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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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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������˾�� 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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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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Motion-triggered cameras showcase the prevalence of ‘nectar robbing’ in Hawaiian flowers

Some long curved bills are the perfect implement for drawing sweet nectar from deep within a lobelioid flower. As birds reach into flowers to access the nectar stored near the base, their bills can brush against the ‘ pollen-bearing structures, making hungry honeycreepers important pollinators. But some of these specialized honeycreepers have gone extinct. Shorter-billed species can now “rob” nectar — without contacting the flower’s pollen-bearing structures — from the endangered flowers. A UW-led team used motion cameras to gauge how often nectar robbing occurs. The results, in Ecology and Evolution, reveal both nectar robbing and pollination visits, showcasing a broader pattern that the team previously identified . Nectar robbing can damage flowers and leave less nectar for other potential pollinators. The researchers 3D printed a bird bill to simulate nectar robbing and track changes in nectar availability and the plants’ ability to reproduce. Damaged flowers often struggled to replenish their nectar stores, but were still able to produce fruit and viable seeds. These studies are part of a that aims to catalog Hawaiian bird-plant interactions through time, specifically tracking how these interactions are reshaped by extinction.

For more information, contact lead author , a UW research scientist in the biology department, at sam.case24@gmail.com.

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

People with anxious attachment styles are more likely get emotionally involved with ChatGPT

rose to popularity in the late 20th Century as a way to categorize how people bond with others. Someone with an anxious attachment style, for instance, fears abandonment and rejection, whereas someone with an avoidant attachment style is independent at the cost of personal closeness. In , UW researchers explored how peoples’ attachment styles affect their interactions with ChatGPT. The team analyzed the chat histories of 105 young adults, each of whom completed an attachment-style survey. Researchers found that they could automatically detect peoples’ attachment styles based on their interactions with the chatbot. People with an anxious attachment style were more likely to be emotionally involved with the AI system, writing things like “Can you please love me?” and “I miss my ex and I can’t sleep because of it.” Anxious users were also more prone to trust ChatGPT and to follow its recommendations. The team argues that this highlights the need for policies that prohibit companies from psychologically profiling users without their consent, since it leaves them vulnerable to manipulation.

For more information, contact senior author , a UW associate professor in the Information School, at alexisr@uw.edu or lead author , a doctoral student in the Information School, at marxwang@uw.edu.

The other UW co-authors are , , and .

Nursing is a major energy suck, but it’s difficult to estimate the toll for many marine mammals

Marine mammals lactate like any other mammal, but the energetic demands are difficult to measure in wild animals and thus not well understood.�� Researchers are concerned that some marine mammals may not be getting enough food, which can lead to failure to reproduce and . To understand the link between nutritional status and reproduction, researchers need to know what marine mammals require to rear offspring. A published in PLOS One modeled the daily costs of lactation using data from semi-aquatic and terrestrial mammals to explore whether results could be generalized to other species, like whales and dolphins. Modeling could approximate lactation costs of certain understudied marine mammals, including seals and sea lions, but appeared unable to produce accurate estimates for whales and dolphins. Lactation costs increase over time for most animals, but seem to be higher early in lactation for marine mammals, possibly due to their fully aquatic lifestyle. The study highlights a need for other methods to fill the remaining data gap to better understand the impacts of environmental change on marine mammals.

For more information, contact lead author , a research scientist in the UW Cooperative Institute for Climate, Ocean, & Ecosystem Studies, at emchuron@uw.edu. Funding information is .

Simulations suggest that lasers could ‘calm’ persnickety plasma

could supply humanity with — provided that scientists and engineers can work out how to create sustained fusion reactions safely, efficiently and affordably. The trick is in the taming of , a superhot state of matter made of free-floating electrons and atomic nuclei. When compressed to outlandish pressures and temperatures in a reactor, the nuclei fuse with one another, releasing energy. In that extreme environment, plasma forms instabilities that can derail a fusion reaction; much fusion research is focused on “calming” volatile plasma. published in Physics of Plasmas, UW researchers and other collaborators simulated a novel strategy to control instabilities using two opposing laser beams. By tuning the lasers’ properties — such as their frequency and polarity — the researchers prevented instabilities from growing and cascading. Surprisingly, the lasers also delayed other instabilities within the plasma, even though they were not directly targeted by the laser fields. By taking advantage of interactions within the plasma, the researchers found a way to calm instabilities indirectly. The results could help experts develop algorithms that stabilize plasma in real time, sustaining fusion conditions long enough to produce useful energy.

For more information, contact , UW professor of aeronautics and astronautics at shumlak@uw.edu.

