The 天美影视传媒 today announced a multimillion-dollar gift to establish the Winbond Endowed Fund for Excellence in the College of Engineering, supporting research, education and innovation for students, faculty and staff.

The $12 million gift from Winbond Electronics Corporation America, a U.S. subsidiary of Taiwan-based Winbond Electronics Corporation, a global semiconductor company and leading provider of memory and integrated circuit solutions, provides the College with the flexibility to make strategic investments in exceptional people, promising ideas and emerging opportunities.

鈥淲inbond鈥檚 investment in the College of Engineering reflects tremendous confidence in our faculty and students and strengthens our ability to advance discovery in emerging technologies. Deepening the UW’s partnership with Winbond also creates new opportunities to connect with leading companies and scholars across the Pacific Rim,鈥� said UW President Robert J. Jones. 鈥淭he fact that this partnership is championed by UW alumnus Arthur Chiao makes it all the more special to the University.鈥�

Winbond鈥檚 chairman, Arthur Y.C. Chiao, (MS 鈥�80 Electrical Engineering) has spent more than three decades helping shape Taiwan鈥檚 semiconductor industry, advancing innovation in memory and logic integrated circuits, strengthening independent research and development capabilities and fostering collaboration across industry, academia and government. Chiao envisions the new fund as a catalyst for breakthrough discoveries, early-stage research and interdisciplinary collaboration, enabling the College to pursue bold initiatives and respond to evolving opportunities in engineering, technology and fields of future strategic importance. Examples include semiconductors, artificial intelligence, quantum technologies and advanced manufacturing, areas where the UW Engineering already leads, and could expand to include other emerging fields.

鈥淪eattle is a gateway to the Pacific Northwest of North America, and the 天美影视传媒 will play an important role in connecting future technology innovation between North America and East Asia,鈥� Chiao said.

The fund will support research, faculty recruitment and retention, student scholarships and fellowships, research infrastructure, interdisciplinary collaborations and emerging opportunities across the College.

The work will build upon existing Pacific Rim collaborations and further interconnect the UW with industry and research across the globe.

“Arthur Chiao’s vision, leadership and lifelong commitment to the 天美影视传媒 make this gift especially meaningful. This investment strengthens our ability to attract talent, foster innovation and deepen collaborations across the Pacific Rim, creating new opportunities for students and researchers while advancing the technologies that will shape the future,鈥� said Nancy Albritton, the Frank and Julie Jungers Endowed Dean at the College of Engineering.

For more information, contact Jackson Holtz at jjholtz@uw.edu.听

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For the last three years, while studying at the 天美影视传媒, was also teaching in local prisons. She headed to a penitentiary in Monroe weekly, as well as one in Gig Harbor, working with organizations such as the and the .听

Doing this work, Eiger, a doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, noticed a disconnect. The technology incarcerated people had to use to communicate with anyone outside of prison was 鈥渞eally inefficient, unusable, frustrating and expensive,鈥� Eiger said. For instance, each message cost money to send, but it didn鈥檛 necessarily reach the recipient. Why was this technology so much worse than the messages she sent for free? And how did its failings affect the people using it?

In three recent papers, Eiger and her coauthors explore technologies used in policing, in prisons and to monitor people after release, with a focus on their effects on people.

UW News spoke with Eiger and , senior author on the papers and a UW professor in the Allen School, about the three papers and the themes that emerged across them.听

Can you explain the studies?

Yael Eiger: The first paper focuses on technologies like . Securus basically owns the market for technology that incarcerated people use to communicate with their loved ones, lawyers or anyone in the outside world. But reports have shown that just from communicating with them. They鈥檙e charged just to send an email. So we interviewed formerly incarcerated people and loved ones of currently incarcerated people about their experiences with these technologies.听

For the second, we ran workshops with people when they were released from prison. We started realizing how much digital literacy was playing a role in people’s outcomes after release. I would have students who鈥檇 maybe used a pager, then were incarcerated for decades and released into a society where artificial intelligence existed. So navigating things like applying for housing, jobs or food stamps was so difficult without baseline digital literacy. One of the things we also kept hearing about was people falling for scams often 鈥� phishing scams over text, email or phone.听

For the third, I went to a big conference expo where companies try to sell their technology products to prison and police officials. I collected all the advertising literature, and we did a taxonomy of the technology being sold. We came up with a set of case studies of this technology, looking at some of the most pressing and urgent harms or risks of using it 鈥� whether that’s a First Amendment problem or a Fourth Amendment right-to-privacy problem in the legal setting, or bias and fairness risks of using AI.听

Could you give me an example of a product at that expo?

YE: I was spamming Franzi the whole time with pictures I was taking. One that jumps out is an AI chatbot called . It’s basically a booth, maybe six feet tall and two to three feet wide, and you sit on a chair inside it, all encased in bulletproof glass. The premise is that when people are newly incarcerated or transferred to a new prison, they normally have to talk to a caseworker about their educational attainment goals and history. But this takes time, and often incarcerated people are distrustful of this process and don’t share much. So this company, Vantage, created a chatbot to have this conversation with them and elicit information they might not otherwise feel comfortable telling an officer, recording and analyzing it from a bunch of different sources.

That stood out to me because I was physically within this technology booth, and the privacy policies 鈥� how the AI processes, saves and retains the data, who it’s shared with, what AI model is being used 鈥� were not clear at all.

Most prisons are public but they’re filled with private products like those I saw at the expo. There are tons of public-private partnerships and contracts between private companies and public entities, paid for by taxpayers, but we don’t have much transparency into the technologies, the contracts, how data sharing happens, or whose rights are being respected, consumer protections and so on. It’s a very opaque ecosystem.

