Pack Ventures, a new venture capital fund that is collaborating with the 天美影视传媒, aims to help entrepreneurs launch new innovations and grow startups that emerge across the UW, while also giving Husky alumni access to investment opportunities.

Pack VC is independently run and is building affinity to the UW, lowering the threshold to investing and leveraging the deep relationships with innovators who have a UW affiliation 鈥� spinouts from campus and alumni-founded companies. The UW and Pack Ventures signed a memorandum of understanding earlier this year, formalizing the relationship.

Pack Ventures is now a preferred venture partner of the UW and CoMotion, the UW鈥檚 collaborative innovation hub. On the back of this agreement, Pack Ventures launched their second venture fund and is raising $30 million to invest in more Husky founders. The second fund already has more than 50 investors.

Ken Horenstein, Pack Ventures鈥� founder, said the fund also will help attract faculty and students to the UW, increase philanthropy to the UW and help the UW engage alumni who are looking to invest in emerging companies. 听Horenstein has committed to donating up to 2% of his personal proceeds to the UW and is encouraging all fund investors to make a similar pledge.

鈥淚’m kind of a marketplace. I’m trying to pair people who have investment dollars to good investment opportunities,鈥� Horenstein said, emphasizing companies that will succeed and are likely to have a positive social impact on a global scale.

鈥淧art of my calculus to focus on the UW is: I think the talent is world class. I think the resources are world class. And there’s not enough attention here, which has created what we call in finance, 鈥榓lpha,鈥� which is an overlooked opportunity that will perform better than the rest of the market,鈥� he said.

Horenstein said over the past decade the UW had more than $30 billion in exit valuations, a broad measure of the worth of companies, intellectual property and other assets. With additional nurturing, Horenstein said, that number will grow.

The UW is one of the top institutions nationwide receiving federal funds for research 鈥� more than $1.5 billion in fiscal year 2023, according to the UW Office of Research. That figure is an indicator of the quality and creativity of UW faculty and staff 鈥� and quite often these faculty go on to start spinoffs to amplify and scale the impact of their research.

Pack Ventures was an idea that germinated at first Innovation Roundtable in 2020, part of former Provost Mark Richards’ agenda to help take UW research and discoveries to a higher level of excellence and impact. The Roundtable brings together some of the top names in venture capital and industry from the Pacific Northwest. Participants in the first Roundtable suggested the creation of an Innovation Imperative website that aggregates all things entrepreneurial across UW鈥檚 three campuses, helped bring to the Foster School of Business, had a vision for and contributed to the diversification of the UW innovation ecosystem.

Chris DeVore, creator of Founders鈥� Co-op, a Seattle based venture fund, participated in that first Innovation Roundtable. He noticed that similar universities with UW鈥檚 research funding had venture capital funds within their ecosystem. While state law prohibits the UW from investing directly in startups, there was an opportunity to bring more early seed funding to companies emerging from the school. Entrepreneurial success leads to entrepreneurial wealth, DeVore said, and fostering that cycle can lead to a number of positive outcomes.

鈥淚f we’re better at supporting entrepreneurs, it will, in the long run, support our advancement goals as an institution,鈥� he said. 鈥淭hat’s the capsule.鈥�

The UW has many cornerstones in place to support an innovation culture, but Pack Ventures taking on this work helps supplement and complete the landscape, said Mike Halperin, a member of the Innovation Roundtable, a life sciences investor and an enthusiastic UW supporter.

鈥淭here’s a different role to be played by a venture fund, and in particular one which has its DNA, its roots and its goals 100% in supporting the vision and mission of the 天美影视传媒, in support of the population of the state of Washington,鈥� Halperin said.

Horenstein earned his bachelor鈥檚 and master鈥檚 degrees at the UW and he already was mentoring participants at CoMotion, the innovation center that provides UW researchers with the tools, connections and acumen to transform ideas into economic and societal impact. Fran莽ois Baneyx, the CoMotion director and UW vice provost for innovation, said Horenstein has experience working for M12, Microsoft鈥檚 venture fund, and is a community builder who is equipped to deal with the complexity of running a fund.

