David Baker – UW News /news Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:11:13 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 Four UW researchers named AAAS Fellows /news/2026/03/26/four-uw-researchers-named-aaas-fellows/ Thu, 26 Mar 2026 14:08:36 +0000 /news/?p=91088 Four researchers' headshots
Four 天美影视传媒 researchers have been named AAAS Fellows. They are, from left to right, David Baker, Elizabeth Buffalo, Maitreya Dunham and David J. Masiello. Photo: 天美影视传媒

Four 天美影视传媒 researchers have been named AAAS Fellows, according to . They are among 449 newly elected fellows from around the world, who are recognized for their 鈥渟cientifically and socially distinguished achievements鈥 in science and engineering. New Fellows will receive an official certificate and a gold and blue rosette pin 鈥 representing science and engineering, respectively 鈥 to commemorate their election.

A tradition dating back to 1874, election as an AAAS Fellow is a lifetime honor. AAAS Fellows play a crucial role in shaping public policy, advancing scientific research and influencing national and global perspectives on critical issues. Becoming a AAAS Fellow is among the most distinct honors within the scientific community, and those elevated to the rank have made distinguished efforts to advance science or its applications. All fellows are expected to meet the commonly held standards of professional ethics and scientific integrity.

This year鈥檚 UW AAAS fellows are:

, professor of biochemistry at the UW School of Medicine and the director of the UW Medicine Institute for Protein Design, was recognized for his groundbreaking work in computational protein design. Baker鈥檚 early work was in predicting how chains of chemicals fold into molecular structures that determine protein functions. He went on to design new proteins from scratch to carry out tasks in medicine, technology and sustainability. His team is developing vaccines, targeted drug delivery for cancer, enzymes to break down environmental pollutants and innovative biomaterials, among other endeavors. Baker received the 2024 Nobel Prize in Chemistry for his scientific achievements to benefit humankind. He has also been awarded the Overton Prize in computational biology, Feynman Prize in Nanotechnology, Breakthrough Prize in Life Sciences and Wiley Prize in Biomedical Sciences.

, professor and chair of neurobiology and biophysics at the UW School of Medicine, was honored for her distinguished contributions to cognitive and systems neuroscience. Buffalo, who is the Wayne E. Crill Endowed Professor, is particularly noted for her pioneering research on the neural basis of remembering and learning, and for advancing translational research into broader insights on human brain function. She studies the relationship between eye movements and activity in the hippocampus and other nearby brain regions involved in forming memories, navigating and recalling the emotional context of past events. She is an elected member of the National Academy of Sciences, which presented her with the Troland Award for innovative, multidisciplinary studies. She also helps train postdoctoral scholars at the UW Medicine Institute for Translational Immunology.

, professor and chair of genome sciences at the UW School of Medicine, was noted for her distinguished contributions to the fields of genetics and genomics. She is known for advancing knowledge of the mechanisms underlying molecular evolution and genetic variation in yeasts and in humans. Her lab develops new tools to study mutations and their consequences, genome structure, gene interactions, and the evolution of gene expression. She has a longstanding interest in how copy number variations 鈥 how many times a particular segment of DNA repeats 鈥 affect adaptation, and how these variations arise. Dunham applies her genomics methods to diverse topics, including the biology of aging and the emergence of multi-drug antibiotic resistance. Dunham is a graduate of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Stanford University and was a Howard Hughes Medical Institute Faculty Scholar.

, UW professor of chemistry, was honored for distinguished contributions to the theoretical understanding of nanoscale light-matter interactions, particularly for the design and interpretation of advanced spectroscopies that use electrons and light to probe material excitations. Masiello is an applied physicist whose research focuses on creating simple-yet-rich theoretical models that bring insight and understanding to observations spanning from quantum materials to nanophotonics. Masiello was hired as an assistant professor at the UW in 2010. He is a faculty member in both the Molecular & Engineering Sciences Institute and the Institute for Nano-Engineered Systems, and is also an adjunct professor of applied mathematics and of materials science and engineering. Masiello’s honors include receiving an NSF CAREER Award and a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, called PECASE, awarded by President Obama at the White House.

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Clarivate Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list includes 56 UW faculty and researchers /news/2025/11/25/clarivate-highly-cited-researchers-2025-list-includes-56-uw-faculty-and-researchers/ Tue, 25 Nov 2025 18:05:25 +0000 /news/?p=89946 aerial view of a college campus in autumn
TheUW has 56 faculty and researchers named on the Highly Cited Researchers 2025 list from Clarivate. Photo: Mark Stone/天美影视传媒

The 天美影视传媒 is proud to announce that 56 faculty and researchers who completed their work while at UW have been named on the list from Clarivate.

The annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the .

Highly Cited Researchers demonstrate significant and broad influence in their fields of research. The total list includes 7,131 awards from more than 1,300 institutions in 60 countries and regions. This small fraction of the global researcher population contributes disproportionately to extending the frontiers of knowledge and contributing to innovations that make the world healthier, more sustainable and which drive societal impact, according to Clarivate.

The that determines the 鈥渨ho鈥檚 who鈥 of influential researchers is drawn from data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate.

The list below includes faculty and researchers whose primary affiliation is with the UW, Fred Hutch Cancer Center, and the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation.

Please note: Some of the people on the list are no longer with the UW and their current affiliation is noted. This list reflects initial data from Clarivate and may be updated.

