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Engineers Without Borders General Meeting – April 16 at 5pm

Greetings,

You are invited to attend the Engineers Without Borders University of Washington Chapter general meeting on April 16th at 5:00pm in EEB 403.  We are pleased to welcome Dr. Joseph Cook from the Evans School of Public Affairs to speak on Water Supply and Sanitation in Developing Countries.  Dr. Cook offers unique and interesting perspectives on supplying water to less privileged communities; a seemingly simple, but always complex problem.  EWB-UWS has a history of water projects and is currently evaluating new programs, this talk will offer ideas on what will make our next project appropriate and sustainable. This meeting is a great way to network and get involved with the chapter, even if it is for the first time.

At the meeting attendees will learn about EWB-UWS current events and exciting future plans, especially our upcoming fundraiser, the third annual Building Across Borders.  Jointly hosted between the UW, Seattle University, and Puget Sound Professional chapters of EWB, the dinner event includes demonstrations, games, and auctions. The event will be held Monday April 23rd 5:30pm-10:00pm in the Campion Ballroom at Seattle University.  To purchase tickets online, please visit http://www.brownpapertickets.com/event/222118 and enter ‘college2012’ for the discounted student price of $30.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact me or another executive member. 

You may have already seen this announcement, and if so we apologize for the repeat.

Best regards,

Titus

Titus Butcher
EWB-UWS Publicity Director Elect
Email: titusb@uw.edu
Cell: 253-334-8314

April 12, 2012

Vote for Oren!!

Oren Etzioni etzioni@cs.washington.edu to Ed, Faculty, Cs-Grads, Staff, Cs-Ugrads
show details 8:57 PM (13 hours ago)

Ed is very kind to “get out the vote”.  I would like to point out that:

1.      The party is free if you vote for me and you’re a student… (it’s also free if you’re a student J).

2.      Nathan Myhrvold has been linked to an outside super-PAC that’s pouring corporate money into this race…ok, maybe not…

To vote click here: http://bit.ly/gwvoting

Thanks,

Oren

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ed Lazowska <lazowska@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, Apr 10, 2012 at 8:16 PM
Subject: [Cs-staff] Vote for Oren!!
To: Faculty Faculty <faculty@cs.washington.edu>, Cs-Grads <cs-grads@cs.washington.edu>, Staff <cs-staff@cs.washington.edu>, Cs-Ugrads <cs-ugrads@cs.washington.edu>

Since kicking off the official voting yesterday, we’ve already collected hundreds of votes for the upcoming Seattle 2.0 Startup Awards. And we’re expecting even more ballots to flow in as we highlight the top minds and businesses in the Seattle startup community in the coming days, leading up to the big awards bash May 3rd at the Experience Music Project.

Today, we’re showcasing a fun category: “Geek of the Year.” Here’s how we described this one during the nomination process: “If engineering is the ‘kitchen’ of startups and tech giants, geeks are the top chefs. Nominate the best developers, designers, makers and doers in local tech.”

We’ve got a diverse group of finalists in this category, which is sponsored by Filter. And the competition is pretty tight based on the initial ballots. Vote here if you haven’t already, and if you need help deciding, see more background on each finalist below the poll.

Take Our Poll

Buster Benson: The entrepreneur, author and mobile app developer previously worked at Amazon.com before creating Robot Co-op, Locavore, and most recently, Habit Labs, a new service designed to improve one’s health and fitness. A constant chronicler of his daily routine and whereabouts, Benson’s online exhibitionism has led him to post more than 25,500 items to the Internet since October 1999.

Jim Demonakos: The longtime Emerald City Comicon director (and past GeekWire Geek of the Week) is one-half of the Kirby Krackle nerd rock band, owner of the ComicStop comic-book store chain, and author of a best-selling graphic novel.

Oren Etzioni: This serial entrepreneur and University of Washington computer scientist — another former Geek of the Week — has made a habit of building businesses based on complex algorithms that help people make decisions, the latest being Decide.com, a startup that forecasts the price of consumer electronics and appliances.

Yoky Matsuoka: She’s leaving the University of Washington, but this longtime Seattleite and specialist in robotics and human-machine interfaces is expanding into the consumer world as the vice president of technology for Nest, the Silicon Valley-based startup that develops and markets an intelligent learning thermostat.

Nathan Myhrvold: The former Microsoft technology chief, a lighting rod in the world of technology patents, also made his mark in the culinary world this past year with a six-volume scientific cookbook called Modernist Cuisine, cementing his geek cred. As if the dinosaur-hunting wasn’t enough.

You can vote  in all of the Seattle 2.0 Startup Awards categories here. Also, don’t forget that early-bird pricing concludes this Friday, so make sure to pick up your tickets today for this exciting night in local tech.

