UW News

January 15, 2009

Etc.: Campus news & notes

TOPS IN TECH: A joint product of the UW’s medical and engineering schools was named a “top technology of 2008” by the Society of Laparoendoscopic Surgeons. The EDGE (Electronic Data Generation for Evaluation) was invented in the UW’s BioRobotics Lab, in conjunction with the UW Medical School’s Center of Videoendoscopic Surgery (CVES) and Institute for Simulation and Interprofessional Studies (ISIS). The system tracks the movement and forces on the tools surgeons use when training to perform minimally invasive surgery, and uses mathematical algorithms to objectively assess surgical skills based on these data. Originally dubbed “Red Dragon,” the device was developed by Scott Gunther, a former mechanical engineering graduate student now with Boeing; Blake Hannaford, professor of electrical engineering; Jacob Rosen, a former electrical engineering faculty member now an associate professor at UC Santa Cruz; and Mika Sinanan, a UW professor of surgery. The Red Dragon won a silver medal at James F. Lincoln Foundation’s student engineering design competition in 2006 and was subsequently licensed to Simulab Corp., a Seattle-based company that develops medical and surgical simulators. UW graduate students Tim Kowalewski and Phil Roan also worked on the technology as interns at Simulab.


CAMERA, LIGHTS…: Some portions of the UW campus are ready for their close-ups. The University will be the site for the filming of a reality show segment on Friday, Jan. 16. The show, an MTV production called The Phone, involves contestants searching for locations based on clues given to them via cell phone. In this case several of the locations they’ll be searching for are on the UW campus. Contestants will arrive via floatplane to the dock on Lake Washington at the Waterfront Activity Center area. They’ll exit the plane and run into the parking lot, then be picked up and driven to the sky bridge off Red Square. From there they are released to find the first location. And when they’ve found all the campus locations, they’ll be whisked off to search for other sites in Seattle.


KITCHEN CONFIDENTIAL: Architecture Professor Rick Mohler helped a Seattle family remodel its kitchen, and the result was featured in the Jan. 4 Pacific Northwest magazine, a feature of the Seattle Times. Of course, the house in question was no ordinary one. It was designed in 1952 by prominent Seattle architect Paul Hayden Kirk, and most of its original design had survived. Because the owners did not want to alter the design of the Kirk house, they e-mailed the UW Architecture Department and found Mohler, who is also a principal of Adams Mohler Ghillino Architects. Mohler’s remodel of the kitchen included carrying through the cedar cathedral ceiling, a honed-granite countertop along the windows, moving the oven, a cork tile floor, new lighting, and a creative solution to his client’s desire to not have any backsplash and no electrical outlets, a code requirement. The work was completed just in time for Thanksgiving, ready for company. Click here to learn more.