Kristin Osborne, Author at Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

‘Embrace every experience’: A tribute to the Allen School’s Class of 2026

Wide angle photo of the arena with graduates in regalia seated on the floor surrounded by bleachers full of crowds beneath the jumbotron displaying a speaker in regalia — The Allen School celebrated the achievements of more than 800 graduates on June 12, 2026. *Photo by Matt Hagen*

Undeterred by traffic, transit woes, weather or the World Cup, nearly 7,500 participants and guests packed the Alaskan Airlines Arena at the University of Washington the evening of June 12th to cheer on the Allen School graduates about to begin their next chapter. In all, the school will have awarded more than 800 degrees this year — and the vast majority of them were seated on the arena floor as professor Magdalena Balazinska — overseeing proceedings for the final time as Director of the Allen School — kicked off the celebration by acknowledging what it took for them to reach this happy milestone.

“You have taken challenging courses, worked late into the night on all kinds of assignments and projects and papers, contributed to the Allen School community in a variety of ways, and hopefully also made some friends along the way,” said Balazinska, who then launched into a call and response inviting members of the audience to cheer for the graduates and all those who supported them.

Jeff Dean (Ph.D., ‘96): ‘Discernment of what is important can be your superpower’

Jeff Dean in Ph.D. regalia raises his hands while addressing the graduates from the podium behind a row of flowers — Allen School alum Jeff Dean: “Extraordinary people and communities exist everywhere.” *Photo by Matt Hagen*

A familiar face joined in congratulating the graduates — and even donned the traditional purple regalia of a UW doctoral degree. Thirty years after his own graduation from the Allen School, Jeff Dean returned to his alma mater to stand on the other side of the podium and share advice and encouragement with those about to take their next step.

Long before he graduated and left Seattle to become one of the first 20 employees at a little search engine startup called Google, Dean’s world view was shaped by a childhood involving extensive travel in which he went to 11 schools in 12 years — an experience, he says, that taught him that “extraordinary people and communities exist everywhere.”

“So embrace every experience,” he advised. “You will inevitably end up in an unexpected place in your life, but you can find value and learn something from it — something new, if you’re open to finding it.”

That something might include an idea whose time hasn’t yet come. Dean recalled how, as an undergraduate, he experimented with how to scale neural networks to solve real-world problems, but computers didn’t have sufficient processing power to do what he wanted. It would be 20 years before the field reached the point where his vision could become reality.

“When the time is right, you may find that something you learned a while ago can now help you achieve something that was not previously possible,” he said.

Dean observed — and in several cases, helped bring about — the emergence of many transformative technologies during a career in which he rose to Chief Scientist for Google DeepMind and Google Research and Gemini overall technical lead. (He subsequently left the company to launch a new startup, Discovery Loop, in August). During his June address, Dean shared his optimism about artificial intelligence, in particular, owing to its potential to solve global challenges in healthcare, education, scientific discovery and other areas. He also acknowledged people’s valid concerns about the potential downsides of AI. It would be up to those seated on the arena floor, he said, to shape these technologies so that they benefit the broader good rather than only a select few.

“As graduates entering a rapidly evolving world, remember this: As tools make the ‘how’ of what we do simpler in some cases, it becomes even more important to be wise in what you create with these technologies,” he said. “That discernment of what is important can be your superpower.”

As tools make the “how” of what we do simpler in some cases, it becomes even more important to be wise in what you create with these technologies.

Jeff DeanPh.D., '96

Dean also reminded the graduates that saying goodbye to the Allen School doesn’t mean saying goodbye to the people who helped shape their experience here.

“The memories you made with your fellow UW classmates will shape your future, as it did mine,” Dean said. “You can continue to learn and grow together.”

Honoring alumni excellence: David Dawson (B.S., ’06) and Nodira Khoussainova (Ph.D., ’12)

Two people dressed in business casual attire holding award plaques flanked by two people dressed in Ph.D. regalia from their respective alma maters — Exceptional role models: Alumni Impact Award winners David Dawson (second from left) and Nodira Khoussainova (second from right) flanked by Allen School professors Magdalena Balazinska (far left) and Dan Grossman. *Photo by Kerry Dahlen*

Dean is a past recipient of the Allen School’s Alumni Impact Award, which serves two purposes: to recognize some of the school’s most accomplished alumni, and to show new graduates that they are joining a long line of former students who are changing the world. Professor Dan Grossman — in his last official act as Allen School Vice Director before stepping into the interim director role — took to the stage to recognize the two alumni who recently joined that rarified group as recipients of the 2026 Alumni Impact Awards.

After graduating from the UW, honoree David Dawson tapped into an entrepreneurial spirit honed in high school, when he built websites for local businesses, to build a series of startups “rooted in community, purpose, and the people around him,” said Grossman. His first job out of college was with fledgling online real estate company Zillow, where he was one of the first software engineers. He subsequently co-founded Stash Hotel Rewards, a loyalty program for independent hotels, dinner-delivery service Leah’s Kitchen, and recycling subscription service Ridwell. He continues in an advisory role for the latter, even as he pivots to helping other entrepreneurs harness AI to build their businesses.

Honoree Nodira Khoussainova combines an entrepreneurial spirit with systems expertise honed working with Balazinska and Allen School professor Dan Suciu in the UW Database Group. After earning her doctorate, she co-founded Streamlit, a maker of data app development tools that was later acquired by Snowflake. Khoussainova also led the experimentation team at X (formerly Twitter), where she observed technology’s impact on human behavior and mental health. Those observations inspired her to co-found Focused Space, an online co-working platform that supports users to make progress toward their goals through “body doubling” and other productivity tools. Khoussainova, who is CEO of the company, credits the Allen School for teaching her that “technology is only as meaningful as the humans it serves.”

“David and Nodira are exceptional role models for our graduates,” Grossman said in an earlier announcement. “They demonstrate how you can bring the technical skills unique to a computing education to bear on matters of community and societal well being that we can all relate to.”

Vaishnavi Vidyasagar (B.S., ‘26): ‘We aren’t just writing code, but we’re opening doors’

Closeup of Vaishnavi Vidyasagar in cap and gown smiling from behind the podium — Vaishnavi Vidyasagar: “Success was not a result, but it was a journey toward it.” *Photo by Matt Hagen*

This year, the Allen School initiated a new tradition in which a member of the current graduating class is selected to deliver an undergraduate student address. The inaugural speaker, Sammamish, Washington native Vaishnavi Vidyasagar embraced the opportunity to check an item off her bucket list — a giant selfie of herself and all the graduates from the stage — before reflecting on what it took for them all to get there.

