Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering

09/03/2026

We’re proud to celebrate the research contributions of University of Washington graduate alumni Miranda Wei (Ph.D., ‘25) and Chenzhi Zhu (Ph.D., ‘25), winners of the William Chan Memorial Dissertation Awards! Each year, Allen School faculty honor two recent Ph.D. graduates who produced outstanding doctoral dissertations with the award in memory of the late graduate student William Chan.

Wei and Zhu each tackled emerging digital threats in their dissertation research. As a member of the Security and Privacy Research Lab working with professors Franziska Roesner and Yoshi Kohno, Wei identified new methods for addressing online harassment and abuse by applying a sociotechnical approach. Zhu, who worked with professors Stefano Tessaro and Rachel Lin in the Cryptography Group, introduced secure yet efficient techniques for generating digital signatures in emerging applications.

Read more about their work, which is already having an impact in their respective fields: https://www.cs.washington.edu/allen-school-blog/miranda-wei-chenzhi-zhu-william-chan-memorial-dissertation-awards/

University of Washington College of Engineering University of Washington Graduate School UW Alumni Association

The Allen School has recognized alumni Miranda Wei (Ph.D., ‘25) and Chenzhi Zhu (Ph.D., ‘25) with 2025 William Chan Memorial Dissertation Awards, which honors outstanding doctoral dissertations...

08/27/2026

When Malek Itani experienced Apple Airpods Pro for the first time, he had an epiphany. Amazed by the feeling of being in his own personal space, Itani, a UW Electrical & Computer Engineering Ph.D. student working in the Allen School's Mobile Intelligence Lab, thought, “Wow, we can do something here.”

Then he remembered that the model he was working with in the lab was big, incapable of processing in real time, and definitely not something you could put on a pair of earbuds.

“But what if you can?” University of Washington professor and lab director Shyam Gollakota responded.

Itani accepted the challenge, working with Gollakota and his labmates on a succession of AI hearables that enable the wearer to customize their soundscape by amplifying the sounds and voices of people they want to hear — and silencing those they don’t. After proving the concept on standard headphones, they’ve since moved on to developing systems for “superhuman” hearing on earbuds and hearing aids and started a company, Hearvana AI, to commercialize their work.

This week, Itani received a Paul Baran Young Scholar Award from the The Marconi Society, which recognizes exceptional early-career researchers whose work is advancing the future of information and communications technology (ICT). He’s one of only three scholars selected for the honor from around the world — and also the third honoree from Gollakota’s lab.

“I feel like I’ve hit a niche that’s going to be so transformational, and it’s going to be in billions of devices,” said Itani. “It’s going to change the way we hear the world.”

Read our story about Itani and his work: https://www.cs.washington.edu/allen-school-blog/malek-itani-marconi-society-ai-hearing/

University of Washington College of Engineering

In 2022, University of Washington Ph.D. student Malek Itani purchased his first pair of Apple Airpods Pro in a pre-holiday sale. When he put them in his ears, something clicked — and it wasn’t a...

08/25/2026

Did you know that the phone in your hand is a potentially powerful health screening tool, one that could save time, money and possibly even a life?

Testing for common biomarkers like cholesterol and blood sugar often requires a doctor’s visit or acquiring and learning to use at-home testing devices and/or mailing in samples — and then waiting for results. But imagine you could do the same screenings whenever and wherever it’s convenient for you, and at a fraction of the cost…

That’s the vision of University of Washington researchers like postdoc and alum Jason Hoffman (Ph.D., ‘25) and Allen School and UW Electrical & Computer Engineering professor Shwetak Patel. They lead the team that is developing ResoScreen, an accurate, easy-to-use readerless test strip for common health biomarkers that is compatible with any smartphone.

Earlier this summer, the team presented ResoScreen at Nucleate’s Demo Day, where they received the Life Science Washington Market Impact Award in recognition of their innovative, patient-focused solution. They followed that up with an Innovation Gap Fund award from UW CoMotion, which supports proof-of-concept and business development activities to advance promising innovations that could lead to new products and services — like at-home health screening!

