Thank you,

Kendrick Tang

HKN Treasurer

Monte-Carlo Methods for Artificial Intelligence: A Short Course

March 18-22, 2013, Corvallis, Oregon

http://www.eecs.orst.edu/mcai

Following the previous year’s highly successful short course, the National Science Foundation and Oregon State University are sponsoring another all-expenses paid short course on Monte Carlo algorithms.

Monte Carlo methods are search algorithms based on repeated random sampling. Originally invented in physics to optimize nuclear reactions, they are used in many fields such as computational biology, finance, astrophysics, and microelectronics. They are creating big advances in Artificial Intelligence, including the first master-level play in Go, and excellent performance in Solitaire and other games. Monte Carlo methods are also being applied to many more practical problems such as robot planning, species conservation, weather forecasting, and air traffic control.

Monte Carlo methods are naturally parallel, simple to implement, and appear to perform better or comparably to other more complex approaches. There are many open research problems including some fundamental ones such as why and when they work well.

Applicants should be US citizens or permanent residents with a preference to historically under-represented groups in computer science (women, minorities, first generation to attend college). They should be in the second or third year of their undergraduate degree and should have prior experience in programming. Background in Artificial Intelligence is not required. The course runs from March 18-22 in the beautiful town of Corvallis. We will provide accommodation, airfare, computer access, high quality interactions, and technical presentations.

If you are interested or have questions, please visit http://www.eecs.orst.edu/mcai. Applications are due by December 20, 2012.

Come join the Black Student Union and Delta Sigma Theta Sorority Inc. to watch the presidential election today. There will be free food!!
Location: Condon Hall 7th Floor
Time: 6 PM

Google is proud to sponsor this event! All attendees will receive FREE Google Elections-themed sunglasses, noise makers, stickers, buttons, and more. The first few will even receive Google Chrome water bottles! Be sure to cast your vote if you haven’t already, and join us in watching the election results!

A reminder that the Engineering Networking Night is next Wed. There is a FREE DINNER at this event, but you must sign up by Sunday night. For more details and registration go here:

http://www.engr.washington.edu/alumcomm/networkingnight.html

Or, more directly, fill out this catalyst:

https://catalyst.uw.edu/catalyst/chooser/b2e6ec9d9b85df33ee04c14de3b53bc2

———- Forwarded message ———-

Please read the announcement below for the 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing conference, which will be held in Washington, D.C. from February 7th-10th. We hope to organize a small number of ugrads and grads to attend the conference. If you are interested, please email me and plan to apply for a scholarship by the November 25th deadline.

Thanks!

– Megan

The 2013 Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in

Computing Conference has issued a call for participation, inviting
submissions for panel discussions, student research posters,
birds-of-a-feather sessions and workshops. Additionally, applications
are now being accepted for the Doctoral Consortium and student
scholarships to attend the conference. Tapia 2013 will be held Feb.
7-10, 2013 in Washington, D.C.

The 2013 conference is the seventh in the series and brings together
diverse leading researchers to present state-of-the art topics in the
field of computing. The Tapia conference has a tradition of providing
a supportive networking environment for under-represented groups
across the broad range of computing and information technology, from
science to business to the arts to infrastructure. Tapia 2013 is
organized by the Coalition to Diversify Computing and co-sponsored by
the Association for Computing Machinery and in cooperation with the
IEEE Computer Society and the Computing Research Association.

Confirmed speakers include Vint Cerf (Google VP and ACM President),
Armando Fox (UC Berkeley), Anita Jones (University of Virginia),
Jeanine Cook (New Mexico State University), Annie Anton (Georgia
Tech), and Hakim Weatherspoon, (Cornell University), among others. For
more information, visit the Tapia 2013
website<http://tapiaconference.org/2013/>.

The Tapia conference is organized by the Coalition to Diversify
Computing, sponsored by the Association for Computing Machinery, and
in cooperation with the IEEE-Computer Society and the Computing
Research Association.

From Tammy Denning:

I am happy to announce that Cory will be stopping to chat with us on
his way through town on book tour. You may know him for his novels
(including Little Brother, nominated for the 2008 Hugo, Nebula,
Sunburst and Locus Awards), his blogging (boingboing.net), or his
appearances as a character on xkcd (http://xkcd.com/239/).

If these words get you excited, think about coming by!
Privacy, Censorship, Surveillance, Anonymity, Digital Re-Mixing and
Creativity, Makers, Technology and Society

WHEN:
Tuesday, October 23rd
2:30PM
EEB 403

BIO:
Cory Doctorow (craphound.com) is a science fiction novelist, blogger
and technology activist. He is the co-editor of the popular weblog
Boing Boing (boingboing.net), and a contributor to The Guardian, the
New York Times, Publishers Weekly, Wired, and many other newspapers,
magazines and websites. He was formerly Director of European Affairs
for the Electronic Frontier Foundation (eff.org), a non-profit civil
liberties group that defends freedom in technology law, policy,
standards and treaties. He holds an honorary doctorate in computer
science from the Open University (UK), where he is a Visiting Senior
Lecturer; in 2007, he served as the Fulbright Chair at the Annenberg
Center for Public Diplomacy at the University of Southern California.

Professor Ernst is looking for students to help this autumn with the course development of CSE 140, which will be offered for the first time this winter. Please contact him directly if you are interested.

**************

TAs are needed to help teach an introductory programming class, CSE 140, in
winter quarter. This is a brand-new class, so you have the exciting
opportunity to be involved in its first regular offering. The class is
taught in Python — a fun, powerful, popular language. The assignments use
real scientific and engineering datasets.

Positions are available during winter quarter when the class is offered,
and also now to prepare the class.

If you are interested, please contact
Michael Ernst <mernst@cs.washington.edu>.

Hello CSE Students (if you have a locker in EEB – read on, if not delete!),

Locker registration forms and payment is due to HKN via Locker #19 in the upper basement of the EEB Building on Thursday, October 18^th (see instructions on lockers). On Friday, October 19^th, HKN will cut off locks and store contents till the end of the quarter. To retrieve your items you will need to contact HKN via hknlockers@gmail.com and set up an appointment.

Thank you,

Kendrick Tang

HKN Treasurer