Graduation Celebration: Friday, June 12, 2026
The Allen School cordially invites family and friends to join us on the evening of Friday, June 12 to honor the accomplishments of our 2026 graduates.
Important Note:
June 2026 will be a busy time at the UW, as students move out of residence halls and graduation celebrations – including Commencement on June 13 – take place across the University.
Another event taking place in Seattle that could impact your graduation-related travel and lodging plans is the 2026 FIFA World Cup. If you are traveling to Seattle in June, we suggest booking your rooms and travel as early as possible.
Matches begin in Seattle on June 15, and we expect many hotels will be full, with prices higher than normal around this time. Since the World Cup draws soccer fans from around the globe, Seattle-area hotels are expecting June bookings to ramp up during the holidays. Many are expected to sell out during this time.
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Allen School Open House for Graduates & Families
- Friday, June 12, 2026
- 12:00 – 2:00 pm PDT
- Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering
- Graduates, Faculty, Staff, Photos!
The Allen School invites graduates and their families to join us on campus for an open house to kick off the graduation festivities. Meet our faculty and staff, explore our buildings, and take commemorative school photos on Friday, June 12, between 12:00 noon and 2:00 pm. We hope to see you there!
Allen School Student & Faculty Award Recognition
- Friday, June 12, 2026
- 2:00 – 2:45 pm PDT
- G20 (ground level of Bill & Melinda Gates Center for Computer Science & Engineering)
- Priority seating for awardees and their guests
- The majority of awardees will be notified by Friday, June 5.
Formal Graduation Celebration
- Friday, June 12, 2026
- 6:00 pm – 8:30 pm (tentative end time) PDT
- Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion
- Doors open at 5:00 pm; all graduates must be on the arena floor by 5:30 pm
- Tickets will be required this year for guest and graduate entry.
Classmates, family, and friends are welcome to join us in officially commemorating the graduating class of 2026. During the celebration, we will hand out souvenir diplomas to our bachelor’s and master’s graduates, hold the traditional hooding ceremony to honor our Ph.D. graduates, honor alumni who are using their Allen School education to change the world and recognize our award winners for academic excellence, leadership, and service. We are in awe of our soon-to-be grads and hope to see you make the Allen School proud!
Note: This event will be live-streamed on the Allen School’s YouTube page and a recording made publicly available for later viewing for the benefit of those who cannot join us in person.
UW Commencement
The UW is holding its 2026 commencement ceremony on Saturday, June 13. Ceremony details here.
Participant Information & Registration
Order your Allen School graduation stole by June 10. Orders for Allen School graduating student stoles are now being accepted. If you are planning to pick up at the Allen School, please order by June 10. Password to access online storefront: UWCOMP2026!
Step 1: Register & Claim Graduation Tickets by May 22
Register to participate in the Allen School Graduation Celebration by our priority deadline on May 22.
[Optional] Program Name Requests are due May 5. If you wish to either opt out of appearing in the printed graduation program or wish to use a name in the program other than your legal name, complete the Program Name Request Form by May 5. Requests made after this date cannot be honored. If no request is made, we will use your legal/record name as listed in the university system.
Claiming Your Graduation Tickets
To access your tickets, please follow the steps below:
- Visit the ticketing site using the link provided above.
- Enter your UW NetID in the ‘Have a passcode?’ field in the bottom left corner under ‘Total’.
- Select one Graduate Ticket:
- Bachelor’s, or
- Advanced Degree (PhD, PMP, BS/MS)
- Select the number of Guest Tickets you would like to request (up to 10).
- Complete the checkout process to confirm your tickets. You will receive them via email from ‘University of Washington Box Office’ auto-reply@hometownticketing.com.
Important: Graduates are responsible for distributing guest tickets to their attendees in advance of the ceremony.
Additional Information:
- Each graduate is eligible for one graduate ticket.
- Graduates may request up to 10 guest tickets at this time. You may access the system multiple times using your UW NetID, but you are limited to a total of 1 graduate ticket and up to 10 guest tickets.
- If you would like tickets sent directly to your guests, you will need to place separate orders for each guest and enter their email address at checkout. This is optional and does not change your total ticket limit.
- If additional seating becomes available, we will communicate opportunities to request more guest tickets. If you have special circumstances (for example, guests traveling internationally) and may need more than 10 guest tickets, please reach out to graduation-celebration@cs.washington.edu and we’ll do our best to help.
Step 2: Order Your Allen School Graduation Stole by June 10
Order your Allen School graduation stole. Orders for Allen School graduating student stoles are now being accepted. If you are planning to pick up at the Allen School, please order by June 10.
Password to access online storefront: UWCOMP2026!
Step 3: Order Regalia & Parking Permits, May 11 – 24
Use the 2026 UW Graduation Registration/Order Form to order regalia and parking permits for all graduation events, if you or your family plan to drive. This is also where you will order tickets and parking permits for the big UW Commencement on Saturday if you are participating in it.
Be prepared to pay online with Visa, MasterCard, or debit card. Those living in the Seattle area will pick up the items they ordered at the University Book Store. You will select your pickup date when ordering online. Students who are no longer in the Seattle area will be directed to specific pick-up times closer to the date of the ceremony.
Step 4: Contribute to the Allen School Graduation Kudoboard
Families, friends and classmates of the graduating classes are invited to post photos and messages to graduates on the Allen School’s graduation Kudoboard, which will be displayed publicly during both celebration events.