Ivan Anishchenko (Vilya)

David Baker

William A. Banks

Gregory N. Bratman

Steven L. Brunton

Guozhong Cao

Ting Cao

Lauren Carter (Gates Medical Research Institute)

Helen Chu

David H. Cobden

Katharine H. D. Crawford

Riza M. Daza

Frank DiMaio

Kristie L. Ebi

Evan E. Eichler

Emmanuela Gakidou

David Ginger

Raphael Gottardo (CHUV)

Alexander L. Greninger

Simon I. Hay

Andrew Hill (Infinimmune)

Eric Huang

Michael C. Jensen (BrainChild)

Neil P.听 King

C. Dirk Keene

J. Nathan Kutz

Eric H. Larson

Aaron Lyon

Michael J. MacCoss

Brendan MacLean

C. M. Marcus

Julian D. Marshall

Ali Mokdad

Thomas J. Montine (Stanford)

Mohsen Naghavi

Marian L. Neuhouser

Julian D. Olden

Robert W. Palmatier

David Pigott

Hannah A. Pliner (Bristol Myers Squibb)

Ganesh Raghu

Stanley Riddell

Andrea Schietinger (Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center)

Jay Shendure

M. Alejandra Tortorici

Troy R. Torgerson (Allen Institute)

Cole Trapnell

Katherine R. Tuttle

David Veesler

Theo Vos

Alexandra C. Walls (BioNTech SE)

Bryan J. Weiner

Di Xiao

Jie Xiao

Xiaodong Xu

Jihui Yang

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ArtSci Roundup: September and October /news/2025/09/15/artsci-roundup-september-and-october/ Mon, 15 Sep 2025 22:31:12 +0000 /news/?p=89104

Come curious. Leave inspired.

We welcome you to connect with us this autumn quarter through an incredible lineup of more than 30 events, exhibitions, podcasts, and more. From thought-provoking talks on monsters to boundary-pushing performances by Grammy-nominated Mariachi ensembles, it鈥檚 a celebration of bold ideas and creative energy.


ArtSci On Your Own Time

Exhibition: (Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture)
Journey through the seasonal cycle of weaving, from gathering materials and spinning wool to dyeing with natural ingredients and weaving intricate designs. Along the way, learn firsthand from weavers and gain insight into the deep cultural and scientific knowledge embedded in every strand. Free entry for UW faculty, staff, and students.

Closing September 28 | (Henry Art Gallery)
This focused exhibition features works from Passing On (2022), a series of collaged newspaper obituaries of influential feminist activists and organizers. The clippings, presented with Winant鈥檚 handwritten annotations, reflect on a lineage of non-biological inheritance and how language shapes memory and history. Free.

Closing October 4 | (School of Art + Art History + Design)
The Jacob Lawrence Gallery presents Crossings, featuring new bricolage sculptures by Rob Rhee inspired by inosculated trees and experimental grafting processes. The exhibit includes work from his studio and ongoing developments at the UW Farm. Free.

Exhibitions: (天美影视传媒 Magazine)
Find art by UW alumni and faculty in solo exhibitions, group shows and art fairs across Seattle and beyond. Free.

Podcast: Ways of Knowing, Season 2
Faculty in the College of Arts & Sciences are facilitating critical conversations in the classroom and the sound booth! The second season of 鈥淲ays of Knowing,鈥 a podcast collaboration with The World According to Sound, spotlights eight Arts & Sciences faculty members whose research shapes our knowledge of the world in real time鈥攆rom digital humanities to mathematics to AI. Free.

Video: (Astronomy)
What will Rubin Observatory discover that no one鈥檚 expecting? Neil deGrasse Tyson and comedian Chuck Nice learn and answer cosmic queries about the Vera Rubin Observatory, the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), and our next big tool to uncover more about the universe with Zeljko Ivezic, Director of Rubin Observatory Construction. Free.

Book Club: 鈥淭he Four Winds鈥 by Kristin Hannah(UW Alumni)
Readers鈥 Choice! Author (and UW alum – BA, Communication, 鈥83 ) Kristin Hannah highlights the struggles of the working poor during the Great Depression in this novel. Elsa is an awkward wallflower who is raising her two children on the family farm. As the Dust Bowl hits, she must choose between weathering the climate catastrophe in Texas or moving her family west to follow rumors of jobs in California. Free.


Week of September 22

September 25 | (Department of Chemistry)
A seminar featuring Professor Matt Golder. Free.

September 25 | (Henry Art Gallery)
A two-part series of readings by local authors exploring ghosts, familial histories, and the porousness between life and death. Free.

September 26 |
From the best-selling author of These Truths comes We the People, a stunning new history of the U.S. Constitution, for a troubling new era.


Week of September 29

October 1 | (School of Music)
Students of the UW School of Music perform in this lunchtime concert series co-hosted by UW Music and UW Libraries. Free.

October 3 | (Henry Art Gallery)
Celebrate fall at the Henry with an evening of bold, boundary鈥憄ushing art and vibrant community, featuring exhibitions like Rodney McMillian: Neighbors, Kameelah Janan Rasheed: we leak, we exceed, Spirit House, and Sculpture Court Mural 鈥 Charlene Liu: Scallion. Meet the artists, enjoy a no鈥慼ost bar, and a curated playlist. Free.

October 3 | (Meany Center for the Performing Arts)
Award-winning pianist and cultural ambassador Mahani Teave is a pioneering artist who bridges the creative world with education and environmental activism.

