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President Cauce meets with Finnish Ambassador and delegation on innovation and collaboration

Aerial photo of the UW Seattle Campus
Aerial photo of the UW Seattle campus and surrounding Puget Sound. The Finnish delegation met with the UW as part of a series of meetings with business, academic, and governmental leaders in Seattle and Washington state. University of Washington

On November 4, 2021, University of Washington President Ana Mari Cauce welcomed a delegation from Finland, including Mikko Hautala, Ambassador of the Republic of Finland to the United States of America, and Timo Harakka, Minister of Transport and Communications, accompanied by a team of diplomatic officials. Sean Carr, incoming Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX), and Francois Baneyx, Director of CoMotion and Vice Provost for Innovation, joined the meeting to discuss areas of mutual interest for Finland and UW.

The delegation visited UW’s Seattle campus, as part of a tour of the Pacific Northwest, focused on building relationships with the region’s governmental officials, academic institutions, and business community. Washington state is home to an active and strongly-connected Finnish-American community, and the Finnish delegation had earlier signed an MOU with the state of Washington outlining future research and technological collaborations.

During a cordial exploratory meeting, President Cauce introduced the UW’s broad-based strengths in academic and applied research, emphasizing the expertise and experience of UW faculty and researchers in various areas such as the study of misinformation. In late 2019, the UW launched the Center for an Informed Public, an interdisciplinary and nonpartisan effort to translate and apply research on disinformation in policy, public engagement, technology, and education. Minister Harakka pointed to the importance of education in shaping the ability of citizens to resist misinformation and manipulation and the need for countries such as Finland to broadly build skills and increase literacy in areas such as artificial intelligence.

President Cauce noted the importance of ‘knowledge diplomacy’ between governments in a time of breakdown of many other forms of diplomacy. Communicating scientific research and information to the general public was seen by both groups as an important role for governance and academia, and an area of common interest and possible collaboration between Finnish institutions and UW.

GIX Bellevue

GIX’s headquarters in the Bellevue Steve Ballmer Building, hosts prototyping labs, event space, and three startups. GIX

Ambassador Hautala also underlined Finland’s focus on six US states for potential technological synergy and partnership. Helsinki and Seattle both host thriving start-up communities, and the University of Washington’s CoMotion and the Global Innovation Exchange create environments focused on experiential learning and technological innovation for students and faculty. As the incoming Executive Director, Carr highlighted the strong potential for collaboration in educational ventures with GIX for Finnish universities.

The meeting concluded with expressions of a shared sense of mission and collaboration among the Finnish delegation and UW representatives and optimism towards the many paths forward for collaboration between Finnish institutions and the UW.

Reframing Global Engagement at UW

Written by Anita Ramasastry, Henry M. Jackson Endowed Professor of Law, Director of the Sustainable International Development Graduate Program, and Faculty Director, International, Comparative and Transnational Programs

Anita RamasastryIn autumn of 2020, I was appointed as chair of the Global Engagement Strategy Task Force and charged with reimagining the role that the Office of Global Affairs (OGA) plays in informing and shaping the future of global engagement at the University of Washington.

Over the last year, I had the pleasure of not only diving deeply into discussion with seven peers from diverse units, but meeting with and learning from over 100 stakeholders from across the university.

This work took place at a time of inflection both for the UW broadly and for OGA. The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly transformed UW’s model for teaching and learning, it also put global travel including study abroad on hold. The pandemic also underscored the importance of UW providing administrative and social support structures for international students and researchers during a major global crisis. The Black Lives Matter movement and a renewed call to action for greater focus on anti-racist approaches to education prompted us to grapple with what it means for us to be globally engaged in a way that confronts issues of historica and contemporary racism and colonialism and is consistent with the UW’s overall approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. These challenges and opportunities shaped our process and our recommendations.

