The 天美影视传媒 was awarded $2.5 million from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation to fund 16 postdoctoral fellows in a number of fields across the College of Arts & Sciences, the College of Engineering and the College of the Environment.

The UW is one of 30 U.S. research universities to receive the funding. The grants support work in a range of natural science disciplines supported by the foundation, including disciplines of astronomy, biology, chemistry, Earth and planetary sciences, ecology materials science, physics and quantum information. Post doctoral fellows will receive between $90,000 and $200,000 for work lasting nine to 24 months.听

Gordon and Betty Moore established the Moore Foundation in 2000 to create positive outcomes for future generations. In pursuit of that vision, the Foundation advances scientific discovery and environmental conservation. It is one of the nation鈥檚 leading philanthropies with an endowment of approximately $12 billion and annual grantmaking exceeding $500 million.

In awarding the funds, officials with the Moore Foundation noted the 鈥渃ritical role postdoctoral fellows play in advancing scientific discovery and the importance of maintaining the talent pipeline for science.鈥�

The UW is well known for training future researchers and scientific leaders across disciplines. Many of the post-doctoral fellows in this cohort say they plan to pursue faculty positions, to inspire another generation of scientists.

鈥淭he work these postdoctoral researchers are doing will increase our understanding of the planet and the universe, helping to create a better future for all,鈥� said Cecilia Giachelli, associate vice provost for research and a professor of bioengineering. 鈥淲e are deeply grateful to the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation for their generous support.鈥�

UW News asked the cohort of Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellows to share their research goals. Here鈥檚 what they told us:

Arachaporn Anutaliya, Applied Physics Laboratory:

“I’m excited to receive this fellowship because it allows me to study large-scale equatorial waves that move heat through the ocean and shape global climate patterns. Understanding how these waves redistribute heat is essential for improving our understanding of climate variability and global warming. This fellowship supports my goal of building a career in ocean and climate science that connects fundamental research to broader climate understanding.”

Arpit Arora, Department of Astronomy:听

“I am thrilled to receive this fellowship, as it lets me collaborate with the UW experts leading the Rubin Observatory to study dark matter 鈥� the invisible substance making up 85% of all matter in the universe. I use computer simulations to model ‘stellar streams,’ which are long trails of stars being torn apart by our galaxy鈥檚 gravity. By comparing these simulations with new telescope data, I can use the motion of these stars to map out the hidden influence of dark matter and finally understand how it shapes our universe.”

George Brencher, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering:

“My research uses satellite data and machine learning to improve measurements of snow and ice that are needed for managing water resources and natural hazards. Rapid advances in Earth observation and machine learning are transforming the field, allowing us to push the limits of what we can observe on Earth from space. This fellowship will allow me to develop new approaches that translate these advances into meaningful, real-world impact.”

Leo Brody, Department of Chemical Engineering:听

“Receiving this fellowship gives me the flexibility to explore a new class of materials that could dramatically lower the cost of turning waste plastics and biomass into useful fuels and chemicals. I am especially excited about replacing rare, expensive catalysts with materials made from Earth-abundant elements like iron, aluminum and carbon. This support will help me prioritize making energy and chemical production cleaner, cheaper and more sustainable.”

Jamie Cochran, Department of Biology:

“I will study the physiology of the freshwater crustacean Hyalella azteca, which is used to understand the impact of aquatic stressors 鈥� such as metals or pesticides 鈥� on freshwater environments. Just like humans require a specific ratio of salt to water for survival, these shrimp-like crustaceans must regulate their internal balance of ions to water. My project involves trying to determine the mechanisms behind this balance, which could also help us understand other sensitive freshwater creatures. I am grateful to this fellowship for the opportunity to investigate this ecologically significant species.”

Debarati Das, Department of Chemistry:

“As a biochemist, I am keen on pursuing a career in industry or the government sector addressing questions at the interface of chemistry and biology. I find microorganisms particularly fascinating because they are able to live in diverse habitats, from the deep sea to the human body. With the support of the Moore Foundation, I will be able to develop new skills to study how microbes use unique chemistry to adapt to different environmental conditions. This work will help us to understand the critical roles of microorganisms in every ecosystem on our planet.”

