News releases

October 6, 2015

UW climbs to No. 11 in U.S. News Global University Rankings

The University of Washington moved up three spots to No. 11 overall in the second edition of U.S. News & World Report’s Global University Rankings.

UW holds public meetings on Seattle Campus Master Plan update

Meeting schedule 5:30 to 7:30 p.m. Wednesday, Oct. 14 at the University Temple Church, 1415 NE 43rd St. Noon to 2 p.m. Thursday, Oct. 15 at the Husky Union Building, Room 340, on the UW campus. For more information, check the Campus Master Plan FAQ The University of Washington is inviting students, staff, faculty and members of the community to participate in public meetings on Oct. 14 and 15 to kick off a two-year effort to develop the next master…

October 5, 2015

Where to look for life? UW astronomers devise ‘habitability index’ to guide future search

The James Webb Space Telescope, a large infrared telescope with a 6.5-meter primary mirror, is scheduled to be launched on an Ariane 5 rocket from French Guiana in October of 2018 and will be the premier NASA observatory of the next decade, serving thousands of astronomers around the world.

Astronomers with the University of Washington’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory have created the “habitility index for transiting planets” to rank exoplanets to help prioritize which warrant close inspection in the search for life beyond Earth.

October 1, 2015

Simulating path of ‘magma mush’ inside an active volcano

The first simulation of the individual crystals in volcanic mush, a mix of liquid magma and solid crystals, shows the mixing to help understand pressure buildup deep inside a volcano.

3-D printing techniques help surgeons carve new ears

A UW otolaryngology resident and bioengineering student have used 3-D printing techniques to create lifelike models to help aspiring surgeons – who currently practice on soap, apples, and vegetables – learn to perform ear reconstruction surgeries.

Known fish species living in the Salish Sea increases in new report

An illustration of the longfin sculpin (Jordania zonope).

A new report published Tuesday documents all of the fishes that live in the Salish Sea. In total, 253 fish species have been recorded, and that’s about 14 percent more than in the last count.

September 29, 2015

Arsenic found in many U.S. red wines, but health risks depend on total diet

A new UW study that tested 65 wines from America’s top four wine-producing states — California, Washington, New York and Oregon — found all but one have arsenic levels that exceed what’s allowed in drinking water. But health risks from that toxic element depend on what else a person is eating.

September 28, 2015

Diverse group of universities form coalition to improve college admission process

A diverse coalition of public and private colleges and universities including the University of Washington is coming together with the goal of improving the college admission application process for all students. The Coalition is developing a free platform of online tools to streamline the experience of planning for and applying to college. The initial iteration of the planning tools will be available to freshmen, sophomores and juniors in high school beginning in January 2016. In creating this platform, these colleges…

UW to raise minimum wage for workers to $15 an hour

The University of Washington announced today that, consistent with its earlier commitment to Seattle’s minimum wage law, it intends to raise the minimum wage of its workers — including student workers in Seattle — to $15 an hour. Subject to the successful conclusion of on-going negotiations with its unions, the increase will take effect in two stages: moving to $13 an hour on Jan. 1, 2016, and to $15 an hour on Jan. 1, 2017. The increases are in keeping…

Earth-like planets around small stars likely have protective magnetic fields, aiding chance for life

Earth-like planets orbiting close to small stars probably have magnetic fields that protect them from stellar radiation and help maintain surface conditions that could be conducive to life, according to research by UW astronomers.

A new single-molecule tool to observe enzymes at work

A team of scientists at the University of Washington and the biotechnology company Illumina have created an innovative tool to directly detect the delicate, single-molecule interactions between DNA and enzymatic proteins. Their approach provides a new platform to view and record these nanoscale interactions in real time. As they report Sept. 28 in Nature Biotechnology, this tool should provide fast and reliable characterization of the different mechanisms cellular proteins use to bind to DNA strands — information that could shed new light on the atomic-scale interactions within our cells and help design new drug therapies against pathogens by targeting enzymes that interact with DNA.

