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It’s a moth, it’s a plane, it’s … the Smellicopter, a little drone that senses odors with an onboard moth antenna. Seriously, that’s the scientists’ real name for their creation, a system that monitors the electrical signals sent from the antenna of an actual moth, allowing the drone to lock onto the source of a scent and navigate toward it. The UW’s Melanie Anderson, a doctoral student in mechanical engineering, and Thomas Daniel, professor of biology, are quoted.

Battles of grammar, for the most part, play out in English classrooms and in the pages of style guides. Rarely do arguments over split infinitives and Oxford commas venture beyond the walls of academia. But one linguistic phenomenon lands in the limelight every so often, and it’s a word you know well: the pronoun “they” — along with its derivatives “them” and “their.” Kirby Conrod, a lecturer in linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

Glennys Young, professor of history and of international studies and chair of the Department of History, was featured in a Spanish TV documentary about Cold War-era interrogation program, and the new Burke Museum was honored.

Andrea Godinez, assistant director of communications at the Burke
Museum, discusses all the resources the UW's Burke Museum has to offer to
students and the public.

Last year, Amazon surpassed Boeing as the state’s largest private employer, usurping a title the airplane manufacturer had likely held since the post-World War II era. The UW’s Margaret O’Mara, professor of history; Jeff Shulman, professor of marketing; and Andrew Hedden, associate director of the Harry Bridges Center for Labor Studies, are quoted.

Eleven Seattle-area community members pay tribute to a few of the cultural figures we lost last year. UW piano professor Robin McCabe remembers UW emeritus piano professor Bela Siki.

“Humanities Washington convened an interesting and provocative online discussion about controversial public monuments and ways we might think about whether they remain as is, whether they should be reinterpreted given today’s understanding or whether there are cases in which they should be moved to private settings,” writes Rufus Woods, publisher emeritus of The Wenatchee World. Josh Reid, associate professor of American Indian studies at the UW, is quoted.

Tim Salzman, UW director of bands, is mentioned in this article about a virtual composition class.

Department of Statistics faculty are featured in this article about their COVID-19 research.

Twenty moments from a year like no other — captured through the lenses of UW photographers.