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In 2007....
- "Google
and the Wisdom of Clouds" (Business Week)
(December 2007)
UW CSE alumnus Christophe Bisciglia is profiled in a
Business Week cover story.
"What recruits needed, Bisciglia eventually decided, was
advanced training. So one autumn day a year ago, when he ran
into Google CEO Eric E. Schmidt between meetings, he floated
an idea. He would use his 20% time, the allotment Googlers
have for independent projects, to launch a course. It
would introduce students at his alma mater, the University
of Washington, to programming at the scale of a cloud.
Call it Google 101. Schmidt liked the plan. Over the following
months, Bisciglia's Google 101 would evolve and grow. It
would eventually lead to an ambitious partnership with IBM,
announced in October, to plug universities around the world
into Google-like computing clouds ...
"How was Bisciglia going to give students access to this
machine? The easiest option would have been to plug his
class directly into the Google computer. But the company
wasn't about to let students loose in a machine loaded
with proprietary software, brimming with personal data,
and running a $10.6 billion business. So Bisciglia shopped
for an affordable cluster of 40 computers. He placed the
order, then set about figuring out how to pay for the servers.
While the vendor was wiring the computers together, Bisciglia
alerted a couple of Google managers that a bill was coming.
Then he 'kind of sent the expense report up the chain, and no
one said no.' ... ("If you're interested in someone who
strictly follows the rules, Christophe's not your guy,' says
Lazowska."
MSNBC
Seattle Times
Don't miss the
BusinessWeek / CHINA cover!
- "Recap
of what was cool, not so cool in tech world in 2007"
(Seattle Times) (December 2007)
"With New Year's Eve a week away, our thoughts turn to
bubbles and the year that was ...
We asked a panel of technology party guests to review a list
of 25 events, trends and products that made the scene in 2007
and rate them on a scale of 'forget about it' (1) to 'game-changer' (5) ..."
UW CSE's Ed Lazowska is quoted throughout.
- "Sam
Karlin, mathematician who improved DNA analysis, dies"
(Stanford News Service) (December 2007 / January 2008)
Samuel Karlin, a Stanford professor emeritus of mathematics and
father of UW CSE professor Anna Karlin, died December 18 at
Stanford Hospital. He was 83.
According to UW CSE professor Martin Tompa: "Karlin
was one of the pioneers who applied mathematics and
statistical models to problems in biological sequence analysis.
He worked in this field for the last 20 years or so. He wrote
many important papers, but probably the most influential was a
series of papers with Stephen Altschul in the early 1990s laying
out the statistical foundation for BLAST, the most important piece
of software in computational biology. Their work is known as the
Karlin-Altschul Theory and is taught in many computational biology
courses."
Karlin was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences
and the National Academy of Sciences, and was awarded the National
Medal of Science in 1989. He was the author of 10 books and more
than 450 articles.
Earlier article from Stanford News Service
here.
- CSE
alums Rob Short, Gail Murphy win 2008 UW College of Engineering
Diamond Awards (December 2007)
Each year, the University of Washington College of Engineering
recognizes a small number of alumni with Diamond Awards. These
alumni are chosen by a committee of their peers to be recognized
for their contributions as engineers of excellence.
The winner of the 2008 Diamond Award for Entrepreneurial
Excellence is 1978 UW CSE M.S. alumnus
Rob
Short, recently retired as Corporate Vice President for
Windows Core Technology at Microsoft.
The winner of the 2008 Early Career Diamond Award is 1996 UW CSE
Ph.D. alumna
Gail
Murphy, now a Professor of Computer Science at the University of
British Columbia.
- The
University of Washington's economic impact (Columns)
(December 2007)
Columns, the UW alumni magazine, explores the economic
impact of the University of Washington on the region.
"'Eight of the companies we've invested in have come from the
Department of Computer Science & Engineering,' said Tom Alberg,
managing director of Madrona Investment Group. When he asked local
software companies to help fund the deparment's new building, even
non-Huskies relized how much they benefited by hiring UW
graduates. 'To succeed, technology companies need three
things - money, entrepreneurs and innovative ideas - and
UW is one of the main sources of innovative ideas.'" [page 4]
- Four
UW CSE chairs lay it on the line (December 2007)
Jean-Loup Baer (1988-1993), Ed Lazowska (1993-2001),
David Notkin (2001-2006), and Hank Levy (2006-present).
- "New
endeavors aim to build a better Internet" (MSNBC)
(December 2007)
MSNBC profiles the work of UW CSE professor Oren
Etzioni.
"University of Washington computer scientist and search engine
pioneer Oren Etzioni is hoping to make today's 'dumb'
computers far more consumer-friendly. As part of a larger
push in the field, his latest projects are providing a
sneak preview of how online applications might look in a
more intuitive Web 3.0 of the not-so-distant future."
- "What
Do Low U.S. Math And Science Scores Mean?" (Technology
Daily) (December 2007)
"University of Washington Computer Science Professor Ed Lazowska,
former co-chair of the now-defunct President's Information Technology
Advisory Committee, said the report 'once again clearly indicates
the performance of U.S. secondary students in science and mathematics
lags that of our competitor nations.'
He said the results should effectively counter a widely publicized
October Urban Institute report that claimed the United States, contrary
to other recent reports, is not falling behind in science and math
education.
Lazowska acknowledged performance gaps among segments of the U.S.
student population. While 'the best-prepared students in America
are equal to the best in the world,' he said, 'a greater and
greater proportion of America's students are not being prepared
at this level and are not being equipped for success.'"
- Oren
Etzioni on spam (Seattle Times) (December 2007)
"Oren Etzioni, a UW computer science professor, says ...
there are no obvious legal cures for spam. Just as 'arresting
a drug kingpin won't do much about drug use.'"
- Michael
Cohen, Ed Felten named ACM Fellows (December 2007)
UW CSE Affiliate Professor Michael Cohen (a researcher at
Microsoft Research) and
UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus Ed Felten (a professor at Princeton University)
were among 38 eminent computer scientists named 2007 ACM
Fellows. Congratulations to Michael and Ed!
- Dana
Wen, David Tepper, and Sam Whittle recognized by CRA (December 2007)
UW CSE undergraduates Dana Wen, David Tepper, and Sam Whittle were
among 89 students from across the country recognized in the 2008
Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate Award
competition.
- "Software
that Learns from Users" (Technology Review) (November 2007)
"The thing that makes computers a huge pain for everybody, says
Pedro Domingos, an associate professor of computer science at the
University of Washington, is that you have to explain to them every
little detail of what they need to do. 'It's really annoying,'
Domingos jokes. 'They're stupid.'
"That's why Domingos is taking part in CALO, a massive, four-year-old
artificial-intelligence project to help computers understand the
intentions of their human users. Funded by the Defense Advanced
Research Projects Agency (DARPA), and coordinated by SRI International,
based in Menlo Park, CA, the project brings together researchers
from 25 universities and corporations, in many areas of
artificial intelligence, including machine learning,
natural-language processing, and Semantic Web technologies.
Each group works on pieces of CALO, which stands for
'cognitive assistant that learns and organizes ....'
"'It's insanely ambitious,' Domingos says. 'But if CALO succeeds,
it'll be quite a revolution. Even if it doesn't, so much good
research is happening under it that it will still have been
worthwhile.'"
- NCWIT
Award for Aspirations in Computing (November 2007)
"The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing recognizes
young women at the high-school level for their computing-related
achievements and interests ...
"The NCWIT Award for Aspirations in Computing is given out
twice per year to nominees from the local metropolitan areas
where NCWIT holds its bi-annual meetings. Nominations are
made in conjunction with local school educators and
administrators, and nominees are selected for their
demonstrated, outstanding aptitude and interest in
information technology/computing; solid leadership ability;
good academic history; and plans for post-secondary education ..."
On November 19, NCWIT CEO and co-founder Lucy Sanders and
UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska presented the NCWIT
Award for Aspirations in Computing to
eight wonderful winners from the Puget Sound region:
Lenda Nguyen, Melinda Mudd, Nicole Mina Askarian, Kayleigha Holten,
Kaitlin McKinnon, Amy Li, Manpreet Kaur, and
Nicole Torcolini.
See a video featuring the award recipients
here.
- "Forging
a Remarkable Future: Computer Scientists Hold the Key to
Astounding Advances in the Coming Decades" (UWTV) (November 2007)
"Ed Lazowska has his gaze firmly focused on the future. He speaks
not in terms of the possibilities, but the realities of the coming
years. Personalized medicine based on genome sequencing. Web
browsers in your brain. Quantum computers. Digital prosthetics.
'This stuff is really cool!'
Lazowska foresees amazing changes in the coming years,
and believes computer science is the ultimate path to
this progress."
- "UW senior wins national coding competition"
(UW Daily) (November 2007)
"Computer Science senior Michael Skinner placed first in his
division of the national TopCoder Collegiate Competition in
Orlando, Fla., Nov. 2 ...
