March 9, 2001
UW student named Computing Research Association undergrad of year
Kevin Zatloukal, a senior in the University of Washington’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering, is one of two winners of the Computing Research Association’s 2001 “Outstanding Undergraduate” award. Zatloukal, whose work as an undergraduate has resulted in three publications and one patent, will be honored this Sunday at an awards banquet in San Jose, Calif.
Two other seniors in the department, Matt Rosencrantz and Steve Zhang, were among 27 students nationwide who received honorable mentions in the competition. The UW was the only university with three students recognized. Last year, two UW students, Emma Brunskill and Adnan Sulejmanpasic were recognized in the same competition. Brunskill went on to become the UW’s first Rhodes Scholar in 15 years.
“UW Computer Science & Engineering is blessed with some of the finest students in the nation,” said department chairman Ed Lazowska. “I’m thrilled at the recognition they’re receiving.”
Zatloukal, who grew up in Kenmore, said that he and many of his friends have been impressed by the degree of personal attention that UW professors give their students.
“Their efforts to enhance the education of their students have gone far beyond my expectations,” he said. “Numerous professors have given me their time outside of class to discuss problems, work on research projects, photocopy journal articles and lend me books.”
Zatloukal’s work has involved data compression, data caching and development of a cache-conscious Web server. He has worked three summers at Microsoft and is now working at Crossgain, an eastside start-up company where he is involved in building a platform for next-generation Web services. At the UW he has been a teaching assistant for four classes, a mentor for disabled students and a tutor for the Women in Engineering program. Zatloukal has been named a University of Washington Undergraduate Scholar, a Mary Gates Scholar and a Robert C. Byrd Honors Scholar.
The Computing Research Association is a national organization of more than 180 academic departments of computer science and computer engineering, industrial research laboratories, and government laboratories that engage in computing research.
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For more information, contact Lazowska at (206) 543-1695 or lazowska@cs.washington.edu, or Zatloukal at zatloukal@cs.washington.edu. Zatloukal already has left for San Jose, where he can be reached through Sunday by e-mail through a friend’s account at kumar@psych.stanford.edu