A full list of co-authors and funding is .

When exposed to air, new nanomaterial becomes magnetic at high temperatures

While fridge magnets are great for saving favorite recipes, modern magnetic materials are useful for improving fiber optics or quantum information sciences technology. If you zoomed in on most fridge magnets, you’d see the atoms arranged in a repeated lattice structure called a “spinel.” These structures are made up of three types of atoms, generically referred to as atoms “A,” “B” and “X.” In a paper in the Journal of the American Chemical Society, UW researchers describe two new spinels made of silver, chromium and selenium ions. These are among the first spinels to include a silver ion in the “A” slot, the slot that determines the “vibe” of the spinel, or how it will react to various stimuli, such as light, heat or air. When exposed to air, the original spinel loses silver ions and transforms into the second spinel. The second spinel maintains its magnetic properties up to 400 Kelvin, or 260 degrees Fahrenheit; the original loses its magnetism at 152 K, or -185 F. This is the largest change ever documented in what is known as the Curie temperature, or the highest temperature at which a material is still magnetic. The researchers plan to continue to explore these two materials and what they can teach us about the fundamentals of magnetism.

For more information, contact lead author , UW doctoral student in chemistry, at ekbacong@uw.edu.����������

The other UW co-authors are Charlize Agag, , , , Yinuo Xu, , , and . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

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Today’s wireless technologies harness chunks of the for myriad uses — radio waves broadcast TV and radio; microwaves transmit cellphone signals and cook our food; X-rays image our bodies; gamma rays kill cancerous cells.

, however, is interested in more neglected slices of the spectrum. Naghavi, an assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering at the ������˾��, studies the “terahertz band,” a region of the spectrum . Terahertz frequencies are notoriously difficult to work with, but they hold enormous potential in the fields of sensing, imaging and communications — future sensors, for example, could help firefighters “see” through smoke during rescue operations.

Naghavi recently joined a cohort of researchers from across the country who were awarded grants by the U.S. Department of Energy’s , an initiative to apply artificial intelligence across a wide range of research areas; other UW researchers are part of a Genesis-funded project to advance AI-driven cosmology. With the grant, Naghavi plans to develop compact, efficient sensors that could enable wearable gadgets to image their environment in new ways.

UW News caught up with Naghavi to learn about his new project and how it extends his work on terahertz frequencies.

What is the terahertz band and why are you studying it?

Hossen Naghavi: The terahertz band is a segment of the electromagnetic spectrum that lies between 100 gigahertz and 10 terahertz — the microwave band sits below it, and the optical band sits above it. That position gives terahertz waves a unique combination of microwave and optical properties. Microwaves can see through opaque materials like clothing, smoke or fire, but their long wavelengths limit the resolution of microwave imaging. Optical waves have the opposite problem. Their wavelengths are short, so they produce high-resolution images, but most materials block visible light completely, which makes it impossible to see inside or behind an object.

Terahertz waves are a sort of “happy medium.” Their wavelengths are short enough to give useful resolution but long enough to see through many materials. That combination allows us to build new sensors and cameras that can detect concealed objects or image scenes through smoke, dust and other conditions that defeat conventional optics.

What are some applications you envision for terahertz frequencies?

HN: is expected to become a defining mode of human-computer interaction, but realizing its full potential requires machines that can perceive and understand their surroundings far beyond what the human eye can see. Consider a high-stakes setting such as firefighting, where an augmented reality headset powered by terahertz waves could help firefighters locate victims or identify hazardous materials through smoke, fog and debris.��

Beyond firefighting and emergency response, terahertz technologies could also aid in autonomous navigation, security screening, industrial inspection, biomedical sensing, molecular spectroscopy, agricultural applications, and 5G and 6G communication networks.��

Sounds exciting! What’s the catch?

HN: Sensors that use terahertz waves, like the ones in our firefighting headset example, have been demonstrated in the lab. However, low-cost, low-power electronics that would be practical in a wearable device have not yet been developed.

Terahertz sensors produce high-resolution image streams, and processing them conventionally means moving enormous amounts of data to a central processor for analysis by an artificial intelligence system. That consumes too much power and adds too much delay to be practical in a lightweight device meant to be worn all day.

Tell us about your new project. How will it address some of the hurdles facing terahertz technologies?

HN: The usual way to build a terahertz imager is to split the job in two. The radar sensor collects raw signals, and a separate processor turns the signals into a picture. That division sounds sensible, but it is the source of most of the trouble. The raw signals arriving at each of the sensor’s antennas are slightly out of step with one another, and the processor has to line them all up before an image can form. That alignment requires a lot of continuous computation, which drains batteries quickly and introduces lag.

