A first-of-its-kind center housed at the 天美影视传媒 has received a from the National Science Foundation.

The offers a way for researchers to get their hands on state-of-the-art equipment to study the effects of natural disasters, such as hurricanes, wildfires and earthquakes. This facility contains more than 100 unique instruments, including a variety of drones and a remote-controlled boat that uses sonar to scan what鈥檚 happening underwater.

“Before RAPID, it was ad hoc, DIY or sometimes BYO (bring your own) equipment to a reconnaissance mission,” said facility director , a UW professor in the civil and environmental engineering department. “The few people who had reconnaissance instruments, such as lidar, tended to be very overburdened in the sense that they were asked to participate in numerous missions. It didn’t leave space and room for others to join.”

Since opening its doors in 2018, the RAPID Facility has transformed how data is gathered, processed and saved in the aftermath of natural disasters. So far, this center has supported 80 field missions around the world, including helping investigate and using a to develop new methods to assess the structural integrity of buildings after an earthquake.

Use the interactive visualization below to explore all 80 of the RAPID Facility’s deployments:

The NSF renewal grant provides this center with four additional years of funding and a 30% budget increase to advance the natural hazards reconnaissance field through new initiatives.

The RAPID Facility is part of a larger network of experimental research facilities at seven universities across the country. These centers were founded in 2016 through the NSF’s program.

“We have everything we need to start making even more significant breakthroughs in years to come,” Wartman said. “I am very optimistic about what will come from the RAPID. Even in the first few months of the renewal, I’ve seen exciting uses of data and innovations in reconnaissance.”

For more information, contact RAPID Facility staff at uwrapid@uw.edu.

Air pollution is linked to multiple health conditions, including heart disease, cancer and cognitive decline. These effects vary depending on the source of air pollution. And not everyone is equally exposed to poor air quality.

天美影视传媒 researchers investigated disparities in exposure to six major air pollutants in 1990, 2000 and 2010 by comparing models of air pollution levels to census data 鈥� including where people live, their racial/ethnic background and their income status.

The team showed that while overall pollutant concentrations have decreased since 1990, people of color are still more likely to be exposed to all six pollutants than white people, regardless of income level, across the continental United States.

The researchers Dec. 15 in Environmental Health Perspectives.

“This is the first time anyone has looked comprehensively at all these main pollutants and watched how they vary over time and space,” said senior author , UW professor of civil and environmental engineering. “This paper is a chance to recognize that, while every community is unique, there are some factors that play out over and over again consistently across our country. If we go state by state, there’s no place where there are no environmental justice concerns.”

Previously the researchers showed that Americans of color were exposed to higher concentrations of (NO2), an outdoor pollutant from cars and trucks, in two census years: 2000 and 2010.

Now the team has expanded that research to look at five additional pollutants that are harmful to our health: (CO), (O3), (SO2) and 鈥� both larger particles, such as dust or pollen (PM10), and smaller particles, such as molecules from vehicle exhaust (PM2.5). For all pollutants except for PM2.5, the researchers also expanded the census years studied to include 1990, in which the Clean Air Act .

“There have been so many improvements,” said lead author , UW doctoral student in civil and environmental engineering. “But we still see these disparities persist, even after two decades.”

To get air pollution data for each year, the researchers used models that incorporate pollution estimates from multiple sources, including data from satellites and Environmental Protection Agency monitoring stations. These levels were then mapped onto census demographic groups 鈥� including four race/ethnicity categories (Black, Asian, Hispanic and white) and income 鈥� to determine estimated exposure to each pollutant for each group across states in the contiguous U.S. and Washington, D.C.

For each location, the team calculated both absolute and relative disparities. For absolute disparities, the researchers subtracted pollution exposures for each group from the average exposure for the state. The team determined relative disparities by dividing the absolute disparity by the average exposure across the country.

Grant number: R835873

Lightning is one of the most destructive forces of nature, as in 2020 when it sparked the massive California Lightning Complex fires, but it remains hard to predict. A new study led by the 天美影视传媒 shows that machine learning 鈥� computer algorithms that improve themselves without direct programming by humans 鈥� can be used to improve lightning forecasts.

Better lightning forecasts could help to prepare for potential wildfires, improve safety warnings for lightning and create more accurate long-range climate models.

鈥淭he best subjects for machine learning are things that we don鈥檛 fully understand. And what is something in the atmospheric sciences field that remains poorly understood? Lightning,鈥� said , a UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences. 鈥淭o our knowledge, our work is the first to demonstrate that machine learning algorithms can work for lightning.鈥�

The new technique combines weather forecasts with a machine learning equation based on analyses of past lightning events. The hybrid method, Dec. 13 at the American Geophysical Union鈥檚 fall meeting, can forecast lightning over the southeastern U.S. two days earlier than the leading existing technique.

