Pulling the strings: How stem cells in the developing fruit fly brain organize their DNA from outside the nucleus

Cells are very particular about the proper locations of their contents. For example, DNA is packaged in the nucleus in a highly specific way, but researchers are still trying to understand how this happens. For stem cells in the brain of a larval fruit fly ā€” model organisms used to study processes such as early development ā€” the DNA is organized so that the center of each strand, called the centromere, is at the top of the nucleus. In a paper in the Journal of Cell Biology, UW researchers describe how proteins outside the nucleus work alongside proteins inside the nucleus to control the position of centromeres. The researchers observed this mechanism by imaging stem cells within larval fruit fly brains and then using machine learning to measure how centromere locations change when specific proteins are removed. The research team also followed the locations of two specific genes that are far away from the centromeres. Both genes lost their usual positions in the nucleus when the centromeres strayed from their normal location, suggesting that proper centromere positioning may be important for orienting the rest of the DNA in the nucleus. Studying how and why DNA is organized in these stem cells can help researchers better understand how stem cells are regulated and how brains develop.

For more information, contact lead author Jennifer Taylor, UW postdoc in biology, at jatay@uw.edu.ĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢż

The other UW co-author is . A full list of funding is .

Micro language models let AI run instantly on small devices like smartwatches

Though artificial intelligence can refer to many technologies, the current AI boom has been driven by large language models, or LLMs. They power chatbots and AI agents by running predictions based on ever-increasing amounts of variables called ā€œparameters.ā€ Current cutting-edge models are estimated to have several trillion parameters, making them far too large to run on slower phones or small devices like smartwatches. In a paper at EMNLP 2026, UW researchers introduced ā€œmicro language models,ā€ which run with 8-30 million parameters. These models are small enough to run on devices with limited computing power and give users instant responses that fill the lag before the device can access an LLM through the cloud. For instance, a user could ask their smartwatch a question and the micro language model would start responding instantly; then after four to eight words, the LLM would complete the response. The micro language model made mistakes in 4% to 8% of responses that the other model corrected seamlessly before continuing. In a user study, nine out of 10 participants preferred the paired system to the lagging responses from only a cloud model.

For more information, contact ulm@cs.washington.edu or visit .

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

Policy gaps impact migrant fishers in Washington state

The commercial fishing industry is key to Washingtonā€™s maritime economy, but there are concerns about exploitation and forced labor among fishers. While much of industry is regulated by the Washington Department of Fish and Wildlife, exemptions in U.S. law mean some vessels arenā€™t subject to the same citizenship requirements. A research team from the UW Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies recently focused on understanding the experiences of migrant fishers pursuing albacore tuna, a highly migratory species, who dock or unload at ports in Washington state. Researchers found the exemptions allow migrant fishers to work without authorization or visas, leaving them vulnerable to forced labor and exploitation. Meanwhile, complicated policy and regulatory frameworks make it difficult to address workersā€™ rights violations. The researchers gathered information from 15 migrant fishers, 14 U.S. citizen fishers, and more than 35 subject matter experts. Every migrant fisher interviewed by the team reported experiences aligned with the International Labour Organizationā€™s indicators of forced labor, and both migrant and U.S. citizen fishers reported difficult living and working conditions. Approaches to combating forced labor are varied and uneven, the researchers found, and additional work is needed to better understand and support the needs of Washingtonā€™s fishers. Along with the full report, the team also published .

For more information, contact , research director at the Bridges Center, at rerstad@uw.edu.

The other UW co-authors are , and .

Burrowing shrimp are on the move in a mudflat near you

Burrowing shrimp are a pest well known to shellfish growers. These pale-bodied creatures excavate mud as they dig into the ground, creating piles of sediment that suffocate oysters and clams growing on the surface. In estuaries on the west coast, shrimp beds reach densities of hundreds of shrimp per square meter, but the boundaries of beds change. in Estuarine, Coastal and Shelf Science shows that shrimp beds move up to 100 feet each year. The study took place at Willapa Bay over the course of three years and is the first to quantify how rapidly the boundaries of these beds shift over time. Researchers still donā€™t know why the shrimp move, but they observed a clear pattern in the ecosystem. Shrimp change the texture of sediment by eating organic matter and releasing finer particles, so sediment becomes muddier and more compact once they leave. After several years, these abandoned beds were colonized by eelgrass, a marker of ecosystem health. This ā€œengineeringā€ effect was less evident in areas where moving water keeps mud from settling. Studying these rapid shifts and the types of sediment left behind could ultimately help shellfish growers better protect their product.

For more information, contact co-author Jennifer Ruesink, a UW professor of biology, at ruesink@uw.edu.ĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢżĢż

The other UW co-authors are Wesley Hull, Haleh Mawson, and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

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UPDATE October 28, 2026: This story has been updated to correct when Marie Gluesenkamp Perez flipped District 3.

Ballots have been mailed to Washington residents, and the will take place on Nov. 3.Ģż

Between critical contests across the country, prominent gubernatorial races and divisive ballot initiatives, there will be plenty to watch on Election Day. All 435 seats in the U.S. House of Representatives and 35 Senate seats are up for a vote. Democrats need a net gain of four seats in the House and four seats in the Senate to overturn the Republican majorities in both.

UW News spoke with and , professors of political science at the ŗŚĮĻĄĻĖ¾»ś, about midterm election trends, what theyā€™re watching statewide and nationally, and more.

What will you be watching most closely in Washington state and/or nationally?

James Long: On the state level, is very competitive. Incumbent Marie Gluesenkamp Perez, a Democrat, won the district by about 4 points in 2024, having flipped it from Republican to Democrat control in 2022. This year, she is running against a Republican candidate, state senator John Braun. While all congressional races have a certain degree of localism and variation in candidate quality with respect to what matters in close races, should Gluesenkamp Perez hold onto the seat ā€” and by a healthy margin ā€” that could be a bellwether for how Democrats expect to perform in close House races nationwide. Similarly, if Braun flips the district back to Republican control, it could suggest that Republican losses across the country may not be as bad as many expect.

