Frequent news headlines and rising gas prices are constant reminders of the fuel shortage linked to the war in Iran. But energy crises are about more than oil and geopolitics, say and , who co-teach “Communication, Design and the Environment” in the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý’s Communication Leadership program.

Muren, a teaching professor of design, and Russell, a professor of communication, examine environmental problems from a perspective beyond the hard sciences. They are currently working on a book that explores how the systems we design and the stories we tell shape the relationship between society and the living world.

UW News spoke to Muren and Russell about what today’s energy crises reveal about contemporary societies’ dependence on fossil fuels and how we can create a “solar-powered system.”��

The war in Iran has put energy back at the center of public debate. What stands out to you about the conversation we’re having?

Adrienne Russell: To me, it’s impressive how quickly the conversation — in the news media mostly — narrowed to . Where will the oil come from? How quickly can markets stabilize? What will happen to prices? Those are important questions, but they’re also very familiar. Every energy crisis seems to produce the same script. We talk about rather than asking why our societies are organized in ways that make them so vulnerable to disruptions in the first place.

Dominic Muren: Exactly. We tend to treat these moments as temporary interruptions to an otherwise normal system. But they’re also reminders that the system itself depends on finite resources and exceptional geopolitical stability. The crisis isn’t just exposing a shortage of oil; it’s exposing assumptions about how much energy we expect to have available and how our economies are built around that expectation.

What assumptions are built into this way of thinking?

DM: The biggest assumption is that energy should always be available in whatever quantity society demands. When supply falls short, we assume the problem is getting more energy, not reconsidering the expectations that created that demand. That assumption feels natural today, but of the fossil-fuel era.

AR: Those assumptions become embedded in everyday life. We stop noticing that overnight shipping, long commutes, streaming entertainment or all depend on enormous amounts of energy. They begin to feel like ordinary features of modern life instead of choices made possible by a particular energy system.

What are the material consequences of thinking about energy this way?

DM: We respond to crises by reinforcing the very system that created them. The was widely expected to trigger a dramatic spike in global oil prices. Instead, the shock was muted, in part because China rapidly shifted away from imported oil and relied more heavily on domestically produced coal. Economically, that reduced dependence on imported oil. Environmentally, however, it came at a significant cost: than oil per unit of energy, so avoiding one crisis just increased another.��

Even China’s massive electric vehicle fleet — normally a climate advantage — became more carbon-intensive because the electricity charging those vehicles increasingly came from coal rather than lower-carbon sources. From a climate perspective, that represents a significant step backward.

AR: We’re seeing similar patterns elsewhere. In the United States, the war in Iran has been in California and in the name of energy security. Each crisis becomes a justification for extracting more rather than asking why our societies remain so dependent on these fuels in the first place.��

In other words, the immediate response is often to stabilize today’s energy system, even if doing so locks in higher emissions tomorrow. We end up reversing much of the progress we’ve made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions because we’re treating the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying design of the system.

How have fossil fuels shaped contemporary society and our expectations?

DM: Fossil fuels gave us access to enormous stores of concentrated energy accumulated over millions of years. That allowed societies to expand production, transportation and consumption at unprecedented scales. Over time, we built our cities, economies and institutions around the expectation that this on-demand abundance could continue indefinitely. But this ��

AR: Fossil fuels and their infrastructures are one of the most powerful sense-making systems ever built. They have trained societies to expect continuous expansion. Because that expectation feels natural, it rarely appears as a choice; it appears as reality. That’s why energy shocks are so often misread. When supply is disrupted, the instinct is to restore the flow and return to “normal.” But that normal isn’t neutral. It’s a high-energy system organized around the assumption that growth has no meaningful limits. Energy crises aren’t interruptions to that system — they’re the moments when those assumptions collide with physical reality.��

DM: And because those systems become invisible, so do the assumptions they create. Continuous access to energy begins to feel like a law of nature rather than the outcome of a vast physical and political system. So when disruptions occur, we focus on repairing the flow instead of questioning the system that made uninterrupted flow seem inevitable.��

We could counter this tendency by recognizing that the only long-term source of energy available to life on Earth is the continuous flow of . Every fossil fuel we burn is nothing more than stored sunlight from the distant past. And like any finite reserve, it will eventually run out. What is guaranteed is the steady income of energy from the sun we receive each day, nearly unchanged from one sunrise to the next. Long before humans, life on Earth already adapted to this reality. Plants learned to capture sunlight directly, while animals survived by consuming those that did. Growth has always depended on access to this continuous energy flow. The point is not that we need more solar panels. It is that we need to think like a solar-powered system.

What does it mean to think like a solar-powered system? What would have to change, politically and culturally?

DM: A solar-powered system is one that aligns its activity with incoming energy rather than assuming limitless withdrawals from stored capital. Instead of designing around unlimited energy and perpetual expansion, we’d design around timing, sufficiency, resilience and adaptation. It’s not simply a technological shift; it’s a different way of imagining how society should function with whatever technologies — past, current�� or yet-to-be-invented — make that possible.

