Coral reefs provide shelter and protection , including crabs, moray eels, octopus and fish. But these cozy homes are currently under threat for many reasons, such as rising sea temperatures and ocean acidification.

Researchers are trying to understand how groups of fish communicate with each other within a coral reef, and how the health of the reef affects that communication.

This fall , a ������˾�� doctoral student in the biology department, and UW research scientist are traveling to the on Magoodhoo, Maldives, to gather live footage of interactions. This fish is a common schooling species on Maldivian reefs. UW News asked Milan a few questions about the trip for the occasional series “In the Field,” which highlights UW field research efforts.��

Tell us about your project.

Jj Milan: I’m studying how fish in schools can accurately communicate the difference between a real threat and a harmless false alarm. And then, once a threat is gone, I want to understand how they coordinate the return to normal behavior.

What will you be doing on this trip?

JM: I’ll be using synchronized cameras and automated tracking to record how threat responses spread through a school. We will be scuba diving to place GoPro cameras and tablets around specific coral heads. We won’t be diving very deep because we need sufficient natural lighting for our video recordings. Our local contacts at the MaRHE Center have confirmed that the surrounding reef is shallow with abundant marine life.

I’m also hoping to collaborate with locals to get more insights into typical fish behavior and predator activity in this area.

What do you hope to learn?

JM: I hope to be able to reconstruct how threat responses move through a school of fish in real time, from the first fish that reacts to how the group settles back into normal behavior. I’ll also reconstruct the three-dimensional structure of the coral to understand if the complexity of the structure changes how quick and how coordinated that response is.

What’s something you really enjoy about doing this field work — especially something that might not occur to most people?

JM: I enjoy how this work brings together my love of ocean life, my diving hobby and my passion for research all in one. I have been diving since 2019 and I am excited because this will be my first time diving in warm water conditions.

More generally, is there anything you find surprising or enlightening about doing field work?

JM: I’m surprised at how many possibilities and opportunities for collaboration arise just during the planning process through connecting with other researchers and resources. I hope to build on these connections in the future.��

For more information, contact Milan at jdmilan@uw.edu.

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This summer, OpenAI announced escaped a training environment and hacked into the AI company Hugging Face. Anthropic quickly followed with news that its AI agents also .��

Last week, an outgoing Anthropic employee took to X, posting that the “.” Such talk has for years, though many AI experts have argued that these Terminator-esque claims are distractions from the real risks posed by current AI systems. Nevertheless, that viral X thread is .����

To help make sense of all this, UW News talked to five AI researchers from the ������˾��:��

• , associate professor in the Information School;
• , professor in the Information School;
• , professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering;
• , professor in the Allen School and the UW’s vice provost for AI;
• and , professor in the Information School and the School of Law.

How alarming do you find the hacks announced by OpenAI and Anthropic?��

Franziska Roesner: I do find them somewhat alarming — not due to the hypothetical risks from an anthropomorphized runaway AI, but because complex interconnected systems are being built and seemingly run without much in the way of standard safeguards and auditing. The resulting outcomes are unsurprising to security experts, but are sensationalized as AI risk.

Ryan Calo: The timing makes me a little skeptical. Is OpenAI trying to match Anthropic by arguing that its systems are just as scary? Is Hugging Face trying to look relevant in advance of its purchase by Nvidia? But yes — this sort of emergent behavior is concerning.

Noah A. Smith: We’ve been told that the beast got out of the cage, but we don’t know enough about the cage the beast was in. The demonstrations may establish an important new capability in these AI models without establishing the broader risk people are inferring. Assessing the underlying risk depends on what access, scaffolding, permissions and safeguards the system had. shows that the alarming behavior depended heavily on what tools the model was given, what it was allowed to access, and how the experiment was set up, not just on the model itself.

Chirag Shah: I’m in half-agreement with scholars like who warn that the big AI labs are creating this scare to distract us from real problems that AI is causing. I also concur with and others who have been warning us about the security threats posed by the frontier models. I don’t think these two viewpoints are mutually exclusive: Yes, there are many other potential harms being created by AI, but the hacks and other security issues are real too and could be more devastating. Worse, we may not have time or opportunity to react, fix or reverse.

Aylin Caliskan: When such a complex system is equipped with tools and capabilities that enable it to interact with other complex systems, we should expect unforeseen exploits, problems and unintended consequences by default. The safety of these systems needs to be rigorously evaluated under controlled conditions and in real time, and appropriate guardrails should be dynamically integrated while they’re running.

What do you make of former Anthropic that, “The people building AI earnestly believe that it could kill us all by the end of the decade”?

