In early April, a powerful typhoon formed over the northwestern Pacific Ocean, as it swirled toward the Mariana Islands, a 15-island archipelago east of the Philippines. By the time it on April 14, the wind was gusting 130 miles per hour, rain fell in sheets and huge waves pounded the shores.

This super typhoon, called Typhoon Sinlaku, was among the strongest early-season storms recorded in the past 75 years. It caused widespread damage on the islands 鈥� home to approximately 50,000 people 鈥� leaving most without power, tearing roofs off homes and destroying vital infrastructure.

The U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, includes 14 of the islands in the archipelago and the remaining island, Guam, is a U.S. territory. The residents, a mix of Indigenous Chamorro people and settlers, are American citizens and U.S. institutions and agencies are well represented on the islands.

On Rota, 天美影院 researchers have been working to stabilize the population of the endangered Mariana crow for decades after research signaled rapid decline. , a 天美影院professor of environmental and forest sciences, and , a 天美影院professor of environmental and forest sciences, oversee several projects on Tinian, a small forested island roughly 12 miles long and 6 miles wide.

The first project, launched in 2021, focused on a small, formerly endangered songbird called the . It has since expanded into broader study of native birds and plant restoration.

天美影院News spoke with Gardner, , a research scientist in Gardner鈥檚 lab, and , a graduate student in Bakker鈥檚 lab, about the impacts of the typhoon and how they plan to resume their work on the islands.

What first brought you to Tinian? What makes the island unique?

Beth Gardner: We were initially approached by a consulting firm with a contract to study the Tinian monarch, which led us to form a relationship with the U.S. Navy based on the island. They were impressed by our work and efforts to integrate into the community and funded our group to continue developing research on Tinian.

Kaeli Swift: Tinian鈥檚 unique ecological character reflects its complicated history. The island is about 60% forested but the forests are primarily composed of a mix of introduced species. Centuries of colonization 鈥� by the Spanish, Germans, Japanese and now U.S. 鈥� has resulted in immense habitat destruction. Tinian was heavily bombed during World War II and then became the U.S. point for the atomic bomb.

Fletcher Moore: By the end of the war, over 95% of the forest had been cleared, obviously to the extreme detriment of all the native plants and animals. Now, over two-thirds of the island is controlled in a lease agreement by the U.S. military. That land is largely undeveloped, but the U.S. military plans to invest in major new projects on Tinian in the next decade.

What does your work involve?

KS: We have been doing on Tinian for five years. We鈥檙e trying to understand threats to native birds by studying offspring survival and predator populations 鈥� primarily rats and cats. Our recent work involves acoustic monitoring, specifically looking at how birds are impacted by human-related noise associated with development on the island.

FM: We are working on a long-term native forest restoration project based on the observation that the lack of native plants was limiting wildlife populations on Tinian. We are supporting development of a native plant nursery by partnering with local entities to enhance the space, hire full time staff, and collect and propagate plants. We had about 2,000 native trees representing 20 different species in the nursery, and planted about 300 of those trees in the past six months.

How will it be impacted by Typhoon Sinlaku?

FM: The site where we planted the young trees is on an isolated corner of the island that is difficult to get to in the best of times. Right now, the road is totally inaccessible. We鈥檙e not sure when we will be able to get out there to assess the damage and resume regular restoration work, like controlling invasive species and planting other species. The nursery also suffered a lot of damage; almost half of its plants were destroyed. So it’s going to require a pretty big reset.

KS: Our work involves venturing into the jungle to set up cameras and acoustic recording devices for monitoring birds. Our access to those sites will be limited until the roads are cleared and even then, the nature of the vegetative landscape will have changed. We can鈥檛 really compare data on birds from one year to the next when there have been major changes to vegetation on the island.

BG: That little songbird we study has probably gone quiet for now. As we鈥檝e seen in the past, their populations will likely suffer from this type of devastation. The typhoon sat on top of Tinian and Saipan for somewhere around 50 hours. We don鈥檛 know the full extent of the damage yet, but I think things will be completely different when we get back out there.

What happens now?

FM: It is difficult to access resources on the Marianas and especially hard on Tinian. We had to transport everything we needed for these projects from elsewhere. Shipping can take weeks or months and building materials are often twice as expensive as they would be on the mainland U.S.

When it comes to our work, it’s really difficult to see the nursery destroyed and to see the materials we spent months and a lot of money gathering torn apart. But, it’s going to be especially hard for the people who live on the island and don鈥檛 have grants funding their rebuilding efforts. So there are just a lot of practical challenges to recovery out there that even folks affected by disasters in the mainland U.S. might not face to the same degree.