What are some important takeaways from these three papers?

Franziska Roesner: Often, when we think about consumer security and privacy, we’re thinking about technologies that consumers themselves buy and use. But in the carceral context, it’s very much technology being used by, or on, people who have no control or choice in using it. The people making decisions about buying it, and what features to prioritize and what failure cases matter, are just not aligned with the people it’s used on.

Several of your co-authors were formerly incarcerated. How did that collaboration affect your research?听

YE: It felt quite natural. These co-authors were instrumental to this research 鈥� whether through data analysis or, in the scams paper, organizing workshops and partnerships with community organizations. They contributed more to the paper than a typical co-author would. So it was clear to me that they were going to be authors, if they wanted that.

There鈥檚 a history of researchers going to work among marginalized groups and taking advantage of their expertise and their histories without crediting them, which in my opinion is both unethical and makes for worse research.听

FR: There’s also always a risk when you’re working with marginalized populations that you come in, write the paper, get research credit for it in your academic community. And you get separated from what should be the actual goal, which is improving whatever it is you’re studying.

What do you want the public to know about this research?

YE: It’s always my goal to increase compassion and understanding about people we may not know or normally encounter. Having people speak for themselves, with a researcher able to lend a stamp of legitimacy or just listen to those experiences, is important to me.

Also, there are very tangible ways we can increase incarcerated people’s security and privacy in a compassionate way that doesn’t have to be at odds with the goals of lowering crime, preventing crime and making society safer. We have rights as people 鈥� free speech, a right to privacy. I’d like policymakers and technology providers to see the opportunity to make things better, and the general public to have a more compassionate understanding of these kinds of problems.

That’s not an unrealistic expectation. For instance, policymakers in 2022 released coming in and out of prison. So there’s a lot of legislation in this space that I think could make things a lot better.

FR: The general public’s exposure to these various surveillance technologies also raises concerns. We’ve seen that with Flock cameras and the upset that has been raised, and cities backing away from them. These technologies affect everyone.

A full list of co-authors and funding is included in the papers.听

For more information, contact Eiger at yeiger@cs.washington.edu and Roesner at franzi@cs.washington.edu.

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A 天美影视传媒-led center for optoelectronics 鈥� technologies that combine light and electronics 鈥� brings researchers from 14 universities across the U.S. together with the mission to develop new materials to transform information technology with light. This research has broad ranging applications, from enabling photorealistic virtual reality displays for telehealth calls, to secure, optical quantum communication links to ensure that data remains private on the internet.

Founded in 2021 as a , the , or NSF IMOD, has received a second round of funding from the NSF to continue its work for the next five years.

The research tackled by NSF IMOD is so interdisciplinary that it requires researchers from backgrounds such as chemistry, physics, engineering and materials science to work together.

“There’s still this idea that scientists go in their labs, put on their safety goggles and lab coats, and then work alone for hours at a time. The point of this center is to tackle problems that are too big for one scientist or even two or three to tackle by themselves,” said NSF IMOD director , UW professor of chemistry. “We have all these people from different disciplines working together to advance optoelectronics and semiconductor technology that we couldn’t do just as individual scientists.”

“Until our center came along, quantum dots were thought of as something you made in a beaker in a chemistry lab. And if you could paint them on a TV or phone display, that was great,” said Ginger, who is also the B. Seymour Rabinovitch Endowed Chair in Chemistry and the chief scientist at the UW . “But they weren’t something that you could put as a discrete component in an optoelectronic circuit. That’s something that we’ve proven you can do.”

With chemists, material scientists, mechanical engineers, chemical engineers, physicists and electrical engineers on the team, researchers at NSF IMOD created something unprecedented: a way to print quantum dots, . The team showed that they could strategically place quantum dots into specific cavities, which could one day be the building blocks for quantum communication, and possibly even quantum computing.

The team hopes to continue this research direction over the next five years, further refining quantum dots as well as the cavities the dots get placed into.

NSF IMOD’s interdisciplinary nature gets passed down to its students as well. One of the center鈥檚 main goals is to develop researchers into leaders in the fields of semiconductor and optoelectronic technology. Every summer, NSF IMOD trainees from different disciplines come together at the UW for in multiple disciplines. The students synthesize quantum dots, study single photons of light in UW鈥檚 , make quantum dots, and learn to calculate the electronic structures of advanced materials. The collaborations established during this course and throughout the NSF IMOD training program helps students graduate with the ability to work in complex, interdisciplinary teams.

Trainees also gain real-world experience in the form of internships at a variety of companies, including some of NSF IMOD’s industry and national lab partners. A partial list of NSF IMOD鈥檚 partners includes ; ; ; ; ; and More partner information can be found on .

“We’re already seeing our students get hired at everything from startup companies to large semiconductor firms for the exact skills they’re being trained for in the center,” Ginger said. “We’re really excited to see our students start taking important roles, and then eventually we hope they move into leadership roles in this space of commercializing new semiconductor materials.”

And it’s not just graduate students who benefit from NSF IMOD. The center hosts a program, and has programming for younger students as well. As part of their science communication training, NSF IMOD trainees become who can facilitate outreach events, such as at the Pacific Science Center. The team has also developed a for K-12 teachers to find lesson plans to use in their own classrooms.

“Just as the atomic structure of a quantum dot produces unique and exciting properties, the exceptionally interdisciplinary structure of NSF IMOD is enabling foundational science and technological innovations that would not otherwise be possible,” said , a program director in the NSF Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences, which manages NSF IMOD.

Over the past five years, NSF IMOD has published 140 papers, hosted 36 undergraduate students through its REU program and hosted more than 85 outreach events.

