Alumni feature

Avinash Ratnavel wins alumni engagement medal

Anonymous — Mon, 29 Apr 2024 18:23:48 +0000

Avinash Ratnavel wins alumni engagement medal Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 04/29/2024 - 12:23

Ratnavel (MCompSci'18) was recognized by the College of Engineering and Applied Science for bringing support to networking events, mock interviews, events for career exploration and on-campus job interviews, among other accomplishments.

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Lucky Vidmar: Engineering and ethics intertwined

Anonymous — Fri, 22 Apr 2022 18:09:19 +0000

Lucky Vidmar: Engineering and ethics intertwined Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/22/2022 - 12:09

Grace Wilson

Lucky Vidmar (CompSci'94; M'97) is working to empower ethics-focused engineers and honor his friend and mentor through the Moulakis Lecture Series within the Herbst Program for Engineering, Ethics & Society.

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Alumna on a mission to break barriers and make new connections

Anonymous — Fri, 01 Apr 2022 06:00:00 +0000

Alumna on a mission to break barriers and make new connections Anonymous (not verified) Fri, 04/01/2022 - 00:00

Rupa Dachere (CompSci’94) recognizes the challenges women software developers still encounter in the workforce. She recently moved back to Colorado and is also looking to expand her network of women in science and engineering in Boulder.

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Pushing Boundaries: From humble roots to Google role model

Anonymous — Wed, 03 Apr 2019 00:00:00 +0000

Pushing Boundaries: From humble roots to Google role model Anonymous (not verified) Tue, 04/02/2019 - 18:00

Bhavna Chhabra (CompSci'95) grew up in New Delhi, India, in a house with no electricity or running water, expected by her parents to marry a man they chose.

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‘Spellcheck for clinicians’

Anonymous — Thu, 20 Dec 2018 21:31:46 +0000

‘Spellcheck for clinicians’ Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 12/20/2018 - 14:31

Alum’s startup uses AI to improve detection of broken bones

Robert Lindsey’s startup, Imagen, has ambitious goals: Eliminate the medical diagnostic errors that affect more than 12 million Americans each year and make high-quality medical care more accessible worldwide.

Lindsey, who graduated from CU Boulder with his PhD in computer science in 2014, explained that radiologists read hundreds of X-rays, CT scans and MRIs a day and are expected to make accurate diagnoses on all of them.

“But in reality, medical image interpretation is a very difficult task, and it’s impossible for an unassisted human to do it with perfect accuracy, especially on so many studies,” he said. “I’m researching AI techniques intended to serve as what will essentially be a spellcheck for clinicians, providing a corrective signal on top of their existing diagnostic workflow in order to help them become more accurate and deliver better, safer care to their patients.”

Those artificial intelligence techniques analyze radiologic images, determine what issues are present and where they are, and then convey that information to the clinicians. The Imagen team trains the machine-learning models basically the same way you would train a human – by showing them many medical images and their corresponding correct diagnoses.

Lindsey was inspired to co-found Imagen after being introduced to a group of orthopedic surgeons and radiologists at New York’s Hospital for Special Surgery, one of the top-ranked hospitals for orthopedics and one that sees some of the most challenging cases in the world.

“The potential for highly specialized clinicians to be able to deliver their expertise to so many people throughout the world was something that I really wanted to make happen, particularly in developing nations where there aren’t enough trained doctors,” he said.

Some of those surgeons and radiologists are now part of Imagen’s clinical team. The company kicked off their work with fracture detection because they wanted to do something that would have a big clinical impact. Misdiagnosed fractures in X-rays – such as missing a break or incorrectly identifying another issue as a fracture – can account for 80 percent of diagnostic errors in a hospital’s emergency room, Lindsey explained.

Along with his PhD advisor, Professor Mike Mozer, and several Imagen colleagues, Lindsey published a paper in November in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that showed their trained AI model significantly improved the ability of emergency medicine clinicians to diagnose broken bones.

Imagen also received marketing clearance from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration this year for a computer-aided detection and diagnostic software that uses an AI algorithm to analyze X-rays for signs of a common type of wrist fracture.