October 3 | (School of Music)
A performance featuring special guests Stomu Takeishi (bass), Lucia Pulido (voice), Cuong Vu (trumpet), and Ted Poor (drums), performing the music of Chilean composer Violeta Parra. Free.

October 4 | (Henry Art Gallery)
An in-depth conversation between artist Rodney McMillian and curator Anthony Elms about the artistic process, themes, and the


Week of October 6

October 7 | (Department of Economics)
Distinguished economist and 2024 Nobel Laureate James Robinson delivers the Milliman Lecture. Free.

October 8 | (Jackson School of International Studies)
A literary conversation between novelist and artist Gerardo S谩mano C贸rdova and UW professors Mar铆a Elena Garc铆a (CHID) and Vanessa Freije (JSIS/History), centered around S谩mano C贸rdova’s recent novel, Monstrilio, exploring the major themes of the book, including queerness, monstrosity, and grief. Free.

October 9 | (American Indian Studies)
A series to prepare for the Film Screening & UW Symphony Performance: Healing Heart of the First People of This Land on February 6, 2026 (). Free.

October 10 | (School of Music)
A performance featuring UW Jazz Studies students Jai Kobi Kaleo ‘Okalani, Coen Rios, and Ethan Horn. Free.

October 10 | (Jackson School of International Studies)
The South Asia Center and Tasveer Film Festival host a screening and discussion of Farming the Revolution (1hr 45min, India, 2024, Nishtha Jain). Free.

October 12 | (Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture)
KEXP broadcasts live from the Burke Museum with music from Indigenous artists all day long! Visit the new special exhibition, Woven in Wool: Resilience in Coast Salish Weaving. While you’re here, say hello to Sammy the Sounder and celebrate the team’s new Salish Sea Kit, co-designed by local Coast Salish weavers. Enjoy free admission for all鈥攑lus, kids wearing any Sounders gear will receive a free soccer ball! Free.


Week of October 13

October 14 | (School of Music)
New UW strings faculty John Popham (cello) and Pala Garcia (violin) are joined by Mika Sasaki (piano) in a concert of contemporary works by their trio Longleash, including Nossas M茫os (Our Hands) by Igor Santos.

Online Option – October 14 | (Classics)
For three decades, the Centre d鈥櫭塼udes Alexandrines has reshaped our understanding of Alexandria, moving its history from ancient texts to a tangible reality. Terrestrial digs reveal the city’s daily life, while underwater excavations at the site of the legendary Lighthouse have yielded spectacular monumental discoveries. These integrated findings present a multi-layered city, allowing us to write a new history of Alexandria grounded in its material culture of adaptation and reuse. Free.

President Robert J. Jones

October 15 |听
President Jones will share his vision for advancing the UW鈥檚 public mission: expanding access to an excellent education for all students; strengthening connections with our communities; and accelerating research, discovery and innovation for the public good. Free.

Andrei Okounkov

October 15 | 听(Department of Mathematics)
Mathematics has its own language, which is used by all other sciences to describe our world. It is very important to use it correctly, and to appreciate how it changes with time. This importance is growing rapidly with the ever wider use of large language models. There is great potential here, but also many pitfalls, as discussed in this lecture. Free.

October 15 | (School of Art + Art History + Design)
This Fall MFA exhibition at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery showcases emerging artists鈥 work. On view through November 8. Free.

October 16 | (American Indian Studies)
A series to prepare for the Film Screening & UW Symphony Performance: Healing Heart of the First People of This Land on February 6, 2026 (). Free.

October 16 | (Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies)
Connect with local legislators. John Traynor, the Government Affairs Director from the Washington State Labor Council, AFL-CIO, will facilitate the forum.

October 16 | (Simpson Center for the Humanities) Free.

October 17 | (Meany Center for the Performing Arts)
The Grammy-nominated ensemble puts their unique spin on traditional mariachi, creating an explosion of colors and sounds all their own.

October 17 | (Department of Political Science)
UC Berkeley鈥檚 David Vogel joins the UW Center for Environmental Politics for a special guest lecture. Free.

October 18 | (Henry Art Gallery)
A curated selection of works explore the significance of branded products, examining how their ubiquity shapes perception, influences identity, and reflects broader cultural values. On view through January 28, 2026. Free.

October 18 | (School of Music)
Celebrate the 40th anniversary of the Fritts-Richards organ with a concert featuring UW students and faculty. A reception follows. Free.


Week of October 20

Emily M. Bender, Alex Hanna

Online Option – October 21 |听 The AI Con (Book Talk) with Emily M. Bender and Alex Hanna (Office of Public Lectures)
Emily Bender (Linguistics) and Alex Hanna expose corporate-driven AI hype and provide essential tools to identify it, break it down, and expose the underlying power plays it seeks to conceal. Pay what you will.

David J. Staley

October 21 | (Meany Center for the Performing Arts)
Internationally acclaimed for their rich tone and precision, the Jerusalem Quartet brings a dynamic program featuring works by Haydn and Beethoven, plus Jan谩膷ek鈥檚 dramatic 鈥淜reutzer Sonata.

October 21 | (College of Arts & Sciences)
Staley is the author of Alternative Universities: Speculative Design for Innovation in Higher Education, which argues that too many innovations in education focus on delivery rather than transformative experience. Free.

October 22 | (Department of Chemistry)
Professor Wilfred van der Donk delivers this annual lecture in memory of Prof. Dauben, who helped shape modern organic chemistry. Free.

