The latest news from the UW

The University of Washington has chosen 14 researchers across campus to receive this year’s UW Innovation Awards. The awards are given to encourage early and mid-career scientists to pursue projects that may not yet qualify for outside funding, but show future promise and will engage students in innovative, creative work. “These are some of the most creative thinkers in our midst and are at the heart of the UW’s innovation ecosystem. We congratulate them for fueling the innovative research and…

There is a widely recognized gender gap in the English language Wikipedia. Two members of the campus community are teaming to offer a four-hour hands-on workshop and discussion to bring feminist dialogues and theory to the information website, the seventh most-viewed in the United States. The event, titled “I Love To You: Critical Wikipedia Edit-a-Thon,” will be from 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Saturday, Feb. 14, in the UW Research Commons. It is being organized by Amanda Menking, a doctoral…

Pardon, Princeton. Step aside, Harvard. Maybe next time, Yale and Columbia — this one’s going to the University of Washington Department of English. UW colleges and departments are often named among the best in the country for science, technology and research. But the latest ranking has more to do with semi-colons than computer algorithms: USA Today has named the UW English Department as the third-best in the country for English majors. “The university challenges students to view the world through…

The Green Seed Fund, a grant fund for sustainability research projects at the UW, will award money to six projects that contribute to the university’s sustainability goals, are well-planned and achievable and will help the UW reduce its greenhouse gas emissions. The six winning projects for 2015 will share about $250,000 in grant money and were chosen by a committee of students, faculty and staff. The projects are: Carbon challenge: Footprint reduction through curricular development and community building: This UW…

Amy Snover, director of the UW’s Climate Impacts Group and assistant dean for applied research in the UW’s College of the Environment, has been named a White House Champions of Change for her work in promoting climate education and literacy. She will be honored during a ceremony Monday at the White House from 10 a.m. – noon Pacific Time. The event includes a panel discussion where participants will talk about their work and the challenges and opportunities they encountered. The…

Laurie Olin, teacher, artist, innovator and one of landscape architecture’s most famous names, will return to his alma mater to deliver the College of Built Environments’ 2015 Dean’s Distinguished Lecture at 6 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 11, in Architecture Hall. His talk will be titled “Global, Regional, Local; Working Toward a Meaningful Landscape.” Olin is known for his design of Battery Park City and Bryant Park in New York City, as well as the London’s Bishopsgate, the outdoor sculpture garden at…

The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation has worked for years with the University of Washington Information School‘s Technology & Social Change Group on the foundation’s multi-year Global Libraries Initiative, dedicated to improving digital connectivity around the world. The Gates Foundation announced in May 2014 that the initiative is entering a three- to five-year winding-down phase and is creating a “legacy strategy” to help leave the library field in strong shape after that time. The strategy is still being drafted, but…

Are you a UW alum or other local educator who’s passionate about your work and willing to talk publicly about it? The UW College of Education and the Seattle Times are hosting a storytelling event at the university on Feb. 25 and are looking for a handful of teachers to share five-minute personal stories onstage. To be considered, call the Seattle Times at 206-464-2057 and leave a two-minute, condensed version of your story and your full name, phone number and…

A recent study found that graduates of the University of Washington’s two early-entrance university programs excelled in their academic and subsequent professional lives. The study was published in January in Roeper Review, a publication focused on education for gifted students. It looked at the academic, professional and personal outcomes for 192 students in the UW Early Entrance Program, which started in 1977 and enrolls students as young as age 13, and UW Academy, an early admission program started in 2001….

The 2015 Super Bowl just got serious, because now it involves a bet over delicious seafood between dining services at the University of Washington and the University of Massachusetts. UMass threw down the gauntlet, in the form of lobster, and the UW responded with crab. Here’s the bet: If the Seahawks win, UMass will provide a seafood dinner — a clambake of lobster, clams, steamers, corn and Boston cream pie — for eight lucky students in UW housing chosen at…

Three members of the UW College of the Environment are among the first 20 recipients of a Wilburforce Fellowship, a new year-long training for conservation scientists in Western North America. The year-long program provides communication and leadership training to help build a community of conservation scientists and encourage them to reach beyond the scientific audiences. The three UW fellows are: Jonathan Bakker, an associate professor in the UW’s School of Environmental and Forest Sciences who works on the restoration of…