“I’m excited about it because it’s a big first step for my startup to transition deep learning research into real-world medical devices that can be legally used within the U.S.,” Lindsey said. “No other company has done this yet in musculoskeletal radiology.”

Now that they’ve trained their model to detect fractures, Lindsey expects the next problem Imagen tackles to be easier and faster to solve.

“The amount of labor and time necessary to build a fracture detector might be relatively large, but the next pathology requires a fraction of the same resources to solve. And the next pathology may take a fraction of those resources, and so on,” he said.

He said that exponentially increasing rate of progress is what makes AI for medical imaging so exciting.

“That potential is what I believe makes it possible for my startup to someday achieve its goal, which would have a huge positive impact on the world and would save many millions of lives a year,” Lindsey said.

Robert Lindsey’s startup, Imagen, has ambitious goals: Eliminate the medical diagnostic errors that affect more than 12 million Americans each year and make high-quality care accessible worldwide.

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National Academy recognizes alum for pioneering genome research

Anonymous — Thu, 15 Mar 2018 14:51:34 +0000

National Academy recognizes alum for pioneering genome research Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 03/15/2018 - 08:51

David Haussler (PhDCompSci’82) is well known for his work with the Human Genome Project – he and his team posted the first publicly available human genome sequence on the Internet in 2000.

And he says that interest in the genome started right here at CU Boulder, where he had come to do his doctoral work with Distinguished Professor Emeritus Andrzej Ehrenfeucht.

Haussler, who currently serves as a faculty member and director of the Genomics Institute at the University of California Santa Cruz, was elected to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) earlier this year. He was recognized “for developments in computational learning theory and bioinformatics, including first assembly of the human genome, its analysis and data sharing.”

“Andrzej had a seminar every week, where we would discuss wide-ranging topics,” Haussler said. “There’s no limit to his creativity. … When Andrzej would pause and look up, you knew there was some great new idea coming.”

In one of those sessions, he and his classmates – many of whom also went on to study at the intersection of biology, math and computer science – got interested in problems of interpreting DNA sequences. They wrote a number of papers together on theoretical topics related to reading signals in DNA, including some early work in machine learning and neural networks.

After earning his PhD, Haussler explored various applications of machine learning, but eventually came back to how it could be used to sequence and understand genes.

“Genes are kind of like words or sentences written in DNA,” he said. “Being able to read and understand them is a worthy challenge.”

To understand the language of genes, Haussler pioneered the use of hidden Markov models (HMMs), stochastic context-free grammars and discriminative kernel methods in molecular biology. That work helped to crack the code of how genes were written and put the pieces of the genome together, which he said was a very big moment in his career.

A year after he was invited to join the Human Genome Project in 1999, Haussler’s lab, driven by graduate student Jim Kent, published the first computational assembly of the human genome on the Internet, and later developed the UCSC Genome Browser, which is used extensively in biomedical research.

Today, his team is working on new experimental questions. They have a paper coming out soon on genes specific to the human genome that seem to have made a difference in making human brains larger but are also occasionally associated with autism and schizophrenia.

“We’ve been trying to read more carefully and understand more deeply this message that has been passed down to us from our ancestors over the eons,” he said. “In a struggle for survival for billions of years, the DNA messages carried from parent to offspring have contained the secret of success. I’m happy to spend all my time reading the wisdom in that script.”

Haussler, who believes strongly that more data sharing will aid genetic research, said he sees election to the NAE as a way to continue addressing the problem of “greed and fear” that prevents the sharing of information about people’s DNA.

“Being elected to the academy helps me shine a light on this problem,” he said. “I hope through the academy I can increase awareness of the importance of data sharing and start to change the culture of biomedicine to encourage it.”

David Haussler (PhDCompSci’82) and his team posted the first publicly available human genome sequence on the Internet in 2000.

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Alumna’s nonprofit creating technical focus and safe space for women in tech

Anonymous — Mon, 31 Oct 2016 06:00:00 +0000

Alumna’s nonprofit creating technical focus and safe space for women in tech Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 10/31/2016 - 00:00

In her more than 20 years in the tech industry, Rupa Dachere (CompSci’94) has attended and spoken at a lot of conferences. But she often came away disappointed by a lack of focus on high-quality technical issues at women-centric conferences, or on diversity issues at male-dominated technical conferences.