Dr. Carolyn Pinedo-Turnovsky

October 22 | (Jackson School of International Studies)
A forum discussing recent developments, diplomacy, and policy issues on the Korean Peninsula. Free.

October 23 | Samuel E. Kelly Distinguished Faculty Lecture – Beyond Status: Living Undocumented in Disruptive Times (Office of Minority Affairs & Diversity)
Dr. Carolyn Pinedo-Turnovsky is a sociologist in the Department of American Ethnic Studies at the 天美影视传媒, where she also holds an adjunct appointment in the Department of Sociology. Annual lecture honoring UW faculty focused on diversity and social justice. Free.

October 23 | (American Indian Studies)
A series to prepare for the Film Screening & UW Symphony Performance: Healing Heart of the First People of This Land on February 6, 2026 (). Free.

October 23 | 听(Education)
Filmmakers and College of Education (CoE) community members Dr. Edmundo Aguilar, Assistant Teaching Professor, and Tianna Mae Andresen, ECO alum and instructor of Filipinx American US History in SPS, bring us the story of 鈥渢he students, teachers, and community members in their fight to preserve cross community liberatory ethnic studies and watch them reclaim their humanity along the way.鈥 Free.

Online Option – October 24 | The Art of Refuge, Resistance and Regeneration with Peter Sellars (Office of Public Lectures)
Director Peter Sellars will share real-world examples drawn from a lifetime of cross-cultural, cross-disciplinary artistic collaborations around the globe鈥攄emonstrating how art responds to crisis and catalyzes social transformation in an era of profound stakes.听Pay what you will.

October 24 | (Department of Political Science)
Jessica Weeks joins the UW International Security Colloquium to present current research in global politics and international relations. Free.

October 24 |听 (Department of Political Science)
This event is jointly hosted by the UW Political Theory Colloquium and the Washington Institute for the Study of Inequality and Race (WISIR). Free.

October 25 | (Henry Art Gallery)
Explore new exhibitions, catch captivating performances, get hands-on with an all-ages art-making workshop and museum bingo, and discover rarely seen works from the Henry鈥檚 collection. Free.

October 26 | (School of Music)
Chamber winds from the UW Wind Ensemble perform works by Caroline Shaw, Richard Strauss, and more, under the direction of Erin Bodnar. Free.


Week of October 27

David Baker

October 28 | (Department of Physics)
Nobel laureate David鈥疊aker discusses advanced protein design software and its use in developing molecules to address challenges in medicine, technology, and sustainability. Free.

October 28 | (School of Music)
Renowned pianist Santiago Rodriguez, from the Frost School of Music (Miami University), performs a solo recital presented by the keyboard program. Free.

October 30 | (American Indian Studies)
A series to prepare for the Film Screening & UW Symphony Performance: Healing Heart of the First People of This Land on February 6, 2026 (). Free.

October 31 | (Political Science)
Lecture by Egor Lazarev, Assistant Professor of Political Science, Yale University. Sponsored by the Severyns Ravenholt endowment and The 天美影视传媒 International Security Colloquium (UWISC).

October 31 | (School of Music)
Dr. Stephen Price, UW Organ Studies students, and guests perform spooky organ works and Halloween-themed favorites in this festive concert. Free.

Curious about what’s ahead? Check out the November ArtSci Roundup.


ArtSci Roundup goes monthly!

The ArtSci Roundup is your guide to connecting with the UW鈥攚hether in person, on campus, or on your couch.

Previously shared on a quarterly basis, those who sign up for the Roundup email will receive them monthly, delivering timely updates and engaging content wherever you are. Check the roundup regularly, as events are added throughout the month. Make sure to check out the ArtSci On Your Own Time section for everything from podcasts to videos to exhibitions that can be enjoyed when it works for you!

In addition, if you like the ArtSci Roundup, sign up to receive a monthly notice when it’s been published.

Do you have an event that you would like to see featured in the ArtSci Roundup? Connect with Lauren Zondag (zondagld@uw.edu).

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Using computers to design proteins allows researchers to make tunable hydrogels that can form both inside and outside of cells /news/2024/01/30/using-computers-to-design-proteins-allows-researchers-to-make-tunable-hydrogels-that-can-form-both-inside-and-outside-of-cells/ Tue, 30 Jan 2024 18:46:09 +0000 /news/?p=84275
New research led by the 天美影视传媒 demonstrates a new class of hydrogels that can form not just outside cells, but also inside of them. Hydrogels are made up of protein building blocks linked together. Shown here are images of two cells. The cell on the right contains hydrogels decorated with Green Fluorescent Protein (green blobs), whereas the cell on the left does not because it is missing one of the hydrogel building blocks (green is everywhere in the cell). Photo: Mout et al./PNAS

When researchers want to study how COVID makes us sick, or what diseases such as Alzheimer’s do to the body, one approach is to look at what’s happening inside individual cells.

Researchers sometimes grow the cells in a 3D scaffold called a “hydrogel.” This network of proteins or molecules mimics the environment the cells would live in inside the body.

New research led by the 天美影视传媒 demonstrates a new class of hydrogels that can form not just outside cells, but also inside of them. The team created these hydrogels from protein building blocks designed using a computer to form a specific structure. These hydrogels exhibited similar mechanical properties both inside and outside of cells, providing researchers with a new tool to group proteins together inside of cells.

