College of Arts & Sciences
November 14, 2018
ArtsUW Roundup: A Library of Black Lies, Power and Pleasure in Indian Painting, and more!

This week in the arts, shop for hand-printed gifts, attend a sonic-theatrical performance, dive into lectures about Indian Painting in Mewar and Marwar, and more! Print Sale November 14 to 15, 8:00 AM–7:00 PM | Art Building Hand-printed artwork, cards, soft goods, and more! UW student members of the UW Printmaking Association and UW printmaking alums…
November 13, 2018
Scientists engineer a functional optical lens out of 2D materials

In a paper published Oct. 8 in the journal Nano Letters, a team from the University of Washington and the National Tsing Hua University in Taiwan announced that it has constructed functional metalenses that are one-tenth to one-half the thickness of the wavelengths of light that they focus. Their metalenses, which were constructed out of layered 2D materials, were as thin as 190 nanometers — less than 1/100,000ths of an inch thick.
November 7, 2018
ArtsUW Roundup: Caravaggio Lecture, Campagnie Käfig, Print Sale, and More!

This week in the arts, attend “Unbelievable: Reflections on Caravaggio’s Religious Art” lecture, go to a Print Sale, see Brooklyn Rider perform, and more! Faculty Lecture: Estelle Lingo on Caravaggio November 8, 5:30–6:30 PM | Art Building Estelle Lingo, Associate Professor of Art History and Donald E. Peterson Professor in the Arts, will give the…
After a bad winter in the ocean, female Magellanic penguins suffer most, study shows

Researchers from the University of Washington have shown how Magellanic penguins fare during the winter months when they spend months at sea feeding. They have discovered that oceanographic features are more likely to negatively impact the body conditions of Magellanic penguin females, but not males, when the penguins return to their nesting grounds in spring.
November 5, 2018
Violence in childhood leads to accelerated aging, study finds

A new study of nearly 250 children and teens led by the University of Washington found that participants who had suffered abuse were developing faster than those who had not.
October 30, 2018
Study reconstructs Neandertal ribcage, offers new clues to ancient human anatomy

An international team of researchers, including from the University of Washington, has completed a 3D virtual reconstruction of a Neandertal thorax a model that indicates an upright individual with greater lung capacity and a straighter spine than today’s modern human.
October 29, 2018
UW books in brief: Postwar Japan, American Indian businesses, dictatorship to democracy — and more

Recent notable books by UW faculty members study politics and culture in post-World War II Japan, explore regime change, nonprofit management, documents from the ancient world and more.
October 24, 2018
UW physicist Jiun-Haw Chu named Packard Fellow for research on quantum materials

Jiun-Haw Chu, a University of Washington assistant professor of physics and faculty member at the UW’s Clean Energy Institute, has been named a 2018 fellow by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation for his research on quantum materials — substances that exhibit novel combinations of quantum-mechanical properties that could one day transform information technology.
New center to recognize American Indian and Indigenous Studies

As the discipline of American Indian Studies approaches its 50th year at the University of Washington, a new research center is in the works: the Center for American Indian and Indigenous Studies, which is supported by multiple colleges and schools.
October 19, 2018
PTSD symptoms improve when patient chooses form of treatment, study shows

A study led by the University of Washington is the first large-scale trial of hundreds of PTSD patients, including veterans and survivors of sexual assault, to measure whether patient preference in the course of treatment impacts the effectiveness of both cognitive behavioral therapy and use of selective serotonin reuptake inhibitors, a type of antidepressant often prescribed for PTSD.
October 16, 2018
Once there were camps: New book by UW historian Jordanna Bailkin remembers Britain’s ‘forgotten’ 20th-century refugee camps

Today, Britain is not known as a land of camps, but through much of the 20th century — from after World War I to the 1980s — the country was home to dozens of refugee camps housing thousands of Belgians, Jews, Basques, Poles, Hungarians, Anglo-Egyptians, Ugandan Asians and Vietnamese. As University of Washington history professor…
ArtsUW Roundup | Peacock in the Desert Lecture, Earshot Jazz Festival Concerts, and more!

