UW News

A historic fire lookout in Utah’s Ashley National Forest. Nearly 60% of the total river length within the forest is protected by the roadless rule, contributing to the water supply for Salt Lake City, Las Vegas, Los Angeles and San Diego. Approximately 90% of the U.S. population relies on public water systems. A significant portion of the water supplying those systems comes from forested lands, which means that policies impacting forests also impact our water access.

Come curious. Leave inspired. Wherever you are, the University of Washington offers opportunities to learn and connect with the ideas, people, and research shaping our world. This summer, visit campus for the latest exhibitions at the Henry Art Gallery and Burke Museum of Natural History and Culture, or join us from anywhere through recorded lectures, podcasts, virtual experiences, and more.

An aerial view of the UW Medical Center-Montlake. The University of Washington is exploring a significant redevelopment and expansion of UW Medical Center–Montlake, the Magnuson Health Sciences Center and west campus. To kick off this potential 10-year effort, the UW Real Estate office is issuing a Phase-1 request for proposals for a one-year exercise to find a development advisor that will, in collaboration with the UW, deliver an executable strategy for the project.

IBIS Symposium 3 IBIS Symposium: Dylan, Cole and Abby IBIS Symposium 4 IBIS Symposium Poster Presentation On May 29th, four School of Oceanography undergraduates presented their research at the IBIS (Identity, Belonging, and Inquiry in Science) Symposium. Lilah Christianson, Ashley (Hana) Chung, Cole Dollens, and Will Menapace each shared work developed through a year-long, mentored research experience — IBIS's signature model for building equitable pathways into marine science.

The Seattle-based activist group calling itself “Students United for Palestinian Equality and Return” (SUPER) has no affiliation with the University of Washington. In May 2025, a group with a similar name was permanently banned by the UW from being a Registered Student Organization due to repeated policy violations, having already been suspended in 2024.

Climate projections estimate that, by the end of this century, the land area exceeding rice’s temperature limits could expand by 10 to 30 times in Asia’s major rice-producing nations. Arguably the most important crop on Earth, rice has been cultivated for roughly 10,000 years. It’s a staple food for more than half the global population, with about 90% cultivated and consumed in Asia.

A UW team studied seven popular agentic AI browsers and found that four create ways for malicious actors to bypass a fundamental cybersecurity protocol called the “same-origin policy,” which makes websites open in a browser unable to interact with each other’s information. Researchers ran a successful proof-of-concept cyberattack on one browser. In the last year or so, artificial intelligence companies have rolled out a spate of web browsers equipped with AI agents.

This high-resolution image of Messier 82, also known as the Cigar galaxy because of its elliptical shape, provides the most detailed look yet at the one-of-a-kind galaxy. The Messier 82 galaxy, known as M82 or the Cigar galaxy, has long fascinated researchers with its astronomical rate of star formation — approximately 10 times faster than the Milky Way.

A field of stars in the constellation Lupus captured by the Simonyi Survey Telescope at the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory. The faint, glowing clouds spread across the image are galactic cirrus: clouds of interstellar gas and dust that can be seen in the foreground of the Milky Way galaxy. The original image is a whopping 1.7 gigapixels in size, a scale made possible by the Rubin Observatory’s 3,200-megapixel camera, the largest digital camera in the world.

Recently, students in the University of Washington’s Prosocial Computing Group noticed a trend on social media: People were using generative artificial intelligence to make short science videos. The trouble was that these people weren’t scientists, which, given AI’s proclivity to be convincingly wrong, could accelerate the spread of misinformation. So the lab wondered how to enable scientists and other researchers to better adapt to platforms like TikTok.