The ad – entitled “” – will air alongside the fan-favorite “” spot. The new spot focuses on how the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý and other Big Ten universities make America healthier, safer and more prosperous in a variety of ways, from discovering new medical treatments to developing healthier foods to driving economic growth.

“The ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý is proud to join our Big Ten peers in showcasing the power of education, research and innovation through this collaborative campaign. Leveraging one of the most visible stages in college sports, these ads highlight to a broad audience how student-athlete competition unites people, while also amplifying the value of each Conference university’s impact,” said ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý President Robert J. Jones, who was previously chair of the Big Ten Council of Presidents and Chancellors and, along with President Emerita Ana Mari Cauce, was a champion of the project.

“Through our Big Ten membership, the UW gains visibility for its role—locally, nationally and beyond—in driving progress and fostering stronger communities nationwide,” Jones said.

Collectively, the 18 members of the Big Ten Conference educate more than 817,000 students and conduct $19.6 billion in research each year. The vast majority of that research is conducted thanks to the American people and their support for federal investments in the nation’s global leadership in health and innovation.

“The Big Ten Conference is an association of 18 world-class universities sharing a common mission of research, teaching and public service, alongside shared practices and policies that reinforce the priority of academics in the lives of its student-athletes,” said Big Ten Commissioner Tony Petitti. “We look forward to highlighting the impact our member institutions make every day in their communities and across the nation.”

“We Are Here” will air on linear and digital platforms during sporting events featuring Big Ten universities, utilizing airtime allocated to the Conference as part of its media agreements, including the Big Ten Network (BTN). From concept to completion, Valentina Gomez Bravo, executive creative director in (UMAC), led a multidisciplinary team of creative staff from Big Ten member universities in developing the ad under the auspices of the .

This new initiative builds on other Conference efforts, including research vignettes highlighting the impact of university research that air during select BTN sporting event broadcasts. That included vignettes about the UW last season featuring the and .

“We Are Here” is the first in a planned series of three ads, which over the course of the series will feature footage from all 18 universities.

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To download a broadcast-quality file of “We Are Here” please

About Big Ten Conference

The Big Ten Conference is an association of world-class universities whose member institutions share a common mission of research, graduate, professional and undergraduate teaching and public service. Founded in 1896, the Big Ten has sustained a comprehensive set of shared practices and policies that enforce the priority of academics in the lives of students competing in intercollegiate athletics and emphasize the values of integrity, fairness and competitiveness. The Big Ten Conference sponsors 28 official sports, 14 for men and 14 for women, and the broad-based programs of the 18 Big Ten institutions provide direct financial support for more than 14,000 student-athletes. For more information, visit .

About Big Ten Academic Alliance

The Big Ten Academic Alliance is the nation’s preeminent��model for effective collaboration among research universities. For more than half a century, these world-class institutions have advanced their academic missions, generated unique opportunities for students and faculty, and served the common good by sharing expertise, leveraging campus resources, and collaborating on innovative programs. Governed and funded by the Provosts of the member universities, Big Ten Academic Alliance programs and initiatives are coordinated by a staff from its Champaign, Illinois headquarters.

Big Ten member universities

• Indiana University
• Michigan State University
• Northwestern University
• The Ohio State University
• Pennsylvania State University
• Purdue University
• Rutgers University-New Brunswick
• University of California Los Angeles
• University of Illinois
• University of Iowa
• University of Maryland
• University of Michigan
• University of Minnesota
• University of Nebraska-Lincoln
• University of Oregon
• University of Southern California
• ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý
• University of Wisconsin-Madison

UPDATE (Aug. 2, 2024): A previous version of this story misstated Paul Kinahan’s name.

Fifteen faculty members at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences. They are among 36 scientists and educators from across the state . Selection recognizes the new members’ “outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement, and their willingness to work on behalf of the academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.”

Twelve UW faculty members were selected by current WSAS members. They are:

• , associate professor of epidemiology, of health systems and population health, and of child, family and population health nursing, who “possesses the rare combination of scientific rigor and courageous commitment to local community health. Identifying original ways to examine questions, and seeking out appropriate scientific methods to study those questions, allow her to translate research to collaborative community interventions with a direct impact on the health of communities.”
• , the Shauna C. Larson endowed chair in learning sciences, for “his work in the cultural basis of scientific research and learning, bringing rigor and light to multiculturalism in science and STEM education through STEM Teaching Tools and other programs.”
• , professor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences, “for her sustained commitment to community-engaged, science-driven practice and policy change related to the prevention of suicide and the promotion of mental health, with a focus on providing effective, sustainable and culturally appropriate care to people with serious mental illness.”
• , the David and Nancy Auth endowed professor in bioengineering, who has “charted new paths for 30-plus years. Her quest to deeply understand protein folding/unfolding and the link to amyloid diseases has propelled her to pioneer unique computational and experimental methods leading to the discovery and characterization of a new protein structure linked to toxicity early in amyloidogenesis.”
• , professor of environmental and occupational health sciences, of global health, and of emergency medicine, who is “a global and national leader at the intersection of climate change and health whose work has advanced our understanding of climate change health effects and has informed the design of preparedness and disaster response planning in Washington state, nationally and globally.”
• , professor of bioengineering and of radiology, who is “recognized for his contributions to the science and engineering of medical imaging systems and for leadership in national programs and professional and scientific societies advancing the capabilities of medical imaging.”
• , the Donald W. and Ruth Mary Close professor of electrical and computer engineering and faculty member in the UW Clean Energy Institute, who is “recognized for his distinguished research contributions to the design and operation of economical, reliable and environmentally sustainable power systems, and the development of influential educational materials used to train the next generation of power engineers.”
• , senior vice president and director of the Vaccine and Infectious Disease Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, the Joel D. Meyers endowed chair of clinical research and of vaccine and infectious disease at Fred Hutch, and UW professor of medicine, who is “is recognized for her seminal contributions to developing validated laboratory methods for interrogating cellular and humoral immune responses to HIV, TB and COVID-19 vaccines, which has led to the analysis of more than 100 vaccine and monoclonal antibody trials for nearly three decades, including evidence of T-cell immune responses as a correlate of vaccine protection.”
• , professor of political science and the Walker family professor for the arts and sciences, who is a specialist “in environmental politics, international political economy, and the politics of nonprofit organizations. He is widely recognized as a leader in the field of environmental politics, best known for his path-breaking research on the role firms and nongovernmental organizations can play in promoting more stringent regulatory standards.”
• , the Ballmer endowed dean of social work, for investigations of “how inequality, in its many forms, affects health, illness and quality of life. He has developed unique conceptual frameworks to investigate how race, ethnicity and immigration are associated with health and social outcomes.”
• , professor of chemistry, who is elected “for distinguished scientific and community contributions to advancing the field of electron paramagnetic resonance spectroscopy, which have transformed how researchers worldwide analyze data.”
• , professor of bioengineering and of ophthalmology, whose “pioneering work in biomedical optics, including the invention of optical microangiography and development of novel imaging technologies, has transformed clinical practice, significantly improving patient outcomes. Through his numerous publications, patents and clinical translations, his research has helped shape the field of biomedical optics.”

