UW underwater robot team competes Saturday

This year’s challenges involve installing, operating and maintaining a cabled ocean observing system, similar to the one being installed by the UW this summer off the Washington and Oregon coasts.

The UW team will attempt to qualify for the international contest, as will Western Washington University and Skagit Valley’s 4H club. Middle- and high-school teams from Seattle, Tacoma, the Kitsap Peninsula and the San Juan Islands will compete and see who will advance to the next round.

The weekend event is one of 22 regional contests held in the U.S., Canada, Japan, China, Egypt and Scotland. Winners of the regional contests will advance to the 12^th annual international competition, which will take place June 20-22 in Federal Way.

Cecilia Bitz recognized for decade’s worth of work
Cecilia Bitz, a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences, was awarded the University of Miami’s Rosenstiel Award. The $10,000 award honors early- to mid-career ocean scientists who have made significant and growing impacts during the previous decade.

Bitz’s research focuses on modeling climate change in snow- and ice-covered regions. She is an author on the last three assessments of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, and in March she briefed U.S. Congress members on Arctic sea-ice loss. Bitz, a UW graduate with a master’s in physics and doctorate in atmospheric sciences, currently chairs the advisory board of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Polar Programs.

Greenwald, Kuhl among 25 honored as part of 25^th anniversary

As part of Association for Psychological Science ‘s 25th anniversary celebration, the board of directors has named 25 distinguished scientists – including UW’s Anthony Greenwald and Patricia Kuhl – who have had a profound impact on the field of psychological science over the past quarter century.

Greenwald is a psychology professor and Kuhl is co-director of UW’s Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences and a UW professor of speech and hearing sciences.

In announcing the awards, the association noted that Greenwald’s work with unconscious and automatic thought processes has changed “what had once been a pariah of psychological science — subliminal perception — and turned it into a respectable area of research and even a gold mine for others to excavate.”

The association wrote that Kuhl is “widely known” for research showing how babies’ ability to discriminate speech sounds becomes increasingly specific to their native language as they age and that social skills play a critical role in language learning.

UW outcompetes PAC-12 schools

Among all the 270 colleges and universities competing in the grand champion category, UW ranked 83. In the category for food services organics, which considers the weight of food waste composted per person on campus, UW was 38^th. Considering the total weight of paper and mixed containers recycled on campus, the UW was 35^th. And considering the weight of paper and mixed containers recycle per person on campus, UW was 183^rd.

In addition to the national competition, UW Housing and Food Services sponsored a competition between UW residence halls. During the two month period, McMahon had the highest waste diversion of all residence halls (highest recycling and compost combined, lowest garbage). Poplar came in second for the highest diversion rate even though it has no dining facility.  McMahon also had the highest compost rate of all the residence halls, followed by Terry/Lander. Hansee had the highest recycling rate of all residence halls.

MIT engineering professor to speak on research, career journey
Many seasoned academics can point to circuitous paths and serendipitous events that led to a successful, perhaps unexpected career in research. One professor’s take on this journey is the topic of this year’s annual Dean Lytle Electrical Engineering Endowed Lecture Series.

Alan S. Willsky, professor of electrical engineering and computer science at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, will speak twice for the UW community. His first talk at 10:30 a.m. Tuesday, May 14, in the Electrical Engineering Building (room 105) will be a more technical lecture titled “Learning and Inference for Graphical and Hierarchical Models: A Personal Journey.”

Then on Wednesday, May 15, Willsky will address a general audience with his lecture “Building a Career on the Kindness of Others” at 3:30 p.m. in the Paul G. Allen Center‘s Microsoft Atrium.

Both talks are free and open to the public.

Willsky’s work on large-scale data fusion has been applied in areas such as object recognition, oil exploration, remote sensing in the ocean and groundwater hydrology.

The Dean Lytle lecture series is the electrical engineering department’s largest annual event, usually featuring speakers in the field of communications and signal processing. Lytle came to the UW in 1958 and served for 40 years as a professor of electrical engineering.

Pharmaceutical science association recognizes Rodney Ho
Rodney Ho, professor of pharmacy, will receive the Research Achievement Award in Biotechnology from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists at its annual May meeting. The award, among the highest the association confers, recognizes the quality of his work and its impact. Ho studies the relationship between drug localization in tissues and cells and the links to disease progression. His nanotechnology and device innovations have helped make anti-infective agents, such as anti-HIV drugs, pain medications and cancer drugs, more potent with fewer side effects.

May is bike to campus month

Math at top speed: Exploding drag racing myths
Elementary mathematical frameworks for studying old and new drag racing beliefs – validating some and debunking others – is the subject of this quarter’s MathAcrossCampus lecture, 3:30-4:30 p.m. Friday, May 3, in 220 Kane Hall. Richard Tapia, mathematician at Rice University, will include a historical account of the development of drag racing with videos and pictures depicting his involvement in the early days of the sport. A reception follows the talk.

UW recognized for campus tree management
For the third year in a row, the UW is on the Tree Campus USA list in recognition of excellence in campus tree management by the Arbor Day Foundation, a nonprofit with more than a million members. The university achieved the title by maintaining a tree advisory committee, a campus tree-care plan, dedicated annual expenditures toward trees, an Arbor Day observance and student service-learning projects.

Eggers, UW professor emeritus of computer science and engineering, is co-inventor of a computer processing technology that makes more efficient use of a chip’s computing power. The technology changed industry standards and was adopted by Intel, IBM and others. Eggers is a member of the National Academy of Engineering and a fellow with the American Association for the Advancement of Science. She has received a number of awards since joining the UW in 1989.

Moon, a professor of pharmacology, is a leader in regenerative medicine research. He began studying the cell signals that transform tadpoles into frogs, later concentrating on how alterations in these Wnt signaling networks, as they are called, lead to cancer, bone density disorders and other human diseases.   More recently, his lab has been enhancing this signaling to accelerate tissue repair and prod stem cells to turn into progenitors for various blood cell types.   He hopes to modulate Wnt signaling to design therapies against deadly cancers, such as melanoma, and to improve recovery from brain injuries and other neurological damage.

This year 198 people were elected to the academy including winners of the Nobel Prize, National Medal of Science, Lasker Award, Pulitzer Prize and MacArthur fellowships as well as  Grammy, Emmy, Academy and Tony awards.

Husky Green Awards announced

The award, now in its fourth year, recognizes students, faculty and staff who have demonstrated leadership, initiative and dedication to environmental stewardship and sustainability. A new award this year, the Husky Green Legacy Award, went to the UPass Advisory Board.

Other winners are:

• Duncan Clauson, graduate student, Evans School
• Sunni Wissmer, undergraduate student, College of Built Environment
• Victoria Rice Bean, operating room nurse, surgical department, UW Medical Center
• Brenda Nissley, Harborview Medical Center
• Green Wall, College of Built Environment
• Facilities Construction Shop 54, Facilities Services

Oceanbound on Earth Day
Oceanographers with the UW’s Applied Physics Laboratory leave on Earth Day aboard the UW’s Thomas G. Thompson to redeploy two ocean monitoring buoys in the Olympic Coast National Marine Sanctuary. Two teachers will join the cruise and share the experience via blogs and Skype chats with their classrooms in Lake Quinault and Bainbridge Island.

Chief scientist Matthew Alford will be collecting data on deep-ocean waves, while Jan Newton will be gathering real-time data on ocean acidification. Six UW graduate students are also onboard. Follow Alford’s blog for updates on the cruise that runs through April 26.

Annual ‘UW Trash-In’ Wednesday
April 24, from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. on Red Square, volunteers will suit up and sort through one day’s worth of trash from around the UW campus. The annual UW Trash-In is a fun and insightful way to explore how much compostable and recyclable material is still being thrown away on campus.

