Who We Are

UW Computer Science Lab & Technical Support

Who We Are

Welcome! The UW Computer Science Laboratory group (CS Lab) coordinates the acquisition, operation, maintenance and development of all information technology assets and services for the Allen School. Specialized instructional and research computing is provided by over 1200 Windows and Unix-based workstations and servers, located in offices, laboratories, and data rooms. Additionally, we offer IT consulting and support an extensive array of internal and external facing online services to support the School’s missions. This group has served and supported CSE for more than 40 years.

The Lab’s Mission Statement

The CS Lab (aka CSE IT) seeks to enable all CSE students, staff and faculty to be more effective by providing accessible, highly-available, scalable and secure IT services. A constant goal is fostering and facilitating collaboration and creativity through technology.

What We Do

The CS Lab is organized into three technical divisions:

Customer Service and Support

The Service Desk (aka “Support”) – This group provides direct technical support for users of the School’s computing facilities, and daily routine support of the computing facilities.  This group also provides hardware and related services within the School, including hardware maintenance, procurement, asset management and inventory tracking, and shipping/receiving.

Technical Operations– This group provides A/V installation and support for collaboration spaces within the Allen School, desktop computing deployment and support, and datacenter deployment management and monitoring.

Engineering

Core & Advanced Services Group – This group provides architectural design, engineering, development, consulting and operational support for the infrastructure of the School’s computing environment. These services include (but are not limited to) identity management, data center management, networking services, printing services, software and platform support and development, and specialized support of research facilities and technologies.

Web & Data Services Group – This group provides architectural design, engineering, development, consulting and operational support for School databases, custom web applications, the CSE web, and a host of research-specific database and web services. 

Business Analysis

 Data Management & Analysis – Ensures and promotes data management best practices and data policy standards for the numerous managed data systems and networked services with the School. Duties include: analyzing and making recommendations on appropriate data storage platforms, analyzing and improving lifecycle policy and processes surrounding user accounts and data, monitoring and tuning log file retention, and monitoring data integrity and service health on critical centralized IT systems.

 Educational Technology – Responsible for managing and coordinating new and existing technological educational resources for Allen School Courses and Instructional Staff. This position investigates new technologies, both proactively and as requested for compliance and ease of use and integration in Allen School Courses, and also works with vendors to negotiate secure pilots and contracts for 3rd party programs and services.

 Cybersecurity & Data Privacy – Coordination with UW CISO, Privacy, AG offices and the UW Registrar as needed for evaluation of any systems and software, current or prospective that may transmit or store student data or other restricted data.  Ensure that instructors and teaching assistants are aware of the proper use of these platforms as well as the general data privacy and security standards that are required by State and federal regulations.

Lab efforts are directed by Aaron Timss.
An organizational chart of all laboratory team members can be found HERE.