Whether or not you were able to attend the UW’s Together campaign launch event on October 21, you should take pride in the degree to which Engineering was featured. The video, in particular, featuring both the Ability Lab in Mechanical Engineering and the Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering, was both moving and informative. The goal of a university campaign is to galvanize philanthropic resources to support excellence and unlock potential, and the kickoff has accomplished that for the UW. In the College of Engineering, we are focused on the following strategic goals:

• Increasing access for students
• Attracting and retaining star faculty
• Supporting innovative, life-changing research
• Adding and improving facilities to meet the needs of today’s students

In short, it’s about making an impact, and the next four years will be transformative for the college in the best of ways. To learn more about our campaign priorities, please visit our new campaign website. Thank you for all you do!

Mike Bragg, Ph.D.
Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of Engineering

Lifelong community volunteers and philanthropists, Scott (Ph.D. ChemE, ‘74) and Catherine (Cathi) Roberts are dedicated to numerous causes, from supporting Amigos de las Americas in a variety of capacities to advocating for the preservation of African Heritage Cultural Resources. But above all, their passion is investing in the future by helping young people to achieve their potential. This passion was their motivation for establishing the Catherine and Scott C. Roberts Distinguished Endowed Graduate Fellowship in Chemical Engineering.

Scott and Cathi typically make current-use gifts, but were inspired to create an endowment by the UW’s recent matching program, which increased the value of their $500,000 gift by 50 percent. The fellowship also honors Scott’s mentor, Professor Graham Allan, whose focus on creative thinking helped Scott to distinguish himself from other young chemical engineers as he began his 35-year career with Royal Dutch Shell.

"The research support I received from the UW for my graduate studies was so important to us; without it, I couldn’t have attended. We really appreciated it and would like to pass it on. And Chemical Engineering is an outstanding department; students who are lucky enough to earn their Ph.D. there are really going to do great things. So if we can help with the fellowship, that’s a great investment."  —Scott Roberts

"We want to invest our money with people who are making positive changes in the world. Our priority is helping programs that grow leaders for the future."  —Cathi Roberts

ESTABLISHED:

1898

UW Civil & Environmental Engineering students and faculty are addressing the challenges presented by our nation’s aging infrastructure and developing new systems to meet urban needs around the globe. From earthquake engineering to water quality research to designing transit systems, the solutions being developed will enhance the quality of life for people worldwide.

CHAIR:

Greg Miller, Professor and Department Chair

HIGHLIGHTS:

#14 best graduate school for 2017, according to U.S. News & World Report

17 new faculty members hired since 2009, to accommodate unprecedented growth in the department

Two new CEE-led centers funded in 2016:

• Funded by a $4 million NHERI NSF Grant, the Post-Disaster Rapid Response Research Facility will facilitate the collection of data in the aftermath of earthquake and wind-related disasters.
• Funded by a $10 million EPA grant, a new Center for Air, Climate and Energy Solutions will enable more than 25 researchers to address the nation’s pressing need for better air quality.

Magdalena Balazinska, Ph.D.
Holder of the Jean-Loup Baer Endowed Professorship in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering

"The Jean-Loup Baer Endowed Professorship enabled me to take a risk and embark on an ambitious project to build a new database management system and cloud service to support the analysis of image and video data at scale, specifically for large-scale virtual reality applications and for scientific applications. Our ability to collect images of the world, en masse, can revolutionize how we interact with the world and our understanding of that world.

"With the initial studies that this professorship has helped fund, my colleagues and I are now applying for funding from the National Science Foundation as well as from industry. I am proud of the work that my students and I have accomplished over the past year, which the professorship helped make possible."  — Magdalena Balazinska