Awards and honors
CSE’s Raymond Zhang & Sam Hopkins win Dean’s Medals
The Dean’s Medal recognizes the top student in the College of
Engineering and each of the College of Arts & Science’s four
divisions — arts, humanities, social sciences, and sciences
— based on grade point average, difficulty of courses taken, and
recommendations from the student’s department. This year two CSE
students received this honor, the fourteenth and fifteenth CSE
students to do so.
Raymond Zhang
Computer engineering senior Raymond Zhang has been
named as one of two recipients of the 2013 University of Washington
Engineering Dean’s Medal for Academic Excellence.
Since his sophomore year, Raymond has participated in the
computational biology group led by Ram Samudrala, associate professor
in the department of microbiology. Under Professor Samudrala’s
guidance, Raymond is developing a program to predict the structure of
how a protein and nucleic acid strand interact. Raymond says he
“wanted to come to the UW because of its excellent departments
of CSE and Biology.”
After graduating in June with double degrees in computer
engineering and biology, Raymond will explore working in industry for
a few years by joining Google as a software developer in October.
Sam Hopkins
Sam Hopkins, a senior majoring in computer science and in
mathematics, has been selected to receive the 2013 University of
Washington College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Medal for the Natural
Sciences.
Sam’s research is in theoretical computer science. He seeks to
apply techniques and insights from logic, algebra, analysis, and
geometry to problems in computer science. He has worked on
foundational questions related to randomness and the complexity of
computation executed by many cooperating parties, with researchers at
Rutgers University and at UW CSE under the advisement of Professor
Paul Beame. As an intern at Google, he designed prototype extensions
to the Dart programming language.
He plans to spend the summer after graduating wandering around
somewhere very far away. In Fall 2013 he will join the Theory of
Computation and Programming Languages groups at Cornell University as
a PhD student, supported by an NSF graduate research fellowship. In
between bouts of math, Sam likes to bike fast, ski fast, and cook
fast, although his success in these endeavors is often limited.
Congratulations to Raymond, to Sam, and to all of CSE’s superb
students!
| CSE Dean’s Medal Winners |
| Samuel Hopkins |
2013 Dean's Medalist in the Natural Sciences (Computer Science & Mathematics) |
| Raymond Zhang |
2013 Dean's Medalist in Engineering (Computer Engineering & Biology) |
| William Johnson |
2011 Dean's Medalist in the Natural Sciences (Computer Science & Math) |
| Eric Arendt |
2010 Dean's Medalist in Engineering (Electrical Engineering & Computer Science) |
| Kathy Wei |
2009 Dean's Medalist in Engineering (Bioengineering & Computer Science) |
| Pavan Vaswani |
2009 Dean's Medalist in the Sciences (Computer Science, Neurobiology & Biochemistry) |
| Chester Chan |
2007 Dean's Medalist in Engineering (Computer Engineering) |
| Jonathan Su |
2006 Dean's Medalist in Engineering (Computer Engineering) |
| Terri Moore |
2004 Dean's Medalist in the Sciences (Computer Science & Math) |
| Erin Earl |
2003 Dean's Medalist in the Arts (Computer Science & Music) |
| Thomas Carlson |
2002 Dean's Medalist in the Sciences (Computer Science, Math & English) |
| Corin Anderson |
1996 Dean's Medalist in the Sciences (Computer Science & Math) |
| Vitaly Schmatikov |
1994 Dean's Medalist in the Sciences (Computer Science & Math) |
| Eka Ginting |
1991 Dean's Medalist in the Sciences (Computer Science & Economics) |
| Samuel Broda |
1986 Dean's Medalist in the Sciences |
Three CSE undergrads recognized in CRA awards competition
The Computing Research Association Outstanding Undergraduate
Researcher Award competition recognizes undergraduates in North
American colleges and universities who show outstanding research
potential in an area of computing research. In the 2013 competition,
three UW CSE students were recognized: 2013 national
winner Matt Bryan, and honorable
mentions Kevin Clark and Grace
Muzny.