鈥淭his demonstrates that forecasts of severe weather systems, such as thunderstorms, can be improved by using methods based on machine learning,鈥� said , who did the work for his UW doctorate in atmospheric sciences. 鈥淚t encourages the exploration of machine learning methods for other types of severe weather forecasts, such as tornadoes or hailstorms.鈥�

Researchers trained the system with lightning data from 2010 to 2016, letting the computer discover relationships between weather variables and lightning bolts. Then they tested the technique on weather from 2017 to 2019, comparing the AI-supported technique and an existing physics-based method, using actual lightning observations to evaluate both.

The new method was able to forecast lightning with the same skill about two days earlier than the leading technique in places, like the southeastern U.S., that get a lot of lightning. Because the method was trained on the entire U.S., its performance wasn鈥檛 as accurate for places where lightning is less common.

The approach used for comparison was a recently developed technique to forecast lightning based on the amount of precipitation and the ascent speed of storm clouds. That method has projected and a continued .

鈥淭he existing method just multiplies two variables. That comes from a human鈥檚 idea, it鈥檚 simple. But it鈥檚 not necessarily the best way to use these two variables to predict lightning,鈥� Kim said.

The machine learning was trained on lightning observations from the , a collaborative based at the UW that has tracked global lightning since 2008.

鈥淢achine learning requires a lot of data 鈥� that鈥檚 one of the necessary conditions for a machine learning algorithm to do some valuable things,鈥� Kim said. 鈥淔ive years ago, this would not have been possible because we did not have enough data, even from WWLLN.鈥�

Commercial networks of instruments to monitor lightning now exist in the U.S., and newer geostationary satellites can monitor one area continuously from space, supplying the precise lightning data to make more machine learning possible.

鈥淭he key factors are the amount and the quality of the data, which are exactly what WWLLN can provide us,鈥� Cheng said. 鈥淎s machine learning techniques advance, having an accurate and reliable lightning observation dataset will be increasingly important.鈥�

The researchers hope to improve their method using more data sources, more weather variables and more sophisticated techniques. They would like to improve predictions of particular situations like dry lightning, or lightning without rainfall, since these are especially dangerous for wildfires.

Researchers believe their method could also be applied to longer-range projections. Longer-range trends are important partly because lightning affects air chemistry, so predicting lightning leads to better climate models.

鈥淚n atmospheric sciences, as in other sciences, some people are still skeptical about the use of machine learning algorithms 鈥� because as scientists, we don鈥檛 trust something we don鈥檛 understand,鈥� Kim said. 鈥淚 was one of the skeptics, but after seeing the results in this and other studies, I am convinced.鈥�

Other collaborators are and at the UW, and Yoo-Geun Ham and Jeong-Hwan Kim at Chonnam National University in South Korea.

For more information, contact Kim at daehyun@uw.edu or Cheng at wycheng@uw.edu. Cheng will this research online at 12:45 p.m. Central Time (10:45 a.m. Pacific, 1:45 p.m. Eastern) on Monday, Dec. 13.

Online advertisements are found frequently splashed across news websites. Clicking on these banners or links provides the news site with revenue. But these ads also often use manipulative techniques, researchers say.

天美影视传媒 researchers were curious about what types of political ads people saw during the 2020 presidential election. The team looked at more than 1 million ads from almost 750 news sites between September 2020 and January 2021. Of those ads, almost 56,000 had political content.

Political ads used multiple tactics that concerned the researchers, including posing as a poll to collect people’s personal information or having headlines that might affect web surfers’ views of candidates.

The researchers Nov. 3 at the ACM Internet Measurement Conference 2021.

“The election is a time when people are getting a lot of information, and our hope is that they are processing it to make informed decisions toward the democratic process. These ads make up part of the information ecosystem that is reaching people, so problematic ads could be especially dangerous during the election season,” said senior author , UW associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

The team wondered if or how ads would take advantage of the political climate to prey on people’s emotions and get people to click.

“We were well positioned to study this phenomenon because of our previous research on misleading information and manipulative techniques in online ads,” said , UW professor in the Allen School. “Six weeks leading up to the election, we said, ‘There are going to be interesting ads, and we have the infrastructure to capture them. Let’s go get them. This is a unique and historic opportunity.'”

The researchers created a list of news websites that spanned the political spectrum and then used a to visit each site every day. The crawler scrolled through the sites and took screenshots of each ad before clicking on the ad to collect the URL and the content of the landing page.

The team wanted to make sure to get a broad range of ads, because someone based at the UW might see a different set of ads than someone in a different location.

The researchers used natural language processing to classify ads as political or non-political. Then the team went through the political ads manually to further categorize them, such as by party affiliation, who paid for the ad or what types of tactics the ad used.

“We saw these fake poll ads that were harvesting personal information, like email addresses, and trying to prey on people who wanted to be politically involved. These ads would then use that information to send spam, malware or just general email newsletters,” said co-author , UW doctoral student in the Allen School. “There were so many fake buttons in these ads, asking people to accept or decline, or vote yes or no. These things are clearly intended to lead you to give up your personal data.”