Three new UW members of the academy were selected by virtue of their previous election to one of the National Academies. They are:

• , professor of atmospheric and climate science, who had been elected to the National Academy of Sciences “for contributions to research and expertise in atmospheric radiation and cloud processes, remote sensing, cloud/aerosol/radiation/climate interactions, stratospheric circulation and stratosphere-troposphere exchanges and coupling, and climate change.”
• , the Bartley Dobb professor for the study and prevention of violence in the Department of Epidemiology and a UW professor of pediatrics, who had been elected to the National Academy of Medicine “for being a national public health leader whose innovative and multidisciplinary research to integrate data across the health care system and criminal legal system has deepened our understanding of the risk and consequences of firearm-related harm and informed policies and programs to reduce its burden, especially among underserved communities and populations.”
• , division chief of general pediatrics at Seattle Children’s Hospital and a UW professor of pediatrics, who had been elected to the National Academy of Medicine “for her leadership in advancing child health equity through scholarship in community-partnered design of innovative care models in pediatric primary care. Her work has transformed our understanding of how to deliver child preventive health care during the critical early childhood period to achieve equitable health outcomes and reduce disparities.”

In addition, Dr. , president and director of the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center and of the Cancer Consortium — a partnership between the UW, Seattle Children’s Hospital and Fred Hutch — was elected to the academy for being “part of a research effort that found mutations in the cell-surface protein epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), which plays an important role in helping lung cancer cells survive. Today, drugs that target EGFR can dramatically change outcomes for lung cancer patients by slowing the progression of the cancer.”

the Boeing-Egtvedt endowed professor and chair in aeronautics and astronautics, will join the board effective Sept. 30. Morgansen was elected to WSAS in 2021 “for significant advances in nonlinear methods for integrated sensing and control in engineered, bioinspired and biological flight systems,” and “for leadership in cross-disciplinary aerospace workforce development.” She is currently director of the Washington NASA Space Grant Consortium, co-director of the UW Space Policy and Research Center and chair of the AIAA Aerospace Department Chairs Association. She is also a member of the WSAS education committee.

“I am excited to serve on the WSAS board and work with WSAS members to leverage and grow WSAS’s impact by identifying new opportunities for WSAS to collaborate and partner with the state in addressing the state’s needs,” said Morgansen.

The new members to the Washington State Academy of Sciences will be formally inducted in September.

“Our digital technology operates through a series of electronic on-off switches that control the flow of current and voltage,” said , a research scientist at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý. “But our bodies operate on chemistry. In our brains, neurons propagate signals electrochemically, by moving ions — charged atoms or molecules — not electrons.”

Implantable devices from pacemakers to glucose monitors rely on components that can speak both languages and bridge that gap. Among those components are OECTs — or organic electrochemical transistors — which allow current to flow in devices like implantable biosensors. But scientists long knew about a quirk of OECTs that no one could explain: When an OECT is switched on, there is a lag before current reaches the desired operational level. When switched off, there is no lag. Current drops almost immediately.

A UW-led study has solved this lagging mystery, and in the process paved the way to custom-tailored OECTs for a growing list of applications in biosensing, brain-inspired computation and beyond.

“How fast you can switch a transistor is important for almost any application,” said project leader , a UW professor of chemistry, chief scientist at the UW Clean Energy Institute and faculty member in the UW Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute. “Scientists have recognized the unusual switching behavior of OECTs, but we never knew its cause – until now.”

In a published April 17 in Nature Materials, Ginger’s team at the UW — along with Professor at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology in Japan and Professor at Zhejiang University in China — report that OECTs turn on via a two-step process, which causes the lag. But they appear to turn off through a simpler one-step process.

In principle, OECTs operate like transistors in electronics: When switched on, they allow the flow of electrical current. When switched off, they block it. But OECTs operate by coupling the flow of ions with the flow of electrons, which makes them interesting routes for interfacing with chemistry and biology.

The new study illuminates the two steps OECTs go through when switched on. First, a wavefront of ions races across the transistor. Then, more charge-bearing particles invade the transistor’s flexible structure, causing it to swell slightly and bringing current up to operational levels. In contrast, the team discovered that deactivation is a one-step process: Levels of charged chemicals simply drop uniformly across the transistor, quickly interrupting the flow of current.