Recalling late-night lab sessions, days of debugging code and nervous moments asking questions in class, Vidyasagar also shared how her view of computer science evolved during her time at the Allen School. “For a long time, I thought computer science was the system of efficiency, optimization and saving memory,” she said.

Her perspective changed while working with robotics professor Maya Cakmak on a research project for people with upper-body impairments. The experience caused her to understand technology not as something that “helps” but rather something that gives people autonomy. “As computer scientists, we aren’t just writing code, but we’re opening doors,” she said.

Acknowledging that she and her classmates were graduating into a rapidly changing world, Vidyasagar expressed confidence in their collective ability to define the future of their field.

“We’re a class that pairs strong foundations with deep human empathy. We’re a class of teachers, leaders and entrepreneurs. As you walk across the stage, I want you to remember that success was not a result, but it was a journey toward it,” she said. “I can’t wait to see the impact you’ll make on your journeys ahead.”

Honoring student leadership, scholarship and service

Earlier in the day, the Allen School honored Vidyasagar and a group of her peers for their academic achievements, support for fellow students and contributions to the campus community through its end-of-year awards. Family and friends were invited to join this more intimate ceremony celebrating the recipients before later applauding them en masse on the arena floor.

A group of smiling students and faculty pose on a staircase holding framed award certificates — The Allen School recognized students and faculty for service, scholarship and excellence in teaching at a dedicated awards ceremony. *Photo by Kerry Dahlen*

Undergraduate Service Awards

Vidyasagar earned one of four Undergraduate Service Awards for her leadership and dedication that “have left a lasting and meaningful mark on the Allen School.” As chair of Computing Community, or COM^2, Vidyasagar oversaw the student organization’s programming and events that serve the school’s more than 2,300 undergraduates. Along the way, she earned the respect and admiration of peers and collaborators for her empathy, integrity and commitment to empowering others.

Hawa Drammeh — described as an “extraordinary force” from the moment she arrived at the Allen School — was recognized for her work as founder of CSEED, a student organization that supports students to become innovators through a combination of mentorship, community-building, professional development and peer support. Known for bringing people together and building people up, Drammeh grew CSEED into one of the school’s largest, most impactful student organizations serving nearly a thousand students each year.

Joban Mand was recognized for his contributions as an Allen School peer adviser, undergraduate researcher and officer of the student affinity group Ability. Whether mentoring his fellow students as they navigate academic and personal challenges, helping to build a supportive community among students with disabilities and allies, or investigating AI to support wildlife conservation efforts, Mand “has left a lasting impression on students and staff alike” owing to his empathy, advocacy and genuine care for members of the Allen School community.

Ishan Sinha, who “consistently leads by example and inspires those around him to strive for excellence,” was recognized for his contributions with the Algorithmic Trading Club, a student organization focused on the intersection of technology and finance. As ATC’s managing director, Sinha developed a comprehensive curriculum, secured sponsorships from major firms such as Jane Street and Citadel, and personally mentored students. He also served as co-president of the Lavin Entrepreneurship Program supporting undergraduate student entrepreneurs.

We’re a class that pairs strong foundations with deep human empathy. We’re a class of teachers, leaders and entrepreneurs.

Vaishnavi VidyasagarB.S., '26

Outstanding Senior Awards

Weikai Huang was recognized for his contributions to vision-language models and 3D computer vision as an undergraduate researcher in the Allen School’s Reasoning, AI, and VisioN (RAIVN) Lab and at the Allen Institute for AI. His work includes large-scale data and model pipelines for real-world use in 3D object detection and a system for text-to-video generation, with papers appearing at the International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR) and the Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR). Huang will start his Ph.D. in the Allen School this fall.

Tong Lin was recognized for her scholarship and leadership that also inspired her nomination for a College of Engineering Dean’s Medal. Lin’s contributions as a researcher in the UbiComp Lab and Personal Robotics Lab spanned robotics, embedded systems, sustainability, and AI-assisted engineering tools. A paper she co-authored exploring approaches for more sustainable electronics design earned an honorable mention at the 2025 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems. Lin, who was an active member of Advanced Robotics at UW, will join the NVIDIA robotics team after graduation.

Hao Xu was recognized for her research in AI transparency, fairness and language model evaluation. Xu’s contributions include a groundbreaking new tool for identifying benchmark contamination in large text-based training datasets that earned the Best Paper Award at 2025 Conference on Empirical Methods in Natural Language Processing (EMNLP). Xu, who was named a finalist in the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards and nominated for the College of Arts & Sciences Dean’s Medal, will pursue a Ph.D. at Stanford University this fall.

Student Thesis Awards

Kaiyuan Liu received the Best Senior Thesis Award for “Code as a Substrate toward LLM Self-Improvement,” which he completed under the guidance of professor Natasha Jaques. Liu developed multiple approaches for evaluating LLMs’ ability to generate and solve competitive programming problems. His projects included LiveCodeBench Pro, a benchmark for testing models’ reasoning capabilities that was presented at NeurIPS 2025 and featured in Google’s release of Gemini 3. Earlier this year, Liu earned an honorable mention in the CRA Outstanding Undergraduate Researcher Awards for his work.

Xu, who earlier received an Outstanding Senior Award, returned to the stage to collect an honorable mention for “Navigating Language Model Training Data with Scalable N-gram Search,” which she completed under the guidance of professor Hanna Hajishirzi.

Anna Kuznetsova was recognized with the Outstanding Master’s Thesis Award for her thesis “Does This Even Matter in the Real World? Real World Problems in Foundational Theory Courses” that she completed as part of the Allen School’s B.S./M.S. program. Under the guidance of teaching professor Robbie Weber, Kuznetsova explored students’ view of computer science theory courses and their relevance outside of the classroom. As part of this work, she developed new homework problems grounded in real-world applications of the material and surveyed students to assess how this approach contributed to their sense of relevance and learning outcomes.

Commemorating excellence in teaching

Hal Perkins Undergraduate Teaching Award

Hal Perkins onstage — “The epitome of who an educator should and can be”: teaching professor emeritus Hal Perkins. *Photo by Kerry Dahlen*

Vidyasagar returned to the podium, this time in her capacity as chair of COM^2, to announce the recipients of the Undergraduate Teaching Awards, an annual tradition in which the students recognize faculty members for the positive impact they have had on their education. This year, COM^2 surprised longtime teaching professor Hal Perkins by officially changing the name of the award to the Hal Perkins Undergraduate Teaching Award in honor of his impact on students during his 28 years of service.

“Anyone who has worked with Hal knows that he takes a human-first approach to the work, always lending a smile, checking in on his colleagues and students, and thoughtfully advocating for changes in the Allen School that ultimately support our student success,” Vidyasagar said. “Hal is the epitome of who an educator should and can be.”