Thanks to our event sponsors Filter, Protingent, Salad Labs, Silicon Valley Bank,  Splunk, Washington Partners, Heinz Marketing, Bader Martin, SEOmoz, Christensen O’Connor Johnson Kindness, Knoll, and Creativello for their support.

 

April 11, 2012

MapReduce Bootcamp v1.0 – pilot

Hi UW CSE students!

We’re piloting a “Boot Camp Style Class” at UW this quarter because lots of students have asked if Google could teach a class on campus to cover the topic of distributed computing on large data sets on clusters of computers via MapReduce.

So, without further ado, we present: The Google UW MapReduce Bootcamp Class!  Interested?  Read further:

Class Title:  MapReduce Bootcamp v1.0

Synopsis: 3 week Bootcamp style class to learn how to use MapReduce to process large data sets. Covers basics of MapReduce and how to apply them through a series of exercises to build a simple search engine over Wikipedia.  Read full syllabus here.

Instructor: Shen Lee is a UW CSE alum of 2007 and has been a Googler since departing from the CSE department.  Shen has been a technical lead on our Knowledge team and is pretty stoked to be coming back to his old stomping grounds to teach this class!

Pre-Req: CSE 143

Dates & Classroom: CSE Room 403

4/25, Wednesday, 4:30-7:00 p.m.

5/02, Wednesday, 4:30-7:00 p.m.

5/09, Wednesday, 4:30-7:00 p.m.


Office Hours: 
Wednesdays (4/16, 4/25, 5/02, 5/09 at 2-4pm) CSE Room 204

Food:  YES.  In Google fashion, we’ll have dinner during each class provided (probably pizza and the like!).

Want to sign up?  Limit for class is 25 students, please fill out SIGN UP FORM by Monday 4/17 to be considered!

Thanks all!  Questions?  Please feel free to email Shen (shenl@google.com) or Yin (yinner@google.com).

 

See you in class!

Shen and Yin

April 11, 2012

Fwd: Law School presentation on copyrights, Tuesday at 12:30

———- Forwarded message ———-

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Robert W. Gomulkiewicz

Ed and Hank,

I know lots of programmers are fired up about recent copyright
legislation (several have stopped by to chat with me).  The law school
has invited Prof. Eric Goldman (director of Santa Clara law school’s
high tech law institute) to give a lecture on this topic—his talk will
be tomorrow over the noon hour.  Lunch is on us.  All your students
and faculty are invited.

–Bob

Recent Copyright Legislation (SOPA, PIPA, ACTA) and Controversies

Eric Goldman

Associate Professor

Director of the High Tech Law Institute

Santa Clara School of Law

Tuesday, April 10, 2012

12:30 to 1:20 p.m.

University of Washington School of Law

William H. Gates Hall

Room 127

Lunch served

Computers and the Internet have changed the way copyright law can (and
cannot) protect books, music, and movies. Today, many copyright
holders believe that the law does not protect creative works enough
but many others believe that copyright law provides far too much
protection. Congress and the Executive branch have entered the fray,
considering legislation such as the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA).
Prof. Eric Goldman, an expert and blogger about copyright in
cyberspace will address this copyright controversy and the legislation
that has and perhaps should flow out of it.

Hosted by the Law, Technology & Arts Group and the Technology Law Society

For more information contact

Professor Bob Gomulkiewicz

bobgom@uw <dot>edu

April 9, 2012

2012-2013 ACM / ACM-W Officer Nominations Reminder

It’s that time of the year again, us ACM/W officers will be stepping down and we need to get new officers elected.

This is a great opportunity for a leadership role and departmental involvement!

Nominate people you think are worthy to take the reigns of ACM by going to: https://catalyst.uw.edu/webq/survey/timjv/162727

You can nominate as many people as you’d like.

Specific officer roles will be determined in the future.

We plan to close the poll by April 23, 2012.

April 4, 2012

Call for participation: user study

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Ben Birnbaum <birnbaum@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 4:22 PM
Subject: [cs-ugrads] Call for participation: user study
To: cs-ugrads@cs.washington.edu

Hi CS students!

I’m running a user study on undergraduates with Android phones.  Please see the call for participation below to see if you might like to participate.

Thanks,
Ben Birnbaum

Ph.D. Student, CSE Dept.

Call for Participants
Research Study: Survey Data Quality for Mobile Phones

Researchers at the University of Washington are performing a study on survey data quality assurance using mobile phones.

Participation in research studies is always voluntary!

This study may be a good fit for you if you:

  • Are a student at the University of Washington.
  • Own and use your own Android phone.
  • Are willing to have the study software on your phone.

If you took part in this study, you would:

  • Attend a training session in the lab.
  • Conduct a short survey on 10 university students over the course of the week following the training session.
  • Attend a follow up session in the lab.

People who take part in the study will receive between $50 and $70 in Amazon.com gift certificates to thank them for their time.

