CSE Undergrad News

The capstone request form will close on Monday morning, so please get your preferences in by then. I’ll try to have preliminary results ready by later next week. See previous blog posting for the capstone form links.

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Communicating Science to the Public Effectively ASTR 599B (sln 10562)/BH 597 (sln 10876) Autumn 2010

2 credits (Credit/No Credit)

Meets Mondays 2:30-5:20 in Bagley 154

In this course, students will

– develop and practice several analogies to distill their research

– produce animations or visualizations of their research

– create a variety of concise research promoting statements

– practice story-telling and ways of connecting with the public

– learn improvisation, acting games and lessons

– engage in weekly readings and discussions

– hear from guest speakers on science communication

At the end of the quarter, each student will produce a 30 minute public talk to be delivered during the winter quarter’s Engage: The Science Speaker Series.  http://engage-science.com/

Questions?  Email Eric Hilton hilton@astro.washington.edu

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Thanks,

Sarah

—

Sarah Garner, M.Ed.

Department of Astronomy

University of Washington

Physics/Astronomy C-319       Phone: 206-543-9590

Box 351580

Seattle, WA 98195

—-Original Message—–

From: cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu [mailto:cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu] On Behalf Of S. Morris Rose
Sent: Friday, June 18, 2010 10:01 AM
To: cs-staff – Mailing List
Cc: cs-ugrads – Mailing List; faculty – Mailing List; cs-grads – Mailing List
Subject: Re: [cs-ugrads]  Bill Gates Sr.’s UW commencement address

Video of the address us up on the CBSNews site now at:

http://www.cbsnews.com/video/watch/?id=6592885n&tag=cbsnewsVideoArea.0

or

http://is.gd/cUnqY (cbsnews.com)

Sound Capstone: Winter 2011, (Hemingway)

Added–  Prereqs: CSE466 or CSE467.

490DX:

This capstone will involve an in-class survey of computer audio techniques for sound recording and playback, encoding and decoding, synchronization, sound synthesis, recognition, and analysis/resynthesis. Students will work in teams to design, implement, and release a software project utilizing some of the techniques surveyed.

The capstone registration form is now open :

http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/ugrad/current/Capstone.htm

Additional information on the capstones that will be offered next year is listed below. Some faculty have not yet provided detailed descriptions, so I’ll  post updates as I receive them.

Fall:

1.    Advanced Internet Systems CSE 454

a.    Design of Internet search engines, including spider architecture, inverted indices, frequency rankings, latent semantic indexing, hyperlink analysis, and refinement interfaces. Construction of scalable and secure web services. Datamining Webserver logs to provide personalized and user-targeted services. Large project.

See last year’s website to get a better sense of how the class works.  http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/cse454/09au/

Prereqs: 326 or 332
Strongly recommended: several of the following: 444,446,451,461,473

Winter:

1.    Sound Capstone: more information TBD, prereq at least 326 or 332 and preferably one 400 level project course

2.    Accessibility capstone: http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/481h/ see last years’ course web

a.    As cell phones become more capable with connectivity with the internet and sensors such as cameras, compasses, GPS, and accelerometers, there are opportunities to use them as accessibility or assistive devices. In this capstone, students will work in teams to create new applications on cell phones that allow persons with disabilities to accomplish tasks that would be difficult to impossible to do without their applications. An example would be an application for a blind person that would take a picture of a bar code on a product, decode it, look it up on the internet, then speak the name of the product. Teams will then implement and test their concepts as working applications. Teams will prepare written reports on their applications and present their applications in a public poster session where persons with disabilities will be invited.

Prerequisites: Completion of 300 level majors courses.

Spring

1.    477 Hardware Capstone: http://abstract.cs.washington.edu/~shwetak/classes/cse477/

a.    Prerequisites: CSE 466; 467 and 451 (or permission of instructor) 466 must be completed however.