Knowing the lag’s cause should help scientists design new generations of OECTs for a wider set of applications.

“There’s always been this drive in technology development to make components faster, more reliable and more efficient,” Ginger said. “Yet, the ‘rules’ for how OECTs behave haven’t been well understood. A driving force in this work is to learn them and apply them to future research and development efforts.”

Whether they reside within devices to measure blood glucose or brain activity, OECTs are largely made up of flexible, organic semiconducting polymers — repeating units of complex, carbon-rich compounds — and operate immersed in liquids containing salts and other chemicals. For this project, the team studied OECTs that change color in response to electrical charge. The polymer materials were synthesized by Luscombe’s team at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology and Li’s at Zhejiang University, and then fabricated into transistors by UW doctoral students Jiajie Guo and Shinya “Emerson” Chen, who are co-lead authors on the paper.

“A challenge in the materials design for OECTs lies in creating a substance that facilitates effective ion transport and retains electronic conductivity,” said Luscombe, who is also a UW affiliate professor of chemistry and of materials science and engineering. “The ion transport requires a flexible material, whereas ensuring high electronic conductivity typically necessitates a more rigid structure, posing a dilemma in the development of such materials.”

Guo and Chen observed under a microscope — and recorded with a smartphone camera — precisely what happens when the custom-built OECTs are switched on and off. It showed clearly that a two-step chemical process lies at the heart of the OECT activation lag.

Past research, including by Ginger’s group at the UW, demonstrated that polymer structure, especially its flexibility, is important to how OECTs function. These devices operate in fluid-filled environments containing chemical salts and other biological compounds, which are more bulky compared to the electronic underpinnings of our digital devices.

The new study goes further by more directly linking OECT structure and performance. The team found that the degree of activation lag should vary based on what material the OECT is made of, such as whether its polymers are more ordered or more randomly arranged, according to Giridharagopal. Future research could explore how to reduce or lengthen the lag times, which for OECTs in the current study were fractions of a second.

“Depending on the type of device you’re trying to build, you could tailor composition, fluid, salts, charge carriers and other parameters to suit your needs,” said Giridharagopal.

OECTs aren’t just used in biosensing. They are also used to study nerve impulses in muscles, as well as forms of computing to create artificial neural networks and understand how our brains store and retrieve information. These widely divergent applications necessitate building new generations of OECTs with specialized features, including ramp-up and ramp-down times, according to Ginger.

“Now that we’re learning the steps needed to realize those applications, development can really accelerate,” said Ginger.

Guo is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory and Chen is now a scientist at Analog Devices. Other co-authors on the paper are , a former UW postdoctoral researcher in chemistry who is now an assistant professor at the University of Utah; Jonathan Onorato, a UW doctoral alum and scientist at Exponent; and Kangrong Yan and Ziqui Shen of Zhejiang University. The research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, and polymers developed at Zhejiang University were funded by the National Science Foundation of China.

For more information contact Ginger at dginger@uw.edu, Luscombe at christine.luscombe@oist.jp and Giridharagopal at rgiri@uw.edu.

Two ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý researchers have been named AAAS Fellows, according to an by the American Association for the Advancement of Science. They are among 502 newly elected fellows from around the world, who are recognized for their “scientifically and socially distinguished achievements” in science and engineering.

A tradition dating back to 1874, election as an AAAS Fellow is a lifetime honor, and all fellows are expected to meet the commonly held standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

This year’s UW AAAS fellows are:

, the Lloyd E. and Florence M. West Endowed Professor of Chemistry and a researcher with the UW Clean Energy Institute, is honored for her contributions to the development of nanoscale materials, which are in the size range of approximately 1 to 100 nanometers, for applications in energy and advanced electronics. For reference, 1 nanometer is about 100,000 times smaller than the width of a human hair. Cossairt investigates how crystalline nanoscale materials come together, grow and shrink and react with other compounds and photons. Her research includes synthesizing materials with novel physical and surface chemistry properties, such as inorganic quantum dots with use in lighting, displays, catalysis and quantum information technology. A UW faculty member since 2012, Cossairt has earned numerous honors, including a Sloan Research Fellowship, a Packard Fellowship, an NSF CAREER Award and a teacher scholar award from the Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation. She also co-founded the Chemistry Women Mentorship Network to provide support, encouragement and career-development opportunities for women in the chemistry field.

, professor of pharmacy and of global health, was recognized for his work to better monitor the safety of essential medicines and vaccines, especially in low- and middle-income countries. He directed a study assessing the safety of antimalarial drugs among pregnant people in sub-Saharan African nations and has been involved in several other initiatives to assess the safety of vaccines used during pregnancy. He researches the global burden of antimicrobial resistance and has strengthened pharmacy services in numerous countries. Dr. Stergachis is an elected member of the National Academies of Medicine, fellow of the American Pharmacists Association and fellow of the International Society for Pharmacoepidemiology. He holds adjunct faculty appointments in the Departments of Health Metrics & Evaluation and in Epidemiology.

In an experiment akin to stop-motion photography, an international team of scientists has isolated the energetic movement of an electron in a sample of liquid water — while “freezing” the motion of the much larger atom it orbits.

The finding reveals the immediate response of an electron when hit with an X-ray, an essential step in understanding the effects of radiation exposure on objects and people. The results, Feb. 15 in the journal Science, provide a new window into the electronic structure of molecules in the liquid phase on a timescale previously unattainable with X-rays.