The transition isn’t simply replacing fossil fuels with renewable technologies. It’s replacing the mindset fossil fuels made possible. If we continue expecting unlimited growth while changing only the energy source, we’ll recreate many of the same problems in a different form. supports this.�� A durable transition means learning to organize society around the energy that is actually available, rather than around the illusion of limitless reserves.��

AR: We would have to rethink many of the assumptions we’ve inherited about progress and abundance. Much of contemporary culture treats continual expansion as both natural and desirable. Changing energy systems requires changing those stories as well.

For more information, contact Russell at adruss@uw.edu and Muren at dmuren@uw.edu.

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Today’s wireless technologies harness chunks of the for myriad uses — radio waves broadcast TV and radio; microwaves transmit cellphone signals and cook our food; X-rays image our bodies; gamma rays kill cancerous cells.

, however, is interested in more neglected slices of the spectrum. Naghavi, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, studies the “terahertz band,” a region of the spectrum . Terahertz frequencies are notoriously difficult to work with, but they hold enormous potential in the fields of sensing, imaging and communications — future sensors, for example, could help firefighters “see” through smoke during rescue operations.

Naghavi recently joined a cohort of researchers from across the country who were awarded grants by the U.S. Department of Energy’s , an initiative to apply artificial intelligence across a wide range of research areas; other UW researchers are part of a Genesis-funded project to advance AI-driven cosmology. With the grant, Naghavi plans to develop compact, efficient sensors that could enable wearable gadgets to image their environment in new ways.

UW News caught up with Naghavi to learn about his new project and how it extends his work on terahertz frequencies.

What is the terahertz band and why are you studying it?

Hossen Naghavi: The terahertz band is a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that lies between 100 gigahertz and 10 terahertz — the microwave band sits below it, and the optical band sits above it. That position gives terahertz waves a unique combination of microwave and optical properties. Microwaves can see through opaque materials like clothing, smoke or fire, but their long wavelengths limit the resolution of microwave imaging. Optical waves have the opposite problem. Their wavelengths are short, so they produce high-resolution images, but most materials block visible light completely, which makes it impossible to see inside or behind an object.

Terahertz waves are a sort of “happy medium.” Their wavelengths are short enough to give useful resolution but long enough to see through many materials. That combination allows us to build new sensors and cameras that can detect concealed objects or image scenes through smoke, dust and other conditions that defeat conventional optics.

What are some applications you envision for terahertz frequencies?

HN: is expected to become a defining mode of human-computer interaction, but realizing its full potential requires machines that can perceive and understand their surroundings far beyond what the human eye can see. Consider a high-stakes setting such as firefighting, where an augmented reality headset powered by terahertz waves could help firefighters locate victims or identify hazardous materials through smoke, fog and debris.��

Beyond firefighting and emergency response, terahertz technologies could also aid in autonomous navigation, security screening, industrial inspection, biomedical sensing, molecular spectroscopy, agricultural applications, and 5G and 6G communication networks.��

Sounds exciting! What’s the catch?

HN: Sensors that use terahertz waves, like the ones in our firefighting headset example, have been demonstrated in the lab. However, low-cost, low-power electronics that would be practical in a wearable device have not yet been developed.

Terahertz sensors produce high-resolution image streams, and processing them conventionally means moving enormous amounts of data to a central processor for analysis by an artificial intelligence system. That consumes too much power and adds too much delay to be practical in a lightweight device meant to be worn all day.

Tell us about your new project. How will it address some of the hurdles facing terahertz technologies?

HN: The usual way to build a terahertz imager is to split the job in two. The radar sensor collects raw signals, and a separate processor turns the signals into a picture. That division sounds sensible, but it is the source of most of the trouble. The raw signals arriving at each of the sensor’s antennas are slightly out of step with one another, and the processor has to line them all up before an image can form. That alignment requires a lot of continuous computation, which drains batteries quickly and introduces lag.

The natural comparison is the human eye. Your retina does not ship every photon to your brain for interpretation. It processes what it sees on the spot and passes along something much more compact, which is part of why vision costs your body so little energy. We are trying to give a terahertz sensor the same quality, which is why we describe the design as “neuromorphic,” meaning “brain-inspired.”

Who are you working with on this technology, and what’s next?

HN: My group at the UW and ‘s group at Texas A&M University are designing and building the sensor hardware. at the University of Utah and at ChipNexus are developing and implementing the AI system. This is a highly collaborative project.

Our next big milestone is to demonstrate a terahertz neuromorphic imager as a proof of concept in Phase I of our Genesis Mission project. Moving forward, we hope to expand the project into Phase II to add even more capabilities and make this technology accessible for public usage as early as possible.

For more information, contact Naghavi at naghavi@uw.edu.

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The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation (IHME), an independent research organization at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, has received a landmark 10-year grant from the Gates Foundation to strengthen freely available, scientifically rigorous health evidence used by governments, researchers, and leaders to improve the health and well-being of people in Washington, the United States, and around the world.