Learn more about ResoScreen on the company’s website: https://www.resoscreen.com

Check out their recent interactive demo at : https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3772363.3799167

University of Washington College of Engineering University of Washington Graduate School UW Alumni Association

08/18/2026

Many software tools, including compilers, optimizers and synthesizers, all depend on a common core to transform long and complicated programs into a simplified equivalent. This pattern stretches across a variety of problems, from shrinking three-dimensional CAD models to optimizing SQL queries.

Previously, each problem required developing an ad hoc and application-specific search strategy. But then a team of researchers led by University of Washington professor Zachary Tatlock cracked the code. They introduced egg, an open-source library that uses e-graphs, or equality graphs, along with equality saturation to optimize term representations. Since its release, egg has inspired the emergence of an entire community, with annual workshops, multiple follow-up papers and industry adoption. The team’s paper was recently selected as a Communications of the ACM - Association for Computing Machinery (CACM) Research Highlight, which recognizes outstanding research with strong, novel contributions to the field and broad interest to the computing community.

“By making equality saturation practical, egg essentially gave everyone a powerful new hammer — and it turns out many nails were waiting,” Tatlock said.

Tatlock's collaborators include Allen School Ph.D. student Oliver Flatt; former postdoc and alum Max Willsey (Ph.D., ‘21), now faculty at UC Berkeley; and alumni Chandrakana Nandi (Ph.D., '21), now director of U.S. R&D at Certora, Remy Wang (Ph.D., '23), faculty at UCLA, and Pavel Panchekha (Ph.D., '19), now faculty at The University of Utah.

Read more about the team's egg-cellent work: https://www.cs.washington.edu/allen-school-blog/cacm-research-highlight-equality-saturation-more-practical/

University of Washington College of Engineering

(Pexels/Elif Tekkaya)

08/11/2026

A team of researchers including University of Washington professor Chinmay Nirkhe has resolved one of the biggest open problems in quantum complexity theory of the past 20 years: Are quantum proofs computationally more powerful than classical proofs?

The answer, evidently, is yes. And to prove it, Nirkhe and his colleagues identified a query complexity problem called spectral forrelation that can be verified with a short quantum proof but for which “no classical proof can provide the same advantage without requiring exponentially many queries or an exponentially long proof,” Nirkhe explained.

"The result gives strong evidence that quantum proofs are not just different encodings of classical proofs; they can be fundamentally more powerful computational objects," he said.

That result earned the researchers a Best Paper Award at the 58th Annual ACM Symposium on Theory of Computing (STOC 2026) in June. University of Washington College of Engineering

Chinmay Nirkhe is part of both the Allen School’s Theory Group and the Quantum Group.

08/10/2026

Them: “You live in a bubble.”

Me: “You say that like it’s a bad thing.”

Life’s good in the bubble — if you’re talking about hearing bubbles created with technology from University of Washington professor Shyam Gollakota’s lab. Gollakota and his team are developing AI powered acoustic technology that will give people more control of their soundscape — from focusing on a companion’s voice in a crowded room, to adjusting the volume of various sounds in their environment.

They founded a startup, Hearvana.AI, with the goal of integrating the technology into hearing aids, earbuds and other devices. Soon, wearers will be able to amplify sounds they want to hear (like a loved one’s voice), and tune out ones they don’t (the neighbor’s annoying leafblower).

Read more about the team’s progress in this excellent piece from HearingTracker, “What’s Next for AI Hearing Aids? Hearing in Your Own Friend Bubble”: https://www.hearingtracker.com/news/what-s-next-for-ai-hearing-aids-hearing-in-your-own-friend-bubble?_storyblok=203725734220603&_storyblok_c=n4-container&_storyblok_version=&_storyblok_lang=default&_storyblok_release=0&_storyblok_rl=1785429337012&_storyblok_tk%5Bspace_id%5D=45415&_storyblok_tk%5Btimestamp%5D=1785429336&_storyblok_tk%5Btoken%5D=c2e301088a629d1a2003edc038507714a981d29b

University of Washington College of Engineering

Semantic hearing could transform AI hearing aids with acoustic bubbles, targeted voices, and personalized control over the sounds around you.