There are in Washington, all of which are controversial and speak to some current “culture war” divisions between the left and the right. I don’t have a sense of which of these initiatives will succeed or fail ā€” polling on them is notoriously difficult. Voters may change their minds due to exposure to a variety of ads. They may also decide by reverting to how they view national conversations around parents’ involvement in educational curriculum, trans athletes in K-12 schools, and greater taxation of the wealthy in terms of whether and how they vote on these measures.

Mark Smith: In Washington, Iā€™m particularly interested in the three ballot initiatives, especially . The state legislature is counting on the revenue from this tax in 2028. If the tax is repealed, the legislature will need to make major changes in their projected budget, with downstream effects for the UW.Ģż

Nationally, Iā€™m closely watching the competitive , partly because thatā€™s where Iā€™m from, but also because Ohio tells the tale of the changing geography of American politics. Ohio used to be considered a bellwether state, and it was the tipping-point state as recently as 2004. If John Kerry won Ohio, which he lost by only 2.1%, he would have been elected president. Since then, Ohio has trended strongly red. If Democrats win the Senate and governorā€™s races there, and polls have them favored in both, that would be a noteworthy result. If Democrats can win Senate seats in other red states such as Kansas, Iowa, Alaska and Texas, that would also grab my attention.Ģż

What are the factors likely to impact voter behavior in these midterms?

JL: For Congressional races nationwide, this election really seems to be a referendum on Donald Trump and Republican control of Congress. It’s been a period of single party control across the executive and legislative branches, so it’s not unusual for the incumbent president and party to be the main focal point in a midterm election. Moreover, Trump’s and the Republicans’ policies are deeply unpopular with the American people, including the war with Iran, tariffs and the inability to tackle affordability.

MS: At the risk of sounding pedantic, itā€™s highly variable from person to person. Who people vote for, and whether they vote at all, is driven by a complicated combination of factors. Still, we can parse out some systematic effects that apply more generally. One of them is the dropoff in voter turnout of about 20% between presidential and midterm years. Twenty years ago, the kinds of people who always vote in midterm years were disproportionately voting Republican. Now they are disproportionately voting Democratic. Another way of saying that ā€” based on the off-year elections in 2025 and the polling we have this year ā€” is there will be more people who voted for Donald Trump in 2024 and donā€™t vote in 2026. Thatā€™s opposed to people who voted for Kamala Harris in 2024 and will stay home in 2026.

What patterns tend to emerge historically in midterm elections, and do you predict those patterns will hold this year?

MS: Since the time of World War II, the presidentā€™s party has lost an average of about 26 seats in the House and four seats in the Senate. But now regional polarization and gerrymandering have reduced the number of competitive House races, so itā€™s unlikely that Democrats will reach that average of 26 seats. But they only need to gain four to take the majority of the House. In the Senate, curiously, they need the same net gain of four seats to reach a majority. Current polling and prediction markets indicate that Democrats are likely to get there for both the House and Senate ā€” though itā€™s somewhat less likely with the Senate. The fact that Republican PACs and committees are redirecting money toward states and districts they would normally win handily suggests that they fear a blue wave.

JL: It’s not just about whether there is a ā€œblue waveā€ in Congress, which many observers are predicting. The margin of that seat gain and the margins of victory within districts also helps measure the depth of pro-Democratic Party support, or anti-Republican sentiment, which I believe will inform candidates from both parties who are thinking of running in the 2028 presidential cycle.

What issues currently appear to be most important to voters?

JL: Affordability, affordability, affordability. Joe Biden, Kamala Harris and the Democrats were unpopular in 2024 because inflation had not declined enough according to voters. Two years later, inflation is now growing at a higher rate than it was when Trump took office. A host of other policies, such as oil prices resulting from the U.S. attack on Iran and Trump’s tariffs, have hit the pocketbooks of every American, including those in rural areas who supported Trump and Republicans in 2024.Ģż

It’s not so much that the Democrats have provided an alternative set of policies that voters find popular as it is that Trump and the Republicans are the focal point and it’s a brand whose stock has been declining of late.Ģż

Moreover, candidates like Jon Ossoff ā€” who is running for Senate reelection in Georgia and is a 2028 presidential candidate contender ā€” have gained popularity by tying the affordability crisis to Trump and those in his orbit. While everyday Americans have seen wages flatten and costs rise, Trump, his family and his allies have grown enormously wealthy at the same time.

MS: One good source of data is the Gallup organization, which regularly asks Americans, ā€œWhat do you think is the most important problem facing this country today?ā€ , the answers in order were the government/poor leadership (30%), high cost of living/inflation (13%), economy in general (11%), immigration (10%) and war in the Middle East (7%). The first three of those and the fifth clearly favor Democrats, with the fourth ā€” immigration ā€” hard to discern without more information. You donā€™t want to be the party in power when the government is perceived to be performing poorly and high prices are making even the essentials unaffordable for many people.

There have been as President Donald Trump has expressed his desire to exert more control. How serious are these potential threats?

MS: He on his biggest chance to exert more control, through restricting voting by mail. Some version of that proposal could come back, because the Supreme Court did not foreclose it entirely, but not in 2026. Anyone who lived through Jan. 6, however, would be foolish to say, ā€œIt canā€™t happen here.ā€Ģż

There has been speculation about President Trump sending federal law enforcement agents to polling places, or asserting widespread fraud and confiscating ballots or polling equipment after the election is held. Such an outcome becomes more likely if the election overall, or in certain important places, is very close. However, I would not rule it out even for a wave election. He could also take other, harder-to-predict actions to affect the results.

JL: I think explicit threats, and Trump has historically and in this cycle made them, should always be taken seriously. Whether or not they are successful is another matter. Trump and some Republican allies have attempted measures to restrict voting, suppress turnout, control mail-in ballots, and more, but have mostly been stopped so far by the courts, and the strategies don’t seem to be working. It mostly seems half-baked, but so did the “fake elector” scheme in 2020 that led to the riot, so protecting electoral integrity always requires eternal vigilance.

