UW News


May 1, 2015

UW, academic student employee union reach tentative agreement on new contract

After months of negotiations, and just hours before the current collective bargaining agreement expired, the University of Washington and UAW 4121, representing nearly 4,500 academic student employees (ASEs) including teaching assistants, research assistants, readers, graders and tutors, reached a tentative agreement Thursday for a new three-year contract. A ratification vote by union members on the…


UW biologist wins Saruhashi Prize for top woman scientist

Keiko Torii, a UW professor of biology, this month was awarded the 35th annual Saruhashi Prize, given each year to a female researcher in the natural sciences. Each year, one woman scientist receives the award recognizing both exceptional research accomplishments and mentoring of other women scientists. “I am especially pleased that the selection committee recognized…


April 29, 2015

UW Tacoma junior wins prestigious Udall Scholarship

Faith Ramos, a junior studying sustainable urban development at UW Tacoma, was named one of 50 students nationally to receive the prestigious Udall Scholarship. Ramos worked for 15 years in arts and other nonprofits, including for National Parks programs that bring economically disadvantaged youth to the parks, before enrolling at UW Tacoma. She also has a strong background in…


April 22, 2015

Two UW faculty named to American Academy of Arts & Sciences

Two University of Washington faculty members are among the leaders from academia, business, philanthropy, humanities and the arts elected as 2015 fellows of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences, one of the nation’s oldest and most prestigious honorary societies. Stanley Fields, a professor of genome sciences and medicine, and David B. Kaplan, a professor…


Guggenheim Foundation honors UW mathematician Tatiana Toro

Tatiana Toro, a University of Washington professor and associate chair of mathematics, is among 175 new fellows from the U.S. and Canada recognized this year by the Guggenheim Foundation. Winners, chosen from more than 3,100 applicants, receive grants of varying amounts that allow them to pursue creative projects of six to 12 months in the…


April 20, 2015

Engineering Discovery Days celebrates 100 years on UW campus, April 24-25

At the University of Washington’s first engineering open house, visitors marveled at early-1900s scientific advances: using electricity to cook and curl hair, sending wireless messages over a distance of five miles, experimenting with lightning. Engineering Discovery Days Fri., April 24, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m. (registration full) Sat., April 25, 9 a.m. – 2 p.m….


UW Stroum Center to host Spring Research Symposium May 1

The UW Stroum Center for Jewish Studies will host its third annual Spring Research Symposium 9:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m. Friday, May 1, in room 214 of the HUB. The event is free but advance registration is recommended. This half-day event highlights research by the five members of the 2014-15 Jewish Studies Graduate Fellowship, with topics ranging from…


April 17, 2015

Workshop to explore the scientific potential of a hardwired seafloor volcano

Last summer, a team of University of Washington oceanographers successfully installed hardware deep underwater for an Internet-connected observatory off the Washington and Oregon coasts. Now scientists from around the country are meeting to discuss how this will change how people monitor and study seafloor geology. The Networked Observations and Visualizations of the Axial Environment, or…


Sheppard on Shostakovich: Professor of piano discusses upcoming recital

Craig Sheppard, professor of piano in the School of Music, will perform all of the 24 Preludes and Fugues, Opus 87, by Dmitri Shostakovich in a faculty recital at 7:30 p.m. on Saturday, April 25, in Meany Hall. He answered a few questions about the music and his approach to the performance. In a 1993…


UW will investigate seaweed as a tool to fight ocean acidification in Puget Sound

The University of Washington will be working with the Bainbridge Island-based Puget Sound Restoration Fund to see whether growing seaweed could help combat ocean acidification in Puget Sound waters. Like plants on land, kelps and other seaweeds naturally take up carbon dioxide. Puget Sound waters are already high in carbon dioxide and are projected to…


UW’s Jonathan Bricker a finalist for ‘Geek of the Year Award’

Some people think Jonathan Bricker is a geek, and they mean it in the best way possible. Bricker, an affiliate professor of psychology at the UW and a psychologist at Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center, is among five finalists for the annual “Geek of the Year Award” from Seattle technology news site GeekWire. The award…


April 16, 2015

Interim President Ana Mari Cauce opens a dialogue about race and equity on campus

UW Interim President Ana Mari Cauce will give remarks and lead a conversation about equity, racism and difference Thursday afternoon on campus at the Intellectual House. Updated 4/14: Transcript of Cauce’s remarks The roundtable event, which starts at 2 p.m., will encourage students to participate in a discussion about these issues. Space is limited and…


April 14, 2015

UW Information School’s Katie Davis gets NSF Early Career Award

Katie Davis, assistant professor at the University of Washington Information School, has received a Faculty Early Career Development Award from the National Science Foundation. Davis, who studies the role of digital media technologies in the lives of teenagers, will receive $759,462 over five years for a project titled “Digital Badges for STEM Education.” The work…