"Stuart Reges, a senior lecturer in the computer science department,
said Skinner's win is the most significant accomplishment in the
area of programming contests at the UW in the past 10 years.
'I hope that he can help to bring greater visibility to our
undergraduate program,' Reges said. 'As a top-10 department,
our research and graduate programs are well known internationally.
But not all UW undergraduates seem to be aware that they have a
chance to get a first-class computer science education that is
comparable to what undergraduates get at Stanford, Berkeley and
other top schools. Hopefully Michael's success can help to
change that.'"
- "Priming
the Pipeline for Women in Computing" (PressMediaWire)
(November 2007)
"'In computer science, we're engineering systems for the whole
population,' says professor Ed Lazowska, the Bill & Melinda
Gates Chair in Computer Science & Engineering at the
University of Washington. 'Every one of us brings our own
personal baggage to any system we design. If all computers
are designed by fully-able 40-year-old white males, they'll
be built to be used by fully-able 40-year-old white males.'
It's an argument that should resonate widely as enlightened
self-interest if nothing else, Lazowska says. 'A diverse
workforce [makes for] a better engineered artifact.'"
- "Google
Seattle lands UW ccmputer science professors" (Seattle PI)
(November 2007)
"Two University of Washington computer science professors are
joining Google's new development office in Seattle's Fremont
neighborhood, strengthening the search giant's ties to the
largest research institution in the state ...
"Brian Bershad and Craig Chambers - who together spent more than
30 years at the UW - will bring 'firepower' to the company, said
Google vice president of engineering Shiva Shivakumar, who is
based in the company's Kirkland office.
"'These two are spectacular,' said Shivakumar. 'They have done
some incredibly big things over the last few years. It is a huge deal.' ...
"Losing two talented professors to Google could be viewed as a
blow to the UW computer science department. But Ed Lazowska,
the Bill & Melinda Gates chair in the department, doesn't
see it that way.
"'On one hand, it is not like we are delighted to see these
guys go. But each of them was ready for a change. And I think
this is going to wind up being a real plus - a plus for us, a
plus for our students, a plus for collaboration, a plus
for Google,' said Lazowska, who noted that close to 150 UW
computer science students have been hired by Google over the
years. 'Craig and Brian are guys who have enormous respect
among the faculty and students. I think there are going to
be a bunch of really exciting projects going on up here.'"
See also
here.
- "CSE to launch new five-year
degree program" (UW Daily) (November 2007)
"Technologically minded students will soon have a new
degree program to add to their choices thanks to the
Department of Computer Science & Engineering (CSE),
if chair Hank Levy has his way.
The program received approval for funding for an initial
run of 10 students beginning next fall."
- CSE's
Michael Skinner is TopCoder Marathon Champion!
(Seattle Times) (November 2007)
CSE senior Michael Skinner has won the Marathon
competition of the
2007 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge.
"University of Washington computer whiz Michael Skinner
scored an upset victory Friday by winning his division
of an international contest aimed at finding out who can
write the most effective computer programs ...
Skinner, 22, a senior, was one of just two Americans among
a field of 120 students gathered in Florida for the 2007
TopCoder Collegiate Challenge ...
Skinner, a computer-science major better known among
peers by his online handle 'Paranoia,' won $15,000 and
bragging rights for the victory."
The TopCoder Collegiate Challenge is an annual competition
for collegiate programmers from around the world. There are
four independent contests: Algorithm, Component,
Marathon, and Studio.
The finals were held at Walt Disney World in
Orlando FL from October 30 - November 2.
The first three rounds of the Marathon competition
were held online in August and September. 300 competitors
advanced from the first round to the second; 100 from the
second to the third; and 8 from the third to the Orlando finals.
Across all four contests, 120 collegiate programmers
qualified for the Orlando
finals. Michael was one of only two finalists from the
United States. In winning the Marathon finals, he bested
competitors from France, Poland, the Russian Federation, Sweden,
the United Kingdom, Thailand, and the Netherlands.
TopCoder announcement
here
Seattle Times article from before the finals
here
- "Vacation
photos create 3D models of world landmarks" (UW News and
Information) (November 2007)
"More than 10 million members of the photo-sharing Web site Flickr
snap pictures of their surroundings and then post those photos on
the Internet. One group at the University of Washington is doing
the reverse - downloading thousands of photos from Flickr and
using them to recreate the original scenes."
- "Whose mouse is mightiest? UW code whiz hopes it's his"
(Seattle Times) (October 2007)
"Creating fast and flawless computer programs may not sound
like a competitive spectator sport. But when University of
Washington senior Michael Skinner takes on other top college
computer programmers from around the world in Florida today,
there will be $260,000 total prize money at stake, and
observers watching competitors' every keystroke on large plasma
screens.
"Skinner, 22 ... carries national pride on his back. He's
one of only two Americans to make the final 120 competitors
in the 2007 TopCoder Collegiate Challenge."
- "Field Notes
from UW Computer Science & Engineering Intern Fair"
(blist) (October 2007)
As I blogged previously, Justin, Matt & I from
blist
attended the University of Washington Computer Science &
Engineering department's annual career day today. It
was a terrific event that far exceeded my expectations.
Here are some of my random thoughts ..."
- "UW: New computer science programs, lab"
(Seattle Times) (October 2007)
"Growth and new programs are happening at the University of
Washington's Computer Science & Engineering Department,
Chairman Hank Levy said this morning at the annual 'industrial
affiliates' meeting with tech companies, investors and school
supporters ...
"There for the update, and research presentations by students,
were representatives of Microsoft, Apple, Google, Yahoo, Cray,
Sony, Madrona Venture Group, Amazon.com, DreamBox Learning and
other companies ...
"Another initiative Levy outlined is already under way: a new
'Experimental Computer Engineering Lab' created as a partnership
of the computer science and electrical engineering departments.
"Six new faculty positions, three from each side, are allocated
to the effort, including two now being filled.
"Computer science is also taking more Ph.D. students and overall,
Levy's planning for '25 percent growth across the board'
in the department."
Other coverage
here.
- Ph.D.
alumnus Greg Barnes wins Emerald City Search
(Seattle Times) (October 2007)
"Greg Barnes was supposed to be home sick this week. Instead,
he was deciphering clues, searching online about obscure
Japanese history, and prowling Harbor Island, hoping to find
a hidden medallion - the prize of this year's citywide
treasure hunt, Emerald City Search.
"On Wednesday morning, the 42-year-old found the blue-and-white
ceramic medallion wrapped in plastic under a wooden bench in
Seacrest Park in West Seattle. He won $2,500 in cash and prizes.
"The daily clues in the treasure hunt that began Oct. 17
were inspired by the Seattle Art Museum's latest exhibit,
'Japan Envisions the West,' but that didn't help Barnes out much.
"'My wife and I are both computer scientists,' Barnes says with
a laugh, 'so Japanese history's not really our thing.'"
- "Linus
Chou dives headfirst into making UW team" (Seattle PI)
(October 2007)
"With their football team mired in a five-game losing streak,
Huskies fans may be looking for a beam of light, something
tangible to make them smile.
"It can be found on special teams: No. 51, Linus Chou.
"Perhaps the most unlikely of football players, Chou, a Chinese-American,
is a computer science major. He scored 1500 on his SAT. He just
interviewed for an internship at Microsoft.
"How the Lakeside School product went from academia to special teams,
managing to balance both successfully, is one of the Huskies' best
feel-good stories of the season."
- CSE
Ph.D. alum Rachel Pottinger wins first annual Denice Denton
Emerging Leader Award (October 2007)
The
Denice
Denton Emerging Leader Award is given annually
by the
Anita Borg Institute
to an individual under the
age of 35 who has demonstrated a significant leadership
capability and positive impact of the lives of women
through technology.
The award is named in honor of the late Denice Denton,
formerly Dean of Engineering at the University of Washington.
It's thus particularly wonderful that the inaugural
recipient of the Denton Award is UW CSE alumna
Rachel
Pottinger, now a faculty member at the University of
British Columbia. The award was presented at the
Grace
Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing.
Congratulations Rachel!
Grace Hopper Conference award announcement
here.
- CSE's Yoky Matsuoka named to
Popular Science's "6th Annual Brilliant Ten"
(October 2007)
"We take about six months to create our annual list of the most
impressive young scientists in the U.S., six months of quizzing
academic department heads, professional organizations and journal
editors about the most creative and important research in the
country and the individuals making it happen ...
"So when we say that these 10 are the most creative, the most
groundbreaking, the most brilliant, just what does it mean?
It means they have the gall to ask the big questions, even if
those happen to be outside the traditional areas of inquiry ...
"Yoky Matsuoka grew up dreaming of becoming a top-ranked
tennis pro, but she wasn't your average jock. She spent a
lot of on-court time pondering how her brain was controlling
her hand, allowing her to smoothly swing her racket at just
the right time and angle.
More than a decade and several mechanical hands later,
Matsuoka is still chasing the same question.