No doubt should Trump and the Republicans receive a “” ā€” as President Barack Obama famously admitted when the Democrats suffered heavy losses in Congress in 2010 ā€” he will call the result “rigged” and likely spread misinformation about the election’s integrity. He appears ready to contest results, as . He has learned this is a costless way to avoid admitting defeat and it remains popular among his MAGA base. That said, evidence of any vote tampering should be investigated and, if it comes to it, adjudicated by the relevant judicial authority.

For more information, contact Lauren Kirschman at lkirsc@uw.edu.

Source

Itā€™s not unusual for students to ask why heā€™s so dressed up for class, but his answer often takes them by surprise.

Goldman, a teaching professor of chemistry at the ŗŚĮĻĄĻĖ¾»ś, often goes directly from work to meetings for his other position: for Lake Forest Park, a suburb of Seattle. Heā€™s been a council member since 2022 and is currently serving his second term, which runs through 2029.

Science came naturally to Goldman. He decided to major in chemistry during an Advanced Placement class in high school and chose to teach as a postdoctoral scholar, but his venture into civics was ā€œmore serendipitous.ā€ When a friend on the council first approached him with the idea in April 2021, Goldman all but scoffed.

ā€œThatā€™s not my personality,ā€ he said. ā€œIā€™m not the most gregarious person. I tend to be much more analytical, so I wouldnā€™t have envisioned myself being a politician. I also think there is a stereotype that you have to have studied political science or you have to be a lawyer to be in politics. Iā€™m a chemistry teacher.ā€

But Goldmanā€™s friend insisted he only needed to be passionate about the community to be an effective council member. A month later, he decided to run. In order to run for office in Lake Forest Park, a person must only be a registered voter of the city and have lived there at least one year.

ā€œI think my friend was completely correct in that each council member brings a different scope,ā€ Goldman said. ā€œI really took that to heart. Some people are more experienced in land use while others know construction design or finances or can analyze data.ā€

Lake Forest Park covers an area of 3.4 miles in King County. The city has an estimated population of 13,630 as of the 2020 Census. More than 18% of the population is aged 65 and over, while 21% of the population is 21 and under.

Goldman’s focus is on environmental issues and public transit. Lake Forest Park tends to be car-centric, Goldman said, so his goal is to make it easier for people to bike or walk to transit.Ģż He doesnā€™t own a car, so he commutes to work at the UW by bus.Ģż

ā€œThere is no reason to be pigeonholed,ā€ Goldman said. ā€œThere is no reason for people to think, ā€˜Oh, Iā€™m in science and youā€™re in politics and those two things are totally separate.ā€™ Scientific literacy is critical for the general population.ā€

Goldman has also found overlap in the skills he uses for his two roles. While professors teach individually, they collaborate on topics like course ideas, textbooks and changing the curriculum.

ā€œA lot of the decisions in the chemistry department are made through mutual consensus,ā€ Goldman said. ā€œI bring that mindset to the city council. There will be some disagreements, but itā€™s the same process of: Where does everyone start from? What are we already in agreement on? What do we need to reach an agreement?ā€

Sitting on the council has also given Goldman a more complete understanding of what it takes to manage a budget, which has helped him grasp the operational and capital expenses in the chemistry department and the College of Arts & Sciences.

By sharing about his path with students, Goldman hopes to illuminate career options outside the traditional chemistry track. Many graduates remain in academia or pursue pre-med or similar paths, but there is a lot of middle ground, Goldman said. Students could consider going into law or using their chemistry knowledge to become a professional consultant.

ā€œThere are a lot of alternative approaches,ā€ Goldman said. ā€œAnd having politicians who are knowledgeable about science will make any science-related legislation that much more effective. I want to encourage people not to separate science from politics.ā€

As for Goldman, his political ambitions end here. You wonā€™t see him campaigning for any county or state posts.

ā€œYou wouldn’t be the first person to ask,ā€ Goldman said. ā€œHonestly, it took a bit of arm-twisting to get me to run in the first place. This is not a stepping stone. I’m happy in my own little quiet neck of the woods.ā€

For more information, contact Goldman at goldmanl@uw.edu.

Source

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

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

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

Multitasking gives marine microbes an edge when nutrients are scarce

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

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

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

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

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

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

A full list of co-authors and funding is .

How Colombian environmentalists use law and democracy to redefine mountain landscapes

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

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

Funding information is .

Researchers develop new way to measure how blood clots form

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

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

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

UW researchers probe superconducting materials that defy expectations

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

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

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

Source

Frequent news headlines and rising gas prices are constant reminders of the fuel shortage linked to the war in Iran. But energy crises are about more than oil and geopolitics, say and , who co-teach ā€œCommunication, Design and the Environmentā€ in the ŗŚĮĻĄĻĖ¾»śā€™s Communication Leadership program.

Muren, a teaching professor of design, and Russell, a professor of communication, examine environmental problems from a perspective beyond the hard sciences. They are currently working on a book that explores how the systems we design and the stories we tell shape the relationship between society and the living world.

UW News spoke to Muren and Russell about what todayā€™s energy crises reveal about contemporary societiesā€™ dependence on fossil fuels and how we can create a ā€œsolar-powered system.ā€Ģż

The war in Iran has put energy back at the center of public debate. What stands out to you about the conversation we’re having?

Adrienne Russell: To me, itā€™s impressive how quickly the conversation ā€” in the news media mostly ā€” narrowed to . Where will the oil come from? How quickly can markets stabilize? What will happen to prices? Those are important questions, but they’re also very familiar. Every energy crisis seems to produce the same script. We talk about rather than asking why our societies are organized in ways that make them so vulnerable to disruptions in the first place.

Dominic Muren: Exactly. We tend to treat these moments as temporary interruptions to an otherwise normal system. But they’re also reminders that the system itself depends on finite resources and exceptional geopolitical stability. The crisis isn’t just exposing a shortage of oil; it’s exposing assumptions about how much energy we expect to have available and how our economies are built around that expectation.