The team Jan. 30 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

“In the past 10 years, there’s been a shift in the world of cell biology,” said co-senior author , a UW associate professor of chemical engineering and of bioengineering. “Classically, folks have attributed much of the cell鈥檚 interior organization to membrane-bound organelles, such as mitochondria or the nucleus. But now scientists are realizing that the cell actually has other ways to locally concentrate certain molecules or proteins without using membranes, for example, by protein-protein interactions. This concentrating allows the cell to turn on or off specific functions that can be helpful or ultimately lead to disease.”

DeForest continued: “What I think is pretty exciting here is that we have good mechanical control of our hydrogels 鈥 even when they are made inside human cells. This means we can tune them to essentially function as a synthetic version of whatever sequestering phenomenon we want to study, such as how protein aggregation can lead to Alzheimer’s.”

One key element of this research was that the protein building blocks were designed from scratch 鈥 they don’t exist anywhere in nature 鈥 using computers.

“You can imagine a protein as a string of subunits called amino acids. That string folds up to form a three-dimensional structure. There are 20 different amino acids, and a typical protein is made up of 100 to 200 of them. That makes the system very complex, because how do you know how it’s going to fold?” said co-lead author , who completed this research as a UW postdoctoral researcher at the and is now a research fellow at Harvard Medical School and Boston Children’s Hospital. “That’s where the computer comes into play 鈥 it does calculations to estimate the most likely three-dimensional shape. And similarly, you can tell it what shape you want and it tells you what sequence you need to build the protein.”

To make a variety of hydrogels with different properties, the team used computational design to control how floppy or rigid the protein building blocks were and how the building blocks organized and connected to create the hydrogel. The researchers also used two different methods to link the building blocks together: One linked them irreversibly and the other allowed the proteins to disconnect and reconnect.

Hydrogels formed with the irreversible linker (shown here, top) were more stiff (top left) while hydrogels formed with the reversible linker (bottom) were more fluid (bottom left). When the researchers applied stress to the gels (middle panel, top and bottom), the stiffer hydrogels remained distorted (top right) while the more fluid hydrogels reverted back to a droplet-like state (bottom right). Photo: Mout et al./PNAS

“Irreversibly crosslinked systems are going to be intrinsically more stable, making them better for long-term cell culture and functional tissue engineering,” said DeForest, who is also a faculty member with the UW and the UW . “But the reversibly crosslinked systems are more fluid, which may be better for driving specific protein-protein interactions within living cells.”

To determine if the hydrogels in cells had similar characteristics compared to their extracellular counterparts, the researchers examined whether building blocks within the hydrogels could move around. A stiffer hydrogel would be more likely to trap the proteins in one position compared to a more fluid gel. The mechanical properties of each type of hydrogel remained even when inside a cell.

To determine if the hydrogels in cells had similar characteristics compared to their extracellular counterparts, the researchers examined whether building blocks within the hydrogels could move around. The mobility test is shown here. Each panel contains an image of the same cell with hydrogels decorated with Green Fluorescent Protein. The panel on the left shows the cell before the test. The test (middle panel) “bleaches” part of a hydrogel (marked with the red arrow, close-up in the top boxes) and measures how long it takes for the green to return (right panel). More fluid gels demonstrate more mobility, which means the green returns faster. Photo: Mout et al./PNAS

The team plans to further explore this system, including being able to better control how hydrogels form and localize within cells.

The most crucial part of this project, the researchers said, was the collaboration between protein designers and chemical and biological engineers.

“Our cross-disciplinary collaboration with Cole鈥檚 group has been very exciting, and has opened up routes to new classes of biomaterials with a wide range of applications,” said co-senior author , the director of the Institute for Protein Design and a professor of biochemistry in the UW School of Medicine.

, a UW doctoral student in bioengineering, is co-lead author on this paper. Additional co-authors are , a UW research scientist in the Institute for Protein Design; , an assistant professor at Pohang University of Science and Technology who completed this research as a UW postdoc at the Institute for Protein Design; , a UW doctoral student in bioengineering; , a UW doctoral student in molecular and cellular biology; , a UW doctoral student in biological physics, structure and design; , a UW research scientist at the Institute for Protein Design; , a group leader at the Hubrecht Institute who completed this research as a postdoc at the Institute for Protein Design; , an acting instructor at the Institute for Protein Design; Alee Sharma, an undergraduate student at Northeastern University; and , an associate professor at the Johns Hopkins School of Engineering. Mout and Sahtoe were part of the . This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Audacious Project, the Open Philanthropy Project, the Wu Tsai Translational Investigator Fund, the Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales and the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, contact DeForest at profcole@uw.edu, Mout at rubul.mout@childrens.harvard.edu and Baker at dabaker@uw.edu.

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More than 40 UW experts on Highly Cited Researchers 2023 List /news/2023/11/30/more-than-40-uw-experts-on-highly-cited-researchers-2023-list/ Thu, 30 Nov 2023 23:38:26 +0000 /news/?p=83739 campus view in fall
More than 40 UW faculty and researchers on Clarivate’s ‘Highly Cited Researcher’ list. Photo: Dennis Wise/天美影视传媒

The 天美影视传媒 is proud to announce that more than 40 faculty and researchers who completed their work while at UW have been named on the annual list from Clarivate.

The annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.

The list of faculty and researchers whose primary affiliation is with the UW or with the Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation who were acknowledged for their work includes:

David Baker

William A. Banks

Gregory N. Bratman

Steven L. Brunton

Guozhong Cao

William A. Catterall

Helen Chu

David H. Cobden

Katharine H.D. Crawford

Riza M. Daza

Frank DiMaio

Evan E. Eichler

Michael Gale Jr.

