Nonprofit organizations throughout Washington state are struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic, as revenues and volunteering drop but demand for services remains high.


Nonprofit organizations throughout Washington state are struggling during the COVID-19 pandemic, as revenues and volunteering drop but demand for services remains high.

A research team led by the University of Washington and Pacific Northwest National Laboratory has shown that microbes taken from trees growing beside pristine mountain-fed streams in Western Washington could make phosphorus trapped in soils more accessible to agricultural crops. The findings were published in October in the journal Frontiers in Plant Science.

The global pandemic is hurting the seafood industry, and American fishmongers may flounder without more government aid, according to the largest study of COVID-19’s impacts on U.S. fisheries.

The University of Washington is proud to announce that more than 50 UW faculty and researchers have been named on the annual Highly Cited Researchers 2020 list from Clarivate.

A commitment to innovation powered the University of Washington to a No. 7 ranking for graduate entrepreneurship programs by The Princeton Review. The 2021 ranking marks an all-time high — solidifying UW and the Foster School of Business as a leader in entrepreneurial education and incubation within the Pac-12 and across the Western United States.

Responding to the burgeoning amounts of data being generated across disciplines, and the development of new tools for working with these data, the University of Washington now offers a minor track for non-STEM students in data science. It’s one of the first such programs in the country.

The American Geophysical Union announced that its members have elected Lisa Graumlich, dean of the UW College of the Environment, as the president-elect starting Jan. 1. After two years in this role Graumlich will begin a two-year term as president of the AGU board beginning in 2023.

During this time of uncertainty and isolation, find solace in digital opportunities to connect, share, and engage. Each week, we will share upcoming events that bring the UW, and the greater community, together online. Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT. Lessons (Not) Learned from the Holocaust | In the Bloodlands: History and Memory of the Holocaust in the U.S.S.R. November 24, 4:00 PM | Online As…

Homelessness is a crisis in Washington and across the U.S. Last year, an annual count revealed that in King County alone, 11,200 people reported being homeless at the time of the survey. The numbers have only increased during the pandemic.

Scientists from around the world, including the University of Washington, have established the Arctic Animal Movement Archive, an online repository for data documenting the movements of animals in the Arctic and Subarctic. With this archive, scientists can share their knowledge and collaborate to ask questions about how animals are responding to a changing climate.

A University of Washington team led by Miqin Zhang, a professor of materials science and engineering and of neurological surgery, has developed a nanoparticle-based drug delivery system that can ferry a potent anti-cancer drug through the bloodstream safely. Their nanoparticle is derived from chitin, a natural and organic polymer that, among other things, makes up the outer shells of shrimp.

The biggest study yet of West Coast wildfire plumes shows how a smoke plume’s chemistry changes over time. Results suggest current models may not accurately predict the air quality downwind of a wildfire.

A new study led by paleontologists at the University of Washington indicates that the earliest evidence of mammal social behavior goes back to the Age of Dinosaurs. A multituberculate that lived 75.5 million years ago, Filikomys primaevus engaged in multi-generational, group-nesting and burrowing behavior, and possibly lived in colonies.

For a time unlike any before, the University of Washington has developed “2020: The Course,” a new online class for UW students that helps contextualize this year’s extraordinary events and societal upheaval. “2020: The Course” gives students an opportunity to hear from UW professors and special guests who will discuss the COVID-19 pandemic, race in the United States, the state of the environment, the economic recession, civic participation, citizenship and this election season and outcomes.

A research team led by UC Irvine and the University of Washington has created a new model of how the coronavirus can spread through a community. The model factors in network exposure — whom one interacts with — and demographics to simulate at a more detailed level both where and how quickly the coronavirus could spread through Seattle and 18 other major cities.

The University of Washington is among leading U.S. oceanographic institutions that have received National Science Foundation funding to build and deploy 500 robotic ocean-monitoring floats to monitor the chemistry and biology of the world’s oceans.

UW researchers have developed SoundWatch, a smartwatch app for deaf, Deaf and hard-of-hearing people who want to be aware of nearby sounds.

The University of Washington’s newest class of undergraduate students broke record levels of enrollment across all three campuses, according to the finalized fall 2020 census of enrolled students.

Simple actions can dramatically improve a person’s chances of surviving a landslide, show records from 38 landslides in the U.S. and around the world. People who survived landslides tended to have moved upstairs or to higher ground, among other key actions.
The University of Washington moved up two spots to No. 8 on the U.S. News & World Report’s Best Global Universities rankings, released Tuesday. The UW maintained its No. 2 ranking among U.S. public institutions.

During this time of uncertainty and isolation, find solace in digital opportunities to connect, share, and engage. Each week, we will share upcoming events that bring the UW, and the greater community, together online. Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT. So Far So Good: Show and Q&A with Libby King October 29 – November 1, 7:30 PM | Online What is the experience of living in…

Research by Forefront Suicide Prevention at the University of Washington, from visits to 18 gun shows and other community events around Washington state last year, found that engaging people in a community-based setting, in an empathetic conversation focused on safety, resulted in more people locking up their firearms.