Thornton听has served as听interim dean听since last July, filling the position vacated by Maya Tolstoy.听

Thornton,听a听professor and chair of the听College鈥檚听Department听of Atmospheric and Climate听Science,听is an atmospheric chemist who studies the impacts of human activities on air quality and climate through changes to the atmosphere鈥檚 composition and chemistry.听听

鈥淭hroughout the search process, the deep respect for Dr. Thornton as both a scholar and an effective and engaged leader were evident,鈥� Serio said.听鈥淗is extensive knowledge of and dedication to the College and its mission will support its continued excellence.鈥�听

Thornton鈥檚听research focus is on the processes which regulate the formation and removal of short-lived greenhouse gases such as methane and ozone, and the formation and growth of airborne particulate matter. These atmospheric components听鈥斕齭trongly modulated by both human activities and natural processes听鈥斕齢ave important effects on human and ecosystem health, and impact climate through the greenhouse effect and changes to cloud properties.听听听

“I am truly honored and delighted to have been selected as the Maggie Walker Dean of the College of the Environment,” Thornton听said.听“Supporting the incredible research and teaching that takes place here as interim dean has been an inspiring experience, and I’m looking forward to partnering with our entire community to further grow the impact of this crucial work.”听

The recipient of a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and a NASA New Investigator Award, Thornton has also received the Houghton Award from the American Meteorological Society and the ASCENT Award from the American Geophysical Union for his research contributions to the field of atmospheric science.听听

He earned his bachelor鈥檚 degree in听chemistry from Dartmouth College, and听his doctoral degree听in听chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley.听听听

Micropantries 鈥� commonly called 鈥渓ittle free pantries鈥澨� 鈥� and community fridges are a frequent sight throughout Seattle and the greater Puget Sound region. One estimate suggests that they supply around 4 million pounds of food per year to neighbors in need in the Seattle area, more than the state鈥檚 largest food bank. The curbside cupboards are a decentralized, community-driven effort to fight food insecurity and reduce food waste at the neighborhood level, but their ad hoc nature limits their dependability 鈥� users don鈥檛 know when food is available without repeatedly checking, and donors don鈥檛 know what foods are needed most.

Now, anyone who interacts with micropantries or community fridges in the Seattle area can try out an experimental app, made by 天美影院 researchers, that brings a suite of new features to the micropantry network. , maps many local pantries across the region. The app also gives each pantry an activity feed where users can share food they鈥檝e donated, report on stock levels, add requests to a wish list, post photos and leave other notes. The research team also retrofitted some pantries with sensors that anonymously auto-report their usage and stock levels to the app in real time.

鈥淭his is an effort to document and quantify the phenomenon of micropantries,鈥� said , a senior research scientist at the 天美影院. 鈥淟ots of micropantries and community fridges popped up around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was curious about who uses them and how they are used.鈥�

The team was cognizant of privacy concerns and designed the smart pantry tech accordingly.

鈥淧utting cameras in the pantries could give us a lot of information about what specific foods are moving through the system, but that may also deter users who are concerned about privacy,鈥� said , a 天美影院doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering who designed and built the sensor suite. 鈥淚nstead, we settled on simpler sensors that measure weight and interactions like opening the door to measure stock levels while preserving everyone鈥檚 anonymity.鈥�

The researchers hope that neighbors will find new ways to connect and help one another through these tools. A user might see that stock levels are low in a nearby pantry, for example, and decide to add some food. Another user might request certain foods to accommodate their dietary restrictions.听

The sensor-equipped pantries are a small subset of the dozens of pantries throughout Seattle, but in addition to providing some neighborhoods with enhanced food tracking, they will generate aggregate data that will help Dalla Chiara鈥檚 team study donor and usage behavior. Dalla Chiara also plans to survey donors to learn more about what motivates people to provide food to pantries.

鈥淲e know that there is a lot of food insecurity in Seattle and in the United States in general,鈥� Dalla Chiara said. 鈥淏ut we know that there is also a lot of food waste 鈥� lots of people have a surplus of food. And we want to see how grassroots efforts like micropantries can address both food insecurity and waste at the same time.鈥�

Dalla Chiara and his team recently completed a refit on a cold, sleeting March day at a pantry owned by Saint Paul鈥檚 Episcopal Church near Seattle Center. The church keeps the pantry regularly stocked, and rector Stephen Crippen is curious about the data the new system will produce.

鈥淚t puts numbers on what we鈥檙e actually accomplishing,鈥� Crippen said. 鈥淚t helps us get in touch with what鈥檚 going on on this street.鈥�

The research team is also working with local businesses and nonprofits to encourage and track food distribution throughout the pantry network. In April, recycling company Ridwell ran a nonperishable food drive across Seattle and delivered 25,000 pounds of food to the ; from there, volunteers from the Cascade Bicycle Club鈥檚 distributed the food to micropantries around the city by bike, giving the network an infusion of both food and usage data. The and the nonprofit helped support the project鈥檚 community fridges effort.

Dalla Chiara recognizes that there are other grassroots online, and he doesn鈥檛 want his app to replace those services. Nor does he expect the smart pantry network to remain in service indefinitely 鈥� it costs about $150 to retrofit each pantry with sensors, and all that tech will be difficult to maintain after the study concludes in October of this year. At its core, the project is an effort to learn about micropantry usage and explore how technology might encourage sharing of resources and mutual aid systems.