Three of Perkins’ colleagues received inaugural awards in his name.

Professor Nirvan Tyagi was recognized for making his Computer Security course exciting and relevant for students, who found his passion for the topic helped them overcome any initial apprehensions they may have had about the course. Known for delivering engaging lectures in which he often shares real-world examples, Tiyagi “has made the class feel connected to their career paths beyond school and opened new avenues as students continue to explore the field of security and privacy,” said Vidyasagar.

Teaching professor Robbie Weber was described by one student as “without a doubt, one of the best professors they have worked with at U-Dub.” Weber’s excitement at sharing various techniques in his Foundations of Computing and Algorithms courses helps students to build their confidence with the material, while his thoughtful approach to integrating AI tools into his curriculum helps them to master it. “It is obvious in everything Robbie does that his primary goal is to have students learn and thrive in his classes,” said Vidyasagar.

Affiliate professor Kevin Zatloukal was recognized for his “legendary dedication” to both his students and teaching assistant (TA) staff. Drawing upon his nearly 30 years of experience as a professional programmer and nearly a decade in the classroom, Zatloukal is known for bringing a combination of clarity, energy and humor to challenging subjects in his Foundations of Computing and Software Design & Implementation courses. “Kevin is not only an outstanding educator, but an exceptional person who has left an immense mark on the Allen School,” Vidyasagar concluded.

Bob Bandes Memorial Awards

The professors celebrated by COM^2 and their faculty colleagues count on the Allen School’s TAs who support the Allen School’s education mission by running quiz sections, holding office hours to provide individualized student support and handling a variety of administrative tasks. Each year, the school pays tribute to a select group of TAs who go above and beyond for their course instructors and their fellow students through the Bob Bandes Memorial Awards.

This year, the school received more than 500 nominations in support of 216 individual TAs. Teaching professors Ruth Anderson and Miya Natsuhara had the happy job of announcing three award winners — Hayden Feeney, Isabel Froelich and Evan Lam — along with four honorable mention recipients.

Hayden Feeney served as a TA a total of 10 times for introductory courses CSE 121 and CSE 123, and is teaching 121 this summer. Known for building a supportive community among his fellow TAs, Feeney was, according to a peer, “quite possibly the most considerate, hardworking, and intentional person I have ever had the pleasure of working with.” As one student observed, “Not only is he exceptional at breaking down computer science concepts to novices in a digestible way, but he does it in the most caring and cordial way possible.”

Isabel Froelich was a TA six times spanning three different courses, including CSE 369 Introduction to Digital Design, the Transfer Admit Seminar and the Mathematics for Computation Workshop. Froelich took an active role in course planning as well as teaching, with one instructor placing her among “the best TAs I’ve worked with.” The students in her classes appreciated Froelich for going “above and beyond to connect with students and check in on how we were doing.”

Evan Lam served as a TA for CSE 484 Computer Security seven times — a course that he made “approachable and meaningful,” in the words of one student, by explaining concepts with patience and clarity. The instructors Lam worked with agreed, with one noting that “he truly wanted to see each and every student succeed, and he would take whatever extra time was needed to make that happen.”

Parker Gustafson, Jonathan Trinh, Trien Vuong and Ivory Wang earned honorable mentions. Gustafson, who served as a TA 15 times across nine courses, was known for contributing “new ideas, activities, and content in the interest of supporting students’ learning.” Trinh, who served as a TA nine times spanning three courses, was known among students for going “above and beyond to ensure students truly understood the material rather than simply getting through it.” Vuong and Wang served as TAs for courses in the Allen School’s introductory series for 12 and seven quarters, respectively. Vuong stood out for his “passion and energy for teaching that’s contagious,” while Wang was appreciated for handling many of the “behind-the-scenes tasks that are often unseen by students and many other TAs.”

The memories you made with your fellow UW classmates will shape your future, as it did mine. You can continue to learn and grow together.

Jeff DeanPh.D., '96

Congratulations and best wishes to all of our graduates!

Watch videos of the awards ceremony and graduation celebration on the Allen School’s YouTube channel.

Large group of Ph.D. graduates posing with commemorative diplomas in their UW graduation regalia — Learning and growing together: New Ph.D. alumni at the Allen School’s graduation celebration. *Photo by Matt Hagen*

Published by Kristin Osborne on September 4, 2026

Ph.D. student Malek Itani earns Marconi Society Young Scholar Award for advancing ‘superhuman’ hearing with AI

Malet Itani smiling in front of red fall foliage

In 2022, University of Washington Ph.D. student Malek Itani purchased his first pair of Apple Airpods Pro in a pre-holiday sale. When he put them in his ears, something clicked — and it wasn’t a sound, but rather an idea.

“I put them on my ears, and I turned on noise canceling, and suddenly I felt like I was in my own personal space,” said Itani, a research assistant in the Mobile Intelligence Lab led by Allen School professor Shyam Gollakota. “I thought, ‘Wow, we can do something here.’

“But the model I was working on at the time was kind of huge, and not real-time, and definitely not something you can put on earbuds,” he continued. “And Shyam said, ‘But what if you can?’ “

Itani, a student in the UW Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, embraced the challenge. And after four years of steady and, at times, astounding progress, he received a Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award for exceptional early-career research that is advancing the future of information and communications technology (ICT). Itani is one of only three scholars selected from a record-high number of nominees from around the world; he and his fellow honorees will be formally recognized at the Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums November 4-6 in San Francisco, California.

“Malek has been a key part of every major contribution to the field of superhuman hearing in recent years,” said Gollakota. “He entered his Ph.D. with a background in RF and backscatter, but he rapidly mastered audio signal processing and deep learning, which is very impressive.”

As an undergraduate, Itani was eager to explore different areas of his chosen field. He dabbled in the aforementioned radiofrequency (RF) communication, embedded systems, robotics and even competitive programming — all the while resisting well-meaning suggestions that he specialize. That breadth of experience was an asset in Gollakota’s lab, where the research is cross-disciplinary and the members approach problems from different, sometimes unexpected, angles.

Itani embodied this ethos during his first foray into the soundscape, which focused not on in-ear capabilities but around-the-room. In his first paper as a primary author, Itani and co-primary author Tuochao Chen, a Ph.D. student in the Allen School, introduced acoustic swarms, a system that creates speech zones in a room by tracking and separating multiple speakers simultaneously. The system consists of a neural network paired with a set of small robotic microphones that self-distribute across a space using only sound — no cameras or special substrate required. The robots automatically return to their charging station after deployment, making the system portable and easy to set up in new locations.