RC: I worry engineers like Mr. Coxon are playing into an industry rhetoric that would have society focus on speculative, existential threats, rather than immediate, real-world harms. I argued as much in 2023 in .

The people making these claims and announcements largely have financial stakes in these companies, which are . How are you thinking about ulterior motives here?

CS: I see this as an attempt to steer the public into believing these companies are building world-changing tech that everyone needs to invest in or they’d miss out; that this tech would be so powerful that they rise up to national security level and gain power; and that the same tech could also be so dangerous that only they have the ability to curb it and they can self-regulate.

NS: It doesn’t take a conspiracy theorist to note that there are incentives at work. The financial stakes around prospective IPOs are enormous, and there are also long-standing concerns that safety arguments can shape regulation in ways that favor incumbent firms. Rules could reduce competition and independent scrutiny, concentrating both technological power and the authority to define what counts as “safe” in the hands of a few companies. They could also bar many people from participating in what the technology is designed to do, for example, by slowing or stopping work on open-source alternatives.

What should be done about AI risk?

NS: Risks need to be defined based on independent scrutiny and high-quality evidence, not messaging from organizations and people with a stake in what the response to risk looks like. We need sensible liability and accountability for harms, and governance proportional to demonstrated risks in real-world contexts rather than speculative narratives and science fiction. We should be especially wary of rules that entrench incumbent interests or treat closed, centralized control as synonymous with safety.��

Openness is part of safety: If outsiders cannot inspect, reproduce and challenge claims about dangerous behavior, we are left trusting the organizations that have the strongest incentives to frame the narrative.

RC: Some combination of common law liability and regulation needs to create adequate incentives for AI companies to address the inevitable harms of this trillion-dollar industry.��

FR: To me, the bigger question for safety is less, “What can AI models do in isolation?” and more, “How and why are we building these models into increasingly complex systems?” Computer systems security, for example, has already offered us examples of how to build these systems. More generally, we should all — whether we are building, integrating or using AI — anticipate how systems might be misused by people or harm them and adjust our systems accordingly.

AC: Academic freedom, independent evaluation and development, and open science play critical roles in analyzing and mitigating AI risks, as well as in effectively disseminating findings and evidence to inform policy and the public. To better manage risks, we should be designing AI deployment contexts in collaboration with stakeholders and communities, providing evidence to demonstrate net positive deployment effects that do not disproportionately benefit specific entities or groups, and iteratively identifying, isolating, and minimizing risks.

CS: Establish and fund commissions and taskforces that audit these companies and models and make independent assessments and recommendations. Make the companies rolling out these models accountable for any harms caused by their tech. Educate and empower the public through media, policies and democratic frameworks that give them a real say in what happens to their lives and labor through these technologies.

To set up an interview with an AI expert, contact Stefan Milne at stmilne@uw.edu.

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Recent recognition of faculty and staff at the ������˾�� includes France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the Richard R. Ernst Prize for contributions to magnetic resonance, and a National Science Foundation CAREER award from the Division of Materials Research.

UW professor named CNRS��fellow-ambassador��

, UW professor of aquatic and fishery sciences, was welcomed into the 2026 cohort of��fellow-ambassadors by France’s National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS). Active across all scientific fields for more than 80 years, CNRS is Europe’s largest fundamental research agency.��

Launched in 2023, the CNRS Fellow-Ambassador program brings internationally recognized researchers to France to foster scientific collaboration. As one of nine members selected this year, Olden joins a group that includes Nobel laureates and other globally renowned researchers, with��nearly 30��active��fellow-ambassadors.��

As part of the program, Olden will spend time in France over the next three summers, collaborating with scientists on research aimed at addressing sustainability challenges facing freshwater ecosystems.��

The opportunity closely aligns with Olden’s broader research program, which focuses on advancing the science and practice of freshwater conservation. His work spans climate change, conservation biology, invasive species, and freshwater community ecology, with an emphasis on bridging fundamental research and practical conservation challenges through quantitative approaches.��

Olden��noted��that France has long been home to some of the world’s most talented scientists.����

“The opportunity to work alongside them—exchanging ideas, tackling shared challenges in freshwater sciences and building lasting research partnerships—is something I look forward to enormously,” Olden said.��

Chemistry professor receives 2026 Richard R. Ernst Prize for contributions to magnetic resonance

, UW professor of chemistry, was one of four researchers awarded the 2026 Richard R. Ernst Prize in Magnetic Resonance, presented at the EUROMAR 2026 conference in Gothenburg, Sweden.��The��annual prize recognizes scientific achievements that expand the capabilities and impact of magnetic resonance.��

Stoll was recognized for his contributions to electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) through widely adopted computational tools and data analysis methods, particularly��EasySpin, software developed and��maintained��by Stoll and colleagues. The software has become a standard resource in magnetic resonance laboratories, allowing researchers to simulate and analyze complex EPR spectra.��

EPR experiments produce signals that scientists use to learn about the structure and behavior of molecules and materials.��EasySpin��helps researchers interpret those signals by allowing them to model what an experiment should look like under different conditions and compare those simulations with real-world data. That capability supports research ranging from understanding how the structure and movement of proteins affect their function to studying molecular systems with potential applications in quantum sensing.��

For Stoll, the award also brings attention to a part of the scientific process that can��operate��behind the scenes: developing and��maintaining��the software researchers rely on to do their work. He noted that although scientific software is essential to many research pipelines and workflows, securing federal or foundation funding for its development can be difficult.��

“It’s very exciting for scientific software development to get some recognition,” Stoll said.��

Stoll��also credited the��EasySpin��user community with helping drive continued improvements to the software’s scope, performance,��accessibility��and usability.

UW professor of physics receives NSF CAREER Award to study electron interactions in quantum materials��

, UW assistant professor of physics, received a 2026 National Science Foundation CAREER Award of more than $600,000 from the Division of Materials Research.

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

With the award, Barnard and his team will study how interactions between electrons give rise to unusual forms of electronic order in two-dimensional quantum materials, including superconducting states and electronic crystals. The researchers will use a new measurement technique developed in Barnard’s Classical and Quantum Nanosystems Lab that allows them to deliberately change how electrons interact while simultaneously measuring how the material responds.

In other words, rather than only observing the properties of a quantum material, Barnard’s team can adjust one of the forces shaping those properties and watch what changes. Understanding how these interactions produce behaviors such as superconductivity could help researchers learn how to more precisely control the electronic properties of materials, foundational knowledge for the development of future electronic and quantum technologies.

Barnard said his lab has spent the past several years developing what he described as a “one-of-a-kind tool” to help researchers better understand how superconductivity and other phenomena emerge in atomically thin materials.

“Now, with NSF CAREER funding, we are beginning to put this tool to work and looking forward to what we will discover,” Barnard said.

The project will also provide research training opportunities for undergraduate and graduate students and support the development of open-source hardware and STEM modules that offer hands-on experience with van der Waals material assembly and electronic measurements.

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Birds evolved from dinosaurs. They share a common ancestor and physical traits — some dinosaurs even had feathers. But while these dinosaurs are thought to have had “fuzzy” or “downy” feathers, ancient birds were more likely to have had feathers that look similar to the birds of today.

A ������˾��-led research team has discovered the best-preserved fossil feathers from the — in a fossilized dinosaur poop, also known as a “coprolite.” Some of these feathers have features that look like modern birds’ feathers. In in Current Biology, the team describes this finding and how it can help researchers better understand why and how some birds survived the that killed 75% of life on the planet.

The team discovered the feathers in 2016 at a research site in eastern Montana in the badland exposures of the geological formation called the .

“I was crawling up a rocky outcrop collecting fish fossils when I came across a dark, reddish-brown nodule about half the size of a golf ball,” said co-author , a UW research scientist in the biology department and the Hell Creek Project collections manager at the Burke Museum. “I picked it up and scanned its surface through my hand lens, and that’s when I couldn’t believe what I was seeing: a tiny fossil feather. I was cautiously optimistic about its discovery, because feathers had not yet been found in the Hell Creek Formation, even after more than 100 years of prospecting.”

Back in the lab, the researchers examined the specimen’s mineral composition and took CT scans of it — essentially, thousands of X-rays that are digitally stacked to reveal the contents of an object.

“Every hour processing the data revealed another feather, another scale, another bone — in stunning 3D,” said co-author , a paleontologist at the Carter County Museum.

The coprolite contained multiple feathers, tiny fish scales from a gar and leg bones from a , an extinct group of birds that are ecologically similar to loons. The researchers reasoned that the feathers must have also come from this same bird. These are the first hesperornithiform feathers ever found.

The hesperornithiforms are close cousins of the birds that survived the mass extinction and still live today. Some scientists have hypothesized that the birds that survived did so because they lived near water, and something about this habitat helped buffer them from the effects of the mass extinction. But the hesperornithiforms also lived by water, and they went extinct.

“We think the types of feathers that these birds had, and/or the way they molted those feathers, may have been one of the underlying causes of the selectivity of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction — essentially, why some birds died out and why others survived,” said lead author , associate curator of fossil reptiles at the Field Museum. “Some of these diving birds’ feathers seem to have been modern-looking and waterproof, but they also had some smaller fuzzy, primitive body feathers that we associate with dinosaurs.”