鈥淲e鈥檙e trying to measure and quantify goodwill,鈥� Dalla Chiara said. 鈥淏ehind each little free pantry there is a whole system of behaviors 鈥� people trying to help one another. If we can understand that system better, we can support it better.鈥�

Other 天美影院collaborators include , professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Urban Freight Lab; , assistant teaching professor of environmental and occupational health sciences; , assistant professor of food systems, nutrition and health; and , assistant professor in the Allen School.

For more information, contact Dalla Chiara at giacomod@uw.edu.

Some Alaska cruises are to this year after a landslide-generated tsunami barreled through the narrow channel during peak season last August. A new analysis of the event from researchers at the University of Calgary and the 天美影院, , describes how glacial retreat caused by global warming primed the fjord for the colossal wave and what, if any, warning signs preceded it.

At 5:26 a.m. on Aug. 10, 2025, a piece of the mountainside one kilometer tall and 200 meters thick collapsed into the Tracy Arm Fjord, a scenic waterway south of Juneau. Rock crashed into the water, taking with it chunks of the South Sawyer glacier and producing a 481-meter high tsunami so powerful that it scraped surrounding hillsides bare.

The event would have been “unsurvivable for any ship of any size,鈥� said co-author a 天美影院professor of Earth and space sciences, but fortunately the tsunami occurred too early for tours and no one was harmed.

Later that day, as many as 20 boats, including large cruise ships, may have visited the fjord. Tourist vessels often draw near the fjord wall to get the best vantage point for photographs of towering glaciers and mountains. The slope that failed was only recently exposed to the water below it due to glacial retreat.

鈥淚t was only in the last few years that the glacier retreated back past the bottom of where the hillside failed,鈥� Roe said.

Tracy Arm Fjord hosts two glaciers, the Sawyer and South Sawyer, which both stem from the , a frozen expanse spanning the Alaska-British Columbia border. The larger South Sawyer glacier terminates in the water, making it a tidewater glacier, while the Sawyer retreated onto land in 2023.

Satellite observations indicate that the ice has retreated nearly 10 kilometers since the beginning of the industrial era, with the pace accelerating after 2000.

Mapping the change in position and mass of a tidewater glacier can be difficult because they shrink in multiple directions. Exposed ice melts in the sun and chunks break off and fall into the water at the glacial front. Glaciers around the world have been retreating in response to global warming, but tidewater glaciers don鈥檛 always follow general trends.

To understand the link between global warming and the 2025 tsunami, researchers used a computational method developed by Roe and , a 天美影院research scientist in Earth and space sciences. Their approach combines hundreds of simulations from various computer models to estimate how different certain climates would look without human influence.

鈥淲ith these data, we can quantify how unusual the observations are compared to the expected natural variability in the climate had we not been burning fossil fuels,鈥� Berdahl said.

In the study, they conclude that 100% of the industrial-era warming in this region of Alaska is human-caused. As it gets warmer, less snow accumulates and the ice retreats.

鈥淪nowline elevations are rising, ice is thinning, and the ice cap is shrinking. Even though tidewater glaciers can be more complicated to study, we are fully confident that the retreat is primarily due to the changing environment, and we are the cause of the changing environment,鈥� Roe said.

It is possible that glacial retreat destabilized the slope that failed, but specific landslide triggers are notoriously difficult to discern. Either way, if the surface beneath the slope had been glacial ice, the slide wouldn鈥檛 have produced such a massive tsunami.

Although no one was harmed by the wave, those nearby raised the alarm. Kayakers awoke early in the morning to water flowing past their tents and carrying away some of their gear. A cruise ship anchored near the mouth of the fjord described large waves rolling through and shifting currents. These reports allowed researchers to triangulate the landslide, but the authors say there were very few advance warning signs.

鈥淣ormally with these gigantic rock avalanches, they often give some sort of warning signs in the weeks, months or years prior when the slope is slowly moving down the mountain. It鈥檚 sagging and then it catastrophically gives way in a rock avalanche,鈥� said lead author , associate professor of Earth, energy and environment at the University of Calgary. 鈥淚n this case, that didn鈥檛 happen.鈥�

The researchers did note an increase in low frequency seismic noise before the landslide.

鈥淭he long precursory phase of seismic activity before the landslide is fascinating, and to my knowledge, rarely observed,鈥� said , a 天美影院professor of Earth and space sciences. 鈥淕iven its duration and the relative ease of detection, this type of signal could conceivably provide advance warning of large slides if enough seismic monitoring can be deployed.鈥�

Until that happens though, it will be difficult to predict the behavior of changing terrain.

The unexpected event presents challenges when it comes to disaster reduction in high-risk areas, Shugar said. Cruise ship companies, captains and other stakeholders should pay close attention, particularly in areas on the West Coast and in polar regions where glaciers are thinning due to the changing climate.

This study was funded by Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council, Alberta Innovates, Canadian Space Agency, U.S. Geological Survey Landslide Hazards Program, the U.S. National Science Foundation, NERC, the Eric and Wendy Schmidt Foundation, and the Carlsberg Foundation.