As it turned out, the project was Itani’s ideal introduction to his new line of research.

“The transition from RF to audio is actually simple, because you work with waves and frequencies — but instead of looking at gigahertz, you’re now looking at kilohertz,” Itani explained, “In some sense, it’s easier working with sound, because there’s less data to process. And it’s also more fun to work with, because you get to hear the end product.”

It was when he teamed up with another labmate, Bandhav Veluri (Ph.D., ‘25), on a project called Waveformer that he began to embrace this new direction.

“I had a lot of background in embedded systems because of my undergraduate work and because of the robots,” Itani said. “I was able to take that and port it over to an embedded system, run it in real time, and integrate it with the noise-cancelling headsets. That’s where I started to really learn about real-time audio processing.”

I feel like I’ve hit a niche that’s going to be so transformational, and it’s going to be in billions of devices. It’s going to change the way we hear the world.

Malek Itani2026 Paul Baran Young Scholar

The result was the first neural network capable of real-time, streaming target sound extraction, which the researchers then translated into semantic hearing. Using off-the-shelf headphones paired with a smartphone, Itani and Veluri created a system that enabled the wearer to tailor what sounds they hear in their environment. For example, a person could program the device so that they could hear bird song while walking in the park but not the sound of nearby traffic. A subsequent project, target speech hearing, enabled wearers to focus on the voice of a single companion in a crowd simply by looking at them. The system leverages AI to learn and latch onto the target person’s speech patterns, which it plays back to the wearer in real time while canceling out other voices.

Itani and Chen then extended the wearer’s control over their soundscape from selected sounds to a selected space with a prototype headset that enabled the wearer to create a sound bubble. All sounds within the bubble’s perimeter are heard clearly; sounds outside the bubble are muffled or silenced. An onboard neural network determines which sounds to amplify or suppress based on the distance of each source from the embedded microphones.

That successful proof of concept inspired Itani to aim smaller and refine the technology for earbuds and hearing aids.

“Hearing aids are a natural use case,” Itani said. “In a noisy environment, hearing aids will amplify everything, but if you use AI you can amplify specific sounds that people care about. And you can recover not only what they would have heard, but you can also recover things that humans normally can’t hear. That’s where the concept of superhuman hearing comes from — you’re extending what’s possible with normal hearing.”

But this use case required the team to incorporate AI into devices with significant power and processing constraints. Last year, Itani, Chen and Gollakota partially answered that question with the development of TF-MLPNet, the first real-time neural speech separation network capable of running on low-power hearables like earbuds and hearing aids. They achieved another first with the introduction of NeuralAids, a programmable on-device AI platform for wireless hearables that achieves real-time speech enhancement under strict power constraints.

It wasn’t long before the team’s progress attracted the attention of industry. The team co-founded a UW startup, Hearvana AI, which raised $6 million last fall to support their push to bring acoustic intelligence to market.

As for what happens next, Itani says to stay tuned.

“I feel like I’ve hit a niche that’s going to be so transformational, and it’s going to be in billions of devices. It’s going to change the way we hear the world,” Itani said. ”Because of how important this is going to be, and how much this is going to change people’s lives, it genuinely feels like I have this responsibility to push this forward. I get to impact many, many people with this.”

To learn more, read the Marconi Society announcement and Itani’s Young Scholar profile, and visit Itani’s personal website.

Published by Kristin Osborne on August 26, 2026

Professor Dan Grossman appointed Interim Director of the Allen School

Portrait of Dan Grossman — Professor Dan Grossman will step into the role of interim director of the Allen School after having served as vice director for the past nine years. *(Photo by Matt Hagen)*

The University of Washington has appointed Dan Grossman, Vice Director of the Allen School and Paul G. Allen Professor of Computer Science & Engineering, as Interim Director of the school effective August 17. Grossman will succeed current director Magdalena Balazinska, Professor and Bill & Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science, at the conclusion of her term. She has served as Allen School Director since her appointment in 2019.

“To me, the Allen School is much more than one of the leading computer science and engineering programs in the world. It has been my professional home since I completed my Ph.D. 23 years ago,” said Grossman. “It was my dream job then, and it’s my dream job now.

“To step in as interim director now is both a great honor and a huge responsibility,” he continued. These are exciting and challenging times for higher education, for the field of computing, and for the state of Washington. The Allen School will continue to educate future innovators and leaders while pursuing groundbreaking research that benefits people everywhere.”

Grossman has served as vice director of the Allen School for nine years. Since he joined the UW faculty in 2003, he has fulfilled a number of service and leadership roles on and off campus. He currently chairs the Senate Committee on Planning and Budgeting and is a member of the Provost’s Task Force on Computing and Data Science. Beyond campus, Grossman has been active in the Computing Research Association, including nine years on the Board and two as Vice Chair, and the Association for Computing Machinery, including the Education Board and the Executive Committee of the Special Interest Group on Programming Languages (SIGPLAN). He received the ACM SIGPLAN Distinguished Service Award in 2015 for significant contributions to programming languages education.

Despite increasing administrative and service responsibilities, Grossman has maintained a strong connection to the classroom. He has designed and taught popular courses on programming languages in addition to courses in software design and implementation as well as data structures and parallelism. In 2013, he created one of the first MOOCs (massive open online courses) in programming languages, which thousands of students completed on Coursera over the following decade.

Five years ago, Grossman revamped the Allen School’s direct-admit seminar, which helps first-year majors to thrive academically, personally and socially, and he continues to lead the course each fall. For students thinking about their next step after the UW, he leads the Alumni Career Experience (ACE) seminar, which brings former students back to campus to share advice based on their professional journeys. Grossman also has taught the Allen School’s computer ethics course nine times since its inception in 2018. The course is a reading and discussion seminar that critically analyzes modern sociotechnical systems in their historical contexts.

To step in as interim director now is both a great honor and a huge responsibility. These are exciting and challenging times for higher education, for the field of computing, and for the state of Washington.

Dan GrossmanAllen School professor and vice director

Grossman completed his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Cornell University before joining the Allen School. A member of the Programming Languages & Software Engineering (PLSE) Group, his research encompasses the theory, design and implementation of programming languages. He is best known for his early work on safe programming languages for systems programming and his work on program-analysis techniques for concurrency and parallelism. His research typically applies foundational concepts from programming languages to less standard domains, including 3D-printing, compiler error messages, quantum computing and more. Seventeen students have completed their Ph.D.s working with him and have gone on to join the faculty of top-ranked universities or industry-leading companies.