IHME is part of the UW School of Medicine, and the $540.2 million investment will provide long-term support for expanding the Global Burden of Disease study to provide health data for thousands of new areas. GBD is the most comprehensive assessment of health trends and conditions across countries. Under the grant, GBD will expand from roughly 925 locations today to nearly 5,000 — a major expansion in the geographic detail available to the people making decisions. The grant will also support IHME’s health forecasting and future-scenarios work, and its tracking of health spending worldwide.

Together, these resources help decision-makers, researchers, and health professionals understand the health challenges people face today, anticipate what is coming next, and determine how limited resources can be used most effectively to improve health.

“Reliable and independent evidence can mean the difference between reacting to a health crisis after it has taken hold and acting early enough to change its course,” said Dr. Christopher J.L. Murray, IHME director and professor of health metrics sciences. “This investment will allow us to provide high-quality evidence at a much more local level and help leaders understand not only where health is improving or worsening, but which decisions can make the greatest difference for people.”

Murray, the grant’s principal investigator, started the Global Burden of Disease study in the early 1990s and has led its development since, in collaboration with a global research network now spanning more than 150 countries and territories.

The Gates Foundation, along with the state of Washington, provided the founding investment that established IHME at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý in 2007, creating an independent institute dedicated to measuring the world’s most pressing health challenges and evaluating whether policies and programs are improving people’s lives. Its sustained support has helped build the field of health metrics itself. IHME has developed many of the methods and standards the field now relies on and has helped collaborators contribute to the field as well. The new grant builds on that longstanding partnership and provides a base for IHME’s next phase of growth.

“Every government and funder faces difficult decisions about where to invest limited resources for greatest impact, and those decisions depend on trusted evidence,” said Mark Suzman, Chief Executive Officer of the Gates Foundation. “For nearly two decades, IHME has been one of the foundation’s most important global partners, helping us, governments, researchers, and global health partners around the world understand where health is improving, where progress is stalling, and where action is needed most. Our long-term commitment recognizes the value of this work to strengthen a shared evidence base that will continue to inform decisions to improve—and save—millions of lives.”

The Global Burden of Disease network has grown to more than 20,000 collaborators in over 150 countries and territories: researchers, clinicians, government analysts, and policymakers who contribute to the study’s data and methods and carry health measurement into their own institutions and ministries. This next phase of IHME’s work is an opportunity to consolidate that foundation and extend it considerably further.

The grant comes as countries confront overlapping health threats and growing pressure on public and global health budgets. By producing more detailed, timely, and forward-looking evidence, IHME aims to help leaders identify urgent needs, prepare health systems, and invest in policies and programs most likely to prevent illness, disability, and premature death.

The award is the largest charitable grant ever given to the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý.

“The Gates Foundation has been a steadfast partner of the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý for decades, and we are grateful for its generous support. The UW is committed to improving the health of people in Washington and around the world, and this investment will expand IHME’s already significant impact, which will mean longer, healthier lives for countless people,” said UW President Robert J. Jones.

IHME’s research and findings are freely available to countries, researchers, and communities regardless of their income or access to commercial data systems.

“We are deeply grateful to the Gates Foundation for this extraordinary investment in IHME and the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý School of Medicine,” said Dr. Timothy Dellit, CEO of UW Medicine and dean of the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý School of Medicine. “Their longstanding partnership has helped make it possible for IHME to deliver trusted health evidence around the world. This new grant will extend that impact by giving leaders data that are comprehensive and comparable to guide decisions that help improve the health of communities and save lives.”

Read . For interview requests, data inquiries or general questions, please contact IHME at ihmemedia@uw.edu.

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Going forward, procedures will be updated to ensure the standards we have for University-hosted events like the Speaker Series are met, particularly so that we can help elevate the level of dialogue on divisive topics during a polarized time in our country.

Update – August 19, 2026

In the process of reviewing the 2026-27 Speaker Series, it was determined that a total of seven of the 16 announced events did not go through the committee-based process for selecting featured speakers. These events will also not be held.

Procedures will be updated to ensure there are clear standards, transparent criteria and robust processes for selecting future Speaker Series participants in a manner consistent with the UW’s mission as a public research university.

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Nobody is immune from the hazards of summer wildfires, even the experts. At the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, researchers study both how to mitigate and understand wildfire behavior and how air quality degrades as a result of burning blazes. While UW faculty contribute to a rapidly emerging body of research into the risks of fire and smoke season, they also contend with the decisions that the rest of us face: how to protect themselves and their families, where to find reliable information, and how to manage the anxieties of summer smoke.��

Who better to learn from? As fires rage and smoke smothers the Pacific Northwest — including historic and devastating — UW News sat down with five UW experts in fire science, forestry, air pollution and more to ask how they manage wildfire season.��

This summer, the U.S. has been inundated with wildfire smoke, sometimes from fires burning hundreds of miles away. What sources do you use to track wildfires and air quality?

, research associate professor of environmental and forest sciences: The most reliable source, in my opinion, is the Fire and Smoke Map from . This map consolidates data from various government sources related to wildfires, prescribed burns, smoke emissions and up-to-date models. It serves as a comprehensive resource for smoke emissions information.

