UW News

College of Arts & Sciences


March 6, 2024

Scientists CT-scanned thousands of natural history specimens, which you can access for free

Natural history museums have entered a new stage of discovery and accessibility — one where scientists around the globe and curious folks at home can access valuable museum specimens to study, learn or just be amazed. This new era follows the completion of openVertebrate, or oVert, a five-year collaborative project among 18 institutions to create 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and make them freely available online. The team behind this endeavor, which includes scientists at the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, published a summary of the project March 6 in the journal BioScience, offering a glimpse of how the data can be used to ask new questions and spur the development of innovative technology.


February 28, 2024

UW graduate receives prestigious Gates Cambridge scholarship

woman in library

Sonia Fereidooni, who earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees from the University of Washington, was selected for the prestigious Gates Cambridge Scholarship. Fereidooni, 22, will receive a full-cost scholarship to pursue doctoral work in Digital Humanities at the University of Cambridge, England. The highly competitive scholarship brings recognition of accomplishments and future promise. This year, 26 students…


February 15, 2024

First-ever atomic freeze-frame of liquid water

In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, an international team co-led by University of Washington scientists has isolated the energetic movement of an electron in a sample of liquid water — while “freezing” the motion of the much larger atom it orbits.


February 8, 2024

Foul fumes pose pollinator problems

Scientists at the University of Washington have discovered that nighttime air pollution — coming primarily from car exhaust and power plant emissions — is responsible for a major drop in nighttime pollinator activity. Nitrate radicals (NO3) in the air degrade the scent chemicals released by a common wildflower, drastically reducing the scent-based cues that its chief pollinators rely on to locate the flower. The findings, published Feb. 9 in Science, are the first to show how nighttime pollution creates a chain of chemical reactions that degrades scent cues, leaving flowers undetectable by smell. The researchers also determined that pollution likely has worldwide impacts on pollination.


January 5, 2024

Husky football players take their skills from the field to the classroom and beyond

Holly Barker, a University of Washington teaching professor of anthropology, and three current members of the UW football team — Ulumoo Ale, Makell Esteen and Faatui Tuitele — are studying how the skills they develop to maximize their chances of victory on the field have applications outside the stadium. Their work, which is ongoing, is showing that the research methods and analytical abilities of student-athletes are applicable in academic and research settings, as well as jobs in a variety of fields.


December 19, 2023

Scientists reveal superconductor with on/off switches

Researchers led by Jiun-Haw Chu, a University of Washington associate professor of physics, and Philip Ryan, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, have found a superconducting material that is uniquely sensitive to outside stimuli, enabling the superconducting properties to be enhanced or suppressed at will. This discovery could enable new opportunities for switchable, energy-efficient superconducting circuits.


December 12, 2023

Holiday blahs? Why social connection, even talking to strangers, can help

A close up of two women and a girl that look like family, looking at a book or a screen and sharing a laugh.

Milla Titova, assistant teaching professor of psychology and director of the Happiness and Well-Being Lab at the UW, offers strategies for joy this holiday season.


December 11, 2023

New faculty books: Story and comic collection, Washington state fossils, colonial roots of intersex medicine

Three book covers on a wooden table background

Three new faculty books from the University of Washington cover wide-ranging topics: life in the Rio Grande Valley, fossils of Washington state and the colonial roots of contemporary intersex medicine. UW News talked with the authors to learn more. Collection highlights life in Rio Grande Valley “Puro Pinche True Fictions” is a collection of short…


November 13, 2023

UW Department of Atmospheric Sciences maintains No. 1 global ranking; more than two dozen UW subjects in top 50

campus entrance

Six University of Washington subjects ranked in the top 10, and atmospheric sciences maintained its position as No. 1 in the world on the Global Ranking of Academic Subjects list for 2023. The ranking, released at the end of October, was conducted by researchers at the ShanghaiRanking Consultancy, a fully independent organization dedicated to research on higher education intelligence and consultation.


November 8, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: Diversity Lecture Series, Jacob Lawrence Gallery Reopening, Sacred Breath, and more.