“One day I hope that we’ll have photonic computing where we’re massively reducing the energy cost for computation by using a computing paradigm that’s based on the research we’re doing now,” Ginger said. “That’s the kind of thing that’s probably still a decade or more away. But that’s why the government invests in basic science now, because the basic science research of the materials today leads to technology that exists 15 years from now.”

NSF is expected to provide NSF IMOD $22 million over the five-year term of the award. The 14 academic institutions that make up NSF IMOD are the 天美影视传媒; University of California, Berkeley; Columbia University; University of Chicago; Northwestern University; University of Pennsylvania; University of Maryland; Georgia Institute of Technology; University of Colorado Boulder; Arizona State University; Rice University; Lehigh University; City College of New York; and University of Maryland, Baltimore County.

In addition to Ginger, other UW faculty involved with NSF IMOD include , associate professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering at the UW; , a UW professor of chemistry; , professor of electrical and computer engineering; , associate professor of mechanical engineering and of materials science and engineering, and technical director of the Washington Clean Energy Testbeds; and , professor of physics and of electrical and computer engineering. Fu chairs UW . Fu, Lin and Majumdar are faculty members with the UW . Cossairt, Fu, Lin, Majumdar and MacKenzie are member faculty at the Clean Energy Institute. Ginger, Fu, Lin, Majumdar and MacKenzie are faculty researchers with the UW .听

For more information, contact Ginger at dginger@uw.edu.

Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the U.S. National Science Foundation.

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Irrigation canals form a sort of circulatory system for global agriculture. Across the world, millions of kilometers of human-made canals carry water from lakes, rivers and reservoirs downhill to farmland. Canals are vitally important to human food production, yet many agricultural areas lack the means to monitor the ebb and flow of water through these waterways. This forces farmers and water managers to rely on scattered gauges, inspections and local reports to make decisions about water use.

A new study from the 天美影视传媒 suggests, however, that the tools needed for more comprehensive monitoring may already exist. In the study, researchers analyzed data from a NASA satellite built to track over time the water level of oceans, lakes, rivers and other large bodies of water. That project was never designed to track smaller bodies like canals. Yet, when the researchers looked at roughly 800,000 kilometers of canals in Asia, they found that the satellite could measure water levels with moderate to high confidence at more than 85% of locations.

The discovery could give farmers around the world a powerful new tool to manage precious water resources, prepare for droughts and improve food security in their communities.

鈥淲hat we are seeing is not simply a new satellite capability,鈥� said co-author , a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering. 鈥淚t may represent a fundamentally new way of managing the water conveyance systems that sustain modern agriculture.鈥�

Sept. 30 in Geophysical Research Letters.

The satellite at the center of the study, , is a joint effort of NASA and international partners. In orbit since December 2022, the satellite monitors the Earth鈥檚 surface water at least once every three weeks using a tool called , which compares multiple radar scans over time to detect elevation changes.

Oceans, lakes and other large bodies of water are relatively straightforward to track in this manner. Irrigation canals, on the other hand, are frequently narrower than 20 meters, which puts them at the extreme low end of the satellite鈥檚 observation power. The project鈥檚 architects assumed that fluctuations within small canals would be invisible to the satellite.

Hossain wasn鈥檛 so sure. In 2025, he and collaborators published the (GRAIN), a global dataset that used and machine learning to chart 3.8 million kilometers of canal networks. Lead author , a UW graduate research assistant in civil and environmental engineering, then overlaid SWOT鈥檚 radar data on top of the canal map to see whether he could find meaningful elevation changes where there were canals.

鈥淚t was quite the accidental and pleasant discovery to see that SWOT is able to track flow direction and water levels in most of the canals skillfully,鈥� Sharma said. 鈥淕RAIN mapped where canals are. SWOT revealed what was happening inside them. They complemented each other beautifully.鈥�

As a proof of concept, the team focused on canals in 22 countries across Asia 鈥� a region where irrigation plays a critical role in feeding roughly 3 billion people. Researchers looked at the satellite鈥檚 data along 800,000 kilometers of canals within that region. They then assigned a confidence score to each kilometer based on how closely the satellite鈥檚 view of the canal water matched the known contours of the land and how strong the signal was compared to the noise in the data. As an additional check, they compared the satellite鈥檚 data to real canal measurements in the United States and found that their confidence levels matched the system鈥檚 actual abilities.

Of all the kilometers studied, the team designated 37.5% as highly observable, 46.9% as moderately observable and 15.6% as poorly observable. The highest-confidence areas corresponded to well-organized, wider canals, smooth slopes and open surroundings. Dense vegetation around canals proved the satellite鈥檚 biggest obstacle. The satellite鈥檚 performance is expected to improve over time as Hossain and other scientists working with SWOT data build better algorithms and analysis methods.

The next step for researchers is to build practical tools that leverage SWOT data. Hossain and collaborators at the UW are already building such systems to monitor and improve water delivery in South Asia and to aid in canal management in the western United States.

In time, farmers around the world could use SWOT-powered tools to monitor which canals are carrying sufficient water; see where water levels drop unexpectedly or where canal flow might be stagnant; and understand the evolution of water delivery across an entire growing season. For example, a farmer preparing to plant rice might see through SWOT that there won鈥檛 be enough water arriving to their field to support the growth of the crop, and switch instead to a less water-intensive crop like corn or wheat.

Altogether, this new view of agriculture鈥檚 circulatory system could improve drought preparedness, strengthen food security and help researchers map humanity鈥檚 change to the global freshwater cycle.

鈥淪ome of the most important scientific discoveries happen when a tool designed for one purpose unexpectedly reveals something else,鈥� Hossain said. 鈥淪WOT may be offering a similar surprise.

