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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

Stacked rocks in a beach scene

SAMPL

SAMPL is an interdisciplinary machine learning research group exploring problems across the system stack, including deep learning frameworks, specialized hardware for training and inference, new intermediate representations and more.

Gloved hands piping liquid into a smalll rectangular nanopore device connected to a laptop

Molecular Information Systems Lab (MISL)

MISL explores the intersection of information technology and molecular biology using in-silico and wet lab experiments, drawing upon expertise from computer architecture, programming languages, synthetic biology and biochemistry.


Faculty Members

Faculty

Faculty


Centers & Initiatives

The NSF AI Institute for Agent-based Cyber Threat Intelligence and Operation (ACTION) seeks to change the way mission-critical systems are protected against sophisticated, ever-changing security threats. In cooperation with (and learning from) security operations experts, intelligent agents will use complex knowledge representation, logic reasoning, and learning to identify flaws, detect attacks, perform attribution, and respond to breaches in a timely and scalable fashion.

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

To help make datasets easier to explore, in 2015, a team of researchers led by Heer introduced Voyager, a system that automatically generates and recommends charts and visualizations based on statistical and perceptual measures — which earned the InfoVis 10-Year Test of Time Award at IEEE VIS 2025.

GeekWire

At the Allen School’s Research Showcase and Open House, school leaders celebrated the work of faculty and student researchers — and offered a blueprint for collaboratively tackling a set of human-centered problems for even greater impact.

Allen School News

Kasikci was recognized for his work developing techniques for systems that are both efficient and dependable, which can help prevent bugs that can lead to data loss, security vulnerabilities and costly critical infrastructure failures.