Winners: Computer science profs pick up two more Sloans

« Washington Engineer - May 2005

Latest winners of prestigious research fellowships brings CSE total to 14 fellows

Venkatesan Guruswami and Mark Oskin, both assistant professors in Computer Science & Engineering, are among 116 promising young scholars around the country to have been awarded Sloan Research Fellowships for 2005.

The awards bring the number of Sloan fellows in the department to 14, according to CSE Chair David Notkin. The fellowships consist of a $45,000 grant over two years, which can be used for any activity directly related to a fellow’s research.

“This is yet another example of the excellent people we have here at the UW,” Notkin said. “Of course, we knew that already. This is outside validation.”

Guruswami’s research interests lie in theoretical computer science, and specifically focus on topics such as error-correcting codes, graph-theoretic optimization and approximation problems, probabilistically checkable proofs, hardness of approximations and complexity theory.

Oskin heads the WaveScalar project, which brings together two ideas: distributing computation across a set of homogenous “tiles” that merge an instruction cache and a microprocessor into a single concept; and using dataflow as the basis for programming these tiles.

Other Stories...

UW Engineering moves up
EE student gets Goldwater
All-female civil engineering team wins design competition
Bioengineer elected to National Academy of Engineers
Technical Communication wins national writing prize
CSE prof wins Weiser Award
Former student, three faculty win prize for best paper
Department chair elected fellow to experimental engineering society
Pavement paper wins transportation award for authors

UW Engineering moves up in national rankings

The latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of graduate engineering programs, released last month, show the UW moving up. Overall, the college went from 25th to 24th in the nation. Among specialty areas, UW Bioengineering held the No. 4 spot, the same it took in 2004 during the last ranking. Computer Engineering was No. 12.

A number of UW departments appeared in the specialty rankings for the first time, including:

Electrical Engineering senior named Goldwater scholar

Electrical Engineering senior Jason M. Parker is among 320 top students across the nation named a Barry M. Goldwater scholar for 2005. The scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books, and room and board to a maximum of $7,500 a year.

Parker lists his career goal as earning a doctorate in electrical engineering, then either conducting research and design of spin-based electronic devices in academia, or working for an engineering firm to pursue interests in magnetism and electron tunneling to the solid state physics in nanodevices.

Parker, a senior, has a second major in German.

Women of civil engineering dominate design competition

An all-female student team from UW Civil and Environmental Engineering took top honors in the latest Water Environment Federation design competition.

The team, composed of students Linda Gaulke, Karen Ecklebe, Rebecca Alli and Yun Xi, won with a project titled “Reducing Methanol Requirements for LOTT Biological Nutrient Removal Wastewater Treatment Plant.”

The work was completed for an engineering course, which allowed the students just 10 weeks from project assignment to completion. In a nod to the gender solidarity of their group, the students named their team Water Innovative Methods InterNational, or WIMIN.

BioE prof elected to National Academy of Engineers

Allan Hoffman, a bioengineering professor with a cross appointment in chemical engineering, has been elected to the National Academy of Engineers. Hoffman’s inclusion in the academy – considered to be one of the highest honors an engineer can achieve – brings the number of members in the college to 12. In electing Hoffman, the academy cited his “pioneering work on the medical uses of polymeric materials.” He initiated the biomaterials program at the UW and has lectured worldwide on the principles of biomaterials and drug delivery.

Technical Communication wins prestigious writing award

The Department of Technical Communication’s Engineering Communication Program has won a certificate of excellence from one of the nation’s most prestigious writing organizations. The Conference on College Composition and Communication, or CCCC, recently gave the UW group a Writing Program Certificate for “its exemplary ongoing professional development for faculty; its strategic alliances with campus units and initiatives; and its modeling of diversity and service to diverse communities.”

Computer scientist gets Weiser Award

Brian Bershad, associate professor of Computer Science & Engineering, has been named the fourth recipient of the Mark Weiser Award. Established in 2001 by the Association for Computing Machinery’s Special Interest Group on Operating Systems, the award is named for computing visionary Mark Weiser and given to young researchers for “contributions that are highly creative, innovative, and possibly high-risk,” in keeping with the spirit in which Weiser pursued his work. Bershad’s research interests lie in operating systems, distributed systems, networking, parallel systems and computing architecture.

Student, faculty in AA and ME get best paper

Former aeronautics and astronautics doctoral student Quinn Y.J. Smithwick, A&A emeritus Professor Juris Vagners, and Per Reinhall and Eric Seibel, both faculty in mechanical engineering, have won the annual Best Paper Award from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers Journal of Dynamic Systems, Measurement and Control. The paper was titled “A Nonlinear State-Space Model of a Resonating Single Fiber Scanner for Tracking Control: Theory and Experiment.” The principle author of the paper is Smithwick and it is based on work he did for his dissertation. Vagners was his adviser on the project.

ME chair elected fellow to engineering society

Mark Tuttle, chair of the Department of Mechanical Engineering, has been made a fellow of the Society for Experimental Mechanics. The society, founded in 1943 as a nonprofit scientific and educational organization, is an international network of engineers and scientists. Tuttle will be officially installed as a fellow during the group’s annual meeting, scheduled for June in Portland, Ore.

Researchers win award for transportation paper

Stephen Muench and Joe Mahoney in Civil and Environmental Engineering have won the 2004 K.B. Woods Award from the Transportation Research Board. The award, established in 1971, is given each year to recognize the most outstanding paper published in the field of design and construction of transportation facilities. Muench and Mahoney’s paper, titled “A Computer-based Multimedia Pavement Training Tool for Self-Directed Learning,” was selected from among 700 papers submitted.

Members of the department are regulars in the winner’s bracket for the award. Since the award was first issued in the 1970s, department faculty, staff or former students have won it six times. Research Engineer George White and professors George Turkiyyah and Joe Mahoney won in 2002, and Mahoney won twice earlier, in 1987 and 1985. David Newcomb, a 1986 doctoral graduate, won in 2000. Associate Professor Donald Janssen won in 1986.