Husky Days in the Bay

Prof. Su-In Lee, the Paul G. Allen Professor of Computer Science at UW, earned her PhD from Stanford University in 2009 under the guidance of Prof. Daphne Koller. She joined the UW in 2010 after serving as a visiting Assistant Professor in the Computational Biology Department at Carnegie Mellon University School of Computer Science. A recipient of the National Science Foundation (NSF) CAREER Award and an American Cancer Society (ACS) Research Scholar, Prof. Lee is renowned for her work in AI and computational biology. Notably, she is recognized as a trailblazer in explainable AI (XAI), significantly enhancing ML model interpretability.

Prof. Lee’s recent contributions revolve around essential XAI principles and techniques, including her groundbreaking SHAP framework. Her innovative biomedical research spans basic biology to clinical medicine, enabled by XAI advancements. Conceptually advancing the integration of AI with biomedicine, her work addresses forward-looking scientific questions, enabling novel discoveries from high-throughput molecular data and electronic health records and advancing healthcare. This pioneering line of work has led to highly cited publications across foundational AI, clinical medicine, and computational molecular biology.

Acclaimed author, researcher and television personality Pepper Schwartz has devoted her life to furthering the fields of intimacy and sexuality. After achieving a BA and MA at Washington University, St. Louis, Schwartz went on to receive her PhD in Sociology at Yale University in 1974.

Over the next 40 years, Pepper has become a prolific writer, authoring many academic and popular articles as well as 25 books about love, sexuality, and commitment. Her most recent book, Relationship Rx with Dr. Jessica Griffen, Rowland and Littlefield, 2022. American Couples and The Normal Bar: The Surprising Secrets of Happy Couples have been on the New York Times Best Sellers list. Several others, including Prime, Ten Talks Parents Must Have with Children About Sex and Character, Peer Marriage, and The Great Sex Weekend were featured on Oprah. Her latest books are SNAP Strategies for Couples, Frommer’s Places for Passion, and 50 Great Myths of Human Sexuality.

Schwartz is the former president of SSSS, the Society for the Scientific Study of Sexualities, and the past president of the Pacific Sociological Association. She received an award from the American Sociological Association for public understanding of sociology and Law and Politics Magazine named her one of the 25 Smartest People in Washington State. Among other awards, Pepper was named as a distinguished alumni from Washington University in St. Louis and served on the alumni counsel of Yale University Graduate School. Alongside Janet Lever, Pepper has coauthored a column for Glamour magazine as well as independently authored a column for American Baby magazine (both over a period of 8 years). She currently writes a column for Seattle Magazine. She was the Love and Relationship Ambassador for AARP for over 10 years. Pepper lectures nationally and internationally on intimate relationships, sexuality, and women’s wellbeing. She is a relationship expert on Married at Frist Sight, on Lifetime television, Netflix and Prime, now in its 19th season.

Pepper is an Emeritus Professor of Sociology from the University of Washington. She lives on a horse range outside of Seattle and loves spending time with her two children, Cooper and Ryder, and her husband, Fred Kaseburg.