UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni is quoted in this New York Times article:
“But parsing and categorizing language, with its ambiguity and subtlety, remains a formidable hurdle for computers. So the challenge facing Watson was far greater than the one I.B.M. overcame in 1997 with its Deep Blue chess-playing computer, which beat the world champion Garry Kasparov.
“‘It’s a lot more difficult for a computer to understand language at the level of an 8-year-old than to beat a grandmaster at chess,’… Read more →
UW CSE’s Raj Rao at TED2011
UW CSE professor Raj Rao was one of the headliners at the TED2011 conference, speaking in Session 11, “The Echo of Time,” along with paleontologist Jack Horner, President of the Institute of Medicine Harvey Fineberg, and General Stanley McChrystal. More photos here. Raj the cartoon here.… Read more →
CSE’s James Landay elected to CHI Academy
The CHI Academy is an honorary group of individuals who have made extensive contributions to the study of Human Computer Interaction and who have led the shaping of the field.
This year seven new members were elected to the CHI Academy, including UW CSE’s James Landay. James’s citation reads:
“James Landay is the Short-Dooley Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His research over the past two decades has included contributions in the areas of automated… Read more →
CACM reports on the PCAST NITRD report
Communications of the ACM reports on the report of the Presidents Council of Advisors on Science and Technology concerning the Federal Networking and Information Technology Research and Development Program. (UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska co-chaired the Working Group that advised PCAST on the report.)
“An example of high payback was given at the report’s public release by Akamai founder Tom Leighton. He related a story of Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency funding he received in the 1990s to study ‘highly mathematical… Read more →
Cascadia Innovation Fellowships
Our friends at Madrona Venture Group, working with a number of top Seattle technology companies, have introduced the Cascadia Innovation Fellowship.
The Cascadia Innovation Fellowship is targeted at computer science undergraduate and graduate students from across the nation. If selected, students receive a paid summer internship, plus a $5,000 scholarship. The Seattle technology community will support the fellows and provide them with networking, education, and insights that will benefit them as they finish school and well beyond into their career.… Read more →
Open Data Kit wins WTIA Industry Achievement Award
UW CSE’s Open Data Kit (ODK), a collection of free and open source tools, in use around the world, that make data collection easier and more flexible, has received the 2011 Washington Technology Industry Association Industry Achievement Award for Best Use of Technology in Government, Non-Profit, or Education.
ODK began as a collaboration between UW CSE and Google.
Learn more about ODK here. Learn more about the WTIA Industry Achievement Awards here.
UW CSE’s Living Voters Guide was… Read more →
“Q&A: The meaning of Watson”
TechFlash interviews UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni:
“The folks at University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering have been watching IBM’s Watson computer on ‘Jeopardy!’ this week with even more interest than the rest of us. They even hosted a viewing party last night on campus, followed by expert commentary. We followed up today with one of those experts, computer science professor Oren Etzioni, the director of the UW Turing Center, to get his take on the whole thing. Continue reading… Read more →
Jeopardy!
On February 15, UW CSE and IBM hosted a viewing of the second of three Jeopardy! matches pitting IBM’s Watson Artificial Intelligence system against two human champions.
More than 250 fans, ranging in age from 7 to 70, turned out! Commentary was provided by UW CSE’s Oren Etzioni, Ed Lazowska, and Luke Zettlemoyer, Microsoft Research’s Eric Horvitz, and IBM’s Greg Dietzel.
There are some wonderful background videos on the IBM Watson website, here.
And don’t miss “Watson, The … Read more →
Oren Etzioni in Nature News on Watson
“‘It is, in my mind, a historic moment,’ says Oren Etzioni, director of the Turing Center at the University of Washington, Seattle. ‘I watched Gary Kasparov playing Deep Blue. This absolutely ranks up there with that.'”
Read the complete interview here.… Read more →
Anup Rao, Georg Seelig win Sloan Research Fellowships
CSE’s Anup Rao and Georg Seelig have been selected to receive 2011 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships, among the most selective awards for young scientists.
Rao, an expert in the theory of computation, joined CSE in 2010, following graduate work at the University of Texas and postdocs at the Institute for Advanced Study and Princeton. His interests include finding mathematical explanations for why some computational problems are fundamentally harder than others, and discovering the limitations of efficient computational… Read more →