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More than 7,000 UW graduates of the Class of 2024 plan to participate in the June 8 ceremony for UW Seattle. Officials expect about 40,000 family and friends to cheer the graduates from the Husky Stadium grandstands. UW Tacoma will hold its commencement June 7; UW Bothell’s graduation ceremonies are June 9. UW President Ana Mari Cauce will present 18,006 degrees to the Class of 2024 across all three UW campuses’ ceremonies.

As the academic school year comes to an end, many students will continue their studies by packing a suitcase and heading overseas.

About 3,000 University of Washington students will study abroad this school year, a number that surpasses the previous high set in 2018-2019. That means study abroad participation is back to pre-pandemic levels. UW leaders say these programs promise profound experiences and lifelong memories. and  new research shows that college students who study abroad are more likely to graduate.

“We asked one 11-year-old how he’d feel if his favorite book series was written by AI instead of an author, and he said it would ‘dismantle’ the joy of reading for him. We often don’t think about kids having these deep, existential questions about what it means to be an artist,” said Michele Newman, a University of Washington doctoral student in the Information School.

A University of Washington team has developed an artificial intelligence system that lets someone wearing headphones look at a person speaking for three to five seconds to “enroll” them. The system then plays just the enrolled speaker’s voice in real time, even as the pair move around in noisy environments.

Spending time in nature is good for us. And knowing more about nature’s effects on our bodies could not only help our well-being, but could also improve how we care for land, preserve ecosystems and design cities, homes and parks. Many studies have focused on how seeing nature affects us. A team of scientists from around the world wants to understand what the nose knows. They are calling for more research into how odors and scents from natural settings impact our health and well-being.

A project led by the University of Washington to better understand our atmosphere’s complexity is a finalist for NASA’s next generation of Earth-observing satellites. STRIVE will receive $5 million to conduct a one-year concept study, and then will hear whether it is selected for launch.

As often as four days a week, Boeing EA-18G Growler electronic attack aircraft based at Naval Air Station Whidbey Island fly loops overhead as pilots practice touch-and-go landings. The noise is immense. New research from the University of Washington shows that the noise isn’t just disruptive — it presents a substantial risk to public health.

Before the oars dip their blades signaling the beginning of the Windemere Cup, before hundreds of flag-draped boats parade from Portage Bay to Lake Washington to open the boating season, the campaign to save the ASUW Shell House at the University of Washington already can be called a winner. 

Working with teens, UW researchers have designed RESeT: a snowy virtual world with six activities intended to improve mood. In a 3-week study of 44 Seattle-area teens, researchers found that most used the technology about twice a week without being prompted and reported lower stress levels after using the environment.

A team led by researchers at the University of Washington developed a new PCB that performs on par with traditional materials and can be recycled repeatedly with negligible material loss. Researchers used a solvent that transforms a type of vitrimer — a cutting-edge class of polymer — into a jelly-like substance without damage, allowing solid components to be plucked out for reuse or recycling. With these “vPCBs” (vitrimer printed circuit boards), researchers recovered 98% of the vitrimer and 100% of the glass fiber.

New research from the University of Washington shows the brain’s response to viewing errors in both the syntax (form) and semantics (meaning) of code appeared identical to those that occur when fluent readers process sentences on a word-by-word basis, supporting a resemblance between how people learn computer and natural languages.

A detailed reconstruction of climate during the most recent ice age, when a large swath of North America was covered in ice, provides information on the relationship between CO2 and global temperature. Results show that while most future warming estimates remain unchanged, the absolute worst-case scenario is unlikely.

Forests could also be potential bulwarks against climate change. But, increasingly severe droughts and wildfires, invasive species, and large insect outbreaks — all intensified by climate change — are straining many national forests and surrounding lands. A report by a team of 40 experts outlines a new approach to forest stewardship that “braids together” Indigenous knowledge and Western science to conserve and restore more resilient forestlands. Published March 25, the report provides foundational material to inform future work on climate-smart adaptive management practices for USDA Forest Service land managers.

The University of Washington and the University of Tsukuba have entered an innovation partnership with NVIDIA and Amazon aimed at furthering research, entrepreneurship, workforce development and social implementation in the field of artificial intelligence. This U.S.-Japan academic partnership is part of a broad, $110 million effort to build upon the strong ties between the U.S. and Japan and to continue to lead innovation and technological breakthroughs in artificial intelligence.

In a study published April 8 in Current Biology, University of Washington researchers found that when the adult talked and played socially with a 5-month-old baby, the baby’s brain activity particularly increased in regions responsible for attention — and the level of this type of activity predicted enhanced language development at later ages.

University of Washington researchers have shown that levels of anisakid worms — a common marine parasite — rose in two salmon species in the Gulf of Alaska and Bristol Bay over a 42-year period. The team discovered this by studying salmon caught, killed and canned from 1979 to 2021. Since anisakid worms have a complex life cycle involving multiple types of hosts, the researchers interpret their rising numbers as a potential sign of ecosystem recovery, possibly driven by rising numbers of marine mammals thanks to the 1972 Marine Mammal Protection Act.

Could life be found in frozen sea spray emitted from moons orbiting Saturn or Jupiter? New research finds that life can be detected in a single ice grain containing one bacterial cell or portions of a cell. The results suggest that if life similar to that on Earth exists on these planetary bodies, this life should be detectable by instruments launching in the fall.

President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Tricia Serio announced an organizational restructuring that brings the offices of Public Records and Open Public Meetings, Records Management Services, and the Privacy Officer functions into Compliance and Risk Services to better serve the University community and the public. The changes are an extension of additional restructuring previously announced to form the expanded Office of Finance, Planning and Budgeting. 

In 2021, Colin Orion Chandler started Active Asteroids Citizen Science, a partnership between NASA, Zooniverse, astronomers and thousands of citizen scientist volunteers. The initiative is searching for so-called “active asteroids,” which have comet-like tails and could hold clues to the formation of our solar system, among other cosmic mysteries. Chandler, now a University of Washington researcher, and his team recently announced they have discovered 15 active asteroids, and are continuing the search for more of these unusual and rare objects.

An AI-powered analysis of 25 years of satellite images yields the surprising finding that methane emissions in Turkmenistan, a former Soviet republic and major oil-producing region, actually increased in the years following the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

Natural history museums have entered a new stage of discovery and accessibility — one where scientists around the globe and curious folks at home can access valuable museum specimens to study, learn or just be amazed. This new era follows the completion of openVertebrate, or oVert, a five-year collaborative project among 18 institutions to create 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and make them freely available online. The team behind this endeavor, which includes scientists at the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, published a summary of the project March 6 in the journal BioScience, offering a glimpse of how the data can be used to ask new questions and spur the development of innovative technology.