A new University of Washington and NOAA Fisheries study found that sea lions have the largest negative effect on early-arriving endangered Chinook salmon in the lower Columbia River. The results of this study will publish Oct. 18 in the Journal of Applied Ecology.

Cost of living is up in all Washington counties, for families of all sizes, according to the 2020 Self-Sufficiency Standard for Washington State, a report that identifies the amount of income needed to support families of various sizes without additional help from the government, community or other personal resources.

During this time of uncertainty and isolation, find solace in digital opportunities to connect, share, and engage. Each week, we will share upcoming events that bring the UW, and the greater community, together online. Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT. Beyond Guilt Trips: Mindful Travel in an Unequal World October 20, 4:00 PM | Online via Zoom Join author and Professor of English and Comparative History…

A new art installation, Guests of the Great River, now greets visitors to the Burke Museum. The piece consists of 11 large-scale bronze paddles representing the arrival of a Chinookan canoe carrying cultural heroes of the Columbia River region, and with them the knowledge they embody.

UW researchers have created a sensor system that can ride aboard a small drone or an insect, such as a moth, until it gets to its destination.

A King County initiative to relocate people from homeless shelters to hotel rooms during the pandemic not only limited the spread of COVID-19, but also improved people’s mental health and well-being, and allowed them to focus on long-term goals.
During this time of uncertainty and isolation, find solace in digital opportunities to connect, share, and engage. Each week, we will share upcoming events that bring the UW, and the greater community, together online. Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT. Curating in Conversation October 13, 6:00 PM | Online via Zoom Marking the one year anniversary of the opening of the New Burke and Northwest Native…

In a paper published Sept. 14 in the journal Nature Physics, a team led by the University of Washington reports that carefully constructed stacks of graphene — a 2D form of carbon — can exhibit highly correlated electron properties. The team also found evidence that this type of collective behavior likely relates to the emergence of exotic magnetic states.

The Southeast Asia Center at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies and the Libraries at the University of Washington will spearhead a new initiative of innovative collaborations to explore the effects and consequences of authoritarianism in Southeast Asia and on Southeast Asian American communities in the United States.

When exploring data on Washington workers during the pandemic — demographics, working conditions, wages and benefits, and risks of exposure to disease — the authors of a new report found that women hold two-thirds of the jobs in the harshest category of work. “The big takeaway from our research,” said David West, a co-author of the report and an analyst at the Washington Labor Education and Research Center, “is how particularly women are working under precarious conditions — a large…

FINAL UPDATE Jan. 11: For more than two months, this post has been updated regularly as cases have been added to the Greek community outbreak. The updates will continue to be provided on the UW COVID-19 Case tracking dashboard, which can be found here. Updates on the Greek community outbreak can be found by hovering over the question mark icon near the top-right corner of the dashboard on that page. UPDATE at 10:30 a.m. Monday, Jan. 11: As of Monday morning,…

With roughly 109 people dying every day and many others treated in emergency rooms from firearm-related injuries — which are the second leading cause of death among adolescents — the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has, after decades, stepped in to fund critical firearm research. The CDC announced on Sept. 23 it would fund 16 studies for a total of more than $7.8 million to understand and prevent firearm violence. The University of Washington’s proposal to study handgun carrying…

A new study combines ice cores, geologic records and computer models to understand the past, present and future of the Greenland Ice Sheet. The results show that emissions this century have a big influence on how much ice will be lost from Greenland.

A new University of Washington study uses passive data from a fishing technology company to model the movement of anglers and predict where aquatic invasive species may be spreading.

During this time of uncertainty and isolation, find solace in digital opportunities to connect, share, and engage. Each week, we will share upcoming events that bring the UW, and the greater community, together online. Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to Zoom Pro via UW-IT. Velvet Sweatshops and Algorithmic Cruelty: Labor in the Global Tech Economy October 6, 5:00 PM – 6:15 PM | Online via Zoom As the tech economy…

University of Washington faculty member Ian Schnee, associate teaching professor in the Department of Philosophy, was the featured speaker at the UW’s 37th annual New Student Convocation. The virtual ceremony was held Sept. 27 and was livestreamed to audiences around the world. A recording is available here.

As universities and colleges struggle to find the right combination of in-person and online classes combined with protective measures to help prevent the spread of the novel coronavirus, a new study by researchers from four institutions has reached a troubling conclusion. Reopening university and college campuses with primarily in-person instruction is associated with a significant increase in cases of COVID-19 in the counties where the schools are located. “Consequently, we are able to predict between 1,000 and 5,000 additional cases…

In the United States, individual state laws barring 18- to 20-year-olds from buying or possessing a handgun make little difference in the rate of homicides involving a gun by people in that age group, a new University of Washington study has found. “The central issue is that there’s a very high degree of informal access to firearms, such as through family members or illicit channels,” said Caitlin Moe, the study’s lead author and a doctoral student in epidemiology in the…