Founder of World Justice Project, former top Microsoft lawyer Bill Neukom to chair advisory board for UW Population Health Initiative

November 13, 2019

Founder of World Justice Project, former top Microsoft lawyer Bill Neukom to chair advisory board for UW Population Health Initiative

Known for his decades-long leadership of Microsoft’s law and corporate affairs team and then at the American Bar Association, his success as CEO of the San Francisco Giants and founder/CEO of the World Justice Project, Bill Neukom will now chair the external advisory board for the University of Washington Population Health Initiative. The university initiative is a 25-year, interdisciplinary effort to bring understanding and solutions to the biggest challenges facing communities, and revolves around three major pillars — human health, environmental resilience…

November 12, 2019

ArtsUW Roundup: Public opening of ‘In Plain Sight,’ view ALTAR: Ritual, Prayer, Offering — and more

This week in the arts, join poet Cedar Sigo at the Burke, learn about the translation of comics, attend a performance by Gabriel Kahane and School of Music faculty, and more! Closing Reception for ALTAR: Ritual, Prayer, Offering November 22, 6:30 – 8:30 pm | Jacob Lawrence Gallery Altars are often erected to pay homage to an ancestor or to honor (a) God or a saint. This exhibition takes the altar out of its religious context and interrogates photography as…

New Weill Neurohub will unite UCSF, UC Berkeley, UW in race to find new treatments for brain diseases

With a $106 million gift from the Weill Family Foundation, UC Berkeley, UC San Francisco and the University of Washington have launched the Weill Neurohub, an innovative research network that will forge and nurture new collaborations between neuroscientists and researchers working in an array of other disciplines — including engineering, computer science, physics, chemistry and mathematics — to speed the development of new therapies for diseases and disorders that affect the brain and nervous system.

November 7, 2019

ArtsUW Roundup: Olmstead in Seattle, the Music of Somalia’s Disco Era, Artist Talk with Kameelah Janan Rasheed, and more

This week in the arts, see a mind-blowing troupe of wildly creative and physically daring dancers at Meany Center, learn about Somali funk, disco, soul and reggae of the 1970s and 80s, and more! Olmstead in Seattle November 12, 7 pm | Center for Urban Horticulture Seattle has one of the most extensively developed Olmsted park systems in the United States, yet the story of how it came into existence has never been fully explored or described – until now,…

Team uses golden ‘lollipop’ to observe elusive interference effect at the nanoscale

An image of small golden discs and rods used in an experiment

A team led by scientists from the University of Washington and the University of Notre Dame used recent advances in electron microscopy to observe Fano interferences — a form of quantum-mechanical interference by electrons — directly in a pair of metallic nanoparticles.

November 6, 2019

Mailed self-sampling kits helped more women get screened for cervical cancer

Woman's hand pulling envelop from mailbox

Signaling a potential major change in cervical cancer screening options for American women, a new study found that mailed self-sampling kits that test for HPV — the virus that can cause cervical cancer — helped significantly more women get screened for the cancer. The study involving nearly 20,000 women was conducted by researchers from the University of Washington and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute and was published Nov. 6 in JAMA Network Open. In the study, women within the…

November 5, 2019

Fall storms, coastal erosion focus of northern Alaska research cruise

freight shipping container in foreground and research ship in background

A University of Washington team is leaving to study how fall storms, dwindling sea ice and vulnerable coastlines might combine in a changing Arctic.

Soundbites & b-roll: HuskySat-1

‘HuskySat-1’ is among seven student-built satellites from around the country that launched Saturday morning, Nov. 2, from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility on the Virginia coast.

November 4, 2019

Swordfish as oceanographers? Satellite tags allow research of ocean’s ‘twilight zone’ off Florida

UW marine scientists are using high-tech tags to record the movements of swordfish — big, deep-water, migratory, open-ocean fish that are poorly studied — and get a window into the ocean depths they inhabit.

Single discrimination events alter college students’ daily behavior

Five hands making fists in a circle. All arms have black Fitbit trackers on them.

UW researchers aimed to understand both the prevalence of discrimination events and how these events affect college students in their daily lives. Over the course of two academic quarters, the team compared students’ self-reports of unfair treatment to passively tracked changes in daily activities, such as hours slept, steps taken or time spent on the phone.

Light-based ‘tractor beam’ assembles materials at the nanoscale

Researchers at the University of Washington have developed a method that could make reproducible manufacturing at the nanoscale possible. The team adapted a light-based technology employed widely in biology — known as optical traps or optical tweezers — to operate in a water-free liquid environment of carbon-rich organic solvents, thereby enabling new potential applications.