, research scientist in environmental and forest sciences: For smoke forecasts, I often turn to AirNow, but the is an excellent friend when we have been inundated with smoke for days and I’m looking for extended forecasts and analyses. is also an incredibly helpful site. I’m careful to check if the readings are U.S. EPA PM2.5 with the conversion applied — otherwise the readings generally are higher than reality.

, professor of environmental and forest sciences: For personal use and immediate up-to-date information, I really like . As a free app that has lots of options and configurations, it can be really helpful for getting immediate information on any ongoing fire incident and incorporates information from multiple sources. Second, for more detailed maps, photos, and daily incident updates, I frequently check , which is the U.S. government interagency website that provides real-time public information and updates on fire incidents. As a forest fire scientist, I also use these sources for archived information about past fires that can better help us in our research.

Let’s say you’re planning a weekend trip, or a hike you’ve been looking forward to. How do you predict and plan around fire and smoke?��

E. Alvarado: I’ll plan my outdoor activities while considering potential smoke impacts. I’ll choose an area that’s unlikely to be affected by smoke for the duration of the activity. During the fire season, I’ll avoid areas with thermal inversions, which can trap smoke at night. For example, canyons or valleys surrounded by mountains are risky.

To predict future smoke concentrations, the National Weather Service is the most reliable source of information. Their weather predictions can indicate fire weather for the duration of the forecast. This is also important for hiking the rest of the year to stay informed about the weather for any outdoor activity.

BH: has nice maps of the U.S. and Canada with high-resolution smoke forecasts over the coming day or two. These maps can be really helpful for planning ahead, though are always subject to change based on changing fire behavior or weather conditions. With our lab group doing field work outdoors all summer long every summer, these are critical tools for us to be able to do our work.��

Do you have an AQI threshold where you’re no longer comfortable being outside? Does that vary depending on what you’re doing outside? If so, how?

, professor of environmental and occupational health sciences: The AQI is designed for communicating health risk to both general populations as well as populations that may be more susceptible to smoke.�� Rather than focusing on the AQI number, I instead focus on the public health messaging (the “Description of Air Quality” column in this figure):

, associate professor of environmental and occupational health sciences: I generally become more concerned when air quality has remained consistently elevated for about 24 hours, because I think about smoke exposure cumulatively over the course of the day.

SP: If it looks like air quality is going to degrade over an AQI of 80, I start thinking about my health and what level of activity I’m going to do. As the science on smoke and human health only becomes more cautionary, I save strenuous exercise like running or climbing mountains for times when the AQI is below 80.��

If you have to be outside during smoky days, how do you protect yourself?��

E. Alvarado: Starting from AQI in the yellow zone, I may wear a . However, above the orange zone, an N95 mask is mandatory.

ES: If working outdoors during smoky days, you and your employer should be aware that in Washington State, Labor and Industries has established from hazardous smoke exposures. Also be aware that oftentimes smoke and heat co-occur, and there are for working outdoors too.

E. Austin: I always make contingency plans while hiking and camping. In that case, I identify egress routes prior to departing in case a wildfire event limits my ability to return using the route I had planned. I also sign up for emergency text alerts for the county where I am spending time, and check the current fire activity and nearby evacuation status.��

How do you keep your indoor spaces safe during smoke waves?

ES: Thinking ahead and preparing your indoor space for regularly occurring wildfire smoke episodes is just as important as planning for other emergency events.�� Can you close doors and windows tightly and have good weather sealing to avoid smoke from infiltrating indoors? Can you set your ventilation system to recirculate air?�� Have you replaced your ventilation system (e.g., furnace) filter recently? Have you considered getting a portable HEPA-rated air cleaner that is sized appropriately for your bedroom or living area?�� Have you considered building a DIY box-fan filter?

E. Austin: I create a smoke-ready space in my home. This is a separate area, where I set my ventilation system to recirculate indoor air rather than bringing in outdoor air. I also run a HEPA filter, rated to perform well for the square footage of my space, during wildfire events. Lastly, I try to reduce air exchange between the indoor space and outdoors by closing all windows, only opening outdoor doors when necessary, and weatherizing the space around doors and windows prior to the event.

SP: For indoor air, we make sure our HEPA air filters are clean at the end of each fire season so that they are ready to go the following year. When there’s smoke in the air, we make sure windows and doors are closed and use our air filters. We also just got a heat pump so that we can keep windows closed when smoke is a factor at night.

If you find yourself in close proximity to an active wildfire, what steps do you suggest taking?

BH: I suggest being as conservative and cautious as possible. Conditions can change rapidly, and being in the direct line of where a fire is spreading can be extremely dangerous and life-threatening. So first, I would make sure that there is a clear and safe route to safety via a road, trail, path, etc. Second, assessing the situation through any official information or local authorities is critical. If the fire has not been reported, calling 911 immediately is important to alert responders and others. If an evacuation order is issued, leaving immediately is critical to get to safety ASAP.