But now she's pursuing it by trying to build the ultimate
prosthetic - a fully functional replica of the human hand,
controlled directly by the brain."
Introduction to the sequence of profiles
here
UW CSE Neurobotics Laboratory
here
- CSE Ph.D. alum Gun Sirer also named to
Popular Science's "6th Annual Brilliant Ten"
(October 2007)
"In 2004, Emin Gun Sirer figured out how to hijack the FBI's
Web site. The problem wasn't with the Feds; it was with the
structure of the Internet itself. Anytime you type an address
like 'www.fbi.gov' into your browser, your request feeds
through several servers that act as the phone booths of
the Internet. Sirer realized that many of these
directories were insecure and that a hacker could easily
reroute all traffic meant for the FBI to a malicious
doppelgdnger site ...
"His modest solution? Reorganize the entire Internet. Sirer
created a scheme that eliminates the need for vulnerable
central servers by distributing information among thousands
of smaller computers. The strategy now helps safeguard Web
sites through the PlanetLab worldwide academic network
and could someday protect the Web as a whole."
Gun is now a faculty member at Cornell University.
- "Google,
IBM expand program to teach 'Internet-scale' computing"
(Seattle PI) (October 2007)
"Google and IBM, expanding an effort that began at the
University of Washington, will launch an initiative to
help computer science students and researchers learn a
form of programming increasingly significant in the Internet age.
"'It was clear to us that this is something that we and everybody
else needed to be offering our students,' said Ed Lazowska, a UW
computer science professor.
'Not so that they could go work for Google, although that's great,
but because this is a new approach to solving a new set of problems
in this data-rich world.'"
Google/IBM press release
here
UW press release
here
San Jose Mercury
here
Google Blog post by Christophe Bisciglia
here
Wall Street Journal
here
CIO Today
here
Information Week
here
Seattle Times
here
c|net
here
New York Times
here.
- "The scientific dark age of George Bush"
(Crosscut) (October 2007)
"University of Washington computer science professor Ed Lazowska,
a onetime Bush appointee, says scientific research and education
are sputtering in the 'dark time' of the Bush years. He also says
Washington state's higher ed system is failing the next generation."
- CSE's
Richard Ladner appointed trustee at Gallaudet University
(October 2007)
Gallaudet University in Washington DC,
the world leader in liberal education and
career development for deaf and hard-of-hearing
undergraduate students, has announced the appointment
of six new members to its Board of Trustees, including
CSE professor Richard Ladner.
Ladner's contributions to the deaf and hard-of-hearing
earned him the 2004 Presidential Award for Excellence
in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring.
His mother, father, and sister are Gallaudet alumni,
and he spent a sabbatical year there in 1985-86.
- "Opening
New Possibilities for Deaf Students in Computer Science" (National
Science Foundation) (October 2007)
The National Science Foundation features CSE professor Richard
Ladner's 9-week Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf and Hard
of Hearing in Computing.
- V2Green
in the PI (October 2007)
"David Kaplan spent 12 years at Microsoft Corp. helping to
build SQL Server into a billion-dollar business. Now, after
a respite from the software industry, he is testing his
luck with electric cars.
The 54-year-old entrepreneur is at the wheel of a Seattle
startup by the name of V2Green, which is developing
software and hardware so utilities can better manage
power flows to plug-in vehicles."
V2Green involves numerous CSE alums including
Dave Kaplan and Seth Bridges.
- Ph.D. alum
Doug Zongker featured at Ig Nobel awards ceremony (October 2007)
"This year's Ig Nobel program included a two-minute speech by
keynote speaker Doug Zongker consisting only of the word 'chicken.'"
The original YouTube video of Doug's presentation is
here.
- "UW
researchers put more 'reality' into 'virtual reality'"
(KOMO TV) (October 2007)
KOMO TV interviews CSE's Zoran Popovic and Adrien Treuille:
"Researchers at the University of Washington have a come up
with a new formula for simulating fluids like fires and smoke.
The new formula is changing the world of virtual reality by
improving the technology and making it more accessible at the same time."
- "Genius
in our midst: Matsuoka wins coveted MacArthur"
(University Week) (September 2007)
"Yoky Matsuoka, associate professor in the Department of
Computer Science & Engineering, has been named one of
this year's MacArthur Fellows.
"Matsuoka, whose research combines neuroscience and robotics
to create more realistic prosthetics, is one of 24 people
honored today by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur
Foundation. The $500,000 no-strings-attached prizes are
often referred to as the 'genius' awards."
- "Allen Center art is all in the (UW) family"
(University Week) (September 2007)
"The UW community no doubt knows the Paul G. Allen
Center for Computer Science & Engineering as a modern,
even majestic building with pleasing lines and an attractive,
light-filled atrium just right for studying and visiting.
"But fewer, perhaps, know that the handsome building, home
of the Computer Science & Engineering Department,
also hosts one of the most splendid art collections on
campus - one that boasts works by celebrated artists
Jacob Lawrence, George Tsutakawa, Kenneth Callahan,
Akio Takamori and Alden Mason, and photographs by
Imogen Cunningham and Art Wolfe, among others."
- "Technology Review honors
3 UW engineers" (University Week) (September 2007)
"If you pick up a copy of Technology Review magazine
this month, you'll see this year's winners for the top 35 young
innovators. Then again, you might bump into a handful of the
winners on campus.
"Technology Review named three members of the UW's College
of Engineering for the TR35, a list recognizing the world's top 35
innovators under the age of 35. One of the winners was also named
Humanitarian of the Year for creating technology for the developing world."
- "ASL 'spoken' here: New class offered"
(University Week) (September 2007)
"This quarter for the first time, the UW will be offering American
Sign Language (ASL) for credit ...
"The class is the culmination of a long-term effort to bring ASL
to campus... As far back as the 1980s, students have been interested
in the subject, said Richard Ladner, who was instrumental in
pushing for the class. A professor of computer science and engineering,
he is the hearing child of deaf parents and has been active in working
with the deaf community."
- Tapan Parikh's TR-35 video tribute and acceptance speech
(September 2007)
CSE graduate student Tapan Parikh was selected as "Humanitarian of
the Year" in Technology Review's TR-35 competition. Accessing
this video tribute and acceptance speech is a bit of an ordeal, but
it's worth it. Note that CSE professor Yoshi Kohno and CSE Ph.D.
alumna Karen Liu also were recognized in year's TR-35 competition.
- Yoky
Matsuoka wins MacArthur Foundation "Genius" Award (September 2007)
Yoky Matsuoka, associate professor Computer Science &
Engineering, has been named one of this year's MacArthur Fellows.
Matsuoka, whose research combines neuroscience and robotics to
create more realistic prosthetics, is one of 24 people honored
by the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.
The $500,000 no-strings-attached prizes are often referred to
as the "genius" awards.
A major focus of Matsuoka's work investigates how our central
nervous system produces signals that control our limbs' movements
and then use that information to create lifelike robotic
prosthetics. The goal is to help people with reduced mobility use
robots that integrate seamlessly with their bodies' motions,
allowing an unprecedented degree of control.
"'What's different about Yoky is that she's a mechanical engineer,
neuroscientist, bioengineer, robotics expert and computer scientist,
all in one,' said Matthew O'Donnell, dean of the UW's College of
Engineering. 'She has the ability to see what is possible by
combining all these disciplines.'"
MacArthur Foundation announcement
here
and
here.
Seattle
PI
Seattle Times
- "Lee
Hood Achieves Scientific Grand Slam" (September 2007)
CSE Adjunct Professor Leroy Hood is being inducted into
the National Academy of Engineering on Sept. 30 in Washington D.C.,
making him one of only seven individuals currently elected to all
three National Academies - the National Academy of Engineering,
the National Academy of Science and the Institute of Medicine of
the National Academies.
"'Lee Hood has been a pioneer in bringing engineering to biology
through his leadership in the invention, commercialization and
application of five of the key instruments that lie at the
foundation of biotechnology today: DNA and protein synthesizers
and sequencers, as well as the ink-jet oligonucleotide synthesizer,'
said Ed Lazowska, Ph.D, the Bill & Melinda Gates Chair of
Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington
and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. 'He
also has played a significant role in founding more than a
dozen game-changing biotechnology companies including Amgen,
Applied Biosystems, Systemix, Darwin and Rosetta.'"
- CSE's
Dan Grossman on Software Engineering Radio (September 2007)
CSE professor Dan Grossman was recently interviewed on Software
Engineering Radio. An abbreviated version of the interview is
part of a package of podcasts being used to publicize October's
OOPSLA conference (see
Episode 9
here).The full interview is
here.
- "UW and Google: Teaching in Parallel"
(September 2007)
CSE undergraduate and Google intern
Sierra MIchels-Slettvet describes the Google/UW
"Problem Solving on Large-Scale Clusters" course on
the Google Code Blog.
