UW’s Shwetak Patel, a faculty member in Computer Science & Engineering and Electrical Engineering, has been named a 2011 MacArthur Fellow – colloquially known as the MacArthur “Genius” Award.
Each year, the MacArthur Fellows Program awards unrestricted fellowships of $500,000 to roughly twenty “talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits and a marked capacity for self-direction. There are three criteria for selection of Fellows: exceptional creativity, promise for important future advances based on… Read more →
“Remote Control, With a Wave of a Hand”
Joint research by UW and Microsoft Research is described in the New York Times.
The research provides gestural remote control by means of algorithms that interpret and harness the interaction between the human body and the ambient electromagnetic field that is emitted as a matter of course by the wiring in households, by the power lines above homes, and by the gas pumps at service stations. The work was described in the CHI 2011 paper “Your Noise is My … Read more →
“Work on Home Sensors Targets Energy Efficiency”
PC World notes the selection of UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel as a Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow.
“Homeowners who want to know which electrical device in their house consumes the most energy will soon be able to find out due to the research of Shwetak Patel. The assistant professor from the University of Washington is one of this year’s recipients of Microsoft’s Research Faculty Fellowships …
“The Microsoft Research Faculty Fellowship is not the first award marking Patel as an outstanding… Read more →
UW’s Shwetak Patel on GeekWire Radio
UW CSE’s and EE’s Shwetak Patel is the guest on this week’s GeekWire Radio broadcast.
“Our guest in the studio is Shwetak Patel, an assistant professor of computer science and electrical engineering from the University of Washington, who has figured out how to use voltage noise on home electrical systems to monitor the energy usage of specific appliances and devices, and also how to use home wiring as an antenna to receive signals from sensors around the home.”
Give it… Read more →
UW CSE Ph.D. alum Noah Snavely named Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow
Noah Snavely, a 2008 UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus now on the faculty at Cornell University, joined UW CSE professor Shwetak Patel in the 2011 class of Microsoft Research Faculty Fellows.
Noah, who studied with professor Steve Seitz in UW CSE’s Graphics and Imaging Laboratory, is interested in using massive collections of images on the web to better understand and visualize the world. A portion of his Ph.D. work was embodied in Microsoft’s amazing Photosynth offering.
(Another UW… Read more →
UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel named Microsoft Research Faculty Fellow
Each year since 2005, Microsoft Research has honored a small number of the world’s most innovative young faculty members as Microsoft Research Faculty Fellows.
The 2011 class of Microsoft Research Faculty Fellows – announced today – includes Shwetak Patel, Assistant Professor of CSE and EE at the University of Washington. Shwetak’s research concerns Human-Computer Interaction, Ubiquitous Computing, and User Interface Software and Technology. He is particularly interested in developing easy-to-deploy sensing technologies and approaches for activity recognition and… Read more →
Shwetak Patel is July Wired magazine cover story
The research of UW professor Shwetak Patel is prominently featured in the cover story of the July issue of Wired magazine.
The focus of the story is feedback loops that modify human behavior. Shwetak’s work on clever, cost-effective monitoring of the home environment (electricity, gas, water) and feeding this information back to residents to influence their behavior is the prime example (beginning halfway through the attached article.
Read the article here. Learn more about Shwetak and his work… Read more →
High school student Akash Badshah wins “Best of CHI” award!
Akash Badshah has scored a triple-first: Akash is the first high school student in the nearly 30-year history of the CHI conference (human factors in computing) to serve as lead author, present a paper, or win a “Best of CHI” award.
Akash presented his paper on a self-powered haptic feedback device to a huge crowd at CHI 2011 in Vancouver BC last week. The session was standing-room-only, and the organizers even had to set up an overflow room and pipe… Read more →
Shwetak Patel wins UW College of Engineering “Community of Innovators” Award
Shwetak Patel, a faculty member in CSE and EE, will receive a 2011 University of Washington College of Engineering “Community of Innovators” Award.
Each year, these awards recognize UW College of Engineering faculty, students, and staff who have gone “above and beyond.” Shwetak shares the Junior Faculty Innovator Award with EE’s Brian Otis.
See all the award winners here. Learn about Shwetak’s work here.
(CSE staff members Tracy Erbeck and Melody Kadenko were nominated in the professional… Read more →
“Talking to the Wall”
Technology Review highlights work by UW CSE’s Shwetak Patel and Microsoft Research’s Desney Tan.
“Our lives are awash with ambient electromagnetic radiation, from the fields generated by power lines to the signals used to send data between Wi-Fi transmitters. Researchers at Microsoft and the University of Washington have found a way to harness this radiation for a computer interface that turns any wall in a building into a touch-sensitive surface.”
Read the article here. NewScientist here. Gizmodo here… Read more →