E. Austin: Many local districts allow you to register your phone and/or email to receive real-time alerts. I also suggest identifying your evacuation route, any obstacles or bottlenecks that would slow down your evacuation and to preplan and even pack critical items that you would need to take with you in an emergency.

SP: I live in the Methow Valley, and we’ve been evacuated around five times in the last 20 years. As a fire ecologist who studies fire behavior and smoke, one of the most upsetting things for me has been to watch neighbors and friends stay to protect their places. We quickly pack a few valuable things — photo albums, laptops, wallets, and passports — and leave. My main message to friends over the years is that it’s not worth the risk — if flames are close that means that smoke and super-heated air may be close, too, and deadly.

How do you manage the stress and anxiety of fire season both here and elsewhere?

E. Austin: I manage that stress by preparing my home before fire season, relying on a small number of curated information sources rather than trying to identify reliable sources in the moment or checking multiple apps, and I try to make flexible backup plans for outdoor activities. I also suggest planning ahead to learn how to obtain and effectively use an N95 respirator to reduce exposures either at work or when outdoors for recreational activities.

SP: Fire and smoke season are stressful. I’ve dealt with some stress and anxiety not only from fast-moving wildfires but also from long-duration smoke events that feel like they will never clear. We have a strong community that is very supportive and understands how fire season can bring up some PTSD-type symptoms. We take care of our place and make sure that we have as low of risk in and around our home as possible. We also remind ourselves how very lucky we are to be able to have flexibility in our work schedules and plenty of friends and family elsewhere to be able to leave when wildfires hit close to home.

BH: Fire is an integral part of life on earth, and in regions like the Pacific Northwest, fire is a key process that will continue to shape this region well into the future. Knowing that it is not if, but when, fire will return to any given area helps me embrace the reality of fire season. Like anything in life, being informed and prepared is a great way to lower stress and anxiety that comes with uncertainty.��

The UW has dozens of experts in wildfires, smoke and related topics. To reach an expert, contact Alden Woods at acwoods@uw.edu.

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Drug development is among the slowest, most failure-prone processes in modern science, with . Today, artificial intelligence methods have accelerated the first step — plucking promising molecules out of endless possibilities — but countless challenges remain. A successful drug must be not only safe and effective, but also able to bypass the body’s defenses and reach the right target.

Most drug candidates fail such optimizations. That’s where a new research institute at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý has focused its attention. Housed in the UW School of Pharmacy, the brings together experts in artificial intelligence, drug discovery, pharmacology, data science and biotechnology to ease the bottleneck between promising molecules and successful drugs.��

The Institute opened in July 2026 and is led by three UW faculty members: , an associate professor of medicinal chemistry who oversees the Institute’s AI-enabled molecular design; , the Milo Gibaldi Chair of Pharmaceutics and expert in drug metabolism and disposition; and , a professor of psychiatry and behavioral science in the UW School of Medicine, who leads drug discovery, translation and commercialization efforts.

UW News spoke with the three co-directors about why drug candidates fail, how AI is speeding drug development and how I2D3 hopes to help get drugs to market more quickly.

What separates a promising molecule from a full-fledged drug? What properties need to be considered, and how can a developer work toward them?

Gaurav Bhardwaj: It really depends on the disease indication you are targeting and the therapeutic modality. Let’s say you have a promising molecule that interacts with the disease-causing protein. Delivery becomes equally important — do we need an orally delivered drug? Do we need to cross the blood-brain barrier? If the disease requires daily dosing, then injectable or IV methods aren’t optimal. If it’s delivered orally, then the molecule needs to be able to get across the gut barrier, and also needs to be stable enough that it doesn’t get chewed up by the body. It also needs to stay in the body for a reasonable time. A successful drug molecule has to meet all these and more criteria, and ultimately all these criteria are encoded by the sequence and structure of the molecule.

The Institute is devoted to aspects of drug development that are often overlooked. What problem do you see the Institute being able to help solve?��

GB: Traditional drug discovery and development is a trial-and-error-based process. Either you find a useful molecule in nature and spend years optimizing it for human use, or you create many random combinations of molecules and hope that one of them has the function you need. Both of these approaches are highly unsuccessful, which has created a bottleneck.

Now the field is also focusing on an idea called rational drug design. It started long before AI but is now becoming even more common. People are using AI methods to design new molecules. However, a lot of that work has focused on the first step — finding a molecule that binds to a specific protein, or has a specific function in the body. That’s still not a drug, it’s just more candidates.

The bottleneck has now shifted. It’s no longer finding that first molecule, but now, how do you add all the other drug-like properties? That’s what the Institute is trying to do. Let’s build the models that ultimately make molecules that are going to be successful all the way through the drug development pipeline.��

Marco Pravetoni: I see our work also as accelerating discovery. I work on substance use disorders, and my lab develops vaccines, antibodies and next-generation antibody-like molecules that target drugs in the body. With these new tools, instead of working to design 10 antibody candidates in a lab, we could design 1,000 or more, and then we can accumulate enough data to reduce any risks, so that what we bring to clinical trials is more likely to be successful. AI can do a lot of that.