The Allen School under Balazinska’s leadership significantly expanded in both size and impact while navigating challenges such as the Covid-19 pandemic and an uncertain federal regulatory and funding environment. Today, the school graduates 50% more students than it did in 2019; over the same period, it hired 40 new faculty members who enhanced the school’s research and teaching in artificial intelligence, quantum computing, theory, systems, computational biology and more.

Balazinska also oversaw the modernization of the school’s core educational programs, including an overhaul of its introductory programming course sequence, the launch of a new undergraduate research program and Graduate Certificate in Modern AI Methods, the creation of new minors in Data Science and — coming soon — in AI, and expanded course offerings in AI and other subjects. To ensure the school would operate effectively at this new, larger scale, Balazinska worked with Grossman and other faculty and staff leaders to overhaul the school’s organizational structure and processes.

Portrait of Magdalena Balazinska — Magdalena Balazinska *(Photo by Mark Stone)*

“As Director of the Allen School for nearly seven years, I’m incredibly proud of what we’ve accomplished. My deep thanks to Dan for his willingness to assume this responsibility, and for the wonderful support he has provided to me in his role as vice director,” said Balazinska. “Dan is a thoughtful leader who cares deeply about the success and well-being of our faculty, students and staff. I’m delighted that he agreed to take on this role at such a critical time for computer science education, for our University, and for higher education more generally.”

The interim appointment ensures continuity as University leaders consider the forthcoming recommendations from the aforementioned Task Force on Computing and Data Science, which Provost Tricia Serio convened earlier this year to evaluate how best to advance computing, data science and artificial intelligence across the UW.

“As Interim Director, Dan will provide steady leadership and support the Allen School’s continued excellence in teaching, research, service, and innovation,” said Nancy Allbritton, Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of Engineering at the UW. “His appointment will ensure strong leadership and continuity during a period of thoughtful planning for the future.

“I would also like to express my sincere gratitude to Magda Balazinska for her exceptional service and leadership,” Allbritton continued. “Under her leadership, the school strengthened its standing as one of the nation’s leading computing programs while advancing its impact in AI, data science, and emerging areas across research and education.”

Read the announcement by the College of Engineering and a related story in GeekWire.

Published by Kristin Osborne on August 3, 2026

Allen School professor Shayan Oveis Gharan wins IMU Abacus Medal for advancing the theory of algorithms

blog-featured-shayan-oveis-gharan-abacus-medal — A generational talent: Allen School professor and Abacus Medal winner Shayan Oveis Gharan. *(Photo by Farnaz Ronaghi)*

Shayan Oveis Gharan has made it his mission to tackle some of the most famous — and famously hard — problems underpinning computer science. A member of the Theory of Computation Group and Edward D. Lazowska Professor in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington, Oveis Gharan has contributed to an impressive series of results that have moved the field forward, from offering the first improvement to the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) in more than four decades, to proving a 30-year old conjecture about counting the bases of matroids.

The International Mathematical Union recently honored Oveis Gharan with the 2026 IMU Abacus Medal for “landmark contributions to the theory of algorithms.” The IMU awards the Abacus Medal every four years to a researcher under the age of 40 who has made outstanding contributions in the mathematical aspects of the information sciences. Announced at the same time as the Fields Medal, both recognize generational talent and are among the most prestigious prizes in mathematics.

Although the awards are a closely guarded secret leading up to the public announcement, Oveis Gharan had a hunch even before the official notice came.

“I first received an email from the president of IMU for a Zoom call back in September, and I immediately guessed it must be for this award. Because you normally would not get an email from the president of IMU,” he said with a laugh. “I am very happy for my colleagues and collaborators and everyone in my areas of research — approximation algorithms, analysis of Markov chains, and spectral graph theory — to be recognized and hopefully get better support in the future for their brilliant contributions to the field.”

According to Oveis Gharan, those areas of research hit the sweet spot between the beauty of “pure” mathematical theory and the real-world applicability of computing.

“Pure mathematics is so beautiful because we can prove theorems about truths in the world that hold independent of time and location. They may be used tomorrow, or thousands of years from now, or never, but when you have a correct proof, nobody can downgrade it,” Oveis Gharan explained. “Theory of computing stands out for me because it’s a branch of mathematics that tries to prove statements that, in my opinion, are significantly more related to the real world.

“In a sense, my work combines the best of both worlds,” he continued. “On one hand, I look for the truth about mathematical objects such as spanning trees, matroids, matchings, et cetera, and on the other hand, I design algorithms which may be used to solve basic daily-life tasks.”

A prime example — and one of Oveis Gharan’s career-defining accomplishments to date — has been his work on TSP, which aims to find the shortest route between a network of cities and back to the start while visiting each location only once. It is one of the most recognized and intensely studied problems in combinatorial optimization. When Oveis Gharan was a doctoral student at Stanford University, Christofides’ famous 3/2 algorithm, published back in 1976, could approximate a solution that was, at most, “only” 50% longer than the ideal round trip. He began chipping away at the problem, applying concepts such as randomness, maximum entropy sampling, negative dependence, the geometry of polynomials and other tools to achieve the first improvement over Christofides’ 3/2-approximation for the symmetric graph case and the first asymptotic improvement on the asymmetric TSP.

My work combines the best of both worlds. On one hand, I look for the truth about mathematical objects such as spanning trees, matroids, matchings, et cetera, and on the other hand, I design algorithms which may be used to solve basic daily-life tasks.

Shayan Oveis GharanAllen School professor

According to faculty colleague and fellow traveler Anna Karlin, Oveis Gharan’s persistence is fundamental to his success — along with his sparkling personality. “He’s incredibly fun to work with,” she told Quanta Magazine. “He’s a believer that you can make progress.”

That belief was vindicated when Oveis Gharan eventually teamed up with Karlin and Allen School doctoral student Nathan Klein (Ph.D., ‘23) to, at long last, obtain a provably better approximation factor than Christofides’ 3/2-approximation on any metric.

“The main outcome of our work is not only a slightly improved approximation, but that 50% is not the limit of what you can do with computers efficiently. You should be able to do much better,” he explained in a Simons Foundation video. “And now many researchers are trying to use our ideas to design a much better approximation for TSP.”

Oveis Gharan has a knack for coming up with ideas and tools that other researchers can run with. For instance, he worked with Allen School doctoral student Kuikui Liu (Ph.D., ‘23), UW Department of Mathematics professor Cynthia Vinzant and Stanford University professor Nima Anari on a novel technique for approximate sampling of Markov chains called spectral independence, which they used to develop the first fully polynomial randomized approximation scheme (FPRAS) algorithm for efficiently counting the bases of matroids. In the process, they also proved a 30-year old conjecture concerning the minimum edge expansion of the bases exchange graph of any matroid.