鈥淎 mission built to study oceans and rivers has begun revealing the hidden dynamics of the canals that sustain agricultural production around the globe. What was once invisible is becoming measurable.鈥�

Co-authors include and , UW graduate research assistants in civil and environmental engineering; , a postdoctoral researcher at Virginia Tech who completed this research as a UW doctoral student of civil and environmental engineering; and at University of North Carolina Chapel Hill.

This research was funded by NASA.

For more information, contact Hossain at fhossain@uw.edu.

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Capybaras like their habitats wet. These large rodents thrive in low-elevation wetlands, migrating along creeks and rivers to nibble on foliage and flowers. That’s why researchers were surprised to find an 8.8 million-year-old fossilized capybara tooth in northern Chile’s , one of the driest regions on Earth. In a paper in Scientific Reports, researchers postulate that the Atacama Desert must have had a wetter climate during the , based on this discovery. This is the first time a capybara species has ever been seen in the Atacama region of Chile 鈥� today these creatures reside in the marshy lowlands across Venezuela, Colombia, Argentina and Uruguay. Researchers had at one time assumed that the Andean mountain chain on the eastern side of Chile would have prevented these short-legged rodents from ever entering the Atacama region. With this discovery, the authors propose that capybaras were able to follow a wetland trail along the northern part of South America, trekking from Bolivia to Peru into northern Chile. In addition to capybaras, the ancient Atacama region also likely had palms and other flowering plants, according to plant fossils analyzed by a UW scientist for the study. These findings challenge the idea that the Atacama was just always a desert, and can help researchers better understand how shifts in climate can drastically affect the environment.

For more information, contact co-author , UW professor of biology, at caestrom@uw.edu.听听听听听听

A full list of co-authors and funding is . Adapted from a release .

Multitasking gives marine microbes an edge when nutrients are scarce

The world鈥檚 oceans teem with tiny organisms that are difficult to study yet critical to account for. The organisms that make up this microscopic community, many of which are protists, have evolved over time to help keep marine ecosystems balanced. A UW study in the ISME Journal, found that organisms that can both photosynthesize and eat to generate energy do better in nutrient-limited environments, which includes warmer water. This flexibility may help them cope with changing conditions and could help researchers gauge how marine ecosystems will respond to future warming. Gathering more data from the bottom of the food web is important for understanding the ecosystem-wide impacts of environmental change. The study also debuted a new genetic method for studying energy production versus consumption that may make it easier to study protists. Samples in this study were collected from the North Pacific, near Hawaii and about 1,000 miles north, but the researchers hope to continue expanding the radius to improve global ocean models.

For more information, contact , UW research scientist and engineer of biological oceanography at coesel@uw.edu.

The UW co-authors are Shiri Graff van Creveld, and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

UW engineers capture behavior of ‘edge waves’ on beaches, putting popular wave models to the test

Coastal engineers and oceanographers often think of the motion of water on beaches as “one dimensional”: waves propagating directly onto the beach from offshore. These simplified wave models are used widely from designing shoreline infrastructure to forecasting coastal flooding. However, some waves propagate along the coast rather than crashing into it, and may push an additional meter of water depth onto the beach. For decades, these “edge waves” have not been accounted for in the one-dimensional models commonly used to understand wave behavior. To find out how edge waves might be impacting model accuracy, researchers at the UW and UC San Diego deployed an array of pressure and velocity sensors along a beach in Southern California for 60 days. In a paper in JGR Oceans, the researchers describe a model they built to tease out the influence of edge waves in the larger system. While edge waves contributed a significant amount of energy, the team found that ultimately the one-dimensional models that exclude edge waves remain accurate enough for predicting total water levels at the shoreline.

For more information, contact , a postdoctoral scholar of civil and environmental engineering, at cshender@uw.edu.

A full list of co-authors and funding is .

How Colombian environmentalists use law and democracy to redefine mountain landscapes

In 2013 and 2017, Colombian voters in two towns backed a legal effort to stop a large-scale gold mining project. In doing so, they are making the mountainous areas where they live more visible and politically relevant. The decision allowed environmental advocates to organize around a larger area defined by elevation, massive volume, and subterranean and arboreal features. , UW assistant professor of anthropology, a research article in the journal Anthropological Forum that examines how the effort used legal tools for citizen participation to not only voice their opinions on extractive projects, but also reconfigure space in unprecedented ways. The case shows that democratic participation can have far-reaching consequences for how landscapes are defined and lived. The article appears in a special issue, called “Ethnographies of Vertical and Volumetric Worlds,” which was co-edited by Ardila and Steven Schwartz of the University of Rochester.

For more information, contact Castillo at acastil@uw.edu.

Funding information is .

Researchers develop new way to measure how blood clots form

A wound stops bleeding because tiny blood cell fragments called platelets clump together to form a clot. Researchers know that platelets generate forces that help compact and strengthen clots. However, they鈥檝e struggled to understand how blood clots form in real time. To better understand this system, UW mechanical engineers created a device that measures how platelet forces and stiffness evolve together during the first minutes of clot formation. in Advanced Healthcare Materials, the research team used the device to apply magnetic forces to clumps of platelets, causing them to strengthen and stiffen through a process called 鈥渕echanotransduction鈥� in which cells convert mechanical forces into biological responses. These findings could be used to study how new drugs affect clot formation, how platelets respond to signals when disease is present, and how blood clotting biomechanics contribute to cardiovascular disorders.

For more information, contact , a UW professor of mechanical engineering, at nsniadec@uw.edu.

The UW co-authors are , , Yoeur-Man Mach and . A full list of co-authors and funding is . Adapted from a story by .

