Heralded UW computer science professor scores $6.75M for GraphLab, looking to make better online recommendations

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It was a major coup last summer when The University of Washington hooked computer science professor Carlos Guestrin, a leading data scientist and expert in machine learning. What wasn’t widely known at the time was that the Guestrin-led open source project, an ambitious undertaking known as GraphLab.org, would soon sprout into its very own startup. But that’s… Read More…

Wash. colleges debut 5-year engineering program for low-income students

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You typically hear the term “redshirt” for collegiate athletics. It’s a title given to athletes who receive an extra year of eligibility on the field because of injury or other reasons. But now it’s coming to the classroom, as the University of Washington and Washington State University are developing an “academic redshirt” program that will… Read More…

Marijuana candies and brain-powered wheelchairs: Meet the 16 finalists in the UW business plan competition

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The results are in from the initial rounds of the University of Washington Business Plan Competition, and there’s no shortage of diversity in the teams moving on to the final rounds of the competition. More than 200 judges turned out at yesterday’s event, choosing these 16 teams. Among the contenders for the top prize: a… Read More…

Life on Kepler-62f? How a UW astronomer found a tantalizing new world

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They’re in the zone. The habitable zone, that is: In a paper published today in Science, a team of astronomers announced that they’ve identified two planets orbiting a star not too unlike our own in a system in the Lyra constellation, 1,200 light years away. What makes their discovery special is the size of the… Read More…

BeatBio gets $2.5M for new ‘super fuel’ that boosts pumping power of heart muscles

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BeatBio, a Seattle life sciences startup led by former Vulcan Capital managing director Michael Kranda and former VieVax CTO Gregory Mahairas, has raised $2.5 million in seed funding from CET Capital Partners, the W Fund and others. The new funds will be used to move the company’s gene therapy product into clinical trials, an experimental… Read More…

PolyDrop turns paint into conductive coatings, wins $10K at UW environmental challenge

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College students are saving the world. Well, maybe not all of them. But the teams that participated in last week’s Environmental Innovation Challenge at the University of Washington are certainly impressive by our standards. Teams from universities and colleges around the Northwest congregated at the UW to pitch their innovations that addressed energy, urban agriculture,… Read More…

Remote learning: University of Washington to offer first online-only degree program

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In an attempt to fix a “national crisis in early childhood education,” the University of Washington is introducing its first-ever online-only degree program. The Early Childhood and Family Studies degree will be offered this fall at $160 per credit, regardless of your location — a lower cost than typical UW degrees and up to five… Read More…

This app studies your text messages to recommend restaurants

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Intelligent robot assistants like Siri have changed the way we interact with our mobile devices, and can now make recommendations for us. But the technology has yet to fully adapt to our personal preferences. University of Washington graduate student Jared Bauer is developing an application that has several of the same functions as Siri, such… Read More…

Startup vet, aeronautical expert to lead University of Washington’s college of engineering

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The University of Washington continues to undergo a radical transformation under the direction of president Michael Young. And today the university took a big step in one of its critical departments, naming Michael Bragg as dean of the College of Engineering. Bragg — an aeronautical engineer who specializes in the effects of ice on aircraft… Read More…

Ed Lazowska: The iPad wouldn’t be here without federal research dollars

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University of Washington computer science professor Ed Lazowska is known for this strong opinions. And he got to share some of those Thursday, testifying before the House Science, Space and Technology Subcommittee on Research and Science Education. Lazowska’s main point: Federal research dollars play a critical role in helping to spark innovation. Lazowska was making… Read More…