The Makeability Lab took part in the Drumheller Half Marathon—a wonderful new(ish) tradition hosted by the Allen School's own Race Condition Running Club. CSE ugrads, grads, postdocs, faculty, and staff participated. It was so much fun! The course begins with a short segment down the upper vista, followed by 110 laps around Drumheller Fountain. Runners will enter first loop from the east of the finish line and begin by running counterclockwise. The direction will flip every 20 minutes, and runners must change directions only by rounding the marker placed at the north end of the finish line. Here's a few pictures and my GPS log from the run.

We had a wonderful time this week doing a "lab exchange" with MIT's City Form Lab. On Wednesday, Chu Li and Jon Froehlich gave a talk to the MIT group and on Friday, the MIT group reciprocated and gave a talk to us. Inspirational and fun!

Congrats to Chu Li for presenting our work on Project Sidewalk and sidewalk equity for the World Information Architecture Day in Seattle. Pictures below courtesy of Zhihan Zhang.

Congrats to Stefania Druga for passing her iSchool PhD dissertation defense today on the topic of Creative AI Literacies for Families. I was honored to serve on the PhD committee. Such timely, important work exploring how to develop children and family AI literacy and involve them in AI-assisted creation! Also, best title slide ever, which was generated via DALL E-2 using the new Microsoft Designer—an AI-assisted design tool (how fitting!).    

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the prestigious Microsoft Research Dissertation Grant for his work on “Sound Sensing and Feedback Techniques for Deaf and Hard of Hearing Users.” The MSR Dissertationg Grant aims to "increase the pipeline of diverse talent receiving advanced degrees in computing-related fields by providing a research funding opportunity for doctoral students who are underrepresented in the field of computing."

Read more on the Allen School news page.

Congratulations to Dhruv Jain who was selected for the Google-CMD-IT LEAP Alliance Fellowship. CMD-IT stands for the Center for Minorities and People with Disabilities in IT and is dedicated to "promoting innovation that enriches, enhances, and enables our target communities, such that more equitable and sustainable contributions are possible by all communities."

Both of our ASSETS'19 papers were nominated for 'Best Paper' at ASSETS'19:

1. Weld, G., Jang, E., Li, A., Zeng, A., Heimerl, K., Froehlich, J. E. (2019). Deep Learning for Automatically Detecting Sidewalk Accessibility Problems Using Streetscape Imagery. Proceedings of ASSETS 2019.
2. Jain, D., Desjardins, A., Findlater, L., Froehlich, J. E. (2019). Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler. Proceedings of ASSETS 2019.

We were honored that both of our papers submitted to ASSETS'19 were accepted for publication:

• Autoethnography of a Hard of Hearing Traveler led by UW CSE PhD student, Dhruv Jain, and co-authored by Jain, Audrey Desjardins (School of Art + Art History + Design), Leah Findlater (HCDE), and Jon Froehlich
• Deep Learning for Automatically Detecting Sidewalk Accessibility Problems Using Streetscape Imagery led by UW CSE PhD students, Galen Weld and Esther Jang, and co-authored by Weld, Jang, Anthony Li (UMD ugrad), Aileen Zeng (UW CSE ugrad), Kurtis Heimerl (UW CSE prof), and Jon Froehlich.