Profiles

A public art installation commemorating the 1886 expulsion of Chinese Seattleites is a step closer to reality after more than 20 years in the making. About 50 community leaders, historians and members of the public gathered on April 28 at the Wing Luke Museum for an educational open house about the Chinese American Legacy Artwork Project. Connie So, teaching professor of American ethnic studies at the UW, is mentioned.

Members of the UW Math AI Lab traveled to Rio de Janeiro for ICLR 2026, where undergraduates Luke Alexander, Evan Wang, Rohan Pandey, and Simon Chess joined Vasily Ilin, Math PhD student and Math AI Lab Director, to present five papers on AI for Math. The lab is also celebrating Vasily’s paper being accepted as an ICML 2026 main-conference spotlight paper (top 2.2%).

This year’s Neddy Artist Award Recipient in Painting is UW Associate Professor of Painting + Drawing Sangram Majumdar.

The Neddy Artist Award is one of the most generous and longest-running awards for visual artists in the state of Washington. This year's eight Neddy Awards finalists included alums Dana Blume (MFA 2023) and ralph salazar (MFA 2025). 

Christie Tirado's (BA 2013) solo exhibition Cosechando Historias at Milwaukee’s Latino Arts gallery explores themes of migration and generational memory.

David Hertzog, a University of Washington professor of physics, is a recipient of the 2026 Breakthrough Prize for Fundamental Physics. The award is shared among roughly 400 scientists and celebrates decades of work to better understand the muon a subatomic particle with anomalous properties.

A Nigerian scientist's "personal experience" with a wildfire, its threat to endangered bats she discovered just days before, and her campaign to protect them, has won her the global Goldman Environmental Prize. Iroro Tanshi, postdoctoral scholar of biology at the UW and recipient of the award, is quoted.

Access, care, and community are at the center of Chave Pichardo's practice. Read how the graduating MFA student has connected their role at the Jacob Lawrence Gallery to their research and studio practice. 

"On Dec. 30, 2024, my mother, Brenda Louise Baker, died. I have known grief most of my life. I was 9 when my uncle died. By high school, death no longer felt shocking. It felt familiar. I decided I wanted to become a pathologist, as if understanding the science of death might quiet the ache it caused," writes KD Hall, affiliate instructor of communication leadership at the UW.

Briana Abrahms, associate professor of biology at the University of Washington, studies how climate change affects human-wildlife interactions and increases conflict around the world. In January, she gave the keynote speech at the International Parliamentary Roundtable on Human-Wildlife Coexistence held in Botswana.

Tom Nissley (PhD, English, 1999) is owner of Phinney Books in Seattle thanks to a love of literature and his winnings as a Jeopardy! champion. 

When she was working as the social impact and marketing director at Molly Moon’s, UW communication alum Emily Kim, ’08, saw an opportunity: a free pastry education program to help people facing barriers to employment. Thus the Pastry Project, complete with a Pioneer Square storefront, was born. 

UW Magazine’s Aleenah Ansari checks in with Kim about the origins of the Pastry Project, what it means to run a social impact business and how she developed the curriculum for their free pastry education program.

A top 4 finalist on Season 27 of The Voice, 2023 alumna Lucia Flores-Wiseman is just getting started. Read more about her journey and how her Journalism and Public Interest Communication degree influences her storytelling!

Pulitzer-winning reporter Evelyn Iritani uncovers the diplomatic exchange of American and Japanese civilians while the two countries were at war.

Between college and "the real world," design alum and animator Vivian Cho (BDes 2025) was the 2025 Artist in Residence at the University Bridge. Her final project will be on display at ARTS at King Street Station from June 4 through August 8, 2026.

Pulitzer-Prize winning editorial cartoonist David Horsey tells stories in long hand with his novel “Beach of Stars.”