Natural Sciences Division

Meet the four graduating students selected by the College of Arts & Sciences as 2025 Graduate Medalists for their accomplishments. 

Meet the four new graduates honored as College of Arts & Sciences Dean's Medalists for 2025. 

Astronomers and skywatchers alike gathered Monday at the UW to see the first colorful images from the worlds largest digital camera, discoveries that are expected to revolutionize the field of astronomy. The UW's eljko Ivezi and Mario Juri, both professors of astronomy, and Sam Charney, a student at the UW, are quoted.

Perched high on a ridge in the South American Andes, a new observatory aims to revolutionize our understanding of the cosmos and unravel some of the mysteries it holds. Featuring the worlds largest digital camera, the Vera C. Rubin Observatory will spend the next 10 years constantly surveying and recording time-lapse movies of the stars, galaxies, asteroids and other objects moving across the southern hemisphere. Mario Juri, professor of astronomy at the UW, is interviewed.

After more than 20 years of planning and construction, astronomers celebrated the release of the first images from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory today and also registered hundreds of the first discoveries from the worlds newest eye on the sky. Mario Juri, professor of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

Once an eight-mile network of caves with an entrance in the lower part of Paradise Glacier, the Paradise ice caves were the most-visited tourist spot for decades before glacial melting caused large chunks of ice to begin to fall from the ceiling, endangering visitors and pushing officials to close access. Now, the caves are gone. Janneke Hille Ris Lambers, affiliate professor of biology at the UW, is quoted.

The Vera C. Rubin Observatory is expected to find millions of unknown objects in our solar system, and perhaps even a mysterious Planet Nine. Mario Juri, professor of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

A new era of astronomy and astrophysics began Monday when the first images captured by the NSFDOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory were released, demonstrating the extraordinary capabilities of the new telescope and the worlds largest digital camera.

Lindsay Schwarz, '03, received the highest honor handed out by the U.S. government to scientists and engineers in independent research. Schwarz graduated from the UW with a bachelor’s degree in cell and molecular biology.

When astronomers first dreamt up the Vera Rubin Observatory in the 1990s, the sky above the Chilean Cerro Pachn, where the star-observing machine was to be located, looked different than it does today. Meredith Rawls, a research scientist of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

The College of Arts & Sciences celebrates undergraduate and graduate students from across all four divisions, who are recognized for making the most of their time at the UW. 

Imagine an art class where you only did paint by numbers, or a music class where you werent allowed to play a song until you practiced scales for 20 years. This is often what its like to take a math class, where students spend most of their time learning to solve problems that have already...

Alejandro Rico Guevara is one of the foremost researchers on hummingbird bills. He has spent years studying how hummingbirds use their beaks to feed and fight. But his latest research looked at how human actions seem to be driving a high-speed example of evolution in hummingbird bills.Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of birds at the UW Burke Museum, is interviewed.

A new type of computer simulation predicts that the Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile will discover millions of previously undetected objects in the solar system over the course of the coming decade. Mario Juri, professor of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

A group of astronomers from across the globe, including a team from the University of Washington and led by Queens University Belfast, have revealed new research showing that millions of new solar system objects will be detected by a brand-new facility, which is expected to come online later this year.