After a brief introduction to the sorting process, volunteers are given cover-up suits, gloves and shoe covers, and sent to a sorting station. Bags of trash are emptied onto tables and volunteers sort materials by type into nearby bins for compost, mixed containers, mixed paper and garbage. There’ll be  music, sorting games and challenges.

“Even avid recyclers or composters can learn a lot at this event,” said Jennifer Perkins with the UW Environmental Stewardship and Sustainability office. “Plus, there is a lot of laughing and dancing. I never knew how fun sorting trash could be.”

 Don’t just save everything: Tips to spring-clean your inbox

We tend to keep nearly all email thinking it will be useful someday. But usually old emails are just obsolete clutter that slow our Outlook accounts and make it hard to find what we actually need.

For most UW employees, 70 to 80 percent of email messages can be deleted, according to email policies provided by UW’s Records Management.

Taking a closer look at how to comply with the university’s requirements for keeping records,  UW Human Resources staff have come up with some tips for downsizing inboxes:

• Click on “Rules/create rule” to automatically move mail into designated, organized folders.
• Create “Quick Steps” and apply them with one click to do things such as create a task with a start and end date, change a message’s status, or flag a message.
• Use the “Clean up” function to remove redundant emails whose content is included in other messages.
• Once an email has been read or acted on, file it or delete it immediately.
• On the File tab, periodically check the bar under “Mailbox Cleanup,” and if you don’t have much storage left do a more extensive purge of email folders and messages, especially those with attachments.

Read more tips on records management in an article by UWHR’s Human Resources Records Management Group.

Police department open house April 17

It’s a chance to meet police officers and other police department employees and learn about community policing initiatives. This year the department will recognize Eric Godfrey, vice president and vice provost for Student Life, for his leadership and support at 2 p.m.

2013 Magnuson Scholars named
Six students, one from each UW health sciences school, have been named 2013 Magnuson Scholars and will receive $30,000 scholarships for the coming academic year. The award program commemorates the late Sen. Warren G. Magnuson. They are:

• Dentistry: Emily Chu, a dentistry/doctoral oral biology student, is exploring the causes, treatment and prevention of craniofacial disorders, especially cleft lip and palate.
• Medicine: Alan Kwan, a fourth-year medical student, conducts research to influence evidence-based medical practice and healthcare economics in the areas of heart and blood vessel disease, diabetes and obesity.
• Nursing: Sunniva Zaratkiewicz, a third-year doctoral student and wound program coordinator at Harborview Medical Center, studies pressure ulcers and wound healing in patients with diabetes.
• Pharmacy: William Canestaro, a doctoral student in the pharmaceutical outcomes research and policy program, performs comparative-effectiveness assessments of molecular diagnostics, genome technologies and personalized medicines
• Public Health: Cynthia Curl, a doctoral student in Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences, studies the health effects of dietary exposures to pesticides and the influence of organic food consumption on those exposures.
• Social Work: Charles Hoy-Ellis is a doctoral student who is addressing the health and aging needs of older lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgendered adults.

Medicine on the move: Bioethicists to discuss ethics of health care ‘migration’
What ethical problems does globalization bring to health care and medical education? What inequalities is it creating in medical expertise and care?

Three scholars of medicine and bioethics will discuss such questions in a daylong symposium April 19 at the UW titled “Whose Medicine, Whose Care? Troubling Inequalities in the Migration of Health Care” sponsored by the UW Department of Philosophy‘s Program on Values in Society.

“We live in a world of globalized medicine on the move,” said Sara Goering, UW associate professor of philosophy and a co-organizer of the event, adding that this has brought both advantages and daunting ethical problems. “Such ‘medicine on the move’ contains huge imbalances of power in terms of how medical labor is valued, who is doing what medical labor, and who gets to define what counts as ‘medicine.’”

Those interested may RSVP online. For more information, contact Amy Reed-Sandoval at 503-913-9201 or amyjota@uw.edu.

Portion of Montlake closing Saturday, Sunday

Northbound traffic will be routed around the Triangle Parking Garage area. Southbound traffic will be directed to Northeast Pacific Street, loop toward the waterfront via Brooklyn Avenue and back up Fifteenth Avenue Northeast, then back on Northeast Pacific heading back to Montlake Boulevard.

Pedestrians and bicyclists will be routed onto a temporary path at the Triangle Parking Garage area.

For more information, contact Sound Transit community outreach, Andrea Burnett, 206-398-5300 or andrea.burnett@soundtransit.org.

UW finalist in environmental excellence contest
The University of Washington is among four finalists in the “Environmental March Madness Tournament,” and in the running to be named the national environmental-excellence champion April 9.

“Our track record in researching and teaching about environmentally sound and sustainable practices and incorporating them into the lives and behaviors of our students is impeccable,” said UW President Michael K. Young. “We are very mindful and self-conscious about the importance of educating the generation that will be taking over from us and – we hope and trust – doing a better job of it. The planet demands it.”

For the challenge, the UW submitted images on Facebook, short essays and YouTube videos documenting environmental and sustainability efforts.

Family-friendly Paws-on Science April 5-7
Nearly 40 UW units will have exhibits and hands-on activities for Huskies of all ages at this year’s Paws-on Science: Husky Weekend at Pacific Science Center, April 5-7. Bring your Husky Card or UW Alumni Association member card to receive a 20 percent discount on general exhibit admission for you and your guests.

Home Improvement Fair April 11
The 16^th annual Home Improvement Fair will be 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Thursday, April 11, in the HUB Lyceum, Room 106.

This year’s theme focuses on appreciating and adapting your home at any stage. Experts will discuss renovating, remodeling, refinancing and buying a home. Exhibitors include LastingNest, Rivalee Design, GreenHomes America and WSU Master Gardeners. There will be refreshments and door prizes.

The event is sponsored by HomeStreet Bank, a partner of the UW Benefits Hometown Home Loan Program. For more information contact Kathleen Dwyer, 206-543-2812, kdwyer@uw.edu or Mary Parker-Hale at 206-616-4932 or mphale@uw.edu.

Built “ecologies,” resource integration subject of lecture April 4

The lecture from 6 to 7 p.m., Thursday, April 4, in Kane 210 is free and open to the public, but advanced registration is requested.

Speaking on the subject of “Built Ecologies: Regionalism and Resource Integration in the Built World” will be Thomas Knittel, vice president and project designer with HOK, a design, architecture, engineering and planning firm with offices in Seattle and 23 other cities.

Drawing on research and project examples from Brazil and Haiti to China, he will discuss how new design strategies and solutions, to be more resilient, must be integrated with sustainably produced regional resources—and how design informed by nature provides insights, from the nano to the macro, toward building a sustainable future locally and globally.

UW wins sixth consecutive regional cybersecurity competition
The University of Washington has won the 2013 Pacific Rim Regional Collegiate Cyber Defense Competition, extending its undefeated streak to all six years of the competition.

In competition March 23-24 at Highline Community College, teams of students defended a fictional computer network against attacks conducted by security industry professionals. The event helps students develop teamwork and project management skills and is part of the curriculum for the UW’s Center for Information Assurance and Cybersecurity.

A dozen teams competed this year, including one from UW Bothell, which finished in fourth place. Students on the UW Seattle team were from the Informatics Program at the UW Information School and the Computer Science and Engineering Department. The national competition will be April 19-21 in San Antonio, Texas.