2.    481: Capstone Design for Low-Resource Settings, Professor Borriello

CSE490D – Spring 2011 – Capstone Design for Low-Resource Settings

a.    Mobile computing offers many opportunities to bring information technology to

low-resource settings.  These are environments with limited infrastructure (power, connectivity, literacy, etc.) and

that require particularly low-cost low-overhead solutions (low-income

communities, developing regions around the world, etc.).  In this

capstone, we will focus on real problems faced in these settings and

develop solutions that will rely heavily on mobile and cloud

computing.  The types of projects and skills needed will depend on the

particular issues addressed (chosen during Fall 2010) and there will

undoubtedly be opportunities for students with a variety of

backgrounds (e.g., networking, vision, embedded systems, HCI, mobile

computing, sensor networks, etc.).  In past offerings, projects have

dealt with education in rural schools, delivering health care to

remote areas, web marketing of indigenous art, transportation

information, and environmental monitoring, among others.   The work

will be group-based with each ranging from 2 to 4 students and each

project will be connected to potential “customers”, that is, users or

deployers, of the resulting systems.

The principal prerequisites are maturity in dealing with a range of

programming environments (although they will mostly be Java-based,

e.g., Android phones, Google AppEngine) and a commitment to solve real

problems that will help real people.  In Winter 2011, there will be a

2-credit project definition seminar that is highly recommended *but

not required*.  This will be in conjunction with an HCDE course led by

Prof. Beth Kolko that will formally analyze problems and set a basic

plan for solutions.  CSE490D will then bring these solutions to the

prototype stage.  We also expect the successful projects to lead to

actual field deployments and evaluation – and eventual publication at

relevant workshops and conferences.

3. CSE 428: Computational Biology Capstone

In the current revolution of high-throughput experimental methods in genomics, biologists are relying more heavily than ever on computational analyses.  In this capstone course, students will explore software development for real problems that arise in the analysis of such data.  The application area will be sequence analysis, which is the problem of predicting which regions of biological sequences (DNA, RNA, protein) are biologically functional, and predicting what their functions might be.  Solving such problems often involves aspects of data structures, algorithm design and analysis, discrete mathematics, machine learning, statistics, molecular biology, and genetics.  However, you will not need to know any biology beforehand: the first few lectures will tell you the basics that you need to get started.

i.    Each team will design, implement, and experiment with software for a current research problem in Computational Molecular Biology.  The team will test its tool on real biological data and present the results at the end of the quarter.  There is a real sense of exploration and discovery in this area.

ii.    This capstone has been offered four times in the past and all were quite successful.  For details on those offering of the course, see http://www.cs.washington.edu/education/courses/428/ .

iii.    Prerequisites: CSE 326 and substantial programming experience.  CSE 427 and/or BIOL 180 are recommended but not necessary.

4.    Games Capstone: prereq CSE 326 or 332, and a 400 level project course, previous game/graphics experience a plus

5.    OS Capstone: Students work in small teams to design, implement, and test extensions to the Windows Operating System.  The projects are chosen by the students with instructor approval.

Prerequisite is CSE451.

CSE Advising

—–Original Message—–
From: cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu [mailto:cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Ed Lazowska
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 12:23 PM
To: faculty – Mailing List; cs-staff – Mailing List; cs-grads – Mailing List; cs-ugrads – Mailing List; Lyndsay Downs; Adam Lazowska; Jeremy Lazowska; Tom Alberg; Jeremy Jaech; Marty Smith
Subject: [cs-ugrads] Bill Gates Sr.’s UW commencement address

Bill Gates Sr. delivered the UW commencement address on Saturday.  It was extremely good, delivered in Bill’s usual under-stated way.  I’ve attached it.  Here are a few key excerpts:

Public will is when the right thing to do becomes consensus and people generally start expressing the convictions they share in everything they do …

I suggest that we are extending the consensus flowing from the success of the civil rights movement.  We are seeing a growing acceptance of the idea that we have an obligation to counteract the fundamental disadvantages that so burden a large part of mankind.  How can a world of plenty have a billion hungry people? How can a million infants die of a disease, diarrhea, for which the treatment is essentially Gatorade? …

I have begun to perceive that this movement for global equality might just be your civil rights movement. That could be the world-historical problem that you solve through billions of ordinary acts of citizenship …

Let me note here that many people make the case that global poverty is an economic opportunity for the rich world or a national security issue. If we have to make that argument to generate the public will required to overcome this problem, we should do it. But to me this is not primarily an economic issue or a national security issue; this is a humanitarian issue. People are dying and we can save them—that ought to be enough.  People suffering in poverty are human beings. They are not national security assets. They are not markets for our exports.

