A University Week profile of CSE professor Richard Ladner, winner of the 2009 University of Washington Outstanding Public Service Award for his work with the deaf and blind communities.
“‘It is kind of interesting at this point in my career. You would think I would be winding down,’ says Ladner, the Boeing Professor in Computer Science & Engineering … But instead of making plans for retirement, he has a pile of cell phones on his desk that he’s adapting… Read more →
CSE Recognizes Inspirational Teachers
Each year, we invite our UW Computer Science & Engineering undergraduates to identify “influential teachers” who shaped their careers prior to arriving at UW. We host a dinner for the teachers, their guests, and the students who nominated them. There are three goals: to honor these life-changing teachers, to reacquaint them with their highly successful students, and (crassly) to get them to send us more great students.
This year’s dinner was held on June 3rd. Photos (taken by our own… Read more →
What’s Microsoft’s Bing Strategy?
Technology Review looks at Microsoft’s cherry new search engine, Bing, and turned to CSE web search expert Dan Weld for his take.
“Bing is a limited start, but for a reasonable set of queries, it is better.” But there’s still plenty of room for both search leader Google and Bing to improve. “Search can and will get much, much better,” says Weld.
Read the full article here.… Read more →
UW Robotics Trailblazer, Gatewood Girls
The Robotics Team from Gatewood Elementary visited UW CSE’s Yoky Matsuoka back in February on a field trip with their after school program. Now two of the fifth graders, who share a passion for building robots, have been invited to spend a week this summer at Yoky’s lab.
Read the full post from the West Seattle Blog here.… Read more →
UW CSE to pilot Amazon Kindle DX
In Fall 2009, each incoming University of Washington Computer Science & Engineering graduate student will receive a Kindle DX, Amazon’s latest wireless reading device, to use in place of traditional printed textbooks and research papers in their first-year graduate courses. The students also will receive textbooks and other required reading materials free of charge for the Kindle DX.
The University of Washington is one of seven colleges and universities conducting a Kindle DX pilot program. The goals of the… Read more →
Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Seattle tech ecology
TechFlash reported today that Scott Silver will be the new site director for Google’s Kirkland office. He will replace Peter Wilson, who is leaving to launch his own start-up. When asked for his reaction, UW CSE’s Ed Lazowska said, “‘The positive is that it contributes a seasoned veteran to the local startup scene – Peter spent a number of years at Microsoft before Google, so is really well connected and experienced. The great news is the diversity of the information… Read more →
“When the Country Called: How a Team of Academic Experts Contributed to the President’s Cyberspace Review”
A National Science Foundation news release regarding the President’s 60-day assessment of cybersecurity. “[NSF CISE Assistant Director Jeannette] Wing asked Fred Schneider, a computer science professor at Cornell University and chief scientist of the NSF-funded TRUST Science and Technology Center, and Ed Lazowska, a professor of computer science at the University of Washington, to gather ideas from experts in trustworthy computing from a variety of academic institutions and turn them into a viable set of policy recommendations.”
See the NSF… Read more →
“How IBM Plans to Win Jeopardy!”
For decades, humans have struggled to create machines that can extract meaning from human language. Traditional approaches require a great deal of manual work up front to render material understandable to computer algorithms, and the ultimate goal is to make this step unnecessary. In May’s Technology Review, David Talbot discusses how IBM hopes to advance this objective. Expected later this year, Watson — a natural-language computer system — will play Jeopardy! (the popular TV trivia show) against human contestants.
UW… Read more →
New issue of MSB!
The Spring 2009 issue of Most Significant Bits, the UW CSE alumni newsletter, is now available! This issue includes:
Three CSE faculty receive NSF CAREER awards
Sensing the water we use
Faculty and student honors
Alumni spotlight: CSE engages high school teachers with Agnes Kwan’s hands-on support
Annual CSE Scholarship and Fellowship Luncheon
(The usual giant photo of Hank appears on page 2.)
See all MSB issues here.… Read more →
“Twitter in the classroom”
KPLU’s Jennifer Wing (@kplujwing) reports how social networking technology like Twitter is breathing new life into the typical end-of-the-day conversation parents have with their kids, thanks to teachers that seed the conversation with a daily tweet. UW CSE’s James Landay (@landay) discusses current research on sensing and social networking.
Listen to the full 4:48 audio story on KPLU (@kplu) here.… Read more →