鈥淜en has quickly become an integral part of the fabric of our innovation enterprise,鈥� Baneyx said. 鈥淗e talks to our alumni. He talks to our students. He’s really keen on helping build up the UW entrepreneurial ecosystem.鈥�

Now entering its second fund and its third year, Pack VC has raised more than $10 million from more than 100 investors and invested in 29 companies run by people that have connections to the UW, including faculty, students and alumni. These companies have raised more than $130 million in additional venture capital funding or grants.

Pack Ventures helps those organizations with mentorship and critical early funding. Investments can take years to realize gain 鈥� many companies fail early on 鈥� but some will breakthrough and deliver returns of up to 50 times the original investment. Unlike other venture funds that have high-dollar investment minimums for limited partners to get access to the fund returns, Pack Ventures lowered the initial threshold, actively embracing people who have been historically excluded from the venture marketplace.

The fund also hires UW graduate students to serve as fellows. Lucy Maynard, a bioengineering doctoral student and current Pack Ventures fellow, said the experience has demonstrated the fundamentals of meeting founders, doing due diligence, understanding the financials and writing investment memos. In the lab, Maynard is working on therapeutics that rewire biology, but she wanted to round out her experience.

鈥淰C has always been an avenue that’s been of interest to me,鈥� Maynard said. 鈥淚’ve seen science from the academic lens, I’ve seen it from the industry lens and I’ve had a few opportunities to sort of explore it from a startup lens. And so, VC was that final lens.鈥�

Pack Ventures checked the boxes, she said, especially the goal of cultivating entrepreneurship at UW and in the Pacific Northwest.

Rainfall Health CEO Ahmed 鈥楨ddie鈥� Qureshi was an UW undergraduate when he first developed a technology platform for better diagnostics. Since then, Qureshi has been building a digital health platform at Rainfall Health that leverages artificial intelligence to improve healthcare delivery to rural and underserved communities. He built the company as part of the Creative Destruction Lab program in the Foster School, and that鈥檚 when he met Horenstein and the team at Pack Ventures.

The meeting led to early seed funding 鈥� and today Rainfall Health has 11 employees and has received more than $3 million in two funding rounds from multiple investors, including prominent healthcare executives. They鈥檙e hoping to do for healthcare what Airbnb did for hospitality and Uber did for transportation 鈥� make healthcare accessible to the 70 million Americans who live two hours or more from a hospital. Building the business with mentors from Pack Ventures, the UW and the talent in the Pacific Northwest has helped Qureshi鈥檚 business flourish.

鈥淚t makes such a big difference when people are ready and willing to believe that the system can change and improve,鈥� Qureshi said. 鈥淭hat’s half the work right there.鈥�

Another startup to receive Pack Ventures investment dollars is Monod Bio, a spinout from UW Medicine鈥檚 Institute for Protein Design. GeekWire that Monod Bio and other spinouts from IPD now are valued at more than $1 billion. Monod Bio used technology built at the UW and optimized it for scientists to use in a laboratory, a multibillion-dollar industry. They鈥檙e also developing new clinical diagnostics. Founded in 2021, the company set up shop at and utilized facilities at Fluke Hall, said David Shoultz, a cofounder, chief operating officer and an affiliate professor of epidemiology in the School of Public Health.

鈥淭he first day, thanks to CoMotion and their incubation services, we were able to already have office and lab space,鈥� Shoultz said.

Pack Ventures injected capital in two rounds of funding and today Monod Bio has raised $25 million and has 26 employees operating in office and lab space in Seattle鈥檚 South Lake Union neighborhood. Despite the relatively small investment amount from Pack VC, the relationship has 鈥渙utsized鈥� value thanks to Horenstein鈥檚 strategic guidance and his ability to tap into a vast professional network.

Horenstein said he hopes to see innovations impact the world and not be limited to a laboratory.

鈥淲e’re progressing science,鈥� he said. 鈥淚 want to see it actually have an impact on patients or customers or industries.鈥�

Creative Destruction Lab, a nonprofit organization for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies, will launch its third U.S.-based location, CDL-Seattle, this fall. Based at the UW鈥檚 Foster School of Business, CDL-Seattle will be a partnership with Microsoft Corporation, the UW College of Engineering, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and CoMotion, UW鈥檚 collaborative innovation hub. The initial area of focus for CDL-Seattle is computational health.