- "Image
search tool speaks hundreds of languages" (UW News &
Information) (September 2007)
"'Images are universal, but image search is not,' said Oren Etzioni,
a professor of Computer Science & Engineering at the University
of Washington. 'A person who types his or her search in English won't
find images tagged in Chinese, and a Dutch person won't find images
tagged in English. We've created a collaborative tool that solves
this problem.'
"A new multilingual search tool developed at the UW's Turing Center
makes the universal appeal of pictures available to all. PanImages
allows people to search for images on the Web using hundreds of languages."
Seattle Times article.
PanImages search page.
- "Star Searcher"
(Columns) (September 2007)
The University of Washington alumni magazine Columns profiles
UW CSE professor Oren Etzioni.
"Although he's only 43, Etzioni is a genuine pioneer in the world of
artificial intelligence. For 20 years, he has been bringing his very
real intelligence to bear on it."
- CSE's David Wetherall
wins 2007 ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award (August 2007)
The ACM SIGCOMM Test of Time Award annually recognizes a single paper
published 10 to 12 years in the past in Computer Communication Review
or any SIGCOMM sponsored or co-sponsored conference that is deemed to
be an outstanding paper whose contents are still a vibrant and useful
contribution today.
At the annual SIGCOMM conference in Japan at the end of August,
the 2007 SICOMM Test of Time Award was given to
"Toward an Active Network Architecture" by UW CSE professor
David Wetherall and his MIT research advisor David Tennenhouse,
which appeared in
ACM Computer Communication Review
26(2) (April 1996), pp. 5-17.
Congratulations David(s)!
(Paper
here.)
- "Victor
Klee, 81, widely known as mathematician, mentor" (Seattle Times)
(August 2007)
Vic Klee, who joined the UW Mathematics faculty in 1953 and helped to
establish the Computer Science Group 20 years later, passed away on
August 17.
- UW
CSE students and faculty clean up in 2007 "TR35" young
innovators under age 35 (August 2007)
"Since 1999, the editors of Technology Review
have honored the young innovators whose inventions and
research we find most exciting; today that collection is the TR35,
a list of technologists and scientists, all under the age of 35.
Their work - spanning medicine, computing, communications,
electronics, nanotechnology, and more - is changing our world."
UW CSE Ph.D. student
Tapan Parikh,
in addition to being
one
of 18 young innovators recognized in
the Information Technology category, was
recognized with one of two over-arching awards:
TR35 2007 Humanitarian of the Year.
UW CSE faculty member
Yoshi Kohno
also was
one
of 18 young innovators recognized in the Information
Technology category, for his work in computer security.
Last year's UW CSE Ph.D. alum
Karen Liu,
who recently
joined the faculty of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech,
was
one
of 18 young innovators recognized in the Information
Technology category, for her work in digital animation.
UW CSE Affiliate faculty member
Desney
Tan, a researcher in the Visualization and Interaction
Group at Microsoft Research,
was
one
of 18 young innovators recognized in the Information
Technology category, for his work in brain-computer
interfaces.
UW EE faculty member
Babak
Parviz was also recognized as
one
of 18 young innovators in the Information Technology
category, for his work in self-assembling micromachines.
UW press release
here.
- "Venture firms give startup a vote
of confidence" (Seattle Times) (August 2007)
"Without dropping a huge pile of cash, four high-profile venture
capital outfits are making a major statement about a local startup
company's entry in a fast-growing field of software that promises
to save businesses billions.
"They're investing $6 million in illumita, founded last year by
four University of Washington computer scientists to commercialize
their research into virtualization technology.
"'It really is a game-changing technology,' said Brad Silverberg,
formerly a top Microsoft executive and a founder of Ignition Partners,
which joined Madrona Venture Group, Bezos Expedition and
Washington Research Foundation in the financing round to be
announced today."
- "Computers
expose the physics of NASCAR" (August 2007)
"It's an odd combination of Navier-Stokes equations and NASCAR driving.
"Computer scientists at the University of Washington have developed
software that is incorporated in new technology allowing television
audiences to instantaneously see how air flows around speeding cars.
The algorithm, first presented at a computer graphics conference last
August, was since used by sports network ESPN and sporting-technology
company Sportvision Inc. to create a new effect for racing coverage.
The fast-paced innovation hit prime time in late July when ESPN used
the Draft Track technology to visualize the air flow behind cars in
the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, a NASCAR race at the Indianapolis
Motor Speedway.
"Zoran Popovic, an associate professor in the UW's department of
Computer Science & Engineering, and two students wrote the code
that dramatically speeds up real-time fluid dynamics simulations.
Working with ESPN, a Chicago-based company named Sportvision
developed the application for NASCAR competition."
- NASA
uses UW/Microsoft Photosynth software for photos of space shuttle
(Seattle PI) (August 2007)
"NASA says it will use Microsoft's unusual Photosynth
photo presentation program to give the public a unique
view of the space shuttle Endeavour ...
Photosynth is the result of a collaboration between
Microsoft's internal Live Labs group and University of
Washington researchers."
- "Talking
Back to Teacher" Chronicle of Higher Education
(pdf) (August 2007)
The Chronicle of Higher Education profiles
UW CSE professor Richard Anderson's
"Classroom Presenter" system.
"Anderson may have solved the
problem of the class loudmouth ...
With computers on their desks that have touchsensitive
screens that read pen strokes,
it's easy for anyone to raise a 'virtual
hand.' Mr. Anderson, instead of scribbling a
problem on the blackboard, scribbles it on a
screen image -- a slide -- on his computer. The
image then shows up on his students' computers.
They scribble their answers on top of Mr.
Anderson's slides and send them back to his
computer, where he can riffle through them like
the pages of a book. 'I can display different
answers on a slide projector,' Mr. Anderson
says. 'One person's view doesn't dominate.'"
- "Smartphones
are the PCs of the developing world" (New Scientist)
(August 2007)
The New Scientist surveys work by UW CSE's Tapan Parikh
and others.
- "Caution urged for licenses containing data chips" (Seattle Times) (July 2007)
"Is there really any reason to read an RFID tag in a
driver's license without touching it?' asked UW computer-science
professor Gaetano Borriello. 'I can't think of any. Why are we
even putting an antenna that allows long-range reading of a
driver's license? It's just silly.'"
- "Microsoft
picks new UW center to develop distance learning technologies"
(July 2007)
"Last year, students enrolled in a professional
master's degree program in Seattle sat 800 miles
from their teacher. When the students asked questions,
their teacher responded from the video screen.
Discussion ricocheted between classrooms in Seattle
and Redmond, Wash., and further south to San Diego
and Berkeley, Calif.
"The course was one of many using experimental
collaboration software developed at Microsoft Research
in collaboration with universities worldwide. Microsoft Research
today announced that the University of Washington will lead
future work on the project in the newly established
Center
for Collaborative Technologies at the University
of Washington. Microsoft will provide $750,000
in funding during the next three years."
Other press articles about this project and the
Microsoft Research Faculty Summit:
UW Daily;
Seattle
PI;
EE Times;
Seattle Times.
- "In
Forbes.com's second annual Top States for Business ...
Washington is the big story" (Forbes) (July 2007)
"You use its products every day - when you take a cross-country
flight on a Boeing jet, when you sip your morning Starbucks coffee,
when you order the latest Harry Potter book from Amazon.com and
when you use the Microsoft operating system on your PC.
Washington state is home to these companies and more,
befitting the state's tagline, 'Innovation is in our nature.'"
- "Deaf
college students pursue computing at UW" (UW Daily) (July 2007)
"For nine weeks this summer, 20 deaf and hard-of-hearing
students from across the nation are participating in the
Summer Academy for Advancing Deaf & Hard of Hearing
in Computing on the UW campus ...
In addition to classes, students have the opportunity to
tour local high-tech companies.
Program Co-Director Richard Ladner said deaf or hard-of-hearing
professionals also come speak to students about their
experience obtaining advanced degrees and pursuing careers
in computer science."
- "Determined
to Reinspire a Culture of Innovation" (NY Times) (July 2007)
The New York Times profiles retiring National Academy of
Engineering President Bill Wulf.
"As Ed Lazowska, a computer scientist at the University of
Washington, put it, 'he has been a huge statesman for the engineering
enterprise.' In the process, he said, Dr. Wulf greatly increased
the prominence of the engineering academy, chartered by Congress
to offer scientific and technical advice to the government.
He did this in part, colleagues say, by starting programs
to encourage students to enter engineering, and establishing
prizes to reward high engineering achievement.
More than that, people like Dr. Lazowska say, he encouraged
the academy to issue hard-hitting reports that sometimes
challenged government positions on code-breaking, the
importance of classifying research, and other security issues."
- Maynard
Olson wins 2007 Gruber Prize in Genetics (Seattle Times)
(July 2007)
UW CSE adjunct professor Maynard Olson has won the 2007 Gruber Prize
in Genetics. In selecting Olson for the $500,000 prize, the Gruber
Foundation said:
"Maynard V. Olson was a founder of the field of genomics.
