CSE Undergrad News

The Allen School is announcing a change to how it does admissions for currently enrolled UW students to our majors.  In short, while CSE 142 remains a prerequisite for current UW students to apply, we will no longer consider CSE 142 as one of the prerequisite grades in evaluating academic performance.  

The rationale for this change is to help address the negative impact that competitive admissions has on the environment in CSE 142, a course that is designed for students with no programming experience.  We hope the effect of not using CSE 142 grades in admissions is a greater focus on learning and a lesser focus on grades in CSE 142.  

This change was initially recommended by a working group of faculty who reviewed our 100-level courses.  It was then considered and approved by our undergraduate admissions committee. This change does not affect how we evaluate other prerequisite grades, including CSE 143.

As always, the source for accurate information on Allen School admissions for current UW students is https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/ugrad/admissions/currentuw and our undergraduate advisors.  

As that page notes:

We use an evaluative, rather than a quantitative, process in our admission review. This means our decisions are based on more than simply which applicants have the highest grades. We do not tally up points; rather, we form an overall evaluation based on academic background and other factors, such as outside interests and activities, evidence of leadership and a sense of direction, and life experience. We do not expect all students to excel across the board, but achievement in relevant academic areas or evidence of overcoming hardships can strengthen an application.

Hello CSE Students!

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Hank Levy <levy@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, May 21, 2019 at 12:05 PM
Subject: THURSDAY 1:30: Symposium on Machine Learning for Protein Design

The UW Institute for Protein Design (IPD) is hosting an afternoon (THIS THURSDAY) of talks by researchers who work in the interdisciplinary field of protein design and machine learning. CSE undergraduate and graduate students who are interested in collaborative research in the protein design field are very welcomed!   Come hear from David Baker (UW Professor and one of the world’s leading experts in protein design) and others about this research and research opportunities.

May 23, 2019, 1:30p – 4:00p

CSE2 (Zillow Commons)

Reception to follow the talks with finger foods and non-alcoholic beverages provided. Mingle with the speakers as well as current members of the Baker lab!

Speakers include:

UW professor and TED speaker David Baker, director of the IPD, who will share how his lab is leveraging decades of biophysical data to create software to design brand new biomolecules that fight cancer, degrade gluten, and act as potent vaccines.

UW Associate Professor Frank DiMaio will describe efforts in developing automated approaches to improve the molecular energy function used in Rosetta, and the development of GPU-enabled versions of basic Rosetta algorithms.

Professor Jinbo Xu, senior fellow at the Computational Institute at the University of Chicago, who will share how his team built one of the best-in-class deep-learning tools for modeling the structure of natural proteins based on information encoded in DNA.

UW PhD student, Nao Hiranuma, who will share his approach to incorporate deep learning techniques to boost the performance of the current refinement protocol in the Rosetta framework.

Thanks!

Hank

Hello! The BS/MS application is now open.

A couple of notes about the application:

• We will contact your faculty recommenders after the application closes. You should talk to them in advance, but do not need to coordinate the actual recommendation process.
• You may not find a person you want to use as a reference in the drop down menu. If that is the case, it may be that:

1. 1. They are a graduate student with whom you have been doing research. In that case, we generally encourage them to work with their faculty adviser to submit on their behalf. Please let us know if this is problematic. Graduate students who have taught courses are fine to have as references and should be on there.
   2. They may be a guest lecturer. In that case, if we still have contact with them we will try to include them.  Contact us with questions.
   3. They may be affiliate faculty and may not be in our system yet. Let us know and I’ll have it updated.
   4. They may be totally unaffiliated with CSE. If you would still like to use them as references, please email Jen.

The application is linked from the BS/MS application page: https://www.cs.washington.edu/academics/bsms/application

Here are the timelines for this application cycle:

May 20 – June 9th: Application Open
June 9th 11:59pm: Application Deadline
Decisions emailed early July

Questions? Email Jen <jenifer@cs.uw.edu>

Course Description:

Join us to learn about prison while studying inside a prison! Honors 230B (5 cr., summer B term) is centered around a series of classes to be held at the Twin Rivers Unit of the Monroe Correctional Complex (about 45 minutes outside of Seattle, transportation provided); this is a medium-security prison unit for men. We will meet with a group of student-inmates, working on a series of projects based on topics developed by the men there. Topics will include Virtual Reality in the prison setting (we are collaborating with the UW’s Reality Lab on this); educational access (especially library access) in prison; and voting and other citizenship rights. We will be at the prison every Wednesday during B term, departing from the HUB around 11:00 am and arriving back at about 5:00 pm.