November 1, 2019

ArtsUW Roundup: attend the Danish String Quartet concert, observe a Monologue Audition workshop, and more

This week in the arts, celebrate Beethoven’s 250th anniversary with Jonathan Biss, attend the Burke museum for free, catch A Midsummer Night’s Dream, and more. Jonathan Biss – Celebrating Beethoven Pt 1 November 5, 7:30 pm | Meany Center In celebration of the 250th anniversary of Beethoven’s birth, Meany Center presents a selection of his piano sonatas with acclaimed pianist and Beethoven expert Jonathan Biss. In addition to having embarked on a nine-year project to record all 32 of the composer’s piano…

October 31, 2019

Washington’s first student-built satellite preparing for launch

tall silver rectangle inside glass box that reads "flight hardware"

After years of preparation, a tiny satellite built by UW students is scheduled to launch early Saturday, Nov. 2, from a NASA flight facility in Virginia. The launch will be broadcast live on NASA TV.

New technique lets researchers map strain in next-gen solar cells

an image showing the surface of a solar cell, and which sections of the surface are susceptible to heat loss

Researchers from the University of Washington and the FOM Institute for Atomic and Molecular Physics in the Netherlands have developed a way to map strain in lead halide perovskite solar cells. Their approach shows that misorientation between microscopic perovskite crystals is the primary contributor to the buildup of strain within the solar cell, which creates small-scale defects in the grain structure, interrupts the transport of electrons within the solar cell, and ultimately leads to heat loss through a process known as non-radiative recombination.

October 29, 2019

UW book notes: Political scientist Megan Ming Francis to edit new series on race, ethnicity, politics

Megan Ming Francis, UW political science professor, who will edit a new book series on race, ethnicity and politics

University of Washington political scientist Megan Ming Francis says there is a dearth of academic book series being published on topics of race, ethnicity and politics. Now, she will start to change that. An associate professor of political science, Francis will be the editor of a new series of books from Cambridge University Press called Cambridge Elements in Race, Ethnicity and Politics. Francis, on leave and at Harvard for the 2019-2020 school year, answered a few questions about the new…

Popular third-party genetic genealogy site is vulnerable to compromised data, impersonations

A hand holding a tube in front of a 23andMe kit

UW researchers have found that the third-party genealogy site GEDmatch is vulnerable to multiple kinds of security risks.

October 28, 2019

Precision mapping with satellite, drone photos could help predict infections of a widespread tropical disease

A team led by the University of Washington and Stanford University has discovered clues in the environment that help identify transmission hotspots for schistosomiasis, a parasitic disease that is second only to malaria in its global health impact.

Video: Spider myths, facts from the Burke Museum’s spider expert

This video features Rod Crawford, the curator of arachnids at the University of Washington’s Burke Museum. He has spent decades studying spiders and says there are many common myths about spiders that he is regularly asked about.

Hubble captures galaxies’ ghostly gaze

An image captured earlier this year by the Hubble Space Telescope may look like a ghostly apparition, but it is not. Hubble is looking at a titanic head-on collision between two galaxies.

October 24, 2019

NSF invests in cyberinfrastructure institute to harness cosmic data

The National Science Foundation awarded the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee and nine collaborating organizations, including the University of Washington, $2.8 million for a two-year “conceptualization phase” of the Scalable Cyberinfrastructure Institute for Multi-Messenger Astrophysics.

New fossil trove documents recovery of life on Earth after dinosaur-killing asteroid impact

An image of an ancient mammal that is now extinct.

Scientists have discovered an extraordinary collection of fossils that reveal in detail how life recovered after a catastrophic event: the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.

October 23, 2019

UW is most innovative U.S. public university; No. 5 in the world, according to Reuters

The University of Washington is listed at No. 5 on the Reuters Top 100: The World’s Most Innovative Universities, released Wednesday. Now in its fifth year, the list ranks the educational institutions doing the most to advance science, invent new technologies and help drive the global economy.

ArtsUW Roundup: the Paco de Lucia Project, CabLab, Jenny Odell at Town Hall, and more

This week in the arts, kick-off School of Drama’s new season, view local artist’s work at the Center for Urban Horticulture, learn about Dakota Sioux artist Mary Sully, and more. Reclaiming our Attention in an Age of Distraction November 1, 7:30 pm | Town Hall Seattle UW Communications Leadership Program presents author and artist Jenny Odell in discussing the impact digital media has on our everyday lives. Joined by political reporter Austin Jenkins, this lecture addresses the dilemma of life in…

UW team sending autonomous surfboard to explore Antarctic waters

researchers on ship lowering large surfboard into water

This week a UW team is releasing a robotic surfboard to explore the surface ocean around Antarctica.