The University of Washington’s eScience Institute and GitHub, a code-sharing and publishing service, are hosting a town hall discussion on campus 6-9 p.m. Monday, Feb. 2, to talk about the role of software in academic research today. Six panelists will give short presentations, followed by a discussion moderated by Arfon Smith with GitHub. Dan Halperin, director of research in scalable data analytics at UW’s eScience Institute, and Marina Meila, a UW associate professor of statistics, will join other speakers from…

All faculty are invited to a town hall discussion of the proposed new faculty salary policy at 2:45 p.m. Wednesday, Feb. 4, in the Walker Ames Room (225) in Kane Hall. The first half of the program will be devoted to a panel discussion and debate of the major arguments for and against the policy that have emerged so far. The five faculty panelists and the moderator come from diverse units:  Arts & Sciences, Medicine, Business, Public Health, UW Bothell,…

Kristy Leissle, a lecturer in the UW Bothell School of Interdisciplinary Arts and Sciences, will appear in an episode of the PBS television series “Nature” tonight, Jan. 28. The episode, titled “Penguin Post Office,” is about a unique British post office located in the heart of the Antarctic Peninsula at Port Lockroy, about 700 miles south of Argentina and Chile. The spot is Antarctica’s most popular tourist destination, with cruise ship passengers from around the world coming ashore to see…

The University of Washington Center for Philosophy for Children will host the 2015 Washington State High School Ethics Bowl on campus Saturday, January 31. The event is modeled after the Intercollegiate Ethics Bowl and involves teams of high school students competing to analyze wide-ranging ethical dilemmas. Twenty-three high school bowls will take place around the country during this school year. Winners of the regional events will advance to the National High School Ethics Bowl, to be held in April at…

The online Legislative Explorer, the big-data policy project by John Wilkerson and Nicholas Stramp of the UW political science department, has been named an award of excellence winner in interactive design by Communication Arts, an international trade journal of visual communications. Their website, www.legex.org, which tracks all Congressional legislation in the last 40 years, also was named among the 18 best infographics of 2014 by the business magazine Fast Company. That magazine featured the site among “stellar examples of the…

The UW seismologists couldn’t have asked for a better football game to monitor fan-generated stadium shaking. And indeed, the Seahawks’ improbable comeback victory in Sunday’s NFC Championship Game showed the biggest vibrations ever recorded at CenturyLink Field. See also: “How the ‘Beast Quake’ is helping scientists track real earthquakes” (Jan. 7) “Packers versus Seahawks game analysis” by UW’s Steve Malone (Jan. 19) “Seismologists analyze last week’s game, prepare for more stadium shaking” (Jan. 15) The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network‘s analysis…

A record 36,528 freshman applications – an increase of 5,000, or 16 percent, over last year – were submitted to the University of Washington for the 2015 academic year, according to figures released by the UW’s admissions office.  Increases occurred among all categories: 12 percent from Washington residents, 19 percent from other parts of the U.S., and 18 percent from international applicants. Approximately two-thirds of available slots in the freshman class are reserved for state residents. “This surge of applications…

The University of Washington Dance Program begins its 50th anniversary with the 2015 Dance Faculty Concert which, advance notes say, “includes everything from flying bodies to soup cans that playfully and architecturally define space.” The concert will feature choreography by UW dance faculty members Rachael Lincoln and Wilson Mendieta, with guests Holley Farmer, an alumna and Broadway veteran, and well-known local choreographer Mary Sheldon (Molly) Scott. The show will feature live and recorded music by Stuart Dempster and Paul Moore…

UW seismologists (and everyone else in the region) got their wish: The Seahawks won last Saturday, and will play another hometown game in front of a cheering crowd that can rock the stadium. The Pacific Northwest Seismic Network’s post-game seismic analysis of the Jan. 10 game shows 197,000 page requests, almost twice as many as during last year’s NFC finals when the group first outfitted CenturyLink stadium with seismic equipment. (Read more here.) The first test of the new, faster…

The eyes of the world are on France in the wake of the deadly shootings at the office of satirical weekly Charlie Hebdo. The Jan. 7 act of terrorism has sparked questions about radical Islam, European unity and conflicts in the Middle East. The University of Washington’s Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies will hold a roundtable discussion on these issues and more, 7 to 9 p.m. Wednesday, Jan. 21, in Room 101 of Thomson Hall. The event —…