To take part in this research study, or for more information, contact

Ben Birnbaum
birnbaum@cs.washington.edu
425-522-3297
(Confidentiality cannot be guaranteed for communication sent via email.)

The principal researcher for this study is Benjamin Birnbaum at the University of Washington.

April 3, 2012

[cs-ugrads] Isaacson article about Steve Jobs in Harvard Business Review

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Hal Perkins <perkins@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Tue, Apr 3, 2012 at 11:31 AM
Subject: [cs-ugrads] Isaacson article about Steve Jobs in Harvard Business Review
To: faculty – Mailing List <faculty@cs.washington.edu>, cs-grads – Mailing List <cs-grads@cs.washington.edu>, Cs-Ugrads <cs-ugrads@cs.washington.edu>

Walter Isaacson, the author of the biography of Steve Jobs, has a piece in Harvard Business Review on what he thinks are the real leadership lessons from Jobs’ career and life. Interesting reading….

Hal
April 3, 2012

2012 Goldwater Scholar

 

———- Forwarded message ———-
From: Martin Tompa <tompa@cs.washington.edu>
Date: Mon, Apr 2, 2012 at 2:45 PM
Subject: 2012 Goldwater Scholars
To: faculty@cs.washington.edu, Ugrad Advisor <ugrad-advisor@cs.washington.edu>, cs-ugrads@cs.washington.edu
I am extremely happy to hear that Raymond Zhang has been named a 2012 Goldwater Scholar!  See http://www.act.org/goldwater/sch-2012.html .

Congratulations, Raymond!

April 3, 2012

Speakers Wanted For Undergrad Research Seminar

Hello, I’m Tim Vega and  I’m TAing for the Undergrad Research Seminar, https://catalyst.uw.edu/workspace/timjv/29655/, this quarter.  We would like undergrad speakers to present their work to a group of about 20 undergrads, ranging from sophomores to seniors, on Fridays from 12:30 – 1:20.

The goal of the seminar is to get undergrads to recognize that doing research isn’t just for students going to grad school, seniors doing a thesis, 4.0 students, and students with extensive experience. We’re doing outreach to get undergrads involved with graduate students, faculty, and research.

It would be great if you could speak about what it is you work or have worked on, what you’re trying to accomplish, and entertain the undergrads with a technical, yet accessible, aspect of your research.

We’d additionally like for you to talk about your background: class year/standing, how long you’ve been doing research, what you’ve learned, what it’s like working with faculty/grads, etc.

As an undergrad you’ll have a large advantage in being able to relate to the class. This is also a great chance to practice public speaking if you happen to be working on a senior thesis and need to do a presentation.

Would anyone like to be a speaker for our seminar?

April 3, 2012

Participants Wanted for Usability Study of an Eclipse plug-in April 2-12th

 

 Usability Evaluation of a Tool for Improving Integrated

Development Editor Recommendation Engines

 

 

Kivanc Muslu

kivanc@cs.washington.edu

 

Subject: Participants Wanted for Usability Study of an Eclipse plug-in April 2-12th

 

You are invited to participate in research investigating the usability of Quick Fix Scout, an Eclipse plug-in that improves Quick Fix by providing the consequences of each recommendation in a Quick Fix dialog.

 

The purpose of this research is to better understand the role of recommendation tools (Eclipse Quick Fix particularly) in common development tasks. We are especially investigating the practical effects of providing consequences of each recommendation to the developer.

 

You may be eligible to participate if you meet the following criteria:

  • You are at least 18 years old.
  • You are familiar [UWCSE1] with Java programming language, Eclipse Integrated Development Editor and Quick Fix.

 

If you decide to participate, we will schedule an appointment with you in the Allen Center at the University of Washington. This appointment will last about 90 minutes. You will be asked to resolve compilation errors in two sets of projects. Afterwards, you will be asked questions about how you completed the tasks, as well as some questions about your background in Java / Eclipse and Quick Fix.

 

You will be using standard computer equipment such as a monitor, keyboard, and mouse to perform tasks. As in regular programming tasks, you may become stressed or frustrated in response to the inherent difficulty and intellectual challenges of the task. The purpose of the study is to evaluate the plug-in, not the success of the participants. There are no consequences if you do not complete a task in time allotted. The risk of injury, stress or discomfort is the same as encountered in daily life. There are no foreseeable benefits to you for participating in this research. Study participants will be compensated for their time with a $20 Amazon.com gift card. To accept the monetary reward for completion of the study, we must collect your name and address. This is an institutional policy of the University of Washington. You are not obligated to accept this reward.

 

This study is being conducted in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Washington, Seattle campus. Your participation in this research is voluntary, and you are free to refuse to participate or quit the experiment at any time.

 

If you have any questions about the research or are interested in participating, please contact Kivanc Muslu at kivanc@cs.washignton.edu, or by phone at (206) 849-1411.

 

We cannot guarantee the confidentiality of information sent by email.


 

March 29, 2012

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