Allen School News

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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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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 →

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Allen School professors Tim Althoff and Carlos Guestrin were recognized by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Knowledge Discovery and Data Mining (SIGKDD) this week for seminal research contributions made roughly a dozen years apart. At the KDD 2019 conference held in Anchorage, Alaska, Althoff received the 2019 SIGKDD Doctoral Dissertation Award for his paper “Data Science for Human Well-being” that presented new techniques for turning data generated by… Read more →

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First-year Ph.D. student Kuikui Liu and professor Shayan Oveis Gharan of the Allen School’s Theory of Computation group earned a Best Paper Award from the Association for Computing Machinery’s 51st annual Symposium on the Theory of Computing (STOC 2019) by presenting a novel approach for counting the bases of matroids and solving a 30-year-old conjecture by Mihail and Vazirani that will have wide-ranging implications for the theory and practice of computation and mathematics.… Read more →

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Allen School professor Pedro Domingos has been selected as the 2019 recipient of the John McCarthy Award from the International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence (IJCAI). The award, which is named for one of the founders of the field of AI, recognizes established, mid-career researchers who have amassed a track record of significant research contributions that have been influential in advancing the field. Domingos is being honored by the IJCAI for his multiple contributions in machine learning and data science… Read more →

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The Allen School family is mourning the recent passing of Bob Ritchie, one of our founding faculty members who helped build the foundations of Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington as we know it today. Originally from Alameda, California, Ritchie earned his bachelor’s from Reed College and his Ph.D. from Princeton University — both in Mathematics — before joining the faculty of Dartmouth College in 1960. He had a near escape when, two years later,… Read more →

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The University of Washington today announced the appointment of Magdalena Balazinska as the next director of the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Former Dean of Engineering Michael Bragg and UW Provost Mark Richards selected Balazinska, a professor who co-leads the Allen School’s Database and Data Science research groups, to succeed current director Hank Levy, who has overseen 13 years of growth in the school’s size, stature, and impact. “I am thrilled and deeply honored to… Read more →

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Allen School alumnus Brandon Lucia (Ph.D., ‘13) has been recognized by the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Computer Architecture with the 2019 Young Computer Architect Award. This award recognizes an outstanding researcher who has completed their doctoral degree within the past six years and who has made innovative contributions to the field of computer architecture. Lucia, who completed his Ph.D. working with… Read more →

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