UW researchers probe superconducting materials that defy expectations

Most materials resist the flow of electricity to some degree, but unusual materials known as superconductors can carry an electric current with no resistance at all. Superconductors offer a unique window into the physics of materials at tiny scales, and they could one day revolutionize electronics. In recent years, researchers have discovered new forms of superconductivity in stacks of atomically thin materials such as . Resistance typically drops to zero as these materials are cooled, but in some cases it mysteriously levels off at a small finite value, which contradicts expectations of superconductor behavior. In a paper in Nature, UW materials scientists tested this behavior with a device consisting of several layers of graphene stacked in a staircase-like pattern. By adjusting voltages applied to the device, the researchers could control whether the graphene exhibited true superconductivity or the more peculiar 鈥渇ailed鈥� form, providing clear evidence that failed superconductivity is real. The team is now working to uncover the origin of this mysterious behavior.

For more information, contact , a UW associate professor of both physics and materials science and engineering, at myank@uw.edu..

The UW co-authors are , , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

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New faculty books from the 天美影视传媒 include those from the Information School, bioengineering, mathematics, the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, and Earth and space sciences.

Feminist theory of creep through technological analysis听

, professor in the Information School, is the co-author and co-editor of 鈥�,鈥� published by Duke University Press.

New and emerging technologies, especially ones that infiltrate intimate spaces, relations, homes, and bodies, are often referred to as creepy in media and political discourses. In 鈥淭echnocreep and the Politics of Things Not Seen,鈥� Neda Atanasoski and Nassim Parvin introduce a feminist theory of 鈥渃reep鈥� that they substantiate through critical engagement with smart homes, smart dust, smart desires and smart forests toward dreams of feminist futures.听

Contributing authors further illuminate what is otherwise obscured, assumed, or dismissed in characterizations of technology as creepy or creeping. Considering diverse technologies from border surveillance and China鈥檚 credit system to sexcams and home assistants, the volume鈥檚 essays and artworks demonstrate that the potential and pitfalls of artificial intelligence and digital and robotic technologies cannot be assessed through binaries of seeing/being seen, privacy/surveillance or harmful/useful.听

Together, their multifaceted and multimodal approach transcends such binaries. This volume develops creep as a feminist analytic and creative mode on par with technology鈥檚 complex entanglement with intimate, local, and global politics.

For more information, contact Parvin at nassimi@uw.edu.

Foundations of microfluidics through broad understandings of the world听

In 鈥�,鈥� , professor of bioengineering at the UW, explores听 microfluidics, the field of science that studies fluids constrained to spaces that are smaller than one millimeter wide. Through engaging and digestible stories, Folch takes a lens to this tiny science and demonstrates how big a role microfluidics plays in life as we know it.听

“It was my wife who insisted I write another book on microfluidics,鈥� Folch said. 鈥淪he insisted that this one be for the general public and cover not just the academic microfluidic chips but also the mesmerizing microfluidics one finds in nature and in a variety of contraptions and devices you鈥檇 never think to call 鈥榤icrofluidic.鈥欌��

The goal of 鈥淗ow the World Flows鈥� was not for students to learn microfluidic engineering, but instead, to create a broader understanding of the foundations of the field. As the title suggests, this process spans from natural raindrops to COVID tests, affecting humanity in marvelous ways.

鈥淛ust like microelectronic circuits are too small for you to see and are hidden under the screen of your smartphone, most microfluidic phenomena happen in tiny spaces,鈥� Folch said. 鈥淎ll these microfluidic systems, despite their microscopic size, have had a colossal impact on our planet and our lives. In some capacity or another, they all make the world flow.鈥�

For more information, contact Folch at afolch@uw.edu.

Unified account of a fundamental mathematical object听

, professor emeritus of mathematics at the UW, recently published 鈥�.鈥澨�

This is a survey of the mathematics developed over the last 60 years concerning the Heisenberg group, a mathematical object that has connections with many different areas of mathematics.

Folland intends the audience to be graduate students and professionals in mathematics, providing 鈥渢he first unified account of the diverse analytic and geometric mathematical developments associated with the Heisenberg group.鈥�

For more information, contact Folland at folland@uw.edu.

Jewish family saga unveiled

, professor emeritus of computer science and engineering at the UW, published 鈥�鈥� in February. This braided historical novel is based on family history concealed from Tompa by his parents throughout his childhood.

The book starts in the 1930s, as two Jewish families live happy and successful lives in cosmopolitan Vienna. On March 12, 1938, without firing a shot, the Nazis annex Austria into the German Reich, and Adolf Hitler marches into Vienna with his army. This sudden, terrifying event tears each of these close-knit families apart and scatters their members across the globe as they snatch at any possibility of safe haven.

Liesl, who is 18 years old, flees alone to London and a servant鈥檚 life. Liesl鈥檚 future soulmate, Peter, is deported from Vienna and thrown into a Hungarian jail. Liesl鈥檚 parents, Otti and Ernst, flee on the Trans-Siberian Railway to a foreign life in Shanghai. Two years later, they sail to Manila in the Philippines, arriving just as Japan鈥檚 bombardment and occupation begin.

By the end of 1945, all four of them and several more family members converge on New York City as though drawn together by magnetic forces.听

鈥淚t is a tale of survival against terrible odds and the rebuilding of family at journey鈥檚 end,鈥� Tompa said. 鈥淲riting this family saga has been my dream for 25 years.鈥�

For more information, contact Tompa at tompa@cs.washington.edu.听

Solutions to help our land

In 鈥�,鈥� , professor of Earth and space sciences at the UW, lays out practical and productive solutions to recover the health of our land through soil-building regenerative agriculture. Drawing on the work of farmers, historians and researchers, he articulates the power of rebuilding soil health by minimizing or avoiding physical and chemical disturbance of the soil, such as through combining cover cropping, no- or low-tillage and crop diversity.