This story was adapted from

For more information, contact Roe at groe@uw.edu.听

Biodiversity loss is directly threatening human health and welfare, according to new research by a multi-institution team including the 天美影院. The study, , reveals for the first time how the decline of insect pollinators undermines essential ecosystem services that support human nutrition and livelihoods.

It鈥檚 been long known that insect pollinators are vital for producing many of the fruits, vegetables and legumes that supply essential vitamins and minerals in our diets, yet clear evidence of how their decline affects people has been limited.

Working in 10 smallholder farming villages and their surrounding landscapes in Nepal, researchers traced the full chain of connections between wild pollinators, crop yields and the nutrients families rely on. By tracking diets, crop nutrients and the insects visiting those crops over a year, the research team showed how pollinators directly support both nutrition and livelihoods.

鈥淭his study directly connects the crops that local pollinators visit with people鈥檚 diets, nutrition and income,鈥� said , a research scientist in the Department of Environmental and Occupational Health Sciences at the UW. 鈥淚t was a real collaborative effort across many partners to collect and analyze a large body of data, making it possible to explore these links.鈥�

The study found insect pollinators were responsible for 44% of people鈥檚 farming income and contributed more than 20% of their intake of vitamin A, folate and vitamin E. When pollinators decline, families risk poorer nutrition leading to higher vulnerability to illness and infections, and deeper cycles of poverty and poor health. One quarter of the global population currently suffer from this 鈥渉idden hunger.鈥�

The research shows there is real potential for positive change 鈥� nutrition and income can improve when communities support pollinators. Simple steps like planting wildflowers, using fewer pesticides or keeping native bees can help boost pollinator numbers, strengthening both nature and people鈥檚 wellbeing.

Even though smallholder farmers are highly vulnerable to biodiversity loss, these practical local actions could enhance their food security and economic resilience. The findings could also help improve the health and livelihoods of millions of smallholder farmers around the world.

鈥淥ur study shows that biodiversity is not a luxury 鈥� it is fundamental to our health, nutrition and livelihoods,鈥� said lead author who completed the research while at the University of Bristol and is now a postdoctoral research associate at the University of York, both in the United Kingdom. 鈥淏y revealing how species like pollinators support the food we eat, we highlight both the risks of biodiversity loss for human health and the powerful opportunities to improve human lives by working with nature.鈥�

The research shows that human health is deeply tied to the health of nature. By tracking how pollinators support food production and diets, the study reveals that biodiversity loss isn鈥檛 just an environmental problem, it threatens public health and economic stability 鈥� as highlighted in the recent U.K. government.

With around 2 billion people relying on smallholder farming and with many facing vitamin deficiencies, protecting the ecosystems that support nutritious food is essential and crucial for sustainable development.

The study鈥檚 findings offer a practical framework to help policymakers and farmers design more nature鈥憄ositive farming systems. Although the research is focused on Nepal, the same connections shape food systems everywhere. Diets, even in industrialized countries, still depend on the pollinators and ecosystems that sustain global agriculture.

The researchers 鈥� spanning universities and non-governmental organizations across Nepal, the U.K., the U.S. and Finland 鈥� are now putting their findings into action across Nepal to tackle pollinator declines and repair the pollination systems that support food production. Working with farmers, local organizations, researchers and government partners, they are helping people understand the value of pollinators and how to support them in everyday farming.

By demonstrating why pollinators matter, and sharing simple, practical techniques to support them, the researchers are already seeing farmers adopt changes that boost crop yields, nutrition and income.

鈥淎 鈥榳in-win鈥� scenario exists where we can simultaneously improve conditions for both biodiversity and people,鈥� said co-author , professor of ecology at the University of Bristol. 鈥淚t takes ecological understanding, but it costs remarkably little and there are significant gains for both parties.鈥�

This story was adapted from a

For more information or to contact the researchers, email Alden Woods at acwoods@uw.edu.

Artificial intelligence has swept into American schools, and more is sure to come. This year, both Google and Microsoft 鈥� the two biggest companies at the forefront of the AI boom 鈥� in AI training for teachers.听

But what do teachers think of this transformation of their work?

, a 天美影院 professor in the Information School and co-director of the Center for Digital Youth, studies how technology affects young people鈥檚 learning and development. Davis has also been teaching for over two decades 鈥� first as an elementary school teacher and now as a professor 鈥� so she鈥檚 acutely aware of how earlier technological revolutions in teaching have not always played out as hoped.

Davis and a UW-led team of researchers interviewed 22 teachers in in Colorado 鈥� a district that鈥檚 investing heavily in AI through systems like Google鈥檚 Gemini and , an AI tool that helps teachers plan. Overall, teachers were ambivalent about the technology. They liked that it could reduce workload, especially for rote tasks, but worried that it could erode the social aspects of teaching.

The team April 15 at the Association for Computing Machinery Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona.