This week, attend the Diversity Lecture Series “Unveiling Maternal Morbidity and Mortality in the United States”, celebrate the Jacob Lawrence Gallery Reopening, listen to Indigenous storytellers at Sacred Breath, and more. November 13, 3:00 – 4:30pm | Diversity Lecture Series: “Unveiling Maternal Morbidity and Mortality in the United States: Disparities and Challenges in Women’s Health”,…


November 2, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: UW Pandemic Project Radical Listening Session, National First-Generation College Celebration, and more

This week, attend the UW Pandemic Project’s Radical Listening Session to honor each individual’s lived pandemics experiences, head to Meany Hall for Garrick Ohlsson’s piano performance, celebrate Diwali with the Burke Museum, and more. November 7, 4:30 – 6:00pm | Sharon Stein, “The University and Its Responsibility for Repair: Confronting Colonial Foundations and Enabling Different…


October 26, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: Grammy-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth, Labor Studies Annual Awards Celebration, and more

This week, check out Grammy-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth’s performance, an ingenious dark comedy written by Jen Silverman, attend the Labor Studies Annual Awards Celebration Banquet, and more. November 2, 7:30pm | Roomful of Teeth with Gabriel Kahane, Meany Hall  The Grammy-winning vocal group Roomful of Teeth continue to expand the capabilities of the…


Fruit, nectar, bugs and blood: How bat teeth and jaws evolved for a diverse dinnertime

There are more than 200 species of noctilionoid bats, mostly in the American tropics. And despite being close relatives, their jaws evolved in wildly divergent shapes and sizes to exploit different food sources. A paper published Aug. 22 in Nature Communications shows those adaptations include dramatic, but also consistent, modifications to tooth number, size, shape and position. For example, bats with short snouts lack certain teeth, presumably due to a lack of space. Species with longer jaws have room for more teeth — and, like humans, their total tooth complement is closer to what the ancestor of placental mammals had.


October 19, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: Fall Concert with DXARTS, Dance Graduate Research Symposium and more

This week, check out the Fall Concert hosted by DXARTS (Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media), attend the Dance Graduate Research Symposium, listen to guest composer concerts, and more. October 25, 7:30pm | DXARTS FALL CONCERT: Ritual-Entropy-Storm, Meany Hall  Join the Department of Digital Arts and Experimental Media (DXARTS) as they host a Fall…


October 18, 2023

UW’s Chandan Reddy named one of six ‘Freedom Scholars’ for work on race, gender and sexuality

Chandan Reddy, an associate professor of gender, women and sexuality studies and of the comparative history of ideas at the University of Washington, has been named a “Freedom Scholar” by the Marguerite Casey Foundation.


October 17, 2023

Closing in on the elusive neutrino

In a paper published Sept. 6 in Physical Review Letters, an international team of researchers in the United States, Germany and France reported that a distinctive strategy they have used shows real promise to be the first approach to measure the mass of the neutrino. Once fully scaled up, their collaboration — Project 8 — could also reveal how neutrinos influenced the early evolution of the universe as we know it.


UW’s Briana Abrahms chosen as a Packard Fellow for 2023

Briana Abrahms, a University of Washington assistant professor of biology and researcher with the UW Center for Ecosystem Sentinels, has been named a 2023 Packard Fellow for Science and Engineering, according to an Oct. 16 announcement from the David and Lucille Packard Foundation. As one of 20 new fellows across the country, Abrahms, who holds the Boersma Endowed Chair in Natural History and Conservation, will receive $875,000 over five years for her research.


October 10, 2023

“Ways of Knowing” Episode 8: Translation

When you hear a cover of a favorite song, comparisons are inevitable. There are obvious similarities – the lyrics, the melody – but there are also enough differences to make each version unique. Those deviations say more than you might expect.     Maya Angela Smith, associate of professor of French at the University of…


“Ways of Knowing” Episode 7: Material Culture

Picture a series of uniform mounds of earth, each about 6-feet high. Enclosing 50 acres, the mounds form an octagon that is connected to a circle. This is The Octagon Earthworks, located in central Ohio, and it’s one of thousands of Indigenous mounds across the eastern half of North America.     Chadwick Allen is…


“Ways of Knowing” Episode 6: Visual Literacy

An empty wallet, a hairbrush, a diaper. These are just a few of the items left behind by migrants at the United States-Mexico border, photographed for a 2021 article in the Los Angeles Times. In this episode, Diana Ruíz discusses how the same images can be used on both sides of the same debate. In…