April 7, 2015

UW astronomer named 2015 Sagan Fellow

A UW postdoctoral scientist is among six nationwide recipients of the 2015 Carl Sagan Exoplanet Postdoctoral Fellowships. The Sagan Fellowships support recent postdoctoral students in research related to the scientific goals of NASA’s Exoplanet Exploration Program — specifically, to discover and characterize planetary systems and Earth-like planets around stars. Daniel Foreman-Mackey , an incoming postdoctoral…


April 3, 2015

University of Washington undergraduates assist search for El Salvador’s disappeared children

The country of El Salvador was torn apart by a brutal civil war from 1980 to 1992 that took the lives of 75,000 civilians, many the victims of massacres that wiped out entire villages. Throughout that war, thousands of children were forcibly disappeared from their homes and communities by agents of the Salvadoran state as…


Event explores mass incarceration, racial justice

The United States imprisons a larger percentage of African Americans than South Africa did at the height of apartheid. In Washington, D.C., three out of every four young black men are likely to serve time in prison, according to projections. Those stark facts are found in Michelle Alexander’s 2012 book “The New Jim Crow: Mass…


R2-D2 to driverless cars: UW conference to explore gray areas in robotics law

Robots such as household helpers, driverless cars and personal drones are — or will soon be —available to consumers. But what protections guarantee they won’t spy on us or surreptitiously sell us things? Could a robot be used to verify an alibi in a criminal court case? Who is liable if a driverless car crashes…


April 2, 2015

Public talk April 9 looks back at astronomy department’s 50 years

The UW Astronomy Department celebrates its 50th anniversary this school year. Julie Lutz, research professor emeritus of astronomy, will review that history in a free public talk at 4 p.m. Thursday, April 9, in the Physics/Astronomy Auditorium. The astronomy department was formed in 1965 by George Wallerstein, Paul Hodge and Theodor Jacobson, for whom a…


March 31, 2015

Anne Greenbaum a 2015 fellow of the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics

Each year the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the fields of applied mathematics and computational science. A University of Washington mathematician is among 31 new fellows honored this year from academic, industrial and government institutions around the world. Anne Greenbaum, a UW professor of applied mathematics,…


March 30, 2015

Three UW programs make top 10 in LinkedIn’s graduate school program rankings

The University of Washington has three programs in the top 10 on LinkedIn’s rankings of university graduate school programs based on job outcomes in some select fields. The UW’s graduate program for software developers (ranked third), designers (fourth) and accounting professionals (seventh) were in the top 10 in their fields. “By analyzing the employment patterns…


Huge whirlpools help set oceanic spring bloom

On the UW campus, most people’s focus at this time of year is on pink cherry blossoms. But this time of year in the northern Atlantic Ocean, a massive bloom soon to appear at the ocean’s surface is a major event in our planet’s carbon cycle. Now UW-developed robots have captured what happens to these…


Lecture April 2 looks at how to fill nature void for kids, adults

We are attached to our devices nearly 24/7. As our number of activities and time spent outdoors shrinks, it’s perhaps no coincidence that the larger society faces higher occurrences of depression, child and adult obesity and attention deficit disorder. Getting more people outside and engaged with nature is the topic of this year’s School of…


March 27, 2015

UW-built mic records noisy glacier melt

One would imagine a glacier’s melt to be fairly quiet. That would be wrong. Recordings by current and former University of Washington researchers in fjords shows that melting at glacier edges in the narrow rock-edged canyons are some of the noisiest places in the sea. The study, published in Geophysical Research Letters, recorded the sound…


Students to pitch clean-tech solutions April 2 at Environmental Innovation Challenge

More than 40 University of Washington students will compete in the Alaska Airlines Environmental Innovation Challenge 2015. It asks students from around the state to identify an environmental problem, develop a solution, build a prototype and sell their idea to judges. Twenty-two interdisciplinary student teams will pitch and demonstrate their solutions April 2 at an…


March 25, 2015

Labor Archives of Washington kicks off minimum-wage history project April 11

The Labor Archives of Washington, part of UW Libraries Special Collections Department, is creating an online resource called the Minimum Wage History Project to document the 2013-2014 campaign that succeeded in mandating a $15 minimum hourly wage in the cities of Seattle and Sea-Tac. The effort kicks off with a public program, “Preserving Solidarity Forever:…


March 24, 2015

Is exposure to secondhand smoke child abuse?