天美影院News talked with Davis about the study and how ostensibly democratizing technologies can widen disparities in schools.听

Why did you want to study AI adoption by schools?

Katie Davis: At least since the introduction of the radio, every new technological invention has been hyped for how it will change teaching and learning. Computers are the prototypical example. They were pushed into schools only to start collecting dust, because they didn’t really change anything. We saw it with , too. Ten or 15 years ago, these courses were supposed to transform education and put colleges and universities out of business. But that hasn’t happened.

Often the hype centers on closing educational inequities. But these new technologies actually tend to aggravate existing inequities. The schools serving the most affluent students have the resources to think carefully about how to incorporate technologies into their curriculum so that they’re supporting student learning goals and outcomes, whereas more under-resourced schools don’t have the resources or the time to do that kind of work. So they end up incorporating technologies in ways that don鈥檛 necessarily help students learn; instead, they make things more efficient or keep track of students.

When AI started being intensely pushed into schools, I thought here we go again. AI is here and it’s not going anywhere, so I would love for us to understand how it’s being taken up in schools and, ideally, to prevent this recurring pattern.

What did you hear from teachers about AI?

KD: Teachers expressed a deep ambivalence toward AI. It wasn’t as if any one teacher said it’s all great or it’s all terrible. I think the single strongest driver for teachers to use AI was to prevent burnout. Teachers are being asked to do more and more 鈥� not just teach, but care for students’ entire emotional, cognitive and academic lives. It really weighs on them. So a lot of them talked about turning to AI to be a thought partner, to help them brainstorm lesson ideas, create assessments and differentiate lessons for different learners.

Another really big benefit for this particular school district was multilingual support. The district serves students who speak more than 160 languages. One teacher we spoke with said she had four main languages represented in her classroom but she only spoke English, so she was turning to AI to help her translate materials for her students and for their families so that she could communicate with them.听

I think it’s really important to note that this district is going all in on AI. They’re encouraging teachers to use it and providing professional development, and teachers are talking among themselves and sharing ideas. This kind of institutional support and more informal teacher conversations are also encouraging teachers to use AI and explore how they might incorporate it into their teaching practice.

AI is often presented as a democratizing technology, but a recently showed that higher wage earners are using AI more than lower wage earners in the same industry 鈥� possibly increasing disparities. Are you seeing anything like that playing out in education?

KD: The way that manifests in education is in the kinds of support that students have access to. It’s more likely that better-resourced schools are also going to provide some form of AI literacy instruction 鈥� to really engage students in thoughtful reflection about what AI is, how it may or may not be useful for their learning, and to actually get them to think about these issues in a deep way. Whereas in under-resourced schools, the easiest thing to do is to just block AI. That’s not going to prevent students from using it, but they will end up using it in a communication vacuum, without any adult guidance. You can see how that would create disparities in how well students can use it.

I was really interested in the finding that teachers are concerned that students will know they鈥檙e using AI.

KD: That is one of the most interesting findings for me. Teachers are definitely aware that if their students think they’ve used AI, students and their parents will feel that their teachers are cheating them out of a proper education. Teachers are very worried about both students and their more AI-resistant colleagues seeing them that way. I don’t think this is unique to teachers 鈥� I feel it in university jobs, too. Many people have this perception that using AI is cheating or taking the easy way out.听

But there’s another layer: Teachers are personally worried about their own authentic voice and professional identity. They鈥檙e asking, 鈥淚f I am using AI, at what point am I no longer a teacher? Where’s that line between using AI as a thought partner to augment my professional practice versus it now replacing my professional practice?鈥澨�

What are ways schools might amplify the positive parts of using AI while mitigating some of these negative effects?

KD: One of the first things is to bring AI out of the shadows and talk about it. Since we published this piece, I’ve been engaging with groups of teachers around the country in professional development experiences around AI, and they really enjoy having a community of practice. They feel that those spaces don’t necessarily exist in their schools. It’s like there’s this vacuum of communication 鈥� students don’t talk about it because they’re implicitly getting the message that it’s not OK to use it, and it鈥檚 the same with teachers.

Professional development is also very important. But a lot of professional development for teachers is just one-off PowerPoint presentations. It doesn’t really connect to whatever is going on in the classroom. Professional development needs to be done in a sustained way that meaningfully connects AI to teachers’ immediate classroom experiences.

School leaders need to be able to communicate AI policies, so that teachers are aware of them and understand how they apply in their specific schools. If you take Washington state as an example, the Office of Superintendent of Public Instruction has a really great blueprint and guidance for using AI. But my sense is that not many teachers are aware of it, or even if they are, there hasn’t been any concerted effort to say, “OK, this is what that means in our school.” We need to be working at many levels to make sure that AI is integrated into education well.听

Is there anything you want to add?

KD: Something I hold very dear as a teacher is that teaching is relational. Kids don’t learn in isolation. The gave saying the ideal vision is for every kid on the planet to have their own personal AI tutor and for every teacher to have their own personal AI teaching assistant. Maybe that would be great, but I worry that this push toward AI will erode the relationships between teachers and students. Teaching and learning are social processes. It’s not just about putting information into a student鈥檚 brain. Students learn through dialog, through participation in cultural practices. To remove that element of learning really concerns me.

