We have put together a new webpage with all the 490/492 special topics and seminars courses for winter quarter.
Special Topics and Seminars for Winter 2020
One things to note, while all the graded 490’s on this page for winter will count as CSE Senior Elective credit, they will NOT count as Core Courses. There is also a new change by the curriculum committee that you may apply one of the following towards CSE senior electives: 2 credits of CSE 301 (internship credit) OR 2 credits of ENGR 321 (Engineering internship credit) OR one credit of 492 seminar even though these are all credit/no credit.
CSE 490: Special Topics in Computer Science and Engineering
All of the following CSE 490s will apply as CSE Senior Electives if they are graded credits but not as Core Courses.
490A: Entrepreneurship: Company-Building
From formation to successful exit. Admission by application only:
**This application is currently closed for the quarter due to a high number of applications.
490D: Accessibility Capstone Prep
New accessible technologies are rapidly transforming the way users interact with digital interfaces. How can inclusive design practices support independent living in an interconnected world for people with heterogeneous abilities? CSE 490D is designed to give students the tools, foundational understanding, and inclusive design thinking to practice and build accessibility into their design and engineering projects.
Bringing together end-users, professionals and thought leaders, CSE 490D is a survey course and showcase featuring innovative technology, mobile applications, connected devices, and services for more than one-billion users worldwide.
Key Topics include:
- Smart Cities for All “Last Mile” Solutions
- Artificial Intelligence for User Interfaces
- IoT and Robots for Smart Homes
- Real World End User Experience
- Accessible Media Platforms Entertainment
- Autonomous Mobility
- Augmented Reality
- International Trends in Digital Accessibility
- W3C: Standards for Web Accessibility
490V: Virtual Reality Systems
Prerequisites: Linear Algebra (MATH 308) and Systems Programming (CSE 333). Students are also recommended to have completed either Vision (CSE 455) or Graphics (CSE 457) coursework. Familiarity with JavaScript will be helpful, but is not required.
Modern virtual reality systems draw on the latest advances in optical fabrication, embedded computing, motion tracking, and real-time rendering. In this hands-on course, students will foster similar cross-disciplinary knowledge to build a fully functional head-mounted display. This overarching project spans hardware (optics, displays, electronics, and microcontrollers) and software (JavaScript, WebGL, and GLSL). Each assignment will build toward this larger goal. For example, in one assignment, students will learn to use an inertial measurement unit (IMU) to track the position of the headset. In another assignment, students will apply real-time computer graphics methods to correct lens distortions. Lectures will complement these engineering projects, diving into the history of AR/VR and relevant topics in computer graphics, signal processing, and human perception. Guest speakers will participate from leading AR/VR companies and academic institutions.
This course is designed to be accessible to senior undergraduates and early MS/PhD students without requiring a hardware background. Attendance is limited to 40 students.
CSE 492: Undergraduate Seminars
492E: Computer Ethics
Be it social media platforms, robots, or big data systems, the code Allen School students write—the decisions they make—influences the world in which it operates. This is a survey course about those influences and how to think about them. We recognize “the devil is in the implementation details.”
The course is divided into two parts: In the first part, we survey historical and local issues in tech, particularly those concerning data. We then engage with critical perspectives from disciplines such as feminism, machine ethics, and science and technology studies as a framework for students to articulate their own beliefs concerning these systems. In the second part, we apply these perspectives to urgent issues in emerging technologies, such as facial recognition and misinformation.
Throughout students hone their critical reading and discussion skills, preparing them for a life-long practice of grappling with the—often unanticipated—consequences of innovation.
We cover topics such as: AI ethics, social good, utopianism, governance, inclusion, facial recognition, classification, privacy, automation, platforms, speculative design, identity, fairness, power and control, activism, and subversive technologies.
492J: Landing a Job in the Software Industry
Prerequisite: Completion of 332 or co-enrollment
Taught By: Kim Nguyen, Allen School Career Counselor and Katherine Wang, Interviewing Extraordinaire
Meets: Tuesday and Thursday 12:30 – 1:20
This seminar is targeted at students who have already completed 332 (or are taking it during Winter 2020) and need help building their confidence for pursuing software engineering jobs (internship and full-time). Kim and Kat will take you through the recruiting process end-to-end: resumes, applying, career fairs, interacting with recruiters, INTERVIEWING, negotiating, etc. The bulk of the course will be focused on software engineering interview techniques. This pass/fail seminar will include an optional weekly workshop on Thursdays @ 12:30 PM. Note that this seminar is not a good fit for anyone who has already had multiple internships or has had multiple successful experiences interviewing for software opportunities. There will be no exceptions for students that do not meet the CSE 332 pre/co-req. If you have any questions, please reach out to Kim Nguyen: kim@cs.washington.edu
492S: A Workshop in Software Performance Engineering
Prerequisite: CSE 331
Software Performance Engineering is devoted to building responsive systems and achieving scalability requirements. The seminar will use readings, case studies, and guest lectures to introduce students to the practical tools and techniques that skilled software developers use to solve difficult performance problems. The class discussion will focus each week on a single, performance-related topic: Moore’s Law, RISC machines vs. CISC, benchmarking, parallel processing and Amdahl’s Law, integrating performance into the application development life cycle, load and stress testing, the human psychology of time perception, RTT in TCP, among others.
The instructor is an industry veteran and well-known developer of performance tools. The workshop is based on a fuller version of the class that was first given to graduate students in 2018.
1-credit CR/NC, expected workload from students outside of regular attendance is 1-2 hours/week