“They would have diversity scholarships and luncheons, but none of it actually focused on the women engineers,” she said. “It felt like superficial efforts to show that they were doing something but no real focus on the root causes for the existing and contentious issues.”

So in 2009, she decided to take matters into her own hands. She founded the nonprofit CodeChix, which is focused on retention, training and advocacy for women engineers. In 2015, they started their own annual technical conference, DevPulseCon, in order to create an “extreme safe space” for women to learn, network, talk about technical issues and share their experiences with tech culture that they can’t talk about at work.

“That is the forum I’ve created to help all the women -- mostly engineers who are hands-on and building products and associated with building products -- who are eventually going to drop off if we don’t talk about it,” Dachere said, referring to the 56 percent of women engineers who leave the industry within 10 years. “Our experiences are not an isolated thing, and I want to try to find ways to combat it.”

The conference is focused on delivering high-quality, extremely technical content for women, by women and supportive allies, Dachere said. They limit attendance for the one-day conference to 100 people, and sold out in two weeks for 2016. She personally invites and coaches all of the speakers, and allows limited time for companies to recruit in order to focus on the educational content. “We request that recruiters bring their laptops and attend the classes. How else are they going to know how to recruit and retain good engineers?”

In addition to DevPulseCon, CodeChix also hosts workshops, hacking sessions and tech talks in the Bay Area. One of Dachere’s favorites was a three-day competition where women graduate students were invited to help build open-source technical curriculums for CodeChix per the organization’s guidelines. She said she was inspired to see them get so excited about the project and stay up late to go above and beyond on their projects.

“It gave these aspiring women engineers the chance to do something completely out of the box that could be shared with the community,” she said.

Originally, Dachere said she decided to pursue computer science because she had strong feelings about what she did not want to do with her career.

“I did not want to wear high heels and dress up,” Dachere said with a laugh. “I wanted to use my brain, build cool things that help people and be financially independent.”

Now, she looks forward to helping others do the same. Dachere said she wants to continue her work with CodeChix as they grow their volunteer base and sponsorships. It’s how she spends most of her spare time when she’s not at work as a senior member of technical staff for VMWare building cutting-edge products.

“All my weekends are booked with CodeChix stuff – board meetings, fundraising meetings,” she said. “We have a lot of good, unique programs that no one else has, and I want to see that continue to grow.”

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CS alumna wins prestigious university award

Anonymous — Mon, 28 Sep 2015 15:59:43 +0000

CS alumna wins prestigious university award Anonymous (not verified) Mon, 09/28/2015 - 09:59

Pamela Drew has a master's and a doctorate in computer science, but she came very close to being a different kind of doctor altogether.

Drew was pursuing a pre-medicine degree in math and biology at CU-Boulder when she decided to take a computer science class during her junior year. From then on, she was hooked.

“I really enjoyed the idea of being able to use the computer as a tool to solve problems to help improve people’s lives,” she said. “I was never into computers as an end unto themselves.”

Drew recently received the Alumni Association’s Norlin Award for her distinguished career in information technology for aerospace and defense companies, as well as her ongoing commitment to CU-Boulder through service on several advisory councils.

Aerospace Accomplishments

Drew’s family originally moved to Colorado because her father worked in aerospace, and she said the space program is “in her blood.” After spending four years as a founding professor of the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology, she decided to return to the United States and find a job in industry.

Boeing was one of the companies that caught her eye because of their aerospace connection. When she didn’t find the kind of position she was looking for, Drew went out on a limb and created it herself.

“I wrote them a letter saying that they needed a team looking at how they managed data and that I could lead it,” she remembers. “Next thing I knew, I got a phone call saying, ‘You’re right! Come interview.’”

Since then, she’s risen through the ranks at companies including Boeing, Northrup Grumman and Exelis, where she’s currently executive vice president and president of information systems.

