News and Updates

The University of Washington is home to the new Molecular Engineering Materials Center — a national center of excellence for research, education and training in materials science. The center is a partnership among UW faculty from the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering, the Clean Energy Institute and the Molecular Engineering & Sciences Institute and will reinforce the UW’s record of innovative, collaborative and cross-disciplinary research in the materials sciences.

The center is funded by a $15.6 million, six-year grant from the National Science Foundation as part of its highly competitive Materials Research Science and Engineering Center program. Funding for the UW’s Molecular Engineering Materials Center began Sept. 1. The NSF supports 20 MRSECs across the nation, and the UW’s is one of only two on the West Coast.

Read more about the UW MRSEC from UW News.

The University of Washington’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME) is celebrating 20 years of the Global Burden of Disease study. Join IHME and The Lancet for a series of events, including panel discussions and a keynote by Bill Gates, Co-Chairman of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, and Dr. Jim Yong Kim, President of the World Bank.

The Global Burden of Disease is the world’s largest systematic, scientific effort to quantify the magnitude of health loss from all major diseases, injuries, and risk factors by age, sex, and population. With 2,303 collaborators in 130 countries and territories, the study examines 332 diseases and injuries and 84 risk factors and has helped transform health care policy in numerous countries. Learn more here.

For the second consecutive year, the University of Washington has been ranked No. 25 on the Times Higher Education world rankings for 2018, released Tuesday. Among U.S. public institutions the UW is again ranked fourth — a position it has held for the last two years as well. Read more from UW Today.

The University of Washington and the Seattle Housing Authority (SHA) have signed a memorandum of understanding for the two organizations to develop affordable housing in the University District. The goal is to create a minimum of 150 affordable units that will be income restricted to those making 60 percent or less of area median income­­. Read more from UW News.

On Thursday, the Seattle Chamber hosted guests for an education-focused panel on Career Connected Learning. The Chamber is communicating with their members and other business about the need to ready themselves for the workforce of the future. Career-connected learning is a continuum of awareness, exploration, preparation and workforce experiences developed through strong public and private partnerships. Vice President Randy Hodgins, UW Office of External Affairs, joined Jeneé Myers, special advisor, postsecondary success & advancement, and other speakers from Seattle Colleges, Washington STEM and the Seattle Region Partnership for the panel discussion.