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Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Gospel Choir May 23, 7:30 PM | Meany Hall Phyllis Byrdwell leads the 100-voice gospel choir in songs of praise, jubilation, and other expressions of the Gospel tradition. $10 | Buy tickets & more info Astronomy on Tap: Technology in Earth Orbit and Beyond May 25, 8:00 PM | Bickersons Brewhouse First, Dr. Meredith Rawls, a research scientist at the UW Department of Astronomy, will talk about her…

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Christina Fiig: Gender Policies in a Context of (Quasi) Permanent Crisis May 17, 12:00 PM | Online Join the Center for West European Studies and the Jean Monnet EU Center to continue the Talking Gender in the EU Lecture Series, with Christina Fiig on “EU Gender Policies in a Context of (Quasi) Permanent Crisis,” Christina Fiig is an Associate Professor at the School of Culture and Society, Section for…

After a mother octopus lays a clutch of eggs, she quits eating and wastes away; by the time the eggs hatch, she is dead. Some females in captivity even seem to speed up this process intentionally, mutilating themselves and twisting their arms into a tangled mess. The source of this bizarre maternal behavior seems to be the optic gland, an organ similar to the pituitary gland in mammals. For years, just how this gland triggered the gruesome death spiral was unclear. But in a new study published May 12 in Current Biology, researchers from the University of Washington, the University of Chicago and the University of Illinois Chicago show that the optic gland in maternal octopuses undergoes a massive shift in cholesterol metabolism, resulting in dramatic changes in the steroid hormones produced. Alterations in cholesterol metabolism in other animals, including humans, can have serious consequences on longevity and behavior, and the team believes this reveals important similarities in the functions of these steroids across the animal kingdom — in soft-bodied cephalopods and vertebrates alike.

Recent recognition of the  includes the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring for Joyce Yen, the election of J. Nathan Kutz as a Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics fellow and the recognition of Alexina Kublu with the 2022 Inuit Language Recognition Award.

Four faculty members at the University of Washington have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences for 2022: Elizabeth Buffalo, professor and chair of physiology and biophysics; Joseph Mougous, professor of microbiology; Dr. Jay Shendure, professor of genome sciences; and James Truman, professor emeritus of biology.

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Andrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture: Japanese Propaganda and the Power of Love: Mobilizing the Wartime Empire May 9, 6:30 PM | Kane Hall 225 Historians and cultural critics often identify “exploiting hate” as the primary affective mode of propaganda. Particularly in the context of war, manufacturing a clear division in militarist propaganda between valorous “us” and demonized “them” seems axiomatic. An examination of kamishibai (literally, paper theater), one…

The flashing of a nearby star drew the attention of a team of astronomers, who discovered that it is part of a rare and mysterious system. As they report in a paper published May 4 in Nature, the stellar oddity appears to be a “black widow binary” — a type of system consisting of a rapidly spinning neutron star, or pulsar, that is circling and slowly consuming a smaller companion star, as its arachnid namesake does to its mate.

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Carving out a brave space: Courage in art May 3, 7:00 PM | HUB Lyceum & Online “Have something to say. Be brave enough to say it. Use your art to change the world.” UW Drama Professor and Head of Directing & Playwriting Valerie Curtis-Newton lives by these words in her directing and teaching career. She urges artists to take risks and inspires audiences to see the world…

Scientists once thought that post-starburst galaxies scattered all of their gas and dust — the fuel required for creating new stars — in violent bursts of energy, and with extraordinary speed. Now, a team led by University of Washington postdoctoral researcher Adam Smercina reports that these galaxies don’t scatter all of their star-forming fuel after all. Instead, after their supposed end, these dormant galaxies hold onto and compress large amounts of highly concentrated, turbulent gas. But contrary to expectation, they’re not using it to form stars.

Former UW Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences Robert Stacey will speak to the graduates of the classes of 2020 and 2021 when they return to Alaska Airlines Field at Husky Stadium for an in-person celebration on Sunday, June 12.

