Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ

Skip to content

News releases

The R/V Thomas G. Thompson, the 274-foot-long research vessel operated by the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ, has spent 25 years carrying researchers, students and teachers out to sea. The ship has collected material from the bottom of the deepest ocean trenches and braved storms near Antarctica. This week, the ship will begin a yearlong stay in protected waters and dry dock near Seattle’s Harbor Island for a complete overhaul of its propulsion system, navigation and many core engineering systems. The $34.5…

More than 5,600 graduates, along with 40,000-plus family members, friends, faculty and other observers, are expected to attend the 141st Ģ¹½ÊÓÆµ commencement ceremonies June 11 at Husky Stadium. Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ President Ana Mari Cauce will preside as more than 12,500 degrees are conferred, including more than 7,700 bachelor’s degrees, more than 3,500 master’s degrees, more than 500 professional degrees, 11 educational specialist degrees and more than 740 doctoral degrees. U.S. Secretary of the Interior Sally Jewell, a 1978 graduate of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ…

City and state officials, entrepreneurs, attorneys and others will come together June 14 for a daylong conference at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ on the future of marijuana policy in the state. The event, co-hosted by the Cannabis Law and Policy Project and Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ Professional & Continuing Education, will be held at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ School of Law and feature 30-plus speakers. The day aims to provide a comprehensive look at current and future regulations governing the retail and medical marijuana industries…

Gov. Jay Inslee named Austin Wright-Pettibone as the next student member of the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ Board of Regents for the 2016-17 school year. Wright-Pettibone, a Kirkland native, is an undergraduate studying chemical engineering and becomes the first undergraduate since 2008 to be selected as the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ’s student regent. He graduated from Inglemoor High School in 2012. In 2015, through his role as director of ASÄ¢¹½ÊÓÆµ’s office of government relations, he lobbied state lawmakers in Olympia to lower Washington’s four-year college tuition. “Austin has…

A team led by Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ engineers has developed a new tool that could aid in the quest for better batteries and fuel cells. Although battery technology has come a long way since Alessandro Volta first stacked metal discs in a “voltaic pileâ€� to generate electricity, major improvements are still needed to meet the energy challenges of the future, such as powering electric cars and storing renewable energy cheaply and efficiently. The key likely lies in the nanoscale, said…

Electrical energy fuels our modern lives, from the computer screen that keeps us up after sunset to the coffee maker that greets us at sunrise. But the electricity underlying our 21st century world, by and large, is generated at a cost — through the unsustainable expenditure of fossil fuels. For decades this demand for cheap, fast and non-renewable electricity has promoted pollution and global warming. The key to reversing this downward spiral is deleting the “non” in “non-renewable electricity.” In…

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ President Ana Mari Cauce announced Tuesday that after a four-month national search, Jennifer Cohen, senior associate athletic director at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ, who has been serving as the interim athletic director since January, has been named the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµâ€™s new athletic director, effective June 1. “I am very pleased to announce Jen’s appointment,â€� said Cauce. “She has all the skills and energy to provide exceptional leadership for Husky athletics. Her years of experience leading its fundraising program, along with…

Statisticians at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ have developed the first model for projecting population that factors in the vagaries of migration, a slippery issue that has bedeviled demographers for decades. Their work, published online this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, also provides population projections for all countries worldwide — and challenges the existing predictions for some, particularly the United States and Germany. “It turns out that for quite a few countries, migration is the single…

Children who suffer traumatic brain injuries can face a difficult road to recovery, requiring services such as physical therapy and mental health treatment for months or years to get their young lives back on track. When those children come from low-income households with limited English proficiency, there can be significant barriers in getting them the care they need. A recent Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ study found that less than 20 percent of rehabilitation providers in the state accepted Medicaid and also…

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ President Ana Mari Cauce today named Jerry Baldasty provost and executive vice president, following a 14-month term as interim provost. The appointment is to a three-year term, effective June 1, 2016, subject to approval by the Board of Regents. “Jerry’s excellence as a scholar and teacher, as well as a seasoned administrative leader, makes him the ideal person to serve as Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµâ€™s chief academic and budgetary officer,â€� said Cauce. “The Provost oversees the challenging and crucial work…

Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ President Ana Mari Cauce and Interim Provost Jerry Baldasty announced today the selection of Rickey L. Hall as the new vice president for the Office of Minority Affairs and Diversity and Chief Diversity Officer, effective Aug. 1, 2016.

In a White House ceremony May 19, President Barack Obama presented the National Medal of Science to Mary-Claire King, Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ professor of genome sciences and medicine. The award, the nation’s highest recognition for scientific achievement, honors King’s more than 40 years dedicated to research in evolution and the genetics of human disease, as well as to teaching and outreach endeavors that have supported human rights efforts on six continents and reunited families.

From self-driving vehicles to social robots, artificial intelligence is evolving at a rapid pace, creating vast opportunities as well as complex challenges. Recognizing that, the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy is co-hosting four public workshops on artificial intelligence — the first of them May 24 at the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ. Subsequent events will take place in Washington, D.C.; in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania; and in New York City. Put on by the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ School of Law and the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ…

In traditional light-harvesting methods, energy from one photon only excites one electron or none depending on the absorber’s energy gap, transferring just a small portion of light energy into electricity. The remaining energy is lost as heat. But in a paper released May 13 in Science Advances, Wu, Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ associate professor Xiaodong Xu and colleagues at four other institutions describe one promising approach to coax photons into stimulating multiple electrons. Their method exploits some surprising quantum-level interactions to give one photon multiple potential electron partners.

The amount of marijuana allowed to be grown by state-licensed producers in Washington is enough to satisfy both the medical and recreational marijuana markets, a Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ study released today finds. The state Liquor and Cannabis Board (LCB) tasked the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ-based Cannabis Law and Policy Project (CLPP) with calculating the “grow canopy,â€� or square footage, required to supply the state’s medical marijuana market as it becomes folded into the state’s retail system, as required by the 2015 Cannabis Patient…

The Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ is leading a new, four-year collaboration aimed at promoting mental health and preventing suicide at colleges and universities around the state. The initiative is a partnership between Forefront: Innovations in Suicide Prevention — an organization in the Ä¢¹½ÊÓÆµ School of Social Work — and the New York-based Jed Foundation, which focuses on protecting emotional health and preventing suicide among college students. The effort kicked off May 10 at a Forefront conference in Bellevue, where 12 schools…