Bernard Dean, who brings two decades of state and local government experience, has been appointed director of state relations at the University of Washington, effective Sept. 1.
News releases
A new study from the UW’s Runstad Center for Real Estate Studies suggests that Seattle and Washington state could invite development of more affordable housing by easing the legal risk — or the appearance of risk — in condominium development, construction, liability and insurance.
A study of the the first clean cookstove intervention in India financed through the Kyoto Protocol’s Clean Development Mechanism found expected benefits from newer, more “efficient” stoves — based on their performance in lab tests — did not materialize in the field.
The lot of Seattle’s lowest-paid workers improved following the city’s minimum wage increase to $11 in 2015, but that was more due to the robust regional economy than the wage hike itself, according to a research team headed by the UW Evans School.
Polar oceans pump organic carbon down to the deep sea about five times as efficiently as subtropical waters, because they can support larger, heavier organisms. The finding helps explain how the oceans may function under climate change.
The University of Washington received a record $542.4 million in the 2016 fiscal year, ending June 30, breaking the previous record of $482.5 million set in 2013-14. The funds came in the form of private gifts and grants earmarked by individuals, corporations and foundations for specific areas of research, labs, faculty, and student scholarships and programs.
A team of researchers from the University of Washington and the University of Trento in Italy unveiled an engineered protein that they designed to repress a specific cancer-promoting message within cells.
A personalized image search engine developed by a University of Washington researcher lets a person imagine how they would look a with different a hairstyle, if they lived in a different time period or any other appearance change that can be synthesized with internet photos.
UW professor Adam Summers is scanning and digitizing all 25,000 species of fish that live on Earth. Each species soon will have a high-resolution, 3-D visual replica online, available to all and downloadable for free.
A University of Washington team has shed new light on a common but poorly understood bacteria known to live in low-oxygen areas in the ocean. By culturing and sequencing the microbe’s entire genome, the oceanographers found that it significantly contributes to the removal of life-supporting nitrogen from the water in new and surprising ways.
The University of Washington has been recognized as a “Great College to Work For” by the Chronicle of Higher Education for the third consecutive year.
At a time of intense national attention on law enforcement and race, a new University of Washington study suggests that racially based fear plays a role in public support for policing reforms. The research, conducted by UW postdoctoral researcher Allison Skinner and published online July 12 in the open-access journal Frontiers in Psychology, used a series of experiments to gauge participants’ level of support for policing reforms in relation to whether they felt threatened by police officers or black men….
A research team including University of Washington’s Laura Prugh has found that within 30 years of cougars recolonizing the Eastern U.S., large cats could thin deer populations and reduce vehicle collisions by 22 percent — each year preventing five human fatalities, 680 injuries and avoiding costs of $50 million.
At meetings with Native American community leaders, educators in the University of Washington’s College of Education repeatedly heard the same question — what can be done to improve educational outcomes among Native learners? Those discussions led to the creation of the UW’s new two-year Native Education Certificate program, which launches in August. The 10-unit curriculum mixes online learning with hands-on projects in participants’ communities, with the goal of providing more meaningful and culturally relevant education for Native students. “There is…
In a three-page commentary in the journal Nature, fisheries professor Ray Hilborn argues that establishing marine protected areas is not as effective at protecting marine biodiversity as properly managing recreational and commercial fisheries.
Scientists from the University of Washington recently reported a relatively simple method swell the tiny, complex structures within cells, bringing them within range of a common microscope’s resolving range.
“Excitation” is not just a scientific term or perfect Beach Boys lyric, it’s also the topic of this year’s cross-disciplinary Summer Institute in the Arts and Humanities, an intensive summer research program for undergraduate students.
How much liability do website owners and other online service providers have for content posted by other people? If someone posts content on your website that is defamatory, constitutes hate speech, disseminates child pornography or invades someone’s privacy, are you liable? The answers to such questions can be murky in developing countries. And as internet use expands around the globe, so does the potential liability for the owners of websites, search engines, social media sites and other online platforms, who…
UW President Ana Mari Cauce: “Congratulations to the Friends of 88.5 on their agreement with Pacific Lutheran University to purchase KPLU, and on the unprecedented fundraising effort that made it possible. We are delighted they were able to make it happen.” KUOW General Manager Caryn Mathes: “The generosity of KPLU’s listeners is a testament both to the excellence of the station’s programming and to the deep affection that Puget Sound listeners hold for public radio. “Through the Northwest News Network,…
University of Washington computer scientists have launched the “MegaFace Challenge,” the world’s first competition aimed at evaluating and improving the performance of face recognition algorithms at the million person scale.
A new study evaluates the performance of a seasonal forecast, developed by researchers at the UW and NOAA, that predicts conditions over the coming months in the Pacific Northwest marine environment.