Matt's research focuses on creating brain-computer interfaces
— machines that read brain activity to discern a user's
intention without the need for physical movement. His contributions
employ various machine learning techniques to allow the devices to
work for a wider variety of people, to be more robust to noise, and to
adapt to the users' changing needs over time. He has led several
research teams in Raj Rao's Neural Systems Lab, has published and
presented papers at various venues around the world, and recently
received a grant from the Center for Sensorimotor and Neural
Engineering. This seed grant funds a spin-off project from his work,
which will be continued over the next two years. After graduating this
quarter, he will work on distributed file systems as a senior software
development engineer at EMC Isilon, located in downtown Seattle.

Grace's current research identifies idioms at scale in natural
language processing. It leverages Wiktionary to create a scalable
machine-learning approach for differentiating between literal and
idiomatic senses of a given phrase. This research works to make
Wiktionary a more complete resource by identifying idioms that are not
yet marked as such. She plans to spend the summer bicycling across
the country with the open road and the wind to guide her.

Kevin's research has primarily been on sentiment analysis,
automatically identifying subjective information in text. He worked on
a project called RevMiner, a system that extracts information about
restaurants from reviews. The extractions are then used to concisely
summarize and provide quality search of restaurants. Recently he has
worked on building personalized recommender systems that exploit mined
opinions to improve recommendation accuracy. After graduating, he
plans to take a year off to travel and then start a computer science
Ph.D. at Stanford.
This year's recognition extends UW CSE's record of having the
largest number of students recognized in the most recent ten years of
this competition! A list of all winners may be viewed with our CSE
undergrad student recognition:
Fourth Annual CSE Alumni Achievement Awards
CSE honored two extraordinarily accomplished alumni —
Anne Dinning and Ed Felten —
during its June 15th graduation ceremony. These awards affirm to CSE
graduates and students that each contributes to a long, successful
line with impact that drives deep and extends far.
Anne Dinning (BS '84) Finance industry leader, community benefactor
Anne Dinning was finishing her doctorate in computer science and
considering faculty positions when she fielded an out-of-the blue
invitation to interview at a fledgling hedge fund, D.E. Shaw &
Co. Founder David Shaw, a former computer science professor at
Columbia University, was staffing the firm with scientists and
mathematicians to develop a business strategy based on computational
finance and quantitative investment management.
Dinning's award-winning dissertation research (PhD '89) at New
York's Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences caught his eye. She
signed on as a researcher when the company had just 20 employees,
drawn by the opportunity to help create something from scratch. Today
the global investment firm has more than 1,000 employees in North
America, Europe, and Asia, and manages $26 billion in investment
capital. And Dinning runs the company as “first among equals” on a
five- member executive committee.
Respected in industry and government, Dinning served for several
years on the Asset Management Committee of the President's Working
Group on Financial Markets. In 2006 she received the Industry
Leadership Award presented by 100 Women in Hedge Funds.
Dinning is a second-generation UW Engineering alum. Her father was
an electrical engineer and missile systems specialist at Boeing. She
gravitated into computer science because she enjoyed solving puzzles
and wanted a portable skill so she could consult and travel, but
faculty convinced her she could do more than programming.
“Professor Richard Ladner, my senior thesis advisor, assigned
me to work with the grad students on the text editor for a braille
device. Giving me a meaningful project showed he had respect for me,
and it was so cool to work on something that would get built,”
she says.
Dinning is passionate about supporting current CSE students and
faculty. She and her husband, Michael Wolf, established an endowed
regental fellowship, awarded annually to a first- year graduate
student. They also established three endowed professorships in honor
of Professor Ladner, Professor Emeritus Jean-Loup Baer, and Anne's
father, Bob Dinning. She also has given back to the university through
service on the UW Foundation board and the UW Futures Committee
chaired by Bill Gates, Sr.
“This committee is encouraging the university to look at new
ideas and metrics and how to measure success. We must figure
out how to adapt to the funding challenges in higher education.
I'm very grateful to the UW, and it's been nice to engage,”
Dinning says.
In New York, Dinning serves on the leadership boards of Math
for America, which advocates for teachers and improving math
and science education in public schools, and of the Robin Hood
Foundation, which funds efforts to alleviate poverty.
“I appreciate how New Yorkers engage with the city, even in the
physical way of taking the subway and walking. In my neighborhood,
people know you and say hello,” she says. “But I do miss Seattle's
beauty and closeness to nature.”
Luckily, she returns for summers with Wolf and their two children
and enjoys getting back to nature.