How can you make it more likely that a drug candidate succeeds in trials?��

Nina Isoherranen: Part of it is predicting what’s going to happen to a drug in humans before it’s ever given to humans. That should increase the success rate and eliminate the waste of doing a lot of unsuccessful trials.��

We can also build machine learning and AI approaches to predict drug disposition in an individual person. What we talk about today are ‘digital twins,’ which refers to a computational model of the individual patient and their characteristics. For example, how does your kidney function? What is your body mass index? And so forth. Then we generate a digital version of you. We can then predict how a certain drug would behave in your body and build the best strategy.��

There’s also an access-to-treatment question here. Pregnancy is a great example — we often don’t know how drugs work in pregnant women because we’ve never done trials. To be safe, we say that pregnant people shouldn’t take those drugs, but that means they don’t have access to a potentially hugely beneficial medication. If we can use AI and machine learning to predict how pregnant people respond to medications and how their bodies handle drugs differently from nonpregnant people we can make more medications accessible

Now with AI and machine learning, I think we can get to a place where we can truly sample the full space of possibilities.��

How can the methods you’re building help with these individualized treatments?��

NI: We know that drugs behave differently in different people. Even if we give them the exact same drugs and concentrations, people may still have different responses because of factors inherent to our bodies.

During drug development the candidate drug needs to be studied to see responses in different populations. Before you get a drug approved, you need to understand how liver disease, for example, is going to change exposure to that drug and whether you need to change the dosing. There’s a lot of guidance on drug interactions. Pharmacists manage drug interactions all the time, but it gets very complicated when you combine multiple patient factors. Now, if we have good predictive tools, we can predict what’s going to happen without having to do trials.��

The ultimate goal here is to be able to predict, using model computational tools, what’s going to happen in individual humans before you ever give them a drug. What’s the right dose? The right timing?��

UW has established itself as a leader in these fields already. I’m thinking especially of the UW Medicine , whose director, , recently won the Nobel Prize in Chemistry. How does I2D3 fit into the broader UW ecosystem?��

MP: IPD is a world leader in designing novel proteins, and the UW also has outstanding capabilities in clinical testing and implementation through the . However, there remains a critical translational space between discovery and clinical application —�� one that focuses on the pharmaceutical development needed to turn promising innovations into viable therapeutic products. That’s where I2D3 can play a leading role.

For example, when researchers at IPD develop a new protein, I2D3 can partner with them early to address formulation, manufacturability, stability, delivery, and other key pharmaceutical considerations that are essential for advancing a discovery toward the clinic and ultimately the marketplace. I2D3 would serve as a core translational partner, helping bridge the gap between innovation and implementation.

IPD brings unmatched strengths in protein design, ITHS provides expertise in clinical translation, and I2D3 contributes the drug development and pharmaceutical sciences capabilities needed to move discoveries across the translational continuum. Together, these organizations can create a powerful and highly integrated ecosystem.

For more information, visit . To reach the researchers, contact Alden Woods at acwoods@uw.edu.

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The ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý is exploring a significant redevelopment and expansion of UW Medical Center–Montlake, the Magnuson Health Sciences Center and west campus.

To kick off this potential 10-year effort, the UW Real Estate office is issuing a Phase-1 request for proposals for a one-year exercise to find a development advisor that will, in collaboration with the UW, deliver an executable strategy for the project. This Phase-1 work would include a year-long process to identify potential capital funding sources, assess the existing south campus buildings and infrastructure, and determine a realistic program and plan for expansion and redevelopment.

The UW’s current facilities cannot meet the demand for health care as more patients turn to UW Medicine for cancer, heart and transplant treatments, among other care needs. UWMC–Montlake currently operates with a shortage of beds, and that shortage is expected to grow to nearly 300 by 2040.

Additionally, modern biomedical research and health research, such as the Institute for Protein Design led by Nobel Prize winner David Baker and the Brotman Baty Institute for Precision Medicine require expanded facilities to continue delivering new treatments and cures.

Teaching, research and clinical facilities in the Magnuson Health Sciences Center are split across many floors and wings, and many of those spaces need replacement or will soon. The review will also include close consultation with the schools of Dentistry, Nursing and Pharmacy to determine the need for improved teaching, clinical training, research and dental care facilities.

A four-month initial feasibility study conducted by Seattle architectural and design firm NBBJ, along with the UW Medicine Strategy Team, determined the clear need for a new hospital tower at UWMC–Montlake with capacity for up to 400 additional beds. In a separate assessment, it was determined a new electrical substation is needed, as the existing substation is at capacity.

The RFP states a clear preference for limiting situations where a unit has to move more than once and for minimizing disruptions to teaching, research and patient care. If the project proceeds, the preferred project timeline includes the construction of new, permanent space for any units that may need to move, to be completed in approximately five years, at which point the existing hospital tower and portions of the Magnuson Health Sciences Center would be demolished and replaced. If the project proceeds, any units that are impacted will be supported through the project, including if there is a need to move to temporary space during construction.