Mateo Lopez Espejo, Department of Psychology:

“When we hear a sound, we turn our heads to focus our vision and hearing on the source. This is a process called active sensing. I am excited to investigate the mechanisms behind this process using the fruit fly as a model so that I can take advantage of its genetic tools and fully mapped brain connectivity. The support of this fellowship will be fundamental to help me establish this research plan during my postdoc, and to cement my future career.”

Cassandra Henderson, Department of Civil & Environmental Engineering:听

“I am pleased to accept the Moore Foundation fellowship to support my essential research in preparing Washington communities for climate change. With this assistance, I will be able to continue work on the , which enables long term flood planning that addresses sea level rise.”

Sophia Jannetty, Department of Biology:听

“I use computer simulations to explore how the behavior of individual cells affects the health of our tissues and organs. I am honored to receive the Moore Foundation fellowship, which will allow me to apply this approach to better understand how aging cells and inflammation interact to influence disease. I hope my work can inform more thoughtful strategies for promoting healthy aging.”

Atsushi Matsuda, Department of Biology:

“Electron microscopy reveals extraordinary details inside living cells, but turning these images into accurate three-dimensional reconstructions remains a major challenge. My research aims to overcome this by combining physics-informed machine learning with computer vision to create tools that are broadly usable by biological researchers. I am excited to receive this fellowship because it gives me the freedom to pursue this highly interdisciplinary work at the intersection of biology, computational mechanics and artificial intelligence.”

Hikari Murayama, Department of Atmospheric and Climate Science:听

“Quantifying greenhouse gas emissions was a core pillar of my doctoral work, and this fellowship provides an opportunity to build off of that. We’ll be focusing on historical data: Tracking past methane emissions from oil and gas facilities can give us insight into how emission patterns fluctuate over time. I’m excited to continue developing as an interdisciplinary scholar while also forming my identity as a researcher as I pursue faculty positions.”

Dongmin Shi, Department of Materials Science & Engineering:听

“I am honored to receive support from the Moore Foundation fellowship, which will enable me to pursue innovative, foundational ideas with long-term impact in biomedical engineering. My research focuses on developing wearable biosensors that help monitor and better understand human health. In the future, I aim to become a faculty member who helps translate fundamental scientific discoveries into technologies that improve health care.”

Marta Ulaski, School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences:

“Healthy rivers are the backbone of thriving salmon and trout populations but we don’t yet know if the places we protect are the ones most at risk from a warming climate. I鈥檓 looking forward to combining climate, policy and habitat information in a new way to better understand how river protections support salmon and trout. Ultimately I hope this work will help close the gap between research and conservation practice and provide evidence to guide future policy.”

Corinne Vietorisz, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences:听

“I am very excited to receive the Moore Fellowship, which will allow me to join the Willing Lab at the UW to study how fire-adapted microbes can aid in forest recovery following wildfire. I am continuously amazed by the enormous impacts microorganisms have on our world. My long-term goal is to study how soil microbes 鈥� including fungi and bacteria 鈥� can improve ecosystem restoration and land management outcomes.”

Samuel Wong, Department of Physics:听

“I am interested in proposing novel ways to test theories beyond the current understanding of fundamental physics, such as searching for new particles and forces. Specifically, my work involves finding ways to use precision measurement techniques to search for these tiny signals of new physics. The UW is a leading center for precision measurement, and the support from the Moore Foundation postdoctoral fellowship will allow me to do this work alongside , UW assistant professor of physics.”

Weiwang Zeng, Department of Chemistry:听

“I am excited to receive this fellowship because it gives me the freedom to take big scientific risks at a crucial stage in my career. I use ultrafast bursts of light in a special range of the electromagnetic spectrum to reveal and control new behaviors in atomically thin quantum materials. With this support, I can build toward an independent research program.”

Targeted drug delivery is a powerful and promising area of medicine. Therapies that pinpoint the exact areas of the body where they鈥檙e needed 鈥� and nowhere they鈥檙e not 鈥� can reduce the medicine dosage and avoid potentially harmful 鈥渙ff target鈥� effects elsewhere in the body. A targeted immunotherapy, for example, might seek out cancerous tissues and activate immune cells to fight the disease only in those tissues.

The tricky part is making a therapy truly 鈥渟mart,” where the medicine can move freely through the body and decide which areas to target.