If the feathers on hesperornithiforms and other extinct bird species weren’t as good at keeping their bodies warm, the researchers hypothesize, maybe that’s why they weren’t able to survive the extinction event.

“It’s such a beautiful, well-preserved feather, from such an unexpected source, and it’s exciting that it could help us answer this huge question in paleontology,” O’Connor said. “I usually work with fossils that are preserved in big stone slabs, and the entire skeleton and even the soft tissue is preserved — they make it easy for me. But with this project, we just had this coprolite — and its contents — to go off of, and it made me feel like a detective, piecing together all these little clues. And since no one has studied feathers in coprolites before, this opens up a whole new avenue for investigation. We only knew to look at this one because of how it happened to be split open, with the feather exposed — it was literally a lucky break. I hope more scientists start CT scanning coprolites and taking a closer look at them to see what might be inside.”

, UW doctoral student in biology; , the Hell Creek Project Fossil Preparator at the Burke Museum of Natural History; at the University of Colorado, Boulder; at the Field Museum and the University of Chicago; Christian Cooper at the Field Museum; at the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology, Chinese Academy of Sciences; at the University of Alabama; at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County; at the University of Southern California; and at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County are also co-authors on this paper. This research was funded by donations to the Hell Creek Project.

For more information, contact Wilson Mantilla at gpwilson@uw.edu and DeMar at ddemar@uw.edu.

Adapted from .

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A city’s sewers say a lot about its residents. Sick people often shed pathogens in their waste, adding traceable amounts of bacteria and viruses into wastewater. Testing that wastewater offers a simple, low-cost way to monitor the spread of disease — a practice that began with polio in the 1940s and became more widespread during the COVID-19 pandemic. Today, tests for a variety of common and emerging viruses.

American public health agencies don’t routinely test wastewater for sexually transmitted infections, but new research led by the ������˾�� and the Washington State Department of Health found that such methods could be used to effectively identify Chlamydia trachomatis, the bacteria that causes chlamydia.

The study, , could help public health agencies better identify and respond to increased spread of chlamydia and other STIs, which are The researchers specifically explored wastewater’s potential as a community monitoring tool, and not as a way to identify cases or trace pathogens back to individual people or locations.

“STIs are known for being underreported because of a lot of factors, especially stigma and the prevalence of asymptomatic cases,” said co-lead author , assistant professor of environmental and occupational health sciences and of civil and environmental engineering at the UW. “Wastewater is cool because it’s population level. You don’t need people to go to the doctor and seek out treatment to know that there are people in a community shedding specific pathogens.”

Working in collaboration with local health jurisdictions, researchers collected frequent samples from influent wastewater at five wastewater treatment plants across Washington state and six neighborhood-level sewer sites near Seattle. Collection sites ranged from a large, high-population urban area to a rural treatment plant serving fewer than 5,000 people. Researchers masked the specific names and locations of sample locations to protect the privacy of people and communities.

Researchers tested wastewater samples for the pathogens that cause three common STIs: chlamydia, syphilis and gonorrhea. C. trachomatis was the most prevalent pathogen across all test sites. The bacteria that cause gonorrhea and syphilis were found far less frequently, despite data showing confirmed cases of those diseases in the associated areas.��

Further research could reveal why tests captured C. trachomatis more consistently than other STI-causing bacteria and explore the study’s limitations, which included people moving between sewer sites and the influence of demographics.

The researchers are also eager to investigate several trends they observed in the data, such as spikes in pathogen concentration occurring near the winter holidays and after Valentine’s Day.

Among the neighborhood collection sites was a small, densely populated area adjacent to a college campus. More than 87% of residents were young people between 18 and 34 years old, a population considered high-risk for STIs. Clinical health records showed very low case counts of chlamydia, but researchers consistently detected C. trachomatis in wastewater samples.��

That gap could indicate underreporting driven by stigma or asymptomatic cases. It also gives public health officials an opportunity to react to a previously unknown increase in infection activity.

“From a public health perspective, data like this allows us to elevate awareness that this pathogen is here and spreading in the community, even if cases aren’t presenting to clinics or providers are not identifying the infections in their patients,” said co-lead author , program manager of the Washington State Department of Health’s wastewater surveillance program. “A small amount of wastewater can tell you so much about the community while simultaneously filling gaps in the traditional methods we monitor disease activity.”��

A full list of co-authors is available with the paper.��

This research was funded in part by the Epidemiology and Laboratory Capacity Infectious Diseases Cooperative Agreement from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.��

For more information, contact Fuhrmeister at efuhrm@uw.edu.

