faculty – Office of Global Affairs

President Cauce meets with Finnish Ambassador and delegation on innovation and collaboration

Aerial photo of the UW Seattle Campus. — Aerial photo of the UW Seattle campus and surrounding Puget Sound. The Finnish delegation met with the UW as part of a series of meetings with business, academic, and governmental leaders in Seattle and Washington state. *天美影视传媒*

On November 4, 2021, 天美影视传媒 President Ana Mari Cauce welcomed a delegation from Finland, including Mikko Hautala, Ambassador of the Republic of Finland to the United States of America, and Timo Harakka, Minister of Transport and Communications, accompanied by a team of diplomatic officials. Sean Carr, incoming Executive Director and Chief Executive Officer of the (GIX), and Francois Baneyx, Director of and Vice Provost for Innovation, joined the meeting to discuss areas of mutual interest for Finland and UW.

The delegation visited UW鈥檚 Seattle campus, as part of a tour of the Pacific Northwest, focused on building relationships with the region鈥檚 governmental officials, academic institutions, and business community. Washington state is home to an active and strongly-connected Finnish-American community, and the Finnish delegation had earlier with the state of Washington outlining future research and technological collaborations.

During a cordial exploratory meeting, President Cauce introduced the UW鈥檚 broad-based strengths in academic and applied research, emphasizing the expertise and experience of UW faculty and researchers in various areas such as the study of misinformation. In late 2019, the UW launched the聽, an interdisciplinary and nonpartisan effort to translate and apply research on disinformation in policy, public engagement, technology, and education. Minister Harakka pointed to the importance of education in shaping the ability of citizens to resist misinformation and manipulation and the need for countries such as Finland to broadly build skills and increase literacy in areas such as artificial intelligence.

President Cauce noted the importance of ‘knowledge diplomacy’ between governments in a time of breakdown of many other forms of diplomacy. Communicating scientific research and information to the general public was seen by both groups as an important role for governance and academia, and an area of common interest and possible collaboration between Finnish institutions and UW.

GIX’s headquarters in the Bellevue Steve Ballmer Building, hosts prototyping labs, event space, and three startups. GIX

Ambassador Hautala also underlined Finland’s focus on six US states for potential technological synergy and partnership. Helsinki and Seattle both host thriving start-up communities, and the 天美影视传媒鈥檚 CoMotion and the Global Innovation Exchange create environments focused on experiential learning and technological innovation for students and faculty. As the incoming Executive Director, Carr highlighted the strong potential for collaboration in educational ventures with GIX for Finnish universities.

The meeting concluded with expressions of a shared sense of mission and collaboration among the Finnish delegation and UW representatives and optimism towards the many paths forward for collaboration between Finnish institutions and the UW.

Reframing Global Engagement at UW

Written by , Henry M. Jackson Endowed Professor of Law, Director of the Sustainable International Development Graduate Program, and Faculty Director, International, Comparative and Transnational Programs

In autumn of 2020, I was appointed as chair of the Global Engagement Strategy Task Force and charged with reimagining the role that the Office of Global Affairs (OGA) plays in informing and shaping the future of global engagement at the 天美影视传媒.

Over the last year, I had the pleasure of not only diving deeply into discussion with seven peers from diverse units, but meeting with and learning from over 100 stakeholders from across the university.

This work took place at a time of inflection both for the UW broadly and for OGA. The COVID-19 pandemic rapidly transformed UW鈥檚 model for teaching and learning, it also put global travel including study abroad on hold. The pandemic also underscored the importance of UW providing administrative and social support structures for international students and researchers during a major global crisis. The Black Lives Matter movement and a renewed call to action for greater focus on anti-racist approaches to education prompted us to grapple with what it means for us to be globally engaged in a way that confronts issues of historical and contemporary racism and colonialism and is consistent with the UW鈥檚 overall approach to diversity, equity and inclusion. These challenges and opportunities shaped our process and our recommendations.

Five key recommendations emerged for the future work of OGA:

Shift OGA鈥檚 focus from being a steward of policies and procedures to being a builder of global learning and research communities
Serve as a portal and ambassador for stewarding and advancing institution-wide relationships with key global actors 鈥� from international organizations, such as the UN and the World Bank, to key foundations and think tanks
Catalyze global teaching and education beyond study abroad, ensuring a global education for all through the use of technology
Identify and work to eliminate the structural barriers that prevent many BIPOC faculty, staff, and students from leveraging OGA鈥檚 services and programs
Continue to provide broad administrative support (travel security, MOUs, etc.) for the myriad global partnerships, but also invest more substantially in fewer, deeper, and bi-directional partnerships

Collectively, we are eager to see OGA build a richer ecosystem for global engagement at the UW. UW has a strong commitment to global citizenship. We now have the chance to expand and reframe our approach.

