Allen School News

Last week marked the end of an academic year unlike any other — and the culmination of all of the hard work, hopes and dreams of a graduating class unlike any other. With the resumption of in-person pomp and circumstance precluded due to ongoing pandemic-related restrictions at the University of Washington, the Allen School marked this important milestone with a virtual tribute highlighting the Class of 2021’s commitment to excellence and service — and acknowledging their perseverance in… Read more →

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Parker Ruth, a senior who will graduate this spring with bachelor’s degrees in computer engineering and bioengineering, has been awarded the College of Engineering’s Dean’s Medal for Academic Excellence. Each year, the college selects two students to receive this award in recognition of their academic achievement, leadership, and engagement in research and extra-curricular activities. Ruth exemplifies these qualities with departmental honors in both of his majors, his contributions to multiple research projects, his leadership roles and his work… Read more →

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Ten Allen School students earned recognition from the National Science Foundation (NSF) as part of its latest round of Graduate Research Fellowship Program (GRFP) awards, which honor outstanding students who are pursuing full-time research-based degrees with the potential to produce innovative contributions in science and engineering. Since 1952, this prestigious competition has provided support for graduate education in NSF-supported STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) disciplines. The Allen School honorees — eight Ph.D. students and two undergraduate students — were… Read more →

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Joy He-Yueya applies data science techniques to measures of patient behavior to assess how they might predict the onset of schizophrenia symptoms. Meanwhile, Ximing Lu uses machine learning to improve cancer diagnosis and explores how neural language models can advance commonsense reasoning. Parker Ruth builds mobile sensing systems to detect and monitor a variety of health conditions, while Jenny Liang develops programming techniques to support developer education and collaboration. And Emily Bascom contributes to research aimed at promoting user privacy… Read more →

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Allen School alumnus Aditya Vashistha (Ph.D., ‘19) received the 2020-2021 WAGS/ProQuest Innovation in Technology Award from the Western Association of Graduate Schools for his doctoral dissertation on “Social Computing for Social Good in Low-Resource Environments.” The award recognizes a graduate thesis or dissertation that presents an innovative technology with a creative solution to a significant problem. Vashistha, now a computing and information science professor at Cornell University, completed his Ph.D. working with professor Richard Anderson in the Information … Read more →

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The University of Washington’s Undergraduate Research Program has recognized six Allen School students for excelling in their area of research. Skyler Hallinan, Raida Karim and Ximing Lu were selected as Levinson Emerging Scholars and Jerry Cao, Jakub Filipek and Millicent Li were named Washington Research Foundation (WRF) Fellows. Both the Levinson Scholars, funded by Art (UW ‘72) and Rita Levinson, and the WRF Fellows are chosen for their innovative research in bioscience and other related fields. The scholarships… Read more →

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The University of Washington has established a new endowed professorship, the Senosis–Paul G. Allen Endowed Professorship in Computer Science & Engineering, through the generosity of professors Shwetak Patel and Julie Kientz. The $1 million endowment, which was made possible in part by the acquisition of Patel’s mobile health startup Senosis Health by Google in 2017, will support recruitment and retention of Allen School faculty who pursue high-impact research aimed at solving meaningful, real-world problems… Read more →

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Allen School professor Adriana Schulz and adjunct professor Nadya Peek are among the 35 “Innovators Under 35” recognized by MIT Technology Review as part of its 2020 TR35 Awards. Each year, the TR35 Awards highlight early-career innovators who are already transforming the future of science and technology through their work. Schulz, a member of the Allen School’s Graphics & Imaging Laboratory (GRAIL) and Fabrication research group, was honored for her visionary work on computer-based design tools… Read more →

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To our extended Allen School community, Traditionally, June marks a time of great joy and celebration at the Allen School, as we send off our graduates into the world to push the limits of innovation and apply computing for the benefit of humanity. If this were a normal year, we would be gathering with friends and families tomorrow in Hec Edmundson Pavilion on the University of Washington campus in Seattle to cheer on our bachelor’s and master’s recipients as they… Read more →

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Ten years ago, a team of security and privacy researchers at the University of Washington and University of California, San Diego published a paper, “Experimental Security Analysis of a Modern Automobile,” describing how they were able to override critical safety systems and take control of a range of vehicle functions of what was later revealed to be a… Read more →

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