"He created tools critical to each step of human genome sequencing
as it developed from dream to reality. Then, through his articulate
advocacy of high standards for accuracy and of free public access
to data, he worked to ensure that DNA information is used to benefit
humanity.
"Today he is turning genomic methods into true experimental tools
to tackle real biological problems such as those posed by
infectious disease."
- "UW
offers deaf, hard of hearing chance to excel at computer
academy" (Seattle PI) (July 2007)
"Richard Ladner, a computer science and engineering professor,
hopes the program will show others that people who are deaf or
hard of hearing can be successful in the field, and introduce
the students to new opportunities."
- "The
iPhone's Untapped Potential: Apple could do a lot more with all the
sensors in the iPhone" (Technology Review) (June 2007)
Technology Review describes work at
Intel Research Seattle by UW CSE affiliate professor
Tanzeem Choudhury.
- Landay on iPhone in Seattle Times (June 2007)
"Right or not, Apple's design will influence other companies.
It may also set expectations for this sort of device, said
James Landay, an HCI expert at the University of Washington.
'The question is, will people mind not having usable buttons?'
he said. 'I think that's a big issue.'"
- "Human-Aided
Computing" (Technology Review) (June 2007)
"Despite all the power of computers, they are still lousy at
certain simple tasks, such as recognizing faces and knowing
the difference between a table and a cow ...
Desney Tan, a researcher at Microsoft Research, and Pradeep
Shenoy, a graduate student at the University of Washington,
have devised a scheme that uses electro-encephalograph (EEG)
caps to collect the brain activity of people looking at
pictures ... 'Given that the brain is constantly processing
external information,' says Tan, 'we can start to use the
brain as a processor.'"
- UW CSE
Ph.D. alumnus John Bennett to direct ATLAS Institute at
University of Colorado (June 2007)
UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus John Bennett has been named the Director
of the ATLAS Institute at the University of Colorado.
ATLAS, the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society,
is a campus-wide program dedicated to integrating information
and communications technology with a wide variety of disciplines
ranging from music, theater and dance to film studies and journalism.
Concurrently, Bennett -- until this appointment the Associate
Dean for Engineering at the University of Colorado -- was named
the Archuleta Professor.
- "Husband's
thesis starts wife's business" (University Week) (June 2007)
"Computer science alumna Suzanna Kovoor started a company in January
selling implantable brain chips. The company, called Neumio, has its
headquarters in the basement of her Bellevue home. When she has a
question for the technology's inventor, she doesn't have far to
travel -- the device was created by her husband, Jaideep Mavoori,
as part of his doctoral thesis at the UW."
- UW CSE's
Ed Lazowska delivers closing keynote at Federated Computing
Research Conference (June 2007)
UW CSE professor Ed Lazowska delivered the closing keynote
at the Federated Computing Research Conference in San Diego
CA. FCRC gathers more than a dozen computer science conferences
together once every three years to encourage interactions
across subfields.
In addition to delivering the closing keynote, Lazowska
organized four evening talks under the auspices of the
Computing Community Consortium, which he chairs -- talks
by Christos Papadimitriou, Bob Colwell, Randal Bryant, and
Scott Shenker.
Some blog reviews
here and
here.
- "Photosynth
Builds Your Digital World" (ABC News.com) (June 2007)
"In 2005, Noah Snavely, a computer-science graduate student
at the University of Washington, and associate professor
Steven Seitz began a collaboration with Microsoft researcher
Richard Szeliski to create a more intuitive way to view
photos in relation to one another.
'Computer vision has been very recently getting to the
point where it's working really well,' Seitz said. 'At the
same time, there's been an explosion of photos on the Internet.
Photo sharing had begun to blossom. We wanted to see if you
could reconstruct 3-D models from people's pictures on the Internet.'"
- UW CSE
adjunct professor Jim Larus wins ACM SIGPLAN "Most Influential PLDI
Paper" award (June 2007)
UW CSE adjunct professor
Jim Larus,
Research Area Manager at Microsoft Research,
has won the 2007 ACM SIGPLAN "Most Influential PLDI
Paper" award for his paper
Exploiting
Hardware Performance Counters with Flow and Context Sensitive Profiling,
co-authored with Glenn Ammons and Tom Ball.
The award is presented annually to the author(s) of the paper presented at
the Conferrence on Programming Language Design and Implementation
(PLDI) held 10 years prior to the award year that is judged to
have had the greatest influence over the past decade.
The 2005 award went to UW CSE professor Craig Chambers
and UW CSE graduate students Jeff Dean and Dave Grove.
- CSE's
Oren Etzioni is "Top Dawg" (June 2007)
CSE's Oren Etzioni was featured in UW President Mark Emmert's
quarterly communication to the regional business community.
- "Researchers
Chart Internet's 'Black Holes'" (Wired) (June 2007)
"Despite its robust appearance, more than 10 percent of the
internet flickers out like a candle every day, according to
researchers who unveiled on Wednesday an experimental tool
that probes the network's dark places.
Ethan Katz-Bassett, a computer science Ph.D. candidate from
the University of Washington, introduced Hubble - a network
of deep cyberspace probes scattered around the internet - at
the meeting of the North American Network Operator's Group."
- Ph.D.
alumna Tessa Lau interviewed on IT Conversations (June 2007)
"Tessa Lau, a researcher with IBM's Almaden Research Center,
is working with colleagues on ... Koala ... a system for
recording, playing back, and sharing the performance of tasks
on the web. In this conversation we discuss Koala's style of
'sloppy programming,' its clever way of abstracting away from
personal information to create generic templates, and the
challenges of building a universally reliable system for
capturing and replaying web interaction."
See also c|net
article.
- UW CSE Ph.D.
alumnus Jonathan Aldrich wins 2007 Dahl-Nygaard Prize (June 2007)
UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus
Jonathan
Aldrich, now a faculty member in the School of
Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University, has
won the
2007
Dahl-Nygaard Prize.
The
Dahl-Nygaard Prize
was established in 2004
by the
Association Internationale
pour les Technologies Objets
in the name of the Ole-Johan Dahl and Kristen Nygaard
to honor their pioneering work on object-orientation.
UW CSE Ph.D. alumna
Gail Murphy,
now a faculty member
in Computer Science at the University of British
Columbia, received the
2005
Dahl-Nygaard Prize.
- UW
CSE rocks in Software Engineering! (pdf) (June 2007)
The June issue of Communications of the ACM includes
an article describing a way of assessing research impact using
publication in top venues as the metric.
To illustrate, the article identifies the 50 highest
impact researchers in the software engineering field during the
period 2000-04. Of the 50, one is UW CSE faculty member
David Notkin,
five are David's former UW CSE Ph.D. students
(Gail Murphy,
now on the faculty at UBC;
Mike Ernst,
now on the faculty at MIT;
Kevin Sullivan,
now on the faculty at UVa;
Amir Michail,
most recently on the faculty at New South Wales;
and Bill Griswold,
now on the faculty at UCSD),
and two are David's academic grandchildren (Gail Murphy's Ph.D. alumni
Martin Robillard,
now on the faculty at McGill, and
Robert Walker,
now on the faculty at Calgary).
Talk about impact!
- Lazowska/Ballmer
"keynote conversation" headlines 2007 Technology Alliance
"State of Technology" luncheon (May 2007)
Keynote conversations between UW CSE's
Ed Lazowska and leading corporate technology
innovators have become a fixture of the annual
Technology Alliance "State of Technology" luncheon:
Eric Schmidt (Google) in 2005, Jeff Bezos (Amazon.com)
in 2006, and Steve Ballmer (Microsoft) in 2007.
The relationship between Lazowska and Ballmer is particularly
close, as revealed by
these
photographs.
- Celine
Latulipe wins Alain Fournier Ph.D. Thesis Award (May 2007)
The
Alain
Fournier Ph.D. Thesis Award is presented annually
to the best Canadian computer graphics dissertation,
and is awarded at the
Graphics
Interface Conference.
This year's recipient was
Celine Latulipe,
a University of Waterloo student of UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus
Craig Kaplan.
- UW
CSE Ph.D. alumnus Steve Wolfman wins UBC Killam Teaching
Award (May 2007)
In his first year of eligibility, UW CSE Ph.D. alumnus
Steve Wolfman,
now on the Computer Science faculty at
the University of British Columbia, has won the
Killam Teaching Award for the Faculty of Science.
Congratulations to Steve!
- David
Notkin wins ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award (May 2007)
CSE's
David Notkin
has been named the recipient
of the 2007 ACM SIGSOFT Distinguished Service Award,
presented annually "to an individual who has contributed
dedicated and important service to the software engineering
community." Congratulations David!
- CSE's
Paul Javid, team, win "Best Innovation Idea" prize at 2007
UW Business Plan Competition (May 2007)
A 4-person team including UW CSE senior Paul Javid and his brother
Ali has won the "OVP Venture Partners Best Innovation Idea" prize
in the 2007 University of Washington Business Plan Competition
for their Antibiotic Haptic Sleeve.
