CSE Undergrad News

Below is a message from the UW’s Engineers Without Borders student chapter. Note that this org is open to non-engineers (meaning CS majors are welcome to participate).

Hello Engineers and Pre-Engineers!

Now that classes are back in full swing, it is also time for EWB-UW to start off another great year! The EWB-UW chapter is coming off an extremely successful year, with well over $60,000 raised to support the projects in Bolivia. The funds were used during this last summer to build about 55 roofs and stoves for the Tuquiza community, to implement a new potable water system for the Yanayo Grande community, and to construct a new irrigation system for the people of Yanayo Chico. The chapter’s great success in fundraising last year also helped with the travel costs for the seven UW students who were on the implementation trip. Numerous other students were instrumental in the design work, fundraising efforts, and organizational leadership of the chapter, and it was simply impressive to see so many students come together to help improve the lives of people who live thousands of miles away.

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Love technology?  Passionate about making an impact with your career?  Think about your dream vacation constantly?  Come get your geek on at Expedia’s Info Session on Thursday, October 8th at 5:30 pm in the Paul G. Allen Center Atrium.  This is a great chance to take a break from the books, enjoy some free food, and learn how Expedia has used technology to become the world’s largest online travel company.

What’s in it for you?
*       Interesting Topics:  Learn about Best Fare Search, innovation at Expedia, and the technology problems we’re looking to you to solve.
*       Free (and tasty) food:  Expedia is a food centric company.  Come enjoy dinner on us–there will be plenty of Jimmy John’s sandwiches to go around.
*       Sweet giveaways:  We like giving away free stuff.  Enough said.
*       Job opportunities:  Come learn about the roles we’ll be actively recruiting for at the SEBA and CSE Career Fairs.  Bring your resume if you like!

Questions?  Email campus@expedia.com.

Look forward to seeing you there!

Expedia Campus Recruiting

On Tuesday October 6, 3:30 in the Atrium, Nathan Myhrvold and Chris Young will speak about … “molecular gastronomy.”  Nathan did a startup that was acquired by Microsoft in the late 1980’s.  He became Microsoft’s first CTO, and created Microsoft Research.  About 5 years ago he left to form Intellectual Ventures.  Nathan has eclectic interests and skills — paleontology, photography, cooking.  (He is a spectacular cook; did an “internship” at Rover’s.)  For the past year or two he has been working with Chris Young on a “molecular gastronomy” cookbook — cooking with liquid nitrogen, various weird chemicals, $250K centrifuges, etc.  Last spring I had a dinner that they prepared, and it was off the charts (and plenty weird), so asked them to give a talk.  I should note that they are bringing a crew of cooks over to do some demos during the talk and to contribute to the post-talk refreshments.

On Thursday October 15, Irwin Jacobs, the founder of Qualcomm, will speak in the Atrium at 10:30 a.m. in a joint EE/CSE talk.  (Note the non-standard time.)  Irwin was a faculty member at MIT and UCSD before founding Qualcomm (and, before that, Linkabit) with Andy Viterbi.  He and Qualcomm hold all the patents on CDMA-based wireless telephony — it’s their invention.  “Principles of Communication Engineering” by Wozencraft and Jacobs has been a staple of EE graduate education for 20 years.  Irwin is a legend.

“Be there!”

http://www.cs.washington.edu/news/newdlshome.html

The Employer Panel is first CSE recruiting prep event of the year! The purpose is to inform you about the recruiting process from the employers’ perspective.

• When: Wednesday Oct. 7, 5:45-6:45 pm
• Where: EE 125
• RSVP: https://catalysttools.washington.edu/webq/survey/cseadv/85023

The panel consists of four industry representatives: one recent grad/engineer, one HR representative from a large company, one HR rep from a small company, and one hiring manager.

This year’s panelists:

• Hiring Manager: Tam Armstrong, Sony Media
• Recent CSE Grad: Brian Ma, Eggsprout
• Large Co. HR: Ben Mercer, Microsoft
• Small Co. HR: Joni Kimzey, Tableau Software

Moderator: Dave Rispoli, CSE Professional Master’s Program Advisor

Brian Ma will discuss his own job search after graduating from CSE. Tam Armstrong, another CSE alum, will discuss what his company looks for in employees.  Ben Mercer and Joni Kimzey will discuss how recruiting works within their large and small companies.

The panel is meant to be general — the represented companies may certainly provide some level of self-promotion, their focus will be on providing a peek inside the recruiting process so the students will know how to best prepare. We encourage you to attend even if you’re not considering employment at these specific companies!

Our moderator, Dave Rispoli, is the PMP adviser. He’ll be helping out with other ugrad career events.

From Evan Herbst, grad seminar coordinator:

The National Science Foundation fellowship is generally considered the most desirable fellowship for grad students in CS and related fields. All current seniors who are US citizens and permanent residents (and applying to grad school) are eligible to apply. The point of major fellowships is to pay for you to work on whatever you want in grad school rather than what your advisor, who can otherwise take away funding at will, tells you to. In this case, you get about $30k a year, but the important thing is you don’t have to stick to working on the project plan you present in your application–you can switch topics after you get to grad school.

Obama has kept up his campaign rhetoric about increasing research funding, and the little birdies say there should be two to three times as many NSF fellowships awarded this year as are usual. UWCS students (undergrad + grad) usually get about two a year. The more people who apply in the CS category, the more awards in the CS category there will be.

The CS dept. is holding an info/Q&A session on the NSF fellowship Friday 10/2 at 5 pm in cs303. You’ll hear from past NSF recipients and Prof. Ed Lazowska, who’s been on the NSF awarding committee. We’ll provide copies of past winning essays. And non-NSF-specific fellowship questions are welcome.

The application deadline is early Nov. Later in October we’ll provide essay-writing help. For now, come next week and open an application at nsfgrfp.org.

Thanks!

Hi all,

A friendly reminder that the annual PocSci conference is a mere 2 hours away.  Join us in the Gates Commons at 4:30 for a taste of the best computer science research done on less than a week’s notice.  Alcohol will be served, so unfortunately this is a 21+ only event.

PocSci Program Committee

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Hi All,
The Spring BBQ will be this Friday (5/22) from 3:30 – 7 PM.

We will need volunteers to come help us set up and clean up before and after the event.

Please come and take advantage of this wonderful opportunity to hang out with your friendly, lame duck ACM officers as well as new, succeeding officers for next year.

Please contact Patrick (pattsao@cs.washington.edu) if you’re interested!
Thank you!!

Your Friendly (and Lame Duck) ACM Officers

You’re invited to a mentorship event held by UW Chinese Institute of Engineers (CIE) this Saturday:

Location: Thompson Hall 101
Date and time: Saturday, May 16, 12:30p
Open to the public, RSVP required (email cieuw@u.washington.edu)
More info: http://students.washington.edu/cieuw/
For COMPUTER SCIENCE, COMPUTER ENGINEERING and ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING majors, there are real job openings, and the executives managers with hiring authority will be present to conduct direct interviews.

Available internship and full-time position: Algorithm Engineering and Software Development Engineering. If interested, please send your resumes to cieuw@u.washington.edu and RSVP to get the interview ticket.

Thanks to Hussein for forwarding! Read on for job descriptions of available positions.

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Hey Everybody,

Some of the grads and faculty are doing this “Beat the Bridge” run next weekend. If you’re interested in running, they’ve invited us undergrads as well. You can email Kayur (kayur@cs) if you have any questions.