Ads that appeared to be polls were more likely to be used by conservative-leaning groups, such as conservative news outlets and nonprofit political organizations. These ads were also more likely to be featured on conservative-leaning websites.

The most popular type of political ad was click-bait news articles that often mentioned top politicians in sensationalist headlines, but the articles themselves contained little substantial information. The team observed more than 29,000 of these ads, and the crawlers often encountered the same ad multiple times. Similar to the fake poll ads, these were also more likely to appear on right-leaning sites.

“One example was a headline that said, ‘There’s something fishy in Biden’s speeches,'” said Roesner, who is also the co-director of the . “I worry that these articles are contributing to a set of evidence that people have amassed in their minds. People probably won’t remember later where they saw this information. They probably didn’t even click on it, but it’s still shaping their view of a candidate.”

The researchers were surprised and relieved, however, to find a lack of ads containing explicit misinformation about how and where to vote, or who won the election.

“To their credit, I think the ad platforms are catching some misinformation,” Zeng said. “What’s getting through are ads that are exploiting the gray areas in content and moderation policies, things that seem deceptive but play to the letter of the law.”

The world of online ads is so complicated, the researchers said, that it’s hard to pinpoint exactly why or how certain ads appear on specific sites or are viewed by specific viewers.

“Certain ads get shown in certain places because the system decided that those would be the most lucrative ads in those spots,” Roesner said. “It’s not necessarily that someone is sitting there doing this on purpose, but the impact is still the same 鈥斅� people who are the most vulnerable to certain techniques and certain content are the ones who will see it more.”

To protect computer users from problematic ads, the researchers suggest web surfers should be careful about taking content at face value, especially if it seems sensational. People can also limit how many ads they see by getting an ad blocker.

, a UW undergraduate student studying computer science is also a co-author on this paper. This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the , and the John S. and James L. Knight Foundation.

For more information, contact badads@cs.washington.edu.

Grant number: CNS-2041894

The Burke聽Museum聽has always been a second home to聽Owen聽Oliver聽(Quinault聽Indian Nation聽and Isleta Pueblo),聽a recent University of聽Washington聽graduate. His father, Marvin Oliver, was a renowned artist, UW emeritus professor of American Indian Studies and adjunct curator at the聽museum;聽his聽sister,聽Lisa,聽did her graduate research at the Burke.

During his senior year, Owen Oliver created a downloadable , highlighting聽the Indigenous presence on campus, including the Burke Museum, which is the first stop on the tour.

UW News met up with Oliver to ask about his inspiration for the tour, what he hopes people get out of it and to聽assist in creating聽a virtual map version.

Below is聽the聽virtual version of the tour you can use to guide yourself around campus as you read through聽Oliver鈥檚 descriptions of each stop.

Read more about Oliver鈥檚 work as a UW student in this聽鈥溾�澛爌iece from January 2021.

When the Big One hits, the first thing Washington residents notice may not be the ground shaking, but their phone issuing a warning. The U.S. Geological Survey, the 天美影视传媒-based and the Washington Emergency Management Division on Tuesday, May 4, will activate the system that sends earthquake early warnings throughout Washington state. This completes the tri-state rollout of , an automated system that gives people living in Washington, Oregon and California advance warning of incoming earthquakes.

鈥淔or the first time, advance warning of imminent earthquake shaking will be a reality in our region. Even just seconds, up to a minute of warning is enough to prepare yourself and take cover 鈥斅燼ctions that may spare you from injury or even save your life,鈥� said , a UW professor of Earth and space sciences and director of the PNSN, which operates the seismic monitoring in Washington and Oregon.

Once the system goes live on May 4, the first signs of an earthquake above a magnitude 4.5 or 5, about when the shaking becomes noticeable indoors, will trigger an alert and a reminder to drop, cover and hold on. Warning times range from a few seconds to tens of seconds depending on your distance to the epicenter. The launch will be silent 鈥� there will be no test on May 4.

The PNSN operates a growing network of about 230 seismic stations in Washington and some 155 stations in Oregon that provide data for ShakeAlert. When four or more of these instruments detect unusual shaking, that motion is analyzed by computers, some of them on the UW campus, that quickly calculate the size and location of the event.

People connected to the Wireless Emergency Alert system (the same system that produces AMBER alerts), will now get earthquake alerts for events of magnitude 5 or greater, using a similar interface. Alerts for events of magnitude 4.5 or above will be integrated into Android devices, where screens will also show the earthquake鈥檚 approximate magnitude and location. When people get an alert, they should use the brief warning to seek immediate protection, following this . No downloads are required 鈥� find out .