- UW
Daily on CSE's RFID ecosystem (May 2007)
"'There's not even a question of whether this technology will be
deployed. It's here, and people are using it,' Balazinska said. 'The
question is: Can we propose good privacy models by deploying it
faster?'"
- Raj
Rao's Morpheus on CBS Sunday Morning with Bill Geist
(May 2007)
A wonderful CBS News piece on Raj Rao's brain-controlled robot Morpheus.
"At the University of Washington in Seattle, professor Rajesh Rao
and his team are doing sciency stuff with a robot named Morpheus - 'Mo'
to his friends.
Mo walks kinda funny - actually the little man of steel sort of sashays - and
he is a bit of a klutz. Tables will be knocked over.
But Mo is a sophisticated robot. He responds to thought commands - you
think it, Mo does it.
All you have to do is put on a funny hat and have wires poked into
your head. Then your brain waves (if any) are analyzed and you're ready
to go.
Say you have a red block and a white block. You think hard about the
red block and Mo goes for the red block.
Someday it could be a beer!"
See CBS News video clip
here.
Photographs of the session
here.
- "Ahead
of the Curve: Mind-Controlled Robots" (ABC News) (May 2007)
ABC News features CSE professor Raj Rao's mind-controlled
robot Morpheus.
- Lazowska,
Reges recognized with UW CSE ACM Teaching Award (May 2007)
Ed Lazowska was named the winner of the 2006-07 UW CSE ACM Teaching Award,
and Stuart Reges was named the runner-up. The award is given annually
by the UW CSE undergraduate student body.
- "Game turns moviegoers into
human joysticks" (c|net) (May 2007)
MSNBC.com has launched a game, called NewsBreaker Live, that plays in
movie theaters. A motion-sensitive camera in the front of the theater
measures how the audience is moving its arms. The camera then translates
that collective motion to an onscreen paddle that players use to bounce
a ball back up to the top of the screen to knock out blocks.
The game is based on work that CSE's Steve Seitz did
while a faculty member at Carnegie Mellon University,
working with then-CMU-undergraduate
Dan Maynes-Aminzade and fellow CMU faculty member
Randy Pausch.
The game was commercialized by a CMU spin-off.
See video
here.
Original research paper
here
(pdf).
- Lazowska
practices architectural criticism at
MIT CSAIL Dertouzos Memorial Lecture (video) (May 2007)
Ed Lazowska had the honor of presenting the annual Dertouzos
Memorial Lecture at the MIT Computer Science and Artificial
Intelligence Laboratory on May 17 2007.
Lazowska began his lecture with
some observations on academic architecture.
Streaming video
here.
PowerPoint here.
A portion of Professor John Guttag's introduction of Lazowska
(also pretty funny)
here.
(Longer version of the intro -- lower density of humor but does contain
a comparison to Dick Cheney --
here.)
- "CSE
department makes strides to attract women" (UW Daily) (May 2007)
"The endeavor begins with attraction, which can be stimulated
by spreading the word at an early age that computer science is
a viable option for future goals.
'The message is that this is an unbelievably great field,' Lazowska
said. 'It is intellectually very stimulating and also very rewarding.'
"With enrollment, the CSE department, and the UW as a whole,
is taking a more holistic approach to admission.
'We want to be educating future leaders, looking at the whole person
and determining if they have what it takes to succeed,' Lazowska said.
"In order to help people thrive, it is necessary to make them feel
less isolated, he said.
'We need to form individual cohorts and let them know that they
can succeed,' Lazowska added."
- CSE's
Sam Burden, Sam Whittle excel in Mathematical Contest in Modeling
(May 2007)
Eleven 3-person undergraduate teams, from among 949 entries, were chosen
as "Outstanding Winners" in this year's Mathematical Contest in Modeling.
Two of those teams were from the University of Washington. Each team
included a CSE major: Computer Engineering junior Sam Burden (from
Spokane WA), and Computer Science junior Sam Whittle (from
Bellingham WA). Professor of Mathematics Jim Morrow coaches UW's
MCM teams.
- "Could
Anything Top His Talking Toaster? Yes! Corey Anderson Has Created an Even
Bigger Buzz with His Endowments" (Trend in Engineering)
(pdf) (May 2007)
"The 'Talking Toaster' generated a hot buzz in Computer
Science & Engineering's senior capstone design
course in spring 1996. Voice-activated and programmed
to respond to instructions and talk back (no need to set
dials or push levers), the popular gizmo remains firmly
and fondly embedded in CSE's cultural memory and in
video format on the department's website.
"Its co-designer, Corin (Corey) Anderson, recently
set off another buzz around CSE when he simultaneously
established both fellowship and scholarship endowments
with a substantial gift through the UW's new Students
First program. Now a software engineer at
Google, he is, at age 29, CSE's youngest donor at this
level."
- CSE's
Ed Felten wins College of Engineering Diamond Award for Early Career
Achievement (Trend in Engineering) (pdf) (May 2007)
"Ed Felten is one of the nation's most
effective public advocates for technical
innovation and secure computing. As
a professor of computer science and
public affairs at Princeton University,
his research spans operating systems,
programming languages, Internet
software, and consumer products."
See video on Felten's accomplishments
here.
- "Global
Outreach: Small Solutions with Big Impact" (Trend in Engineering)
(pdf) (May 2007)
"Tapan Parikh took a risk when he chose an unconventional topic for his
doctoral work in Computer Science & Engineering.
'Now he is one of the leading researchers in creating information
technology to meet the needs of the Third World,' said his advisor,
CSE Professor Ed Lazowska."
- "Test-Driving
the Future: Will Mind-Controlled Robots Steal Our Hearts?"
(Discover Magazine) (pdf) (May 2007)
Discover Magazine features Raj Rao's research:
"I am seated at a network of computers with an
electrode-studded swim cap suctioned to my head,
watching a colorful trail of EEG signals unfurl
across a nearby screen. A mess of wires conducts
these signals from my brain to the computers,
which - based solely on what I'm thinking - then
relay instructions halfway across the room to my
humanoid proxy: a shiny chrom robotnamed Morpheus,
currently awaiting his next command ..."
Information on UW CSE's Neural Systems Group
here.
Article and video in ScienCentralNews
here.
Article in The Columbian
here.
Article in Electronic Design
here.
- CSE's
Magda Balazinska wins Microsoft New Faculty Fellowship
(May 2007)
CSE's
Magda
Balazinska
is one of 5 winners -- from more than 100 nominees -- of 2007
Microsoft New Faculty Fellowships. The awards provide $200,000 in
research funding to the finest young faculty nationwide.
- CSE's
Richard Anderson, Richard Ladner, Adrien Treuille win UW
College of Engineering "Community of Innovators" awards
(April 2007)
Richard Anderson
was named the "Faculty Innovator for Teaching."
Richard Ladner's
AccessComputing
Alliance received the "Team Award."
Adrien Treuille
received the "Research Assistant Innovator" award.
Congratulations to Richard, Richard, and Adrien!
- Balazinska's
Law (Seattle Times) (pdf) (April 2007)
When CSE's Magda Balazinska was named a 2007 Microsoft Faculty Fellow, she
received $200,000 in research funding from Microsoft - and a starring
role in their media campaign.
- "Computer
Science Takes Steps to Bring Women into the Fold" (NY Times)
(April 2007)
|
|
Alex Moshchuk's torso, Cherie Cheung, Julie Letchner,
Ed Lazowska, Sierra Michels-Slettvet, and Tanya Bragin
watch Roxana Geambasu demonstrate a research prototype
that she built with Cherie.
"Dr. Lazowska and Dr. Blum, with colleagues at the University
of California, Los Angeles, and Google, are working on materials
that high school teachers can use to tell students about the
challenges and opportunities of computer science. They are
developing them for teachers of math, science and English
because, as Dr. Lazowska put it, 'many young women have opted
out of the field before they even get to computer science' in
high school.
"He and his colleagues at the University of Washington (which
never had a programming requirement, he said) have produced
a Web page for prospective students with an explicit goal of
breaking stereotypes about computer science and demonstrating
that computer scientists work in a broad range of interesting
fields - everything from designing prosthetics to devising new
ways to fight forest fires.
"The people on the page's 'day in the life' feature are Erin,
Kiera, Crystal, Tessa and Siobhan - all women. 'That was
deliberate,' he said, adding that women will make up 23
percent of the prospective computer science majors next year."
(See videos at
http://www.cs.washington.edu/WhyCSE/.)
- "The
Brain-Powered Robot Servant" (Popular Mechanics) (April 2007)
Raj Rao's brain-controlled robot in Popular
Mechanics.
"Researchers at the University of Washington's Laboratory
for Neural Systems have built a humanoid robot, called Morpheus,
that can be controlled by thought alone. According to project leader
Rajesh Rao, 'In essence, the robot becomes an extension of your own body.'"