An important component of the RFP is the development of a structured, multi-source funding plan for the entirety of the project. Potential funding sources include, but are not limited to, philanthropy, government funding, public-private partnerships and ground leases. If the year-long review determines that some aspects of the program are not feasible, the team will provide an alternative plan.

For more information, contact Victor Balta at balta@uw.edu.

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Arguably the most important crop on Earth, rice has been cultivated for roughly 10,000 years. It’s a staple food for more than half the global population, with about 90% cultivated and consumed in Asia.

But a new ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý study, recently published in , warns that this essential crop is in danger. Due to rising temperatures driven by climate change, projections show that Asia’s major rice-producing regions may soon pass the thermal limits that have remained consistent throughout the crop’s history.

Using satellite maps, agricultural records, archaeological data and climate projections, researchers found that domesticated Asian rice has never thrived where the mean annual temperature exceeds 28 degrees Celsius — 82 degrees Fahrenheit — or where the warm-season maximum temperature exceeds 33 C, or 91 F.��

Climate projections estimate that, by the end of this century, the land area exceeding these temperature limits could expand by 10 to 30 times in Asia’s major rice-producing nations. This would create unparalleled challenges in a region where more than a billion people rely on rice cultivation for their livelihoods. While rice breeding programs offer some hope, the researchers found that even the major rice subspecies won’t thrive in the projected temperatures.

UW News spoke with , an archaeologist, UW associate professor of anthropology and co-author of the study, about the research and what it means for the future.

How did you become interested in this topic?

JDG: A lot of my research focuses on how climatic events have shaped people’s ability to farm or grow crops in environments around the world. One of the places I previously worked was the Tibetan Plateau, and some of my early research documented that there was a cooling event around 4,000 years ago that halted Tibetans’ ability to grow two critical crops, which were . They shifted to wheat and barley after that, and they’ve been growing them ever since.

I became interested in applying the same research to understand how our current unprecedented moment of climate change may impact crop distribution. I work in Asia, particularly China, and I’ve worked on rice for most of my career. Our team found that the same cooling event that affected Tibet had a major impact on rice genetics. In fact, it led to the development of cold-adapted temperate rice, which is the same type of rice that people rely on for subsistence today in Japan, northern China and Korea. It’s the short-grained sticky rice that’s cold tolerant, as opposed to the original form of rice that was a semi-subtropical cultivar.��

We then became interested in the types of challenges rice will face moving forward. We pulled records of everywhere that rice has ever been cultivated in Asia throughout human history — and all the climatic conditions under which it’s been cultivated — and compared that to the types of situations that we’ll face under global warming today.

What did you find as you started looking toward the future?

JDG: Basically, we found that large areas that are major rice producers are going to face rising temperatures that are unprecedented in the history of rice cultivation. Over the course of the past 10,000 years and its domestication, rice has been adapted to cooler conditions and not to warmer conditions. We used a wide variety of forward-looking climate projection models, and all of those models seem to converge on the same point: Large parts of primary rice growing regions around the world are expected to surpass the known temperature limit where these crops can be cultivated.

I use the word unprecedented, and I don’t use it lightly. Another term I could apply to this would be no analog. There is no known situation over the course of rice’s cultivation where rice grew in regions which had such high mean annual temperatures. This crop has simply never experienced this before, so there is no data for how it will react. But we do have thousands of years of data saying that to date, it hasn’t been cultivated in temperatures like these. In fact, there are only two parts of the world today that have mean annual temperatures that are similar to those that we expect will occur in major rice producing regions of the world: the Sahara desert and parts of the Arabian peninsula. There is a reason these areas are largely desert. Most people think about water but temperature is a critical reason, too.��

I can’t underscore enough how writing this study felt. Millions of people live in this region and depend on temperatures as we have known them to continue to live and farm there. This is beyond devastating, and we are beginning to see the impacts of processes like this already.��

What are some recent examples of rising temperatures causing problems with crop cultivation?

JDG: In 2023, of all non-basmati rice. Sona masoori rice, or the type of rice grown across most of low altitude South Asia, had such great losses due massive heat waves that the government stopped all exports. People were panic buying rice that year, even in the U.S.

With climate change, the temperature is not increasing in a completely linear fashion. But the average is increasing over time. As the average increases, there’s a higher probability of these extreme events occurring. It’s already happening in our lifetime, and this study is solid evidence for why addressing climate change should be an absolute top priority for all of us. Over a billion people on the planet are rice cultivators, and that is their primary means of livelihood. For a fourth of the world’s population, rice is a main staple in the diet.