Researchers at the 天美影视传媒 took a significant step toward that goal by designing proteins with autonomous decision-making capabilities. In a proof-of-principles study in Nature Chemical Biology, researchers demonstrated that by adding smart tail structures to therapeutic proteins, they could control the proteins鈥� localization based on the presence of specific environmental cues. These protein tails fold themselves into preprogrammed shapes that define how they react to different combinations of cues. In addition, the experiment showed that the smart protein tails could be attached to a carrier material for delivery to living cells.

Advances in synthetic biology also allowed the researchers to manufacture these proteins cheaply and in a matter of days instead of months.

鈥淲e鈥檝e been thinking about these concepts for some time but have struggled with ways to increase and automate production,鈥� said senior author , a UW professor of chemical engineering and bioengineering. 鈥淲e鈥檝e now finally figured out how to produce these systems faster, at scale and with dramatically enhanced logical complexity. We are excited about how these will lead to more sophisticated and scalable disease-honing therapies.鈥�

The concept of programmable biomaterials isn鈥檛 new. Scientists have developed numerous strategies to make systems responsive to individual cues 鈥� such as pH levels or the presence of specific enzymes 鈥� that are associated with a particular disease or area of the body. But it鈥檚 rare to find one cue, or 鈥渂iomarker,鈥� that鈥檚 unique to one spot, so a material that hones in on just one biomarker might act on a few unintended places in addition to the target.

One solution to this problem is to seek out a combination of biomarkers. There might be many areas of the body with particular enzyme or pH levels, but there are likely fewer areas with both of those factors. In theory, the more biomarkers a material can identify, the more finely targeted drug delivery can be.

In 2018, DeForest鈥檚 lab created a new class of materials that responded to multiple biomarkers using Boolean logic, a concept traditionally used in computer programming.

鈥淲e realized that we could program how therapeutics were released based simply on how they were connected to a carrier material,鈥� DeForest said. 鈥淔or example, if we linked a therapeutic cargo to a material via two degradable groups connected in series 鈥� that is, each after the other 鈥� it would be released if either group was degraded, acting as an OR gate. When the degradable groups were instead connected in parallel 鈥� that is, each on a different half of a cycle 鈥� both groups had to be degraded for cargo release, functioning as an AND gate. Excitingly, by combining these basic gates we could readily create advanced logical circuits.鈥�

It was a big step forward, but it wasn’t scalable 鈥� the team built these large and complex logic-responsive materials manually through traditional organic chemistry.

But over the next several years, the related field of synthetic biology advanced by leaps and bounds.

鈥淭he field has developed exciting new protein-based tools that can allow researchers to form permanent bonds between proteins,鈥� said co-first author , a UW doctoral student of bioengineering. 鈥淚t opened doors for new protein structures that were previously unachievable, which made more complex logical operations possible.鈥�

Additionally, it became practical to use living cells as factories to produce these complex proteins, allowing scientists to design custom DNA blueprints for new proteins, insert the DNA into bacteria or other host cells, and then collect the proteins with the desired structure directly from the cells.

With these new tools, DeForest and his team streamlined and improved many steps of the process at once. They designed and produced proteins with tails that spontaneously fold into more bespoke shapes, creating complex 鈥渃ircuits鈥� that can respond to up to five different biomarkers. These new proteins can attach to various carriers 鈥� hydrogels, tiny beads or living cells 鈥� for delivery to a cell, or theoretically a disease site. The team even loaded up one carrier with three different proteins, each programmed to deliver their unique cargo based on different sets of environmental cues.

鈥淲e were so excited about the results,鈥� DeForest said. 鈥淯sing the old process, it would take months to synthesize just a few milligrams of each of these materials. Now it takes us a couple of weeks to go from construct design to product. It’s been a complete game changer for us.鈥�

鈥淭he sky鈥檚 the limit. You can create delayed and independent delivery of many different components in one treatment,鈥� Ross said. 鈥淎nd I think we could create much, much larger logical circuits that a protein can be responsive to. We鈥檙e at the point now that the technology is outpacing what we鈥檝e seriously considered in terms of applications, which is a great place to be.鈥�

The researchers will now continue searching for more biomarkers that proteins could target. They also hope to start collaborating with other labs at the UW and beyond to build and deploy real-world therapies.

The team outlined other uses for the technology as well. The same tools could manufacture therapies within a single cell and direct them to specific regions, a sort of microcosm of how the process works in the body. DeForest also envisions diagnostic tools like blood tests that could, say, turn a certain color when a complex set of cues within the blood sample are present.

DeForest thinks the first practical applications are likely to be cancer treatments, but with more research, the possibilities feel endless.