October 22, 2019

UW is No. 10 on global ranking; No. 2 among US public institutions

The University of Washington maintained its No. 10 spot on the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Global Universities rankings, released this week. The UW is ranked No. 2 among U.S. public institutions.

October 21, 2019

Humpback whale population on the rise after near miss with extinction

A new study finds that the western South Atlantic humpback population has grown to 25,000 whales. Researchers, including co-authors from the University of Washington, believe this new estimate is now close to pre-whaling numbers.

October 18, 2019

ArtsUW Roundup: Music of Today, School of Art faculty lectures, and more

This week in the arts, celebrate flamenco with the Paco de Lucía Project, attend the opening reception for Irreducible Forms, tour the Henry Art Gallery with Ariel Goldberg, and more. Exhibition Opening: Irreducible Forms October 24 – November 9 | Jacob Lawrence Gallery Celebrate work by the second-year Master of Fine Arts students working in and between the media of installation, time-based visual art, painting, and sculpture. Attend the Opening Reception October 23, 5 – 7pm | Jacob Lawrence Gallery Free |…

UW Regents approve five-year contract extension for President Ana Mari Cauce

The University of Washington Board of Regents this week approved a five-year contract extension for President Ana Mari Cauce. The agreement was finalized under authority previously delegated to the board chair.

October 17, 2019

Old friends and new enemies: How evolutionary history can predict insect invader impacts

A team led by the University of Washington has developed a way to help foresters predict which nonnative insect invasions will be problematic, and help managers decide where to allocate resources to avoid widespread tree death.

October 16, 2019

Video: UW President Ana Mari Cauce delivers annual address to community

UW President Ana Mari Cauce delivered her annual address to the community Oct. 15 at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House on the University of Washington campus.

Soundbites and b-roll: UW Annual President’s Address 2019

UW President Ana Mari Cauce delivered her annual address to the community Oct. 15 at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House on the University of Washington campus.

October 15, 2019

New pronoun option coming for students; celebrate International Pronouns Day Oct. 16

On International Pronouns Day (Oct. 16) the University of Washington community is invited to celebrate the ways in which using someone’s pronouns have a positive impact on the community as a whole.

Deaf infants more attuned to parent’s visual cues, study shows

Baby looking at something not seen by the camera.

A University of Washington-led study finds that Deaf infants exposed to American Sign Language are especially tuned to a parent’s eye gaze, itself a social connection between parent and child that is linked to early learning.

UW’s Ashleigh Theberge receives Packard Fellowship for research on cell communication signals

Ashleigh Theberge, a University of Washington assistant professor of chemistry, has been named a 2019 Packard Fellow for her research on cell signaling. Every year since 1988, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation has awarded Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering to early-career scientists to pursue the types of innovative projects that often fall outside the purview of traditional sources of funding, such as research grants from government agencies. As one of 22 fellows for 2019, Theberge will receive $875,000…

Piranha fish swap old teeth for new simultaneously

With the help of new technologies, a team led by the University of Washington has confirmed that piranhas — and their plant-eating cousins, pacus — lose and regrow all the teeth on one side of their face multiple times throughout their lives. How they do it may help explain why the fish go to such efforts to replace their teeth.

First smart speaker system that uses white noise to monitor infants’ breathing

UW researchers have developed a new smart speaker skill that lets a device use white noise to both soothe sleeping babies and monitor their breathing and movement.

October 14, 2019

To reduce gun violence, lift roadblocks to firearm data

While gun violence in America kills more than 35,000 people a year and as calls for policies to stem the crisis grow, University of Washington researchers point out in a new analysis that barriers to data stand in the way of advancing solutions. “Firearm data availability, accessibility and infrastructure need to be substantially improved to reduce the burden of the public health crisis of firearm violence,” said Dr. Ali Rowhani-Rahbar, lead co-author and associate professor in the Department of Epidemiology…

Fishing for the triple bottom line: profit, planet — and people

In a new study, an interdisciplinary group of researchers used Pacific herring in Haida Gwaii, British Columbia, as a case study for modeling the implicit tradeoffs within the triple bottom line that result from various fisheries management decisions.

October 11, 2019

New UW center receives NIH grant to improve the fight against cancer

Even successful methods for diagnosing, treating and caring for people who are suffering from cancer are not enough without effective, practical tools and guidance for putting those methods into practice. To bridge this gap between cancer interventions and their implementation within communities across the country, the National Institutes of Health’s National Cancer Institute is funding the creation of six implementation science centers focused on cancer control. The creation of these centers are part of NIH’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to make…