Getting Started in Computer Science

While her family was an early adopter of computers – she’s had one in her home since she was 12 or 13 – she didn’t have any programming experience when she took her first CS course.

“At the beginning, it took me a while to figure out that the computer does exactly what you tell it to do, not what you’re thinking,” she said.

Today, studies show that that a lack of programming experience is one of the reasons women don’t pursue computer science in college. But Drew encourages women and others with little programming experience not to be afraid of the challenge.

“Don’t be intimidated. You’ll be surprised at how well you do,” she said. “Sometimes you have to brute force your way through it, but it’s weird – there’s always this ‘click’ moment.”

Alumni Connections

About 10 years ago, the College of Engineering and Applied Science reached out to Drew to see if she would be interested in serving on the Engineering Advisory Council (EAC). While she initially hesitated because work and family were keeping her plenty busy, she decided to volunteer.

“By that point, I started to see that I could be serving as a role model,” she said. “It’s just awesome to see how far the college has come since then.”

She said she has enjoyed seeing the college grow in stature and the quality of its students, adding that she especially enjoys the student presentations during EAC meetings. She has also gotten involved with the university’s Grand Challenge initiative in order to provide her industry perspective.

Drew strongly encourages alumni to get involved, both with the university and with the college or their major department.

“The college is not the college 10-15 years ago,” she said. “The national ranking is very high, but we need alumni to be advocates of the school. The more positive comments people hear, the better for our reputation and students.”

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Alumna's newest startup tackles diversity issues through hiring software

Anonymous — Thu, 23 Oct 2014 23:11:52 +0000

Alumna's newest startup tackles diversity issues through hiring software Anonymous (not verified) Thu, 10/23/2014 - 17:11

Throughout her career, Laura Mather (AppMath’94, MS CompSci’96, PhD CompSci’98) has focused on making the world a better place. She’s proud that her security startup, Silver Tail, was helping to keep 1.5 billion online accounts safe when she sold it in 2012.

That sale has since allowed her to step back and consider how she wants to have an additional impact in the world. While she’s one of the world’s experts on Internet fraud, she decided to turn her sights to another issue in the technology industry – diversity. Her new project, Unitive, is tackling the issue in a new way: through software. And the timing couldn’t be better, she said.

“What we’re finding is that HR departments are realizing that unconscious bias is a real problem, and they need to address it in their hiring and promotion processes,” Mather said. “Our software is doing exactly that, and it has been great to get such an enthusiastic reception to our methodology.”

She explained that training around unconscious bias can be helpful, but hasn’t been shown to actually impact end results in hiring. Instead, Unitive incorporates a body of research on successful ways to eliminate bias, including techniques like making sure job descriptions are gender neutral, doing anonymous resume reviews and making interviewers accountable for their feedback about interviewees.

“One thing I think people can do is be aware of the ‘not a culture fit’ comment about candidates,” Mather said. “There are definitely people who really aren’t a culture fit with a company, but interviewers often use the ‘not a culture fit’ reason to veto a candidate with whom they are less comfortable.”

While there are still a lot of unknowns about the Unitive project, Mather said the success of Silver Tail has given her confidence to keep pushing through.

“Throughout the Silver Tail journey, there were so many times when I felt unsure about what I was doing,” she said. “Having lived through the entire life cycle of Silver Tail and seen it have a positive outcome allows me to see that even though things feel uncertain, they can all work out in the end.”

And Mather still keeps a close eye on the security field and the high-profile headlines about online security breaches. She said while it’s unfortunate that so many companies and consumers have fallen prey to criminals, she’s glad that it’s forcing companies to address security issues.

“The vulnerabilities that are being exploited now have been around for years, but the fact that these incidents are now making the news means that other companies are starting to take security seriously,” she said.

Her professional advice for companies is to train IT staff to watch for anything unexpected or unusual, whether it’s a server having more load than expected or strange errors in firewall monitors.

“You can never remove all vulnerabilities, so you need to constantly be on the lookout for new attacks,” she said. “If companies can train their IT staff to be on the lookout for anything out of the ordinary, I think they’ll do a better job identifying exploits when they occur.”

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