The ShakeAlert system, similar to existing early warning systems in Mexico and Japan, began sending alerts in California in 2019 and in Oregon in March 2021. With the addition of Washington state, the system will now issue warnings to millions more people at risk from the largest possible earthquake in the lower 48 states 鈥� a rupture of the offshore Cascadia Subduction Zone, a 700-mile fault that runs from California鈥檚 Cape Mendocino to the tip of Canada鈥檚 Vancouver Island (discovered in part through UW research). The alerts will also warn of potentially damaging earthquakes that are more likely to occur sooner, on one of crustal faults in the Puget Sound region alone, or deeper slips on the underlying ocean plate. The system works by detecting the first signs of an earthquake before the slower-moving but more damaging ground-shaking waves arrive.

The PNSN began testing the ShakeAlert system with select Washington and Oregon businesses, utilities and organizations in 2015. Besides the individual alerts on phones, the system will be available for organizations or businesses to incorporate into their emergency plans 鈥� for instance, to close water valves, slow trains to prevent derailment, halt surgeries or pause sensitive equipment before the shaking starts.

鈥淏usiness in the pilot program have used these alerts to close valves for water and natural gas, stop rotating equipment and alert employees. We have also partnered with Stanwood Elementary School, which has connected the system to its PA system so students can do earthquake drills that use ShakeAlert,鈥� said PNSN communications manager Bill Steele, who has coordinated the regional test users.

Scientists at the PNSN are continuing to improve the system. About 65% of the planned seismic stations in the network are complete in Washington state. PNSN field teams will install more seismometers through late 2025 in places like the Olympic Peninsula and Eastern Washington.

鈥淭he network is successfully detecting earthquakes now, but that doesn鈥檛 mean we can鈥檛 make it even better. We鈥檙e continuing to install seismometers and improve algorithms to make the alerts faster and more reliable, to give people more warning time and lower the chance of any missed events or false alarms,鈥� Tobin said.

Initial development of the earthquake alert system by three West Coast universities, including the UW, began a decade ago and was funded by the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation. The buildout of the system was funded by Congress, with major grants administered by the USGS in 2015 and 2019, and completed by federal and state agencies working with a consortium of four West Coast universities: the UW; the University of Oregon; the University of California, Berkeley; and the California Institute of Technology.

The Washington system also got state funding in the 2020-21 budget. Private support for Washington鈥檚 system has also come from the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust, Amazon, Puget Sound Energy and individual donors.

For more information, contact Tobin at htobin@uw.edu, Steele at wsteele@uw.edu and 206-601-5978, or PNSN ShakeAlert user engagement lead Gabriel Lotto at glotto@uw.edu.

See also a USGS and a Washington Emergency Management Division .

Then came the questions: How long will the virus keep us inside and shut down? What will happen to the people who can鈥檛 work from home or don鈥檛 have a home, and how can we protect them? What communities are getting hit hardest by COVID-19, the disease caused by the virus, why and what can we do about it?

The questions went on and on, but where could the answers be found?

For the UW 鈥� which in 2016 launched the to bring interdisciplinary understanding and solutions to the biggest challenges facing communities 鈥� the pandemic was a crystallizing moment.

鈥淭his was a turning point for the Population Health Initiative,鈥� said Ali H. Mokdad, the UW鈥檚 chief strategy officer for population health and professor of health metrics sciences at the UW聽Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. 鈥淎 turning moment, when the university said to our researchers: 鈥楪ive me your best idea and let鈥檚 do it.鈥欌��

Five months later, the initiative had funded 53 pilot projects out of 207 applications, totaling a collective $1.7 million. The common theme for these projects was to understand and mitigate the health, economic and equity impact of COVID-19 on communities 鈥� particularly the communities of color that have been especially hard hit by the pandemic.

Dashboard by Rebecca Gourley/天美影视传媒

鈥淔aculty are at their best when you give them an opportunity to be innovative and not tell them what to do. If you come to them and say here鈥檚 the problem, you come up with the best way to solve it and then we鈥檒l support you to do so 鈥� that鈥檚 when you get the greatest ideas,鈥� Mokdad said. 鈥淎nd, quite honestly, I was shocked. Because this is a stressful time, I felt we鈥檙e not going to be able to get a lot of applications, let alone a lot of great applications.鈥�

Based on feedback from nearly all of the UW teams (see testimonies above), the initiative鈥檚 money got them started on projects they either had in mind, had started but needed a boost, or created from scratch and then built a dream team of collaborators around. Through these incentives, the grants changed how the university works.

“The grant provided an opportunity for me to reach out to the Somali Health Board to see what needs they identified. Without being able to offer funding, I wouldn’t have reached out. Public health research has a long way to go in supporting 鈥� and expecting 鈥� researchers to co-create projects with community partners. Our research was driven by the Somali Health Board’s interests, and I think the fact that the PHI award explicitly rewarded community collaboration has allowed UW researchers to practice community engagement and deepened community relationships.” 鈥斅燢eshet Ronen, acting assistant professor, Department of Global Health, as stated in the above interactive graphic.