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Once coyotes get a taste for city living, the call of the wild fades to a whisper. Food is abundant and predators are few. Research indicates that coyotes enjoy the benefits of urban areas enough to put up with all the people, and Seattle is no exception.

Over the past century, coyotes have colonized every major metropolitan area in North America. Chicago is home to an , and in Los Angeles, urban coyote density is at least seven times higher than in wild areas. Coyotes are often spotted in parks and neighborhoods , but the lack of formal data makes it difficult for researchers to track trends.

“We observed a ninefold increase in coyote density in Seattle compared to more natural and wild areas of the state,” said lead author , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences. “That might surprise people who think of coyotes as afraid of humans, but I think it just shows how ideal the urban setting is for coyotes.”

The results in Environmental Research: Ecology.

In the study, researchers analyzed coyote scats collected throughout Seattle and from wild study areas near Winthrop in north-central Washington and Chewelah in the northeastern part of the state. They estimated density based on how often they picked up a scat from the same animal, identifying 261 total coyotes from 842 scats.

Researchers were also curious about factors that influence density within the city, such as the luxury effect — where wealthier neighborhoods have more plant and animal diversity. Researchers compared the coyote density maps to ones showing pollution level, tree cover, buildings and roads, human population density and income level. Of those factors, only human density seemed to influence the coyotes.

“In Seattle, human population density had a negative effect on coyote density. But when you compare coyote abundance in Seattle to areas with far fewer people, the coyote population was much higher in the city,” Prugh said.

Although coyotes are wary of people, the conditions that dense human populations create favor their survival. Urban coyotes are less likely to be killed or go hungry than their wild counterparts.

that fear of mortality may play a role in determining where coyotes live. In the wild, larger carnivores such as wolves and mountain lions hunt coyotes, but in cities they get to masquerade as apex predators. Farmers and landowners are also more likely to kill coyotes to protect their livestock in rural settings.

The only things that regularly kill urban coyotes are cars and disease.

Cities also offer a wider variety of food options for coyotes. Scat analyses showed that urban coyotes’ diets were more than twice as diverse as those of wild coyotes, although .

Rabbits are the choice prey for coyotes in most ecosystems and the abundance of one often impacts the other. Seattle’s over the past few decades changed urban ecology, and may have helped draw coyotes to the region.

“Coyotes and rabbits have a natural relationship, even in a highly altered environment like Seattle,” Prugh said. Rabbit density could be an even stronger predictor of coyotes than humans, she added, but there isn’t enough data to test the theory.

Although long-term coyote population data is also limited, there is overwhelming anecdotal evidence of coyote abundance increasing in the past few decades, Prugh said.

Sightings are more common at dusk and dawn, but coyotes are now as well. They tend to avoid people, but residents have raised concerns about coyotes and displaying territorial or behavior.

Because they are territorial, coyotes will fight each other over turf. This behavior helps control their population in the absence of other predators. Cities can only support so many coyotes, but Prugh isn’t sure whether Seattle has met that limit yet.

Either way, the coyotes aren’t going anywhere fast.

“One thing that coyotes have shown over and over is that they are incredibly resistant to control efforts,” said Prugh. “With enough food, they will just have more pups.”

The study also highlights some of the often overlooked ways that coyotes can benefit the ecosystem. For example, by munching on young plants, and coyotes help them by munching on rabbits.

“Whether there are too many or too few coyotes is sort of a societal question, but ultimately our answer might not matter,” said Prugh. “Coyotes are here to stay in cities, and it is up to us to learn how to live with them.”

Co-authors include , lab manager at the UW; of Purdue University; and of Colorado State University; of the Wildlife Institute of India; of New Mexico State University; and of the University of California Berkeley.

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the UW Royalty Research Fund, the Woodland Park Zoo, the Animal Welfare Institute and the Fulbright India program.

For more information, contact Prugh at lprugh@uw.edu.