The combination allows farmers 鈥� and gardeners 鈥� to greatly reduce or eliminate synthetic fertilizer and pesticide use and can help address a number of today鈥檚 most pressing problems.

The book takes apart common myths around conventional farming and unearths much-needed soil rehabilitation as the key to our agricultural future.

“REGEN shows how reforming the way we see and treat the land can address critically underappreciated, yet eminently solvable problems to restore the health of our land and secure civilization鈥檚 agricultural foundation 鈥� and a healthy future for society and ourselves,” Montgomery said.听

For more information, contact Montgomery at bigdirt@uw.edu.听

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As our skies increasingly crowd with buzzing, hovering, flitting drones, spare a thought for the humble hopping robot.

Hopping, a popular form of locomotion in the insect and amphibian worlds, is nearly two orders of magnitude more energy-efficient than flying. Unlike a mosquito that must constantly expend energy to stay aloft, a flea only works out when it jumps. Those cost savings could also pay off in the world of robotics: A group of small, simple hopping robots could explore a location much more cheaply than flying drones. These robots could find gas leaks in an oil refinery, monitor water and fertilizer usage on a farm, or even explore other planets.

鈥淚n my mind, the three hardest challenges for hopping robots are the ability to vary jump length, self-right and reload for multiple hops,鈥� said senior author , a UW associate professor of mechanical engineering. 鈥淒irectHop clears all three of those hurdles with a totally new design, and we鈥檙e well on our way to tackling other challenges like onboard power, steering and navigation.鈥�

Fuller and his team will present DirectHop on Sept 30th at the International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems. .

Most hopping robots are modeled after insects like fleas that are literally spring-loaded. Fleas compress and then release parts of their exoskeletons to . Robots that utilize springs and latches 脿 la fleas can also travel impressive distances, but they have no easy way to calibrate jump distance 鈥� discharging a spring is an 鈥渁ll or nothing鈥� action, said Fuller. What鈥檚 more, springs and latches are complex bits of machinery that are difficult to build and operate at small scales. 

DirectHop鈥檚 solution to those problems is ditching the spring entirely.

鈥淲e found that a very small electric motor can accelerate fast enough to power a jump directly, the way a frog鈥檚 leg muscles directly power its hop,鈥� said lead author , a UW graduate research assistant in mechanical engineering. 鈥淲e also discovered that by adjusting the current going to the motor, we could make the robot jump specific distances.鈥�

The robot itself consists of a tiny electric motor attached to a tower by a length of fishing line. When the motor accelerates, it spools the line quickly and hoists itself up the tower, pulling the rest of the robot into the air. As the motor rises, three hinged legs extend to keep the motor aligned with the robot鈥檚 foot.

Since the robot tends to tumble in the air, the researchers included a roll cage to support it when it lands on its side. From there, the team was able to right it 90% of the time by sending the motor back down the tower, which shifts the robot鈥檚 center of gravity and causes it to roll back onto its foot, readying it for another jump.

The design was inspired by box turtles, which can roll themselves upright using a similarly-shaped shell.

The current prototype has some notable limitations. Power is supplied via wires, and it has no way to steer or orient itself beyond random twitching. Wang and Fuller, however, are working on solutions: onboard solar cells and a battery for power, a vibration motor to spin the robot in place, tiny retractable feet to adjust hop angle, and an onboard camera and electronics to navigate. 

鈥淥ne of our goals is fully autonomous stair climbing,鈥� Fuller said. 鈥淎 camera looks at the stair, the processor figures out how high the robot has to jump, it steers itself into position, jumps, self-rights, steers again and repeats. It uses a combination of simple sensors and actions to perform a complex task.鈥�

Wang thinks it鈥檚 reasonable to imagine producing a fully featured DirectHop bot for about $10 since the individual components are so small and cheap. At that price, the bots could be extremely useful as a semidisposable complement to larger, more capable, more expensive robots.

鈥淲e could dispatch 100 or even 1,000 of these robots into the field,鈥� Wang said. 鈥淚f some are lost or disabled, it鈥檚 not really a failure. The team of them can complete the task.鈥�

Yash Talwekar, a UW research assistant in mechanical engineering, is a co-author.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation. 

For more information, contact Fuller at minster@uw.edu or Wang at hw328@uw.edu.

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This summer, OpenAI announced escaped a training environment and hacked into the AI company Hugging Face. Anthropic quickly followed with news that its AI agents also .听

Last week, an outgoing Anthropic employee took to X, posting that the 鈥�.鈥� Such talk has for years, though many AI experts have argued that these Terminator-esque claims are distractions from the real risks posed by current AI systems. Nevertheless, that viral X thread is .听听

To help make sense of all this, UW News talked to five AI researchers from the 天美影视传媒:听

• , associate professor in the Information School;
• , professor in the Information School;
• , professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering;
• , professor in the Allen School and the UW鈥檚 vice provost for AI;
• and , professor in the Information School and the School of Law.

How alarming do you find the hacks announced by OpenAI and Anthropic?听

Franziska Roesner: I do find them somewhat alarming 鈥� not due to the hypothetical risks from an anthropomorphized runaway AI, but because complex interconnected systems are being built and seemingly run without much in the way of standard safeguards and auditing. The resulting outcomes are unsurprising to security experts, but are sensationalized as AI risk.

Ryan Calo: The timing makes me a little skeptical. Is OpenAI trying to match Anthropic by arguing that its systems are just as scary? Is Hugging Face trying to look relevant in advance of its purchase by Nvidia? But yes 鈥� this sort of emergent behavior is concerning.