What assumptions are built into this way of thinking?

DM: The biggest assumption is that energy should always be available in whatever quantity society demands. When supply falls short, we assume the problem is getting more energy, not reconsidering the expectations that created that demand. That assumption feels natural today, but of the fossil-fuel era.

AR: Those assumptions become embedded in everyday life. We stop noticing that overnight shipping, long commutes, streaming entertainment or all depend on enormous amounts of energy. They begin to feel like ordinary features of modern life instead of choices made possible by a particular energy system.

What are the material consequences of thinking about energy this way?

DM: We respond to crises by reinforcing the very system that created them. The was widely expected to trigger a dramatic spike in global oil prices. Instead, the shock was muted, in part because China rapidly shifted away from imported oil and relied more heavily on domestically produced coal. Economically, that reduced dependence on imported oil. Environmentally, however, it came at a significant cost: than oil per unit of energy, so avoiding one crisis just increased another.Ģż

Even China’s massive electric vehicle fleet ā€” normally a climate advantage ā€” became more carbon-intensive because the electricity charging those vehicles increasingly came from coal rather than lower-carbon sources. From a climate perspective, that represents a significant step backward.

AR: We’re seeing similar patterns elsewhere. In the United States, the war in Iran has been in California and in the name of energy security. Each crisis becomes a justification for extracting more rather than asking why our societies remain so dependent on these fuels in the first place.Ģż

In other words, the immediate response is often to stabilize today’s energy system, even if doing so locks in higher emissions tomorrow. We end up reversing much of the progress we’ve made in reducing greenhouse gas emissions because we’re treating the symptoms instead of addressing the underlying design of the system.

How have fossil fuels shaped contemporary society and our expectations?

DM: Fossil fuels gave us access to enormous stores of concentrated energy accumulated over millions of years. That allowed societies to expand production, transportation and consumption at unprecedented scales. Over time, we built our cities, economies and institutions around the expectation that this on-demand abundance could continue indefinitely. But this Ģż

AR: Fossil fuels and their infrastructures are one of the most powerful sense-making systems ever built. They have trained societies to expect continuous expansion. Because that expectation feels natural, it rarely appears as a choice; it appears as reality. That’s why energy shocks are so often misread. When supply is disrupted, the instinct is to restore the flow and return to “normal.” But that normal isn’t neutral. It’s a high-energy system organized around the assumption that growth has no meaningful limits. Energy crises aren’t interruptions to that system ā€” they’re the moments when those assumptions collide with physical reality.Ģż

DM: And because those systems become invisible, so do the assumptions they create. Continuous access to energy begins to feel like a law of nature rather than the outcome of a vast physical and political system. So when disruptions occur, we focus on repairing the flow instead of questioning the system that made uninterrupted flow seem inevitable.Ģż

We could counter this tendency by recognizing that the only long-term source of energy available to life on Earth is the continuous flow of . Every fossil fuel we burn is nothing more than stored sunlight from the distant past. And like any finite reserve, it will eventually run out. What is guaranteed is the steady income of energy from the sun we receive each day, nearly unchanged from one sunrise to the next. Long before humans, life on Earth already adapted to this reality. Plants learned to capture sunlight directly, while animals survived by consuming those that did. Growth has always depended on access to this continuous energy flow. The point is not that we need more solar panels. It is that we need to think like a solar-powered system.

What does it mean to think like a solar-powered system? What would have to change, politically and culturally?

DM: A solar-powered system is one that aligns its activity with incoming energy rather than assuming limitless withdrawals from stored capital. Instead of designing around unlimited energy and perpetual expansion, we’d design around timing, sufficiency, resilience and adaptation. It’s not simply a technological shift; it’s a different way of imagining how society should function with whatever technologies ā€” past, currentĢż or yet-to-be-invented ā€” make that possible.

The transition isn’t simply replacing fossil fuels with renewable technologies. It’s replacing the mindset fossil fuels made possible. If we continue expecting unlimited growth while changing only the energy source, we’ll recreate many of the same problems in a different form. supports this.Ģż A durable transition means learning to organize society around the energy that is actually available, rather than around the illusion of limitless reserves.Ģż

AR: We would have to rethink many of the assumptions we’ve inherited about progress and abundance. Much of contemporary culture treats continual expansion as both natural and desirable. Changing energy systems requires changing those stories as well.

For more information, contact Russell at adruss@uw.edu and Muren at dmuren@uw.edu.

Source

UPDATE Aug. 20, 2026: This story has been updated to include a faculty member who was originally omitted.Ģż

Twelve faculty members at the ŗŚĮĻĄĻĖ¾»ś have been elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences. They are among 30 scientists and educators from across the state July 16 as new members. Election recognizes the new memberā€™s ā€œoutstanding record of scientific and technical achievement and willingness to assist the Academy in providing the best available scientific information and technical understanding to inform complex policy decisions in Washington.ā€

New WSAS members are selected by current members or by their election to national science academies. All 11 UW faculty members were voted on by current WSAS members:Ģż

, chair and PACCAR Endowed Professor of mechanical engineering and adjunct professor of neurological surgery and of aeronautics and astronautics, for ā€œsignificant contributions to scientific understanding of multiphase and biomedical flows, including the role of fluid mechanics on arterial disease, heart failure, biomedical devices, and surgical planning for respiratory disease, through work combining rigorous experimentation and analysis that has influenced both engineering and clinical practice.ā€

, professor of materials science and engineering, for ā€œpioneering research on structureā€“processingā€“property relationships and the aging of hard tissues that has shaped modern oral health science, and for influential contributions to advanced manufacturing, biomechanics, and bioinspired materials ā€” coupled with exemplary educational leadership ā€” that have made a lasting impact across disciplines and the STEM community.ā€

, professor of health economics and Stergachis Family Endowed Director of The CHOICE Institute, for ā€œpioneering health economic methods ā€” including causal estimation of personalized treatment effects, cost-effectiveness frameworks, and value-of-information analysis ā€” that have shaped national drug pricing policies, international discussions on the economics of innovation, and the scientific foundations of the economics of precision medicine.ā€