The natural comparison is the human eye. Your retina does not ship every photon to your brain for interpretation. It processes what it sees on the spot and passes along something much more compact, which is part of why vision costs your body so little energy. We are trying to give a terahertz sensor the same quality, which is why we describe the design as “neuromorphic,” meaning “brain-inspired.”

Who are you working with on this technology, and what’s next?

HN: My group at the UW and ‘s group at Texas A&M University are designing and building the sensor hardware. at the University of Utah and at ChipNexus are developing and implementing the AI system. This is a highly collaborative project.

Our next big milestone is to demonstrate a terahertz neuromorphic imager as a proof of concept in Phase I of our Genesis Mission project. Moving forward, we hope to expand the project into Phase II to add even more capabilities and make this technology accessible for public usage as early as possible.

For more information, contact Naghavi at naghavi@uw.edu.

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

Twelve faculty members at the ������˾�� 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 member’s “outstanding 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.”

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:��

, chair and PACCAR Endowed Professor of mechanical engineering and adjunct professor of neurological surgery and of aeronautics and astronautics, for “significant 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.”

, professor of materials science and engineering, for “pioneering research on structure–processing–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 — coupled with exemplary educational leadership — that have made a lasting impact across disciplines and the STEM community.”

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

, affiliate professor of health services and biostatistics and professor in the Public Health Sciences Division at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center, for “pioneering statistical models that transformed cancer early detection and screening policy, reshaping national and global guidelines and advancing equitable public health decision‑making, and for exceptional leadership, cross‑disciplinary collaboration, and mentorship, influencing generations of scientists.”

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

, Endowed Professor in Prevention in the School of Social Work and director of the Social Development Research Group, for “contributions 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.”

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

, research professor of epidemiology and associate director for public health sciences at the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center for “integrating large‑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.”

, affiliate professor of environmental engineering and chief scientist and laboratory fellow emeritus at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, for “his 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.”

, professor of bioengineering, the Dr. James B. Bassingthwaighte Endowed Faculty Fellow in Bioengineering, director of the Center for Translational Muscle Research, and�� associate chair of research and translation for the Department of Bioengineering, for “internationally 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.”

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

, 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 Health’s Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) Research Branch, director of the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’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 “inverse design framework” 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 — such as wearable electronics — 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.��

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

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 aren’t always indicative of a general trend.��

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 fathers’ 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 fathers’ 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.��

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

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Landslides cause an estimated in the United States. Those numbers could easily increase as housing needs spur development in landslide-prone areas, and as climate change , which are often a trigger. Despite the threat, there has never been a systematic, nationwide accounting of who is most at risk from landslides.

The new is the first resource to map building-level landslide risk for the entire U.S. The database, developed by ������˾�� researchers, rates 128 million buildings by landslide susceptibility, and uses socioeconomic data to assess residents’ vulnerability to the dangers and disruptions caused by landslides.��

According to the analysis, roughly 6.5 million people live in landslide-prone regions; most of those people are concentrated in Appalachia and along the West Coast. Urban residents of landslide-prone properties tended to be more affluent and resilient, whereas rural residents in at-risk areas tended to be less resourced and more vulnerable to the impacts of a landslide.

The results give government agencies and emergency managers a way to prioritize resources for landslide education and mitigation, and can also help individual residents understand their own risk.

“As a community of landslide researchers, we have spent almost all of our time studying the physical geography of landslides,” said , a UW professor of civil and environmental engineering and the co-creator of the database. “But we never considered the human geography. Now we can answer some very important questions about who is exposed.”

Wartman and his team in Earth’s Future. They also along with user-friendly tools to help nonscientists browse the results.��

To create the new database, the research team blended together multiple huge datasets: a map of terrain and landslide susceptibility made by the United States Geological Survey; inventories of building footprints and occupancy information from the Overture Maps Foundation and the Army Corps of Engineers, respectively; and socioeconomic data from the Census Bureau. The census dataset included information like income, disability, vehicle access, housing condition and other factors that impact the ability of communities to respond to disasters.

“This effort was much more than just merging massive datasets,” said lead author , a UW doctoral student of civil and environmental engineering. “The real work was the careful curation required to turn the incredibly rich data available in the U.S. into an accurate, usable tool for everyone from decision makers to the public.”

The analysis revealed that while almost 20% of the land in the country is prone to landslides, that area is home to just 2% of the population, or about 6.5 million people. Of those highest-risk residents, 80% live either on or near the West Coast or in Appalachia; West Virginia emerged as the state with the largest share of at-risk residents.