We could have written this paper for so many crops, including wheat, corn and others. What we’re dealing with here is that plant photosynthesis just doesn’t function well above those temperature limits. We’re running into fundamental limits of photosynthetic biochemical process plants, which are temperature limited. There are not that many types of plants that can sustain life under conditions like that, and certainly they are not our major economic plants.��

We live in an era where we have all experienced climate change. In 2026, most of the globe has experienced an extreme heat event. We understand how difficult this is for us as mammals to live through, and yet some of us have the privilege of escaping indoors or even to air conditioning. Plants, on the other hand, cannot move to escape the heat. I’m sure many here in Seattle remember the . The plants in our yard are still recovering from those short few days. That event caused billions of dollars in losses in the agricultural sector in the Pacific Northwest. Some berry and soft fruit farmers experienced nearly 100% crop losses. By midcentury, conditions like this could occur every five to 10 years and could have a huge impact on all plants, including the ones we rely on for food.��

This also critically highlights why we need to expand rather than contract our dietary breadth. Sadly, the opposite of this is happening due to industrial farming practices. Humanity is relying on an increasingly narrow range of species. We are essentially putting all our eggs into one or just a few baskets when we need crop diversity.��

What do climate projections take into account, and what can be done to change the path we’re currently on?

JDG: For this study, we used multiple climate projections based on what different countries’ carbon commitments will be moving forward. What we found is that even for climate scenarios where there is a strong global commitment to sustainability-focused growth, international cooperation, and an eventual transition to net-zero emissions, major rice growing regions are still impacted (SSP 1-2.6 on our maps). These impacts expand dramatically with other climate scenarios which assume less concerted action, and sadly this is consistent with where we are headed today which is probably somewhere between SSP 3- 7.0.

Our actions can change the course of what scenario we might be looking at with these maps. We have the technology to move forward with more climate-friendly solutions and many countries around the world are trying to take the lead while we lag behind. For instance, China, where I work, has made massive investments in public transit and railways. Nearly everybody in China drives an electric vehicle. I did not see a single gas-powered car last time I was there. We could do that here at home, and we’re not. Our politicians are making active choices to halt this type of action and at the same time we have the highest per capita emissions in the world. We could and should do much more. It can feel hopeless, particularly for those of us who live in a country where action from our politicians has been in a decades-long gridlock for meaningful change. But we shouldn’t stop lobbying for change.��

We can also look at what steps we can make in our own lives to lower emissions. It’s worth noting that the vast part of emissions come from the top 1%, and that portion of the population can really drive meaningful personal action. Simple steps for those that have the means and access can be switching to solar if you own a home or taking public transit where you can.Asking honestly, how am I contributing to this and what can I do differently can always help. For me, the single largest part of my personal emissions was flying and I ceased a large part of all my noncritical travel for that reason. Emissions from short-distance flights and private jets contribute hugely to this issue.

No country will be immune to a crisis of this magnitude, and it is an issue that deserves global attention. While the impacts may initially appear distant to readers from the U.S., our interconnected economies mean that we will also be affected through global trade systems and shifting agricultural dynamics. The same environmental and socioeconomic processes influencing rice production in Asia will have comparable implications for crops such as corn in lower-latitude regions of the U.S. and even here in the Pacific Northwest, as we saw with the last heat dome. Addressing these challenges requires recognizing their global scope and engaging proactively with the evidence before us.��

Other co-authors of the study were of the University of Florida and and of New York University.��

The study was funded in part by grants from the Zegar Family Foundation and the NSF Plant Genome Research Program.

For more information, contact d’Alpoim Guedes jguedes@uw.edu.

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President Robert J. Jones, Provost Tricia Serio and more than two dozen new ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý faculty toured Washington state last week on the annual Faculty Field Tour.

The five-day bus tour departed from the Burke Museum in Seattle on June 15 and made stops at historic sites, the state capitol, health clinics, vineyards, farms, cities and towns throughout the state.

Jones met the group in Richland to participate in a fireside chat. The following day, the UW president joined them at Schoesler Farms, the Ritzville wheat farm owned by Sen. Mark Schoesler, a Republican, and his family. Jones, an agronomist, was delighted to spend time with new faculty, meet Schoesler and get a hands-on tour of the wheat farm.

“We are a state university. We have an obligation on both sides of the mountains,” Jones said. “We have breadth that runs the entire state. And on this tour, these relatively new faculty members have a chance to experience that.”

UW’s Faculty Field Tour began more than 30 years ago to foster connection between new faculty and communities statewide. While making a counterclockwise loop around Washington, the participants learn about Washington’s varied economies, diverse geography and the places where their students grew up. The tour typically stops in Tacoma, Olympia, Mt. St. Helens, Vancouver, Toppenish, Tri-Cities, Ritzville, Spokane, Grand Coulee and Leavenworth before returning to Seattle.

Held the week following Commencement, the tour is open to faculty from all three UW campuses. This year’s cohort included an oceanographer from the College of the Environment, a writing studies professor from UW Tacoma, an economist from the College of Arts & Sciences, and UW Bothell’s executive vice provost for academic affairs, among others.

“Our students come from all over the state, right? Certainly not just Seattle,” said , a UW assistant professor in the Information School who was on the tour. “If you want to be an effective educator, you need to understand where your students come from and what their communities are like.”

The 2027 Faculty Field Tour is scheduled for the week of June 14.

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