But they didn’t stop there. Oveis Gharan, Liu and Anari then applied the technique to resolve an open problem in statistical physics related to sampling from the hardcore model, proving for the first time that Glauber dynamics — an algorithmic tool for modeling ferromagnetism — mixes in polynomial time up to the so-called phase-transition threshold. Shortly after publishing this result, Oveis Gharan was delighted to see researchers finding even more uses for spectral independence in a variety of domains. It’s why, when asked to identify his favorite result from his career so far, he’s inclined to point to this, rather than TSP, as his answer.

“Over a short period of time, this new technique revolutionized the field of approximate counting and sampling,” he recalled. “Every few weeks, I would see a new paper either generalizing our results or finding new applications in some distant area of research.”

Oveis Gharan is delighted when people find new applications for his research. (Photo by Dennis Wise)

Until now, Oveis Gharan’s work has mostly dealt with what he calls the “positive directions” in theoretical computer science, showing that certain tasks are possible with efficient algorithms. But he’s curious to explore the flip side to demonstrate that certain tasks are impossible with these algorithms. He points out that, already, the existence of “fast” algorithms for some tasks can prove the impossibility of using them for other tasks.

“Surprisingly, these two areas aren’t actually that far from one another. One of my favorite questions in this regard has to do with the theory of pseudorandomness. That is, how can we turn randomized algorithms to (possibly slightly slower) deterministic algorithms?” Oveis Gharan said. “Besides having enormous practical importance, such results would have a significant impact on the area of complexity theory. One problem in this area that I’d like to work on is how to turn randomized algorithms that use only logarithmic space to deterministic algorithms (with logarithmic space).”

Whether he’s setting out to prove what’s possible or impossible, Oveis Gharan says he loves his chosen area because, unlike other areas of computing, the results tend to endure — even as other aspects of the field may fade with time.

“In most areas of computer science, you see algorithms developed 20 years ago or so are now obsolete, perhaps because of the advances in AI,” he observed. “But that’s not the case with CS theory.”

The IMU Abacus Medal is funded jointly by the University of Helsinki and the Simons Foundation. It is the latest in a series of honors Oveis Gharan has earned for his body of work, which includes the Stephen Smale Prize from the Society for the Foundations of Computational Mathematics (FoCM), the Michael and Sheila Held Prize from the National Academy of Sciences, a Simons Investigator Award from the Simons Foundation and the EATCS Presburger Award for Young Scientists from the European Association for Theoretical Computer Science.

Learn more about Oveis Gharan’s contributions on the IMU website, read his medal profile in Quanta Magazine, and watch the Simons Foundation video about his life and work.

Published by Kristin Osborne on July 30, 2026

“Incredibly meaningful”: Allen School professor emeritus Ed Lazowska receives UW Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award

Ed Lazowska standing in front of an old university building that resembles a castle with turrets and stained glass — Ed Lazowska on the University of Washington campus. *(Photo by Mark Stone)*

As excitement builds across campus among soon-to-be graduates embarking on the start of their careers, one member of the University of Washington community is reveling in the opportunity to look back upon his. This week, Ed Lazowska, professor and Bill & Melinda Gates Chair emeritus in the Allen School, will receive the UW Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award honoring “UW educators whose profound influence continues to shape the lives of their students long after they’ve left the classroom.”

“Wow, congratulations Ed!!!” wrote Julie Kientz, professor and chair of the UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering and adjunct professor in the Allen School. “I always thought you had to be dead to get this particular award, but clearly not — glad they were able to honor you with it while you are alive and kicking. 🙂 Very well deserved!”

The award represents a kind of closure. In 1995, as chair of what was then the Department of Computer Science & Engineering, Lazowska put forward two junior professors, Gaetano Borriello and Carl Ebeling, for another honor, the Distinguished Teaching Award. Lazowska wanted to recognize the pair together for their leadership in developing the department’s new computer engineering curriculum.

There was a problem, though: the University didn’t give teaching awards to teams, just individuals, based on the now-outdated conviction that teaching was a solo activity. Having convinced the powers that be that it would be appropriate to recognize both Borriello and Ebeling, Lazowska was confronted with another surprise. Back then, the UW gave out a teaching award for each professorial rank. It turned out that he was the highest ranked candidate in the full professor category, and the office that administered the awards declined to give more than one to the same unit in the same year.

Presented with the choice, Lazowska chose Borriello and Ebeling. For the first time (but not the last), the University rewarded a team for excellence in teaching. And Lazowska, at his own insistence, missed out.

“It’s fulfilling to get a teaching award after all these years,” he said with a smile. “It’s really lovely.”

It was also unexpected. Nominator Patrick Jenny (B.S., ‘91) has remained active in the UW Alumni Association (UWAA) and stayed in touch with Lazowska over the years, but the latter never saw it coming.

“As an educator, his class was engaging,” Jenny wrote about his former professor. “He was accessible and brought excitement into a deep and technical class.”

That class was CSE 451, an undergraduate operating systems course that Lazowska taught for many years. It is, as he describes it, a “really hardcore” course that enables students to gain experience in building complex systems. While there is a textbook, the course is designed to allow students to “get their hands dirty” while learning how to collaborate and problem-solve as part of a team. Lazowska taught the Unix offering, while affiliate professor Gary Kimura (Ph.D., ‘84) taught a Windows version.

“Our region excels at systems engineering, whether it’s operating systems or the cloud,” Lazowska noted. “We work hard to prepare our students to be successful working in teams to build these complex systems, and we’ve educated generations of students to go out and do that.”

Jenny was among them. After graduating from the UW, he held a series of software engineering and product development roles before joining the leadership of F5 Networks. There, he spent over 18 years overseeing global product development, first as vice president and then senior vice president, as the company established itself as a mainstay of the Seattle technology industry.

Ed’s nominations spoke powerfully to his influence on generations of students — academically, professionally and personally.

Paul Ruckerexecutive director, UW Alumni Association

Like Jenny, former student Rob Short (M.S., ‘86) was struck by how Lazowska approached his students and his subject matter — in this case, a computer performance analysis course he taught jointly with faculty colleague John Zahorjan.

“I was immediately impressed with his interest in the students, incredible depth and breadth of knowledge and the ease with which he used math, specifically queuing theory, to analyze and understand complex systems,” Short recalled. “I was an unusual student, having worked in the computer industry for years without a formal education in computer science. Ed, along with others, was incredibly supportive introducing me to abstract methods for understanding systems which I used throughout my career.”

Short logged 15 years at Digital Equipment Corporation before joining Microsoft, where he led a design team and later became Corporate Vice President of Windows Core Technology overseeing the company’s flagship operating system. He remained engaged with his alma mater and watched as Lazowska helped build the Allen School into the “powerhouse” that it is known as today.

