Allen School Ph.D. student Kanit “Ham” Wongsuphasawat, who works with professor Jeffrey Heer in the Interactive Data Lab, won the Best Paper Award at the Institute for Electrical and Electronics Engineers’ Conference on Visual Analytics Science & Technology (IEEE VAST) for “Visualizing Dataflow Graphs of Deep Learning Models in TensorFlow.” Wongsuphasawat is the first author on the paper, which is based on work he did as an intern at Google Research with colleagues Daniel… Read more →
2017 Paul G. Allen School “Women in Computing” reception
Each fall we host a reception to celebrate the women of the Paul G. Allen School and of our region’s technology sector, to provide an opportunity for them to interact with one another, and to give a rousing sendoff to the Allen School women who we and our industry partners will be sending to the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing (a group of 40 this year!).
In addition, 2017 marked the awarding of the inaugural Lisa Simonyi Prize,… Read more →
All that jazz: Researchers preserve iconic musical performances in DNA
A team of researchers in the Molecular Information Systems Lab, a collaboration between the University of Washington and Microsoft Research, worked with DNA synthesis company Twist Bioscience to encode two archival-quality audio recordings from the world-renowned Montreux Jazz Festival in nature’s perfect storage medium. The preservation of “Smoke on the Water” by Deep Purple and “Tutu” by Miles Davis represent the first time that DNA has been used for long-term archival storage — making the… Read more →
Franziska Roesner honored with Emerging Leader Award from UT Austin
Allen School professor and Ph.D. alumna Franziska Roesner, co-director of the Privacy and Security Research Lab, received the 2017 Emerging Leader Award from the College of Natural Sciences at The University of Texas at Austin. Roesner, who earned her bachelor’s degree in 2008 from UT Austin before her arrival at the Allen School as a graduate student, was inducted into the college’s Hall of Honor at a ceremony last night.
Calling Roesner a “formidable force and leader in… Read more →
“Geek of the Week” Alex Mariakakis sets his sights on long-term impact through mobile health research
Ph.D. student Alex Mariakakis, who works with professor Shwetak Patel in the Allen School’s UbiComp Lab, has his eye on the prize in the latest edition of GeekWire’s “Geek of the Week.” Blue Devil-turned-Husky Mariakakis was a slam-dunk for the honor based on his work on mobile health apps that will one day allow anyone, anywhere to be screened for potentially life-threatening medical conditions using a smartphone.
“There are so many reasons why I work at… Read more →
UW’s Shwetak Patel, Matt Reynolds, and Julie Kientz earn Ubicomp 10-Year Impact Award
University of Washington professors Shwetak Patel, Matt Reynolds, and Julie Kientz have been recognized with the 10-Year Impact Award at Ubicomp 2017 for the paper, “At the Flick of a Switch: Detecting and Classifying Unique Electrical Events on the Residential Power Line.” The paper, which originally earned the Best Paper Award and Best Presentation Award at Ubicomp 2007, was singled out by this year’s conference organizers for having lasting impact a decade after its original presentation.… Read more →
UW researchers achieve breakthrough in ubiquitous connectivity with long-range backscatter
A team of researchers at the Allen School and University of Washington Department of Electrical Engineering have invented a long-range backscatter system that enables low-cost connectivity for a variety of objects and devices while consuming 1000x less power than existing technologies. The new system — which builds upon pioneering work by members of UW’s Networks & Mobile Systems Lab and Sensor Systems Lab on techniques for harvesting power from ambient signals — is the first of its kind capable of… Read more →
Jeffrey Heer wins IEEE Visualization Technical Achievement Award
Allen School professor Jeffrey Heer, who leads the Interactive Data Lab at the University of Washington, has been recognized the 2017 IEEE Visualization Technical Achievement Award from the Institute of Electrical & Electronics Engineers. The IEEE Visualization and Graphics Technical Committee (VGTC) selected Heer based on his contributions to the “design, development, dissemination and popularization of languages for visualization.” Winners of the Visualization Technical Achievement Award are nominated by their peers.
The IEEE VGTC award citation recounts how Heer’s… Read more →
Securing the Fourth Estate: What the Panama Papers and Confidante reveal about journalists’ needs and practices
When the Panama Papers story first broke in April 2016, its explosive revelations of a vast and hidden network of offshore shell companies and financial scandals-in-waiting tied to politicians, corporations, banking institutions, and organized crime represented a victory for good, old-fashioned investigative journalism — with a high tech twist. In addition to provoking international outrage, toppling governments, and instigating audits and investigations in more than 70 countries, the story caught the eye of researchers like Allen School professor Franziska Roesner… Read more →
UW researchers are working on a way to screen for concussion using a smartphone
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control, an estimated 3.8 million sports-related concussions occur in this country alone — and roughly half of those go undiagnosed. Researchers in the Allen School’s UbiComp Lab and UW Medicine hope to reduce that risk and make sports safer by developing PupilScreen, a tool for measuring whether someone has suffered concussion by means of a smartphone app.
Currently, coaches and parents rely on subjective assessments like asking athletes questions or having them… Read more →