The University of Washington this week ranked No. 5 on the Forbes list of Best Value Colleges 2018. The UW rose from 23rd place in the 2016 ranking.


The University of Washington this week ranked No. 5 on the Forbes list of Best Value Colleges 2018. The UW rose from 23rd place in the 2016 ranking.

A crowd of dignitaries gathered Wednesday for the official groundbreaking of the university’s new 290,000-square-foot Population Health Building, a facility that will house the Population Health Initiative launched by the UW in 2016.

A new carillon — the only such instrument in Western Washington — will ring in full concert at the University of Washington for the first time Thursday.

Mario L. Barnes has been named the next Toni Rembe dean of the University of Washington’s School of Law, President Ana Mari Cauce and Provost Jerry Baldasty announced today. His appointment, set to begin July 5, 2018, is subject to approval by the UW Board of Regents.

Dr. Benjamin Danielson, a 1992 graduate of the UW School of Medicine, a Children’s Hospital pediatrician and director of the Odessa Brown Children’s Clinic, will be the featured speaker at the University of Washington’s Commencement exercises Saturday, June 9.

Brian McCartan has been named vice president for finance at the University of Washington, Executive Vice President Jeff Scott announced today. McCartan joins the UW after serving as the chief financial officer at Sound Transit for the past 11 years. He begins on Feb. 26.

The Peace Corps today announced that University of Washington ranked No. 2 among large schools on the agency’s 2018 Top Volunteer-Producing Colleges and Universities list. There are 74 UW alumni currently volunteering worldwide.

The University of Washington ranked second in the country in producing Fulbright Scholars. Fulbrights were awarded to 11 researchers at UW’s Seattle campus, and to three faculty members at UW Bothell.

Newly discovered fossils reveal a lineage of animals thought to have led to dinosaurs taking hold in Tanzania and Zambia, many millions of years before dinosaur relatives were seen in the fossil record elsewhere on Earth.

The stomach and intestines of certain Dolly Varden trout double to quadruple in size during month-long, salmon-egg-eating binges in Alaska each August. It’s the first time researchers have documented such fish gut flexibility in the wild.

New work in Argentina where scientists had previously thought Earth’s first grasslands emerged 38 million years ago, shows the area at the time covered with tropical forests rich with palms, bamboos and gingers. Grit and volcanic ash in those forests could have caused the evolution of teeth in horse-like animals that scientists mistakenly thought were adaptations in response to emerging grasslands.

Species facing widespread and rapid environmental changes can sometimes evolve quickly enough to dodge the extinction bullet. UW scientists consider the genetic underpinnings of such evolutionary rescue.

Taking into consideration size, an ancient relative of piranhas weighing about 20 pounds delivered a bite with more force than prehistoric whale-eating sharks or – even – Tyrannosaurus rex.

Microorganisms – 99 percent more kinds than had been reported in findings published just four months ago – are hitching rides in the upper troposphere from Asia.

UW librarians acted quickly to eliminate bedbugs in books last August.