2013 Autism Awareness Month: Public events in Seattle and Tacoma
The UW Autism Center will host a series of public lectures throughout April, which is Autism Awareness Month. The free lectures, to be held in Seattle and Tacoma, include:

• “Making Friends: Supporting Peer Interactions for Students with ASD,” April 3 in Tacoma
• “Ask the Experts: A Multidisciplinary Panel Discussion,” April 4 in Seattle
• “Off to College? The Needs of Students with ASD after High School,” April 16 in Tacoma
• “All I Really Need is an iPad, Right? Myths and Realities of iPads for Families of Individuals with ASD,” April 18 in Seattle and April 30 in Tacoma
• “Get your Zzzzzz’s! Strategies for Addressing Sleep Problems in Children and Adolescents on the Autism Spectrum,” April 25 in Seattle

More lectures are on the full schedule, along with the times and locations. To register, call 1-877-408-UWAC or email uwautism@uw.edu.

University Bridge closures March 23, 24

Mobile planetarium demonstration April 1
UW astronomers are inviting the public to tour the cosmos in the comfort of Gould Hall from 3:30 to 5:30 p.m. Monday, April 1 — and no fooling.

Astronomy lecturer Oliver Fraser says visitors will be given an “immersive experience of the universe” in the department’s new portable planetarium.

The planetarium – a GoDome about 10 feet high and 20 across – will be set up in the Gould Hall court. Fraser will also describe plans to help Seattle-area students create their own planetarium shows. You can contact him for more information.

Portion of ticket sales for Seattle Sounder FC’s UW Day goes to scholarships
A portion of every ticket sold for UW Day with the Seattle Sounders FC will go toward UW student scholarship programs.  The UW Alumni Association has discounted tickets for the game – April 13 at CenturyLink Field against the New England Revolution – for UW alumni, parents,  students, faculty, staff and friends.

Washington Sea Grant sponsors four-day symposium on waterfront challenges

UW’s Washington Sea Grant is sponsoring a national event March 25-28 in Tacoma for citizens and maritime leaders to discuss waterfront challenges and creative solutions.

The National Working Waterfronts and Waterways Symposium will include representatives of maritime industries such as shipyards, commercial fisheries and aquaculture; government officials from ports, state and federal government; elected officials;  as well as planners, engineers and researchers, said Peter Granger, program leader for marine advisory services with Washington Sea Grant.

The symposium will feature panels of experts covering the spectrum of maritime interests, from large West Coast ports, such as Geraldine Knatz from the Port of Los Angeles, to to small community fishermen such as Guy Hoppen from Gig Harbor.

The symposium,  being coordinated with Oregon Sea Grant,  begins March 25 with a full day of field trips around the Tacoma waterfront and the region. For more information, visit the symposium website or contact Nicole Faghin, symposium coordinator, at wwaters2013@uw.edu or 206-685-8286.

Lecture March 22 discusses advances, challenges of tissue engineering
Growing human tissues to help repair failing or damaged organs is developing as a new branch of medicine. These engineered tissues give scientists a platform to study stem cells as they grow or regenerate, which could prove useful as the young field develops.

“Functional Tissue Engineering for Regenerative Medicine, Human Stem Cell Research, and Study of Disease” is the topic of the UW Department of Bioengineering’s annual Robert F. Rushmer Lecture, Friday, March 22, 4:30 p.m. in the William H. Foege Auditorium, (Room S060).

Gordana Vunjak-Novakovic, professor of biomedical engineering and medical sciences at Columbia University, will talk about recent findings and the future of tissue engineering, including challenges the field faces. Her research focuses on engineering human tissues for regenerative medicine, stem-cell research and disease study. Vunjak-Novakovic directs the Laboratory for Stem Cells and Tissue Engineering at Columbia.

This is the 25^th year of the annual Rushmer Lecture, which is UW Bioengineering’s largest lecture event of the year. A reception will follow the presentation at 5:30 p.m. in the north lobby of Foege.

Reception March 26 for Distinguished Staff Award nominees
The 70 individuals and 17 teams nominated this year for Distinguished Staff Awards will be honored at a reception, 2:30 to 4 p.m., Tuesday, March 26  in the HUB Ballroom. The event is open to members of the UW community and guests of the nominees. President Michael Young and Vice President of Human Resources Mindy Kornberg will speak at the reception.

The awards will be presented at the university’s annual Awards of Excellence ceremony in June.

It’s being presented in cooperation with the UW Tower Art Committee, which on the same day will open its new show of art made with recycled and found objects.

The fair will include demos of crafts made with recycled objects, Total Reclaim will be on hand collecting personal e-waste and Bike Works will be accepting donations of bikes and bike parts for its Earn-a-Bike program.  Other first time exhibitors include The Sierra Club, Cedar Grove Composting, Cascade Bicycle Club and the King County Native Plant Salvage Program. Sustainability films will be shown in the UW Tower auditorium.

Society recognizes UW Restoration Ecology Network
The Society for Ecological Restoration Northwest Chapter has awarded its 2013 Special Award to the UW Restoration Ecology Network. Through the network UW students conduct capstone projects in cooperation with community partners to restore degraded sites. The program was founded in 1999 by Warren Gold, associate professor at UW Bothell, and Kern Ewing, professor of environmental and forest sciences, who received the award March 1 from the society. In the past 13 years, more than 475 students from 31 academic majors have conducted restoration projects with community partners ranging from local and regional governments, to nonprofits, public utilities, schools and private landowners.

UW Science Now kicks off at Town Hall tonight

Sonia Singhal, a doctoral student in UW’s Department of Biology, says evolution is a prominent force in the present as well as the past. As the website about her talk says: We don’t even need to wait centuries to see its results. With bacteria and viruses, we have the powerful ability to watch evolution happen before our eyes in a matter of days. It can help advance technology against the flu, the common cold and even computer viruses. Singhal speaks at 5:30 p.m. at The Pub at Town Hall, enter on Eighth Avenue.

At 5:30 p.m., Wednesday (March 6) Juliana Houghton, a master’s student at UW’s School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences, addresses the impact of San Juan whale-watching on the whales themselves. The website about her talk says: As researchers consider steps to help killer whales recover, they study the effects of vessel presence and a noisy environment yet still don’t know what whales actually hear as they travel through the water. Recently, a suction-cup-attached tag with an underwater microphone has been used to measure the noise whales actually receive.

A total of 19 UW Science Now talks have been scheduled, often before or after other science talks by local and national speakers at Town Hall.

The students are in the course “Communicating Science to the Public Effectively,” that grew out of efforts in 2010 by UW graduate students who felt students needed better opportunities for training in science communication, says the instructor for the course, Jessica Rohde, a graduate student in aquatic and fishery sciences.

“They started teaching each other, which eventually turned into a course and speaker series at Town Hall. The College of the Environment has fully supported their efforts, and now funds a TA -ship for the course,” Rohde said.

Tickets are $5 at www.townhallseattle.org or 888-377-4510, and at the door beginning at 5:30 pm.

Celebrating UW Women nominations due March 11
Members of the campus community can submit nominations for female UW students, staff and faculty deserving of recognition. All women nominated will be recognized at a reception in late March at the Hub Lyceum. The award was created to honor women from across campus as part of Women’s History Month.

Nominations require an essay of 250 words or less describing the contribution of the nominee. Deadline is Monday (March 11).

Nominations sought for fourth annual Husky Green Awards
Nominations are due March 30 the fourth annual Husky Green Awards meant to recognize individuals or teams from the UW community who demonstrate leadership, initiative and dedication to campus sustainability.

Last year’s winners are featured in a video produced by a student volunteer with the UW Environmental Stewardship & Sustainability Office.

Nominations should include a description of how an individual or team from the UW community demonstrated environmental stewardship or campus sustainability at the Seattle, Tacoma or Bothell campuses. Submissions are encouraged to include descriptions of measurable outcomes resulting from the nominee’s actions as well as descriptions of collaborations and efforts to engage the broader community in sustainability efforts. Two references are required for a nomination submission.