“Those concentrations were surprising,” Wartman said. “In a sense, it’s good news, because it shows landslide risk to be a localized hazard, which makes it more practical and affordable to address.”

The results also reveal an unexpected urban-rural divide. In rural areas across the country, the most landslide-prone communities tend to face greater economic constraints and are thus more vulnerable than the overall population. Residents there often have fewer resources to prepare for or recover from a landslide, for example, and are more likely to live in structures far from emergency services.

But in urban areas, Wartman said, “all of that flips on its head.”

Landslide-prone areas in cities tend to be highly valued hillside neighborhoods with desirable views, so the exposed populations are often better resourced. When a landslide occurs, these residents typically have greater financial capacity to recover from the damage.

Because of those complex regional and socioeconomic differences, the researchers warn against a “one-size-fits-all” approach to landslide policy. Instead, they recommend mitigation strategies that are specific to each region’s realities. In Appalachia, that might mean early warning systems that can reach a widely dispersed population, whereas in Seattle or San Francisco it might mean regulations that discourage building on unsafe slopes.

Wartman hopes that researchers and regulators will use the dataset to study landslide risk and develop new ways to protect residents across the country. He also sees it as an educational tool for anyone to learn about landslides and assess their own risk.

“People email me because they want to know if their homes are at risk, and I haven’t had a resource to point them to,” Wartman said. “That was a big part of the motivation for this work. Now I have something straightforward to offer them.”

, professor of civil, construction and environmental engineering at North Carolina State University, is a co-author of the research.

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Wartman at wartman@uw.edu.

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Eight ������˾�� researchers have been selected as Fulbright Scholars for 2026-2027 and will pursue studies around the world.��

Fulbright Scholars are college and university faculty, administrators and researchers, as well as artists and professionals, who build their skills and connections, gain valuable international insights and return home to share their experiences with their students and colleagues.

This year’s UW cohort represents a variety of disciplines, including sciences, engineering, business, environmental sciences, electrical and computer engineering, and computer science. The scholars will conduct research across the globe, including in Australia, India, Indonesia, Western Europe, Scandinavia and East Asia.

Two-thirds of this year’s UW applicants were selected as Fulbright Scholars — an astonishing acceptance rate in the prestigious and highly selective program.

“We are incredibly proud of these outstanding ������˾�� faculty and staff whose selection as Fulbright Scholars reflects the excellence, innovation and global impact of their work,” said UW Vice Provost for Global Affairs Ahmad M. Ezzeddine. “The knowledge, partnerships and cultural understanding they gain through these experiences will enrich the UW and strengthen our shared commitment to addressing global challenges through collaboration and discovery. As the Fulbright Program celebrates its 80th anniversary, we are grateful for the U.S. Department of State’s continued investment in this transformative program.”��

The Fulbright Scholar Program for academics and professionals supports more than 800 people to teach and conduct research abroad.��

This year’s UW Fulbright Scholars are:

is a professor in the Department of Biology in the College of Arts & Sciences. His research focuses on how mutually beneficial interactions between species — such as how insects pollinating plants is beneficial to both — scale into networks involving multiple species, and how the structure of those networks affects ecosystems. For example, some ecological network structures, or how connections between species are arranged, make these networks more resilient to perturbations, such as droughts or climate change.

Brosi’s Fulbright Scholar award will be through Spain’s flagship public research institution, Consejo Superior de Investigaciones Científicas, at the Doñana Biological Station in Seville. His work there will involve synthesizing and analyzing two comprehensive long-term datasets — one from his lab and one from his Spanish host lab — to better understand global patterns in pollination networks. In particular, scientists have recorded species that appear to be “specialists” — such as a bee species that has only been recorded visiting one plant species�� — in many ecological networks, but, without long-term data, it’s difficult to disentangle whether they are really specialists or just rare. Brosi will tackle this problem in collaboration with his Fulbright host, Ignasi Bartomeus, at Doñana.����

is the director of academic services in the Department of Bioengineering in the College of Engineering and UW Medicine. She supports the department’s doctoral students with a focus on improving the research experience, expanding opportunities and advancing access and collaboration.��

While a Fulbright Scholar, she will develop a framework for a new doctoral biomedical research exchange between the UW and Tampere University in Finland. Combs will work with faculty, students and staff at both universities to lead the development of a preliminary structure of a doctoral research exchange, including eligibility criteria, mentorship plans and evaluation metrics. She will also explore funding sources for the program’s ongoing sustainability and draft a memorandum of understanding for the institutions to consider.

