Research

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.

Brain-computer interfaces, or BCIs, can help people with severe injuries or impairments regain the ability to communicate or move their arms and legs through robotic substitutes. The devices, which are about the size of a dime and are implanted on the surface of a persons brain, serve as a communication link between the brains neural...

The College of Arts & Sciences is home to many distinguished researchers, faculty, and students. Their work and contributions have been featured in media outside of the UW and across the country. Take a look at some ArtSci features from this past Spring Quarter. From AI to nature's poets, ArtSci in the Media has something for everyone!

Imagine sitting in a movie theater watching a film youve been anticipating for months. Suddenly, the screen goes blank. It only lasts a second, but thats long enough to disrupt the experience. Its also long enough, says Mal Ahern, to remind you of the physical infrastructure behind what we so often see as an immaterial...

Recent recognition of the University of Washington includes an EarthLab Innovation Grant, the Best Paper Award from American Political Science Association and honorable recognition mention from the American Society for Theatre Research. UW professor Richard Watts and team awarded EarthLab Innovation Grant Richard Watts, UW associate professor of French, is part of an interdisciplinary team...

Speculative fiction author Anselma Prihandita (PhD, language and rhetoric, 2025), a Nebula Award winner, finds that her creative writing bolsters her scholarly work in unexpected ways. 

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.

On June 3, scientists working on the Muon g-2 experiment (pronounced "mew-on gee-minus-two") released the third and final measurement of the muon magnetic anomaly. This result agrees with the published results from 2021 and 2023 but with a much better precision of 127 parts per billion, surpassing the original experimental design goal of 140 parts per billion.

WRF planning grant fuels effort to unify and elevate research on the brain across the university.

While at the UW, artist Kyra Wolfenbarger was a researcher, museum intern, and arts writer. What shaped her most were the people she met along the way.

Using a powerful research telescope, astronomy and physics major Max Frissell identified a never-before-seen active comet. Now he’s hooked.

Nine months ago, the Seattle school implemented one of the strictest phone bans in the citys public school district, requiring its 755 students to lock up their devices in pouches for the school day. Luca Magis-Weinberg, assistant professor of psychology at the UW, is quoted.

Many bird enthusiasts like to hang bright red feeders filled with homemade sugar water to attract hummingbirds to their gardens. Now, new research suggests this common practice may be driving rapid evolutionary change in one species in California. Alejandro Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of birds at the UW Burke Museum, is quoted.