鈥淭he dream is to be able to pick any arbitrary location inside of the body 鈥� down to individual cells 鈥� and program a material to go and act there,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat鈥檚 a tall order, but with these technologies we鈥檙e getting closer. With the right combination of biomarkers, these materials will just get more and more precise.鈥�

Co-authors include , a former UW undergraduate student of chemical engineering; , a UW undergraduate student of bioengineering; and , a UW doctoral student of chemical engineering.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, contact DeForest at profcole@uw.edu.听

Recent recognition of the 天美影视传媒 includes an AIS Early Career award, the Tomassoni-Chisesi prize for contributions to theoretical physics and the National Science Foundation CAREER award.

Foster School鈥檚 Mingwen Yang receives AIS early career award

, UW assistant professor of Information Systems and Operations Management in the Foster School of Business, received the from the Association for Information Systems.

is a leading international organization dedicated to advancing the practice and study of information systems. Established in 2014, the award recognizes exceptional early-career scholars who have made outstanding contributions to research, teaching and service in the field of information systems, both locally and globally.

A 2024 recipient, Yang was honored for her impactful early work and dedication to advancing the discipline through scholarship and education.

鈥淚 am deeply honored and grateful to receive the Association for Information Systems (AIS) Early Career Award, a meaningful milestone in the early stage of my academic journey,鈥� said Yang.

David Kaplan awarded Tomassoni-Chisesi Prize for advances in theoretical physics

, UW professor of physics, received the for his contributions to theoretical physics. Awarded by Sapienza University of Rome, the prize 鈥� worth approximately $45,000 鈥� was presented on March 18, 2025 by Giorgio Parisi, recipient of the 2021 Nobel Prize in Physics.

Kaplan was recognized for solving a long-standing problem in physics: 鈥� those that exhibit handedness, meaning they behave differently when left- or right-handed 鈥� on a computer. His domain wall approach, which adds a fifth dimension to lattice simulations, has become a foundational tool in particle physics.

Reflecting on the personal significance of the recognition, Kaplan shared that the breakthrough has been decades in the making. 鈥淚 first heard about the problem in 1981 when visiting Princeton,鈥� he said. 鈥淣obel laureate David Gross described it, and I didn鈥檛 really understand it then 鈥� but filed it away in my mind as something interesting.鈥� That early spark led to a 1992 theory involving a five-dimensional model with two surfaces. It wasn鈥檛 until 2019, however, that he saw how a single-surface geometry 鈥� like a doughnut or sphere 鈥� could yield particles with the same interactions observed in nature, including the weak force. 鈥淭he jury is still out 鈥� but I feel that I am on the right path now and it is very exciting.鈥澛� When asked of his plans for the prize money, Kaplan shared his plans to donate to the UW Department of Physics 鈥� 鈥渨hich made the work possible.”

For such an incredible breakthrough, we asked what keeps him motivated to keep exploring such big, complex questions in physics. Kaplan鈥檚 answer was simple: 鈥淚 don鈥檛 need motivation to think about complex questions in physics,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 do it in the shower, as I walk to work, and in my sleep鈥� I find it all obsessively interesting and fun.鈥�

Marchand Receives $800K NSF award to advance synthetic DNA research

, UW assistant professor of chemical engineering, received a from the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences, Systems and Synthetic Biology Program.

The is the agency鈥檚 most prestigious honor for early-career faculty, recognizing those with the potential to become academic leaders in both research and education.

With this award, Marchand鈥檚 lab will develop sequencing technologies capable of precisely reading and interpreting semi-synthetic DNA alphabets 鈥� genetic systems that use more than the four natural DNA bases found in all known life. In other words, while natural DNA uses a four-letter code (A, T, C, G), Marchand鈥檚 group is exploring the implications of expanding that alphabet to six letters. Their research aims to understand what happens to biological systems when the genetic code is fundamentally altered.

鈥淟ife evolved to use a four-letter DNA alphabet,鈥� Marchand said. 鈥淗ow much of biology breaks versus works when we change that alphabet to six letters is unknown. New technology is required to investigate these questions, which we will develop with this award.鈥�

Marchand said he鈥檚 proud of the recognition for his lab鈥檚 鈥渂old vision in engineering biology for compatibility with expanded genetic alphabets.鈥�

Recent recognition of the 天美影视传媒 includes the Best Paper Award at NeurIPS Pluralistic Alignment Workshop, Scialog: Early Science with the LSST Collaborative Innovation Award and 2024 AVS Thin Film Young Investigator Award.