September 24, 2015

Cooled down and charged up, a giant magnet is ready for its new mission

The Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory — or Fermilab — announced that a 680-ton superconducting magnet is secure in its new home and nearly ready for a new era of discovery in particle physics. This achievement follows the delicate, 3,200-mile transport of the magnet’s 17-ton, 50-foot-wide housing ring to the U.S. Department of Energy facility outside Chicago two years ago. The fully assembled magnet will drive high-energy particle experiments as part of an international partnership among 34 institutions, of which the University of Washington is a leading contributor.

September 23, 2015

Chinese president presents gift to Global Innovation Exchange

Microsoft President Brad Smith, Chinese President Xi Jinping, UW Interim President Ana Mari Cauce and Tsinghua President Qiu Yong at the presentation of a dawn redwood tree to the Global Innovation Exchange by President Xi.

Chinese President Xi Jinping presented the gift of a dawn redwood tree to the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX), a new partnership between the University of Washington and Tsinghua University, during a ceremony at Microsoft headquarters Wednesday.

UW and Shanghai Jiao Tong University forge international collaboration on smart cities

Leaders from the University of Washington and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), one of China’s most prestigious public research universities, signed an agreement Wednesday to work together on “smart cities” research, teaching and collaborations in their respective electrical engineering departments.

Washington, Sichuan promise low-carbon cities in new agreement

From left: Wang Dongming, Ana Mari Cauce, Qiu Yong and Jay Inslee at the signing ceremony Sept. 22.

A memorandum of understanding, called the “2+2 MOU,” was signed Tuesday between the state of Washington and the Chinese province of Sichuan, as well as the University of Washington and Tsinghua University, to catalyze the science, technology and investment needed to grow innovations that will underpin adaptable and resilient urbanization.

UW team links two human brains for question-and-answer experiment

Imagine a question-and-answer game played by two people who are not in the same place and not talking to each other. Round after round, one player asks a series of questions and accurately guesses the object the other is thinking about. Sci-fi? Mind-reading superpowers? Not quite. University of Washington researchers recently used a direct brain-to-brain connection to enable pairs of participants to play a question-and-answer game by transmitting signals from one brain to the other over the Internet. The experiment,…

September 21, 2015

AI system solves SAT geometry questions as well as average human test taker

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence and UW computer scientists have created an artificial intelligence (AI) system that can solve SAT geometry questions as well as the average American 11th-grade student, a breakthrough in AI research.

September 17, 2015

Scientists: Let wildfires burn when prudent

In a commentary published Sept. 17 in Science, a team of scientists, including University of Washington researchers Jerry Franklin and James Agee, describe unique opportunities and provide suggestions to reform forest fire management to reduce the impacts of inevitable wildfires in future years.

A Q & A with Pedro Domingos: Author of ‘The Master Algorithm’

UW CSE professor Pedro Domingos’ book “The Master Algorithm” is an essential primer on machine learning, and a popular science romp through one of today’s hottest scientific topics.. It unveils the deep ideas behind the algorithms that increasingly pick our books, find our dates, manage investments and run our lives — and what informed consumers ought to know about them.

September 16, 2015

Reuters names UW the world’s most innovative public university, fourth overall

The University of Washington is the most innovative public university in the world, according to a new ranking by Reuters released Wednesday. The UW is ranked fourth overall, behind only Stanford, MIT and Harvard. “Innovation and turning ideas into action are at the center of everything we do,” UW Interim President Ana Mari Cauce said. “This is great recognition of the hard work done by our faculty and students working across all disciplines, and I can’t wait to see what…

September 15, 2015

Young chum salmon may get biggest nutrition boost from Elliott Bay restored beaches

UW researchers sample for young salmon and invertebrates along a restored beach at Seacrest Park in Seattle's Elliott Bay.

University of Washington researchers have found the types of organisms in Seattle’s Elliott Bay change depending on the shoreline nearby, either armored or restored beaches. Young chum salmon adjusted their diets based on these changes.

September 14, 2015

A more acidic ocean will bend the mermaid’s wineglass

New research from the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories shows that a more acidic ocean can weaken the protective shell of a delicate alga. The findings, published Sept. 9 in the journal Biology Letters, come at a time when global climate change may increase ocean acidification.