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������˾�� researchers are leading and collaborating on four research projects as part of Phase 1 in the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) , a national initiative to build an AI-for-science ecosystem which accelerates breakthroughs in energy, discovery science and national security.��

The DOE awarded a total of 278 Genesis Mission awards for projects that involve more than 300 participating institutions, including DOE and National Nuclear Security Administration national laboratories, universities and companies. As part of the Genesis Mission, awardees will have access to the Genesis Mission Platform, which includes AI frameworks, advanced AI models from industry partners, and high-performance computing resources across DOE’s National Laboratories and partner facilities.��

“The Genesis Mission represents the kind of bold, collaborative approach needed to accelerate the complex scientific and technological breakthroughs required in our rapidly changing world,” said UW Vice Provost for Research . “Its emphasis on bringing together diverse expertise and cutting-edge technology with strategic partnerships highlights the important role universities play in driving innovation for the nation.”��

The UW-supported Genesis projects span disciplines including advanced sensing technologies, protein design for microelectronic applications, and astronomy data infrastructure, demonstrating the broad potential of AI to accelerate scientific discovery.��

, assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering, received a Genesis award to develop neuromorphic terahertz imaging technology for next-generation augmented reality systems. ��

“Neuromorphic terahertz imagers, or brain-inspired imaging in the terahertz band, give us superhuman vision to see through optically obscured media in real time by combining sensing and computation in a single piece of hardware. The Genesis Mission award supports our research in developing the hardware for the neuromorphic terahertz imager, as well as creating a digital twin of the entire system to train imaging models before implementing them on the actual hardware. This is an important step for future terahertz imaging systems on augmented reality hardware,” Naghavi said. ��

Building on research conducted in UW’s , the project brings together collaborators at Texas A&M University, the University of Utah, ChipNexus and NVIDIA to integrate sensing and computation directly within imaging hardware. By reducing the amount of data that must be transferred between sensors and processors, the technology could enable lightweight, low-cost augmented reality headsets capable of seeing through visually obscured materials in real time while operating with far lower power consumption than conventional systems.����

, director of the , and his colleagues are contributing to two Phase I Genesis Mission projects that apply advances in protein design and artificial intelligence to challenges beyond traditional biomedical applications.��

One project, BIND (Biophysics-Informed Learning of Coordination for Metalloprotein Design), led by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, seeks to develop an AI framework for designing selective metal-binding proteins. The project leverages quantum chemistry, structural biology, machine learning and high-throughput experimentation to advance the computational design strategies of next-generation rare earth element binders. ��These advancements will catalyze change in critical mineral recovery, radionuclide management and environmental monitoring, while advancing DOE priorities in predictive biosystems design. ��

The second project, led by Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, will develop an AI-guided loop for the design, fabrication and evaluation of microelectronic devices. The team will leverage proteins designed to assemble on van der Waals substrates to modulate their properties and organize charge carriers within the synthesized hybrid materials, integrating deep-learning protein models with AI-guided material synthesis and characterization, device fabrication and measurements, and circuit-level performance evaluation to create an iterative design process that improves molecules, materials, and device design. ��

Both IPD projects demonstrate how UW-developed protein design technologies are expanding into new areas of chemistry, materials science, and advanced manufacturing. “The Genesis Mission award provides necessary support to develop data that will vastly improve our models, an essential next step in delivering advances for key global challenges,” Baker said.����

, director of the and founding director of the and , a researcher at DiRAC, are partnering with researchers at Carnegie Mellon University to help develop infrastructure that will make it easier for astronomers to combine and analyze data from a wide range of observatories and scientific instruments. ��

Their project will expand data formats and analysis platforms to support images, spectra, data cubes and other forms of astronomical data while enabling seamless access to information distributed across cloud and high-performance computing systems. The goal is to remove technical barriers that often slow scientific discovery and make large, multimodal datasets more accessible for AI research. ��

“We want the plumbing to be boring so the astronomy can be spectacular,” Caplar said.��

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The University engaged an outside entity, the firm ,��to support the review because��of��its��extensive experience working with colleges and universities around the country, including reviewing student conduct codes.

Over the last nine months, University leaders, staff and Husch Blackwell have engaged and consulted with faculty, staff and students. Their feedback, along with national peer best practices and the UW’s legal requirements under state and federal laws, was used to develop the proposed changes to the Code that were to be considered by the Board of Regents at their September meeting.

“I believe this additional period of review and consultation will help us move forward with a Code that reflects both our legal obligations and our shared commitment to fairness, transparency, accountability, and the educational mission of the University,” President Jones wrote.

President Jones asked the Faculty Senate to provide its feedback no later than Dec. 10, 2026, the date of the final Senate meeting of the autumn quarter. Additional staff and student perspectives will also be incorporated during this time, including seeking further input from student governments on the UW’s three campuses.

This feedback, along with feedback already provided during the public comment period, will be used to shape revisions to the Student Conduct Code and related changes to the General Conduct Code that will eventually be presented to the Regents.