08/08/2026

A new visualization from the Washington Technology Industry Association (WTIA) charts the lineage of 625 companies and institutions in the “Washington Tech Universe” — and shows the University of Washington is one of its brightest stars. We’re among the biggest producers of tech company founders in the state (second only to Microsoft), and we account for 70% of university connections on the map.

When it comes to powering our state’s technology economy, you could say we’re Masters of the (Tech) Universe. ⚔🏰💪💻 University of Washington College of Engineering UW CoMotion

Read more in GeekWire:

The Washington Technology Industry Association's new "Tech Universe Map" charts the founder lineage of 625 companies, showing that Microsoft and the University of Washington account for the largest share. A WTIA executive says the hubs forming next are mostly out-of-state companies with engineering....

08/06/2026

In 2019, a team of researchers including professor and alum Jerry Li (B.S.,‘13) proved that a broad class of high-dimensional statistical problems can be both efficiently and robustly solved, even when some of the data has been corrupted. The result, described in the groundbreaking paper “Robust Estimators in High Dimensions without the Computational Intractability,” solved a foundational problem in robust statistics that had remained open since the 1960s — and transformed the field in the process.

At the International Colloquium on Automata, Languages, and Programming (ICALP) last month, Li and his collaborators were awarded the 2026 Gödel Prize for their landmark work. The prize, named for mathematician and logician Kurt Gödel and co-sponsored by EATCS and ACM SIGACT, recognizes outstanding papers in theoretical computer science. “The paper fundamentally changed our understanding of what is algorithmically possible in robust high-dimensional learning,” the award committee wrote.

University of Washington College of Engineering UW Alumni Association

In his award-winning paper, Allen School professor Jerry Li resolved a longstanding issue in robust statistics.

08/04/2026

The University of Washington has appointed Professor Dan Grossman as Interim Director of the Allen School. Grossman, who has served as vice director of the school for nine years, is a nationally recognized leader in computer science education and programming languages research. He will succeed Professor and current Director Magdalena Balazinska at the conclusion of her term on August 17.

“To me, the Allen School is much more than one of the leading computer science and engineering programs in the world. It has been my professional home since I completed my Ph.D. 23 years ago,” said Grossman. “It was my dream job then, and it’s my dream job now.

“To step in as interim director now is both a great honor and a huge responsibility,” he continued. “These are exciting and challenging times for higher education, for the field of computing, and for the state of Washington. The Allen School will continue to educate future innovators and leaders while pursuing groundbreaking research that benefits people everywhere.”

Grossman’s interim appointment will ensure continuity as University leaders consider the forthcoming recommendations from the Provost’s Task Force on Computing and Data Science, which was tasked with evaluating how best to advance computing, data science and artificial intelligence across the UW. University of Washington College of Engineering

Professor Dan Grossman will step into the role of interim director of the Allen School after having served as vice director for the past nine years. (Photo by Matt Hagen)

07/30/2026

University of Washington professor Shayan Oveis Gharan has made it his mission to tackle some of the most famous — and famously hard — problems underpinning computer science. A member of the Allen School’s Theory of Computation Group, Oveis Gharan has contributed to an impressive series of results at the intersection of mathematics and computing, from offering the first improvement to the Traveling Salesperson Problem (TSP) in more than four decades, to proving a 30-year old conjecture about counting the bases of matroids.

“My work combines the best of both worlds. On one hand, I look for the truth about mathematical objects such as spanning trees, matroids, matchings, et cetera, and on the other hand, I design algorithms which may be used to solve basic daily-life tasks.”

Oveis Gharan recently received the 2026 IMU Abacus Medal from the International Mathematical Union for “landmark contributions to the theory of algorithms.” The Abacus Medal, which is co-sponsored by the University of Helsinki and the Simons Foundation, is awarded every four years to a researcher under the age of 40 who has significantly advanced the mathematical aspects of the information sciences. Announced at the same time as the Fields Medal, both recognize generational talent and are among the most prestigious prizes in mathematics. https://www.cs.washington.edu/allen-school-blog/shayan-oveis-gharan-abacus-medal-theory-algorithms/

A generational talent: Allen School professor and Abacus Medal winner Shayan Oveis Gharan. (Photo by Farnaz Ronaghi)