, affiliate professor of health services and biostatistics and professor in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, for ā€œpioneering statistical models that transformed cancer early detection and screening policy, reshaping national and global guidelines and advancing equitable public health decisionā€‘making, and for exceptional leadership, crossā€‘disciplinary collaboration, and mentorship, influencing generations of scientists.ā€

, Charles O. Cressey Endowed Professor of social work and executive co-director of the Indigenous Wellness Research Institute, for ā€œpioneering research across historical trauma, cultural buffers, and healing; substance use/misuse prevention; indigenous health disparities and family wellness; and youth health interventions.ā€

, Endowed Professor in Prevention in the School of Social Work and director of the Social Development Research Group, for ā€œcontributions to the economic assessment of prevention programs addressing substance abuse and mental health, and for advancing community-engaged research, and effective communication of findings to different audiences.ā€

, director of and research professor in the UW School of Marine and Environmental Affairs, for ā€œleadership and contributions in ecosystem-based management, salmon conservation, urban ecology, and pioneering contributions to the development of social-ecological approaches to environmental problem solving.ā€

, research professor of epidemiology and associate director for public health sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center for ā€œintegrating largeā€‘scale genomic, environmental, and tumor data to advance colorectal cancer prevention and reduce population disparities, and for her leadership at Fred Hutch, shaping precision prevention and population health science.ā€

, affiliate professor of environmental engineering and chief scientist and laboratory fellow emeritus at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, for ā€œhis seminal leadership and sustained contributions to soil and agricultural science and environmental geosciences, spanning basic and applied research, university-level teaching and mentoring, and exceptional service.ā€

, professor of bioengineering, the Dr. James B. Bassingthwaighte Endowed Faculty Fellow in Bioengineering, director of the Center for Translational Muscle Research, andĢż associate chair of research and translation for the Department of Bioengineering, for ā€œinternationally recognized leadership in discovering the molecular mechanisms of contractile dysfunction with familial genetic mutations that lead to muscle dysfunction with disease, the design of novel, targeted therapies, and training the next generation of scientists and engineers to have further impact in understanding and treating heart failure and skeletal muscle diseases.ā€

Dr. , professor and chair of radiology in UW Medicine, for ā€œcontributions to the science and clinical practice of radiological imaging and for leadership in national programs and professional and scientific societies that advance academic radiology.ā€

, affiliate professor of civil and environmental engineering and chief scientist at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, for “pioneering the integration of climate science with power systems studies through computational, data-driven, experimental approaches, resulting in significant cost savings for energy customers and a safer, more reliable grid.”

Additionally, Dr. , professor emerita of global health and of medicine and epidemiology in the UW School of Medicine, was elected to the WSAS Board of Directors. Wassersheit has been a member of WSAS since 2008. An infectious disease physician and epidemiologist, Dr. Wasserheit played a central role in launching the UW Department of Global Health and served as chair from 2014-2022. She also served as co-director for the UW Alliance for Pandemic Preparedness. She was the founding chief of the U.S. National Institute of Healthā€™s Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Research Branch, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Preventionā€™s STD/HIV Prevention Program and director of the FHCRC-based HIV Vaccine Trials Network. Her work on epidemiological synergy between HIV and sexually transmitted infections has shaped prevention policy worldwide.

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New design process accelerates the discovery of advanced materials

Flexible materials that combine mechanical flexibility with high thermal or electrical conductivity are essential for wearables, stretchable electronics and soft robotic systems. To identify new composite materials with those properties, researchers typically create and test many different material formulations, a process that can be time-consuming, expensive and lead to waste. , UW researchers developed a new ā€œinverse design frameworkā€ that reverses the standard design process to speed up the discovery of multifunctional materials. The framework starts with the desired material properties for a specific application ā€” such as wearable electronics ā€” and works backward to determine the optimal material composition using physics-based modeling and machine learning. Experiments showed that a material identified by the framework achieved about 60% higher thermal conductivity while reducing material cost by about 10%, compared to materials that were previously used.Ģż

For more information, contact senior author , UW assistant professor of mechanical engineering.Ģż

The other co-authors are Lijun Zhou, Yunsik Ohm, Ren-Mian Chin, Olivia Kerr and Krithika Manohar.

Climate models get a vote of confidence in a new UW study mapping tropical ocean temperature over time

Climate models help researchers understand how conditions are changing over time to forecast what is likely to happen in the future. Predicting extreme heat, drought or flooding years in advance can give people time to prepare, but the accuracy of these predictions varies. Scientists test models by asking them to recreate past climate and comparing those predictions with observational data. Although modern climate models get a lot of things right, they often fail to replicate recent temperature change in the tropical Pacific Ocean, a key region for global weather. This has concerned scientists, but a UW study offers a glimmer of hope. The researchers found that climate models could successfully replicate temperature trends in the equatorial Pacific when they expanded the window of observation by 20 years. Including more data allowed the models to better account for climate variability, which can create long-lasting fluctuations in temperature and precipitation that arenā€™t always indicative of a general trend.Ģż

For more information, contact senior author Matt Luongo, UW postdoctoral fellow in the Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, & Ecosystem Studies and School of Oceanography at mluongo@uw.edu.

The other UW co-author is . A full list of co-authors is .

Paternal body odor increases brain-to-brain synchrony with infants

Infant brains recognize their fathers as unique social partners, showing stronger brain-to-brain synchrony with their fathers compared to unfamiliar males during social interactions. A new study also shows that when infants interact with unfamiliar males while exposed to their fathersā€™ body odor, their brain synchrony increases to levels similar to those seen with their own fathers. Further, exposure to paternal body odor increased infants’ positive arousal. These findings suggest that infants use their fathersā€™ scent as an important social cue, even when the father is not physically present. Researchers also found that father-infant synchrony involved a different neural rhythm than previously observed in mother-infant interactions, suggesting that mothers and fathers may support development through complementary neural pathways. Combined, these findings reveal a previously unknown role of paternal body odor as a sensory signal that contributes to early social and brain development.