The outsourcing of workers at Portland International Airport has increased in recent years while those workers serve ever-more passengers and their wages remain low, according to a recent report from the UW’s Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies.
An international team led by researchers at the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering (CSNE) based at the University of Washington is one of three finalists in a race to produce an implantable wireless device that can assess, stimulate and block the activity of nerves that control organs.
The R/V Thomas G. Thompson, the 274-foot-long research vessel operated by the University of Washington, has spent 25 years carrying researchers, students and teachers out to sea. The ship has collected material from the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches and braved storms near Antarctica. This week, the ship will begin a yearlong stay in protected waters and dry dock near Seattle’s Harbor Island for a complete overhaul of its propulsion system, navigation and many core engineering systems. The $34.5…
Public-private partnerships can be important financing tools, but public officials overseeing them must understand the risks well, says the Evans School’s Justin Marlowe, author of a multivolume Guide to Financial Literacy.
The world won’t be able to fish its way to feeding 10 billion people by midcentury, but a shift in management practices could save hundreds of millions of fish-dependent poor from malnutrition, according to a new analysis by researchers at Harvard, the University of Washington and other universities.
Researchers have discovered a handful of “bright spots” among the world’s embattled coral reefs, offering the promise of a radical new approach to conservation.
Rock from a common type of volcano shows surprising evidence of the descending tectonic plate. Analyses show that magnesium atoms are somehow drawn out of the crust, deep below the surface.
A new study has found that only 2 percent of the eastern U.S. provides the kind of climate connectivity required by species that will likely need to migrate, compared to 51 percent of the western U.S.
A new study by researchers at the University of Washington shows that the final grades that college students received in a second-language class were predicted by a combination of genetic and brain factors.
The University of Washington recognized and honored faculty, staff, students and alumni for their passion and dedication to the UW, the local community, the state and the world. The 46th-annual Awards of Excellence ceremony took place at Meany Hall on Thursday, June 9, 2016.
The Ecological Society of America has named University of Washington professor Jerry Franklin its “Eminent Ecologist” of 2016. The award, considered the organization’s most prestigious accolade, honors a senior ecologist who has made significant, long-standing contributions to the field of ecology.
More than 5,600 graduates, along with 40,000-plus family members, friends, faculty and other observers, are expected to attend the 141st University of Washington commencement ceremonies June 11 at Husky Stadium. UW President Ana Mari Cauce will preside as more than 12,500 degrees are conferred, including more than 7,700 bachelor’s degrees, more than 3,500 master’s degrees, more than 500 professional degrees, 11 educational specialist degrees and more than 740 doctoral degrees. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, a 1978 graduate of the UW…
Data is now streaming from the deep sea, thanks to an observatory installed in this region by the University of Washington as part of a larger National Science Foundation initiative to usher in a new age of oceanographic research.
The authors of a Science perspective piece discuss the growing tension between an arguably necessary role urban areas play in society and the numbing, even debilitating, aspects of cities that disconnect humans from the natural world.
City and state officials, entrepreneurs, attorneys and others will come together June 14 for a daylong conference at the University of Washington on the future of marijuana policy in the state. The event, co-hosted by the Cannabis Law and Policy Project and UW Professional & Continuing Education, will be held at the UW School of Law and feature 30-plus speakers. The day aims to provide a comprehensive look at current and future regulations governing the retail and medical marijuana industries…
Gov. Jay Inslee named Austin Wright-Pettibone as the next student member of the University of Washington Board of Regents for the 2016-17 school year. Wright-Pettibone, a Kirkland native, is an undergraduate studying chemical engineering and becomes the first undergraduate since 2008 to be selected as the UW’s student regent. He graduated from Inglemoor High School in 2012. In 2015, through his role as director of ASUW’s office of government relations, he lobbied state lawmakers in Olympia to lower Washington’s four-year college tuition. “Austin has…
A team led by University of Washington engineers has developed a new tool that could aid in the quest for better batteries and fuel cells. Although battery technology has come a long way since Alessandro Volta first stacked metal discs in a “voltaic pile” to generate electricity, major improvements are still needed to meet the energy challenges of the future, such as powering electric cars and storing renewable energy cheaply and efficiently. The key likely lies in the nanoscale, said…
The waters surrounding Antarctica may be one of the last places on Earth to experience human-driven climate change, because of its unique ocean currents.
Electrical energy fuels our modern lives, from the computer screen that keeps us up after sunset to the coffee maker that greets us at sunrise. But the electricity underlying our 21st century world, by and large, is generated at a cost — through the unsustainable expenditure of fossil fuels. For decades this demand for cheap, fast and non-renewable electricity has promoted pollution and global warming. The key to reversing this downward spiral is deleting the “non” in “non-renewable electricity.” In…