“What happens to an atom when it is struck by ionizing radiation, like an X-ray? Seeing the earliest stages of this process has long been a missing piece in understanding how radiation affects matter,” said co-senior author , the Larry R. Dalton Endowed Chair in Chemistry at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý and a laboratory fellow at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “This new technique for the first time shows us that missing piece and opens the door to seeing the steps where so much complex — and interesting — chemistry occurs!”

Li co-led the team behind this breakthrough with co-senior authors , a distinguished fellow at Argonne National Laboratory and professor at the University of Chicago, and , professor at the German Electron Synchrotron and the University of Hamburg. The team received critical funding and support from the , a Department of Energy center headquartered at PNNL.

The collaboration used a combination of experiments and theoretical insights to see in real time what happens when ionizing radiation from an X-ray source hits matter. Revealing these moments is not as simple as snapping a photo. Subatomic particles move so fast that capturing their actions requires using a probe that can measure time in attoseconds. There are more attoseconds in a second than there have been seconds in the history of the universe.

“Until now radiation chemists could only resolve events at the picosecond timescale, a million times slower than an attosecond,” said Young. “It’s kind of like saying ‘I was born and then I died.’ You’d like to know what happens in between. That’s what we are now able to do.”

The team — under the guidance of Young and co-lead author , a postdoctoral researcher at Argonne — set out to develop a whole new experimental approach to achieve attosecond resolution using X-rays. Attosecond X-ray pulses are only available in a handful of specialized facilities worldwide, so the team partnered with scientists at the in California to use the facility’s Linac Coherent Light Source for developing attosecond X-ray free-electron lasers, with key input from scientists at PNNL.

The resulting technique, AX-ATAS — or all X-ray attosecond transient absorption spectroscopy — employed two delicate X-ray pulses: One to “excite” its target matter and one to probe how the excited matter responded. This approach would theoretically allow the scientists to “watch” electrons energized by X-rays as they move into an excited state, all before the bulkier atomic nucleus has time to move. They chose the liquid water as their test case for an experiment.

“And on our first experiment, it worked!” said Li. “But the signal we picked up in the data was ‘convoluted.’ It turns out that, in this transient snapshot, we were probing so many quantum states that we had to develop a completely new computational analysis method to understand the data.”

Quantum mechanical principles underlie the behavior of all matter, but its signatures are often hidden in experiments like these. But, using AX-ATAS at the attosecond timescale, the scientists were picking up quantum-level details — and needed new methods to make sense of the data.

To that end, Li, a theoretical chemist, worked with co-lead author Lixin Lu — who conducted this research as a UW doctoral student in chemistry and is now a postdoctoral researcher at Stanford University — to reproduce the signals observed at SLAC. The German Electron Synchrotron-based team under Santra and co-lead author Swarnendu Bhattacharyya, a postdoctoral researcher, modelled the liquid water response to attosecond X-rays to verify that the observed signal was indeed confined to the attosecond timescale.

“Using the Hyak supercomputer at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý, we developed a cutting-edge computational chemistry technique that enabled detailed characterization of the transient high-energy quantum states in water,” said Li, who is also UW Associate Vice Provost for research cyberinfrastructure and member faculty at the UW Clean Energy Institute. “This methodological breakthrough yielded a pivotal advancement in the quantum-level understanding of ultrafast chemical transformation, with exceptional accuracy and atomic-level detail.”

The team’s analysis resolved a long-standing scientific debate about whether X-ray signals seen in previous experiments are the result of hydrogen atom dynamics or different structural “motifs” of water. The experiments showed no evidence for two structural motifs in ambient liquid water.

“Basically, what people were seeing in previous experiments was the blur caused by moving hydrogen atoms,” said Young. “We were able to eliminate that movement by doing all of our recording before the atoms had time to move.”

The current investigation builds upon the new science of attosecond physics, . Working at the attosecond timescale will allow the researchers to understand complex radiation-induced chemistry at a fundamental level. This team initially came together to develop tools to understand the effect of prolonged exposure to ionizing radiation on the chemicals found in nuclear waste.

The researchers envision the current study as the beginning of a whole new direction for attosecond science.

“The methodology we developed permits the study of the origin and evolution of reactive species produced by radiation-induced processes, such as encountered in space travel, cancer treatments, nuclear reactors and legacy waste,” said Young.

Co-authors on the paper are Carolyn Pearce of PNNL and Washington State University; Kai Li of the University of Chicago and Argonne; Emily Nienhuis of PNNL; Giles Doumy and R.D. Schaller at Argonne; Ludger Inhester of the German Electron Synchrotron and the Hamburg Centre for Ultrafast Imaging; and S. Moeller, M.F. Lin, G. Dakovski, D.J. Hoffman, D. Garratt, Kirk Larsen, J.D. Koralek, C.Y. Hampton, D. Cesar, Joseph Duris, Z. Zhang, Nicholas Sudar, James Cryan and A. Marinelli at SLAC. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the German Research Foundation and the German Electron Synchrotron.

For more information, contact Li at xsli@uw.edu.

Adapted from a by PNNL.

Researchers led by , a ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý associate professor of physics and Clean Energy Institute researcher, and Philip Ryan, a physicist at the U.S. Department of Energy’s Argonne National Laboratory, have made a discovery that could enable this more efficient future. In a published Nov. 24 in Science Advances, the team reports finding a superconducting material that is uniquely sensitive to outside stimuli, enabling the superconducting properties to be enhanced or suppressed at will. This discovery could enable new opportunities for switchable, energy-efficient superconducting circuits.