- CSE's
Pravin Bhat, Seth Cooper win Nvidia Graduate Fellowships (April 2007)
Nvidia Corp., the Santa Clara-based programmable graphics processor
technologies company, has named 12 recipients of
$25,000 fellowship awards for the 2007-08 academic year, including
UW CSE Ph.D. students
Pravin Bhat
and
Seth
Cooper.
- CSE
graduate student Eytan Adar on Slashdot (April 2007)
"Xerox has filed a patent covering a technique to recover
demographic information like your age, sex and perhaps even
your income by
analysing
the pattern of web pages you browse.
They want to license the technique to online advertisers and
shops. Read the full patent
here."
- UW
CSE startup Farecast in New York Times (April 2007)
"Say you are looking for a deal on an airline flight ...
Farecast.com, which gathered
a following with technology that enables it to predict the direction
of airfares on a particular route, is back with another innovation
that it says can distinguish the best deals in air travel."
- Seniors
name Arendt, Lee as favorite TAs; Lazowska, Oskin, Reges, and Stepp
as favorite faculty (April 2007)
During Winter quarter, the University of Washington Alumni
Association asked the Class of 2007 campus-wide to name
their favorite professor, lecturer, or TA of their undergraduate
career. Two UW CSE TAs were honored by being named:
undergraduates Eric Arendt and Shen Lee. Four UW CSE
faculty were recognized:
Ed Lazowska,
Mark Oskin,
Stuart Reges,
and
Marty Stepp.
Congratulations to these instructors, and thanks to the students
who cared enough to nominate them.
- "Inaugural Bekey Lecturer Challenges" (April 2007)
"Ed Lazowska, the University of Washington professor famous for his
indefatigable efforts to advance the discipline of computer science
while preserving its conscience, appeared before a capacity crowd
to deliver the first in a series of lectures named after USC's
amazingly versatile roboticist/computer scientist/electrical
engineer George Bekey."
- Mercaldi,
Nguyen recognized in Google Anita Borg Memorial Scholarship
competition (April 2007)
UW CSE graduate student
Martha
Mercaldi
has been named as one of 20 recipients of $10,000 2007 Google
Anita Borg Memorial Scholarships for outstanding female
undergraduate and graduate students completing their degrees
in computer science and related fields.
"The Anita Borg Scholarship is a living testament to Anita's
vision of supporting and recognizing exceptional women in
computer science and technology."
UW CSE graduate student
Bao Nguyen Nguyen received a $1,000 award
as one of 30 highly qualified finalists. More than
250 students from 115 different universities across the
nation competed for recognition in this year's program.
Last year, UW CSE graduate student
Michelle
Banko received a Borg Scholarship.
- Oren
Etzioni profiled in Seattle Business Monthly (pdf) (April 2007)
"Etzioni knows a jewel when he sees one. The college
professor, dubbed by the media an 'honorary professor of
webology' and the 'godfather of search,' has spent his working
life asa mining engineering in the virtual sierras of the internet,
unearthing ways to extract diamonds of data from the almost
boundless slag heap of irrelevance that, for most people, is
the World Wide Web."
- CSE's
Aseem Agarwala recognized in ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award
competition (March 2007)
Each year, the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award recognizes the best
few doctoral dissertations worldwide in computer science.
This year, as always, the competition was
intense. There were 55 nominated dissertations, many of which were
superb. The committee selected one winner and one runner-up. Both were
in computer graphics. The winner was Ren Ng from Stanford.
The runner-up (receiving the sole
Honorable Mention) was our very own
Aseem Agarwala.
This is a huge accomplishment --
congratulations to Aseem and also to his advisor
David Salesin and
UW's superb
graphics group.
CSE's
AnHai Doan, now
a faculty member at the University of Wisconsin, received the
ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2003.
CSE faculty member
Venkat Guruswami
received the ACM Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2002 for his
MIT dissertation.
CSE's
Mike Ernst
(now a faculty member at MIT)
and
William Chan
(tragically deceased) were co-runners-up in 2000.
CSE's
Anne Condon,
now a faculty member at the
University of British Columbia, was
runner-up (then called "Series Winner" rather
than "Honorable Mention") in 1988.
CSE faculty member
Carl Ebeling
was runner-up in 1986 for his CMU dissertation.
- CSE's
Chris Diorio named national "RFID Visionary of the Year" (March 2007)
CSE's Chris Diorio, co-founder (with his Ph.D. advisor Carver Mead) of
Impinj, has been named
national "RFID Visionary of the Year" -- the
"individual with the greatest impact on the industry, through
sharing his or her vision and championing the value of RFID
technology."
- Six
CSE students and alums
receive 2007 NSF Graduate Research Fellowships (March 2007)
Current graduate students Nick Murphy and Kate Moore, current
undergraduate Ben Hindman, and recent undergraduate alumni
Jenny Yuen (now at MIT), Diane Hu (now at UCSD), and
Kai Wang (committed to UCSD) received this most prestigious
graduate student recognition.
- CSE's
Julia Schwarz, Pavan Vaswani win Goldwater Scholarships
(March 2007)
Goldwater Scholarships are the most prestigious awards
available to undergraduate students in mathematics,
the sciences, and engineering.
CSE undergraduates Julia Schwarz and Pavan Vaswani
have been named among this year's 317 Goldwater
Scholarship winners nationwide (3 from UW).
Goldwater Scholarship press release
here;
complete list of winners
here.
- CSE's
Sam Burden, Sam Whittle "Outstanding Winners" in 2007
Mathematical Contest in Modeling (March 2007)
949 3-person teams from 12 nations entered this year's
23rd annual Mathematical Contest in Modeling. 14 teams
from 11 institutions were designated as "Outstanding
Winners," including two teams from the University
of Washington.
Each of the triumphant UW teams included a CSE student:
Sam Burden and Sam Whittle.
- CSE
scores big at WSA Industry Achievement Awards (March 2007)
The 1000-person Industry Achievement Awards banquet of the
Washington Software Alliance is the high point of the year
for Washington's IT companies.
Six awards are given: for
"breakthrough technology of the year,"
"technology innovator of the year,"
"business product of the year,"
"consumer product of the year,"
"service provider of the year," and
"best use of technology in the government or non-profit sector."
This year, UW CSE scored big:
UW CSE spinoff
Farecast, founded
by UW CSE faculty member
Oren
Etzioni, was named "consumer product of the year,"
and UW CSE faculty member
Chris
Diorio, founder of RFID technology company
Impinj,
was named "technology innovator of the year."
Congratulations to Oren, Farecast, Chris, and Impinj!
- Dave
Cutler receives inaugural Microsoft Technical Recognition
Award for Career Achievement (pdf) (March 2007)
CSE adjunct professor Dave Cutler, Senior Technical Fellow
at Microsoft, has received the inaugural Microsoft Technical
Recognition Award for Career Achievement.
Microsoft Distinguished Engineer Darryl Havens offers his
thoughts on the selection of Dave Cutler: "I can best
explain the significance of Dave Cutler receiving the Career
Achievement Award ... by noting that while other nominees
had pages written about them, Gordon Bell simply said
'The guy's a god and everybody knows it; just vote for him.'"
- "Lazowska
named chair of Computing Community Consortium" (March 2007)
"In his new role, Dr. Lazowska will lead the CCC -- a
consortium of experts drawn from and chosen by the computing
research community -- as it seeks to stimulate scientific
leadership and vision on issues related to computing research
and future large-scale computing research projects. The CCC,
established by CRA in partnership with NSF, will catalyze
the computing research community to debate long-range research
challenges, to build consensus around research visions, to
articulate those visions, and to develop the most promising
visions into clearly defined initiatives."
Seattle Times
here.
- "UW
student connects technology, social issues" (UW Daily)
(March 2007)
The UW Daily profiles CSE graduate student
Tapan
Parikh's
CAM project.
"In much of the developing world, digital devices of any kind
are not common -- but one UW computer scientist is working to
change that.
Tapan Parikh, a Ph.D. candidate in UW Computer Science & Engineering,
has been working on a project for the past six years to bring the
latest in information technology to bear on real-world problems."
- CSE
graduate student Nodira Khoussainova in Columns (March 2007)
"She's only 19 years old, but Nodira Khoussainova already has her
bachelor's degree from the University of Auckland in New Zealand
and is a year into the Ph.D. program in Computer Science
& Engineering at the UW. Even though her family comes
from Uzbekistan and now lives in New Zealand, it has additional
ties to the UW. Her father was part of an exchange program
between the University of Tashkent and the University of
Washington when the Soviet Union still existed."
- "High tech for global justice"
(University Week) (March 2007)
"'Broadly speaking, what I'm trying to do is look at ways that
information technology can have an impact on important social,
political and economic issues,' [CSE graduate student Tapan]
Parikh said. His research was funded by Microsoft Research,
Ricoh and Intel.