This week in the arts, UW faculty take us into the community, from the Seattle Art Museum to the Royal Room. There will be music, art history lectures, drama, and more! SAM Talks: Peacock in the Desert Discussion October 18, 7:00 pm | Seattle Art Museum, 1300 First Avenue, Seattle Dr. Karni Singh Jasol, Director…
October 9, 2018
ArtsUW Roundup: Last chance to see 10 Études for Summer, Chamber Dance Company concert, music and fin-de-siecle Vienna, and more

This week in the arts, attend the 2018 Chamber Dance Concert, see the works by ten second year MFA students, attend Cello faculty artist-in-residence Sæunn Thorsteinsdóttir’s recital, and more. Chamber Dance Company October 11 to 14 | Katharyn Alvord Gerlich Theater For its 28th season, the Chamber Dance Company received a National Endowment for the Arts:…
October 8, 2018
Awards to UW affiliate professor recognize career of conservation and research on penguins

Pablo García Borboroglu, president of the Global Penguin Society and a UW affiliate associate professor of biology, has won the Whitley Gold Award and the National Geographic/Buffett Award for Leadership in Conservation, as well as accolades from the Argentine National Congress, for his research and advocacy for penguin conservation.
Race, empire, agency explored in UW history professor’s book ‘Risky Shores: Savagery and Colonialism in the Western Pacific’

A new book by University of Washington history professor George Behlmer seeks to improve understanding of the British colonial era by “reconsidering the conduct of islanders and the English-speaking strangers who encountered them.”
October 4, 2018
UW’s Kristina Olson wins MacArthur Foundation ‘genius grant’

Kristina Olson, University of Washington associate professor of psychology, has been named one of the 2018 MacArthur Fellows. The Fellowship from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation comes with a $625,000 stipend, commonly known as the “genius grant,” for recipients to use as they see fit.
October 3, 2018
3,500-year-old pumpkin spice? Archaeologists find earliest use of nutmeg as a food

On a small island in Indonesia, University of Washington researchers found evidence of nutmeg as residue on ceramic potsherds and is estimated to be 3,500 years old — about 2,000 years older than the previously known use of the spice.
October 1, 2018
High CO2 levels cause plants to thicken their leaves, which could worsen climate change effects, researchers say

When levels of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere rise, most plants do something unusual: They thicken their leaves. Now two University of Washington scientists have shown that this reaction by plants will actually worsen climate change by making the global “carbon sink” contributed by plants was less productive.
September 28, 2018
Researchers release endangered crows into the forests of Pacific island

For more than 2 million years, the native forests on the Pacific islands of Guam and Rota were home to several thousand crows, members of a species found nowhere else on Earth. But over the last 60 years, the Mariana crow — called the Aga in the Chamorro language — has completely disappeared from…
September 25, 2018
ArtsUW Roundup: Last Week of Muse, Classical Indian Dance Workshop, and more

This week in the arts, celebrate Dawg Daze with the Meany Center and ArtsUW, visit the Henry Art Gallery to see Muse, and more. LAST WEEK | Muse: Mickalene Thomas Photographs tête-à-tête Last day is September 30 | Henry Art Gallery “As the exhibition title suggests, MUSE is a visual love letter to the people…
Practicing mindfulness benefits parents and children, UW study says

A UW study found that mindfulness lessons, offered to parents at two early childhood centers, helped adults learn how to manage their emotions and behaviors while supporting their child’s development.
September 24, 2018
David Shields deconstructs the mind of President Donald Trump in latest book

David Shields, UW professor of English, discusses his latest book, “Nobody Hates Trump More than Trump: An Intervention.”
Burst of morning gene activity tells plants when to flower

For angiosperms — or flowering plants — one of the most important decisions facing them each year is when to flower. It is no trivial undertaking. To flower, they must cease vegetative growth and commit to making those energetically expensive reproductive structures that will bring about the next generation. Knowledge of this process at the…
September 20, 2018
Even toddlers weigh risks, rewards when making choices

A University of Washington study finds that 18-month-old toddlers conduct a form of cost-benefit analysis, making choices based on how much effort they want to expend, or on whether they like the people involved.
September 19, 2018
DNA testing of illegal ivory seized by law enforcement links multiple ivory shipments to same dealers

The international trade in elephant ivory has been illegal since 1989, yet African elephant numbers continue to decline. In 2016, the International Union for Conservation of Nature cited ivory poaching as a primary reason for a staggering loss of about 111,000 elephants between 2005 and 2015 — leaving their total numbers at an estimated 415,000….
September 18, 2018
UW historian Margaret O’Mara discusses famous 1968 computer mouse ‘demo’ — and the start of Silicon Valley — for new podcast by The Conversation