Superconductivity is a mechanical phase of matter in which an electrical current can flow through a material with zero resistance. This leads to perfect electronic transport efficiency. Superconductors are used in the most powerful electromagnets for advanced technologies such as magnetic resonance imaging, particle accelerators, fusion reactors and even . Superconductors are also used in quantum computing.

Today’s electronics use semiconducting transistors to switch electric currents on and off quickly, creating the binary ones and zeroes used in information processing. Since these currents must flow through materials with finite electrical resistance, some of the energy is wasted as heat. This is why your computer heats up over time. The low temperatures needed for superconductivity — usually more than 200 degrees Fahrenheit below freezing — makes those materials impractical for hand-held devices. However, they could conceivably be useful on an industrial scale.

The research team, under the direction of — then a UW doctoral student in physics and a fellow at the UW Clean Energy Institute — examined an unusual superconducting material with exceptional tunability. This crystal is made of flat sheets of ferromagnetic europium atoms sandwiched between superconducting layers of iron, cobalt and arsenic atoms. Finding ferromagnetism and superconductivity together in nature is extremely rare, according to Sanchez, as one phase usually overpowers the other.

“It is actually a very uncomfortable situation for the superconducting layers, as they are pierced by the magnetic fields from the surrounding europium atoms,” said Sanchez, who is now a postdoctoral researcher at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. “This weakens the superconductivity and results in a finite electrical resistance.”

To understand the interaction of these phases, Sanchez spent a year as a resident at one of the nation’s leading , the Advanced Photon Source, a DOE Office of Science user facility at Argonne. Working with physicists at the APS, Sanchez developed a comprehensive characterization platform capable of probing microscopic details of complex materials.

Using a combination of X-ray techniques, Sanchez and his collaborators showed that applying a magnetic field to the crystal can reorient the europium magnetic field lines to run parallel to the superconducting layers. This removes their antagonistic effects and allows a zero-resistance state to emerge. Using electrical measurements and X-ray scattering techniques, the researchers confirmed that they could control the behavior of the material.

“The nature of independent parameters controlling superconductivity is quite fascinating, as one could map out a complete method of controlling this effect,” said Ryan. “This potential posits several fascinating ideas including the ability to regulate field sensitivity for quantum devices.”

The team then applied stresses to the crystal with interesting results. They found the superconductivity could be either boosted enough to overcome the magnetism — even without re-orienting the field — or weakened enough that the magnetic reorientation could no longer produce the zero-resistance state. This additional parameter allows for the material’s sensitivity to magnetism to be controlled and customized.

“This material is exciting because you have a close competition between multiple phases, and by applying a small stress or magnetic field, you can boost one phase over the other to turn the superconductivity on and off,” said Sanchez. “The vast majority of superconductors aren’t nearly as easily switchable.”

Additional co-authors are Gilberto Fabbris, Yongseong Choi and Jong-Woo Kim with Argonne’s APS; Jonathan DeStefano, Elliott Rosenberg and Yue Shi of the UW Department of Physics; Paul Malinowski, a postdoctoral researcher at Cornell University; Yina Huang of the Zhejiang University of Science and Technology in China; and Igor Mazin of George Mason University. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, the U.S. Department of Energy, the National Science Foundation of China, the Chinese Ministry of Public Security and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Adapted from by Argonne National Laboratory.

For decades, scientists have been probing the potential of two-dimensional materials to transform our world. 2D materials are only a single layer of atoms thick. Within them, subatomic particles like electrons can only move in two dimensions. This simple restriction can trigger unusual electron behavior, imbuing the materials with “exotic” properties like bizarre forms of magnetism, superconductivity and other collective behaviors among electrons — all of which could be useful in computing, communication, energy and other fields.

But researchers have generally assumed that these exotic 2D properties exist only in single-layer sheets, or short stacks. The so-called “bulk” versions of these materials — with their more complex 3D atomic structures — should behave differently.

Or so they thought.

In a published July 19 in Nature, a team led by researchers at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý reports that it is possible to imbue graphite — the bulk, 3D material found in No. 2 pencils — with physical properties similar to graphite’s 2D counterpart, graphene. Not only was this breakthrough unexpected, the team also believes its approach could be used to test whether similar types of bulk materials can also take on 2D-like properties. If so, 2D sheets won’t be the only source for scientists to fuel technological revolutions. Bulk, 3D materials could be just as useful.

“Stacking single layer on single layer — or two layers on two layers — has been the focus for unlocking new physics in 2D materials for several years now. In these experimental approaches, that’s where many interesting properties emerge,” said senior author , a UW assistant professor of physics and of materials science and engineering. “But what happens if you keep adding layers? Eventually it has to stop, right? That’s what intuition suggests. But in this case, intuition is wrong. It’s possible to mix 2D properties into 3D materials.”

The team, which also includes researchers at Osaka University and the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan, adapted an approach commonly used to probe and manipulate the properties of 2D materials: stacking 2D sheets together at a small twist angle. Yankowitz and his colleagues placed a single layer of graphene on top of a thin, bulk graphite crystal, and then introduced a twist angle of around 1 degree between graphite and graphene. They detected novel and unexpected electrical properties not just at the twisted interface, but deep in the bulk graphite as well.

The twist angle is critical to generating these properties, said Yankowitz, who is also a faculty member in the UW Clean Energy Institute and the UW Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems. A twist angle between 2D sheets, like two sheets of graphene, creates what’s called a moiré pattern, which alters the flow of charged particles like electrons and induces exotic properties in the material.

In the UW-led experiments with graphite and graphene, the twist angle also induced a moiré pattern, with surprising results. Even though only a single sheet of graphene atop the bulk crystal was twisted, researchers found that the electrical properties of the whole material differed markedly from typical graphite. And when they turned on a magnetic field, electrons deep in the graphite crystal adopted unusual properties similar to those of electrons at the twisted interface. Essentially, the single twisted graphene-graphite interface became inextricably mixed with the rest of the bulk graphite.