OGA would like to give a special thank you and acknowledgement of the tremendous service of the task force members: Anita Ramasastry (Chair), School of Law; Gayle Christensen, Office of Global Affairs; , Jackson School of International Studies; , Foster School of Business; , College of the Environment; , College of Education; , College of Engineering; , Schools of Public Health & Medicine

Population Health: UW & Aga Khan University partnership leads to research, learning, and health collaborations

The 天美影视传媒 and the have partnered substantially over the past years to advance global population health and link their institutions. Through these collaborations, students, faculty, and researchers have benefited from the shared expertise and exchange in a range of areas and disciplines.

Read more about the history and impact of this partnership and the Office of Global Affairs and Global Innovation Fund’s involvement below:

Read about Partnership

鈥淭here were a lot of synergies between our two institutions not just in terms of our social justice missions, but around the values of what this partnership holds,鈥� Farzana Karim-Haji, director of the Aga Khan University Partnerships Office, said. 鈥淭he Population Health Initiative at UW draws parallels to AKDN鈥檚 Quality of Life Initiative, where both are focused on a holistic view of improving the overall human condition from a variety of aspects in health, education, poverty alleviation, climate change, etc.鈥�

A new tool in the fight against poaching

Smithsonian Magazine profiled the work of passionate UW researcher and conservation advocate Samuel Wasser. He is using wild animal dung to trace and end poaching around the world.

Clues in poached ivory yield ages and locations of origin

More than 90 percent of ivory in large, seized shipments came from elephants that died less than three years before, .聽A team of scientists at the University of Utah, the 天美影视传媒 and partner institutions came to this conclusion by combining a new approach to radiocarbon dating for ivory samples with genetic analysis tools developed by UW biology professor Sam Wasser.

Professor named to UN working group

When law professor began teaching at the 天美影视传媒 in 1996, she was working on an article about banks鈥� responsibilities around human rights, to the bemusement of her peers. But Ramasastry鈥檚 decades-long focus on the intersection of commerce and human rights paid off. In July, she was appointed to serve on the United Nations Working Group on Business and Human Rights. Ramasastry will represent all of Western Europe, North America and Australia-Pacific, one of five UN regions and arguably the most competitive. She was selected out of a field of 22 applicants.

Professor embarks on 100th field course in Indonesia

A chance meeting with a fellow scientist 27 years ago forever changed 鈥� life 鈥� catapulting him from North Carolina to Indonesia and beyond. As the founding director of the 天美影视传媒鈥檚 Center for Global Field Study and head of the Division of Global Programs at the Washington National Primate Research Center, Kyes has spent almost three decades leading field courses on environmental and global health in a dozen countries.

Often accompanied by students from the UW and around the United States, spends about seven months of the year traveling to remote sites in places such as Indonesia and Nepal, leading study abroad programs and 聽conducting field courses and K-12 outreach efforts for local people.

In late July, Kyes 鈥� who is also a research professor in psychology and an adjunct research professor in global health and anthropology 鈥� will lead his 100^th field course, in Thailand. He sat down with UW Today recently to talk about his work.

Tracing China’s past with geologic and oral history

A published this week in Science finds evidence to support stories that a huge flood took place in China about 4,000 years ago, during the reign of Emperor Yu. The study, led by Chinese researcher Qinglong Wu, finds evidence for a massive landslide dam break that could have redirected the course of the Yellow River, giving rise to the legendary flood that Emperor Yu is credited with controlling.

An accompanying 产测听, a UW professor of Earth and space sciences, discusses how this finding supports the historical basis for traditional tales about China鈥檚 Great Flood. It even explains some details of the classic folk story.

Language learning changes your brain – even as an adult

Researchers from the UW聽聽showed that adults immersed in a foreign language environment undergo brain changes.

Professor, researcher, detective – saving endangered animals

UW Professor Samuel K. Wasser “is a Sherlock Holmes of the wildlife trade. With modern biochemical tools and old-fashioned shoe leather, he sleuths out the merchants behind the market for poached animal products.”