Discovery Days is back for the first time since 2019! This University of Washington College of Engineering event brings thousands of elementary and middle school students from all over Washington to campus to be engineers for a day. Students participate in more than 100 hands-on activities — with names like “Walk on Water” and “Electrochemical Engin-earring” — that demonstrate cool engineering concepts. For journalists Download B-roll, soundbites This year 3,801 students registered to attend the event on May 2 and 3,495 students registered to attend the event on May 3. Discovery Days is part ..read more

The National Academy of Sciences announced this week that a University of Washington atmospheric scientist and biologist have been elected as new members, in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research. In total, there are 120 members in the U.S. and 24 international members added to the academy this year. They bring the total number of active U.S. members to 2,617 and the total number of international members to 537. Membership in the Academy is among the highest honors a scientist can achieve. Qiang Fu, who holds the Calvin endowed professorship in at ..read more

This week, head to Kane Hall for the Frontiers of Physics Lecture on the James Webb Space Telescope’s discoveries, enjoy Cie Hervé KOUBI’s performance at Meany Hall, learn about “Influencers, Platforms, and the Rise of the Follower Economy” during the Communications Colloquium, and more. May 6, 5:30 – 8:30 pmAndrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture: Melayu Malay — Mystery Miracle, Kane Hall Professor Hendrik Maier (University of California, Riverside) will deliver the Department of Asian Languages & Literature’s 2024 Andrew L. Markus Memorial Lecture. Language speaks and flows, humans write ..read more

The UW’s “ASUW Shell House: The Next 100 Years” campaign to restore and renovate the iconic building on the Montlake Cut surpassed all expectations, with donors contributing $19.2 million, the UW announced on Wednesday. Crews from around the world will compete Saturday in the Windemere Cup rowing regatta, which passes by the ASUW Shell House.Mark Stone/University of Washington Before the oars dip their blades signaling the beginning of the Windemere Cup, before hundreds of flag-draped boats parade from Portage Bay to Lake Washington to open the boating season, the campaign to save the ASUW S ..read more

Working with teens, UW researchers designed RESeT: a snowy virtual world with six activities, listed on the center image, intended to improve mood. The left panel shows the welcome screen, and the panel on the right shows an activity where teens can use sound to find birds.Björling et al./JMXR 2024 Social media. The climate crisis. Political polarization. The tumult of a pandemic and online learning. Teens today are dealing with unprecedented stressors, and over the past decade their mental health has been in sustained decline. Levels of anxiety and depression rose after the onset of the COV ..read more

Researchers who want to bridge the divide between biology and technology spend a lot of time thinking about translating between the two different “languages” of those realms. “Our digital technology operates through a series of electronic on-off switches that control the flow of current and voltage,” said Rajiv Giridharagopal, a research scientist at the University of Washington. “But our bodies operate on chemistry. In our brains, neurons propagate signals electrochemically, by moving ions — charged atoms or molecules — not electrons.” Implantable devices from pacemakers to glucose monitors r ..read more

A team led by researchers at the University of Washington developed a new PCB that performs on par with traditional materials and can be recycled repeatedly with negligible material loss. Researchers used a solvent that transforms a type of vitrimer — a cutting-edge class of polymer — into a jelly-like substance without damage, allowing solid components to be plucked out for reuse or recycling. Here, from left to right is a vitrimer-based circuit board, a sheet of glass fibers, vitrimer that’s been swollen and removed from a board, and electrical components such as a computer chip.Mark Stone ..read more

This week, listen to the roundtable on “AI, Art, and Copyright,” attend the second annual Gender, Women & Sexuality Studies Spring Community Gathering, check out the Living Breath of wəłəbʔaltxʷ Indigenous Foods Symposium, and more. April 30, 4:30 – 6:30 pmAnton Hur, “Translator Jetlag: Voice and the World We Build”Translator’s Lecture, Husky Union Building In this talk, Anton Hur will examine the idea of voice in literary translation. He will focus on the practice of “triangulation,” or the zeroing in on a narrative voice, and “translator jetlag,” or the tendency for translators to requ ..read more

Franziska Roesner, UW associate professor, set about researching both how TIkTok’s algorithm is personalized and how users engage with TikTok based on its recommendations.Solen Feyissa/Unsplash TikTok’s swift ascension to the upper echelons of social media is often attributed to its recommendation algorithm, which predicts viewer preferences so acutely it’s spawned a maxim: “The TikTok algorithm knows me better than I know myself.” The platform’s success was so pronounced it’s seemed to spur other social media platforms to shift their designs. When users scroll through X or Instagram, they n ..read more

The UW is No. 3 for schools who send the most graduates to the Peace Corps.University of Washington The Peace Corps announced that the University of Washington is again No. 3 on a list of top volunteer-producing institutions over the past two decades. Among universities with 15,000 or more enrolled undergraduates, only the University of California, Berkeley, and the University of Wisconsin-Madison had more Peace Corps volunteers, based on a list compiled for 2024. The UW has graduated more than 2,300 students who have gone on to service opportunities abroad as volunteers, according ..read more