“Though we were generating the moiré pattern only at the surface of the graphite, the resulting properties were bleeding across the whole crystal,” said co-lead author , a UW postdoctoral researcher in physics.

For 2D sheets, moiré patterns generate properties that could be useful for quantum computing and other applications. Inducing similar phenomena in 3D materials unlocks new approaches for studying unusual and exotic states of matter and how to bring them out of the laboratory and into our everyday lives.

“The entire crystal takes on this 2D state,” said co-lead author Ellis Thompson, a UW doctoral student in physics. “This is a fundamentally new way to affect electron behavior in a bulk material.”

Yankowitz and his team believe their approach of generating a twist angle between graphene and a bulk graphite crystal could be used to create 2D-3D hybrids of its sister materials, including tungsten ditelluride and zirconium pentatelluride. This could unlock a new approach to re-engineering the properties of conventional bulk materials using a single 2D interface.

“This method could become a really rich playground for studying exciting new physical phenomena in materials with mixed 2D and 3D properties,” said Yankowitz.

Co-authors on paper are UW graduate student Esmeralda Arreguin-Martinez and UW postdoctoral researcher Yafei Ren, both in the Department of Materials Science and Engineering; , a UW assistant professor of materials science and engineering; , a UW professor of physics and chair of materials science and engineering; Manato Fujimoto of Osaka University; and Kenji Watanabe and Takashi Taniguchi of the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation; the U.S. Department of Energy; the UW Clean Energy Institute; the Office of the Director of National Intelligence; the Japan Science and Technology Agency; the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science; the Japanese Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology; and the M.J. Murdock Charitable Trust.

For more information, contact Yankowitz at myank@uw.edu.

Quantum computing could revolutionize our world. For specific and crucial tasks, it promises to be exponentially faster than the zero-or-one binary technology that underlies today’s machines, from supercomputers in laboratories to smartphones in our pockets. But developing quantum computers hinges on building a stable network of qubits — or quantum bits — to store information, access it and perform computations.

Yet the qubit platforms unveiled to date have a common problem: They tend to be delicate and vulnerable to outside disturbances. Even a stray photon can cause trouble. Developing fault-tolerant qubits — which would be immune to external perturbations — could be the ultimate solution to this challenge.

A team led by scientists and engineers at the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý has announced a significant advancement in this quest. In a pair of papers published and , they report that, in experiments with flakes of semiconductor materials — each only a single layer of atoms thick — they detected signatures of “fractional quantum anomalous Hall” (FQAH) states. The team’s discoveries mark a first and promising step in constructing a type of fault-tolerant qubit because FQAH states can host anyons — strange “quasiparticles” that have only a fraction of an electron’s charge. Some types of anyons can be used to make what are called “topologically protected” qubits, which are stable against any small, local disturbances.

“This really establishes a new paradigm for studying quantum physics with fractional excitations in the future,” said , the lead researcher behind these discoveries, who is also the Boeing Distinguished Professor of Physics and a professor of materials science and engineering at the UW.

FQAH states are related to the , an exotic phase of matter that exists in two-dimensional systems. In these states, electrical conductivity is constrained to precise fractions of a constant known as the conductance quantum. But fractional quantum Hall systems typically require massive magnetic fields to keep them stable, making them impractical for applications in quantum computing. The FQAH state has no such requirement — it is stable even “at zero magnetic field,” according to the team.

Hosting such an exotic phase of matter required the researchers to build an artificial lattice with exotic properties. They stacked two atomically thin flakes of the semiconductor material molybdenum ditelluride (MoTe₂) at small, mutual “twist” angles relative to one another. This configuration formed a synthetic “honeycomb lattice” for electrons. When researchers cooled the stacked slices to a few degrees above absolute zero, an intrinsic magnetism arose in the system. The intrinsic magnetism takes the place of the strong magnetic field typically required for the fractional quantum Hall state. Using lasers as probes, the researchers detected signatures of the FQAH effect, a major step forward in unlocking the power of anyons for quantum computing.

The team — which also includes scientists at the University of Hong Kong, the National Institute for Materials Science in Japan, Boston College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — envisions their system as a powerful platform to develop a deeper understanding of anyons, which have very different properties from everyday particles like electrons. Anyons are quasiparticles — or particle-like “excitations” — that can act as fractions of an electron. In future work with their experimental system, the researchers hope to discover an even more exotic version of this type of quasiparticle: “non-Abelian” anyons, which could be used as topological qubits. Wrapping — or “braiding” — the non-Abelian anyons around each other In this quantum state, information is essentially “spread out” over the entire system and resistant to local disturbances — forming the basis of topological qubits and a major advancement over the capabilities of current quantum computers.

“This type of topological qubit would be fundamentally different from those that can be created now,” said UW physics doctoral student Eric Anderson, who is lead author of the Science paper and co-lead author of the Nature paper. “The strange behavior of non-Abelian anyons would make them much more robust as a quantum computing platform.”

Three key properties, all of which existed simultaneously in the researchers’ experimental setup, allowed FQAH states to emerge:

• Magnetism: Though MoTe₂ is not a magnetic material, when they loaded the system with positive charges, a “spontaneous spin order” — a form of magnetism called ferromagnetism — emerged.
• Topology: Electrical charges within their system have “twisted bands,” similar to a Möbius strip, which helps make the system topological.
• Interactions: The charges within their experimental system interact strongly enough to stabilize the FQAH state.

The team hopes that, using their approach, non-Abelian anyons await for discovery.