They are not allies in the war against terrorism.  They are human beings who have infinite worth in their own right without any reference to us. They have mothers who love them, children who need them, and friends who cherish them, and we simply ought to help them.

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Bill Gates Sr.
University of Washington Commencement Address
June 12, 2010
Final
When they asked me to speak at commencement, I leaped at this opportunity to suit up and take the field in front of 50,000 cheering Husky fans.
I’ve been a Huskies fan since football players wore leather helmets. I’ve seen dozens of games at this stadium.
In fact, who’s in Row K, Seat 32, up there on the north side?
You’re in my seat.
I tell you this because for more than six decades, this university has been an indispensable part of my life. I care deeply about the University of Washington.
I went to college here. I went to law school here. I met my wife and the mother of my children here.
We both met some of our closest friends here, and they have been friends for a lifetime.
I learned a lot about citizenship here. The first real community service I ever did was on the board of the university YMCA.
As the years went on, my wife and I remained in the fold. She served on the board of regents for 18 years. Now I serve on the board, along with our daughter.
I care about the UW because it has been the stuff of my life—it’s the place where I was educated, the way I built my family, and the medium through which I tried to serve my community.
I hope you have the same feelings of affection for the university, and I hope you will express them by serving the university in the years and decades ahead. If you’re anything like me, your loyalty to your alma mater will make your life much richer.
Today, I am going to talk about some things that have made my life very rewarding. My premise is that there may be value to you in hearing what an 84 year old man has to say about the ingredients that cause him to look back with satisfaction.
A lot has changed in the 60 years since I sat where you sit now, so I am going to talk about some very basic ideas—ideas that don’t change much.
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Let me open by suggesting that one worthy goal is what some might call personal indulgence. There is nothing wrong with learning how to do the Hip Hop dance–nothing wrong with planting a garden or playing in that fantasy sports league.
But by far the most rewarding part of my life is—and always has been—raising a family. And if there’s one thing about your future I feel comfortable in predicting, it is that you either do, or will, feel the same way. I want you to know, by the way, that I mean family in the broadest sense—whether by blood, adoption, or bonds of affection.
Let me suggest that you be as deliberate as you can be about the job of raising your family. Being deliberate helps translate your fundamental human decency into your behavior as a parent.
It is intriguing to me that, as a culture, we so seldom look for or accept any guidance in how to be a parent. You need a Ph.D. to teach 20-year-olds for a few hours a week. Based on current priorities in our society, you don’t need anything at all to teach an infant for 168 hours a week. But which does more good if you’re skilled? And which does more harm if you’re not? I’m not saying you should be required to get a certificate in parenting, but it’s worth thinking very carefully about what kind of parent you want to be and how to get there.
I had the good fortune to marry a woman who grew up in a family that enjoyed a number of annual traditions. One was an assumption that everyone would be together for Sunday dinner. Another was new pajamas for all hanging on the tree on Christmas morning.
We adopted many of these regimens and added a couple of our own.
I mention this as an example of being deliberate in organizing a family life, and because I am certain that those traditions had a role in creating a sense of continuity and permanence for our kids growing up in a world full of change and uncertainty.
The next of my paramount pleasures is having a long list of very good friends. This list includes people I met in grade school.
I belong to a bridge club that was started in 1952. I look forward with pleasure to our meetings. It is in part the pleasure of a half-century of shared memories. But it is also the comfort of sharing of experiences and views with people whose ideas you have come to know and appreciate.
If you come to cherish friends as I do you will discover that, as with family, there is a requirement of a measure of deliberateness to make it work. You need to work at it. You do need to email that note or make the phone call to keep friendship alive.
Now I venture out onto softer ground.
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I am very comfortable extolling the rewards that flow from conscientious, well informed parenting and urging you to make that part of your life. I am very comfortable underscoring the pleasures derived from making the effort to have and to maintain close friendships.
The obvious next question is, what about a public life. I haven’t always been comfortable urging young people to embrace public life. I figured it was none of my business. Lately, though, I have grown more accustomed to the idea that every life should have its public aspects.
And for all the rewards of private life, my life would have been much the poorer if I had not experienced those moments when I felt like I belonged to something larger.
My favorite axiom is this: ―We are all in this together.‖
You know it’s a good axiom because there are so many ways to express it. ―We’re all in the same boat‖ is one. Benjamin Franklin said, ―We must all hang together, or most assuredly we will all hang separately.‖
The fundamental idea here is interdependence. We simply cannot succeed without the contribution of others.
What are the implications of that idea? The biggest one is basic citizenship. Citizenship means that we behave according to the belief that every person matters just as much as every other person.
Citizens must not prosper at the expense of another person. Citizens should aspire to do what they can to counteract the disadvantages that random chance imposes on others.
I suggest that this principle for society at large is alive and working in our world. Let me cite the most prominent example I know of the role of good citizenship in changing society for the better.