Based on��the stakeholder engagement process and the feedback received during that process, the proposed revisions make many improvements to the��Code, including:

• Bringing the code into compliance with current Title IX regulations governing sexual assault and misconduct, and aligning its terminology with the��, which prohibits discrimination, harassment and sexual misconduct
• Adding amnesty language for students who admit to unlawful possession or use of alcohol or drugs when seeking medical assistance for another student
• Adding doxxing as��prohibited conduct
• Updating the appeals process to��enable��the��opportunity for��inclusion of��specialized expertise in non-academic misconduct cases, particularly on sexual assault and misconduct matters,��since��there have been cases where the need for more expertise on the difficult subject of sexual assault and consent created delays that did not serve students well
• Establishing that��if��an individual has been found responsible for prohibited conduct, concealing one’s identity for the purpose of evading or escaping discovery, recognition, or identification while engaged in��that��prohibited conduct may be considered in determining sanctions;��students are already required to show identification to a��University official when requested,��so��the proposal adds transparency to existing sanctioning criteria
• Clarifying that alleged conduct violations by Registered Student Organizations are adjudicated through the existing brief adjudication��process and not a full hearing process
• Updating several definitions for clarity and/or to align current practices and legal standards, including definitions for academic misconduct; creating a nuisance in neighboring communities; hazing;��abuse of others and threats; disruption, hindering, impeding, or obstruction; failure to comply; and unauthorized access, presence, or use of property

On this final item, it is important to recognize that the definitions around violations such as disruption, failure to comply and unauthorized access apply only to actions that qualify as misconduct. The Student Conduct Code does not prohibit speech or other expressive activities that are protected by the First Amendment, and these definitions will be applied consistently regardless of what views – if any – were being expressed when the misconduct took place.

In addition to these changes that deal with non-academic misconduct, during the coming academic year the University’s faculty is expected to undertake a review of the academic elements of the Student Conduct Code with the University’s administration, which is a particularly timely topic in light of advances in artificial intelligence and other technologies.

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UPDATE Sept. 8, 2026: This story has been updated to correct the total increase in melt season since the 1980s.

Relatively few people have been to the Arctic, and even fewer have set foot in Antarctica. Most of us rely on our imaginations and media to visualize these landscapes and the ways they are changing.

Research shows that the Arctic is than the global average. The sea ice is melting, exposing more open ocean and throwing the ecosystem out of balance. The story of Antarctica contains fewer details, but emerging trends are concerning to researchers.

Conceptualizing this change can be challenging for those of us who have only glimpsed Greenland from the airplane window, but for someone with firsthand experience, it’s eye-opening.

, a research scientist at the ������˾��’s Applied Physics Laboratory, has visited the Arctic at least once a year since 2009, sometimes staying for as long as five months.

Webster is the lead author of a new research paper, in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, that describes how sea ice has changed in the past 50 years.

Their analysis arrives as the world begins preparations for the , a dedicated period of observation that will peak during the 2023 to 2033 season. International Polar years have occurred every 30 to 50 years since the late 1800s to advance polar research and track environmental change. The upcoming International Polar Year will occur just 25 years after the last, held in 2007, due to the acceleration of climate change.

What motivated this study?

Melinda Webster: We have known for a long time now that the extent, or area, and thickness of sea ice is declining, especially in the Arctic. But we wanted to take that a step further to examine the properties of the ice, especially perennial ice, which doesn’t completely melt away in summer. We updated trends for sea ice with 15 to 20 more years worth of data to understand how it has changed through the contemporary period. We also wanted to emphasize the divergent responses we see in the Arctic and Antarctica, and make recommendations for future research.

What did you discover?

MW: The Arctic sea ice melt season has gotten approximately seven and a half days longer per decade since 1979, and this is mostly driven by sea ice forming later in the fall. This has sweeping implications for the global climate system. The superpower of sea ice is its high albedo, meaning that it reflects a lot of sunlight — somewhere between 60% and 90% — back into space. Dark ocean water, on the other hand, reflects just 7%. The open ocean absorbs much more sunlight than ice does, and with that absorption comes warming. In the fall, the ocean is too warm for ice to form and it is taking longer for that heat to dissipate.

The seasonal ice that ultimately forms is thinner, and easier to melt in the following spring and summer. So this creates a cycle of warming that reduces ice coverage and increases the amount of energy in our climate system over time.

What’s the deal with Antarctica?

MW: Antarctica is a land mass covered in ice and surrounded by water. The Arctic is an ocean surrounded by land. Although they share certain qualities, the two regions are very different from one another, with distinct responses to climate change. For a long time, the sea ice cover wasn’t declining in Antarctica, but in the last four years the sea ice cover experienced record losses.

Logistically, it’s a lot more difficult to deploy instruments in the Antarctic than the Arctic. The measurements we do have are less accurate because the Antarctica sea ice system is more complicated. But, we need to unravel these recent changes, which is a priority research area we identify in the paper.