———- Forwarded message ———
From: Hank Levy <levy@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, May 14, 2019 at 3:58 PM
Subject: [cs-ugrads] Allen School Student Experience Survey

Dear Allen School students,

I am writing to urge you to participate in an Allen School student experience survey. We want to learn from students in the Allen School about their experiences in and perceptions of the environment within the School.

Why take on such a study?  The study is intended to uncover actionable results and help us track our progress over time.  We hope to learn specific ideas and strategies that will strengthen our community, enhance our individual and collective success, and help make this a more welcoming, inclusive place for everyone. The study will also serve as an initial benchmark, enabling us to better measure our progress in the coming years. A strong response rate will be critical in assessing how we are doing.

The University of Washington Center for Evaluation & Research for STEM Equity (CERSE) is partnering with the Allen School to conduct the survey.  This year’s survey includes all current undergraduates and graduate students in the Allen School. We have put a lot of effort into the survey, and will be putting in a lot of effort to analyze the results and share those results, positive and negative, with you, but we cannot do this without your participation.

The results will be de-identified by UW CERSE before sharing with the Allen School.

Tomorrow (Wednesday) you will receive an email from UW CERSE/elitzler via Survey Monkey.  Please take the survey and help us improve the Allen School.

Best,

Hank

_______________________________________________
Cs-ugrads mailing list

Present your posters at the 2019 Allen School Spring Poster Fair!

Present your posters at the 2019 Allen School Spring Poster Fair!

Hello Allen School undergrads and 5th year masters students!

We are excited to announce our annual Paul G. Allen School Spring Poster Fair! All students who have participated in any capstone, project courses, or research this year are encouraged to apply to present their posters.

The Event

The 2019 Allen School undergraduate poster session will be held on Thursday, June 13th, from 3:30-5 p.m. in the Zillow Commons in the Gates Center. The poster session is open to all BS and BS/MS students who participated in a capstone course (such as 475, 481, 441, etc) or project course (such as 440 or any other 400 level project course) or research during the 2018-19 academic year.

This will be a more formal event, with high profile Allen School alumni and friends coming to view your work. Presenting students are welcome to bring family members, as it will be the day before our CSE commencement ceremony.

There is a short registration process. We encourage you to show off your work! Our goal is to present a wide range of ‘cool’ projects from multiple courses to the Allen School alumni/friends that will join us for the poster fair.

Why participate?

1. There will be a prize! A panel of judges in attendance will vote on the 2019 Project of the Year. Presenters of the winning poster, in addition to all the kudos associated with being the awardees, will receive $1,000 to split among the group.
2. You can have another chance to show off that project you have worked so hard on. Presenters will get to meet and talk about their projects with smart, talented friends of CSE.

The Details

• At least one member of the team must be at the poster session to represent the poster.
• At least one member of the team who will be present at the event must be enrolled as a CS, CE, or CSEM student.
• Fall 2018, Winter 2019, and Spring 2019 capstone, project courses, and research are all eligible to participate.

Registration Process (you will be notified by June 3rd if your project is chosen)

Fill out this short form: https://forms.gle/vuLWGjxHr7Vv6TH48

Applications are due by end of day on May 31st

Presenters will be notified by June 3rd.

Questions? Email Kay at kbeck@cs.washington.edu or the advisors  at ugrad-advisor@cs.washington.edu

Hello folks!

The *tentative* teaching schedule for the upcoming year 2019-2020 CSE courses is now online.  We don’t have instructors’ names listed yet.  We will have more information in the next few days on the new courses that are posted, such as cryptography this fall. We do know the prereqs for that crypto course will be 332 and 312, description will follow.

Tentative Teaching Schedule 2019-2020