Raphael Gottardo

Allison J. Greaney

Alexander L. Greninger

Simon I. Hay

Celestia S. Higano

Neil P. King

James B. Leverenz

Charles M. Marcus

Philip Mease

Ali Mokdad

Thomas J. Montine*

Christopher J. L. Murray

Mohsen Naghavi

William S. Noble

Young-Jun Park

David M. Pigott

Stanley Riddell

Andrea Schietinger **

Jay Shendure

M. Alejandra Tortorici

Troy R. Torgerson***

Cole Trapnell

David Veesler

Theo Vos

Alexandra C. Walls****

Bryan J. Weiner

Spencer A. Wood

Sanfeng Wu

Di Xiao

Xiaodong Xu

The that determines the 鈥渨ho鈥檚 who鈥 of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It also uses the tallies to identify the countries and research institutions where these scientific elite are based.

The full 2023 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found online .

* now is at Stanford University.

** now is at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center.

*** now is at the Allen Institute.

**** now is at BoiNTech SE.

now is at Princeton University.

 

 

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UW celebrates researchers on Highly Cited Researchers 2022 List /news/2022/11/15/uw-celebrates-researchers-on-highly-cited-researchers-2022-list/ Tue, 15 Nov 2022 16:22:14 +0000 /news/?p=80080 fountain
The UW is proud of the 47 faculty and researchers on Clarivate’s annual highly cited list. Photo: 天美影视传媒

The 天美影视传媒 is proud to announce that 47 faculty and researchers who completed their work while at UW have been named on the annual list from Clarivate.

The highly anticipated annual list identifies researchers who demonstrated significant influence in their chosen field or fields through the publication of multiple highly cited papers during the last decade. Their names are drawn from the publications that rank in the top 1% by citations for field and publication year in the Web of Science citation index.

The list of faculty and researchers who were acknowledged for their work while at UW includes:

  • David Baker
  • Frank DiMaio
  • William Sheffler
  • Dr. Jay Shendure
  • Cole Trapnell
  • David Veesler
  • Alexandra C. Walls*
  • Philip Mease
  • Dr. Christopher J. L. Murray
  • Dr. Ganesh Raghu
  • Dr. Stanley Riddell
  • Alejandra Tortorici
  • Dr. William A. Banks
  • Gregory N. Bratman
  • Steven L. Brunton
  • Guozhong Cao
  • William A. Catterall
  • David H. Cobden
  • Riza M. Daza
  • Dr. E. Patchen Dellinger
  • Dr. Janet A. Englund
  • E. Erskine
  • Michael Gale Jr.
  • Raphael Gottardo
  • Celestia S. Higano
  • Neil P. King
  • Ali Mokdad
  • William S. Noble
  • Julian D. Olden
  • L. Patrick
  • David L. Smith
  • Dr. Piper Meigs Treuting
  • Spencer A. Wood
  • Jesse R. Zaneveld
  • Ning Zheng
  • Dr. Hans D. Ochs
  • Simon I. Hay
  • Evan E. Eichler
  • Deborah A. Nickerson**
  • John A. Stamatoyannopoulos***
  • Dr. Thomas J. Montine****
  • Di Xiao
  • Xiaodong Xu
  • Bryan J. Weiner
  • Mohsen Naghavi
  • Theo Vos
  • David M. Pigott

The that determines the 鈥渨ho鈥檚 who鈥 of influential researchers draws on the data and analysis performed by bibliometric experts and data scientists at the Institute for Scientific Information at Clarivate. It also uses the tallies to identify the countries and research institutions where these scientific elite are based. This year Clarivate partnered with Retraction Watch and extended the qualitative analysis of the Highly Cited Researchers list, addressing increasing concerns over potential misconduct.

The full 2022 Highly Cited Researchers list and executive summary can be found online .

* now is at BioNTech SE.

** on Dec. 24, 2021.

*** now is at Altius.

**** now is at Stanford University.

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Four UW professors win 2021 Breakthrough Prize 鈥 so-called 鈥極scars of Science鈥 /news/2020/09/10/four-uw-professors-win-2021-breakthrough-prize-so-called-oscars-of-science/ Thu, 10 Sep 2020 13:00:47 +0000 /news/?p=70275
Pictured left to right: David Baker, a professor in the UW School of Medicine and director of the Institute for Protein Design, won the prize for life sciences, while a team of UW physics professors, including Eric Adelberger, Jens Gundlach and Blayne Heckel, earned the prize for fundamental physics. Photo: 天美影视传媒

Four 天美影视传媒 professors were among the winners of the 2021 Breakthrough Prize, which recognizes groundbreaking achievements in the life sciences, fundamental physics and mathematics.

David Baker, a professor in the UW School of Medicine鈥檚 department of biochemistry, won the prize for life sciences, while a team of UW physics professors, including Eric Adelberger, Jens Gundlach and Blayne Heckel, earned the prize for fundamental physics.

The annually awards the Breakthrough Prizes, which were founded in 2013 and are dubbed the 鈥淥scars of Science.鈥 Each prize is worth $3 million.

Baker, director of the , was recognized for developing technology that allowed the design of proteins never seen before in nature, including novel proteins that have the potential for therapeutic intervention in human diseases.

Over billions of years, nature has produced a thousand trillion proteins听鈥 the workhorse molecules essential to every life function听鈥 each with a unique origami-style design that allows it to precisely lock onto an adjacent molecule to perform its unique function. Then came the Protein Design Revolution, harnessing supercomputing and newly discovered principles of how natural proteins fold to turn evolution on its head.