“The rapid growth of new machine learning applications focused on enhancing human health combined with innovations in sensor technology and other complements has created a flood of new entrepreneurial opportunities that will benefit society,鈥� said Ajay Agrawal, founder, Creative Destruction Lab, and professor at the University of Toronto鈥檚 Rotman School of Management. 鈥淲e’re thrilled to partner with one of the world’s great research institutions, the 天美影视传媒, located in such a vibrant hub of global leaders in technology commercialization 鈥� the Seattle region.”

In January 2020, UW Provost Mark Richards announced the formation of the听UW Innovation Roundtable,听comprised of some of the region鈥檚 leading venture capitalists, angel investors and innovation leaders. One of the roundtable鈥檚 working groups, co-chaired by Emer Dooley, Pat Hughes Faculty Fellow at Foster, and Bill McAleer, founder of Voyager Capital, focused on identifying and assessing the best accelerator model to implement at UW. They evaluated five different models and selected Creative Destruction Lab as the best option.

A partnership of investors 鈥� Artie Buerk, Neal Dempsey, Bill McAleer, Rob Short and Steve Singh 鈥� backed CDL-Seattle, helping the initiative gain early momentum.

鈥淚 view CDL as an engine for scaling and funding deep-tech companies, which supports our brand of having an 鈥榠nnovation mindset,鈥欌�� said Frank Hodge, the Orin and Janet Smith Dean of the UW Foster School of Business. 鈥淚t will also offer students a highly experiential, hands-on entrepreneurial education and opportunities to work with startups in an objectives-based accelerator.鈥�

Over nine months, CDL鈥檚 program provides a marketplace for technical startup founders to learn from the insights of experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success.

The first focus area of computational health is well suited to the strengths of UW and the strength of the region in terms of computing, medicine and life sciences. While the past decade saw increasing use of digital health technology, the next decade will center on artificial intelligence and edge computing, with the proliferating use of health sensors. The field of computational health exists at the interface of biomedical signal processing, computational modeling, machine learning and health informatics to drive innovation in research, clinical and customer-facing applications.

鈥淐DL-Seattle is the missing link in the UW innovation ecosystem and our region,鈥� said Fran莽ois Baneyx, director of CoMotion, UW Vice Provost for Innovation, and the Charles W.H. Matthaei Professor of Chemical Engineering. 鈥淚t has the potential to transform and unify research and commercialization activities in the computational health space and will help establish Seattle as a center of gravity for these sectors, while growing the strengths we already have here.鈥�

鈥淭hink of computational health as a powerful tool in unraveling a complex big-data puzzle,鈥� said Dooley. 鈥淲hether it’s mapping the immune system, mining population health data to address inequity, or helping optimize individuals’ health care, AI and machine learning are essential tools. Washington state has incredible cloud computing, AI and machine learning expertise and a vibrant biotech sector. We need to bring the two closer together.鈥�

Experienced entrepreneurs who have founded, led and sold successful tech companies, along with world-leading scientists, engineers and economists, will serve as mentors to participating startups. In addition, UW students and faculty will have an opportunity to apply their expertise and learning to advance science- and technology-based companies in computational health. The successful commercialization of cutting-edge science and technology achieved through CDL, which began in Toronto, has already led to the creation of over $8 billion Canadian dollars in equity value.

Creative Destruction Lab is a nonprofit organization that delivers an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies. Its nine-month program allows founders to learn from experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success. Founded by Agrawal in 2012, the program has expanded to 10 sites across four countries: Oxford (Sa茂d Business School, University of Oxford), Paris (HEC Paris), Atlanta (Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology), Madison (Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Seattle (天美影视传媒, Foster School of Business), Vancouver (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia), Montreal (HEC Montr茅al), Calgary (Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary), and Halifax (Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University).

Selected ventures at UW will begin the nine-month CDL program in November 2021. For more questions, contact听cdl-seattle@creativedestructionlab.com. Applications are currently being accepted online at creativedestructionlab.com/apply.

听

Baneyx is also director of CoMotion, UW鈥檚 collaborative innovation hub dedicated to expanding the economic and societal impact of the UW community. In addition, he is the Charles W.H. Matthaei Professor of Chemical Engineering and an adjunct professor of Bioengineering, and the director of the Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales, a multi-institution Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the Department of Energy.

