“Is there anything a smartphone app can’t do? Researchers at the University of Washington, UW Medicine and Seattle Children’s hospital have figured out how to let people measure their own lung health by breathing in the direction of the standard microphone on a smartphone, without any specialized attachments.
“Here’s the cool part: The results from the app are within 5 percent of those from commercial spirometers that run into the thousands of dollars. That level of accuracy means the app… Read more →
“The Human Face of Big Data”
A New York Times article describing Rick Smolan’s forthcoming book The Human Face of Big Data features two of our favorite computer scientists: UW CSE professor Shwetak Patel, and MIT EECS professor John Guttag:
“Mr. Smolan visited recently to offer a glimpse of what will be in The Human Face of Big Data and the imaginative photo composition involved in bringing technical subjects to life. One photograph shows Shwetak Patel, an assistant professor at the University of Washington, who… Read more →
dub cleans up at Ubicomp!
dub is the University of Washington’s highly successful cross-campus (and beyond!) collaboration on human-computer interaction and design.
Earlier we reported on the receipt of a Best Paper Award at the 14th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing by the paper “An Ultra-Low-Power Human Body Motion Sensor Using Static Electric Field Sensing” by dub researchers Gabe Cohn (UW, and Microsoft Research consultant), Sidhant Gupta (UW, and MSR consultant), Tien-Jui Lee (UW), Dan Morris (MSR, and UW affiliate professor), Josh… Read more →
UW+MSR win Ubicomp 2012 Best Paper Award
The paper “An Ultra-Low-Power Human Body Motion Sensor Using Static Electric Field Sensing” by Gabe Cohn (UW, and Microsoft Research consultant), Sidhant Gupta (UW, and MSR consultant), Tien-Jui Lee (UW), Dan Morris (MSR, and UW affiliate professor), Josh Smith (UW), Matt Reynolds (Duke), Desney S. Tan (MSR, and UW affiliate professor), and Shwetak Patel (UW) has just received a Best Paper Award at the 14th ACM International Conference on Ubiquitous Computing. (Lead author Gabe Cohn is a Ph.D.… Read more →
Abie Flaxman wins TR35
Abie Flaxman, professor of Global Health at UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) and adjunct professor of Computer Science & Engineering, is the latest in a long line of CSE-related researchers to be recognized as a member of Technology Review‘s TR35 – an annual listing of 35 top innovators under the age of 35.
Abie is the research lead for the Computational Algorithms research team at IHME. He is the primary architect of a software tool known as… Read more →
“On the Edge — The Future of Computing Research”
A Computing Community Consortium blog post concerning as session at last month’s CRA Conference at Snowbird chaired by CSE’s Ed Lazowska and featuring CSE’s Shwetak Patel as well as Stanford’s Daphne Koller:
“Our field has exhibited an ever-changing balance of “technology push” and “demand pull” over the years. Many currently sense a movement of the pendulum in the “demand pull” direction. I’d like to argue that this is fantastic — it’s great news for our field, great news for society,… Read more →
CSE’s Jon Froehlich wins 2012 UW Distinguished Dissertation Award
Jon Froehlich – a 2011 UW CSE Ph.D. alum now on the Computer Science faculty at the University of Maryland – has been named the recipient of the 2012 University of Washington Distinguished Dissertation Award.
Froehlich’s dissertation, Sensing and Feedback of Everyday Activities to Promote Environmental Behaviors, was advised by James Landay and Shwetak Patel. It focuses on creating new types of sensors to monitor and infer everyday human activity such as driving to work or taking a shower… Read more →
Shwetak Patel wins India Abroad “Face Of The Future Award”
Since its inception in 2002, the awards presented by India Abroad – the oldest and most widely-circulated Indian-American weekly newspaper – have become the most coveted community honor in the country, celebrating achievements across a wide spectrum.
This year’s winner in the “Face Of The Future” category is UW CSE and EE professor Shwetak Patel, “For being a technological genius; for developing innovative sensor systems for improving daily life; and for being a brilliant, young visionary.”
Read a terrific… Read more →
SoundWave in Popular Mechanics
SoundWave, a joint project of UW CSE and Microsoft Research, is featured in Popular Mechanics. Hey, Shwetak is a licensed plumber and electrician, and worked on his own car in high school – what could be more natural?
“Though using the Doppler effect to track human gestures has been around for a decade, it had always required customized equipment. SoundWave eliminates the need for any specialized hardware, requiring only basic technology.”
Read the article here. Read more about the… Read more →
“Turning the Body into a Wireless Controller”
The “Humantenna” project – joint work by UW CSE’s Gabe Cohn and Shwetak Patel and Microsoft Research’s Dan Morris and Desney Tan – is featured in today’s Computing Community Consortium blog. The CCC blog post builds on an article in New Scientist describing the research, presented at CHI 2012 earlier this month. There’s also a callout to the SoundWave project in the post – joint work by UW CSE’s Sidhant Gupta and Shwetak Patel and Microsoft Research’s Dan Morris… Read more →