UW ECE Professor Maryam Fazel receives 2025 Farkas Prize
UW ECE Professor Maryam Fazel received the award for her foundational work in the field of optimization and for pioneering contributions to data science and artificial intelligence.
Overview
Data Sciences are fundamentally transforming nearly every area of engineering, science, and society. The University of Washington’s Electrical & Computer Engineering faculty are making fundamental contributions to many different areas of data sciences, including machine learning, AI, optimization, information theory, computer vision, and speech and natural language processing. Many of our data sciences faculty hold secondary appointments in applied mathematics, computer science and engineering, bioengineering, and other departments, and are active participants in cross-disciplinary institutes such as UW’s eScience Institute, the Allen Institute of Artificial Intelligence and the Bloedel Hearing Research Center.
Topics
Machine Learning
Artificial intelligence (AI), mathematical optimization and information theory.
Faculty: Lillian Ratliff, Jeffrey A. Bilmes, Maryam Fazel, Mari Ostendorf, Eli Shlizerman, Jenq-Neng Hwang, Linda Shapiro, Shwetak Patel, Radha Poovendran
Statistical Signal Processing
Theory, algorithms, signal processing systems and signal processing applications (i.e. biomedical, geophysical signals and synthetic signals).
Faculty: Mari Ostendorf, Jenq-Neng Hwang
Speech and Natural Language Processing
Speech recognition, natural language understanding, computational linguistics and web-based language techniques.
Faculty: Mari Ostendorf, Jeffrey A. Bilmes
Computer Vision and Image Processing
Video analysis, surveillance, object recognition, activity recognition, medical image analysis and video compression
Faculty: Jenq-Neng Hwang, Linda Shapiro, Jeffrey A. Bilmes, Radha Poovendran
Quantum Information
Quantum information systems, quantum algorithms for complex systems, quantum hardware
Latest News
IFDS workshop brings together experts to help make AI more reliable, robust, and trustworthy
The Institute for Foundations of Data Science brought AI and machine learning experts together from across the nation to explore the mathematical, statistical, and algorithmic underpinnings of modern AI systems — advancing theory to better understand and improve AI technology.
A distinguished career, marked by contributions to machine learning research and education
On July 5, 2025, UW ECE Professor Les Atlas officially retired and was appointed professor emeritus. Atlas has been a UW ECE professor for 41 years, making important contributions to the Department while producing groundbreaking research in machine learning and digital signal processing.
Yiyue Luo — A I dressed for success
UW ECE assistant professor Yiyue Luo is developing smart clothing that can sense where a person is, know what movement is needed to perform a task, and provide physical cues to guide performance.
Eye-tracking for tailored autonomy
UW ECE undergraduate Kyshawn Warren part of NSF-funded team of researchers using eye-tracking technology to help create autonomous systems that can adjust to individual comfort levels.
The 2025 International Conference on Machine Learning: Q&A with Professor Maryam Fazel
UW ECE Professor Maryam Fazel is a program co-chair for the 2025 International Conference on Machine Learning, which will be held from July 13 to 19 in Vancouver, Canada.
Researchers
- Bill Yuchen Lin
- Vasileios Charisopoulos
- Mahmood Hameed
- Gang Hua
- Karthik Mohan
- Rahul Trivedi
- Rania Hussein
- Sreeram Kannan
- Lillian Ratliff
- Eli Shlizerman
- Shwetak N. Patel
- Radha Poovendran
- C. J. Richard Shi
- Jose Nathan Kutz
- Ming-Ting Sun
- Linda G. Shapiro
- Eve A. Riskin
- Mari Ostendorf
- Brian A. Nelson
- Katrin Kirchhoff
- Jenq-Neng Hwang
- Hannaneh Hajishirzi
- Maryam Fazel
- Jeffrey A. Bilmes
- Les Atlas
Research Labs
- MachinE Learning, Optimization, and Data Interpretation (MELODI) Laboratory
- Transformation, Interpretation and Analysis of Language (TIAL)
- Intelligent Systems Lab
- Graphics and Imaging Lab
- Data-Driven Dynamical Systems
- Silicon System Research Lab
- Ubicomp (Ubiquitous Computing) Research Lab
- Information Processing Lab
Latest Projects
- simsong.org
- Digital Pathology: Accuracy, Viewing Behavior and Image Characterization (with PI: Joann Elmore at Harborview and others)
- 3D Head Reconstruction from Images or Videos (with Ira Kemmelmacher-Shlizerman in CSE)
- Expression Recognition with Deep Neural Nets (with Barbara Mones in CSE)
- Automatic Recognition of Power Line in Millimeter Wave Radar Video
Representative Publications
- Surface Light Field Compression Using a Point Cloud Codec
- A Data-driven Point Cloud Simplification Framework for City-scale Image-based Localization
- Full-Capacity Unitary Recurrent Neural Networks
- Deep Submodular Functions: Definitions and Learning
- Exploiting Tradeoffs for Exact Recovery in Heterogeneous Stochastic Block Models
- Y-Net: Joint Segmentation and Classification Diagnosis of Breast Biopsy Images