For more information, contact , co-author and a research scientist in the UW Institute for Learning and Brain Sciences.Ģż

The other co-authors are Linoy Schwartz and Ruth Feldman.

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affects approximately 23 million people worldwide, with onset usually occurring during a personā€™s late adolescence to their 20s. Impairments associated with schizophrenia include hallucinations, delusions and disorganized thinking and behavior.

Now, researchers at the ŗŚĮĻĄĻĖ¾»ś are investigating how genetic changes impact the severity of schizophrenia symptoms. A new study, , supports the idea that deletions in genes that regulate early brain and neuron development are associated with more severe features of schizophrenia spectrum disorders, particularly lower cognitive abilities.

How schizophrenia manifests ā€” and how severely ā€” differs between patients. Poorer cognitive functioning in schizophrenia is associated with more treatment-resistant forms of the disease. , co-author and assistant professor of psychology at the UW, said understanding early developmental genetic factors could help identify people who could benefit from earlier, targeted inventions.

ā€œFor a subset of individuals, we may need to be thinking about how we can create treatments earlier in brain development that will help compensate for the fact that certain genes are being deleted,ā€ Forsyth said. ā€œIs there some kind of medication that can help with that? Down the road, could there be gene therapies for some of these individuals? I do think this research is going to be important for changing treatment direction.ā€

The researchers studied the DNA of more than 600 people with schizophrenia spectrum disorders. The team compared these results to data from patients’ relatives, people without schizophrenia and nearly 10,000 children participating in the .Ģż

People with schizophrenia who carried the deletions tended to perform worse on cognitive tests ā€” showing poorer memory, thinking and attention skills than people with schizophrenia who didnā€™t carry the deletions. Similar, weaker associations were also seen in the general population, which suggests these variants may influence brain development more broadly, even in individuals without schizophrenia.

The study also showed these specific genetic deletions were associated with differences in brain structure, including higher gray matter volume and cortical thickness. This is the opposite pattern researchers typically see on average in schizophrenia, Forsyth said, which again suggests variability between patients.

ā€œThis study helps us understand the specific way somebody manifests a disorder,ā€ Forsyth said. ā€œItā€™s sort of a cumulative effect of different risk profiles. We all carry tons of genetic variants, and the specific types of variants we have and how they combine is very complicated. These things arenā€™t totally deterministic, but I do think understanding which specific aspects of brain development are affected by the genetic variants a person carries, and how this shapes how the disorder manifests, can start to inform how we think about different treatment approaches.ā€

Other UW co-authors were graduate students Jinhan Zhu, Zachary Trevorrow and Mahnoor Hyat, undergraduate research assistant Ariana Chavannes, research coordinator Sam Sievertsen and research technologist Sophie Ferreira-Ianone. , a UW senior research scientist in biostatistics, was also a co-author.

A is included with the study.

This study was funded by the National Institute of Mental Health, the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation, the National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences UCLA Clinical and Translational Science Institute, the UCLA Brain Research Institute and the Shear Family Foundation.

For more information, contact Forsyth at jenforsy@uw.edu.

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Arguably the most important crop on Earth, rice has been cultivated for roughly 10,000 years. Itā€™s a staple food for more than half the global population, with about 90% cultivated and consumed in Asia.

But a new ŗŚĮĻĄĻĖ¾»ś study, recently published in , warns that this essential crop is in danger. Due to rising temperatures driven by climate change, projections show that Asiaā€™s major rice-producing regions may soon pass the thermal limits that have remained consistent throughout the cropā€™s history.

Using satellite maps, agricultural records, archaeological data and climate projections, researchers found that domesticated Asian rice has never thrived where the mean annual temperature exceeds 28 degrees Celsius ā€” 82 degrees Fahrenheit ā€” or where the warm-season maximum temperature exceeds 33 C, or 91 F.Ģż

Climate projections estimate that, by the end of this century, the land area exceeding these temperature limits could expand by 10 to 30 times in Asiaā€™s major rice-producing nations. This would create unparalleled challenges in a region where more than a billion people rely on rice cultivation for their livelihoods. While rice breeding programs offer some hope, the researchers found that even the major rice subspecies wonā€™t thrive in the projected temperatures.

UW News spoke with , an archaeologist, UW associate professor of anthropology and co-author of the study, about the research and what it means for the future.

How did you become interested in this topic?

JDG: A lot of my research focuses on how climatic events have shaped peopleā€™s ability to farm or grow crops in environments around the world. One of the places I previously worked was the Tibetan Plateau, and some of my early research documented that there was a cooling event around 4,000 years ago that halted Tibetans’ ability to grow two critical crops, which were . They shifted to wheat and barley after that, and they’ve been growing them ever since.

I became interested in applying the same research to understand how our current unprecedented moment of climate change may impact crop distribution. I work in Asia, particularly China, and Iā€™ve worked on rice for most of my career. Our team found that the same cooling event that affected Tibet had a major impact on rice genetics. In fact, it led to the development of cold-adapted temperate rice, which is the same type of rice that people rely on for subsistence today in Japan, northern China and Korea. It’s the short-grained sticky rice that’s cold tolerant, as opposed to the original form of rice that was a semi-subtropical cultivar.Ģż

We then became interested in the types of challenges rice will face moving forward. We pulled records of everywhere that rice has ever been cultivated in Asia throughout human history ā€” and all the climatic conditions under which itā€™s been cultivated ā€” and compared that to the types of situations that we’ll face under global warming today.

What did you find as you started looking toward the future?

JDG: Basically, we found that large areas that are major rice producers are going to face rising temperatures that are unprecedented in the history of rice cultivation. Over the course of the past 10,000 years and its domestication, rice has been adapted to cooler conditions and not to warmer conditions. We used a wide variety of forward-looking climate projection models, and all of those models seem to converge on the same point: Large parts of primary rice growing regions around the world are expected to surpass the known temperature limit where these crops can be cultivated.