“Ways of Knowing” Episode 5: Disability Studies

Who gets to be a superhero? What about a villain? It depends on where you look. In the 1940s, comic book villains were often distinguished from heroes through physical disability. That changed in the 1960s and 70s, when it became more common for heroes – think Daredevil and Professor X – to be built around…


“Ways of Knowing” Episode 4: Environmental Humanities

Centuries ago, writers depicted the natural world as terrifying and dangerous, no place for humans. But that fear, in the decades to come, gradually turned to appreciation, awe and joy, for poets and artists, sightseers and backpackers.     Louisa Mackenzie, associate professor of comparative history of ideas at the University of Washington, describes how…


“Ways of Knowing” Episode 3: Close Reading Redux

The autobiography of Frederick Douglass, published in 1845, was a standard bearer of the abolitionist movement. Having escaped slavery as a young man, Douglass became a famous activist, orator, statesman and businessman.   But it is another aspect of his story that is just as intriguing to Habiba Ibrahim, professor of English at the University…


“Ways of Knowing” Episode 2: Close Reading

“Dover Beach,” a poem by 19th century British writer Matthew Arnold, can be read as both a romantic lament and, as many scholars have concluded, a dark, existential commentary on the loss of religious faith.     Through close reading, a way of reading for insight, not information, University of Washington English Professor Charles LaPorte…


“Ways of Knowing” Episode 1: Reading

What marks the start of the Anthropocene – the geological epoch marked by human impact on the planet? The debate hinges, in part, on how we define “signature events,” the important information left behind as clues. But finding signature events transcends the study of the Anthropocene; it’s how we read to make meaning of a…


October 5, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: A Conversation with Emily M. Bender, Dubal Memorial Lecture, and more

This week, learn why Emily Bender believes “AI” is a bad term, take part in the Dubal Memorial Lecture on ‘Race, Science, and Pregnancy Trials in the Postgenomic Era’, view the film screening of Tortoise Under the Earth, and more. October 12, 7:00 – 8:30pm | Jewish History and Jewish Memory Revisited: ‘Zakhor’ at 40,…


October 3, 2023

Group seeks to understand how a new type of satellite will impact Earth-based astronomy

Astronomers with the International Astronomical Union are trying to understand how the brightness and transmissions of the BlueWalker3 satellite will interfere with Earth-based observations of the universe — and what can be done to minimize these effects as more of these satellites are launched.


September 28, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: Faculty Concert, The Secret Language of Art Radicals, and more

This week, explore “how to use art for resistance” with Elisheba Johnson, head to Meany Hall for an engaging performance by the Turtle Island Quartet, and more. October 2, 7:30pm | Faculty Concert: UW Faculty Brass, Meany Hall UW faculty brass instructors and Seattle Symphony members David Gordon (trumpet), John DiCesare (tuba), John Turman (French…


September 21, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: Kicking the school year off with the Henry Art Gallery, Dawg Daze, and more

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week. This week, attend gallery exhibitions, Dawg Daze events, and more. As the UW community returns to campus, consider taking advantage of campus perks available to UW employees and students: Free admission to the Henry Art Gallery and Burke Museum Discounted tickets to performances…


September 19, 2023

Five UW faculty members elected as AGU Fellows, plus more honors

block W

The American Geophysical Union announced Sept. 13 that five University of Washington faculty members have been elected as new fellows, representing the departments of astronomy, Earth and space sciences, oceanography, global health, and environmental and occupational health sciences.


September 14, 2023

Faculty/staff honors: Two professors on TIME100 AI list, UW President Ana Mari Cauce honored for contributions to León, and more

Recent recognition for the University of Washington includes Emily M. Bender and Yejin Choi on the TIME100 AI list, President Ana Mari Cauce receiving a Decrees Award and Jeff Hou’s election to the American Society of Landscape Architects’ Council of Fellows.


September 11, 2023

Q&A: New book examines intersection between climate and information crises

A pile of garbage on the beach behind a laptop computer, which has a hand holding a globe on the screen.