Grade-school students take on philosophy in panel discussion
The UW Department of Philosophy will celebrate its Philosophers in the Schools program and the new book “The Philosophical Child” by Jana Mohr Lone with a panel discussion from 6 to 7:30 p.m. Thursday, March 7, in the HUB Lyceum. The event will feature fourth- and fifth-grade students from Seattle’s Whittier Elementary School. Lone is an affiliate UW faculty member and director of the Northwest Center for Philosophy for Children. RSVP if possible to kgoldyn@uw.edu.

Hall Health Center expands tobacco cessation program
Hall Health Primary Care Center is increasing its free services for those in the UW community who want to quit using tobacco through a new program called “Tobacco Talk.”

The campus medical center now has a part-time tobacco cessation specialist who can meet with students and employees on a one-to-one basis. After the first session, subsequent meetings can be done by phone. Tobacco Talk also provides nicotine replacement products such as patches and gum. All services are free to both students and UW employees.

For more information, contact Colin Maloney, Tobacco Cessation Program coordinator, at 206-685-QUIT (7848) or quittalk@uw.edu.

Tracy Mehlin

Riz Reyes said he took inspiration from movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark for his garden featuring rare, wild and little-seen plant species.

Part-time UW gardener designs winning display
Riz Reyes, who works part time as a gardener with the University of Washington Botanic Gardens, claimed the top prize at the Pacific Northwest Flower & Garden Show this week. Reyes, who earned his bachelor’s in environmental horticulture and urban forestry from the UW, owns RHR Horticulture in Shoreline.

The flower and garden show proposed movies as the theme for gardens and Reyes said he took inspiration from Jurassic Park, King Kong and Raiders of the Lost Ark for his garden titled “The Lost Gardener – A Journey from the Wild to the Cultivated.”

Seattle garden writer Valerie Easton blogged, “The cool plant garden that took the Founder’s Cup – “The Lost Gardener” – is by Riz Reyes, a F&G Show first-timer. . . How many years has it been since there’s been a real plant collector’s garden? This one is all about unusual and rare plants, used extravagantly to create a jungle of a garden. How good Riz was rewarded with the big prize for being daring with his plant choices.”

Included in the display are more than 75 different kinds of plants.

At the UW, Reyes works at the Center for Urban Horticulture and is responsible for maintaining the Soest Herbaceous Display Garden.

The flower and garden show continues this weekend.

RecycleMania a chance to increase recycling, composting on campus
You can help the UW’s standings in this year’s RecycleMania by increasing your efforts to recycle and compost between now and March 30.

The RecycleMania competition pits the UW against universities nationwide – including the Pac-12 rivals such as ASU, Stanford and WSU – to determine the top recycler.

Since Feb. 3, UW Recycling has been tracking the amount of recycling, food waste and garbage collected on campus each week. UW is competing in four categories: the highest waste diversion rate (recycling compared to what is thrown away); the highest recycling rate per person on campus; the highest gross tonnage of recycling generated on campus; and the highest percentage of food waste composted per person.

UW Recycling is sharing weekly results on its website, where you can also see results of a competition between UW residence halls sponsored by Housing and Food Services.

The competitions provides incentives to take waste diversion at the UW further, according Jessica Lisiewski, UW Recycling & Solid Waste program coordinator. The more participation across campus, the closer the UW can get to reaching its waste diversion goal of 70 percent by 2020, she said.

Newborn screening test brings chemical society honor to Gelb, Tureček
Michael Gelb and František Tureček, UW chemistry professors, will be presented the Gustavus John Esselen Award for Chemistry in the Public Interest for their work in devising methods to detect rare genetic diseases in newborns.

The diseases – which include Tay-Sachs, Gaucher, Krabbe, Pompe, Nieman-Pick, Fabry, and Hurler syndromes – affect about one in every 5,000 people and cause serious abnormalities in children, often resulting in premature death. Early detection is important for the best chances of effective treatment.

The procedures for newborn screening developed by Gelb and Tureček have proven so reliable and inexpensive that several states now require that every newborn be tested.

The award will be presented by the Northeastern Section of the American Chemical Society April 4 at Harvard University.

Transportation services “hearts” ridesharing this week

To receive a care package just stop by any staffed campus gatehouse between 6 a.m. and 9 p.m. in either an existing vanpool or carpool with a valid permit, or by purchasing a daily carpool permit on the spot.

Each care package is chock-full of things to help you and your rideshare partners enjoy your trip and encourage those around you to share their ride as well, according to information from transportation services. There’s a Facebook page to learn more about the event.

Registration opens for UW Summer Youth Programs
New classes offered through UW Summer Youth Programs this year include an introduction to engineering design, Lego animation and a class in partnership with the Pacific Northwest Girls Collaborative called Girls Inventing Robots, according to Leslie Rome-Nagata, who manages the program for UW Educational Outreach.

There also will be two middle school academies focused on science, technology, engineering and mathematics topics, as well as daylong programs for elementary students.

For more information call 206-543-2310.

Lizabeth Wilson wins national award
Lizabeth (Betsy) Wilson, dean of UW libraries, is the 2013 winner of the Hugh C. Atkinson Memorial Award from the American Libraries Association. Wilson will receive a cash award and citation during the association’s annual conference.

Named in honor of a pioneer in library automation, the award recognizes an academic librarian who has made significant contributions in the area of library automation or management, and has made notable improvements in library services or research.

Wilson has fostered innovation to strengthen the ability of the libraries she has personally led as well as libraries across the world to serve better users of libraries, according to information from the association.

Nominations due March 1 for university faculty lecturer
Nominations are now open for next year’s university faculty lecturer. The position is open to current and emeriti faculty whose research, scholarship or art has been widely recognized by their peers and whose achievements have had a substantial impact on their profession, on the research or performance of others and perhaps on society as a whole.

The honoree delivers a lecture that is open to the public. For example, this year’s recipient, Batya Friedman, professor in the UW Information School, delivered her lecture last week.

Nomination materials should be submitted to the Secretary of the Faculty at secfac@uw.edu. Those with questions can call 206-543-2637

Meet dozens of suppliers at annual fair Feb. 20
The seventh annual UW Supplier Fair, hosted by Procurement Services and the Business Diversity Program, will be 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Feb. 20 in the HUB Ballroom. The fair is a showcase for suppliers in eProcurement, suppliers with a UW contract and for small, local minority- and women-owned businesses.  Light refreshments will be served. Registration is open now for this free event.

“The ultimate goal is to show that the computerized instruction is effective and transportable to schools to help classroom teachers,” Berninger said.

Participants will go to the UW Center for Oral and Written Language Learners for 18 sessions of reading and writing lessons administered on an iPad. If they wish, participants can give a small blood sample that will be tested for genetic variants related to language learning. Those who choose to be in the brain imaging part of the study, which uses magnetic resonance imaging, will receive copies of their own brain scans.

The project is funded by a five-year, $8.1 million grant from the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development.

Public Health co-hosts “Gun Violence: A Public-Health Crisis” tonight
The University of Washington School of Public Health and Seattle’s Town Hall are co-hosting a forum at 7:30, tonight (Feb. 4) at Town Hall to lay out a public-health approach to gun violence.

Panelists will trace the extent of the problem, explore evidence-based solutions, consider mental-health aspects and new alternatives, discuss new policies in Seattle-King County and Washington state, and consider what each of us can do.