As Vice Provost for Innovation, Baneyx drives the long-term strategy and vision for UW鈥檚 innovation imperative. He helps promote the economic and societal impact of the university鈥檚 innovation activities, as well as explore and leverage emerging opportunities and global strategic partnerships that benefit UW鈥檚 innovation ecosystem.

鈥淔ran莽ois will lead the critical work of expanding the economic and social impact of our University鈥檚 innovators, and I am deeply grateful to him for bringing his creativity, expertise and commitment to this endeavor,鈥� Richards said.

The position reports directly to the Provost and is part of the President鈥檚 Cabinet.

On Monday, January 27, the 天美影视传媒 launched its inaugural Innovation Roundtable. Co-chaired by Baneyx and Bryan White, founder of Sahsen Ventures, the UW Innovation Roundtable represents a cross-section of the regional investment and economic development community, including leading venture capitalists, angel investors and innovation leaders. Its aim is to optimize technology transfer effectiveness, create a vibrant life science innovation ecosystem, and identify opportunities for private/public partnerships to advance UW鈥檚 economic and societal impact.

鈥淚 am very pleased to partner with such a fantastic group of people to help us continue to grow the innovation ecosystem at the UW and beyond,鈥� Baneyx said. 鈥淚 look forward to learning from them and am excited to see the positive results this group will yield.鈥�

Innovation Roundtable members serve as UW innovation ambassadors in the broader community, providing connections and ideas that may further the university鈥檚 innovation strategies. Members include:

• Adriane Brown, venture partner, Flying Fish
• Neal Dempsey, managing general partner, Bay Partners
• Chris DeVore, managing partner, Founders Co-Op
• Emer Dooley, executive director, Alliance of Angels Seed Fund; Faculty Fellow, Foster School of Business
• Greg Gottesman, co-founder and managing director, Pioneer Square Labs
• Mike Halperin, co-chair, UW General Campaign
• Ron Howell, CEO, Washington Research Foundation
• Charlotte Hubbert, partner, Gates Foundation Venture Capital
• Matt McIlwain, managing director, Madrona Venture Group
• Bill McAleer, founder and managing director, Voyager Capital
• Amit Mital, CEO and founder, Kernel Labs
• Susan Preston, managing member, SeaChange Fund, Seattle Angel Fund, and Element 8 Fund
• Sheila Remes, vice president of strategy, Boeing Commercial Airplanes
• Linden Rhoads, former vice provost of the UW Center for Commercialization
• Julie Sunderland, managing director, BioMatics Capital
• Tachi Yamada, venture partner, Frazier Healthcare Partners

Ex-Officio Members:

• Ana Mari Cauce, UW president
• Mark Richards, UW provost

Baneyx fills a position formerly held by Vikram Jandhyala, who died in March.

鈥淔ran莽ois is a respected researcher, teacher and innovator with connections throughout academia and industry, as well as firsthand experience with startups,鈥� Richards said. 鈥淚 am confident that with his interdisciplinary, collaborative approach to his work and leadership, Fran莽ois will build upon 颁辞惭辞迟颈辞苍鈥檚 success and further propel the University鈥檚 culture of innovation.鈥�

CoMotion is the UW鈥檚 collaborative innovation hub dedicated to expanding the economic and societal impact of the UW community. By developing and connecting to local and global innovation ecosystems, CoMotion helps innovators achieve the greatest impact for their discoveries.

Baneyx is the Charles W.H. Matthaei Professor of Chemical Engineering and an adjunct professor of bioengineering. His research lies at the confluence of engineering, biology and nanotechnology.

鈥淚 am honored to succeed Vikram at the helm of CoMotion and I look forward to helping our incredibly talented faculty and students innovate for the greater good,鈥� Baneyx said.

Baneyx currently directs the Center for the Science of Synthesis Across Scales, a multi-institution Energy Frontier Research Center funded by the U.S. Department of Energy. He previously served in a number of leadership positions at UW, including site director of the National Nanotechnology Infrastructure Network, director of the Center for Nanotechnology and most recently chair of the Department of Chemical Engineering. He is also the co-founder of , a UW spinoff.听Baneyx is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a member of the Washington State Academy of Sciences.

Baneyx earned a doctoral degree in chemical engineering from the University of Texas at Austin, was a postdoctoral researcher at DuPont and joined the UW faculty in 1992.

