Popular Science has recognized a technique developed by UW and Microsoft researchers to store and retrieve digital data in DNA as one of the most innovative and game-changing technologies of the year. In July, the UW Molecular Information Systems Lab broke the world record for the amount of DNA successfully encoded and retrieved in DNA molecules, using a novel approach to converting the long strings of ones and zeroes in digital data into the four basic building blocks of DNA sequences.
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October 19, 2016 | UW Today
October 13, 2016 | Department of Bioengineering
Nuttada Panpradist, a fourth year bioengineering Ph.D. student, has received the $50,000 third place APF Student Technology Prize for Primary Healthcare. Panpradist is developing OLA-SIMPLE, a paper-based system that emulates the diagnostic capabilities of laboratory testing to provide a rapid visual readout of HIV diagnosis, viral load and drug resistance. The device is designed to address the increasing prevalence of HIV resistant to antiretroviral therapy in low-resource regions, where existing testing methods are prohibitively expensive to carry out.
October 12, 2016 | College of Engineering
Engineering students involved in Bioengineers without Borders are seeking to create anesthesia delivery devices for use in developing countries. Existing anesthesia delivery methods are not suitable for resource-poor regions because they are costly and require stable access to power and oxygen. The lack of access to anesthesia prevents crucial medical from being performed, but Bioengineers without Borders aims to solve this problem with their affordable, portable devices.
October 12, 2016 | UW Today
The new Urban Freight Lab will investigate high-impact, low-cost solutions for businesses delivering goods in urban settings and cities trying to manage limited curb and parking space where delivery trucks, bicycles, pedestrians and cars all need to coexist. The lab is part of the Supply Chain Transportation & Logistics Center and will collaborate with the Seattle Department of Transportation and three founding industry members: Costco, Nordstrom and UPS. The first research question the lab will investigate is the “final 50 feet” challenge, or the final leg of the delivery journey.
October 6, 2016 | UW Today
Amazon is giving a major push to the campaign to build a second Computer Science & Engineering building on the UW Seattle campus with a $10 million gift. The new 130,000-square-foot UW CSE building will provide space for the UW to double the number of computer science and engineering graduates annually.
According to the Washington Student Achievement Council, the workforce gap in computer science – the gap between available jobs and prepared graduates – is far greater than in any other field. At the UW, student demand far outstrips program capacity: more incoming UW freshmen list CSE as their first choice major than any other field, and UW CSE currently can accommodate just one out of three qualified students who apply to the major.
October 5, 2016 | UW Today
A new Post-Disaster, Rapid Response Research Facility funded by a $4.1 million National Science Foundation grant will provide necessary tools to collect and assess critical post-disaster data. Following a natural disaster, cleanup efforts quickly erase valuable evidence. The tools at the new RAPID facility will allow researchers to gather detailed information immediately after a disaster, so it can later be analyzed to improve building and preparedness practices.
October 3, 2016 | UW Today
Over the next month, College of Engineering’s annual fall lecture series will feature faculty focusing on developing technologies to build more resilient urban communities. The three lectures – on earthquake resiliency, sustainable transport of goods and emerging technologies for safe, clean water — are free and open to the public, but seating is limited and registration is required.
October 3, 2016 | UW Today
In a paper published Sept. 22 in Scientific Reports, engineers at the University of Washington unveiled peptides — small proteins which carry out countless essential tasks in our cells — that can provide a link between the biochemistry of our bodies and the chemistry of implanted devices.
September 27, 2016 | UW Today
University of Washington computer scientists and electrical engineers have devised a way to send secure passwords through the human body — using benign, low-frequency transmissions generated by fingerprint sensors and touchpads on consumer devices.
September 19, 2016 | UW Today
Researchers at the University of Washington are among the winners of a startup challenge to shorten the transition time from lab bench to patient. The team, including members of professor Suzie Pun‘s research group in the UW Department of Bioengineering, was selected based on its proposal and business plan to develop a targeted drug delivery system for breast cancer.
September 12, 2016 | UW Today
CE Professor Jim Pfaendtner is leading a new endeavor funded by the National Science Foundation to bring big data to graduate education in clean energy research at the UW. Known as DIRECT — or Data Intensive Research Enabling Clean Technologies — this traineeship will phase in practical, data-driven research projects for graduate students in fields such as chemistry, renewable energy and chemical engineering.
September 8, 2016 | UW Today
Is life better or worse after sticking your Fitbit in a drawer? UW researchers surveyed hundreds of people who had abandoned self-tracking tools and found emotions ranged from guilt to indifference to relief that the tracking experience was over.
