Today, Google announced that UW Ph.D. student Tianqi Chen has been chosen as a 2016 Google Ph.D. Fellow in machine learning. Chen works with professor Carlos Guestrin in the UW MODE Lab (Machine Learning, Optimization, Distributed Systems and Statistics) and is the creator of XGBoost, an open-source, end-to-end tree boosting system that is designed to be efficient, flexible and portable.
Tree boosting is a highly effective and widely used machine learning method. Researchers have embraced XGBoost because it is… Read more →
UW CSE’s Sergey Levine wins ONR Young Investigator Award
Sergey Levine, who will join the UW CSE faculty this spring, has been recognized with a Young Investigator Award from the Office of Naval Research.
Sergey’s research focuses on the intersection between control and machine learning, with the aim of developing algorithms and techniques that can endow machines with the ability to autonomously acquire the skills for executing complex tasks. In particular, he is interested in how learning can be used to acquire complex behavioral skills, in order to… Read more →
UW CSE students compete in the UW Health Innovation Challenge
The finals of the inaugural Health Innovation Challenge, hosted by the UW Foster School of Business Buerk Center for Entrepreneurship, took place yesterday on campus. Three finalists with a UW CSE connection—FitTraction, HLTH, and MultiModal Health—were among the 18 interdisciplinary teams (out of a competitive field of 34) invited to pitch their ideas to improve health with technology to a roomful of judges drawn from the local community.
MultiModal Health, which captured third place, developed an… Read more →
In support of “institutes” at universities
UW faculty members David Baker (Biochemistry; Director of UW’s Institute for Protein Design), Tom Daniel (Biology; Co-Director of the Institute of Neuroengineering), Ed Lazowska (CSE; Director of the eScience Institute) and Dan Schwartz (Chemical Engineering; Director of the Clean Energy Institute) discuss the role of institutes at universities:
“University research institutes such as ours eliminate sclerotic silos and bureaucratic boundaries by deftly blending teams of super-smart students, faculty, and research scientists from interconnected subject areas. As a result, these institutions… Read more →
Holy cow! UW CSE alum Joe Heitzeberg launches crowdsourced cattle-sharing venture
Crowd Cow, a new company launched by UW CSE alum Joe Heitzeberg (B.S., ’05) and fellow startup veteran Ethan Lowry, offers a different kind of meat market—one in which Northwest steak lovers become “steak holders” by crowdsourcing their evening meal.
Unlike typical cattle-sharing arrangements that require a significant investment in freezer space, Crowd Cow enables customers to purchase only the quantity and cuts that they want online, from sources that are committed to sustainable and humane practices. By tapping… Read more →
Repel the invaders from California!
We in UW CSE have been pretty laid back about the migration of Californians to Seattle. Sure, they drive up our housing prices, crowd our roads, and take our jobs, but what’s not to like?
What’s not to like is this license plate! We send many of our best Ph.D. alums to UCSD to build a world class computer science department, and they respond with propaganda like this?
We’re with Donald! It’s time to close the borders!
(OK, maybe it’s… Read more →
Where are the STEM jobs, 2014-2024?
Better late than never, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics has released its workforce projections for the decade 2014-2024.
We focus here on STEM jobs – jobs in computer science, engineering, the life sciences, the physical sciences, the social sciences, and the mathematical sciences.
BLS projects both job growth (newly-created jobs) and job openings (all available jobs, whether newly-created or available due to retirements).
BLS projects that 73% of all job growth in STEM between 2014 and 2024 will be… Read more →
UW researchers shine at CSCW 2016
Our friends at Georgia Tech’s GVU Center prepared an interactive graphic showing the number of papers and authors by organization at the upcoming ACM Conference on Computer-Supported Cooperative Work and Social Computing (CSCW 2016). UW tops the list, with 15 papers at the conference representing contributions from 46 distinct authors—ahead of such heavyweights as Carnegie Mellon, Cornell, MIT and Georgia Tech itself. The variety of submissions involving UW authors illustrates the strength of our collaboration across multiple departments… Read more →
Computer scientists power our region’s aerospace industry!
Washington state – and particularly King County Washington, Seattle’s home – is a leader in aerospace and in information technology. There’s no news there.
What is news comes from an ongoing study of King County’s aerospace industry talent pipeline by Community Attributes Inc. working with the Workforce Development Council of Seattle – King County:
What field has the largest total number of current employees in King County’s aerospace industry? COMPUTER SCIENCE
What field has the greatest predicted number of new… Read more →
Watch, listen and read: UW’s Shwetak Patel and “The Human Face of Big Data”
Last night the new documentary The Human Face of Big Data premiered on PBS. UW CSE and EE professor Shwetak Patel contributed his expertise and insights to the film, which examines how the vast amounts of data collected in our increasingly connected world is changing the way we live and shaping our future. As big data’s big night approached, Patel and executive producer Rick Smolan joined Jeremy Hobson, host of NPR’s “Here & Now,” to talk about the… Read more →