Parikh designed mobile phone software for use by members of
Indian grassroots banking cooperatives, known as microfinance
groups, for a doctoral thesis. He also founded a company in
India that carries out testing and brings the system to its
intended users. The company, ekgaon, signed its first contract
with CARE India in October to provide phones to more than 700
cooperatives."
More information on Tapan's research
here.
Seattle Times article
here.
- MobileASL in UW Daily (February 2007)
"'Our technology can transmit sign language on the cell
phone network more understandably than existing technology,'
said Richard Ladner, a Computer Science & Engineering
professor working on the project.
The technology works to distinguish the face, arms and hands,
while giving the peripheral areas less attention.
Thus, finer movements are easier to detect even with low
bandwidth."
MobileASL website
here.
- CSE
undergraduate women travel to Microsoft in gas-guzzling style
(February 2007)
Our Microsoft recruiter, Jeremy Briggs, surprised
CSE's undergraduate women with transportation to
Microsoft that they hadn't seen since their high
school proms!
- "Sign
language over cell phones" (popgadget) (February 2007)
"While the development of cell phone technology marches on,
to the point where owning a cell phone's become practically
mandatory for anyone living in a modern urban society, there's
only so much a hearing-impaired person can do with a cell phone ...
Hence the
MobileASL
project at the University of Washington, which aims to develop a
new real-time video compression scheme that can transmit within
existing networks, while retaining sufficient video quality to
enable viewers to follow sign language movements in a video call."
- "UW
lab creating mind-controlled robot" (KING-5 TV Evening
News) (February 2007)
KING-5 TV features UW CSE professor
Raj Rao's
Neural Systems Lab.
"Imagine if you could order a robot to get you a soda, or to do
chores around the house, just by thinking about it.
It may sound like science fiction, but researchers at the University
of Washington are showing it may be reality sooner than you think."
- "Google
class debuts at the UW -- Students learn firm's approach to programming"
(Seattle PI) (February 2007)
"At 26 and at the top of his game as one of Google's vaunted
software engineers, Chistophe Bisciglia found himself bored
and restless ...
Then he had a brainstorm: Why not create a Google 101 class
to teach college students how to program the way that Google does? ...
His idea was launched last month as Google's new pilot project at
the University of Washington. The class is aimed at creating
programming prodigies and revamping the way colleges teach
computer science."
- Sloan
Research Fellowships to Blanchette, Doan, Agrawala (February 2007)
2007 Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellowships
have been awarded to UW CSE Ph.D. alums
Mathieu Blanchette
(Assistant Professor at McGill University) and
AnHai Doan
(Assistant Professor at the University of Wisconsin - Madison),
and to UW CSE Affiliate faculty member
Maneesh Agrawala
(Assistant Professor at UC Berkeley).
Fourteen
UW CSE faculty have received Sloan Research Fellowships.
- "University
of Washington Computer Science & Engineering - Making UCSD CSE
Great Since 1984" (February 2007)
As a fundraising gimmick, UC San Diego encouraged friends
to purchase 12" square engraved paving stones on the walkway that runs
through the new engineering courtyard in front of the CalIT2
and CSE buildings. For $400, it was impossible not to participate.
UW CSE has eight and a half alumni on the UCSD CSE faculty:
Fran Berman,
Brad Calder,
Bill Griswold,
Sorin Lerner,
Stefan Savage,
Steve Swanson,
Dean Tullsen,
half of
Amin Vahdat,
and
Geoff Voelker.
Fran Berman, the first of these, joined UCSD CSE in 1984.
- "Deaf
to sign via video handsets" (BBC) (February 2007)
"Deaf people could soon be using video mobiles to chat with
their friends using sign language ... Professor Richard Ladner and
his co-researchers Professor Eve Riskin and Professor Sheila Hemami
[are] creating compression software that looks for the parts of
each video frame important to signers." See the MobileASL
research project web page
here.
- UW
CSE's Larry Snyder on appropriate goals for university technology
transfer (UW Daily) (pdf) (February 2007)
The University of Washington Intellectual Property Management
Advisory Committee, chaired by UW CSE professor Larry Snyder,
has affirmed that UW's "primary goal in technology transfer
is to maximize worldwide use and societal benefit of its
research and technology."
- "Photo
software creates 3-D world" (UW News & Information)
(February 2007)
"In the digital age, organizing a photo collection has gone
from bad to worse. The saying used to be that a picture is
worth a thousand words. Now the question arises: what are a
thousand pictures worth? In a word, mainly a headache ...
"Experimental software developed by UW and Microsoft computer
scientists, called Photo Tourism, turns the surfeit of images
into a benefit ..."
For more information and a trial version of Photo Tourism,
go to
http://phototour.cs.washington.edu/.
Information on Microsoft's Photosynth software and a tech preview
of the product are available at
http://labs.live.com/photosynth/.
- "It's
all in the dance" (KING-5 TV Evening Magazine) (February 2007)
"Finding a date can be a difficult task. Ask these University of
Washington researchers and they'll tell you the answer might be
learning how to dance." UW CSE's Zoran Popovic on KING5 Evening
Magazine's Valentine's Day Special.
- "Sign
Language Via Cell Phone" (Slashdot) (February 2007)
UW CSE's
MobileASL
project, led by professor
Richard
Ladner, is Slashdotted.
- Lee
Hood elected to National Academy of Engineering (February 2007)
Lee
Hood,
Founder and President of the
Institute for
Systems Biology and Adjunct Professor in UW
Computer Science & Engineering, has been elected to
the National Academy of Engineering.
Lee is one of only 7 individuals who
are members of all three National Academies: the
National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy
of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine.
Hood's induction into the
National
Inventors Hall of Fame also was announced this week.
- CSE
professor Raj Rao on KING-5 TV Evening Magazine (February 2007)
Robot control via skull-cap electrodes, to help those with physical
disabilities. "It's like a childhood dream, come true."
- New
issue of MSB! (pdf) (February 2007)
The Winter 2007 issue of Most Significant Bits, the UW
CSE alumni newsletter, has just been published.
Giant photo of Hank on page 2.
- CSE
alumnus Brad Fitzpatrick in the PI (February 2007)
The Seattle PI features UW CSE alumnus Brad Fitzpatrick,
whose
"OpenID" initiative was just
embraced by Microsoft.
- "Robotics
in Greater Seattle" (pdf) (CrossRoads) (February 2007)
Robotics activities in CSE and EE are featured in the Winter 2007
issue of CrossRoads, a publication of
the Trade Development Alliance of Greater
Seattle.
- Oren
Etzioni wins 2007 AAAI Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture
Award (February 2007)
CSE faculty member has been selected as the fifth
recipient of the AAAI
(American Association for Artificial Intelligence)
Robert S. Engelmore Memorial Lecture Award.
This annual keynote lecture is presented at the IAAI conference
in honor of Dr. Robert S. Engelmore's extraordinary service
to AAAI, AI Magazine, and the AI applications community,
and his contributions to applied AI.
- "Computer
Scientist Lost at Sea Has Extensive Legacy" (NPR Weekend
Edition) (February 2007)
"Microsoft computer scientist Jim Gray, 63, is missing and feared
dead at sea. His revolutionary work with databases will continue
to affect our lives each day. University of Washington computer
science professor Ed Lazowska tells Rebecca Roberts about Gray's
legacy."
- "An
Insurance Policy for Low Airfares" (NY Times)
(January 2007)
The New York Times features UW CSE startup
Farecast.
"Farecast, the Internet start-up that made waves last
year by predicting ticket prices for air travelers,
is putting its money where its mouth is."
- "The
Electric Brain" (KPLU/NPR) (January 2007)
KPLU, Seattle's NPR station, airs a 4-part series
on the brain.
Part
four -- "Brain-computer interface"
features the work of UW CSE professor
Raj Rao.
"I'd heard about researchers who connect computers to someone's
scalp, with wires. And I went to visit Rajesh Rao. I didn't know
I'd be getting hooked up to the machine. Raj wants to create a
robot helper for someone who's lost all movement - can't even
blink their eyes."
- "BitTyrant
makes a turbulent entry into digital filesharing" (UW News
& Information) (January 2007)
"As you read this sentence, an estimated 5 million people
are using BitTorrent to download their favorite movies or
TV shows. The free software has achieved almost iconic status
since its 2001 release, its creator profiled in glossy magazines,
its users coining a new lexicon. The percentage of North American
Internet traffic devoted to BitTorrent is in the double digits.
"This week University of Washington computer scientists released
free software that tweaks BitTorrent's cooperative core. The UW
program, named
BitTyrant,
maximizes individual benefit by
choosing file-sharing partners strategically. In doing so,
it boosts downloading speeds by an average of 70 percent."
- Moving
Ahead: Recent Additions to the Faculty (pdf) (January 2007)
UW CSE welcomes new faculty members Dave Bacon,
Magda Balazinska, James Fogarty, Yoshi Kohno,
Arvind Krishnamurthy, James Lee, and Yoky Matsuoka.
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