Professor wins ‘best paper’ at NeurIPS Pluralistic Alignment Workshop

, assistant professor in the UW Foster School of Business, received the $1,000 Best Paper Award on Pluralistic Alignment at the NeurIPS 2024 Workshop.

The Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems, or NeurIPS, is one of the most influential conferences in artificial intelligence, machine learning and data science and is known for its rigorous peer-review process.

Kleiman-Weiner co-authored the paper, “,” which introduces the MultiTP dataset 鈥� a collection of moral dilemmas in over 100 languages that enables the assessment of large language models鈥� decision-making in diverse linguistic contexts. The analysis explored the alignment of 19 LLMs with human judgments across six moral dimensions.

鈥淏y examining moral decisions across over 100 languages, we discovered that language models often fail to capture the rich diversity of human moral preferences across cultures,鈥� Kleiman-Weiner said. 鈥淭his reinforces why pluralistic alignment — ensuring AI systems can understand and respect different cultural perspectives — is so crucial as we develop these technologies. I’m excited about this work because it pushes us to think critically about whose values AI systems reflect. 鈥� We hope this research encourages more work on building AI systems that serve all of humanity, not just a select few.”

Nora Shipp receives Collaborative Innovation Award

, UW assistant professor of astronomy, was part of one of eight interdisciplinary teams awarded the in the first year of Scialog: Early Science with the LSST.

This initiative, launched by the Research Corporation for Science Advancement, is a three-year program designed to support early-career scientists as they prepare to utilize data from the upcoming Legacy Survey of Space and Time, or LSST, at the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile.

“Scialog has been a great opportunity to make connections with scientists across the field of astronomy to brainstorm new ideas for taking advantage of the unprecedented data that will soon be provided by the LSST,” said Shipp.

Shipp鈥檚 proposal brings together researchers to study stars and dark matter — not just in the Milky Way, but also in smaller galaxies. By using the LSST to reveal the faint outer regions of these galaxies, the research will help us to better understand the universe’s creation and the limits of how galaxies form.

, which is short for 鈥渟cience + dialog, “is a collaborative program launched by RCSA in 2010. It鈥檚 designed to accelerate breakthroughs by fostering a network of creative scientists across disciplines and encouraging intensive discussions on scientific themes of global importance.

As part of this initiative, the conference brought together an expert group of scientists and facilitators, including Eric Bellm, research associate professor of astronomy and DiRAC Institute Fellow, to guide the discussions.

Chemical engineering professor wins 2024 AVS Thin Film Young Investigator Award

, UW assistant professor of chemical engineering, has been named the 2024 recipient of the American Vacuum Society (AVS) . Named in honor of Professor Paul H. Holloway, a distinguished scholar and contributor to AVS, the award recognizes young scientists for significant theoretical and experimental contributions to thin film research.

Bergsman studies how to deposit layers of plastic that are 1/1000 the thickness of a human hair, which he uses to develop better materials for computer processors, clean energy, and water purification.

鈥淭he American Vacuum Society was foundational to my growth as a young scientist,鈥� Bergsman said. 鈥淚 am deeply honored to receive this award from a community which has always been an inspiring and supportive environment. I鈥檓 excited to continue engaging with this network of scientists and pushing the boundaries of research in interfacial engineering, surface science, thin films, and related technologies.”

While science majors are often told their field exists outside the realm of politics and culture, many scientific discoveries have societal implications. For example, (pronounced “Hee-lah”) have been used for major medical and scientific advances, and yet the cells themselves were acquired from a Black woman without her knowledge or permission. Recently, her family was partially compensated for this .

, 天美影视传媒 assistant teaching professor of chemical engineering, studies anti-racism, diversity, equity, inclusion and accessibility in engineering education. As part of her doctoral studies, Prybutok co-founded a workshop called “” that helps researchers learn how to add the context behind science into their classes. She continues to do this work at the UW by adding context in her own classes and creating resources for other professors to use.

For the start of winter quarter, UW News asked Prybutok about her journey to becoming a teaching professor and how she brings a cultural lens to her chemical engineering classes.

Let’s start by talking about your role as a teaching professor. The concept of a teaching professorship as a promotable career option is still quite new in academia. How did you learn about this career path, and when did you know that this was what you wanted to do?

