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Software & Hardware Systems

Our researchers are driving innovation across the entire hardware, software and network stack to make computer systems more reliable, efficient and secure. 

From internet-scale networks, to next-generation chip designs, to deep learning frameworks and more, we build and refine the devices and applications that individuals, industries and, indeed, entire economies depend upon every day.


Research Groups & Labs

Database Group cover image of a mountain

Database Group

The UW Database Group does theoretical, systems and user-centered work in multimodal database management systems; generative AI and data management; complexity of query evaluation and optimization; scalable, interactive data visualization; and more.

Data center connections

Computer Systems Lab

The Computer Systems Lab works on research covering a number of areas in operating systems, distributed systems, computer architecture and security.


Faculty Members

Faculty


Centers & Initiatives

Society + Technology is a cross-campus, cross-disciplinary initiative and community at the University of Washington that is dedicated to research, teaching and learning focused on the social, societal and justice dimensions of technology.

The NSF AI Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation (ACTION) seeks to change the way mission-critical systems are protected against sophisticated, ever-changing security threats. In cooperation with (and learning from) security operations experts, intelligent agents will use complex knowledge representation, logic reasoning, and learning to identify flaws, detect attacks, perform attribution, and respond to breaches in a timely and scalable fashion.

Highlights


Allen School News

In 2011, a team of researchers that included Allen School professor and alum Franziska Roesner published a paper detailing how they could remotely take control of a car. Their work, which inspired new motor vehicle security standards, received the USENIX Test of Time Award.

GeekWire

After nearly half a century at UW — and at the intersection of Seattle tech, education and civic life — Lazowska is logging off from his official duties. But he’s not completely shutting things down, with plans to stay involved in the community and focus on “the big problems.”

Allen School News

Cardinality estimation helps guide decisions on every aspect of query execution, but current methods often have large errors. To address this, Suciu introduced a more accurate and efficient cardinality estimator, LpBound, which provides a guaranteed upper bound on the query output size.