Allen School News

As a community committed to diversity and inclusion, the Allen School celebrates and values differences in its members. Yesterday (Oct. 10), the School held its annual diversity in computing reception, a favorite event highlighting the School’s broadening participation in organizations that honor diversity in computing. Students, faculty and staff that attended the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing  earlier in October and the ACM Richard Tapia … Read more →

---

The volume of content posted on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter and other social media platforms every moment of the day, from all over the world, is monumental. Unfortunately, some of it is biased, hate-filled language targeting members of minority groups and often prompting violent action against them. Because it is impossible for human moderators to keep up with the volume of content generated in real-time, platforms are turning… Read more →

---

Mark your calendars! Another exciting season of the Allen School’s Distinguished Lecture Series kicks off on Oct. 10. During the 2019-2020 season, we will explore deep learning, domain-specific architectures, recent advances in artificial intelligence and robotics, and so much more. All lectures take place at 3:30 p.m. in the Amazon Auditorium on the ground floor of the Bill & Melinda Gates Center on the University of… Read more →

---

On Saturday, Allen School Ph.D. student Galen Weld, his twin brother Adam, his father (and Allen School professor) Dan, and his mom Margaret Rosenfeld reached the 8,528-foot summit of Buck Mountain in the Glacier Peak Wilderness. With that achievement, Galen became the youngest person to summit each of the 100 highest peaks in Washington, and Dan and Galen became the first father-son team to… Read more →

---

Hao Peng, a Ph.D. student working with Allen School professor Noah Smith, has been named a 2019 Google Ph.D. Fellow for his research in natural language processing (NLP). His research focuses on a wide variety of problems in NLP, including representation learning and structured prediction. Peng, who is one of 54 students throughout the world to be selected for a Fellowship, aims to analyze and understand the working and decisions of deep learning models and to incorporate inductive… Read more → Tags: Google Fellow, natural language processing, Noah Smith

---

Allen School Ph.D. student Justin Chan is on a mission to put the power of medical diagnostics into people’s hands, inspired by the ubiquity of smartphones coupled with advancements in artificial intelligence. Working with collaborators in the Networks & Mobile Systems Lab led by professor Shyam Gollakota and in UW Medicine, Chan has developed a mobile system for detecting ear infections in children and a contactless AI system for detecting cardiac arrest using smart devices. He co-founded Edus Health,… Read more →

---

Samia Ibtasam, a third-year Ph.D. student in the Allen School’s Information & Communication Technology for Development (ICTD) Lab, was recognized recently by Google with a Women Techmakers Scholarship. The Women Techmakers Scholars Program — formerly known as the Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship Program — aims to advance gender equality in computing by encouraging women to become active role models and leaders in the field. Ibtasam, who works with Allen School professor Richard Anderson to increase financial and technological… Read more →

---

In late July and early August, the Allen School was pleased to host a very successful MSRI Mathematics of Machine Learning Summer School. Around 40 Ph.D. students from across the country — and beyond — were brought to the University of Washington for two weeks of lectures by experts in the field, as well as problem sessions and social events. The lectures were also opened up to the broader… Read more →

---

The race is on to cultivate new capabilities and talent in robotics and artificial intelligence, but the high barrier to entry for many research platforms means many would-be innovators could be left behind. Now, thanks to a team of researchers in the Personal Robotics Laboratory at the University of Washington’s Paul G.… Read more →

---

The Allen School is preparing to welcome five faculty hires in 2019-2020 who will enhance the University of Washington’s leadership at the forefront of computing innovation, including robot learning for real-world systems, machine learning and its implications for society, online discussion systems that empower users and communities, and more. Meet Byron Boots, Kevin Lin, Jamie Morgenstern, Alex Ratner, and Amy Zhang — the outstanding scholars set to expand the school’s research and teaching in exciting new directions while building on… Read more →

---