What other impacts do you foresee these changes having?

MW: Another key result we presented is that snow cover on Arctic sea ice has gotten thinner and the sea ice itself is smoother. That has huge repercussions for polar bears and seals, as it impacts their ability to build dens for raising their young.

There’s also a connection to fisheries. Changes in sea ice cover also impact algae, which form the base of the food web. These algae are accustomed to very low light conditions, but thinner snow and ice let more light in and the algae are essentially getting sunburnt.

When you take an ecosystem that was adapted to an ice environment and introduce open ocean, it disrupts its regular functioning. The health of algae impacts the entire food web, which has important implications for fisheries in the sub-Arctic and Arctic. Less food might mean fewer fish, and that introduces a whole new set of concerns.

Are there any potential solutions?��

MW: To mitigate climate change, you have to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. That’s at the center of the problem. There are various alternative geoengineering strategies floating around but little consensus on how safe and useful they are.

I think that it is critical to have international regulations that are shaped by representative communities on what kind of research we need before any geoengineering action is taken, if at all. Still, at the end of the day, geoengineering is a Band-Aid. We need to reduce greenhouse gas emissions to deal with the underlying cause of climate change instead of just treating its symptoms.

I’m optimistic about solutions for reducing emissions. Technological and scientific innovation are progressing at a rapid pace, which gives me hope about the future.

Co-authors include of the University of Hamburg; of NASA Goddard Space Flight Center; of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at California Institute of Technology; of Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution; of Université Catholique de Louvain; of the Finnish Meteorological Institute and of Hokkaido University.

This research was funded by the U.S. National Science Foundation, the U.S. Office of Naval Research, NASA, the Alfred-Wegener-Institut, Helmholtz-Zentrum für Polar- und Meeresforschung, the University of Hamburg, the German Research Foundation, SnowCast, the DFG Emmy Noether Programme Project Snowflake and the Research Council of Finland.

For more information, contact Webster at melindaw@uw.edu.

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Claims of “smart” toys go back decades. See and . But generative artificial intelligence is increasing the capabilities of interactive toys. The company , for instance, markets itself as a “magical workshop where toys come to life.” Its plush toys like or one modeled on have onboard AI models that let them talk to kids, remember their conversations and personalize responses. But we know little about how such toys affect kids and even how kids play with them.��

Last summer, ������˾�� researchers gathered eight kids on campus to explore such questions. The 6-11 year olds played with three Curio toys and reflected on the experience with , a group of researchers who work with kids to collaboratively design technologies.��

The kids initially were curious, asking introductory questions, such as “What is your name?” and exploring how the toys work. Do they react when a kid tickles their toes? They do not, which proved a disappointment. Some features delighted the kids, like when a toy said its favorite number was seven. But the toys frequently couldn’t respond well to more complex questions. It “didn’t listen to me like 26 million times,” one participant said. So they turned to antagonizing the toys, calling them “ugly” and “evil” and joking about throwing them in the ocean.��

The team June 25 at the Interaction Design and Children conference in Brighton, United Kingdom.��

“The juxtaposition of this plushie toy that also had signs of intelligence was both interesting and disturbing for the kids,” said co-lead author , who completed this research as a UW doctoral student in human centered design and engineering and is currently a researcher at . “If parents are considering buying these toys for children, they need to be aware that while the toys can be fun and relational and dynamic, they also come with possible harms. They’ll give wrong answers, or flatter the kids excessively, or could manipulate the kids into attachment.”��

The eight kids came in for two sessions to play with the toys and then complete a “comicboarding” activity, where they filled in comic panels imagining what might happen next if they kept playing with the toys.��

The study builds on KidsTeam’s long-running vein of research looking at how kids respond to tech — exploring what makes a technology “creepy” and how smart kids actually think AI is.��

“For as long as children have played with toys, they’ve imparted their imagination to the toy to make it move and talk,” said co-author , a UW associate professor in the Information School and director of KidsTeam UW. “Now the script has been flipped and the toy has this imitation of imagination. We’ve never lived through that before, and we don’t know what questions children will ask or how long they’ll even want to play with these toys. So it’s really important to give them opportunities to discuss these technologies we’re handing down to them.”

Co-authors include , a UW doctoral student in human centered design and engineering; , a UW doctoral student in the Information School; of Rutgers University, who completed this research as a UW doctoral student; , a UW professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering; and , UW professor and chair of human centered design and engineering.��

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation, the Institute of Education Sciences, the U.S. Department of Education, and the Institute of Museum and Library Services.��

For more information, contact Dangol at aayushi@foundry10.org and Yip at jcyip@uw.edu.

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