鈥淚n general, in any university, you are at the mercy of funders,鈥� Mokdad said. 鈥淔unders come to you and say, this is what I want you to work on. But we asked: What could we do here to stimulate innovative ideas that could be done fast? Ideas outside of the box but realistic and helpful to the community.鈥�

Tamsin Lee, a postdoctoral fellow in the Department of Pharmaceutics, and聽Yvonne Lin, an associate professor in the School of Pharmacy, are among the dozens of researchers who pointed to how the initiative influenced how research works at UW.

鈥淭he grant provided an opportunity for us to bring our communities together and support one another as we continue to live during this crisis. We hope this will lead to more community-based participatory research where community leaders are not only stakeholders but also researchers who offer valuable expertise in designing and conducting a study,鈥� they wrote.

Lee and Lin received the grant for their project titled Building Resilient Attitudes with Virtual Engagement (BRAVE). The team constructed a feasibility study to explore the use of online peer support for Black and Asian American adults, ages 17 to 40 years.

鈥淭he initiative provided generous resources without the development overhead that comes with multiyear grants. This helped our team take the leap of faith on addressing a critical challenge to population health, while simultaneously maintaining other commitments,鈥� said Edward Kasner, clinical assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences in the School of Public Health.

鈥淭he initiative offers new opportunities for interdisciplinary projects,鈥� Kasner said. 鈥淢ost importantly, these resources can facilitate community-academic partnerships that expand research impact through practical solutions.鈥�

Kasner鈥檚 team received a grant to build scientifically sound occupational safety and health messages for farmworkers through PSAs, radio and social media messages, and infographics.

(For more testimonies related to the initiative鈥檚 grants, please see the above interactive graphic.)

鈥淭hrough these grants, the university is telling its faculty 鈥� we asked you to stand behind this initiative and we鈥檙e going to support you to do that,鈥� Mokdad said.

“I was already collaborating with my community, and the grant allowed me to fulfill a community request to sample for contaminants that are especially toxic and harmful to children. The money also made it possible for some of the community scientists to be funded to participate. I am very thankful the grant emphasized this component of community research, and I especially appreciate the grant was specifically for people of color 鈥� funding that goes toward supporting diversity in research speaks volumes.” 鈥� Melanie Malone, assistant professor, School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences, UW Bothell.

When it comes to what the initiative says to communities around the state, country and world, Mokdad said, 鈥淭his is what we want you to know about us: We are part of this community. We care.”

Here鈥檚 a look back at the past year, from the perspectives of how the UW community adapted and the impact the UW鈥檚 researchers had in response to the virus in our state, the nation and around the world.

This timeline could not possibly include all the work by UW researchers during the pandemic in 2020. For more stories related to the pandemic, you can visit the UW News website, the and our COVID-19 media coverage page.

January 2020

Before the first case in the U.S.

We begin this timeline with a story published in September 2020. Why? It chronicles how several scientists from the 天美影视传媒 and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center tracked the novel coronavirus in Seattle back in January 2020, even before any COVID-19 cases had been diagnosed in this country.

The UW Medicine Virology Lab was also starting to prepare to test for COVID-19 infection. 鈥淥ur opinion was, this is probably not going to be a problem, this is probably going to be a waste of our effort and some money, but we owe it to the people of our area to be prepared,鈥� said Dr. Keith Jerome, director of the lab.

February 2020

Map tracks the virus from the start

In early February, beginning when Washington had a single case of the novel coronavirus, UW geographer Bo Zhao had already created an interactive map tracking the spread of the virus across the world. He continues to update it.

Read story

Coronavirus 鈥榮pike鈥� holds clues

Research was already well underway in February to decipher how the novel coronavirus attaches to and gains entry into cells. Scientists from the UW School of Medicine and Fred Hutch analyzed the spike architecture and its mechanics to locate the virus鈥檚 vulnerabilities.

Green light to test for COVID-19

The UW Medicine Virology Lab got the green light from the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Feb. 29 to start testing patient samples for SARS-CoV-2.

March 2020

Classes and work go online

The UW announced March 6 that, starting Monday, March 9, classes would no longer meet in person. At the same time, the university made Zoom to all current students, faculty and staff to conduct UW business in a remote environment.

Read story

Finishing the quarter online

Giving her final exam review from her kitchen table with her 12-year-old Chihuahua on her lap wasn’t how LaShawnDa Pittman, assistant professor of American ethnic studies, saw winter quarter 2020 coming to a close. But for Pittman and many other instructors, that’s how the last weeks of winter quarter played out.

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Anti-Asian racism on the rise

Asian Americans in Seattle and elsewhere reported an increase in occurrences of discrimination and racism even before the novel coronavirus, which originated from Wuhan, China, took a strong foothold in King County. Steve Goodreau, a professor of anthropology at the UW, offered his expertise on the intersection between discrimination and health crises to Crosscut for this story in March.