“The observed signatures of the fractional quantum anomalous Hall effect are inspiring,” said UW physics doctoral student , co-lead author on the Nature paper and co-author of the Science paper. “The fruitful quantum states in the system can be a laboratory-on-a-chip for discovering new physics in two dimensions, and also new devices for quantum applications.”

“Our work provides clear evidence of the long-sought FQAH states,” said Xu, who is also a member of the Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute, the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems and the Clean Energy Institute, all at UW. “We are currently working on electrical transport measurements, which could provide direct and unambiguous evidence of fractional excitations at zero magnetic field.”

The team believes that, with their approach, investigating and manipulating these unusual FQAH states can become commonplace — accelerating the quantum computing journey.

Additional co-authors on the papers are William Holtzmann and Yinong Zhang in the UW Department of Physics; Di Xiao, Chong Wang, Xiaowei Zhang, Xiaoyu Liu and Ting Cao in the UW Department of Materials Science & Engineering; Feng-Ren Fan and Wang Yao at the University of Hong Kong and the Joint Institute of Theoretical and Computational Physics at Hong Kong; Takashi Taniguchi and Kenji Watanabe from the National Institute of Materials Science in Japan; Ying Ran of Boston College; and Liang Fu at MIT. The research was funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the National Science Foundation, the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong, the Croucher Foundation, the Tencent Foundation, the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science and the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý.

For more information, contact Xu at xuxd@uw.edu, Anderson at eca55@uw.edu and Cai at caidish@uw.edu.

A clean energy revolution is under way in Washington state, and the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý is well positioned to be its epicenter.

Fueled by increasing demand for new generations of solar cells and batteries — buoyed by investments from the Biden and Inslee administrations as part of efforts to reduce carbon emissions — the marketplace for these industries is being measured in the billions and trillions of dollars, experts say.

With abundant hydroelectricity, manufacturing capacity and a supportive state government, Washington’s economic future is staked, in part, to clean energy.

“The drivers of a modern economy are clean technologies,” said Brian Young, Gov. Jay Inslee’s evangelist for clean energy technologies.

Young, who works for the state Department of Commerce, travels the world encouraging businesses large and small��to learn what Washington has to offer: manufacturing capacity, advanced technology solutions, a skilled workforce and a history of leading-edge research and development anchored by the UW, Washington State University and the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory.

“We are on the radar, both nationally and internationally,” Young said.

This fertile ground for economic development and growth has been nurtured for more than two decades. Gov. Inslee has advocated for moving away from fossil fuels since he served in Congress, and pushed for investments in clean energy throughout his tenure as governor.

In 2013, as a complement to Inslee’s Clean Energy Fund, the UW established the Clean Energy Institute, a collaborative, interdisciplinary academic hub aimed at discovering new ways to harness clean, scalable and equitable energy solutions and to help industry partners bring these solutions to the marketplace.

And, with direct Clean Energy Fund investment in 2017, the UW opened the CEI’s Washington Clean Energy Testbeds, a high-tech lab that has become a portal for researchers and industry partners to collaborate on clean energy solutions through cutting-edge technology, state-of-the-art materials development and scalable production techniques.

“The Testbeds provide the bridge for those technologies to get over that first chasm from lab experiments to pilot demonstration,” said Rick Luebbe, CEO of Group14 Technologies, a battery materials company that continues to use the facility’s equipment to expand its technology platform.

Housed inside a plain, former manufacturing plant next to University Village, the Clean Energy Testbeds give clients laboratory, computing and manufacturing capabilities, supported by UW experts.

“They can come through and can scale more quickly, and reach the marketplace and partners more quickly,” said Daniel Schwartz, the CEI director.

Inside the Clean Energy Testbeds there are devices that replicate the power of the sun. A supercomputer can simulate a power grid. And a printing press can produce battery parts and solar panel arrays, thousands in a minute. It’s a kind of open-access Willy Wonka factory that transforms ideas and innovations into next generation, clean-energy commodities.

Research at the Testbeds will revolutionize e-transportation as we know it, said Jerry Schwartz (no relation to the CEI director), CEO of battery materials startup Ecellix. His company is working on technology to increase battery storage and life while decreasing cost and weight.

“You know, it’s been 100 years since cars really were transformed … since Henry Ford,” Jerry Schwartz said. “Now, this battery is going to change our world, change it dramatically, change everything.”

Ecellix’s technology and others like it will democratize the electric vehicle space, he added. Instead of $100,000, the price today for a Tesla X with a 300-mile range, Schwartz predicts consumer options for about $25,000, roughly in line with a Honda Civic.

The company’s origins stem from research at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory and WSU. But instead of building facilities in Pullman, Schwartz looked across the Cascades to the UW’s Testbeds.

“It would have cost us several millions of dollars of direct investment to have the same capabilities we had at the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds on day one,” Schwartz said.

About half of the Testbeds’ users are from companies like Ecellix and Group14, which pay hourly rates that give their engineers access to the facilities and equipment. Other clients include giant corporations like Microsoft, county utility operations and small startups. Academic researchers, supported by state and federal money, round out the teams working side by side inside the Clean Energy Testbeds.

Even though some of the companies using the Clean Energy Testbeds are competitors — both Group14 and Ecellix are pursuing silicon battery solutions — the fertile Washington state climate for clean energy technologies fosters collaboration.

“The market is so huge that we’re not competing with other silicon battery companies,” Luebbe, of Group14, said. “We’re competing with conventional graphite-based lithium-ion batteries.”

Most negative electrodes in electric vehicle batteries today are manufactured with graphite. Silicon, the transformational technology in Group14 and Ecellix’s batteries, can store more juice, cost and weigh less, and recharge in about the time it would take to fill a tank with gasoline.