September 8, 2015

New wearable technology can sense appliance use, help track carbon footprint

Electromagnetic radiation patterns of various appliances

A new wearable technology developed at the University of Washington called MagnifiSense can sense what devices and vehicles its user interacts with, which can help track that individual’s carbon footprint, enable smart home applications or even assist with elder care.

September 4, 2015

September launch could give UW team rare measurements of ‘dusty plasmas’

Researchers from the University of Washington are awaiting the launch an over 50-foot-long rocket from a launch site in Norway into the upper reaches of the atmosphere to observe and measure a puzzling phenomenon.

Poplar trees are best bet for biofuel in UW-led research project

Poplar materials, including bark, leaves and wood, are used to make cellulosic ethanol.

A five-year, $40 million study is laying the foundation for a Pacific Northwest industry that converts sustainably produced poplar feedstock into fuels and chemicals. The research, led by the University of Washington, will seed the world’s first wood-based cellulosic ethanol production facility.

Climate change could leave Pacific Northwest amphibians high and dry

A new model for snow-fed mountain wetlands projects that the extremely dry conditions seen this year could be commonplace by the 2070s, affecting mountain species.

September 3, 2015

Earth observations show how nitrogen may be detected on exoplanets, aiding search for life

The Earth as seen by the Polychromatic Imaging Camera aboard NASA's Deep Space Climate Observatory satellite, July 2015. Recent research by UW grad student Edward Schwieterman shows that observations of nitrogen in Earth's atmosphere from afar might help astronomers detect the "invisible" gas in the atmospheres of planets beyond our solar system.

Observations of nitrogen in Earth’s atmosphere by a NASA spacecraft 17 million miles away are giving astronomers fresh clues to how that gas might reveal itself on faraway planets, thus aiding in the search for life.

August 26, 2015

Lab experiments question popular measure of ancient ocean temperatures

The study looked at Thaumarchaeota archaea, which are found throughout the world's oceans. These single-celled organisms have just one membrane sac that encloses their bodies. This organism, used in the study, was collected from a tropical-water tank at the Seattle Aquarium.

The membranes of sediment-entombed archaea are an increasingly popular way to determine ocean surface temperatures back to the age of the dinosaurs. But new results show that changing oxygen can affect the reading by as much as 21 degrees C.

August 25, 2015

Rare nautilus sighted for the first time in three decades

Nautilus pompilius swimming next to Allonautilus scrobiculatus off of Ndrova Island in Papua New Guinea.

In early August, biologist Peter Ward returned from the South Pacific with news that he encountered an old friend, one he hadn’t seen in over three decades. The University of Washington professor had seen what he considers one of the world’s rarest animals, a remote encounter that may become even more infrequent if illegal fishing practices continue. The creature in question is Allonautilus scrobiculatus, a species of nautilus that Ward and a colleague had previously discovered off of Ndrova Island…

August 24, 2015

UW remains No. 7 in Washington Monthly ranking; named ‘best bang for the buck’ among universities in the west

For the second consecutive year, the University of Washington held the No. 7 spot in the nation in Washington Monthly’s annual College Guide, which rates universities on students’ social mobility, civic engagement and research. Washington Monthly also rates colleges that are doing the best job of helping lower-income students attain marketable degrees at affordable prices, and named the UW No. 1 on its “best bang for the buck” western region list. “The UW is proud to be a public university…

Power lines restrict sage grouse movement in Washington

Transmission lines that funnel power from hydroelectric dams and wind turbines across Eastern Washington affect greater sage grouse habitat by isolating fragile populations and limiting movement, a new study finds.

Maltreated children’s brains show ‘encouraging’ ability to regulate emotions

Children who have been abused or exposed to other types of trauma typically experience more intense emotions than their peers, a byproduct of living in volatile, dangerous environments. But what if those kids could regulate their emotions? Could that better help them cope with difficult situations? Would it impact how effective therapy might be for them? A University of Washington-led team of researchers sought to address those questions by studying what happens in the brains of maltreated adolescents when they…