“Gun violence is a fraught topic in our society, with much of the debate framed by ideology, fear and inflexibility,” said Dr. Howard Frumkin, dean of the School of Public Health, who will give the opening remarks. “A public health approach – as applied to challenges ranging from influenza to obesity, from polio to heart attacks, from smoking to traffic safety – offers a unique point of view, important insights and even guidelines for action.”

Among the other panelists is Dr. Frederick Rivara, UW professor of pediatrics and epidemiology, speaking on the research about guns and violence.

Cost is $5.

The University of Washington School of Law and Jackson School for International Studies, and other partners, present a daylong seminar on Friday, Feb. 8, titled “Towards Global Food Law: Transatlantic Competition and Collaboration.” Registration is online and costs $50.

“This conference will highlight new developments in food safety law in the U.S. and the European Union, noting where their regulatory strategies converge and where they diverge, as well as examples of ‘smart’ regulation that protect the public without distorting markets,” wrote Jane Winn, UW professor of law.

After an introduction by Pat Kuszler, UW School of Law associate dean and director of its Center for Law, Science and Global Health, food safety attorney William Marler will give the keynote address, “Strengths and Weaknesses of Litigation as a Food Safety Regulation Strategy.”

Pharmacy faculty member honored for early-career achievement
Nina Isoherranen, associate professor of pharmaceutics, will receive the Drug Metabolism Division Early Career Achievement Award from the American Society for Pharmacology and Experimental Therapeutics.

The award recognizes excellent research in drug metabolism and disposition by investigators who have received their doctorate within the last 15 years, according to the society’s website.

Isoherranen studies the metabolism and excretion of drugs, vitamins and hormones. Her work helps prevent harmful drug interactions and addresses the safe use of drugs and vitamins during pregnancy. Her research on vitamin A metabolism, in particular, advances knowledge about certain cancers, fetal development and the body’s ability to fight infections.

She will be honored in Boston at the April annual meeting.

Taylor, vice provost and dean of Undergraduate Academic Affairs, writes about call and response, “the kind of call that allows us to acknowledge misfortune, ruination, or loss, followed by a response proclaiming that freedom and justice are close at hand.”

Financial, research and learning highlights part of Report to Stakeholders now online
Financial Management has just published the 2012 Report to Stakeholders online.

The report contains this year’s financial highlights and financial statements, including the independent auditor’s report, as well as metrics, stories, and videos related to students, research, community impact and sustainability efforts.

Going green at holiday parties

Think green and plan ahead, urge the folks with UW Recycling.

Just before the holidays, they updated the request form to reserve recycling, compost and garbage bins for parties, and launched an ad campaign in the Daily, online and on Facebook reminding people to reserve extra bins.

There’s also an Event Coordinator’s Guide with useful tips on planning your on-campus event.

UW Dream Project named in $40 million federal Race to the Top grant
Part of a four-year, $40 million grant awarded to seven school districts in King County will go toward the UW Dream Project, a mentoring program that serves the school districts in the grant.

The award was announced Tuesday (Dec. 11) by the U.S. Department of Education as part of the Race to the Top program.

The new funds will support counselor assistants in middle and high schools across the region as well as training and program support for college and career readiness.

The Auburn, Federal Way, Highline, Kent, Renton, Seattle and Tukwila school districts competed for the grant this fall as “The Road Map District Consortium,” a reference to their participation in the Road Map Project – an effort to improve education in South Seattle and South King County.

Anna Karlin new Association for Computing Machinery fellow
Anna Karlin, professor of computer science and engineering, is among 52 newly named fellows of the Association for Computing Machinery. The international designation recognizes fundamental computing advances that drive economic growth. Karlin’s research interests include game theory, online algorithms and economics. The association recognized her “contributions to algorithms and to the boundary with systems, networking, data mining, and microeconomics.” UW’s Department of Computer Science & Engineering now has 12 active faculty members who are fellows of the association.

Early Entrance Program information session Jan. 10
Students, parents and middle-school teachers are invited to learn more about the Transition School/Early Entrance Program at the UW at an information session Jan. 10. The program facilitates early entry to the UW for a carefully selected group of 16 highly-capable students younger than 15 years old. RSVPs are being accepted for the information session, which will be conducted 6:30 – 8 p.m. in the Foege Genome Sciences Building’s auditorium, Room 060.

Robinson Center offers Saturday classes for K-8 students, teachers
From star-gazing to math equations to finding the perfect word for the last line of a poem, the Robinson Center’s Saturday Program has a full slate of math and writing classes. Two new science classes are being offered, one on Latin and the classical world and the other for elementary school teachers. Registration begins Jan. 7.

The successful candidate will serve as vice chair during the 2013-2014 academic year, as chair of the Faculty Senate during the 2014-2015 academic year and as chair of the Senate committee on planning and budgeting during the 2015-2016 academic year. This position requires a three year part-time commitment.

‘The Carbon Efficient City’ discusses sustainable development
“The Carbon Efficient City” is a new book co-authored by A-P Hurd, who teaches a graduate course on sustainable development and regional economics through the UW Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies. The book considers 10 ways to reduce carbon emissions in cities. Chief among these are reducing consumption, promoting reuse and restoration, coordinating regional transportation and focusing on neighborhoods.

The book was published earlier this year by University of Washington Press. Hurd, a vice president at Touchstone, a commercial real estate development company, explains the book in a UW Press video.

Gold, silver and bronze awards in 20 categories – ranging from most sustainable corporation to most sustainable non-government organization – were announced Nov. 20 in London.

The International Green Awards, accredited by the United Kingdom’s Royal Society of Arts, recognize innovative approaches to sustainability, according to the award website. The awards program was started in 2006 by Iain Patton, who operated a communications consulting business and later the Green Consultancy.

Gold in the most sustainable educational institutions category went to Bentleigh Secondary College, a public high school in Melbourne, Australia, and the silver to York University in England.

 UW launches website to help foster research collaboration
The Fostering Research Collaboration website, a doorway to interdisciplinary tools and resources, is now live.

On the website, researchers can access a faculty expertise and funding database, profiles of research centers and institutes, profiles of energy researchers, and collaborative resources such as the “Handbook for Leaders of Organized Research Units.” There’s also a link to the Complex Proposals Management Group, which offers consultation on the development and submission of collaborative proposals.

The site is meant to support faculty in obtaining and managing large collaborative projects, help faculty respond to emerging issues and decrease administrative burden on faculty and staff.

“As part of the Fostering Collaboration Initiative, one of our goals is it to continue to strengthen the university’s competitiveness in research, and provide solutions to society’s most pressing issues,” said Mary Lidstrom, vice provost for research.

The work is part of the larger UW Two Years to Two Decades Initiative, also known as 2y2d.

The university proposes amending Chapter 478-276 WAC to better conform to case law and statutory developments since the previous amendment; to modify business hours as provided in RCW 42.56.090; and to reflect current business practices.

Advance copies of the proposed WAC rules may be obtained by contacting Rebecca Goodwin Deardorff, director of rules coordination, Box 351210, Seattle, WA 98195 or by phone at 206-543-9219. Copies will also be available at the hearing.

Persons wishing to provide written comment may submit their remarks to Deardorff at the above address, by email to rules@uw.edu, or by fax to 206-685-3825, by Dec. 7, 2012.

To request disability accommodation for this hearing, contact the UW Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance of the event at: 206-543-6450/voice, 206-543-6452/TTY, 206-685-7264/fax, or by email at dso@u.washington.edu.

WWI Christmas Truce subject of Dec. 5 lecture

Mountcastle will sort the myth from the reality of the event. “It was not officially sanctioned by military authorities, and on some parts of the front, it did not occur,” said Mountcastle, “The war resumed in earnest the day after Christmas, and waged on for another three years, eventually claiming over 16.5 million lives.” There were no other holiday truces.