Group14 materials are slated to be in 2024 electric Porsche batteries. In the future, the company plans to commercialize batteries for all kinds of mobility, including freight and flight. They are selling silicon battery materials as fast as they can make them at plants in South Korea, Woodinville and, coming in 2024, Moses Lake.

Existing infrastructure in Washington state can help expand these endeavors. REC Silicon, for example, operates one of the largest silicon solar cell plants in the world in Moses Lake. A byproduct of its operation is a key ingredient in silicon batteries, making central Washington an attractive hub for this growing field.

The Washington state constellation of clean energy expertise — from its research institutions to manufacturing sites — builds off the principle that the work is imperative to environmental stewardship.

Daniel Schwartz, the CEI director, said that, because of the institute’s work, the UW and its partners are having outsized influence on the national conversation for how to align private, state and federal funding toward the clean energy innovation imperative.

At a recent roundtable convened by the Energy Futures Initiative, Breakthrough Energy and the Department of Energy, Daniel Schwartz said he was surprised to learn that the UW was the only university represented.

“The UW is charting a unique path to clean energy innovation, and it is getting noticed nationally,” said Schwartz, who also is the Boeing-Sutter Professor of Chemical Engineering and an adjunct professor of materials science and engineering at the UW.

The successful relationship of academia working alongside enterprise also means opportunities for UW students, from undergraduate internships to placements for postdoctoral researchers at companies hungry for expertise, Schwartz said.

“We have a huge opportunity to meet our climate goals, but also implement new technologies, develop new technologies. And we need a partner who can bridge that research and commercialization gap,” said Young, the state’s clean energy economic development lead. “That’s the Clean Energy Testbeds. That’s the ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý.”

For more information, contact Schwartz at dts@uw.edu.

New York City Mayor Eric Adams and the Trust for Governors Island on April 24 that a consortium led by Stony Brook University will found and develop a world-leading climate solutions center on Governors Island in the city’s harbor. The will be a first-of-its kind international center for developing and deploying dynamic solutions to our global climate crisis.��

The ����Ӱ�Ӵ�ý is among the core partners of the consortium, along with Georgia Institute of Technology, Pace University, the Pratt Institute, the Good Old Lower East Side community group, Boston Consulting Group and IBM. Other academic partners include Duke University, Rochester Institute of Technology and the University of Oxford.��

“We are very proud to bring our University’s deep and diverse strengths in climate and clean energy research and innovation to the New York Climate Exchange,” said UW President Ana Mari Cauce. “As the only core partner on the West Coast, we are excited to leverage our regional and global relationships to accelerate efforts to address and adapt to the impacts of climate change. This work is vital and urgent for the health and survival of our people and our world.”��

In addition to convening the world’s leaders and climate experts, the exchange will host green job training and skills-building programs and partner with local institutions on addressing the social and practical challenges created by climate change.��

“The UW serves as a global hub for innovative research into climate change action and adaptation, and the resources and relationships provided by the Climate Exchange will help us grow our impact even further,” said Maya Tolstoy, Maggie Walker Dean of the UW College of the Environment. “This is a truly exciting partnership, and it presents a fantastic opportunity for us to collaborate with a diverse group of peers across academia, business and community organizations.”��

Tolstoy will serve as the UW’s representative on the New York Climate Exchange board. The initiative will bring together universities, governments and businesses to address climate change action and adaptation.��

The New York Climate Exchange with 400,000 square feet of green-designed building space, including research labs, classroom space, exhibits, greenhouses, mitigation technologies and housing facilities. The facility will feature:��

• An all-electric-powered campus with onsite solar electricity generation and battery storage with capability to serve the local grid��
• All non-potable water demand met with rainwater or treated wastewater collection��
• 95% of its waste diverted from landfills��
• Climate-resilient design of new buildings, all raised to the design flood elevation of 18 feet above sea level��

“We are honored, excited, and proud to partner with the City of New York to build this historic center that will cement New York City as the world leader on climate change, the most pressing issue of our time,” said Stony Brook University President Maurie McInnis.��

The Exchange’s activities will include:��

• A Research and Technology Accelerator that will source and nurture ideas, projects and new ventures dedicated to solving the climate crisis��
• Workforce development opportunities for communities disproportionately affected by climate change����

• Partnerships and collaborative grant opportunities with community-based organizations already working to mitigate the impacts of climate change��
• Academic and community programs that prepare students at every level for careers focused on climate change solutions and environmental justice, encompassing hands-on learning, a semester “abroad” on Governors Island, fellowship and internship programs and continuing education��

“The UW Clean Energy Institute is proud to bring our expertise in advancing clean energy research, training and stakeholder engagement to the New York Climate Exchange,” said Daniel Schwartz, director of the UW Clean Energy Institute and Boeing-Sutter Professor of Chemical Engineering. “Working as part of this global team, we see great opportunities to accelerate the energy transition through equitable deployment strategies.”��

UW faculty members who worked with UW leadership in the initial planning efforts include Shuyi Chen, UW professor of atmospheric sciences; Dargan Frierson, UW associate professor of atmospheric sciences; Jessica Kaminsky, UW associate professor of civil and environmental engineering; Jonathan Bakker, UW professor of environmental and forest sciences; and Himanshu Grover, UW assistant professor of urban design and planning.

“Although built environments are intensely place-based, the systems that they influence are not bound by geography,” said Renée Cheng, dean of the UW College of Built Environments. “Linking our college’s research and teaching on carbon, water and socio-environmental factors with the New York Climate Exchange will facilitate positive impact at a national and global scale.”��