Co-authors include, a 天美影院doctoral student in human centered design and engineering; of Artech and of Rutgers University, both of whom contributed to this research as 天美影院graduate students in the Information School; of Columbia University; of Aurora Public Schools;, a 天美影院associate professor in the Information School;, a 天美影院professor and chair of human centered design and engineering; of Lahore University of Management Sciences; of the University of Colorado Boulder; and of Boston College. This research was supported by a Spencer Foundation Vision Grant and the AI Research Institutes program by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences.

For more information, contact Davis at kdavis78@uw.edu.

The 天美影院 unveiled the 2026 Husky 100, recognizing 100 undergraduate, graduate and professional students from the 天美影院Bothell, Seattle and Tacoma campuses in all areas of study who are making the most of their time at the 天美影院and are making an impact in their communities.

This remarkable achievement 鈥� a kind of uber dean鈥檚 list 鈥� is awarded to students who demonstrate several key attributes, markers that they will be innovators and leaders.

Since 2016, the 天美影院has highlighted 100 students each year, telling their stories on an interactive website, creating a community on campus and as alumni, and inspiring new generations of Huskies.

Here are some key facts about this year鈥檚 Husky 100:

• There were 734 applicants and 88 faculty and staff who helped select the final 100.
• Nearly half are Washington residents; students on the list hail from all corners of Washington including Seattle, Bellingham, Spokane, Prosser, Olympia and Warden, and many more.
• There are 72 unique majors, including double majors.
• Seventy-one are seniors; 24 are graduate and professional students; and five are juniors.
• Students are from 16 U.S. states and 13 countries including Ghana, the United Kingdom, India, Bangladesh, Vietnam, Taiwan and China.

This year鈥檚 cohort will be recognized Monday with a celebration at the HUB. Learn more about this year鈥檚 Husky 100.

To find out more about students, their hometowns and for interviews, contact Jackson Holtz at jjholtz@uw.ed.

Discovery Days returns!

On April 30 and May 1, thousands of elementary and middle school students from across Washington state will arrive on the 天美影院鈥檚 Seattle campus to explore more than . Hosted by the 天美影院College of Engineering, Discovery Days gives students a chance to experience science and engineering concepts for themselves by building batteries, designing videogames, firing air vortex cannons and controlling plasma with their fingertips.听

This year, more than 9,000 students from 109 schools registered to attend.

For more information, contact William Poor at wpoor@uw.edu.

As the start of the 2026 FIFA World Cup inches closer, 鈥檚 schedule keeps getting busier.

鈥淚f I鈥檓 not teaching, I鈥檓 on a call dealing with the World Cup,鈥� Ramasastry said.

Ramasastry, a professor of law at the 天美影院, is an expert in the convergence of business and human rights 鈥� a field she helped create. She was also an advisor to the United Nations Human Rights Council, the group that established standards to help governments regulate companies while also providing guidelines for听 those companies to navigate global human rights issues.

Her expertise led to work with , which launched a stronger commitment to human rights after the 2022 World Cup in Qatar. included its reliance on migrant workers to build stadiums, women鈥檚 rights and LGBTQ+ rights. As a large global sporting body bigger than most multinational corporations, FIFA accepted that, like those companies, it has corresponding human rights commitments.

In the wake of that tournament, Ramasastry was asked to join FIFA鈥檚 human rights subcommittee as its independent human rights advisor. The committee commissioned on Qatar, which found that many migrants were uncompensated for their work, and others died or suffered injuries.听

As a result, the 2026 World Cup marks the first time each host bid had to include a human rights component, including the United Bid submitted by the United States, Canada and Mexico.听

Once that bid was accepted, cities also had to vie to host matches. Ramasastry drafted the human rights action plan for Seattle. Because of her global and local expertise, she鈥檚 also chairing the human rights expert advisory group for FIFA 2026, headquartered in Miami. She worked on the 2026 World Cup鈥檚 human rights framework, which served as a baseline for cities to create their plans.

天美影院News caught up with Ramasastry to talk about the World Cup and human rights, Seattle鈥檚 action plan and more.

What is a human rights action plan and what potential issues do they address?