Adrienne Russell, professor of communication at the University of Washington, examines in her new book how journalism, activism, corporations and Big Tech battle to influence the public about climate change.


August 29, 2023

Researchers prefer same-gender co-authors, UW study shows

A group of people at a table with papers and water bottles.

A new study from the University of Washington and Cornell University shows researchers more likely to write scientific papers with co-authors of the same gender, a pattern that can’t be explained by varying gender representations across scientific disciplines and time.


August 10, 2023

Muon g-2 doubles down with latest measurement, explores uncharted territory in search of new physics

A particle physics experiment decades in the making — the Muon g-2 experiment — looks increasingly like it might set up a showdown over whether there are fundamental particles or forces in the universe that are unaccounted for in the current Standard Model. On Aug. 10, the international team of scientists behind Muon g-2 — pronounced “g minus 2” — released the world’s most precise measurement yet of the anomalous magnetic moment of the muon. Calculating the muon’s magnetic moment at a high precision will indicate whether it is interacting solely with the particles and forces known today, or if unknown particles or forces are out there.


July 31, 2023

New algorithm ensnares its first ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid

An asteroid discovery algorithm — designed to uncover near-Earth asteroids for the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s upcoming 10-year survey of the night sky — has identified its first “potentially hazardous” asteroid, a term for space rocks in Earth’s vicinity that scientists like to keep an eye on. The roughly 600-foot-long asteroid, designated 2022 SF289, was discovered during a test drive of the algorithm with the ATLAS survey in Hawaii. Finding 2022 SF289, which poses no risk to Earth for the foreseeable future, confirms that the next-generation algorithm, known as HelioLinc3D, can identify near-Earth asteroids with fewer and more dispersed observations than required by today’s methods. That is important because, though scientists know of more than 2,000 near-Earth asteroids, they estimate that another 3,000 await discovery!


July 19, 2023

Researchers put a new twist on graphite

A team led by researchers at the University of Washington reports that it is possible to imbue graphite — the bulk, 3D material found in No. 2 pencils – with physical properties similar to graphite’s 2D counterpart, graphene. Not only was this breakthrough unexpected, the team also believes its approach could be used to test whether similar types of bulk materials can also take on 2D-like properties. If so, 2D sheets won’t be the only source for scientists to fuel technological revolutions. Bulk, 3D materials could be just as useful.


June 28, 2023

New faculty books: Story of oysters, Cherokee oral history, moral contradictions of religion

Three book covers on a wooden table.

Three new faculty books from the University of Washington cover wide-ranging topics: oysters, the moral contradictions of religion, and Cherokee creature names and environmental relationships.


June 27, 2023

Researchers make a quantum computing leap with a magnetic twist

This artistic depiction shows electron fractionalization — in which strongly interacting charges can “fractionalize” into three parts — in the fractional quantum anomalous Hall phase.

A team led by scientists and engineers at the University of Washington has announced a significant advancement in developing fault-tolerant qubits for quantum computing. In a pair of papers published June 14 in Nature and June 22 in Science, they report that, in experiments with flakes of semiconductor materials — each only a single layer of atoms thick — they detected signatures of “fractional quantum anomalous Hall” (FQAH) states. The team’s discoveries mark a first and promising step in constructing a type of fault-tolerant qubit because FQAH states can host anyons — strange “quasiparticles” that have only a fraction of an electron’s charge. Some types of anyons can be used to make what are called “topologically protected” qubits, which are stable against any small, local disturbances.


June 8, 2023

Video: UW School of Drama lead costumer retires after 15 years

Inside Hutchinson Hall, home of the University of Washington School of Drama, students work at tables as they learn to assemble patterns based on costume designs. They’re surrounded by dress forms, bolts of cloth, sewing machines and costumes in progress. This is the Costume Shop, the domain of Val Mayse, master dressmaker for the School of Drama.


June 1, 2023

ArtSci Roundup: 2023 Awards of Excellence, Graduation, Dino Lecture, Summer Reads and more

This week and summer, honor the 2023 Awards of Excellence recipients, visit the newly renovated Jacob Lawrence Gallery to see the works of design students, add one of College of Arts & Sciences Dean Dianne Harris’ favorite books to your summer reading list, learn about the largest animals to ever roam the earth at the…



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