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 →
CSE’s Susan Eggers is UC Berkeley “Distinguished Alumnus”
Susan Eggers, Microsoft Professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, has been named the 2009 Distinguished Alumnus of UC Berkeley’s Computer Science Division. She will be recognized at the UC Berkeley commencement on Sunday May 24.
Eggers’s achievements in computer architecture have earned her recognition as a Member of the National Academy of Engineering and as a Fellow of ACM, IEEE, and AAAS.
Eggers, who will be recognized along with Steve McCanne, joins a… Read more →
HydroSense is 3rd of 90 in UW Business Plan Competition
HydroSense — a team led by UW CSE graduate student Jon Froehlich and advised by UW CSE faculty members Shwetak Patel, James Fogarty, and James Landay — finished 3rd out of 90 entrants in the 2009 University of Washington Business Plan Competition. HydroSense received the $5,000 WRF Capital Finalist Prize, and was named the “Best Clean-Tech Idea.”
Hopes were high as HydroSense won the $10,000 UW Environmental Innovation Challenge in early April, then made it to the Round of… Read more →
Roxana Geambasu, Michael Piatek Awarded Inaugural Google Fellowships
UW CSE graduate students Roxana Geambasu and Michael Piatek are among 13 exemplary Ph.D. students from across the nation who have been named recipients of the inaugural Google Fellowships.
Leading graduate programs in computer science and related fields were invited to nominate two students each. The students could be studying any of 20 different technical areas.
Both of UW’s nominees were awarded Google Fellowships. Roxana received the 2009 Google Fellowship in Cloud Computing. Her research focuses on the challenges, as… Read more →