College of Arts and Sciences

If you’re looking for a way to connect your alma mater to Timothée Chalamet, look no further. The star graced screens around the world in the epic films “Dune” and “Dune: Part Two,” which were based on the Hugo Award-winning science fiction novel by former UW student Frank Herbert. Need another tie? Chalamet’s character, Paul Atreides, first appeared on the silver screen in the 1984 version of “Dune.” The actor? Kyle MacLachlan, ’82.

National Poetry Month takes place every year in April. Its purpose is to increase awareness and appreciation of poetry nationwide. This year, Seattle residents will have the privilege and pleasure of discovering, installed throughout various parts of the city, poems by local poets on topics of place and sustainability. Jayme Yen, teacher of design at the UW, is mentioned.

Scientists have completed the construction of the world’s biggest camera after two decades of work for the Rubin Observatory in Chile. Željko Ivezić, professor of astronomy at the UW, is quoted.

Eclipses past and present arenât just opportunities for incredible sights. Generations of researchers have used them to study phenomena ranging from the sun itself to the fabric of the universe. UW News intervewed Emily Levesque, author and associate professor of astronomy, about what scientists past and present have learned by studying eclipses.

Artificial intelligence is suddenly everywhere. Fueled by huge technological advances in recent years and gobs of venture capitalist money, AI has become one of the hottest corporate buzzwords. Roughly 1 in 7 public companies mentioned “artificial intelligence” in their annual filings last year, according to a Washington Post analysis. But the term is fuzzy. Emily Bender, professor of linguistics at the UW, is quoted.

The Standard spoke to Catalina Velasquez, a doctoral student at the UW, about being one of the few trans, queer people leading the immigrant rights movement in Washington.

Beyoncé's latest album, "Cowboy Carter," pays homage to country and other acts before her time. She covered Dolly Parton's "Jolene" and The Beatles' "Blackbird" and added her own twists. Chart data shows that the artists she spotlights are seeing a streaming boost. Gabriel Solis, professor of music and Divisional Dean of the Arts at the UW, is quoted.

A list of 10 recommended road trips in Washington state includes the UW Planetarium. Andy Tzanidakis, a doctoral student in astronomy at the UW and student director of the planetarium, is quoted. Coach Jedd Fisch also is quoted about open-to-the-public football practices beginning April 2.

Alejandro Rico-Guevara, assistant professor of biology at the UW and curator of ornithology at the UW Burke Museum, remembers when he first realized he was a hummingbird guy — not like an "I fill my hummingbird feeder every week" guy but an “I want to know everything about these birds” guy.

You are voting for the first time. Your ballot arrives. But you can’t read it. The text is too small. And when you come to the candidates’ names, they look something like this: T *&%$@(“&^, T>>%@)%|\^^. Such was the experience—more or less—of many older residents of the Chinatown International-District (CID) before the Nov. 2023 elections, according to multiple organizations sponsoring a get-out-the vote event. Connie So, teaching professor of American ethnic studies at the UW, is quoted.

Last May, a team led by physicists at the University of Washington in Seattle observed something peculiar. The University of Washington team reported the FQAHE for the first time, in a specially designed 2D material: two sheets of MoTe2 stacked on top of one another and offset by a twist. Xiaodong Xu, professor of physics at the UW, is quoted.

In Singapore’s growing microcosm of modern multiculturalism, literary translators bridge people across walks of life. These skilled story-weavers shoulder the responsibility of making our far-reaching roots accessible to readers around the world. Nazry Bahrawi, Assistant Professor of Asian Languages and Literature, is quoted.

The 2024 presidential election will potentially trigger even more people to move both within and outside of the US. James Gregory, professor and associate chair of history at the UW, is mentioned.

"The next generation of optical systems demands lenses that are not only lighter and thinner than ever before, but also uphold uncompromising image quality. This demand has fueled a surge of efforts to develop ultra-thin sub-wavelength diffractive optics, known as meta-optics. ... In a new paper published in Nature Communications, a team of researchers, led by Professor Arka Majumdar at the University of Washington, introduced a new design framework termed 'MTF-engineering,'" writes Anna Wirth-Singh, a UW doctoral student in the physics department.

Last week, children's book author JK Rowling tweeted some more nonsense about transgender people. In this case, she disputed the fact that Nazis destroyed early research on the community. Laurie Marhoefer, professor of history at the UW, is featured.