Post on the Graduation Kudoboard
Step 5: Attend the Allen School Events on June 12!
Information for Event Attendees
Parking
Parking permits for a wide variety of campus lots may be purchased by graduates when they fill out the UW Registration/Order Form in early to mid-May. Permits are available for parking on Commencement Day, June 13, or for school, college, and departmental ceremonies that take place on other days around Commencement, such as the Allen School’s events on June 12. Disability parking is available on any day and can be selected by the graduates when they complete the registration/order form. For more information, visit the UW parking page.
Clear Bag Policy
Alaska Airlines Arena enforces a clear bag only policy.
Any non-compliant bags must be checked into the UW Bag Check for a $15 fee.
Arena Approved Items List
- Cell phones
- Umbrellas
- Trained service animals
- Factory-sealed plastic water
bottles - Unopened soft-sided juice boxes
- Empty water bottles and
thermoses - Medical liquids
- Baby bottles
- Binoculars
- Blankets
- Cameras for still photography
- Handheld video cameras
- Medically necessary items
(after proper inspection) - Outside food – single serving
- Seat cushions that do not have
pockets or zippers that form
pockets - Strollers (stroller parking in NW
Corner of the Arena at your own risk)
Download Approved Items List (PDF).
Accommodation Requests
The Allen School is committed to providing universal access to all of our events. For disability accommodations, please contact Amber Cochran at amberlco@cs.washington.edu as soon as possible and no later than May 22.
Alumni Information
We hope to keep in touch with you as you go off into the world. Please check out our alumni pages for more information on what will happen to your computer accounts and how to keep in touch.
2026 Program Information
Commencement Speaker
Jeff Dean
Chief Scientist, Google DeepMind and Google Research
Jeff Dean joined Google in 1999 and is currently Google’s Chief Scientist, focusing on AI advances for Google DeepMind and Google Research. His areas of focus include machine learning and AI, and applications of AI to problems that help billions of people in societally beneficial ways. He has co-designed/implemented many generations of Google’s crawling, indexing, and query serving systems, and co-designed/implemented major pieces of Google’s initial advertising and AdSense for Content systems. He is also a co-designer and co-implementor of Google’s distributed computing infrastructure, including the MapReduce, BigTable and Spanner systems, protocol buffers, the open-source TensorFlow system for machine learning, and a variety of internal and external libraries and developer tools.
Jeff received a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington in 1996, working with Craig Chambers on whole-program optimization techniques for object-oriented languages. He received a B.S. in computer science & economics from the University of Minnesota in 1990. He is a member of the National Academy of Engineering, and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, a Fellow of the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM), a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS), and a winner of the 2012 ACM Prize in Computing.
Allen School Alumni Impact Awards
Presented by Dan Grossman, Professor and Allen School Vice Director, and Magdalena Balazinska, Professor and Allen School Director
Honoree: David Dawson (B.S., ‘06)
NDavid Dawson has spent the two decades since graduating building technology companies rooted in community, purpose, and the people around him. After joining Zillow as an early engineer, he worked alongside a tight-knit group of fellow UW alumni who would go on to become lifelong friends and collaborators. That pattern — finding the right people and building something meaningful together — has defined his career ever since, through a series of technical co-founder and early engineer roles at startups across Seattle.
In 2018, David co-founded Ridwell, a subscription service that makes it easy for households to recycle hard-to-recycle items and reduce waste. As technical co-founder, he built the original product, grew the engineering team, and helped scale the business to over a hundred thousand members across the Pacific Northwest and beyond. He continues to serve Ridwell as an advisor.
David credits the Allen School with shaping the engineer-entrepreneur he is today. The friendships and mentorship he found there have followed him throughout his career, from his early days at Zillow to the founding of Ridwell and beyond. Outside of work, he and his wife (a fellow Husky) share a love of the Pacific Northwest and the outdoors that mirrors his commitment to building a more sustainable future. He currently lives in Seattle, working on his next chapter: helping small businesses thoughtfully harness AI and build for the long term.
Nodira Khoussainova (Ph.D., 2011)
Dr. Nodira Khoussainova is the CEO and co-founder of Focused Space, a social platform that helps people make space for deep and creative work through the magic of “body doubling.” It combines 100+ weekly live coworking sessions, goal-setting tools, and a built-in community to help creatives, academics, freelancers, and entrepreneurs do their best work.
Before Focused Space, Nodira was an early co-founder at Streamlit, a widely-used AI developer tool, and led the experimentation team at Twitter. She holds a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Washington.
Outside of work, she loves hip-hop dancing, wandering around aimlessly with her curious two-year-old Noor, and reading books like her life (and sanity!) depends on it.
Hooding of Doctor of Philosophy Recipients
Presented by Anna Karlin, Professor and Associate Director of Graduate Programs
Master of Science Processional
Presented by Dan Suciu, Professor and Professional Master’s Program Coordinator,
and Shayan Oveis Gharan, Professor
Bachelor of Science Processional
Presented by Arvind Krishnamurthy, Professor and Bachelor Program Coordinator.
and Dan Grossman, Professor and Allen School Vice Director
Closing Remarks
Magdalena Balazinska, Professor and Allen School Director
Questions about the Allen School Events?
For all other questions, email graduation-celebration@cs.washington.edu..
For disability accommodations, please contact Amber Cochran at amberlco@cs.washington.edu as soon as possible and no later than Friday, May 23.