No one would argue that exposing children to secondhand smoke is bad, but should it be considered child abuse? Taryn Lindhorst, a UW associate professor of social work, says no. In an opinion piece published online in the Annals of Family Medicine earlier this month, Lindhorst argues that treating children’s exposure to secondhand smoke as…


March 23, 2015

For Alternative Spring Break students, a cultural experience close to home

Years ago, a fellow educator made a comment that stuck in Christine Stickler’s head. University students don’t need to travel to a foreign country for spring break to immerse themselves in another culture, she said — they can do that right here in Washington state. That observation led Stickler to launch the UW’s Alternative Spring…


March 20, 2015

UW and local company unveil new five-person submarine

The University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory and Everett-based company OceanGate this month unveiled the first model of its joint project to build a new type of submarine for human research and exploration in the deep sea. Cyclops 1 was a developed over the past year and a half in the Applied Physics Lab’s co-laboratory…


March 19, 2015

UW releases strategy for reaching transportation carbon neutrality

The University of Washington’s latest step toward its goal of carbon neutrality by 2050 came last week, with the release of its Climate Action Strategy for Transportation, or CAST. The CAST follows the UW Climate Action Plan, a set of broad strategies to guide the UW to the goal of carbon neutrality that was released…


March 18, 2015

Remembering architect, author, critic Norman Johnston, 1918 – 2015

Norman J. Johnston will be remembered as a dedicated and community-minded architect, city planner, teacher and critic. He died Monday, March 16, 2015, in his Seattle home. He was 96. Memorial for Norman J. Johnston 2 p.m. Sunday, May 31, University of Washington Club. Johnston earned a bachelor’s degree in art from the University of…


UW TechConnect conference Tuesday: The Future of IT

Members of the UW community are invited to a free daylong conference for technology professionals at the 2015 UW TechConnect Conference on March 24. Explore, learn and connect with other IT colleagues and choose from a dozen presentations about the future of information technology at the UW – from human resources and payroll modernization to…


March 17, 2015

AG Ferguson appoints senior attorney to top UW Division post

Attorney General Bob Ferguson has appointed Senior Counsel Karin Nyrop as the new chief of his office’s University of Washington Division. The division provides legal services to the university, including UW Bothell, UW Tacoma and the UW Medical Center. “The University of Washington will be well served by Karin’s impressive combination of legal expertise, leadership…


March 16, 2015

New ‘mediArcade’ in Allen Library supports multimedia work, play

UW Libraries has opened up a new multimedia space on the third floor of Allen library for the use of students, faculty and staff. It’s called the mediArcade, and is open weekdays 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. to those with a Husky card. With iMacs, large televisions and DVDs, video game consoles, several media editing…


March 13, 2015

Public symposium features UW experts on ‘Reverse-engineering the brain’

One of modern science’s grand challenges is understanding how the human brain actually works — from cataloging millions of individual cells to figuring out how the circuitry that underlies our thoughts and actions decodes information. By deconstructing these intricate processes, engineers can use the human brain to build everything from smarter computers to better speech…


2015 UW cherry tree watch: Full bloom by March 14

Blossom update: 100 percent in bloom as of March 14. Follow @uwcherryblossom for more info. The cherry trees in the Quad at the UW reached full bloom March 14. Exact timing always depends on the weather — if we have sunny, warm days, the trees reach full bloom faster, but colder weather stretches out the timing. Still, full bloom…


iSchool’s Technology & Social Change Group to study online education in developing countries

Online education has great potential to improve lives, but few people in developing countries have access to such classes. The UW Information School’s Technology & Social Change Group will conduct research as part of a $1.55 million multiagency initiative to study and address this need. The project will include research on online course enrollment in…


March 11, 2015

Sephardic Studies document appears in PBS documentary ‘The Jewish Journey: America’

A document from the UW Sephardic Studies Program‘s Digital Library and Museum appears in a new PBS documentary called “The Jewish Journey: America.” The documentary will be broadcast at 7:30 p.m. Monday, March 16, on KBTC, Tacoma’s public broadcasting station, and is now available for viewing online as well. The hour-long film, directed by Emmy-winner…


March 10, 2015

DRIVE/conference offers a deep dive into data mining

No matter what your business — from a nonprofit museum that wants to deepen visitor engagement to a chain store looking for new markets — it’s essential to be able to extract meaningful patterns and results from often massive reservoirs of data. Improving this “art and science” of data analysis, reporting and visualization is the…


March 6, 2015

Study: Lower property values match high body-weight index in King County

New research from the UW College of Built Environments on the “spatial clustering of obesity” in urban areas has helped clarify and build upon work a 2007 study began. The takeaway, in brief: In King County, Washington, at least, low property values match with high body-mass indexes, or BMIs in less diverse, lower-income South King…


March 4, 2015

Women Who Rock host fifth annual (un)conference on Saturday

The power of social media in fueling movements such as Black Lives Matter, the racial justice campaign sprung from last year’s protests in Ferguson, Missouri, has become increasingly evident in recent years. Recognition of those grassroots efforts is the focus of the fifth annual Women Who Rock “unconference” event, to be held Saturday, March 7,…



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