Edward Felten (PhD '93) Computer security researcher, public policy and consumer advocate
Two decades ago Ed Felten decided to
focus his career in computer security because it was “newer
ground not well plowed,” and he wanted to affect policy through
research. Now, in an era of massive data mining, cyber attacks, and
personal privacy concerns, Felten is a leader in a tumultuous field
and an advocate for the rights of the public, technology users, and
researchers. The National Academy of Engineering elected Felten to
membership this year for his work and its impact on public policy.
“It’s great to be recognized in the field and by my peers and
CSE. I’m looking forward to coming back to campus and seeing
old friends,” Felten says.
At Princeton University, Felten is a professor of computer
science and public affairs and directs the Center for Information
Technology and Policy. Its interdisciplinary research spans
security vulnerabilities in electronic voting machines, browser
security and privacy, secure cloud-based Web collaboration,
technology and public policy in global intellectual property
rights, government transparency, and other issues.
In his blog Freedom to Tinker, Felten has sided
squarely with consumers in the outcry over locked cell phones, noting
how copyright protections limit the freedom to take apart or modify
the devices we own. In 2001 the recording industry threatened him and
others with a lawsuit related to research on CDs protected from
copying under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act. Felten’s
article in the March 29, 2013 edition of Slate describes how
the outdated copyright law hurts consumers and cripples
researchers.
From January 2011 to August 2012, Felten held an appointment
as the first chief technologist for the Federal Trade Commission,
whose mandate is to prevent business practices that are anti
competitive and unfair to consumers.
“It was a great opportunity to learn how things work in
D.C. and see how policy meets the political process. So little of this
is visible to the outside,” Felten says.
A growing concern is pervasive big data collection and the
increasingly sophisticated ways that government, retailers,
and those with a criminal bent, can amass and analyze personal
information.
“Our laws are out of sync with advances in technology. We
need to think more about what privacy means and how to safeguard
personal information going forward,” he says. “Another
issue is how government agencies can be more transparent about how
they use data for decision making, so we know the procedures are
fairly applied.”
Felten’s impact and contributions to the public good affirm his
decision to switch to computer science after earning his BS in
physics at Cal Tech. Seattle’s expanding technology sector and
the quality of the UW CSE program drew him here. He counts
his dissertation advisors, Ed Lazowska and John Zahoran, and
general advisor Hank Levy, as prime influencers.
“John urged careful thinking about the core problem and how to
narrow it down. Ed knew everyone and everything going on and
urged me to get out and get the big picture. Hank’s advice was
don’t be afraid to make mistakes — make them quickly, learn,
and race forward into the unknown,” Felten says.
CSE’s Kevin Ross honored for inspiring K-12 students
A passion for exciting K-12 students about math and science, and a
mission to inspire them to become science and technology leaders, has
earned Kevin Ross (BS ’88) the 2013 Diamond Award for
Distinguished Service. Ross first volunteered as mentor for a high
school robotics team in 1999 while working as a senior design engineer
at Microsoft. By 2002 the excitement and passion he saw in students
impelled him to take his volunteer mission statewide by founding
Washington FIRST Robotics.
FIRST (For Inspiration and Recognition of Science and Technology)
now works with more than 7,500 students and 2,000 volunteers across
the state. Mentors encourage students to explore, understand, and
become excited about science and engineering by working in teams to
build robots and compete statewide and nationally. Now retired from
Microsoft, Ross volunteers full-time for FIRST.
His mission is a big one — close to 400 teams are spread over
about 30 percent of the state’s high schools and 20 percent of
elementary and middle schools. The ultimate vision is to have a FIRST
robotics team available for every student in Washington.
“We changed the educational and career choices for a
significant number of our students. It is a truly profound moment to
realize that a student has found a long-term passion as a result of
your work,” Ross says.
The UW Engineering Diamond Award is the most recent recognition of
his work with students. GeekWire named him the March 2012 “Geeks
Who Give Back” honoree, with a page in its GeekWire 2012
Calendar. He was a 2011 nominee for the Microsoft Alumni Foundation
Integral Fellows Awards Program, which recognizes alumni who are
making significant differences in the lives of others. And by popular
demand, a former FIRST student recently created a Facebook page
honoring Ross, explaining that he “asks for nothing yet gives
everything.” The site allows students to list him as an
“Inspirational Person” on their own Facebook pages.
Read about the 2013 Diamond Award honorees at:
engr.washington.edu/alumcomm/diamond/2013honorees.html
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