Alex Prybutok: I have always enjoyed math and science, so from second through sixth grade, I attended Elm Fork, a summer science camp at the University of North Texas. The summer after 6th grade, I needed a volunteer project for my bat mitzvah, and Elm Fork hired me as their youngest junior volunteer. My role there was largely to help prepare for each day鈥檚 activities and support the campers throughout the day. I fell in love with it and volunteered every summer after that. Though my bat mitzvah project required only 25 hours of service, which I completed that first summer, I wound up doing over 300 hours by the time I turned 18. After that, they hired me to be a counselor to design and run the camps.

By the time I started college at the University of Texas at Austin, I knew that I loved teaching and wanted to become a faculty member. At the time, I thought that tenure track faculty was the only path that existed, so I joined a research lab. I worked for two years in an antibody and protein engineering lab, and though I learned a lot, I never really loved the work.

Meanwhile, I pursued teaching activities that seemed enjoyable to me, including serving as a tutor for Reactor Design and a grader for Process Control, two classes I now teach. Then I learned about a professor at UT Austin who was doing engineering education research. She was studying how engineering students come to see themselves as engineers, the factors that contribute to it, and how this relates to retention and sense of belonging. I found her work fascinating. She offered me a position in her lab. I took it on the spot, leaving proteins and antibodies behind.

This happened right at the start of my senior year, and it made me want to go to graduate school to study engineering education. Unfortunately, I was given the advice that nobody would hire me with an engineering education degree.

Now I see how this advice undervalues teaching in academia and the contributions of engineering education researchers. But at the time, I decided to apply to chemical engineering programs with the goal of doing computational immunology related research, which I found interesting. I had convinced myself that I could tolerate being a tenure track faculty if it meant I got to at least do the teaching part (which鈥� is a wild thought).

In graduate school at Northwestern University, I met a few full-time teaching professors, a role that I had no idea existed. These folks, particularly , an associate professor of instruction at Northwestern, became my role models and mentors, and I decided I wanted to be one.

While in graduate school, during the summer of 2020 with three other graduate students. This work wound up being integrated into my thesis, which my advisers were extremely supportive of and encouraged me to do, and opened the door for my current research area.

The “Contextualizing Your Research” workshop was part of your work with your department’s ARDEI committee. What was the goal of the workshop, and what were the outcomes?

AP: The goal was for the participants to think more critically from an equity lens about the impacts of their research. We started off with case studies about HeLa cells, water scarcity, air quality, climate change and plastic pollution. I was in charge of writing the case study about HeLa cells.

One of the biggest outcomes we saw was how much people wanted to have these conversations and take action. This workshop continues to be run every summer. We also so that other institutions can host their own workshops. And we . It won the 2023 Best Diversity Equity and Inclusion Paper at the American Society for Engineering Education.

Not all of the outcomes are positive, though. The unfortunate reality is that workshop attendance has decreased since 2020, even though people find it valuable. For many people, engaging in DEI work is not required, incentivized or evaluated, so they instead prioritize things that are on their ever-increasing required to-do lists. Unless universities start valuing and actively incentivizing DEI work, it will be difficult to see real long-term change.

Are you planning on running similar workshops at the UW?

AP: I鈥檇 like to! But I can鈥檛 run these workshops alone. At Northwestern, there were always at least four of us hosting the workshops. And ideally, each small discussion group would have its own facilitator. We’ve trained others to help facilitate before, but I鈥檇 probably need to train several folks here to help me run the workshop effectively. Another option would be to ask the folks at Northwestern, such as Jennifer Cole, to co-run them virtually with me here.

I think the biggest issue is that time, as a currency, is limited. It will be hard to get people on board, not in terms of their ideology and desire to help, but because people have limited time.

How is this content making its way into the classes you are teaching at the UW?

AP: I have definitely been using this content in my classes. I cover the HeLa cell case study in my CHEM E 467 Biochemical Engineering class every year, and these discussions are always some of the students’ favorites.

Social justice concepts also regularly show up in my UW courses, through lecture, homework and projects. For example, in my CHEM E 465 Reactor Design class, I give a lecture on using kinetics to model the spread of disease. We talk about the COVID-19 pandemic. One of the things we discuss is how the base-case model makes assumptions that can鈥檛 possibly account for inequities in society that impact the differences in how frequently people are exposed to the disease and how long it takes them to recover.