Space urgently needs special legal protection similar to that given to land, sea and atmosphere to protect its fragile environment, argues a team of scientists. The scientific, economic and cultural benefits of space should be considered against the damaging environmental impacts posed by an influx of space debris — roughly 60 miles above Earth’s surface — fueled by the rapid growth of so-called satellite mega-constellations. In a paper published April 22 in Nature Astronomy, the authors assert that space is an important environment to preserve on behalf of professional astronomers, amateur stargazers and Indigenous peoples.

Two University of Washington faculty members are among 180 experts in the arts, humanities, law and the sciences chosen as 2022 Guggenheim Fellows, according to an April 7 announcement from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation. Jordanna Bailkin, a professor in the Department of History, and Emily Levesque, an associate professor in the Department of Astronomy, are among the new class of fellows, which were selected from a pool of nearly 2,500 applicants.

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Many of these opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT.  School of Art + Art History + Design Graduation Exhibitions Ongoing| Jacob Lawrence Art Gallery Join the School of Art + Art History + Design for a series of graduation exhibitions for students receiving Bachelor of Arts degrees in Art. Graduation Exhibition 1: April 6 – 16 Graduation Exhibition 2:…

In France, a political controversy arose when a gender-neutral pronoun was added to a respected dictionary. This controversy made a new volume co-edited by the UW’s Louisa Mackenzie especially relevant. It describes how nonbinary French speakers are changing their language to reflect their identity.

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Many of these opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT.  Donna Huanca: MAGMA SLIT Opens April 2 | Henry Art Gallery Bolivian-American artist Donna Huanca creates work that destabilizes the male gaze while exploring femme and indigenous, specifically Andean, narratives and mark-making. Huanca’s installations encompass painting, sculpture, and live performance, and are characteristically created for, and integrated with, the…

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Many of these opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT.  Re/frame: Orange March 17, 12:00 PM | Online Orange can symbolize power, danger, excitement, and enlightenment. In different contexts, orange evokes images ranging from a bountiful fall harvest to a fiery explosion of energy. How does color affect the way we feel? How many different applications can one…

Laada Bilaniuk is a professor of anthropology at the whose expertise is Ukrainian culture and society. The daughter of Ukrainian Americans, she shares insights on the Ukrainian people who are resisting, how the conflict relates to the use of language and the perspective of the local Ukrainian community.

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Many of these opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT.  Wind Ensemble and Symphonic Band March 8, 7:30 PM | Meany Hall The UW Wind Ensemble (Timothy Salzman, director) performs music by Joseph Schwantner, Joaquín Rodrigo, and William Bolcom. The Symphonic Band (Shaun Day, director) performs music by Joan Tower, Jan Van der Roos, and Frank Ticheli. $10…

Scientists at the University of Washington and Emory University report that an antibiotic sprayed on orchard crops to combat bacterial diseases slows the cognition of bumblebees and reduces their foraging efficiency. The study, published Feb. 9 in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, focused on streptomycin, an antibiotic used increasingly in U.S. agriculture during the past decade.

Through public events and exhibitions, connect with the UW community every week! Many of these opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT.  Don’t Miss Before it Closes! Lauren Williams: Wake Work* Through March 5 | The Jacob Lawrence Gallery What happens in the wake of state violence, particularly against Black people in the United States? Absence and erasure challenge the imagination in Lauren Williams: Wake Work*, an exhibition created as part of…

An international research team, including scientists from the University of Washington, has established a new upper limit on the mass of the neutrino, the lightest known subatomic particle. In a paper published Feb. 14 in Nature Physics, the collaboration — known as the Karlsruhe Tritium Neutrino Experiment or KATRIN — reports that the neutrino’s mass is below 0.8 electron volts, or 0.8 eV/c2. Honing in on the elusive value of the neutrino’s mass will solve a major outstanding mystery in particle physics and equip scientists with a more complete view of the fundamental forces and particles that shape ourselves, our planet and the cosmos.