost in Space, Rosie from The Jetsons, and C-3Po. They have square, electronics-laden heads, human-shaped bodies, lights, buttons, and herky-jerky movements. They look like toys but are nothing of the sort. The robots were created to help Rao learn about human brains …”… Read more →
We Like Mike!
From the President’s Page of the September 2011 issue of Columns, the University of Washington alumni magazine – an issue celebrating the 150th Anniversary of the University of Washington:
“Along the way, there were a number of momentous developments that would help shape the University we see today… Then in 1975, the University took yet another step into the future by establishing the Department of Computer Science, a far-sighted step that would attract some of the world’s best computer scientists… Read more →
“Intel, University of Washington create 3D models with Web images”
ZDNet reports: “At the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco, Intel CEO Paul Otellini demos how the company’s processors are being used to render a 3D model from millions of user-generated images taken from photo-sharing sites like Flicker and Picasa. The work is being done at the University of Washington, where researchers have crowd-sourced images from the Web and created 3D re-construction of St. Peter’s Basilica in Vatican City.”
Watch a video of Otellini’s presentation here.
This work is… Read more →