September 7, 2016 | UW Today
HemaApp measures hemoglobin levels and screens for anemia non-invasively by illuminating the patient’s finger with a smartphone’s camera flash.
August 30, 2016 | The Seattle Times
Alumnus Joe Sutter (1921 – 2016), ‘Father of the 747,’ was an engineering giant and pioneer of the aerospace industry.
August 26, 2016 | The Whole U
Gary Hsieh, an assistant professor in Human Centered Design & Engineering (HCDE), studies incentives, motivation, and the tools that make our lives more efficient. If you stumbled on a list of his publications, it would be hard to guess which department he belongs to. He’s researched mindfulness, nutrition, teen moms, activism, volunteering, video games, and advertising. Hsieh says his research is about everyday life. He’s analyzed websites like Wikipedia and Change.org, and this summer he’s prototyping an app that helps doctors and pharmacists navigate drug risks for pregnant patients.
August 24, 2016 | College of Engineering
The UWashington Hyperloop team is taking part in Elon Musk's competition to design a pod that can travel at transonic speed within a vacuum tube. After winning the Safety Subsystem Technical Excellence Award this January, the team will advance to the next leg of the competition, set to take place in January 2017 at SpaceX.
August 17, 2016 | UW Today
University of Washington researchers have introduced a new way of communicating that allows devices such as brain implants, contact lenses, credit cards and smaller wearable electronics to talk to everyday devices such as smartphones and watches.
August 15, 2016 | UW Today
At the USENIX Security Conference in Austin, Texas, a team of University of Washington researchers on Aug. 12 presented the first-ever comprehensive analysis of third-party web tracking across three decades and a new tool, TrackingExcavator, which they developed to extract and analyze tracking behaviors on a given web page. They saw a four-fold increase in third-party tracking on top sites from 1996 to 2016, and mapped the growing complexity of trackers stretching back decades.
August 10, 2016 | Civil & Environmental Engineering Blog
CEE researchers are helping Pakistani farmers be more profitable and sustainable with a satellite-based app that advises them how much to water their crops. More than 700 farmers in Pakistan who grow bananas, wheat and other crops receive weekly text messages. "The farmers were previously going on instinct and overwatering the crops," Civil & Environmental Engineering Associate Professor Faisal Hossain said. "Now, it is scientifically driven and uses satellite data." Also see the video story from King5 News ».
August 1, 2016 | College of Engineering
Civil and environmental engineering alumnus Marc Edwards led a team of volunteers to uncovered the source of lead poisoning in Flint, Michigan during the "Flint water crisis." Time Magazine has named him one of the world’s most influential people for this work.
August 1, 2016 | UW Today
Four College of Engineering faculty were elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences: Tom Anderson, professor of computer science and engineering, also elected to the National Academy of Engineering; François Baneyx, professor and chair of chemical engineering; Cecilia Giachelli, professor and chair of bioengineering; and Daniel Schwartz, professor of chemical engineering.
July 27, 2016 | UW Today
A team of researchers, including civil and environmental engineering professor Julian Marshall, investigated the benefits of cleaner carbon-burning cookstoves in the field. They found that the increased efficiency observed in the lab did not carry over when these stoves were used in Karnataka, India. The continued use of traditional cooking methods alongside the new stoves contributed to the lower than expected results.
July 25, 2016 | College of Engineering
Since 2010, Mike Francis, ’06, has been an emerging leader in the Northwest’s craft brewing industry, thanks to a degree in Industrial & Systems Engineering. His brewery, Payette Brewing Company, is now the largest in the state of Idaho.
July 22, 2016 | Department of Mechanical Engineering
The Human Powered Submarine team traveled to Gosport, England, for the European International Submarine Races, where they also placed first for top speed by a female pilot.
July 21, 2016 | UW Today
Ira Kemelmacher-Shlizerman, assistant professor of computer science and engineering, has developed a new personalized image search engine called Dreambit. Dreambit lets people imagine how they would look with different hairstyles or in different time periods. To accomplish the image transformation, Dreambit searches internet photographs to locate a “doppelgänger set” of images that resemble the original person but have the desired hairstyle, color, or other characteristic.
Shwetak Patel
Steve Brunton
Mari Ostendorf
Matthew O’Donnell
Yinhai Wang
Brett Maurer
Eve Riskin
Yin Tat Lee
Ruikang Wang
Kurtis Heimerl
Paul Yager
James Riley
Steve Brunton
Joyce Yen