Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All UW faculty, staff, and students have access to .Ìý

Astronomer Emily Levesque: The Last Stargazers Book Launch 

August 3, 7:00-8:30 PM |

ÌìÃÀÓ°ÊÓ´«Ã½ professor Emily Levesque discusses her new books at (online) Elliott Bay Book Company.

From the lonely quiet of midnight stargazing to tall tales of wild bears loose in the observatory, The Last Stargazers is a love letter to astronomy and an affirmation of the crucial role humans can and must play in the future of scientific discovery. In this sweeping work of narrative science, Levesque shows us how astronomers in this scrappy and evolving field are going beyond the machines to infuse creativity and passion into the stars, and inspires us all to peer skyward in pursuit of the universe’s secrets.

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UW Alumni Book Club

Ongoing | Online

VoiceThreads

View at your leisure |

VoiceThreads is an assignment completed by the School of Art + Art History + Design Photo/Media seniors in Professor Ellen Garvens‘ ART 440. These are recordings in the students’ own words that discuss and show their senior thesis projects. The VoiceThreads often include earlier projects that have led to their current work. The commentaries highlight common themes and approaches that have been persistent in their individual research trajectories.

Sephardic Places: Loss and Memory – Ruth Behar

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In this talk, sponsored by the Stroum Center for Jewish Studies, Dr. Ruth Behar discusses movement of Sefardim, their exile from beloved homes, their attachments to different places, and how their loss and memory are layered one upon the other. Dr. Behar moves between the personal essay and poetry, history and ethnography, exile and diaspora, and the role of the sea in remembrances of Sefarad in such places as Istanbul, Havana, Miami, New York, and Seattle.

East Asia Resource Center’s Book Recommendations

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MOHAI History At Home                                 

View at your leisure |

Although the Museum of History and Industry is currently temporarily closed to visitors, it remains committed to our mission to collect and share the stories of our community. During this historic moment, you can connect with MOHAI in a new digital way. You will find fun and unique ways to explore history at home with your friends, family, and the young people in your life.

Looking for more?

Check out UWAA’s Stronger Together web page for more digital engagement opportunities.

Allen School’s Dieter Fox honored by national engineering institute

, professor in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, is the recipient of the from the of the national engineering institute IEEE.

The award, established in 1998, recognizes individuals who through research, development or engineering have had a significant impact in the robotics or automation fields. It comes with a $2,000 cash award.

Fox was honored in particular “for pioneering contributions to probabilistic state estimation, RGB-D perception, machine learning in robotics, and bridging academic and industrial robotics research.” RGB-D is a for imaging of color and depth in robotics.

Fox, who joined the UW is 2000, is director of the and senior director of robotics research at . He will receive the honor during the society’s annual , which is being held online through August 31.

He is a fellow of both the IEEE and the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence and has published more than 240 technical papers. He also co-authored the 2005 textbook “.”

IEEE is the accepted name for the Institute of Electrical and Electronic Engineers, whose focus has grown beyond those technical interests in recent years.

Read more on the Allen School .

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Information School’s Chirag Shah honored for work on info retrieval, language processing

, associate professor in the Information School, has received the 2019 — a career achievement honor in natural language processing and information retrieval — from the British Computer Society Information Retrieval Specialist Group.

The has been given annually since 2008 by the information retrieval group in tandem with the British Computer Society. It is named for a pioneering and professor at the University of Cambridge who died in 2007.

“Chirag is a well-recognized thought leader in the areas of collaborative and social information seeking,” the group said in its . “He has been a trailblazer in collaborative information retrieval and social information retrieval, effectively having defined and shaped these disciplines and established himself as a leading world expert in these areas.”

Shah in 2019 and directs the iSchool’s .

In 2016, , affiliate associate professor in the iSchool who works at Microsoft Research, also received this award.

Read more on the Information School .

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Continued support: East Asia Resource Center grant OK’d for 23^rd year

Even amid uncertain times, some things are unchanged: The UW will receive grant funding from the Freeman Foundation — for the 23^rd year in a row.

The center is located in the , and its mission is “to deepen educators’ understanding of East Asia and improve their teaching about the region.” The center provides professional development and teaching resources about East Asia to elementary and secondary school teachers in the United States.

The Freeman Foundation will give the center $324,025 for the 2020-2021 school year, starting in August. The private, philanthropic foundation was established in 1994 to remember businessman Mansfield Freeman, a co-founder of the insurance and financial conglomerate American International Group, Inc, better known as AIG. The foundation announced the grant renewal in April.

The grant will pay for professional development opportunities and teaching seminars for K-12 educators in Washington, Oregon, Alaska, Montana and Idaho, as well as intensive summer programs for teachers, book clubs, writing groups and possible workshops.

For more information on the East Asia Resource Center, contact Kristi Roundtree, director, at barnesk@uw.edu.