Cpl. John Ferguson of the British Army was heard to say at the time, “Here we were laughing and chatting to men whom only hours before we were trying to kill.”

The lecture, part of the UW’s ongoing History Lecture Series, is free and open to the public.

Winter weather on the way, UW has policies
With winter weather fast approaching, now is the time to review the UW’s policies on suspended operations and inclement weather. Learn about telework options, how pay and leave balances could be impacted and where to look for official UW announcements regarding operational status.

The Inclement Weather Policy addresses employee time off when the university is in operation, but local weather conditions are hazardous or impact transportation.

The Suspended Operations Policy is used when UW officials temporarily suspend non-essential operations, requiring only staff performing essential functions to report to work.

Rob Corser named among 30 ‘most admired educators’ in design
Rob Corser, UW assistant professor of architecture, has been named one of the 30 most admired educators in design for 2013 by the editors of DesignIntelligence magazine.

Each year DesignIntelligence, which is published by the Design Futures Council, names 30 educators in the field that the magazine considers exemplary.

DesignIntelligence wrote that Corser “has become one of the leaders in design and digital fabrication. He has established an energetic presence on campus that brings in­fectious enthusiasm and breadth of knowledge to students and his colleagues.”

Corser, who is also a member of the American Institute of Architects, said, “I’m honored to be included among such an outstanding group of educators – many of whom were teachers of mine. Since DesignIntelligence reaches out to industry professionals as well as other academics to compile this list, I’m pleased to know that my work is reaching a wide audience.”

The magazine’s staff selects the awards with input from thousands of design professionals, academic department heads and students. Educators and administrators from the disciplines of archi­tecture, industrial design, interior design and landscape architecture are considered.

Corser, who joined the UW in the fall of 2008, is a licensed architect in the state of California, and his professional experience includes work in San Francisco and London.

Amendments to the UW’s rules for student housing are proposed to limit the scope of the rules to the Seattle campus, to update the types of housing now offered to students, and to streamline administrative practices.

Advance copies of the proposed WAC rules may be obtained by contacting Rebecca Goodwin Deardorff, Director of Rules Coordination, Box 351210, Seattle, WA 98195 or by phone at 206-543-9219.  Copies will also be available at the hearing.

Persons wishing to provide written comment may submit their remarks to Ms. Deardorff at the above address, by email to rules@uw.edu or by fax to 206-685-3825, by Nov. 29.

To request disability accommodation for this hearing, contact the UW Disability Services Office at least ten days in advance of the event at: 206-543-6450/voice, 206-543-6452/TTY, 206-685-7264/fax, or by email at dso@u.washington.edu.

UW audiologists blogging this week about work in Amazon city

Martha Harney, clinical supervisor in the UW Speech and Hearing Clinic, and Libbey Gollhofer, doctoral student in audiology, are this week spending their mornings treating patients at the Viva o Som clinic and their afternoons working at a school for children with hearing loss and other disabilities.

“We fit one woman with a new hearing aid, and she was so thrilled to be able to hear us – it was very satisfying,” Gollhofer wrote on Monday.

The two are providing hearing tests and fitting hearing aids in some of Brazil’s poorest communities during a weeklong mission sponsored by the American Academy of Audiology Foundation in partnership with the Denmark-based Oticon Hearing Foundation, which also supplied hearing aids and batteries.

“It’s a great learning experience, to learn to do things in a remote clinic,” Gollhofer said before she left Seattle. “You don’t have all the expensive equipment that you’re used to. You have yourself and your skills.”

Information School holds 2012 Research Fair Thursday
How do communication technologies change our lives? How can America help its veterans to transition into technology work? How can touchscreen technology be improved for people with motor impairments?

Presenters in the UW Information School’s 2012 Research Fair pose these questions and dozens more as they showcase their scholarship and creative work to the campus community and the public.

About 40 posters and interactive demonstrations will be presented at the free event, to be held from 6:30 to 8 p.m., Nov. 15, at the Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture.

Richard Catalano becomes American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare fellow
Richard Catalano, director of the Social Development Research Group at the UW’s School of Social Work, was inducted as a fellow into the American Academy of Social Work and Social Welfare Nov. 10.

He is one of 17 fellows inducted by the academy this year.

As a fellow, Catalano joins an elite group of social work teachers, researchers and leaders, according to the academy’s website. The academy encourages and recognizes outstanding research, scholarship and social work practice.

Catalano is the Bartley Dobb Professor for the Study and Prevention of Violence and has dedicated more than 30 years to understanding the forces that propel young people to develop mental, emotional and behavioral problems.

Public health association adopts water resolution written by UW students
The American Public Health Association, at its annual meeting in San Francisco Oct. 27-31, voted to adopt a comprehensive approach to protecting coastal water quality by modernizing the nation’s Clean Water Act, which is 40 years old this year.  The resolution was written by six UW public health graduate students.

The students worked on the resolution as the culmination of a case study as part of their master of public health training program. The resolution was adopted in a unanimous vote by the association’s 202-member governing council Oct. 30. The association is the oldest and largest organization of public health professionals in the world

“We learned a great deal in our class about how various kinds of pollution are threatening the waterways surrounding the United States, and realized there were policy solutions to that problem,” said Peter Blackburn, who graduated with a master of public health degree in June. “Now is a critical time for this policy, given declining funding and recent court rulings limiting the Clean Water Act.”

Sophia Teshome, another member of the student authorship team who traveled to San Francisco to present the resolution, noted how unusual it is to get an education that includes such hands-on work. “We were lucky to have faculty members who gave us this assignment and encouraged us to bring our work forward to be judged by the full weight of the national professional organization.

Campus memorial for David Olson
The UW Department of Political Science will celebrate the life of David Olson, inaugural holder of the Harry Bridges Chair, from 3 to 4:30 p.m. Friday, Nov. 16, in 210 Kane. Olson passed away Sept. 15.

Olson was dedicated to ensuring working people had, as he often put it, “a seat at the table.” Both through his civic commitments and his charming personality, he brought together the unique constituencies represented by the Bridges Center: organized labor, civil servants and university students and faculty.

The event will feature a short program and reception. Please direct any questions about the event to Catherine Quinn in the UW political science department at cquinn83@uw.edu.

Harry Bridges Center celebrates 20 years
Nov. 16 and 17 the UW Department of Political Science will celebrate the 20^th anniversary of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies. The events start with a Friday evening keynote lecture by labor lawyer Tom Geoghegan, author of several books on labor law and the labor movement and a regular contributor to national publications like the New York Times and the Nation.

Saturday a special conference will discuss the accomplishments of the Bridges Chair, the state of the labor movement and the hard work that lies ahead. To learn more, call the Bridges Center at 206-543-7946 or e-mail hbcls@uw.edu.

Tool to manage power usage, patch common software available free

“The Tivoli Endpoint Manager program enables us to reduce our carbon footprint, increase savings and manage our computers more efficiently,” said Kelli Trosvig, vice president for UW-IT.

The program is provided at no charge to UW faculty and staff and is currently installed on more than 3,000 computers on the UW Seattle campus.

The software doesn’t affect computer performance. Software settings are pre-set, but can be adjusted to meet specific needs. Actual energy savings will be realized when computers are not used for an extended period of time (“sleep” mode), and will vary with individual use.

If you access your computer via Remote Desktop Connection, you may need to modify your settings.

Facilities Services financed the purchase of the project software and hopes to recoup part of the cost through a rebate from Seattle City Light.

UW receives first Upward Bound math-science grant in state
The University of Washington Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity received a five-year, $1.25 million Upward Bound math-science grant to help low-income and first-generation students succeed in high school and pursue post-secondary degrees, especially in science, technology, engineering and math fields.