“The top tech companies all have deeply technical science and engineering groups in the Seattle region, thanks to UW CSE,” Short said. “All through this time, Ed continued to teach and mentor a huge number of students. His students are now leading faculty members at top universities and technical leaders at the very top tech companies.”

Such outcomes are very important to Lazowska, who speaks enthusiastically about the “multiplicative power” of the hundreds of students faculty members touch each year.

“At the undergraduate level, these great students largely from the state of Washington come into the Allen School, and we try to help them along the way to great careers — and also turn them into well-rounded, educated people,” Lazowska said. “It’s not purely a technical education. And they eventually go out into the world and do amazing things.”

Lazowska believes in the aforementioned multiplicative power so completely that even after “retiring” he continues to teach an entrepreneurship course with Greg Gottesman, co-founder and managing director of Pioneer Square Labs, that attracts undergraduate and graduate students from across the campus.

I’ve always thought that our most important and highest impact role is as educators.

Ed LazowskaAllen School professor emeritus

“The Distinguished Teaching Legacy Award is especially meaningful because it is based on alumni nominations — invited by the UW Alumni Association — and recognizes a faculty member’s lasting impact on students’ lives and careers,” said Paul Rucker, vice president of alumni and stakeholder engagement at the UW and executive director of the UWAA. “Ed’s nominations spoke powerfully to his influence on generations of students — academically, professionally and personally — many of whom have gone on to shape and disrupt the technology industry in Seattle and beyond. We are honored to recognize him with this award.”

That his selection was alumni-driven makes this award — and the timing of it — particularly special in Lazowska’s mind.

“What really matters to us as teachers is what our students go on to achieve afterwards, and Patrick and Rob have achieved an extraordinary amount,” Lazowska said. “It’s so gratifying that when they look back at their UW education, they view it as having really impacted them.

“I’ve always thought that our most important and highest impact role is as educators,” Lazowska continued. “So this is an incredibly meaningful way to wind up my career.”

Jenny would agree — and take it a step further.

“I know that I am a better leader, engineer and Husky because of Ed’s impact in my life,” he said. “The same is true of Seattle and the UW.”

Learn more about the UW Awards of Excellence here, and read coverage of Lazowska’s recognition in the University of Washington Magazine and GeekWire.

Published by Kristin Osborne on June 11, 2026

The house(s) that Hank built: New professorship fund honors first Allen School director Henry M. Levy

Hank Levy sitting cross-legged on building roof flanked by glass panels and holding a construction hard hat — Levy oversaw design and construction of the Allen Center — one of two building projects he led that cemented the University of Washington’s lofty reputation in computing education and research.

After more than four decades on the faculty, Henry M. Levy (Hank) officially retired from the University of Washington last summer. Now Professor and Wissner-Slivka Chair Emeritus in Computer Science & Engineering, Levy has the distinction of having been the longest-serving leader in the Allen School’s history, with 14 years at the helm.

It’s just one of many he has accrued during his time at the UW. Levy’s list of credits as department chair and, later, the Allen School’s founding director includes several more memorable milestones: the 50th anniversary of Computer Science & Engineering at the UW, when it was elevated from a department to a school; the grand opening of a second building, the Bill & Melinda Gates Center, to complement the program’s first permanent home, the Paul G. Allen Center; and a doubling of both faculty size and annual degree production.

Along the way, Levy was a driving force behind the UW’s emergence as a powerhouse of computing research.

“I always felt that UW could be one of the very top schools in computer science, and that was my goal. The way to achieve that is by attracting the best people,” Levy said. “And the way you do that is by creating a warm, welcoming and collaborative environment that people enjoy being a part of.”

Portrait of Hank Levy — Levy is currently Distinguished Engineer and Director of SystemsResearch@Google *(Photo courtesy of Google)*

That warmth is not an act; Levy genuinely cares about the people he works with. Some of those same people are now paying him back by paying it forward. To honor Levy’s legacy at the Allen School, friends and colleagues are contributing to the creation of a professorship that will enhance the UW’s ability to attract, retain and develop faculty with the potential to make significant professional and scholarly contributions in Computer Science & Engineering.

According to one such friend and colleague, former Microsoft Corporate Vice President Rob Short (M.S., ‘86), “Hank has made significant, widely used contributions to the fields of distributed systems and CPU design, but I feel that his leadership of UW Computer Science & Engineering has had a much broader impact.”

Levy never aspired to an academic career. He joined Digital Equipment Corporation — affectionately known as DEC (pronounced like “deck”) — straight out of Carnegie Mellon University after earning his bachelor’s in mathematics and computer science in the mid-1970s. At DEC, he worked on commercial operating systems and systems architecture, which led him to write a book on VAX computer design that quickly became a standard for introductory courses in computer architecture — including at the UW. In 1978, Levy met then-professor Ed Lazowska at a DEC User’s Group meeting. The two became friends, and Lazowska later convinced Levy to spend a year at the UW. Once there, he earned his master’s degree, wrote his second book, “Capability-Based Computer Systems,” and formed a partnership with Lazowska that would shape the future of the Allen School.

Levy subsequently went back to the East Coast, but he missed the UW and Seattle. He returned two years later when the UW offered him a two-year research faculty position. “What was meant to be a two-year visit turned into 40,” Levy said.

Upon returning to the UW, Levy sparked a remarkable streak of four consecutive Best Paper Awards at the biennial ACM Symposium on Operating Systems Principles (SOSP) between 1985 and 1991. The first, co-authored with former DEC colleagues Nancy Kronenberg and Bill Strecker, introduced the VAXcluster system — a milestone in clustered computing through co-designed hardware and software that was decades ahead of its time. Subsequent papers with UW faculty and students pioneered new mechanisms in distributed and parallel systems: Emerald, an early programming language supporting distributed and mobile objects, co-authored with Andrew Black, Norm Hutchinson (Ph.D., ‘87) and Eric Jul (Ph.D., ’89); and two papers co-authored with Lazowska, Brian Bershad (Ph.D., ‘90) and Tom Anderson (Ph.D., ‘91) introducing Lightweight Remote Procedure Call and Scheduler Activations.

I always felt that UW could be one of the very top schools in computer science, and that was my goal. The way to achieve that is by attracting the best people.

Hank LevyAllen School professor emeritus

These projects put the UW on the map as one of the leading systems research groups in the nation. Its position was further solidified when Levy and his faculty colleague Susan Eggers teamed up with students Dean Tullsen (Ph.D., ‘96) and Jack Lo (Ph.D., ‘98) to invent simultaneous multithreading (SMT), a hardware technique for increasing instruction parallelism to boost processor throughput. The first commercially viable multithreaded architecture, SMT was adopted by industry heavyweights including Intel, IBM and Sun.

