Online ads may not only be trying to sell you something; they may be selling you out. That’s according to a team of researchers in the Allen School’s Security and Privacy Research Lab, who recently discovered how easy it is for someone with less than honorable intentions to turn online ads into a surveillance tool. They found that, for as little as $1,000, a person or organization could conceivably purchase ads that will enable them to track someone’s location… Read more →
Allen School alumnus and cybercrime fighter Stefan Savage wins MacArthur “Genius” Award
Stefan Savage, who earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science & Engineering from the University of Washington in 2002, has been named a 2017 MacArthur Foundation Fellow. The foundation selected Savage, a faculty member at the University of California, San Diego, for his groundbreaking research focused on “identifying and addressing the technological, economic, and social vulnerabilities underlying internet security challenges and cybercrime.”
The MacArthur Fellows Program — commonly referred to as MacArthur “Genius” Awards — celebrates exceptionally creative individuals… Read more →
Allen School’s second building named the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering
The University of Washington Board of Regents today approved the naming of the Allen School’s second building as the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering. The naming of the building in honor of the Gateses was made possible by gifts from Microsoft and a group of local business and philanthropic leaders who are longtime friends and colleagues of the couple.
“There is wonderful symbolism in having the Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science… Read more →
15 volunteers, 2 hours, >300 Allen School résumés reviewed
In the run-up to the Paul G. Allen School’s annual fall recruiting fair, 15 industry volunteers reviewed more than 300 student résumés on Tuesday afternoon in the atrium. Many thanks to Amazon’s Greg Geiger and Abigail Gualberto, Whitepages’ Rachel Flanagan, Redfin’s Marissa Carr, Krystin Morgan and Kritin Vij, Microsoft’s Kelsey Saboori, Indeed’s Jason Gabriel and Robert Noble, Qumulo’s Anthony Falsetto, Google’s Zach Spann, Carolyn Balousek and Lauren Woodward, RealSelf’s Finnian Durkan, and Karat’s Aram Greenman!… Read more →
Allen School and AWS team up on new NNVM compiler for deep learning frameworks
A team of researchers at the Allen School and AWS have released a new open compiler for deploying deep learning frameworks across a variety of platforms and devices. The NNVM compiler simplifies the design of new front-end frameworks and back-end hardware by offering the ability to compile front-end workloads directly to hardware back-ends. The new tool is built upon the TVM stack previously developed by the same Allen School researchers in order to bridge the gap between deep learning systems… Read more →
Paul G. Allen School out in force at Grace Hopper Celebration
Roughly 40 Allen School students attended this week’s Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing – a phenomenal event dating to 1994 that this year had 18,000 attendees!… Read more →
Ph.D. student Kanit Wongsuphasawat earns Best Paper Award at IEEE VAST
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 →