Five key recommendations emerged for the future work of OGA:

  1. Shift OGA’s focus from being a steward of policies and procedures to being a builder of global learning and research communities
  2. Serve as a portal and ambassador for stewarding and advancing institution-wide relationships with key global actors — from international organizations, such as the UN and the World Bank, to key foundations and think tanks
  3. Catalyze global teaching and education beyond study abroad, ensuring a global education for all through the use of technology
  4. Identify and work to eliminate the structural barriers that prevent many BIPOC faculty, staff, and students from leveraging OGA’s services and programs
  5. Continue to provide broad administrative support (travel security, MOUs, etc.) for the myriad global partnerships, but also invest more substantially in fewer, deeper, and bi-directional partnerships

Collectively, we are eager to see OGA build a richer ecosystem for global engagement at the UW. UW has a strong commitment to global citizenship. We now have the chance to expand and reframe our approach.

Download the full report


OGA would like to give a special thank you and acknowledgement of the tremendous service of the task force members: Anita Ramasastry (Chair), School of Law; Gayle Christensen, Office of Global Affairs; Leela Fernandes, Jackson School of International Studies; Debra Glassman, Foster School of Business; Stephanie Harrington, College of the Environment; Joe Lott, College of Education; Rebecca Neumann, College of Engineering; Judd Walson, Schools of Public Health & Medicine

Population Health: UW & Aga Khan University partnership leads to research, learning, and health collaborations


The University of Washington and the Aga Khan University have partnered substantially over the past years to advance global population health and link their institutions. Through these collaborations, students, faculty, and researchers have benefited from the shared expertise and exchange in a range of areas and disciplines.

Read more about the history and impact of this partnership and the Office of Global Affairs and Global Innovation Fund’s involvement below:

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“There were a lot of synergies between our two institutions not just in terms of our social justice missions, but around the values of what this partnership holds,” Farzana Karim-Haji, director of the Aga Khan University Partnerships Office, said. “The Population Health Initiative at UW draws parallels to AKDN’s Quality of Life Initiative, where both are focused on a holistic view of improving the overall human condition from a variety of aspects in health, education, poverty alleviation, climate change, etc.”

Professor named to UN working group

When law professor Anita Ramasastry began teaching at the University of Washington in 1996, she was working on an article about banks’ responsibilities around human rights, to the bemusement of her peers. But Ramasastry’s decades-long focus on the intersection of commerce and human rights paid off. In July, she was appointed to serve on the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights. Ramasastry will represent all of Western Europe, North America and Australia-Pacific, one of five UN regions and arguably the most competitive. She was selected out of a field of 22 applicants.

Read more from UW Today…

 

Professor embarks on 100th field course in Indonesia

A chance meeting with a fellow scientist 27 years ago forever changed Randy Kyes’ life — catapulting him from North Carolina to Indonesia and beyond. As the founding director of the University of Washington’s Center for Global Field Study and head of the Division of Global Programs at the Washington National Primate Research Center, Kyes has spent almost three decades leading field courses on environmental and global health in a dozen countries.

Often accompanied by students from the UW and around the United States, Kyes spends about seven months of the year traveling to remote sites in places such as Indonesia and Nepal, leading study abroad programs and  conducting field courses and K-12 outreach efforts for local people.

In late July, Kyes — who is also a research professor in psychology and an adjunct research professor in global health and anthropology — will lead his 100th field course, in Thailand. He sat down with UW Today recently to talk about his work.

 

Read more from UW Today…

Tracing China’s past with geologic and oral history

A paper published this week in Science finds evidence to support stories that a huge flood took place in China about 4,000 years ago, during the reign of Emperor Yu. The study, led by Chinese researcher Qinglong Wu, finds evidence for a massive landslide dam break that could have redirected the course of the Yellow River, giving rise to the legendary flood that Emperor Yu is credited with controlling.

An accompanying commentary by David Montgomery, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences, discusses how this finding supports the historical basis for traditional tales about China’s Great Flood. It even explains some details of the classic folk story.

Read more from UW Today…