Risk to essential workers

More than 14 million workers face exposure to infection once a week in the workplace, according to a study by Marissa Baker, an assistant professor in the UW School of Public Health. Her analysis pointed to an important population that needed 鈥� and continues to need 鈥� protection as COVID-19 spread across the U.S.

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Predicting the course of the virus

One of the first, and still one of the most widely cited, was developed by scientists at the UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation. In this story from March, Wired detailed the work that went into the model and how hospital systems, like UW Medicine, used the projections to help prepare for the surge in patients.

鈥楿nprecedented鈥� speed of research may set new standard

Dr. Peter Rabinowitz, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences at the UW, spoke to Newsweek in March about the “unprecedented” speed of research and public health action, saying “it does set a new standard for reacting and responding to infectious disease outbreaks.” Nicole Errett, a lecturer in the same department, added that it鈥檚 “hugely impressive” how fast the vaccine clinical trials began after the disease emerged.

Studying immune response to COVID-19

Dr. Helen Chu, a UW Medicine infectious diseases expert and researcher, started two studies in her lab looking at different immune responses to COVID-19 to figure out how the human body might overcome the disease.

April 2020

Study on social isolation goes national

In March, Jonathan Kanter, a research associate professor of psychology at the UW, and psychology graduate student Adam Kuczynski began studying how King County residents were dealing with the social isolation aspects of the pandemic. By April, the public response to their study was so overwhelming that the team expanded the study to the entire country.

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Visiting 鈥榡ust one friend鈥�

In one of UW News鈥� most read stories of the year, a team of researchers explained the harm in visiting 鈥渏ust one friend鈥� during the pandemic. The team, led by Steve Goodreau, professor of anthropology, and Martina Morris, professor emeritus of sociology and statistics, illustrated how fast a community of people becomes connected 鈥� and at risk of spreading the coronavirus 鈥� when each household establishes a social connection with one other household.

Read story

Teaching and learning from home

The switch to a remote learning environment brought with it many challenges 鈥� for students and instructors 鈥� and many found creative ways to adapt. From filming instructional labs to sending students kits to conduct fieldwork, this story and video detail the ways that some instructors taught their classes in the new environment.

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Antibody testing begins at UW Medicine

In April, the UW Medicine Virology Lab announced plans to start processing thousands of COVID-19 antibody tests to help scientists understand more about the deadly virus and its spread. This test allowed people to find out whether they had previously contracted COVID-19 and developed antibodies, and gave researchers a better sense of the infection鈥檚 history and prevalence.

May 2020

Coronavirus herd immunity

Once it became clear that measures would not succeed in containing or eliminating the virus, Carl Bergstrom, professor of biology at the UW, and Natalie Dean of the University of Florida wrote in a New York Times op-ed that waiting for herd immunity to build solely based on infections would result in a 鈥渃atastrophic loss of lives.鈥�

鈥�(A) very large number of people must be infected to reach the herd immunity threshold required. Given that current estimates suggest roughly 0.5 percent to 1 percent of all infections are fatal, that means a lot of deaths,鈥� the researchers wrote.

Face masks required

On May 18, King County directed people to wear face coverings in most public settings. As more information about how the coronavirus spreads was revealed through research, the recommendations for masking and other public health guidelines evolved. Hilary Godwin, dean of the UW School of Public Health, explained in this video how face coverings help mitigate the spread of the virus.

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Later, in June, Gov. Jay Inslee announced a statewide order for everyone to wear a face covering when out in public. Dr. Chloe Bryson-Cahn from Harborview Medical Center explained in this video interview how face masks help prevent the spread of COVID-19

June 2020

The double pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic not only has had a disproportionate impact on communities of color, but the U.S. has also seen an escalation in racial discrimination and heightened awareness of that discrimination. On June 6, thousands of doctors, nurses, health care workers and public health experts from the 天美影视传媒 and other medical institutions turned out in downtown Seattle to demand an end to . The march was led by Dr. Estell Williams and Edwin Lindo of the UW School of Medicine.

Is the air getting cleaner amid COVID-19?

With fewer people commuting to work, a question arose early in the pandemic: Is there less pollution in the air? Julian Marshall and Bujin Bekbulat in the UW Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering dug into the data to find out. Their results, which were peer reviewed and published in January 2021, show that some pollutant concentrations were reduced and then returned to expected levels, while other pollutant concentrations were higher than expected or stayed the same.

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Commencement re-imagined

For the first time ever, all three UW campuses came together for a combined commencement celebration, which was held online. UW News spoke with Sara Griggs, who has led the UW Office of Ceremonies event for 20 years, to talk about the unprecedented ceremony.

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July 2020

A misinformation perfect storm

At the UW Center for an Informed Public, tracking the spread of misinformation and disinformation is a top priority. By July, false information regarding the pandemic was rampant. As demands for racial justice were playing out all over the country and the 2020 election was ramping up, the result was a perform storm, said center co-founder Kate Starbird in the UW Department of Human Centered Design & Engineering.

