Skip to content

Software & Hardware Systems

Our researchers are driving innovation across the entire hardware, software and network stack to make computer systems more reliable, efficient and secure. 

From internet-scale networks, to next-generation chip designs, to deep learning frameworks and more, we build and refine the devices and applications that individuals, industries and, indeed, entire economies depend upon every day.


Research Groups & Labs

Laptop displaying glowing purple light onscreen in darkened room

Security and Privacy Research Lab

The Security and Privacy Research Lab works on a variety of topics, ranging from studying and addressing security and privacy risks in existing technologies, to anticipating future risks in emerging technologies.

Abstract graphic of a blue-tinged circle surrounded by trails of light in varying shades of green and blue against a black background

Quantum Group

The Quantum Group does research on a variety of topics in quantum information and computation (primarily on the theory side), including quantum complexity theory, error-correction, cryptography, algorithms, and learning.


Allen School Faculty

Professor

Professor

Professor

Associate Professor


Centers & Initiatives

IFDS organizes its research around four core themes: complexity, robustness, closed-loop data science, and ethics and algorithms. By making concerted progress on these fundamental fronts, IFDS aims to lower several of the barriers to better understanding of data science methodology and to its improved effectiveness and wider relevance to application areas.

The UW Center for the Future of Cloud Infrastructure (FOCI) aims to foster a tight partnership between practitioners and researchers in both industry and academia to define the next generation of cloud infrastructure to achieve new levels of security, reliability, performance along with cost-efficiency and environmental sustainability.

Highlights


Allen School News

In the award-winning paper, Nirkhe and his collaborators resolved a longstanding problem in quantum complexity theory by proving that quantum proofs are computationally more powerful than classical proofs.

KUOW Soundside

Researcher Chris Takahashi describes how the Molecular Information Systems Lab encoded historical documents from the Library of Congress in synthetic DNA for a time capsule marking America’s 250th anniversary.

UW News

Professors David Kohlbrenner and Franziska Roesner (Ph.D., ‘14) of the Allen School’s Privacy & Security Research Lab found that browser agents are susceptible to cyberattacks by violating the same-origin policy, a cornerstone of modern web security that has safeguarded users for 30 years.