All-in-all, the Washington State legislature’s session that draws to a close this week (after its second overtime period – thank god they didn’t have to resort to penalty kicks) was a great one for Computer Science!
With extraordinary leadership from Reps. Drew Hansen and Chad Magendanz, and with strong backing from Code.org, Microsoft, the Washington Tech Industry Association, and many others, the Washington State Legislature passed HB 1813, establishing standards for learning and teaching computer science in K-12.
In the… Read more →
The fastest growing AP exam in the past 5 years: Computer Science!
Granted, we had (and still have) a pretty deep hole to climb out of, but between 2010 and 2015, Computer Science AP exams are up by 150% – from 20,000/year to 50,000/year.
This is particularly remarkable since only 5% of schools offer AP Computer Science. Let’s fix that!
Visit the Code.org website here; check out their blog post on AP growth here.… Read more →
What does the founder of a tech startup look like?
What does the founder of a tech startup look like? Not like the photo to on the right!
Claire Cain Miller reports in the New York Times on a study by researchers at Berkeley’s Haas School of Business. The average founder is 38, with a master’s degree and 16 years of work experience.
And while only 12 percent of current founders are women, when the researchers searched for potential founders based on matches with other characteristics of successful founders, 20… Read more →
Happy retirement, Scott Rose!
UW CSE M.S. alum Scott Rose has been CSE’s extraordinary webmaster-in-exile for more than 20 years – working first from Madison WI and then from Vancouver BC as he accommodated the career of his academic superstar wife, UW CSE Ph.D. alum Anne Condon.
Anne has a sabbatical coming up (Caltech, New Zealand, and Ireland are on the agenda), and Scott took the opportunity to pull the ripcord.
Thanks, Scott, for your decades of superb work!
(Additional Bruce Hemingway photos here… Read more →
UW CSE Leadership Seminar Series
Each year, UW CSE’s Leadership Seminar Series brings alumni and friends back to campus to impart career success lessons from the school of hard knocks to upper-division undergraduates. This evening we thanked Bay Area participants in 2015’s Leadership Seminar Series at a dinner in San Francisco. Left-to-right: Erin Walker, Ed Lazowska, Ph.D. alum Brian Pinkerton (A9), Bachelors alum Mohamed El-Zohairy (NileTap -> CloudPress -> News Corp), Dan Grossman, Bachelors alum Brandon Ballinger (Google -> Sift Science -> healthcare.gov).
Thanks for… Read more →
UW CSE @ Sift Science
On Friday, Dan Grossman and Ed Lazowska visited UW CSE alum Jason Tan, co-founder and CEO of Bay Area startup Sift Science – bringing machine-learning-powered fraud detection to online merchants of all sizes.… Read more →
Eric Lander: “The Miracle Machine”
We had missed this stupendous talk that Eric Lander (Broad Institute) gave in April at the National Math Festival gala dinner at the Library of Congress:
“There are bills in Congress to ensure the accountability of taxpayer dollars invested in science, to ensure that dollars are stretched efficiently and effectively – I quote from websites here – to ensure ‘accountability’ and ‘transparency.’ There are proposals that the National Science Foundation be required to publish a justification of each and every… Read more →
UW CSE @ Apple
UW CSE professors Dan Grossman and Ed Lazowska plus UW CSE outreach staff Lara Littlefield and Erin Walker engaged in a lunchtime discussion on Friday with some of UW CSE’s alums at Apple: Owen Anderson, Rob Bedichek, Caitlin Bonnar (grad student and summer intern), Susumu Harada, Dave Richardson, Josh Scotland, Peter Stackle, Erik Turnquist, and Jean Wu.
Many thanks to Rob Bedichek for hosting!… Read more →
UW’s Josh Smith and wireless robot recharging featured in The Economist
The latest issue of The Economist asks, “Electronics has already cut the data cord. Can it now cut the power cord as well?” Based in part on the work of CSE and EE professor Joshua Smith, the answer may soon be “yes.” Josh, who heads the UW Sensor Systems Lab, has developed a system for dynamic wireless charging of robots – and started a company, Wibotic, to commercialize the new technology. From the article:
“Drones may one… Read more →
UW CSE Bay Area alumni event – phenomenal!
Nearly 200 UW CSE Bay Area alums turned out on the evening of Thursday June 25 for an event generously hosted by our friends at Twitter.
UW CSE faculty Hank Levy, Ed Lazowska, Luis Ceze, Dan Grossman, Jeff Heer, and Zach Tatlock attended (along with former faculty Bay Area residents Carl Ebeling, Alon Halevy, David Salesin, and Marty Stepp).
Are you a Bay Area alum who didn’t hear about this event? It’s because you don’t check our Bay Area Facebook… Read more →