Margaret O’Mara, UW professor of history, explores the impact of a December 1968 computer presentation that came to be called “the mother of all demos” in an essay and podcast from the news website The Conversation.
September 13, 2018
UW psychology professor honored for founding research on implicit bias

When Tony Greenwald and his colleagues developed the online Implicit Association Test two decades ago, it enjoyed quick success in the pre-laptop, pre-smartphone, nascent Internet world, with some 45,000 participants in the first month. The test, which requires classifying words and images rapidly according to their meanings, captures unconscious biases toward — depending on the…
September 12, 2018
Three UW teams receive TRIPODS+X grants for research in data science

The National Science Foundation announced on Sept. 11 that it is awarding grants totaling $8.5 million to 19 collaborative projects at 23 universities for the study of complex and entrenched problems in data science. Three of these projects will be based at the University of Washington and led by researchers in the College of Engineering and the College of Arts & Sciences.
September 7, 2018
New Life Sciences Building is a nexus for modern-age teaching and research at the University of Washington

The University of Washington today opened the doors to a new Life Sciences Building that will transform learning, teaching and research for generations.
The $171 million Life Sciences complex includes seven floors and 207,000 square feet that encourages and makes possible team-oriented science. Designed by Perkins+Will and built by Skanska, the building encompasses a 187,000-square-foot research and teaching facility and a 20,000-square-foot research greenhouse with UW plant collections.
September 4, 2018
NSF to fund new $25M software institute to enable discoveries in high-energy physics

On Sept. 4 the National Science Foundation announced the creation of the Institute for Research and Innovation in Software for High Energy Physics, or IRIS-HEP. The institute is a coalition of 17 research institutions, including the University of Washington, and will receive $25 million from the NSF over five years.
August 28, 2018
New study finds police-related fatalities may occur twice as often as reported

A study by the University of Washington and Cornell University shows that the risk of being killed by police, relative to white men, is 3.2 to 3.5 times higher for black men, and between 1.4 and 1.7 times higher for Latino men.
August 21, 2018
Do persistent babies make for successful adults?

University of Washington researchers argue that further study of why infants persist, and to what end, may shed new light on how they learn and what the future yields.
August 16, 2018
Men and women show surprising differences in seeing motion

A new UW-led study shows that males and female process visual motion differently, a variation that may be attributable to a neural regulatory process that is different in the male brain.
August 9, 2018
For UW physicists, the 2-D form of tungsten ditelluride is full of surprises

In a paper published online July 23 in the journal Nature, a UW-led research team reports that the 2-D form of tungsten ditelluride can undergo “ferroelectric switching.” Materials with ferroelectric properties can have applications in memory storage, capacitors, RFID card technologies and even medical sensors — and tungsten ditelluride is the first exfoliated 2-D material known to undergo ferroelectric switching.
August 6, 2018
Alexa, be my friend: Children talk to technology, but how does it respond?

When young children talk to voice-activated technologies, the devices don’t always respond in a helpful way. A new University of Washington study suggests that these interfaces could be designed to be more responsive – repeating or prompting the user, for example – and be more useful to more people.
August 3, 2018
UW, PNNL to host energy research center focusing on bio-inspired design and assembly

The U.S. Department of Energy has awarded an expected $10.75 million, four-year grant to the University of Washington, the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and other partner institutions for a new interdisciplinary research center to define the enigmatic rules that govern how molecular-scale building blocks assemble into ordered structures and give rise to complex hierarchical materials.
August 2, 2018
UW books in brief: Urban diaries, battling Jim Crow on campus and more

Recent notable books by University of Washington authors tell of the struggle to break free of racism in higher education, taking an “urban diary” approach to documenting city life and more.
July 25, 2018
And then there was (more) light: Researchers boost performance quality of perovskites

In a paper published online this spring in the journal Nature Photonics, scientists at the University of Washington report that a prototype semiconductor thin-film has performed even better than today’s best solar cell materials at emitting light.
July 18, 2018
Atlantic Ocean circulation is not collapsing – but as it shifts gears, global warming will reaccelerate

New research suggests the Atlantic Ocean is transitioning back to its slower phase, which means average global air temperatures will go back to rising more quickly.
July 13, 2018
Battling STEM stereotypes, UW’s Sapna Cheryan helps Barbie evolve

Sapna Cheryan, a University of Washington associate professor of psychology, has spent her career researching the stereotypes surrounding STEM. Now she’s serving on Mattel’s Barbie Global Advisory Council, lending her expertise as the company looks ahead to the toy’s future.
Previous page Next page