, an assistant professor of management and organization and the Helen Moore Gerhardt Faculty Fellow in Entrepreneurship in the Foster School of Business. Her areas of expertise include entrepreneurship, organizational growth and scaling, technology and innovation strategy, and venture capital. DeSantola teaches entrepreneurship and entrepreneurial strategy to undergraduates, master’s and doctoral students. She was named a Poets & Quants top 50 undergraduate business professor in 2021.��

DeSantola will use her Fulbright award, during which she will be a visiting U.S. Scholar to University College Cork in Ireland, to study factors influencing innovation and entrepreneurship in novel food technologies. The project connects to a broader stream of DeSantola’s research exploring the emergence and evolution of new technology-based industries.

is�� an interdisciplinary scientist in the School of Marine and Environmental Affairs in the College of the Environment. Her work focuses on how coastal communities adapt to climate change and other environmental and socioeconomic stressors, particularly within fisheries and aquaculture systems. During the past 15 years, she has worked with coastal populations, including Indigenous harvesters, to support food sovereignty and long-term approaches to adaptation and resilience.

Green’s Fulbright award is to advance the inclusion of�� fish and other aquatic foods —�� “Blue Foods” — into Indonesia’s National School Lunch Program. The goal of this project is to improve nutritional outcomes for school-aged children while strengthening local food systems. Through working directly with fishers and fish suppliers, Green will work with the project team to identify the conditions necessary to provide Blue Foods that promote positive nutritional outcomes for children, support local fishers and sustain local ecosystems. This project is a pilot program for the initiative that will hopefully be expanded nationally.

is an associate professor in the Information School and also is part of the Responsibility in AI Systems and Experiences (RAISE) Center. An interdisciplinary scholar with expertise in human-centered AI, Mitra’s work draws on human-computer interaction, machine learning, natural language processing and social science to understand how people and AI interact in large-scale online systems. Her research examines the societal impacts of generative AI and develops methods to make AI systems more trustworthy, culturally aware and beneficial for diverse communities.

She will use her Fulbright award in India, where she will collaborate with researchers at the Centre for Machine Intelligence and Data Science (C-MInDS) at the Indian Institute of Technology (IIT Bombay) — the nation’s topmost and most selective public research institution. She will investigate the risks and capabilities of generative AI systems across socio-cultural contexts most relevant to the Global South. The work aims to advance more culturally aware and responsible AI while strengthening research partnerships between the United States and India.

is an associate professor in the School of Oceanography in the College of the Environment. Morris’ research uses cultivation and whole-genome DNA sequencing to identify the roles of bacteria in global nutrient cycles. With a focus on carbon, nitrogen and sulfur, he has conducted studies that show the effects of low dissolved oxygen on the nutrient cycling activities of the ocean’s most abundant organisms.��

During his time at in South Korea, Morris will pursue a project entitled, “High-throughput cultivation-based genomics of freshwater Chloroflexota.” A key goal is to advance understanding of the evolution of this important group of bacteria and its potential to mediate key nutrient transformations.

is an associate professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering and in the Department of Bioengineering in the College of Engineering. She leads a neural engineering lab focused on motor brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs. Her work combines experiments with computational methods to develop new ways to build BCIs that interact with plasticity in the brain.

During her stay at the Champalimaud Institute Centre for Restorative Neurotechnology in Portugal, she will collaborate with two researchers, Dr. Juan Álvaro Gallego and Dr. John Krakauer. The new projects aim to improve our understanding of how plasticity shapes brain dynamics and apply new BCI algorithms for stroke rehabilitation.����

is a professor in the Information School and an adjunct professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering in the College of Engineering. He is the founding director of the InfoSeeking Lab and founding co-director of RAISE, the Center for Responsibility in AI Systems & Experiences. His research focuses on agentic AI, human-centered information seeking and responsible AI, examining how intelligent systems can act on people’s behalf while remaining transparent, trustworthy and accountable. He is also the founder and CEO of VersarAI, a startup translating his research on AI agents into enterprise applications. His book, “Agent Nation,” was published this year.��

Shah will use his Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Entrepreneurship and Innovation at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia, to study how agentic AI can responsibly power entrepreneurship and innovation ecosystems. Working with RMIT researchers and Australia’s startup community, he will investigate what he calls the Delegation Paradox: the tension between the efficiency gained by delegating tasks to AI agents and the oversight, trust and accountability that delegation demands. The work aims to produce frameworks that help founders, enterprises and policymakers adopt AI agents in ways that drive innovation without sacrificing human agency.

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