鈥淲e could wait another million years for the protein we need to evolve, or we could design it ourselves,鈥 Baker said. His enthusiastic design community of 250,000听鈥 citizen scientists, Foldit players and gamers听鈥 uses a combination of human ingenuity and automated computational firepower. Their latest project is a promising crowd-sourced novel protein that could adhere to a COVID-19 virus and destroy it.

鈥淥ne-hundred people will approach the solution to a problem from 100 different perspectives,鈥 said Baker, who invented the open-source Rosetta software for computational modeling and analysis of novel proteins. The promise of protein design? Universal vaccines for flu, HIV, COVID-19 and cancer; medicines for chronic pain; smart therapeutics; nanoengineering for solar energy capture, and more.

鈥淚 am excited about this award accelerating progress at the IPD in de novo design of new proteins not found in nature to address current challenges in medicine and beyond,鈥 Baker said. 鈥淚 thank my wonderful colleagues听鈥 undergraduate and graduate students, postdocs, faculty and staff听鈥 at the IPD and UW, and members of the general public contributing to our efforts through the rosetta@home and Foldit projects.鈥

The award gives Baker and Gundlach, longtime friends who go on hikes and climbs together, something new to talk about the next time they hit the trails.

鈥淒avid is very well deserving of this prize,鈥 said Gundlach, who currently serves as principal investigator on the 鈥檚 research in physics. 鈥淗e has really pioneered the field of protein folding in a major way.鈥

The E枚t-Wash Group, made up of UW physicists Adelberger, Gundlach and Heckel, was recognized for precision fundamental measurements that test our understanding of gravity, probe the nature of dark energy and establish limits on couplings to dark matter is.

“I think the award was quite unexpected to all of us, but as a surprise it generates even more joy,鈥 Gundlach said. 鈥淧resenting our research to the public was always rewarding because our experiments are intriguing and fun to hear about, but knowing that a panel of famous physicists selected our work feels particularly rewarding.鈥

The equivalence principle 鈥 the observation that objects, whatever they are made of, fall with the听same acceleration 鈥 inspired Albert Einstein’s听relativistic theory of gravity. Motivated by the unexplained phenomena of听dark matter and dark energy that hint towards new physics, as well as theoretical attempts to develop unified quantum theories of gravity that听inherently predict violations of the equivalence principle and additional curled-up space dimensions,听the UW E枚t-Wash team decided to probe the fundamental properties of gravity with a new generation of instruments.

They took the two-century-old torsion balance concept and developed it into a supremely sensitive 21st-century instrument to look for new fundamental physics. They tested the equivalence principle, the inverse square law, and measured the gravitational constant听with unprecedented precision and sensitivity.听For example, their latest inverse-square law test probed gravity at ultra-short distances, establishing that any extra dimension must be curled up with a radius less than one-third听the diameter of a human hair.

Last year, Lukasz Fidkowski, an assistant professor of physics at the UW, won the New Horizons in Physics Prize from the Breakthrough Foundation. At least three researchers associated with the UW have received Breakthrough prizes in prior years.

Each year, the Prize is celebrated at a gala award ceremony, where the awards are presented by superstars of movies, music, sports and tech entrepreneurship. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, however, this year鈥檚 ceremony has been postponed until March 2021.

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

 

 

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Faculty/staff honors: Fellowships in medical and biological engineering; a remembrance of Ellis Goldberg /news/2020/04/15/faculty-staff-honors-fellowships-in-medical-and-biological-engineering-a-remembrance-of-ellis-goldberg/ Wed, 15 Apr 2020 16:27:34 +0000 /news/?p=67457 Recent honors to 天美影视传媒 faculty and staff include fellows named by an organization for medical and biological engineering, and a remembrance of political science professor Ellis Goldberg, who died in 2019.

David Baker, Dayong Gao, Herbert Sauro named fellows of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering

David Baker, Baker is a professor of biochemistry, honored by AIMBE
David Baker

UW professors , and have been named fellows of the .

The three faculty members are among the institute’s , numbering 157 in all, chosen for their “distinguished and continuing achievements” in medical and biological engineering.

Dayong Gao, professor of mechanical engineering and director of the Center for Cryo-Biomedical Engineering and Artificial Organs, has been inducted into the AIMBE 2020 Class of Fellows.
Dayong Gao

Called the AIMBE for short, the institute is a Washington, D.C.-based nonprofit organization. Its 2,000-member College of Fellows includes outstanding engineers, entrepreneurs and innovators in medical and biological engineering.

The organization advocates for the value of medical bioengineering in society. Its mission, which also drives advocacy initiatives, is to “recognize excellence, advance the public understanding and accelerate medical and biological innovation,” according to its website.

Herbert Sauro has been inducted into the AIMBE 2020 Class of Fellows.
Herbert Sauro

Baker is a professor of biochemistry and directs the . Gao is a professor of mechanical engineering and director of the . Sauro is a professor of bioengineering and director of the . All three have affiliate appointments in other departments as well.

Election to the institute’s College of Fellows is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to a medical and biological engineer; fellows include three Nobel Prize laureates and 18 recipients of the Presidential Medal of Science or National Medal of Technology and Innovation. The institute’s annual meeting, scheduled for March, was cancelled due to health concerns and the fellows were inducted remotely.