I also work with other faculty to integrate examples in areas that are not my area of expertise. For example, I used a project from , a chemical and biological engineering professor at The Ohio State University, on how the chemical industry impacts various social justice areas, including pollution, water scarcity, climate change, decarbonization and more. For the project, students made short videos covering these topics, and then interacted with videos from other students. The video submissions I got this year were unbelievably amazing 鈥� the amount of effort and care my students put into the project was inspiring. On my course evaluations, the students reported that they found this project valuable to their learning and noted that it covered an important topic.

I think it鈥檚 important to show students that the engineering content they’re learning and the jobs they鈥檒l have one day will impact real people. These students need to know that they have a responsibility to think about their work from an equity and social justice perspective so that they can make sure all members of society can equally reap the benefits of engineering.

Do you have any advice for students going into winter quarter 2025? How about for your fellow faculty members?

AP: I think I should also take this advice: Take care of yourself both physically and mentally. It鈥檚 easy to get overwhelmed by day-to-day tasks and to-do lists. I know I do. To some degree my anxiety propels me, but it also can come at the cost of burnout and exhaustion if I鈥檓 not taking proper care of myself. I find that I鈥檓 able to be more effective and efficient when I鈥檓 more rested. Find time to do things that relax you 鈥� whether that be a hobby, time with friends or family, or even just being a lump on the couch watching crappy TV (one of my hobbies of choice).

For more information, contact Prybutok at prybutok@uw.edu.

Allbritton was selected “for innovation and commercialization of single-cell, analytical, and gut-on-chip technologies for drug screening and for engineering education.”

Drawing from the fields of engineering, chemistry, physics and materials science, Allbritton’s research develops technologies and platforms for biomedical research and clinical care, including the study and analysis of single cells for the treatment of a variety of diseases such as cancer, macular degeneration and HIV. She is an international expert on multiplexed single-cell assays, microfabricated platforms for high-content cytometry combined with cell sorting, and microengineered stem-cell-based systems for recapitulating human organ-level function.

Her work has resulted in over 250 full-length journal publications and patents and led to 15 commercial products. In addition, five companies have been formed based on her research discoveries: Protein Simple (acquired by Bio-Techne in 2014), Intellego, Cell Microsystems, Altis Biosystems and Piccolo Biosystems. She has been nationally recognized for her research and is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Institute for Medical & Biological Engineering, the National Academy of Inventors and the Washington State Academy of Sciences.

As the Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of the College of Engineering, Allbritton is committed to engineering excellence for the public good by fostering high-impact, interdisciplinary research and technology translation and building an inclusive community of faculty, staff and students. She has received numerous awards for her leadership, including the BMES Robert A. Pritzker Award and the Edward Kidder Graham Award for Leadership and Service.

Allbritton is among 114 new members across the U.S. who are honored for contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature” and for contributions to “the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”

, principal senior technical fellow at Boeing, has also been elected to the academy. Seebergh is a UW affiliate professor of chemical engineering.

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.

“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.

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.

In this video, we see the 天美影视传媒 where , assistant professor of chemical engineering, is teaching students to explore ways to transform plastics into useful chemicals. These chemicals could be used to make new plastic or for other purposes like fuel.

The lab aims to advance the field of renewable and sustainable chemical production, shifting away from fossil fuel consumption and mitigating the detrimental environmental effects of waste plastics.

When was a graduate student, she visited elementary schools with other members of her program to talk about science and give demonstrations. But explaining their work and research to the students was a challenge, which gave Rorrer the idea to use coloring pages.

鈥淭he coloring idea came from the fact that I like to doodle,鈥� said Rorrer, an assistant professor of chemical engineering at the 天美影视传媒. 鈥淚 like to draw, and coloring is kind of a ubiquitous medium. I think kids love it. Adults love it. And so, I thought, why don鈥檛 we bring the two together and use the coloring pages to explain the research?鈥�

is a free, all-ages coloring book series that brings current doctorate-level research in science and engineering to a general audience. Each coloring page includes illustrations and descriptions of research papers and projects 鈥� all presented in a way that anyone can understand, on some level.

鈥淪ome of the descriptions are written toward more of a high school reading level,鈥� Rorrer said. 鈥淎n elementary schooler might not necessarily understand everything that’s going on in the descriptions. But my hope would be that they can still learn from it, enjoy coloring it, start to develop an interest in the science and maybe see themselves represented in some of the scientists that are featured.