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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.

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.

A dozen scientists and engineers from the 天美影视传媒 have been elected to the . According to a statement released by the organization, the new members were selected for “their outstanding record of scientific achievement and willingness to work on behalf of the academy in bringing the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.”

Three of the new members from UW were chosen because they had been elected recently to one of the National Academies 鈥� the National Academy of Sciences, the National Academy of Engineering and the National Academy of Medicine. The other nine were elected by current members.

In all, UW faculty make up half of the 24 new members, who will be formally inducted in September during an annual meeting at the Museum of Flight in Seattle.

Elected through recent admission to a National Academy:

: professor of computer science and engineering, to the National Academy of Engineering

: professor of atmospheric sciences, to the National Academy of Sciences

: professor of pediatrics, director of the Center for Clinical and Translational Research and associate director of the Pediatric Clinical Research Center at Seattle Children鈥檚, to the National Academy of Medicine

Elected by current members of the Washington State Academy of Sciences:听听

: professor and chair of chemical engineering, adjunct professor of bioengineering

: professor of sociology

: associate professor of physiology and biophysics

: professor of oceanography

: professor of nursing, adjunct professor of medicine

: professor of environmental and forest sciences

: professor and chair of bioengineering

: professor of biochemistry, professor of chemistry

: professor of chemical engineering, director of the Clean Energy Institute, adjunct professor of materials science and engineering

Incorporated by legislation in 2007, the Washington State Academy of Sciences initially had just 105 members. With this new crop of members from UW and other institutions around the state, the academy’s total membership will rise to 264. The academy’s mission is “to provide expert scientific and engineering analysis to inform public policymaking in Washington, and to increase the role and visibility of science in the state.”

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For more information, contact James Urton in the UW Office of News & Information at 206-543-2580 or jurton@uw.edu.

天美影视传媒 engineers hope a new type of vaccine they have shown to work in mice will one day make it cheaper and easy to manufacture on-demand vaccines for humans. Immunizations could be administered within minutes where and when a disease is breaking out.

“We’re really excited about this technology because it makes it possible to produce a vaccine on the spot. For instance, a field doctor could see the beginnings of an epidemic, make vaccine doses right away, and blanket vaccinate the entire population in the affected area to prevent the spread of an epidemic,” said , a UW professor of chemical engineering and lead author of a recent published online in the journal .

The research was funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

In typical vaccines, weakened pathogens or proteins found on the surface of microbes and viruses are injected into the body along with compounds called adjuvants to prepare a person’s immune system to fight a particular disease. But standard formulations don’t always work, and the field is seeking ways to manufacture vaccines quicker, cheaper and tailored to specific infectious agents, Baneyx said.

The UW team injected mice with nanoparticles synthesized using an engineered protein that both mimics the effect of an infection and binds to calcium phosphate, the inorganic compound found in teeth and bones. After eight months, mice that contracted the disease made threefold the number of protective “killer” T-cells 鈥� a sign of a long-lasting immune response 鈥� compared with mice that had received the protein but no calcium phosphate nanoparticles.

The听nanoparticles听appear to work by ferrying the protein to the lymph nodes where they have a higher chance of meeting dendritic cells, a type of immune cell that is scarce听in the skin and muscles, but听plays a key role in activating strong immune听responses.

In a real-life scenario, genetically engineered proteins based on those displayed at the surface of pathogens would be freeze-dried or dehydrated and mixed with water, calcium and phosphate to make the nanoparticles. This should work with many different diseases and be especially useful for viral infections that are hard to vaccinate against, Baneyx said.

He cautioned, however, that it has only been proven in mice, and the development of vaccines using this method hasn’t begun for humans.

The approach could be useful in the future for vaccinating people in developing countries, especially when lead time and resources are scarce, Baneyx said. It would cut costs by not having to rely on refrigeration, and vaccines could be produced with rudimentary equipment in more precise, targeted numbers. The vaccines could be manufactured and delivered using a disposable patch, like a bandage, which could one day lessen the use of trained personnel and hypodermic needles.

Co-authors of the paper are Weibin Zhou, Albanus Moguche and David Chiu of the UW, and Kaja Murali-Krishna of Emory University.

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For more information, contact Baneyx at baneyx@uw.edu or 206-685-7659.