Profiles

“I feel like my experience at the UW has been incredibly well-rounded," says Eddie McClary, who graduates in June 2026 with bachelor's degrees in dance and biochemistry. 

Graduating with bachelor's degrees in neuroscience and French, Hunter Jung is heading to France for a cognitive neuroscience program that reflects both interests.

Through summer excavations at a former plantation and an anthropology honors thesis, Raquel Matthews is advancing our understanding of the lives of enslaved people who lived there. 

For his UW master's in Scandinavian Studies, Estonian student Greg Rahuoja addressed political and practical challenges for Khanty, an Indigenous language spoken in parts of Siberia. 

University of Washington Provost Tricia R. Serio announced that Daryl Maeda will serve as the next Katherine and John Simpson Endowed Dean of the College of Arts & Sciences. His appointment is effective July 13, pending approval from the UW Board of Regents.

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.