It’s the first Upward Bound Math-Science grant, funded by U.S. Department of Education, awarded in Washington state. It will serve 65 students at Seattle’s Chief Sealth, Cleveland and Franklin high schools, and is a sister program to UW’s existing Upward Bound program that serves the same schools.

“We are excited to provide low-income and first-generation students with a chance to gain the skills needed to succeed and take advantage of the wealth of opportunities provided by our region’s high-tech economy,” said Dave Wolczyk, director of UW’s Upward Bound Math-Science program. “We are also hopeful this grant will allow us to contribute toward the efforts to close the state’s achievement gap that exists between low and higher income students in the fields of science, technology, engineering and math.”

Info transmission in neurons and networks topic of MathAcrossCampus
The brain is often thought of as a computer, taking in information and transforming it into new forms that allow it to drive actions. Learn how one mathematically quantifies how information is represented in neural systems during this quarter’s MathAcrossCampus lecture, 2:30-3:30 p.m., Nov. 9, in Kane 210.

Speaker Adrienne Fairhall, associate professor of physiology and biophysics and director of the UW Computational Neuroscience Program, will explain that in many sensory systems information is represented efficiently, even at the level of single neurons. Properties of single neurons can dramatically affect the way in which information at different timescales is propagated through neural networks.

MathAcrossCampus is a quarterly colloquium series meant to showcase applications of mathematics, to create a community of mathematicians and math users at UW and to help guide students and researchers looking for projects and jobs in math-related areas.

Sam Wasser, Conservation Canine program earn Alberta environmental award
UW’s Sam Wasser, the university’s Conservation Canine’s program and the energy firm Statoil Canada have received the Outstanding Achievement in Environmental Technology and Innovation Award for the province of Alberta. The award is from the Alberta Science and Technology Leadership Foundation.

Wasser, professor of biology, conducted a study using the conservation canines to find scat samples from caribou, moose and wolf during winter oil exploration programs in northern Alberta where oil sands, or tar sands, are found. The project, sponsored by Statoil, investigated the influences of wolf predation, habitat fragmentation and human use on caribou and moose stress and nutrition.

David Notkin, professor of computer science and engineering and the College of Engineering’s associate dean of research and graduate studies, is the UW liaison. The center will be managed by the two universities and will collaborate with the Governor’s new Office of Aerospace. The board of directors is expected to meet for the first time next month.

Sergent Gloria Galloway

Women’s self-defense classes start Thursday
The University of Washington Police Department is offering classes starting Nov. 1 for women interested in learning self-defense through the Rape Aggression Defense program.

The program teaches realistic self-defense movements that do not require special skills, years of practice or any particular level of fitness and was designed for women on university and college campuses.

Classes will be conducted Nov. 1, 8 and 15 with the morning section from 8 a.m. to noon and the afternoon section from 1:30 to 5:30 p.m. A limited number of spots remain for these free classes so register immediately if interested by contacting Lynda Pease at peasel@uw.edu or 206-685-0873.

The UW has been offering the program since 2008, started by then officer Gloria Galloway, now a sergeant. She had been a Rape Aggression Defense instructor at her previous agency and wished to get re-certified and implement the program at the UW. The UW police department approved her request and purchased the necessary equipment, including an aggressor suit for simulation training, also known as a red man suit because of its bright red color.

Because of the program’s popularity, the UWPD has added two additional instructors, officer Tom Warwick and administrative specialist Angela Roberts.

The program continues to be offered for free to community members, including faculty, students and staff as well as neighbors in the University District.

Transportation Services launches biennial survey of campus commuter
The UW is conducting a study to learn more about how students, faculty and staff commute to campus. The survey is required under state law and provides an important basis for long-range development plans, according to information from UW Transportation Services.         The results of the survey may also help improve transportation in and around the University District and provide important feedback about the UW’s U-PASS program.

During the next few weeks, a random selection of students, faculty and staff will be contacted by private research firm ORC International via email or telephone to complete a short, anonymous survey on their travel behavior. UW Transportation Services encourages those who are contacted to participate.

For each completed survey, ORC International will donate $1 to a UW undergraduate scholarship fund; if survey response rates are greater than 50 percent, a total donation of $1,600 will be made to the fund.

Summarized data will be available to the public sometime next year. Previous results can be found online at uwcommute.com/upass/reports.

Bicyclists invited to Ride in the Rain
UW students and employees won’t let the rain get them down this November. Each November, approximately 1,000 students, staff and faculty compete in the UW’s annual Ride in the Rain competition by logging their bicycle trips to and from campus. Participants compete as individuals or on teams, with prizes awarded for most bicycle trips, most prolific recruiter and most commute miles, among other categories. After the final scorecards have been tallied, the team with the most bicycle commute trips is awarded the coveted Soaked to the Gills trophy at the annual awards luncheon.

Each year, almost ten percent of participants indicate they’re new to bicycling. To get those new bicyclists up to speed and help more experienced bike commuters shake off the rust, UW Transportation Services offers a series of free classes throughout November, including Gear and Lights for Winter, Rules of the Road, Winter Bike Maintenance, and – on the lighter side – Holiday Gifts for Bicyclists.

Learn more and register for Ride in the Rain at www.uwcommute.com/riderain.

Runstad fellows present observations of Istanbul in ‘The Conflicted City’
A team of fellows from the UW Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies visited Istanbul and found a prosperous, expanding city in the process of rejoining the world stage. The center invites the public to a presentation of their observations titled “The Conflicted City: The Impacts of 21^st Century Urban Renewal, Hyper-Growth and Mass Urbanization” from 6:30 to 8 p.m. Thursday, Nov. 8, in Room 147 of Architecture Hall. The event is free and open to the public.

Indigenous Wellness Research Institute awarded $6.29 million to reduce health disparities
The Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, part of the UW School of Social Work, has received $6.29 million from the National Institutes of Health.

The UW School of Social Work is the first to receive this type of grant (called P-60), which is historically given to schools of public health. The NIH also named UW’s Indigenous Wellness Research Institute a Center of Excellence – one of 16 centers in America devoted to ending health disparities among minorities.

American Indians and Alaska Natives suffer from disproportionately high rates of cardiovascular disease, obesity, diabetes, HIV/AIDS, substance abuse and mental illness. Karina Walters, director of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, says that instead of following the Western scientific approach of addressing such health problems “from the outside in,” the institute advocates ways of healing and wellness deeply rooted in indigenous culture.

The grant will help the institute create new permanent space for scholarship, bring more students into health science research careers and expand its research and training activities with indigenous communities.

Imaging deep-water, extreme environments is first in series

• Oct. 24: “Volcanoes: Supporting Life Under the Sea.”Debbie Kelley, UW professor of oceanography, will discuss how imaging seafloor hot springs reveals biological communities thriving in some of the most extreme environments on Earth, and helps us understand the underwater volcanoes that form the largest mountain chain on the planet.
• Oct. 30: “Imaging Greenland’s Ice from Earth and Space.” Using high-resolution spaceborne cameras, helicopters, and a GPS-enabled camera, UW’s Ian Joughin of the Applied Physics Laboratory and International League of Conservation photographer Chris Linder are working to reveal and document changes to the vast ice sheets covering Greenland and Antarctica, which are shrinking as the climate warms and sea levels rise.
• Nov. 7: “Wildflowers, Climate Change, and Citizen Scientists.”Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, UW professor of biology, and doctoral candidate Elinore Theobald will discuss the power of crowd-sourcing in documenting flowers, pollinators and the entire Alpine and Montane ecosystems.
• Nov. 14: “Orcas in Puget Sound.”Senior vessel captain and field biologist Dave Ellifrit helped build and curate the photographic library of orcas in Puget Sound and will share highlights from the photo library, what it has revealed about orcas, and how it affects policy and research.