Well over a decade later, in 2010 and 2011, Levy, Eggers and their collaborators were recognized by the IEEE Computer Society and ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Architecture with back-to-back Influential Paper Awards: the first for introducing the SMT technique, and the second, written jointly with Joel Emer and Rebecca Stamm at DEC, for describing a practical hardware implementation. This string of successes — just a fraction of Levy’s record of nearly 20 paper awards during his career — established him as “a true icon” in the field, according to Amin Vahdat, chief technologist and senior vice president of AI and infrastructure at Google.

“Hank has fundamentally shaped the systems research community. His pioneering work laid the core technical groundwork for the design of modern operating systems and large-scale computing platforms,” said Vahdat, who got to know Levy as a visiting researcher at the UW and recently recruited him to help set up a new research group at the company. “Hank is an enduring giant whose intellectual contributions are woven into the fabric of computer systems, and his legacy is carried forward by generations of students, myself included, who learned from him not just what to do, but how to do it.”

In 2011, Levy was elected to the National Academy of Engineering “for contributions to design, implementation, and evaluation of operating systems, distributed systems, and processor architectures.” And he did it all without having a Ph.D. — a point of personal pride as well as a running joke between him and his faculty colleagues. The joke even found its way into the faculty skit, an annual holiday tradition that Levy started in which he dressed faculty in silly costumes and wrote self-deprecating lines for them to “show grad students that faculty were human.” Including himself, of course.

Hank Levy smiling showing off a t-shirt that says "Trust me I'm a Doctor of Computer Science" — Levy as his alter ego, Dr. CSE

“One year, I created my own character called Dr. CSE who would appear in a white lab coat, make fun of himself and everyone there, and flaunt the superiority of a master’s in computer science and engineering over higher degrees,” Levy said with a laugh.

Levy may enjoy flouting academic convention, but he derives the greatest satisfaction from the culture he built within the school — something that those who have the good fortune to work with him are quick to emphasize.

“Beyond the string of best paper awards and his multi-decade impact on industry, what truly sets Hank apart is his unique ability to architect warm, inviting and meticulously crafted cultures,” Vahdat said. “When I decided to start a new systems research group at Google, choosing Hank to co-lead it was the easiest decision I made; no one else combines his level of technical brilliance with such profound care for people.”

That care shaped Levy’s approach to recruiting and retaining faculty — with results that continue to reverberate. Under his leadership, the number of faculty nearly doubled. Over half of the new arrivals were women; also during his term, the program gained national recognition for its success in recruiting and retaining undergraduate women in computer science. As an indication of the quality of young faculty he brought to the UW, three of his hires went on to win coveted MacArthur Fellowships, commonly known as the “genius grant.”

Hank is an enduring giant whose intellectual contributions are woven into the fabric of computer systems, and his legacy is carried forward by generations of students, myself included, who learned from him not just what to do, but how to do it.

Amin Vahdatchief technologist and SVP of AI and infrastructure, Google

One of the selling points to potential faculty has been the Allen School’s physical space. Before he became department chair, Levy managed the design and construction of the school’s first permanent home, the Paul G. Allen Center, which opened in 2003 and gained a national reputation as a model for modern computer science buildings. He donned his hard hat again as director to plan the Bill & Melinda Gates Center, which opened in 2019.

The former bolstered the UW’s leadership in computing research and innovation; the latter expanded its capabilities in exciting new directions, noted Levy’s faculty colleague Luis Ceze, Edward D. Lazowska Professor and co-director of the Molecular Information Systems Lab (MISL).

Levy with two of three paintings by artist Alden Mason that adorn the Zillow Commons in the Gates Center — part of a collection he curated to “tickle the brain.” *(Photo by Ronit Katz)*

“Hank thinks long term, and his inclusion of a wet lab in the Gates Center was instrumental in building the Allen School into a leader in molecular data storage and computing,” said Ceze, who spearhead the creation of the fund in Levy’s honor alongside lab co-director Karin Strauss, affiliate professor and senior principal research manager at Microsoft. “His vision stimulated research that only happens at the intersection of computing and biology.”

A lesser-known, but nonetheless impressive, feature of both buildings is the artwork Levy personally selected to adorn the corridors and common spaces — work that “tickles the brain,” as Strauss put it. The collection is notable for its celebration of UW-affiliated artists and Pacific Northwest culture, and Levy’s labor of love earned him a place on the UW’s Henry Art Gallery Board of Trustees.

“Every time I walk into one of the buildings, I feel really good about what we did there,” Levy said. “We designed spaces that people want to spend time in while sparking new ideas and high-impact research.”

The space provided by the new buildings also supported a significant growth in student population. The year Levy took the helm, the Allen School awarded 255 degrees; by the time he handed the reins to current director Magdalena Balazinska at the start of 2020, that number had more than doubled to nearly 600. The school has continued on that trajectory, last year awarding an estimated 800 degrees.

Along the way, newcomers have continued to benefit from the tone Levy set during his long spell in leadership.

“Hank placed a strong emphasis on maintaining a collaborative and friendly culture, and this intentional focus ensured that as new faculty and students joined, they were able to quickly integrate into the community,” said Short, who held engineering and leadership roles at DEC prior to joining Microsoft. “This environment enabled everyone to become familiar with ongoing work and to connect with the appropriate colleagues for collaboration. The Allen School still exhibits this culture even as we have over 200 faculty and staff working across so many distinct areas of computer science.”

Portrait of Ed Lazowska and Hank Levy standing shoulder to shoulder with arms folded and viewed from above — “Perfect partners”: Levy (right) with Ed Lazowska in the Allen Center. *(Photo by Bruce Hemingway)*

So far, donors have committed more than $1 million to the professorship fund in Levy’s honor. Among them is the person who helped lure him away from DEC in the first place — and who has worked alongside him ever since.

“Hank and I have been partners — perfect partners, really — since the late 1970s. We had complementary skills, which made us an incredibly effective team,” said Lazowska, Professor and Bill & Melinda Gates Chair Emeritus at the Allen School. “Thousands of students, as well as the Allen School, the University, and the tech community, have been the beneficiaries of Hank’s vision and leadership.”

To learn more about Levy’s career and contributions to the UW, read his 2019 interview with GeekWire.

For information on how to contribute to the fund honoring Hank Levy, contact Rebecca Kuenzel Shirley, associate director of advancement, at rkuenzel@uw.edu or make a gift online.

Published by Kristin Osborne on May 22, 2026