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News & events

News archive for 2019

Airplane taking off

Wed, 12/11/2019 | UW News

Communities around Sea-Tac Airport exposed to a unique mix of air pollution associated with aircraft

Communities underneath and downwind of jets landing at Seattle-Tacoma International Airport are exposed to a type of ultrafine particle pollution that is distinctly associated with aircraft.

The night sky over a grass field

Fri, 12/06/2019 | UW News

Astronomy fellowship demonstrates effective measures to dismantle bias, increase diversity in STEM

An astronomy fellowship now has greater gender diversity among its awardees, thanks to a collaboration with UW's ADVANCE Center.

harvesting rice in a rice field

Wed, 12/04/2019 | UW News

Warmer temperatures will increase arsenic levels in rice, study shows

UW researchers found that warmer temperatures, at levels expected under most climate change projections, can lead to higher concentrations of arsenic in rice grains.

A wooden birdhouse

Mon, 12/02/2019 | UW News

Carpentry Compiler helps woodworkers design objects that they can actually make

UW researchers have created Carpentry Compiler, a digital tool that allows users to design woodworking projects and create optimized fabrication instructions based on the materials and equipment a user has available.

Woman holding a smart phone

Wed, 11/27/2019 | UW News

Researchers get ‘glimpse into a human mind’ as it makes choices in groups, social media

Using a mathematical framework with roots in artificial intelligence and robotics, UW researchers were able to uncover the process for how a person makes choices in groups.

A coal power plant in West Virginia.

Wed, 11/20/2019 | UW News

Emissions from electricity generation lead to disproportionate number of premature deaths for some racial groups

University of Washington researchers have found that air pollution from electricity generation emissions in 2014 led to about 16,000 premature deaths in the continental U.S. In many states, the majority of the health impacts came from emissions originating in other states. The team also found that exposures were higher for black and white non-Latino Americans than for other groups, and that this disparity held even after accounting for differences in income.

A healthy reef in Indonesia teems with life

Fri, 11/15/2019 | UW News

UW aerospace engineer part of $1.7M grant to study corals

A&A associate professor Jinkyu Yang and a team of researchers have received a two-year, $1.7 million National Science Foundation grant to study coral growth.

freight shipping container in foreground and research ship in background

Thu, 11/07/2019 | UW News

Fall storms, coastal erosion focus of northern Alaska research cruise

A University of Washington team is leaving to study how fall storms, dwindling sea ice and vulnerable coastlines might combine in a changing Arctic.

illustration of the optical tractor beam

Mon, 11/04/2019 | UW News

Light-based ‘tractor beam’ assembles materials at the nanoscale

College of Engineering researchers have developed a method that could make reproducible manufacturing at the nanoscale possible.

Five hands making fists in a circle. All arms have black Fitbit trackers on them.

Mon, 11/04/2019 | UW News

Single discrimination events alter college students’ daily behavior

A UW team compared students’ reports of unfair treatment to changes in daily activities to understand how single discrimination events alter students’ daily behavior.

perovskite solar cell

Thu, 10/31/2019 | UW News

New technique lets researchers map strain in next-gen solar cells

UW researchers have developed a way to illuminate strain in lead halide perovskite solar cells without harming them.

DNA testing kit

Tue, 10/29/2019 | College of Engineering

Popular third-party genetic genealogy site is vulnerable to compromised data, impersonations

Researchers at the University of Washington have found that GEDmatch, a popular third-party genetic genealogy site, is vulnerable to multiple kinds of security risks.

Mon, 10/21/2019 | College of Engineering

Making medicine accessible

Through the student project-turned-startup MedsForAll, materials science and engineering alum Shawn Swanson (BS ’15, MS ’16) is developing an affordable alternative to the EpiPen.

A baby is asleep while a smart speaker prototype monitors its breathing. The breathing waveform is shown on a computer screen nearby.

Tue, 10/15/2019 | UW News

First smart speaker system that uses white noise to monitor infants’ breathing

UW researchers developed the first smart speaker system that lets a device use white noise to both soothe sleeping babies and monitor their breathing and movement.

Line of Pronto bikes on a sidewalk in front of water

Mon, 10/07/2019 | UW News

How bike sharing in Seattle rose from the ashes of Pronto's failure

UW researchers, led by CEE professor Don MacKenzie, have published a study on why docked bike sharing in Seattle failed while dockless bike sharing succeeded.

A scanning electron micrograph image of the surface of the optical element.

Fri, 10/04/2019 | UW News

New metasurface design can control optical fields in three dimensions

UW scientists have designed and tested a 3D-printed metamaterial that can manipulate light with nanoscale precision. As they report in a paper published Oct. 4 in the journal Science Advances, their designed optical element focuses light to discrete points in a 3D helical pattern.

Wed, 09/25/2019 | Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics

COE remembers Fred Ribe, Professor Emeritus

Dr. Fred Ribe, Professor Emeritus at UW and a leading pioneer in U.S. fusion energy research, died on June 19, 2019 in Santa Fe, New Mexico at age 94. Professor Ribe was a pioneer in fusion energy research in the UW nuclear engineering department.

orange sun with spots

Thu, 09/19/2019 | UW News

Plasma flow near sun’s surface explains sunspots, other solar phenomena

A University of Washington study published this month in the journal Physics of Plasmas proposes a model of plasma motion that would explain the 11-year sunspot cycle and several other previously mysterious properties of the sun.

A traffic jam on a huge freeway at night

Mon, 09/16/2019 | UW News

Americans would rather drive themselves to work than have an autonomous vehicle drive them, study says

Researchers at the University of Washington studied how Americans' perceived cost of commute time changes depending on who's driving. The study suggests that at least for now, people would rather drive themselves than have an autonomous vehicle drive them.

members of the nandropper team with nanodropper

Mon, 08/26/2019 | College of Engineering

An eye for innovation

By reducing the size of eye drops, the team behind Nanodropper wants to make your eye medications last longer and help you save money.

Maria Huffman

Fri, 08/23/2019 | UW News

Semiconductor and Solar Industry Veteran named UW Washington Nanofabrication Facility Director

Dr. Maria Huffman is the new director of the University of Washington’s Washington Nanofabrication Facility (WNF), the largest publicly accessible nanofabrication facility in the Pacific Northwest. Huffman joins WNF from Lund University in southern Sweden.

CEE graduate student Shashank Bhushan

Thu, 08/22/2019 | UW News

3 UW graduate students earn NASA fellowships, continue legacy of success

CEE graduate student Shashank Bhushan is one of three UW recipients of a prestigious NASA fellowship that funds student research projects in the fields of Earth and planetary sciences and astrophysics.

tablet

Tue, 08/20/2019 | UW News

New tools to minimize risks in shared, augmented-reality environments

University of Washington security researchers have developed ShareAR, a toolkit that lets app developers build in collaborative and interactive features without sacrificing their users’ privacy and security. The researchers presented their findings Aug. 14 at the USENIX Security Symposium in Santa Clara, California.

Ashis Banerjee

Mon, 08/19/2019 | UW News

How ergonomic is your warehouse job? Soon, an app might be able to tell you

Engineering researchers have developed a system to monitor workers and tell them how risky their behaviors are.

Dr. Nancy Allbritton

Tue, 08/13/2019 | UW News

Dr. Nancy Allbritton named dean of UW’s College of Engineering

Dr. Nancy Allbritton has been named the next Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of the College of Engineering, University of Washington Provost Mark Richards announced today.