The science behind masks

As mask mandates became more widespread in the summer, new science showed how effective they are at preventing transmission of COVID-19 鈥� and loss of life. Ali Mokdad and colleagues with the UW’s Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation did a meta-analysis of mask studies and found if 95% of people wear cloth masks when they’re out and interacting with other people, it reduces transmission by at least 30%.

Enforcement of mask mandates critical to their success

Dr. Vin Gupta, a pulmonologist with the UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation who has since become a regular on national newscasts, co-wrote an op-ed in The Washington Post with Miami Mayor Francis Suarez emphasizing the importance of mask mandates and their enforcement.

August 2020

Hope for preventing reinfection

A study by researchers at the UW School of Medicine and Fred Hutchinson Cancer Research Center provided hope to people who have survived a COVID-19 diagnosis: Evidence suggests that antibodies protect against reinfection.

September 2020

UW begins testing program for students, faculty and staff

With assistance from the Seattle Flu Study, the UW began enrolling members of its community in a voluntary testing program to monitor symptoms and activities, and to get access to COVID-19 tests if necessary. The Husky Coronavirus Testing program launched on Sept. 24 and had almost 19,000 people enrolled as of Feb. 22.

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October 2020

Hotels and homelessness

King County repurposed hotels in Seattle, Bellevue, Renton and SeaTac as housing for people experiencing homelessness. The result, according to a UW study led by Rachel Fyall, associate professor in the Evans School of Public Policy & Governance, and Gregg Colburn, assistant professor in the Runstad Department of Real Estate, was limiting the spread of COVID-19 as well as improving overall health and stability for those who moved indoors.

Pandemic isolating older adults

While the pandemic hasn’t been easy for anyone, one group that has experienced a significant amount of hardship is older adults. A study led by Clara Berridge, assistant professor in the School of Social Work, found that older adults throughout Washington are increasingly isolated and challenged by an even greater reliance on technology.

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1 million tests

The UW Medicine Virology Lab tested its millionth sample in late October for the presence of the novel coronavirus. As of this writing, the lab had recently surpassed tested, with about 6% showing presence of the virus.

Preserving scientific integrity

The UW joined Johns Hopkins University for a symposium on preserving the scientific integrity in the development of COVID-19 vaccines. The event brought together experts including Dr. Anthony Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases; Michele Andrasik of the UW School of Public Health; and Dr. Larry Corey of the UW School of Medicine; as well as prominent journalists who have been covering the pandemic.

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November 2020

Worse than the flu

A study led by Dr. Natalie Cobb, a UW Medicine physician in pulmonary, critical care and sleep medicine, put to rest the idea that COVID-19 was similar in severity to influenza. One key finding of the study was that COVID-19 patients had an in-hospital death rate of 40%, versus 19% for influenza patients. This higher mortality rate was independent of the patients鈥� age, gender, co-occurring health conditions, and severity of illness while in the ICU.

Washington launches 鈥榃A Notify鈥� app

With help from UW researchers, the Washington State Department of Health launched an app that would notify users if they have been exposed to COVID-19 鈥� while maintaining privacy.

Promising vaccine efficacy news

Pfizer released an early analysis of its vaccine and reported that a course of two shots was more than 90% effective at preventing infection. Dr. Vin Gupta of the Institute for Health Metrics & Evaluation talked to KUOW about his cautious optimism.

December 2020

First vaccine approved for emergency use authorization

Pfizer鈥檚 vaccine was approved for emergency use authorization by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration on Friday, Dec. 11, and started shipping across the country shortly thereafter. UW Medicine was among the first sites in the state to receive doses of the vaccine.

Vaccines arrive at UW Medicine, first doses administered

The first COVID-19 vaccines arrived at UW Medicine on Monday, Dec. 14. The first dose was administered to frontline health care workers the next morning. As of March 4, UW Medicine has administered more than 100,000 COVID-19 vaccine doses.

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January 2021

Communities hit by COVID-19 the hardest brace for vaccine

Public health officials face hurdles to get vaccines out to people who are both wary of the vaccine and have been disproportionately hit by COVID-19. According to the UW Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, Mexicans, Central Americans and other Latinos in Washington are six times more likely to die from the virus.

Clinic treats COVID-19 long-haulers

Harborview Medical Center opened a new clinic in May to treat people who are still dealing with COVID-19 symptoms, weeks or even months after their diagnosis. Of the 24 million people in the U.S. who have contracted COVID-19, up to 2 million might be dealing with symptoms that have persisted for months. Since its opening, the clinic has seen a multifold increase in patients seeking care.

School of Nursing hosts vaccine boot camp

The UW School of Nursing put together a vaccine 鈥渂oot camp鈥� for students to learn how to administer COVID-19 vaccines at the growing number of mass vaccination sites.