When I graduated from college, our society condoned the killing of African Americans. My senior year, a man was beaten to death in Mississippi because, his murderers explained, he was ―hogging the road‖ with his horse-and-buggy, and they couldn’t pass in their car. They were never punished.
But now, we have elected an African American president of the United States. I never imagined I’d see that.
One of the great historical themes of my lifetime—America’s march toward racial justice—has demonstrated the vast potential of citizenship.
You can’t explain the civil rights movement in terms of heroic public service alone. You can give credit, but not sole credit, to the handful of public figures whose names we all
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know. Martin Luther King is a hero of mine, but for every Martin Luther King there were thousands of courageous southerners, citizens whose names we don’t know, who sat in at lunch counters. Thousands who registered to vote, boycotted buses, and enrolled in schools where they weren’t wanted. Thousands who marched into mobs of men armed with billy clubs.
And there were millions of white citizens who said they would no longer sanction racism. Most of them didn’t storm any barricades, but they did the small, necessary things. They told their politicians that the issue mattered. They donated money to the cause. They made sure their children learned about civil rights in school.
What I am getting at is what I believe to be the real substance of democracy: something called public will. It’s an abstract concept, public will. You can’t touch it, or take a photograph of it, or buy it at the store.
But when important fundamental changes, it’s because the public had the will to make them happen. And when nothing happens, it’s because the public isn’t willing. Public will is the reason why the civil rights movement happened in the 1960s, but not in the 1940s.
That’s what public will does, but what is public will?
Public will is when the right thing to do becomes consensus and people generally start expressing the convictions they share in everything they do.
So I don’t care if you carry a banner or if you stand near the back. You can yell into a megaphone if you like, or you can listen carefully if that’s more your style. You don’t need a soap box to be a good citizen. You just need to be part of the public will to make
life on this planet a little bit better.
And if I know you at all, I expect that you want to be an active part of it. I also know that you’re ready to be, because I know what you’ve learned here at the University of Washington.
But let me carry this sense I have about the wisdom that ―we are all in this together‖ a bit further.
I suggest that we are extending the consensus flowing from the success of the civil rights movement.
We are seeing a growing acceptance of the idea that we have an obligation to counteract the fundamental disadvantages that so burden a large part of mankind.
How can a world of plenty have a billion hungry people? How can a million infants die of a disease, diarrhea, for which the treatment is essentially Gatorade?
5
Here at the university and elsewhere, I have begun to perceive that this movement for global equality might just be your civil rights movement. That could be the world-historical problem that you solve through billions of ordinary acts of citizenship.
Dr. King spent his life preaching about this world you are on the verge of creating. He was a preacher because he knew that people needed to keep striving to bring that world into being. He knew that the future he imagined was not ineluctable. It would have to be the product of human effort, your human effort.
―Through our scientific and technological genius,‖ King said, ―we have made of this world a neighborhood. And yet we have not had the ethical commitment to make of it a brotherhood. But somehow, and in some way, we have got to do this. We must all learn to live together as brothers or we will all perish together as fools.‖
There is that axiom again.
Let me note here that many people make the case that global poverty is an economic opportunity for the rich world or a national security issue. If we have to make that argument to generate the public will required to overcome this problem, we should do it. But to me this is not primarily an economic issue or a national security issue; this is a humanitarian issue. People are dying and we can save them—that ought to be enough.
People suffering in poverty are human beings. They are not national security assets. They are not markets for our exports. They are not allies in the war against terrorism.
They are human beings who have infinite worth in their own right without any reference to us. They have mothers who love them, children who need them, and friends who cherish them, and we simply ought to help them.
When I was young there was no Internet. No cable news. I turned my attention to the things I knew, and so did all the people around me. There was but little public interest in thinking of equality on a worldwide scale.
You are different. You will have to work hard not to learn about the wide world. And since you are aware of people suffering, you will act on their behalf.
Privileged people aren’t selfish with their privilege. You will display the ethical commitment to make of this world a brotherhood.
So, on your graduation day, let me exhort you to join me and your fellow graduates on this special day to become Huskies for life. Let me exhort you to go fishing. Let me exhort you to read a novel. I exhort you to find love. I exhort you to be a learned parent and to wring all the joy you can out of the friends with whom you surround yourself.
[Pause]
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In closing, let’s go back to the subject of public life.
In respect to that, I have a confident prediction. It is a prediction based on knowing how prepared you are, from what you have learned here at this fine school to live and to contribute as a constructive citizen.
My prediction is that 60 years from now, when you sit down to write your Commencement speech, you will look around and you will observe that your world, while still beset with serious problems, has indeed become a better place than it was in 2010. And you will make that observation with a sense of pride in having contributed to that change. This will occur not because I say so, but because you are who you are now – graduates of the University of Washington possessed of all the qualities this fine institution has taught you.
Good luck and thank you.