鈥淏ut I do think adult coloring is a really big trend. I think it’s for everyone. Everyone has something to learn.鈥�

The first coloring book volume was a collaboration between Rorrer and other graduate students in her program at the University of California, Berkeley. The researchers illustrated聽some of the pages聽 themselves, while others worked with Rorrer on the drawings and descriptions of their work. One page explains photosynthesis through an illustration of a sunflower sitting at a table holding utensils and preparing to eat stacks of pancakes. Another shows how plant waste is turned into sustainable fuel. Each step has a picture to color, from a power plant to a farm with a windmill to a car at a gas pump.

鈥淔or the second volume, I started getting a lot of people who were really interested in collaborating and having me illustrate their work and work with them on the description,鈥� Rorrer said. 鈥淚 actually ended up putting a little application form on the website where, if someone had a pitch for a coloring page to feature some of their research — whether it be a recent publication or just kind of a general area of research in their group — they could write a little blurb about it and submit.鈥�

With interested researchers from all over the U.S. and a few from outside the country, the second volume featured work from various fields of study, such as RNA, service dogs, the gut bacteria of insects and DNA. It was also the first themed volume: Women in STEM.

The website also offers themed pages featuring people of color and their work in STEM.

鈥淲e have a few coloring pages highlighting different history-making scientists,鈥� Rorrer said. 鈥淲e have a theme series for Black History Month, Hispanic Heritage Month, things like that. I would really love to expand those pages and celebrate more diversity and history makers in the sciences.鈥�

Rorrer is also working on translating existing pages: The website already has a few pages available in Spanish, including those that are part of the Hispanic Heritage Month collection.

鈥淲e had a couple of other volunteers who have been slowly chipping away at other languages as well,鈥� Rorrer said. 鈥淪o many scientists are multilingual, and I think it’s such a wonderful thing to have volunteers help with explaining the science in different languages and reach out to a broader audience.鈥�

Audience feedback has been very positive, Rorrer said. There have been more than 30,000 downloads and the pages are even being used as learning tools in K-12 classrooms.

鈥淭he hope is that the general public can kind of learn about research and science and engineering,鈥� Rorrer said, 鈥渁nd aspiring scientists can get excited about potential schooling and career opportunities.鈥�

For more information, contact Rorrer at jrorrer@uw.edu.

Injury or disease in our most complex organ 鈥� the human brain 鈥� can be hard to detect and even harder to treat. Advancing technologies for brain health requires interdisciplinary collaboration from clinicians and engineers in fields that range from data science to medicine.

This fall the 天美影视传媒’s annual will feature research with potential to transform brain therapeutics from infancy to late adulthood. Two UW engineers will speak about their work 鈥� on detecting and treating Alzheimer’s disease as well as on developing therapies for children’s brains. These lectures are free and open to the public, and this year they will be both in person and livestreamed. .

From discovery to design: Toward early detection and treatment of Alzheimer鈥檚 disease

The series kicks off Oct. 13, at 7:30 p.m. in Kane Hall 130 with , a professor of bioengineering. Daggett has been studying misfolded proteins that lead diseases such as Alzheimer鈥檚, as well as Parkinson鈥檚 and others, since the 1990s. More than 5 million Americans are living with Alzheimer鈥檚 disease 鈥� a number projected to rise to 14 million by 2050 鈥� and currently, there is no cure. Daggett鈥檚 research uses computational and experimental methods to design diagnostic and therapeutic agents to target these diseases. This work has been spun out to form with a promising platform for early diagnosis and treatment of Alzheimer鈥檚. Hear from Daggett about the technology and collaborations driving this research.

Updated 10/28/22 – video

Engineering therapies for the pediatric brain

On Oct. 26, at 7:30 p.m. in Kane Hall 130, , an associate professor of chemical engineering and of bioengineering, will talk about developing therapeutics for newborn and pediatric brain disease, with the goal of improving neurological function and quality of life. Children make up 27% of the world’s population, but most therapeutics for brain disease are tested on adults. Pediatric clinical trials often follow years later. This has led to a significant gap in medical technology for infants and children. Nance鈥檚 research focuses on understanding the brain鈥檚 response to injury or disease and developing nanotherapeutic platforms to treat brain disease using nanotechnology, neurobiology and data science tools.

Updated 10/28/22 – video