I use the word unprecedented, and I donā€™t use it lightly. Another term I could apply to this would be no analog. There is no known situation over the course of riceā€™s cultivation where rice grew in regions which had such high mean annual temperatures. This crop has simply never experienced this before, so there is no data for how it will react. But we do have thousands of years of data saying that to date, it hasnā€™t been cultivated in temperatures like these. In fact, there are only two parts of the world today that have mean annual temperatures that are similar to those that we expect will occur in major rice producing regions of the world: the Sahara desert and parts of the Arabian peninsula. There is a reason these areas are largely desert. Most people think about water but temperature is a critical reason, too.Ģż

I canā€™t underscore enough how writing this study felt. Millions of people live in this region and depend on temperatures as we have known them to continue to live and farm there. This is beyond devastating, and we are beginning to see the impacts of processes like this already.Ģż

What are some recent examples of rising temperatures causing problems with crop cultivation?

JDG: In 2023, of all non-basmati rice. Sona masoori rice, or the type of rice grown across most of low altitude South Asia, had such great losses due massive heat waves that the government stopped all exports. People were panic buying rice that year, even in the U.S.

With climate change, the temperature is not increasing in a completely linear fashion. But the average is increasing over time. As the average increases, there’s a higher probability of these extreme events occurring. It’s already happening in our lifetime, and this study is solid evidence for why addressing climate change should be an absolute top priority for all of us. Over a billion people on the planet are rice cultivators, and that is their primary means of livelihood. For a fourth of the worldā€™s population, rice is a main staple in the diet.

We could have written this paper for so many crops, including wheat, corn and others. What we’re dealing with here is that plant photosynthesis just doesn’t function well above those temperature limits. Weā€™re running into fundamental limits of photosynthetic biochemical process plants, which are temperature limited. There are not that many types of plants that can sustain life under conditions like that, and certainly they are not our major economic plants.Ģż

We live in an era where we have all experienced climate change. In 2026, most of the globe has experienced an extreme heat event. We understand how difficult this is for us as mammals to live through, and yet some of us have the privilege of escaping indoors or even to air conditioning. Plants, on the other hand, cannot move to escape the heat. Iā€™m sure many here in Seattle remember the . The plants in our yard are still recovering from those short few days. That event caused billions of dollars in losses in the agricultural sector in the Pacific Northwest. Some berry and soft fruit farmers experienced nearly 100% crop losses. By midcentury, conditions like this could occur every five to 10 years and could have a huge impact on all plants, including the ones we rely on for food.Ģż

This also critically highlights why we need to expand rather than contract our dietary breadth. Sadly, the opposite of this is happening due to industrial farming practices. Humanity is relying on an increasingly narrow range of species. We are essentially putting all our eggs into one or just a few baskets when we need crop diversity.Ģż

What do climate projections take into account, and what can be done to change the path weā€™re currently on?

JDG: For this study, we used multiple climate projections based on what different countriesā€™ carbon commitments will be moving forward. What we found is that even for climate scenarios where there is a strong global commitment to sustainability-focused growth, international cooperation, and an eventual transition to net-zero emissions, major rice growing regions are still impacted (SSP 1-2.6 on our maps). These impacts expand dramatically with other climate scenarios which assume less concerted action, and sadly this is consistent with where we are headed today which is probably somewhere between SSP 3- 7.0.

Our actions can change the course of what scenario we might be looking at with these maps. We have the technology to move forward with more climate-friendly solutions and many countries around the world are trying to take the lead while we lag behind. For instance, China, where I work, has made massive investments in public transit and railways. Nearly everybody in China drives an electric vehicle. I did not see a single gas-powered car last time I was there. We could do that here at home, and we’re not. Our politicians are making active choices to halt this type of action and at the same time we have the highest per capita emissions in the world. We could and should do much more. It can feel hopeless, particularly for those of us who live in a country where action from our politicians has been in a decades-long gridlock for meaningful change. But we shouldnā€™t stop lobbying for change.Ģż

We can also look at what steps we can make in our own lives to lower emissions. Itā€™s worth noting that the vast part of emissions come from the top 1%, and that portion of the population can really drive meaningful personal action. Simple steps for those that have the means and access can be switching to solar if you own a home or taking public transit where you can.Asking honestly, how am I contributing to this and what can I do differently can always help. For me, the single largest part of my personal emissions was flying and I ceased a large part of all my noncritical travel for that reason. Emissions from short-distance flights and private jets contribute hugely to this issue.

No country will be immune to a crisis of this magnitude, and it is an issue that deserves global attention. While the impacts may initially appear distant to readers from the U.S., our interconnected economies mean that we will also be affected through global trade systems and shifting agricultural dynamics. The same environmental and socioeconomic processes influencing rice production in Asia will have comparable implications for crops such as corn in lower-latitude regions of the U.S. and even here in the Pacific Northwest, as we saw with the last heat dome. Addressing these challenges requires recognizing their global scope and engaging proactively with the evidence before us.Ģż

Other co-authors of the study were of the University of Florida and and of New York University.Ģż

The study was funded in part by grants from the Zegar Family Foundation and the NSF Plant Genome Research Program.

For more information, contact d’Alpoim Guedes jguedes@uw.edu.

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While soccer is the most popular sport globally, it wasnā€™t high on the list in Ron Krabillā€™s home state of Indiana. As a high schooler, Krabillā€™s soccer team often had to travel an hour and a half to find the nearest school with a team. Krabill still became a lifelong fan.

Now a professor in UW Bothellā€™s School of Interdisciplinary Arts & Sciences and director of the Global Sport Lab in the UW Jackson School of International Studies, Krabill never imagined soccer would become part of his academic work until he found himself conducting research in South Africa in 2010 when the country hosted the World Cup. Heā€™s been intertwining sport and academics ever since.