From: cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu [mailto:cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu] On Behalf Of David Notkin

Sent: Tuesday, June 15, 2010 1:19 PM
To: cs-grads – Mailing List; cs-ugrads – Mailing List
Subject: [cs-ugrads] FYI: Robotics summer school in Japan

http://www.jaist.ac.jp/robot/lcr2010/

From: cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu [mailto:cs-ugrads-admin@cs.washington.edu] On Behalf Of Bruce Hemingway
Sent: Monday, June 14, 2010 5:27 PM
To: faculty – Mailing List; cs-grads – Mailing List; cs-ugrads – Mailing List; cs-staff – Mailing List
Subject: [cs-ugrads] CSE Graduation photos

CSE Graduation photos are posted:
http://hemingway.cs.washington.edu/

-Bruce

Summer office hours begin today and the main office/reception will be closing at 4:30.

Dropins this summer (starting next week) will generally be M, T, W and TH 2-3pm.

Hello,
We are offering the LabVIEW training class again this Summer Quarter. Please visit the online registration if you are interested:

Registration:

https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/jmreina/105520
Syllabus:

http://justinreina.com/ni/sum10/NISUM10Syllabus.pdf
Location and Time:

The sessions will take place in Sieg 232 on Mondays from 12:00pm-1:30pm. Sessions start the first week of the quarter. Enrollment is 45 seats.
Summary:

Eleven Week Introductory LabVIEW course. Experience with data acquisition will be provided. CLAD certification exam offered during finals week after satisfactory completion of course. Special topic lectures will be provided at request.
Description:

This course will take you through the fundamentals of the LabVIEW environment in preparation to use it as a powerful T&M tool. Each week will have one 1.5 hr lecture and a follow-up homework assignment afterwards to re-emphasize the lecture material.
At the end of the sessions, anyone who has completed eight or more sessions with satisfactory homework grades will be eligible to take the NI CLAD certification test. This test is normally $300, but NI is offering it for free given satisfactory completion of the course.
Thanks,
Justin Reina
UW Electrical Engineering
(425)760-7291

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Thank you,
Justin Reina