UW Libraries events mark Open Access Week
This week marks the sixth annual observation of Open Access Week. An alternative to the traditional, expensive and restrictive system of academic publication, open access to information involves the free, immediate, online access to the results of scholarly research, and the right to use and re-use those results as needed.

In support of International Open Access Week, the UW Libraries is conducting a number of events.

• “Open Data = Open Research,” Thursday, Oct. 25, 1:30-3 p.m., Room Green A, Research Commons, Allen Library – Following the philosophy of Open Access, Open Data is data that is openly available – with some exceptions – for discovery, access, and re-use.  Join us for an interdisciplinary look at examples of open data at UW, how open data can facilitate research, and which UW services are available to support making data more discoverable and accessible.
• “Sharing Ideas, Expanding Knowledge: Open Access as a Scholarly Publishing Alternative for the Future” – This exhibit will be installed later in October in the library at UW Bothell.  Selected slides from the exhibit are available online.

Ideas for Action, Evans School-sponsored project, announces grants
Cash awards from an innovation contest partly sponsored by the Evans School of Public Affairs are going to programs providing job training, financial education and mentoring and support services for women.

The competition, called Ideas for Action, offered grants to expand promising poverty-reducation. It was sponsored by the Evans School’s Nancy Bell Evans Center on Nonprofits & Philanthropy, with the Northwest Area Foundation and the Humphrey School of Public Affairs at the University of Minnesota.

Awards of $10,000 each will go to Arkansas Career Pathways, which connects people with community college job retraining; and The Financial Clinic, which provides financial education and mentoring. Awards of $5,000 each will go to the Crittenten Women’s Union, which supports women struggling with poverty or domestic abuse; and the Iowa Credit Union Foundation, which helps families build savings.

David S. Harrison, the Evans school senior lecturer who co-chaired Ideas for Action, said its aim was “to shine a light on imaginative and concerted efforts pushing back against historically high poverty levels in America.”

Ruth Johnston on board of sustainability association
Ruth A. Johnston, associate vice president for finance and facilities, has been elected to a three-year term with the Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education. The association, with 860 campus members, helps coordinate and strengthen campus sustainability efforts and is the first North American professional association for those interested in advancing campus sustainability.

The Health Resources and Services Administration’s Donation and Transplantation Community of Practice program gave awards based on key performance measurements. These included how quickly patients received a transplant after being placed on the waiting list, post-transplant graft survival rates and patient mortality rates while waiting for an organ to become available.

Of the 700 U.S. transplant programs reviewed, 174 were recognized for their achievements.

UW Medical Center was the only hospital in Washington state to receive three awards at the bronze level. In fiscal year 2011, UW Medical Center’s transplant volumes increased by approximately 9 percent. UW Medical Center transplant teams have performed more than 1,600 liver transplants, more than 1,500 kidney transplants and more than 500 heart transplants.

Pharmacy’s Jashvant Unadkat receives research achievement award
Jashvant Unadkat, University of Washington professor of pharmaceutics, has received the Research Achievement Award in Pharmacokinetics, Pharmacodynamics and Drug Metabolism from the American Association of Pharmaceutical Scientists. The association, a professional scientific society with 11,000 members worldwide, gives the award to individuals who have made groundbreaking scientific contributions to their area of research.

Unadkat studies how drugs are handled by the body, such as how they are absorbed, metabolized, excreted and distributed. His work helps prevent drug interactions and could potentially lead to better ways to treat diseases such as hepatitis C, AIDS and Alzheimer’s. For example, he developed a novel imaging technique to measure the activity of a transporter that carries an Alzheimer’s-causing peptide out of the brain, which could result in novel ways to treat this disease.

Unadkat received his award at the association’s annual meeting in Chicago.

Melinda Gates and Norm Rice

Evans School celebrates 50 years with gala dinner
The UW Evans School of Public Affairs capped the celebration of its 50^th anniversary with a gala fundraising dinner Oct. 4, in the recently renovated HUB Ballroom. All proceeds from the gala go to benefit student scholarships.

Melinda Gates, co-chair and trustee of the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, was the evening’s featured speaker. UW President Michael Young and former Gov. Dan Evans also spoke and Dorothy Bullitt, Evans School senior lecturer and distinguished practitioner, served as emcee.

Former Seattle Mayor Norm Rice, an Evans School alumnus and CEO of the Seattle Foundation, participated in a question and answer session with Gates after her speech.

Fair Labor Association exec speaks on campus tonight

Van Heerden is in Seattle for a weeklong meeting of the Fair Labor Association, of which the UW is a member.  The group is an international collaborative of companies, civil society organizations, colleges and universities working to end abusive labor practices worldwide.

Volunteers sought to plant 75 native trees Oct. 18 on shores of Montlake Cut
UW Grounds Management is hosting a tree planting on the Montlake Cut from 9 a.m. to 2 p.m., Thursday, Oct. 18. Volunteers are welcome to help put 75 native trees in the ground.

This planting is part of a restoration effort aimed at reducing invasive species along the cut while increasing the aesthetic and recreational value of the site, according to Hillary Burgess, UW graduate student in environmental and forest sciences and a staff member with Grounds Management.

Burgess was among several UW students, staff and friends who developed a video about ways to improve the plantings along the Montlake Cut that helped win $10,000 for the project from Odwalla Inc. The food company also will provide refreshments for next week’s work party.

Volunteers should gather at the Montlake Cut, just east of the Montlake Bridge and south of the Sound Transit construction; look for tents and gather in the grass.

Activities will include digging holes, placing trees, watering them and spreading mulch around the new plantings.  Gloves and tools will be provided.  Volunteers should wear sturdy shoes and be prepared for the weather.

Contact Burgess with any questions.

Fish and Wildlife director, a UW alum, speaks Oct. 3

The College of the Environment’s annual dean‘s lecture features Dan Ashe, director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service and alum of the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs. He’ll talk about how a networked approach to conservation can ensure the sustainability of North America’s land, water, wildlife and cultural resources.

The lecture “Wildlife in the Modern American Landscape” will be 7-8:30 p.m., Wednesday, Oct. 3, in Kane Hall 120. It is free and open to everyone with advance registration requested.

Ashe was confirmed in 2011 as the 16th director of the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service, the nation’s principal federal agency dedicated to the conservation of fish and wildlife and their habitats. He previously served as deputy director for policy and as science advisor to the director.

UW Rideshare options in face of Metro bus route cuts
Saturday marked the end of King County Metro Transit’s Ride Free Area downtown and launched what some have called Metro’s most sweeping service changes in history.  The U District, for example, no longer has Metro routes 133, 45 and 46, three direct-to-UW services that were cut.

“To help, UW Transportation Services sent targeted emails out to community members living in ZIP codes impacted by Metro’s service changes and cuts,” said UW’s Rideshare coordinator Sara Brydges. “The emails included information for other bus lines, Metro’s trip planner and carpool and vanpool options.”

UW Rideshare options include:

• Carpooling, where carpoolers not only save money by splitting gas costs, they receive discounted campus parking. A carpool of three students with U-PASSes, for instance, can park all-day anywhere on central campus for $3 per car, and down at E1 with only two people for only $2 per car.
• Zimride, which is a secure online network where users login using a UWNetID, lets them post or find rides. Users can even connect their Facebook profiles and use interactive Google maps.
• Vanpooling, which is for groups of five to 15 people who live at least three miles away from campus, uses vans provided by any local transit agency. The agency pays for van upkeep, gas and insurance costs, and all vanpools park for free on campus. Vanpoolers receive a fare credit through their U-PASS.