The 天美影视传媒 will lead a team of institutions in establishing an interdisciplinary research institute that brings together mathematicians, statisticians, computer scientists and engineers to develop the theoretical foundations of a fast-growing field: data science.

The Institute for Foundations of Data Science (IFDS) is a collaboration between the UW and the Universities of Wisconsin-Madison, California Santa Cruz, and Chicago, with a mission to develop a principled approach to the analysis of ever-larger, more complex and potentially biased data sets that play an increasingly important role in industry, government and academia.

Support for the IFDS comes from a $12.5 million grant from the and its Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data Science, or , program. Today, the . TRIPODS is tied to the NSF鈥檚program, which aims to accelerate discovery and innovation in data science algorithms, data cyberinfrastructure and education and workforce development.

鈥淲ith NSF鈥檚 $25 million investment, these interdisciplinary teams will be able to tackle some of the most important theoretical and technical questions in data science,鈥� said NSF Division Director for the Division of Mathematical Sciences Juan Meza.

IFDS research will lead to algorithmic decision-making processes that tackle incomplete or ambiguous datasets and are better able to respond and act in changing environments. The team will also study some of the ethical implications of data-driven algorithms.

鈥淎s data science is increasingly incorporated in all facets of our lives, its success is uncovering pressing challenges that call for new theories,鈥� said a UW electrical and computer engineering professor and the lead principal investigator for the IFDS. 鈥淲e need the expertise of all core disciplines to understand the mysteries and to address the pitfalls of data science and artificial intelligence algorithms.鈥�

“The success of the UW team in establishing the IFDS stems from having fantastic faculty from four departments, representing both arts and sciences and engineering, working collaboratively on the most important foundational questions of data science,鈥� said Nancy Allbritton, dean of the College of Engineering. Dan Pollack, dean for the Natural Sciences, added, 鈥淲e are confident that this multi-institutional, multi-disciplinary, effort聽will聽shape the future of the field.”

The UW team of investigators has been laying the groundwork for IFDS during the past three years. UW鈥檚 was established in 2017 with a $1.5 million award from the NSF.聽Since then, the team has collaborated across disciplinary boundaries to address reliability and scalability of data science algorithms, and has also forged new partnerships.

鈥淭he strategic partnership between Washington and Wisconsin was crucial to the success of IFDS in the Phase II competition, and we are excited to build on this relationship over the next five years, 鈥� said Stephen Wright, a professor of computer science who headed the TRIPODS Phase I effort at the University of Wisconsin.

In 2018, the UW team received three additional awards from the NSF鈥檚 new program, through which members of the team partnered with other researchers to address data science challenges in fields such as robotics and epidemiology.

鈥淚FDS is an exciting culmination of these Phase I efforts,鈥� said Fazel, who is also the Moorthy Family Professor in the electrical and computer engineering department. 鈥淚t opens the door to further collaborations across our partner institutions and with practitioners in academia and industry, and helps place the UW and Seattle prominently in the national data science research effort.鈥�

IFDS research addresses new fundamental problems that echo classical results in mathematical optimization, robust statistics, statistical inference and decision theory.

鈥淭he team adopts a neoclassical viewpoint in order to define notions of optimality, robustness and calibration, that is relevant for modern day data science. These new notions will shape the research in order to develop new theories, methods and algorithms to be used by scientists and engineers,鈥� said co-principal investigator , an associate professor of statistics.

The five-year funding plan for the IFDS Phase II includes support for new research projects, workshops, a partnership across the four research sites and students and postdoctoral scholars co-advised by faculty from different fields. Plans for education and outreach will draw on previous experience of IFDS members and leverage institutional resources at all four sites.

鈥淎 central goal of IFDS is to develop algorithms with best-in-class performance for data scientific tasks. Recent breakthroughs in this area (in part by UW investigators) have benefitted from combining techniques across computer science, mathematics and statistics. An interdisciplinary approach to data science will be a key ingredient of the future work at IFDS.鈥� said co-principal investigator , an associate professor of mathematics.

IFDS will cultivate existing ties with the , as well as work with the newly-announced NSF AI Institute, in which UW also participates.

In addition to Fazel,聽Harchaoui and Drusvyatskiy, the UW IFDS team includes and , assistant professors in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. The original UW team was recently joined by , professor and chair of the statistics department, who comes to the UW from University of California, Santa Cruz and serves as the diversity liaison for the Institute.