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Essay fondly remembers Ellis Goldberg, professor of political science

A researcher with the nonprofit has penned a remembrance and appreciation of , UW professor of political science, who September 20, 2019, at the age of 72.

Ellis Goldberg, UW professor of political science who died in 2019, is remembered in an essay
Ellis Goldberg

Goldberg, a political economist and scholar of Middle East politics, was a longtime UW faculty member and former director of the Middle East Center in the Jackson School of International Studies. He also wrote a blog called “” that commented on Middle Eastern and U.S. politics.

He is remembered fondly on the Middle East research project’s website by , clinical assistant professor in Liberal Studies at New York University, in an essay titled “Ellis Goldberg, Egypt and a Reverence for Life.”

El-Ghobashy writes that Goldberg “loved Egypt and knew more about its history and political economy than anyone I know. 鈥 At a time when lives in Egypt are imperiled by deprivation, dictatorship and disease, as are so many lives across the globe, an intellectual sensibility grounded in a reverence for life is a gift and an exigency.”

With Goldberg’s death, El-Ghobashy writes, “we lost one of the most erudite, generous and original scholars of the modern Middle East and North Africa, a truly reflective mind 鈥”听 .

There were remembrances of Goldberg from the and the as well.


UW Notebook is a section of the UW News site dedicated to telling stories of the good work done by faculty and staff at the 天美影视传媒. Read all posts here.

 

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UW, PNNL to host energy research center focusing on bio-inspired design and assembly /news/2018/08/03/uw-pnnl-to-host-energy-research-center-focusing-on-bio-inspired-design-and-assembly/ Fri, 03 Aug 2018 16:21:47 +0000 /news/?p=58449

The United States Department of Energy has awarded an expected $10.75 million, four-year grant to the 天美影视传媒, the and other partner institutions for a new interdisciplinary research center to define the enigmatic rules that govern how molecular-scale building blocks assemble into ordered structures 鈥 and give rise to complex hierarchical materials.

The Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales, or CSSAS, will bring together researchers from biology, engineering and the physical sciences to uncover new insights into how molecular interactions control assembly and apply these principles toward creating new materials with novel and revolutionary properties for applications in energy technology.

“This center seeks to understand the fundamental rules of how order emerges from the interaction of simple building blocks,” said CSSAS Director , the Matthaei Professor and Chair of the UW Department of Chemical Engineering. “What are the energetics, rates and pathways involved, and what properties emerge when simple components come together in increasingly complex layers? Those are some of our driving questions.”

The UW-based CSSAS is among the newest members of the Energy Frontier Research Centers by the Department of Energy. These centers, operated out of universities and national labs, are funded by the Department of Energy and devoted to specific goals in energy science. The work at the CSSAS will focus on understanding the principles of “hierarchical synthesis” 鈥 the process by which molecules come together, bind, interact and create layer upon layer of higher-ordered structures.

The initial stage of the assembly of protein building blocks (left) and a self-assembled peptoid sheet (right). Scale bars indicate length in nanometers. Photo: Jim De Yoreo/Chun-Long Chen

CSSAS experiments will focus on protein-based building blocks, but will also probe protein-like synthetic compounds called peptoids as well as inorganic nanoparticles. Studying the biologically inspired assembly of these systems individually and in combination will shed new light on how living organisms, through billions of years of adaptation and evolution, have created complex hierarchical systems to solve a host of challenges, said Baneyx.

Understanding hierarchical synthesis would allow engineers to design and build new materials with unique properties for innovative technological advancements that can come about only when scientists exert precise control over a material. For example, controlling how charges move precisely through a material 鈥 or how a substrate is shuttled between the active sites of a series of enzymes positioned with nanoscale precision 鈥 could be key to creating new materials for energy storage, transmission and generation. The precision control that scientists envision could also yield functional materials that are self-healing or self-repairing, and have other custom physical properties designed within them.

“Scientists have been trying to create these types of innovative materials largely through ‘top-down’ approaches, and often by reverse engineering an interesting biological material,” said Baneyx. “We will begin with the blocks themselves, exploring how order evolves in the synthesis process when the blocks are put together and interact.”

CSSAS research will focus on three major areas:

  • Investigating the emergence of order from the interactions of individual building blocks, be they peptoids, inorganic nanoparticles or protein-based particles
  • Probing how hierarchy unfolds as these building blocks are combined to construct lattices, active structures and hybrid materials
  • Using machine learning, computational simulations and big data analytics to learn new ways to control the assembly dynamics of hierarchical structures

These investigations will build upon work conducted at the UW , led by UW biochemistry professor and Howard Hughes Medical Institute investigator , and harness the expertise of researchers at the University of Chicago, the Oak Ridge National Laboratory and the University of California, San Diego.

The CSSAS effort was enabled by , or NW IMPACT, which was formally launched earlier this year by UW President Ana Mari Cauce and PNNL Director Steven Ashby to fertilize cross-disciplinary collaborations between UW and PNNL researchers. NW IMPACT co-director , who is the PNNL chief scientist for materials synthesis and simulation across scales and also holds a joint appointment at the UW in both chemistry and materials science and engineering, will serve as the deputy director of the CSSAS.

“This center’s focus is ultimately on unlocking potential,” said Baneyx. “Once we understand the fundamental rules governing the assembly of bioinspired building blocks, we will be able to design new materials to meet a broad range of technological needs.”

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For more information, contact Baneyx at 206-685-7659 or baneyx@uw.edu and De Yoreo at 509-375-6494 or james.deyoreo@pnnl.gov.

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