Noah A. Smith: We鈥檝e been told that the beast got out of the cage, but we don鈥檛 know enough about the cage the beast was in. The demonstrations may establish an important new capability in these AI models without establishing the broader risk people are inferring. Assessing the underlying risk depends on what access, scaffolding, permissions and safeguards the system had. shows that the alarming behavior depended heavily on what tools the model was given, what it was allowed to access, and how the experiment was set up, not just on the model itself.

Chirag Shah: I鈥檓 in half-agreement with scholars like who warn that the big AI labs are creating this scare to distract us from real problems that AI is causing. I also concur with and others who have been warning us about the security threats posed by the frontier models. I don鈥檛 think these two viewpoints are mutually exclusive: Yes, there are many other potential harms being created by AI, but the hacks and other security issues are real too and could be more devastating. Worse, we may not have time or opportunity to react, fix or reverse.

Aylin Caliskan: When such a complex system is equipped with tools and capabilities that enable it to interact with other complex systems, we should expect unforeseen exploits, problems and unintended consequences by default. The safety of these systems needs to be rigorously evaluated under controlled conditions and in real time, and appropriate guardrails should be dynamically integrated while they鈥檙e running.

What do you make of former Anthropic that, 鈥�The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade鈥�?

RC: I worry engineers like Mr. Coxon are playing into an industry rhetoric that would have society focus on speculative, existential threats, rather than immediate, real-world harms. I argued as much in 2023 in .

The people making these claims and announcements largely have financial stakes in these companies, which are . How are you thinking about ulterior motives here?

CS: I see this as an attempt to steer the public into believing these companies are building world-changing tech that everyone needs to invest in or they鈥檇 miss out; that this tech would be so powerful that they rise up to national security level and gain power; and that the same tech could also be so dangerous that only they have the ability to curb it and they can self-regulate.

NS: It doesn鈥檛 take a conspiracy theorist to note that there are incentives at work. The financial stakes around prospective IPOs are enormous, and there are also long-standing concerns that safety arguments can shape regulation in ways that favor incumbent firms. Rules could reduce competition and independent scrutiny, concentrating both technological power and the authority to define what counts as 鈥渟afe鈥� in the hands of a few companies. They could also bar many people from participating in what the technology is designed to do, for example, by slowing or stopping work on open-source alternatives.

What should be done about AI risk?

NS: Risks need to be defined based on independent scrutiny and high-quality evidence, not messaging from organizations and people with a stake in what the response to risk looks like. We need sensible liability and accountability for harms, and governance proportional to demonstrated risks in real-world contexts rather than speculative narratives and science fiction. We should be especially wary of rules that entrench incumbent interests or treat closed, centralized control as synonymous with safety.听

Openness is part of safety: If outsiders cannot inspect, reproduce and challenge claims about dangerous behavior, we are left trusting the organizations that have the strongest incentives to frame the narrative.

RC: Some combination of common law liability and regulation needs to create adequate incentives for AI companies to address the inevitable harms of this trillion-dollar industry.听

FR: To me, the bigger question for safety is less, 鈥淲hat can AI models do in isolation?鈥� and more, 鈥淗ow and why are we building these models into increasingly complex systems?鈥� Computer systems security, for example, has already offered us examples of how to build these systems. More generally, we should all 鈥� whether we are building, integrating or using AI 鈥� anticipate how systems might be misused by people or harm them and adjust our systems accordingly.

AC: Academic freedom, independent evaluation and development, and open science play critical roles in analyzing and mitigating AI risks, as well as in effectively disseminating findings and evidence to inform policy and the public. To better manage risks, we should be designing AI deployment contexts in collaboration with stakeholders and communities, providing evidence to demonstrate net positive deployment effects that do not disproportionately benefit specific entities or groups, and iteratively identifying, isolating, and minimizing risks.

CS: Establish and fund commissions and taskforces that audit these companies and models and make independent assessments and recommendations. Make the companies rolling out these models accountable for any harms caused by their tech. Educate and empower the public through media, policies and democratic frameworks that give them a real say in what happens to their lives and labor through these technologies.

To set up an interview with an AI expert, contact Stefan Milne at stmilne@uw.edu.

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A city鈥檚 sewers say a lot about its residents. Sick people often shed pathogens in their waste, adding traceable amounts of bacteria and viruses into wastewater. Testing that wastewater offers a simple, low-cost way to monitor the spread of disease 鈥� a practice that began with polio in the 1940s and became more widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, tests for a variety of common and emerging viruses.

American public health agencies don鈥檛 routinely test wastewater for sexually transmitted infections, but new research led by the 天美影视传媒 and the Washington State Department of Health found that such methods could be used to effectively identify Chlamydia trachomatis, the bacteria that causes chlamydia.

The study, , could help public health agencies better identify and respond to increased spread of chlamydia and other STIs, which are The researchers specifically explored wastewater鈥檚 potential as a community monitoring tool, and not as a way to identify cases or trace pathogens back to individual people or locations.

鈥淪TIs are known for being underreported because of a lot of factors, especially stigma and the prevalence of asymptomatic cases,鈥� said co-lead author , assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences and of civil and environmental engineering at the UW. 鈥淲astewater is cool because it鈥檚 population level. You don鈥檛 need people to go to the doctor and seek out treatment to know that there are people in a community shedding specific pathogens.鈥�

Working in collaboration with local health jurisdictions, researchers collected frequent samples from influent wastewater at five wastewater treatment plants across Washington state and six neighborhood-level sewer sites near Seattle. Collection sites ranged from a large, high-population urban area to a rural treatment plant serving fewer than 5,000 people. Researchers masked the specific names and locations of sample locations to protect the privacy of people and communities.