Anita Ramasastry: For every city that鈥檚 going to host the tournament, in every country, there are going to be human rights impacts. How do you identify harms and risks to unhoused people that are connected to the tournament? How do you ensure that people have the right to assemble and protest? Are workers being fairly paid?听

There are all kinds of issues that arise that are connected to these sporting events. In different countries, there are different issues. Qatar had issues with migrant labor. In Russia, it was LGBTQ+ rights and discrimination. The controversy around Qatar happened after the bid was already awarded. The world tuned into what was happening there and started thinking about human rights.听

The point of having a human rights action plan is that you anticipate the harms that arise from the tournament and you try to mitigate them. It鈥檚 been a bumpy ride because the issues we’re now dealing with are not the issues we originally thought we were going to be dealing with. Immigration issues are very different now. The issue of protests and counterprotests weren鈥檛 necessarily top of the list before, but they are now very much an issue for cities.听

FIFA and the host cities also have a commitment to what we call 鈥渁ccess to remedy.鈥� If someone is harmed, there should be a way for them to be provided with relief and remediation. FIFA is going to have a grievance portal where people will be able to raise an issue and then FIFA is going to screen it.听

This is the largest and most decentralized World Cup ever. FIFA says its role is to protect human rights in the stadium and to protect the human rights of athletes and workers in the stadium. It鈥檚 the cities鈥� job to deal with fan festivals or other events happening outside the FIFA zone. This has been a challenge because the cities don’t get extra money to deal with this. My job is to say we want to protect people 鈥� the fans, the workers, the communities 鈥� that may get impacted.

What issues are most pressing for Seattle and how did you identify them?

AR: For the Seattle bid, I consulted local stakeholders and they identified what they saw as the top salient risks. The main topics were human trafficking, issues related to unhoused populations, the right to protest, workers鈥� rights and discrimination against certain communities.听

Now one of the biggest issues 鈥� and it鈥檚 challenging to address 鈥� is the rights of immigrant communities. We at the 天美影院hosted a roundtable on safeguarding immigrant communities. We鈥檙e also working on a peaceful assembly toolkit about the rights of protestors 鈥� how they can ensure they鈥檙e doing things peacefully and lawfully.

Part of the idea is that the practices and protocols that are created for Seattle now can be used in the future. I’d love for Seattle to have good ways of dealing with things. When the MLB All-Star Game came to Seattle in 2023, there were . Those are exactly the issues we don’t want to have happen. If there’s a protest, we don’t want people to be harmed. We want to allow dissent in a proper way. It鈥檚 really about the legacy of: Are there mechanisms in place to address issues or, if there is harm, to resolve complaints in a way that helps people?

Can you elaborate on past issues that led to this being the first World Cup to require human rights to be part of the bidding process?

AR: I think it’s a combination of several things. One is that there were the human rights standards that arose out of the United Nations. , a former Harvard professor, helped draft those. And he had such authority that he was then able to go to FIFA and advise on embedding human rights into its operations. FIFA was amenable to changing its governance standards, not only because it was called out because of questions about Qatar, but because it had been implicated. There were and a whole investigation by the Department of Justice. And so with FIFA being ensnared in the bribery and corruption charges, it was open to these other reforms. It was kind of a confluence of events.

At the same time, there was similar pressure on the International Olympic Committee (IOC) to do the same thing, so now the IOC also has its own commitment to human rights. It does work with host governments and they have ways in which human rights plans are mobilized. With the expertise we鈥檝e developed at the UW, I鈥檓 going to keep moving forward with our students. The Women鈥檚 World Cup may be coming to the U.S. in 2031 and the Olympics are in Los Angeles in 2028. Those are other opportunities to ensure safe events.

Speaking of your students, how do they engage with this work?

AR: I just taught a seminar this winter on human rights and the World Cup, so they were able to trace the journey from Qatar all the way to Seattle and beyond. We had people speaking about the World Cup, the LA Olympics and what it means to think about the World Cup going to Saudi Arabia in 2034, which is its own kind of interesting issue. Every week, students were able to meet with insiders 鈥� either in-person or virtually. The human rights officer from FIFA Zurich talked to them, as did the leader of the Dignity 2026 Coalition, which is a network of labor and human rights organizations uniting to protect groups who are at risk of adverse effects from the World Cup. Other speakers included former Olympic soccer gold medalist , who is the CEO of the Centre for Sport and Human Rights who worked on the United Bid, and , who graduated from the 天美影院School of Law. She is the COO of the Seattle Reign and chaired the bid committee for Seattle. She now serves on the board of the Seattle 2026 Local Organizing Committee.

Students who want to do applied work helped write the Seattle bid. They were in the room for the roundtables we convened on immigration and peaceful protest, taking notes and writing summaries. My students have met with people who have dedicated their careers to human rights. For many of us, it鈥檚 about the people, right? No matter how much money is made, at the end of the day it should be made in a harm-free manner.

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

Hear more from Anita Ramasastry

Anita Ramasastry will moderate 鈥淲orkers鈥� Rights in Seattle during the World Cup,鈥� a discussion with King County councilmember Teresa Mosqueda, on May 4 from 5-6:00 p.m.

The discussion is part of an ongoing speaker series from the 天美影院Global Sport Lab where experts discuss the geopolitical, local and sporting implications of the 2026 FIFA Men鈥檚 World Cup in Seattle. These sessions are free and open to all via livestream. Registration is required. Please follow to RSVP.