For more information, contact Fazel at mfazel@uw.edu.

Jessica Ray named among Talented 12 ‘young stars’ by chemical and engineering newsmagazine

, UW assistant professor of civil and environmental engineering, has been named a member of the 2020 of young chemists working to solve world problems by the weekly newsmagazine Chemical & Engineering News, or C&EN.

The honors, bestowed each year since 2015, highlight a dozen “rising young stars who are using chemical know-how to change the world.” Ray, who joined the UW in 2019, researches composites, surface chemistry and targeted removal and recovery of wastewater constituents. She is developing low-cost selective absorbents to remove toxic compounds from wastewater and improve drinking water.

The Talented 12 honorees will give short TED-style talks about their research during a two-day that will be part of the magazine’s free inaugural online Futures Festival Aug. 25 and 26.

The magazine is a publication of the Read an article about this honor and Ray’s work on the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering .

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Richard Ladner receives National Science Board 2020 Public Service Award

The National Science Board has named UW computer scientist recipient of its , honoring his career of contributions to increasing public understanding of science and engineering.

Ladner is a professor emeritus in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. The board, called the NSB for short, was created by the National Science Foundation Act of 1950. Its dual roles are to establish science policy and to serve as an independent body of advisers to the nation’s leaders. The award was established in 1996.

The board , who has championed digital accessibility and inclusivity, for “demonstrated exemplary science communication and diversity advocacy throughout his career and has been called the ‘conscience of computing.'”

Victor McCrary, NSB vice chair, said, “We cannot exclude anyone when it comes to the important pursuit of scientific advancement. Richard Ladner’s work has significantly enlarged the circle of perspectives at the bench, and by welcoming and empowering those with disabilities to fully contribute he has greatly enhanced and advanced our nation’s global leadership in science, engineering, and technology.”

Read more on the Allen School’s .

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Maryam Fazel chosen for inaugural Moorthy family endowed professorship

, UW professor and associate chair in the , has been named the first recipient of the new Moorthy Family Inspiration Career Development Professorship, for her work as a researcher and educator.

Fazel co-directs the UW and holds adjunct appointments in the mathematics and statistics departments at the UW, as well as the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Her research focuses on data science, robotics and controls.

The professorship, funded by an endowment established in 2019 by Ganesh and Hema Moorthy, recognizes the support they received from the family and in turn are passing on to other generations. Ganesh Moorthy, president and chief operating officer of Microchip Technology, earned a BA in physics from the UW in 1981 and has served on the department’s advisory board. Hema Moorthy, an electrical engineer, worked at Hewlett-Packard for many years.

The endowment supports faculty members who have shown significant promise early in their careers. Read more on the department .

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Jackson School gets $200,000 cybersecurity grant from Carnegie Corp of New York

The UW Jackson School of International Studies has received a $200,000 grant for cybersecurity research from .

The grant will support the expansion of the including its cybersecurity training program in the Jackson School’s , which was funded by previous grants by Carnegie. The aim is to bridge the gap between academia and the policy world.

, professor of international studies, is principal investigator for the grant. Other participating faculty are , and 鈥� all faculty members in the Jackson School. The grant will provide research opportunities for students as well.

Read more on the Jackson School .

The grants build on 2017 awards in the Transdisciplinary Research in Principles of Data 鈥� or 鈥� program. These new grants make up the TRIPODS+X program, which expands these big-data projects into broader areas of science, engineering and mathematics. The lead faculty on these new projects are among the core founding faculty of the , the UW’s TRIPODS institute.

“The multidisciplinary approach for addressing the increasing volume and complexity of data enabled through the TRIPODS+X projects will have a profound impact on the field of data science and its use,” said Jim Kurose, NSF assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. “This impact will be sure to grow as data continues to drive scientific discovery and innovation.”

The TRIPODS program’s convergent and interdisciplinary approach emerged from the 2016 NSF TRIPODS workshop. Since then, the program has evolved into a community of institutes that share expertise and work together to advance the three NSF priorities central to TRIPODS: research, visioning and education. Research-track projects aim to develop new algorithms and fundamental approaches to data-driven challenges. Visioning projects focus on fostering collaboration across disciplines and help spawn well-integrated research teams that yield truly new perspectives. Education projects are pilot efforts that aim to drive workforce development in multiple disciplines and at multiple education levels. Each TRIPODS institute will have three years to use its award to expand efforts in one of these program tracks.