Dentists part of the vaccination effort

As the vaccine supply expanded, dentists and hygienists in Washington planned to help immunize patients. Dr. Gary Chiodo, dean of the UW School of Dentistry, and Dr. Sara Gordon, professor of oral medicine at the UW, were quoted in this Seattle Times story on that effort.

February 2021

COVID-19 infections higher in pregnancy

The COVID-19 infection rate among pregnant women was estimated to be 70% higher than in similarly aged adults in Washington state, according to a new study led by Dr. Kristina Adams Waldorf, professor of obstetrics and gynecology at the UW. 鈥淭he higher infection rates in pregnant patients, coupled with an elevated risk for severe illness and maternal mortality due to COVID-19, suggests that pregnancy should be considered a high-risk health condition for COVID-19 vaccine allocation in Phase 1B all across the United States,鈥� Adams Waldorf said.

Pharmacist-administered vaccines have UW roots

As UW President Ana Mari Cauce wrote in her blog, for many Americans the only way to get a vaccine was once at a doctor鈥檚 office or hospital. Then, in the 1980s and 鈥�90s, that changed 鈥� in large part due to the work of faculty members in the UW School of Pharmacy and the UW School of Public Health. 鈥淣ow, our pharmacy and public health colleagues are tackling the problem of vaccinating for COVID-19,鈥� she wrote.

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Equitable vaccine distribution

Seattle will use a map developed by Esther Min and colleagues in the UW Department of Environmental & Occupational Health Sciences to help choose future mobile vaccine delivery campaigns and pop-up vaccine clinics as well as future mass vaccination sites, to ensure equitable distribution.

Preventing future pandemics

Scientists want to build a system to monitor for new viruses. The system would require significant financial investment, notes Dr. Alex Greninger of the UW School of Medicine, as well as broad collaboration across the health care system.

Seven 天美影视传媒 scientists are included in , published in December 2020. is a collaborative resource between Cell Press and Cell Signaling Technology.

鈥淭he list was compiled聽to honor the Black scientists for their efforts in research, diversity and inclusion initiatives, advocacy, social justice outreach, teaching and mentorship,鈥� Antentor O. Hinton, Jr., a postdoctoral scholar at the University of Iowa, a co-author of the list. 鈥淭he hope was that the list 鈥� would serve as a reference for those looking for prominent scientific speakers who could further emphasize the importance of diversity.鈥�

At the UW, the list comprises a spectrum of advanced career scientists, a former chancellor and up-and-coming researchers.

鈥淲e are proud to see the names of several inspiring scientists from the UW on this list.聽 It is our hope that this kind of recognition amplifies the excellent and important contributions our Black faculty, post-docs and students are making in STEM. Because they are here, others can visualize themselves being here as well, and this is critical as we work to increase representation in the STEM fields across our university,鈥� said Rickey Hall, the UW鈥檚 vice president for Minority Affairs & Diversity and university diversity officer.

The UW researchers highlighted include:

• Chancellor Emeritus , who arrived at UW Bothell in 1999 as its founding chancellor. Later, he founded the Science and Technology Program, which became the UW Bothell School of STEM.
• Associate Professor , whose research group aims to engineer systems to meet demands for new sources of industrially and medically important chemicals and materials. His work is in the Department of Chemical Engineering.
• Postdoctoral fellow , who studies pedagogies and other interventions in higher education that support underrepresented students in STEM. Her work is in the Department of Chemistry.
• Associate Professor , whose lab is focused on understanding the pathophysiological basis of genetic epilepsies and their comorbid conditions. His work is in the Department of Neurological Surgery.
• Acting Assistant Professor , who is focused on developing point-of-care diagnostics for therapeutic monitoring and precision dosing to treat infectious and chronic diseases. His work is in the Department of Mechanical Engineering.
• Assistant Professor , whose research and lab is focused on designing low-cost composites to selectively remove contaminants in stormwater and wastewater. Her work is in the Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering.
• Assistant Professor , whose research and teaching involves harmonic analysis, which is a mathematical procedure for describing and analyzing phenomena of a periodically recurrent nature, such as sound waves, electric currents and tides. His work is in the Department of Mathematics.

“We applaud these remarkable researchers who represent the very best of who we are as we continue to diversify our ranks. At the UW, we are working across the academic spectrum, from students to tenured faculty, to ensure our diversity reflects the communities we serve,” said UW Provost Mark Richards.

From studying polar bears in Baffin Bay to evaluating rental ads in Seattle, the work of the UW community makes an impact on the world. As we close the books on this year, we want to reflect on those accomplishments and insights 鈥� the ones that go beyond COVID-19.

It is nearly impossible to summarize the year in a few dozen stories. However, with this interactive timeline, the UW News team hopes this sampling of important work provides a broad retrospective on the community鈥檚 scholarship.

In a separate project, we will look back and summarize the university鈥檚 critical work in the first year of battling COVID-19. We’ve also created a video highlighting a few of the news and research stories that came out of this year.