Sunbirds may look similar to hummingbirds 鈥� small, iridescent birds with thin bills 鈥� but it turns out the two are only distantly related. Sunbirds live primarily in Africa, Asia and Australia, and have a unique way to slurp up nectar. Unlike hummingbirds, which use minute movements in their bills to sip nectar, sunbirds use their tongues as a straw. published in Current Biology, a team led by researchers at the 天美影院 showed that these long-billed birds can change the pressure at the base of their tongues to create suction that moves nectar through their tongues and into their mouths, a novel mechanism never before seen in vertebrates. The researchers used multiple techniques 鈥� including high-speed video of sunbirds drinking red-dyed nectar from transparent artificial flowers 鈥� to demonstrate this phenomenon across multiple sunbird species as well as build a mathematical model that describes how it works. Sunbirds pollinate the flowers they drink from, and researchers are interested in understanding how different sunbird species’ plant preferences affect the plant-pollinator networks across continents.

For more information, contact lead author , who completed this research as a 天美影院doctoral student in biology, at david_cuban@brown.edu.听听

The other 天美影院co-author is . A full list of co-authors and funding is included . Related stories in and .听

Seattle Fault gets 5,000 more years of sleep听

Just over 1,100 years ago an on the Seattle fault rocked 鈥� and reshaped 鈥� the Puget Sound region. It lifted the sea floor and sent a powerful tsunami through the sound. Researchers have estimated that this fault, which runs east to west beneath the middle of the city, will produce a large earthquake every 5,000 years or so. However, , recently published in Geology, pushes that estimate back to 11,000 years. The researchers extended this window by scouring submerged shorelines for evidence of significant elevation changes. The geological record at these sites dates back 11,000 years, but they only found evidence of one major earthquake. This information could be useful to those making seismic hazard maps, which help people understand the risks associated with different regions. Although other regional faults and the imposing pose more imminent risks to residents, the main Seattle fault doesn鈥檛 appear to be ready for rupture anytime soon.

For more information, contact lead author , 天美影院research scientist of Earth and space sciences, at edav@uw.edu.

The other 天美影院co-author is . A full list of co-authors and funding is included in the paper. Related story in .

The PNW has many rivers, but no system for gauging landslide dam risk

Scientists have a new tool for estimating lesser known hazards in the Pacific Northwest: and outburst floods. Landslides along rivers can block the flow of water downstream, creating a lake just above the slide area. Most landslide dams fail within 10 days, releasing trapped water in an outburst flood, which can be devastating. Last fall, 20 people died after in Taiwan. published in Natural Hazards and Earth System Sciences, 天美影院researchers debut a mathematical approach to mapping landslide dam hazards based on valley width and projected slide size. When they applied the tool to a mountain range in Oregon, they found that roughly one-third of rivers in the study area were susceptible to landslide dams, with risk increasing in mountainous areas. If a landslide dam does form, alleviating pressure by for water to escape can help prevent flooding. Identifying high risk areas can help guide emergency response efforts following storms, earthquakes and other events that increase landslide risk.

For more information, contact lead author , 天美影院doctoral student of Earth and space sciences, at pmmorgan@uw.edu.

The other 天美影院co-author is . A full list of co-authors and funding is .

Rubin observatory expected to spot many 鈥榠mminent impactor鈥� asteroids

Small asteroids 鈥� those 1 to 20 meters in diameter 鈥斕� hit the Earth 35-40 times per year, though they鈥檙e very rarely spotted by telescopes before impact. That could soon change: published in The Astrophysical Journal, 天美影院astronomers calculate that the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory could discover one to two Earth-impacting asteroids annually , roughly doubling the number currently logged. The researchers expect Rubin to discover these asteroids an average of 1.5 days before impact, which is more warning time than ever before. Advance notice is extremely valuable in the case of larger asteroids that could be a threat to people or infrastructure. Because the Rubin Observatory is located in the Southern Hemisphere, it will likely discover many Earth impactors that existing asteroid surveys 鈥� concentrated in the Northern Hemisphere 鈥� miss.

For more information, contact lead author Ian Chow, a 天美影院graduate student of astronomy, at chowian@uw.edu.

Other 天美影院co-authors are Mario Juri膰, Joachim Moeyens, Aren N. Heinze and Jacob A. Kurlander. A full list of co-authors is included .

Many marine microbes share a genetic toolbox for fixing supper at sea

Researchers have now identified a set of genes that allow some bacteria to process a compound, called homarine, that is abundant in the ocean and appears to play a key role in nutrient cycling. Phytoplankton produce loads of homarine, but scientists weren鈥檛 sure what became of it until now. In a recent study published in Nature Microbiology, researchers found a set of genes present in common and far-flung bacteria that convert homarine into glutamic acid, an essential building block for life. This suggests that homarine may be a vital and overlooked resource and highlights the importance of bacteria in stabilizing marine ecosystems. Previous studies also found that homarine serves as and helps small crabs . The 天美影院team will continue studying homarine to better understand how it fits into the broader ecological landscape.

For more information, contact senior author , a 天美影院professor of oceanography, at aingalls@uw.edu.听

The other 天美影院co-authors are , , , , , and 听 A full list of co-authors and funding is