The first UW-led project, a research-track endeavor, is called “Safe Imitation Learning for Robotics” and is led by assistant professor of statistics and fellow . This project will focus on imitation learning in robotics, a form of learning in which a system learns through demonstration. Researchers will design trust-building learning algorithms and lay the groundwork for safe imitation-learning approaches for beneficial human-machine interaction. Additional UW researchers on this project include associate professor of electrical engineering ; , an associate professor in both the Department of Statistics and the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; and , who is also a professor in the Allen School.

Fazel will lead the second TRIPODS+X project at the UW: “Foundational Training in Neuroscience and Geoscience via Hack Weeks.” This project will enhance the successful “hack week” model as a tool for data science education and collaboration. blend elements of traditional lecture-style pedagogy and participant-driven projects. Two hack week formats, one for neuroscience and one for the geosciences, have already been organized and held by researchers at the eScience Institute. For this project, hack week leaders will work to incorporate training on core methods in statistics and optimization in order to promote a deeper understanding of methodologies along with hands-on experience with data-driven problems in the geosciences and in neuroscience. Additional UW researchers on this project are at the eScience Institute; at the Applied Physics Laboratory; , an assistant professor of applied mathematics; and Harchaoui.

The third UW-led TRIPODS+X project, “Scaling Up Descriptive Epidemiology and Metabolic Network Models via Faster Sampling,” is led by , an assistant professor in the Allen School. This research track will focus on developing and disseminating practical analysis tools for public health and biological studies that involve large datasets and rely on accurate “sampling” 鈥� a principle of randomly drawing a subset of cases in a larger dataset, in order to identify trends quickly and speed up analysis. To develop these tools, this project will evaluate current big-data projects in health metrics and systems biology. Additional researchers on this project are , an associate professor in the UW’s and , a professor of computing at Georgia Tech.

“TRIPODS+X is exciting not only for its near-term impact addressing some of society’s most important scientific challenges, but because of its potential for developing tools for future applications,” said Anne Kinney, NSF assistant director for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

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For more information, contact Joshua Chamot with the NSF at 703-292-4489 or jchamot@nsf.gov.

Adapted from by the National Science Foundation.

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• Monday, Oct. 28, 3:30 p.m.
• 听补迟谤颈耻尘

Never underestimate your substitute teachers. When , a 天美影视传媒 assistant professor of electrical engineering, was in a first-year engineering course at Stanford University, a substitute filled in for the usual professor. As she listened to the lecture, Fazel recalls wondering if she was in the right class.

“The way this lecturer conveyed the material was so amazing, you’d think it was a totally different set of material,” Fazel said.

That professor, , would later become Fazel’s adviser as she pursued her doctorate. Boyd is the speaker at this year’s hosted by the UW’s Department of Electrical Engineering. He will give a free public talk at 3:30 p.m. Monday, Oct. 28, in the Paul G. Allen Center for Computer Science and Engineering atrium. Boyd will give another more technical talk Tuesday afternoon in the Electrical Engineering Building.

Boyd researches complex decision making in the face of uncertainty, also known as optimization. As automation has seeped into nearly every aspect of our lives 鈥� from generating search-engine results to detecting fraud in real time and managing flight schedules 鈥� we need a way to run these “smart” systems so they produce the best results, quickly, given many unknowns.

Boyd’s recent work leverages big data to solve complicated problems in the fields of power systems, supply and demand, finance trading, search engines and email spam filters. For example, in an electrical power system, managers must try to predict electricity demand while minimizing costs and not overburdening transmission lines 鈥� all in real-time. Unplanned outages further prompt the need for modeling to help make these decisions.

Boyd’s publications and teaching have made contributions to the field outside of his research group and institution, Fazel added. Starting years ago, Boyd began posting his lecture notes and videos online, pioneering the trend that continues today.

“He has a lot of educational innovation,” she said. “The impact of his research is very broad in academics and industry.”

Monday’s talk will be livestreamed on electrical engineering’s and available for viewing later on the department’s .

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For more information, contact Fazel at mfazel@uw.edu or 206-616-4781. For lecture details, contact Erin Olnon at erin82@uw.edu or 206-616-4909.