Researchers tested wastewater samples for the pathogens that cause three common STIs: chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea. C. trachomatis was the most prevalent pathogen across all test sites. The bacteria that cause gonorrhea and syphilis were found far less frequently, despite data showing confirmed cases of those diseases in the associated areas.听

Further research could reveal why tests captured C. trachomatis more consistently than other STI-causing bacteria and explore the study鈥檚 limitations, which included people moving between sewer sites and the influence of demographics.

The researchers are also eager to investigate several trends they observed in the data, such as spikes in pathogen concentration occurring near the winter holidays and after Valentine’s Day.

Among the neighborhood collection sites was a small, densely populated area adjacent to a college campus. More than 87% of residents were young people between 18 and 34 years old, a population considered high-risk for STIs. Clinical health records showed very low case counts of chlamydia, but researchers consistently detected C. trachomatis in wastewater samples.听

That gap could indicate underreporting driven by stigma or asymptomatic cases. It also gives public health officials an opportunity to react to a previously unknown increase in infection activity.

鈥淔rom a public health perspective, data like this allows us to elevate awareness that this pathogen is here and spreading in the community, even if cases aren’t presenting to clinics or providers are not identifying the infections in their patients,鈥� said co-lead author , program manager of the Washington State Department of Health鈥檚 wastewater surveillance program. 鈥淎 small amount of wastewater can tell you so much about the community while simultaneously filling gaps in the traditional methods we monitor disease activity.鈥澨�

A full list of co-authors is available with the paper.听

This research was funded in part by the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Infectious Diseases Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.听

For more information, contact Fuhrmeister at efuhrm@uw.edu.

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天美影视传媒 researchers are leading and collaborating on four research projects as part of Phase 1 in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) , a national initiative to build an AI-for-science ecosystem which accelerates breakthroughs in energy, discovery science and national security.听

The DOE awarded a total of 278 Genesis Mission awards for projects that involve more than 300 participating institutions, including DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration national laboratories, universities and companies. As part of the Genesis Mission, awardees will have access to the Genesis Mission Platform, which includes AI frameworks, advanced AI models from industry partners, and high-performance computing resources across DOE鈥檚 National Laboratories and partner facilities.听

“The Genesis Mission represents the kind of bold, collaborative approach needed to accelerate the complex scientific and technological breakthroughs required in our rapidly changing world,” said UW Vice Provost for Research . “Its emphasis on bringing together diverse expertise and cutting-edge technology with strategic partnerships highlights the important role universities play in driving innovation for the nation.”听

The UW-supported Genesis projects span disciplines including advanced sensing technologies, protein design for microelectronic applications, and astronomy data infrastructure, demonstrating the broad potential of AI to accelerate scientific discovery.听

, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a Genesis award to develop neuromorphic terahertz imaging technology for next-generation augmented reality systems. 听

“Neuromorphic terahertz imagers, or brain-inspired imaging in the terahertz band, give us superhuman vision to see through optically obscured media in real time by combining sensing and computation in a single piece of hardware. The Genesis Mission award supports our research in developing the hardware for the neuromorphic terahertz imager, as well as creating a digital twin of the entire system to train imaging models before implementing them on the actual hardware. This is an important step for future terahertz imaging systems on augmented reality hardware,” Naghavi said. 听

Building on research conducted in UW’s , the project brings together collaborators at Texas A&M University, the University of Utah, ChipNexus and NVIDIA to integrate sensing and computation directly within imaging hardware. By reducing the amount of data that must be transferred between sensors and processors, the technology could enable lightweight, low-cost augmented reality headsets capable of seeing through visually obscured materials in real time while operating with far lower power consumption than conventional systems.听听

, director of the , and his colleagues are contributing to two Phase I Genesis Mission projects that apply advances in protein design and artificial intelligence to challenges beyond traditional biomedical applications.听

One project, BIND (Biophysics-Informed Learning of Coordination for Metalloprotein Design), led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, seeks to develop an AI framework for designing selective metal-binding proteins. The project leverages quantum chemistry, structural biology, machine learning and high-throughput experimentation to advance the computational design strategies of next-generation rare earth element binders. 听These advancements will catalyze change in critical mineral recovery, radionuclide management and environmental monitoring, while advancing DOE priorities in predictive biosystems design. 听

The second project, led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, will develop an AI-guided loop for the design, fabrication and evaluation of microelectronic devices. The team will leverage proteins designed to assemble on van der Waals substrates to modulate their properties and organize charge carriers within the synthesized hybrid materials, integrating deep-learning protein models with AI-guided material synthesis and characterization, device fabrication and measurements, and circuit-level performance evaluation to create an iterative design process that improves molecules, materials, and device design. 听

Both IPD projects demonstrate how UW-developed protein design technologies are expanding into new areas of chemistry, materials science, and advanced manufacturing. 鈥淭he Genesis Mission award provides necessary support to develop data that will vastly improve our models, an essential next step in delivering advances for key global challenges,鈥� Baker said.听听

, director of the and founding director of the and , a researcher at DiRAC, are partnering with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to help develop infrastructure that will make it easier for astronomers to combine and analyze data from a wide range of observatories and scientific instruments. 听

Their project will expand data formats and analysis platforms to support images, spectra, data cubes and other forms of astronomical data while enabling seamless access to information distributed across cloud and high-performance computing systems. The goal is to remove technical barriers that often slow scientific discovery and make large, multimodal datasets more accessible for AI research. 听

“We want the plumbing to be boring so the astronomy can be spectacular,” Caplar said.听

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