With Seattle scheduled to host World Cup games from June 15 to July 6, Krabill is gearing up to co-lead this yearā€™s UW Summer Institute in the Arts & Humanities with , UW teaching professor of communication, and , doctoral student in the UW Jackson School of International Studies. This yearā€™s theme, Seattleā€™s World Cup: Storytelling Through Community Mapping, will combine community mapping with other methodologies, including photo and video essays and journalistic reporting, to tell stories about Seattleā€™s experience with the World Cup.Ģż

The mapping technology was developed by , associate professor of Urban Studies at UW Tacoma. Kelley is the director of the Action Mapping Project, which works to engage issues of livability, equity, and voice in marginalized neighborhoods through the use of participatory data collection, spatial data analysis, mapping and data visualization.

UW News talked with Krabill about his plans for participating students, his background in sports scholarship, what heā€™ll be watching during Seattleā€™s tournament games and more.

When did your love of soccer and your academic work first intersect and how have you continued that work?

Ron Krabill: I lived and worked in South Africa on and off between 1996 and 2010 doing research on South African media, the late Apartheid Era and the media’s impact on anti-Apartheid politics. And then South Africa hosted the World Cup. I had been to two Womenā€™s World Cups, but never before to a Menā€™s World Cup and I thought, ā€œI canā€™t be in South Africa when this happens and not go.ā€ It just felt too big and too important. It was a momentous thing for South Africa as a nation.Ģż

A lot of debates were happening from the time South Africa was awarded the World Cup about whether it was going to be a good thing or a bad thing and what it meant. My academic work was concerned with a state putting a lot of money into feel-good projects whenĢż itā€™s struggling to provide basic resources for its people. I around 2010 for Social Text, which is an academic journal that covers a wide range of social and cultural phenomena. The piece talked about the challenge for people who love soccer but also see all the problems with soccer, mega-events, the industry, and so on. In that piece, I also talked about loving South Africa, being deeply connected to South Africa and worrying about what the impact of the World Cup would be.

In 2010, I helped lead a UW study abroad program called My World Cup, which was funded in part by the Simpson Center for the Humanities at the UW, the Seattle Sounders and Cape Town Community Television. We paired our UW students with University of Cape Town film students and media activists from the Media Workers Alliance to put together short segments on the impact of the World Cup locally. We then aired those during the World Cup on Cape Town Community Television.Ģż

After that, the UW LeĆ³n Center in Spain approached me and I proposed a class about the politics of soccer in Spain and beyond that addresses questions of gender, race, nationalism and migration. For this yearā€™s World Cup, I wanted to create an immersive course much like the study abroad program ā€” something that students can really sink their teeth into.

How will your students study the World Cup and Seattle as a host city?

RK: developed the Action Mapping Project, a community mapping tool that weā€™re excited to use in the World Cup context. This tool will allow us to do both large and geographical analysis alongside more qualitative and traditional arts and humanities methods. Weā€™ll be asking people outside the stadium, at fan zones and at watch parties to reflect on what stories Seattle tells about itself. How do their experiences in Seattle during the Cup ā€” whether theyā€™re from the area, elsewhere in the United States or an international visitor ā€” relate to what they imagine Seattle to be? In other words, does their experience of World Cup Seattle match their expectations?

The first two weeks are going to be very intense. The games are only in town for three weeks and unfortunately, the first of those weeks is the break in between academic terms. So those first weeks, weā€™ll be introducing students to critical sport studies as a field and what it means to think about sports as a site of power and politics, at the same time as training them in research methods and fieldwork.Ģż

Hopefully weā€™ll gather a lot of material to work with, and then we’ll have the rest of the summer to figure out what to do with it. The students will be working in collaborative research teams, looking at different angles of what it means for Seattle to host. They’ll work off whatever material they find really compelling.Ģż

It will be tricky, because they’ll have to collect the data before they’ve decided exactly what they’re going to do with it. They won’t have had the theoretical background to really think about the meaning. That means the teaching team is going to have to be a little more direct about what kinds of research gathering we do on our field days. The first two weeks, we’ll have four pretty long field work days with students. We’re expecting to send teams of students out into different parts of the city and the region to see what the World Cup experience is like.

What are you most interested to observe in Seattle during those three weeks?Ģż

RK: When South Africa hosted the World Cup in 2010, the vibe was incredible. Itā€™s not really clear how much Seattle is going to embrace that vibe. Is the whole city going to be all about the World Cup? Because it was definitely like that in Cape Town. The Women’s World Cup in Paris wasnā€™t like that. You could have easily been in Paris and not had any idea what was going on. I don’t know where Seattle will land. There have also been a lot of stories about the hotel industry downgrading their expectations. The thing about the economic impact is that it’s often named as one big number, but it’s not always very clear where that money’s going and if it’s staying in the city.

People like to say that we should keep politics out of sports. But when we start talking about where the money is going to flow to, whoā€™s going to be able to afford games,Ģż or the pressures FIFA and the federal government is putting on local organizing committees, itā€™s not as hard for people to understand. We should be thinking about: What are the implications of this, and what are the actions that people can take to make it as beneficial as possible for the city and for the people who live in the city? How do you mitigate against the potential harms, and how do you take advantage of the potential benefits?

There is also a lot of evidence that the fan base is going to be more domestic and less international than expected from a World Cup, particularly because President Donald Trump’s stance on immigration will discourage a lot of people from traveling. I do think that’s going to impact Seattle more than most places because of our proximity to Canada. I think we would have had a lot of visitors, both from Canada and from other countries, because they could have gone to Vancouver and Seattle to see matches in both countries.

Iā€™m also super interested in what the will look like. The local organizing committee is super committed to having it. The Seattle committee is also taking really seriously their responsibility to think about what it means to have the U.S. play on Juneteenth. Thatā€™s an opportunity to educate a worldwide audience about what Juneteenth is and why it’s necessary as a holiday.Ģż

Iā€™m following very closely, too. And not just because theyā€™re coming to Seattle. Iā€™m looking at what it means for modern society that two nations can be at war, and yet there is an expectation that one of them will travel to play in the otherā€™s country in a tournament. The idea that thatā€™s even a conversation says something about how detached we are in the United States from the idea of warfare.Ģż

For more information, contact Krabill at rkrabill@uw.edu or globalsportlab@uw.edu.

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