Every summer, , �������� associate professor of biology, and members of her lab head to northern Botswana to study how large predators, such as lions and African wild dogs, are affected by climate change and other shifts in their environment.

The researchers are particularly interested in understanding how these predators are changing their behavior — including where they go and when they reproduce — as the days get hotter and as the animals are more likely to come into contact with people. One example is a project studying how interactions between lions and wild dogs, which don’t typically get along, might change during heatwaves and droughts.

Abrahms is returning to Botswana again this summer, along with two other researchers in her lab: , a UW research scientist in biology, and , a UW doctoral student in biology. , UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, will also be joining for parts of the season. UW News asked Rafiq and Poulin a few questions about their upcoming work for the occasional series “In the Field,” which highlights UW field efforts.

Tell us about the trip. Where are you going?

Kasim Rafiq: Our team will be traveling to the fringes of the . We have a long-standing partnership with , which has been operating a long-term monitoring program there since the 1990s. As part of this program, Wild Entrust operates a remote bush camp that we work out of, which we affectionately call “Wild Dog Camp,” or “Dog Camp” for short. This is really just a collection of tents in the middle of the African bush, and everything is non-permanent, meaning it could be quickly taken apart.

The camp is located in an area managed by the local community for wildlife tourism, and it borders the . So, it’s a wild landscape with lots of wildlife and lush vegetation. There’s no fence around the camp, so it’s not uncommon for animals to wander through the camp day and night, including lions, elephants, leopards and various species of snakes.

Have you visited this site before?

KR: I first came to Dog Camp in 2013 as a research assistant and then I completed my master’s and doctoral research there studying leopards. For my doctoral project, I stayed at the camp for two years because leopards are pretty tricky to study. I’ve been back to Dog Camp every year since I joined the Abrahms Lab as a research scientist in 2021.

I feel very privileged to have been able to work with the people in camp for such a long period of time. It’s been special to see how the camp has developed over that period, and also to maintain relationships with the Botswana-based teams.

MP: I joined the Abrahms Lab in 2024 and spent time in the field that year to become familiar with the carnivores that we study. I returned in 2025 and I began to learn essential field skills, such as how to track and follow carnivores in the bush. I’m excited for my third visit to the field site this year.

How do you study these creatures?

KR: We use a combination of techniques. We directly watch these predators and use new conservation technologies to monitor animals year-round and during periods when it’s just not possible to follow them, such as when it’s too wet.

One key technology we use is wildlife tracking collars that use GPS sensors to let us see where the animals are going and accelerometers and microphones to let us know what they’re doing. We like to think of these collars as Fitbits for wildlife. Just like your fitness tracker helps you better understand your movement and your sleep, these collars allow us to get deep insights into an animal’s behavior.

Can you talk about some of the projects you’re working on?

MP: I’m looking at how social structure in wild dogs may influence how they respond to environmental change. Wild dogs live in tight-knit packs, just like grey wolves in North America. In each pack, usually only one lead pair has pups, while the rest of the pack — often aunts, uncles and older siblings — all work together to babysit, feed and protect the pups.

In my research, I am investigating how a pack’s “social profile,” such as its size, family ties and history, affects how the animals adjust their movement patterns during heatwaves and droughts. I’m also looking at how increasing temperatures affect the timing of these dogs’ reproduction.

Overall, I’m interested in understanding if the benefits of living in a group, such as the higher hunting success, pup care, and reproductive success seen in larger packs, might help buffer the impacts of environmental change on animal populations.

What are your goals for this trip?

KR: This year, our plan is to deploy tracking collars on the long-term lion and African wild dog study populations across our field site. The data that we’ll get from these collars is crucial for helping us understand how behaviors change year after year as a result of environmental change.

A key part of this field season will also involve following animals with these sensors and collecting video recordings of them doing different behaviors, such as where and how they hunt and feed. We will use the video data to train AI models that allow us to better understand how climate change is affecting these behaviors.

What’s something you really enjoy about doing this field work — especially something that might not occur to most people?

KR: Two of the things I enjoy most are the behind-the-scenes parts of the work that are critical to this type of fieldwork, but that people rarely think about or see.

First, I really enjoy tracking animals. There’s something quite meditative about following a wild animal’s footprints through the grass.

The second is vehicle mechanics. Around 80% of fieldwork is fixing your Land Rover when it breaks down for some unknown reason, and although that tinkering can be frustrating, it’s also fun. Some of my favorite memories in the bush come from sitting in the sand and taking apart the engine.

MP: I love tracking animals using radio telemetry. The tracking collars we put on animals send out radio signals that we can detect with an antenna and receiver. By listening for the “ping,” we can tell which direction the animal is in and roughly how far away it is. The carnivores we study roam across huge areas, so tracking them often means a lot of driving on rough roads and not always having successful searches. But, hearing that first — often really faint — “ping” is always super exciting, and finding the animals feels rewarding.

I also especially love being in the field around sunrise and sunset, when the landscape looks golden, feels peaceful and the animals are most active.

More generally, is there anything you find surprising about doing field work?

KR: Although fieldwork is intensive and often the busiest part of the year, it’s busy in a very different way from office work. I’m often surprised that, despite the long hours, I feel more energized in the field than I do at my desk. I think part of that comes from being so close to the animals and the landscape you’re trying to understand.

I’m also a big believer that, although technologies like GPS collars and audio recorders now allow us to collect huge amounts of data from the comfort of our offices, those data are only as useful as our ability to interpret them. To do that well, you really need to understand your study animal. There are many ways to build that understanding, from reading books to watching documentaries, but for me, nothing compares to spending time in the field. I always come back with a dozen new ideas that have appeared while simply sitting and watching the animals.

MP: Doing field work is really enlightening. It’s extremely valuable because it gives us a better understanding of the animals and their environment. By observing where animals spend their time, how they interact with one another and with other species, and the challenges they face, we can develop more meaningful research questions. Spending time in the field also sparks creativity, because it allows us to see and notice unexpected behaviors and inspires new ideas for research.

For more information, contact Rafiq at rafiqk@uw.edu and Poulin at mpoulin1@uw.edu.

The ShakeAlert earthquake early warning system has been rapidly expanding since its launch in 2021. Now, researchers at �������� affiliated Pacific Northwest Seismic Network (PNSN) have finished all planned installations, bringing the two-state total to spread across Washington and Oregon.

ShakeAlert detects ground motion from earthquakes before it is felt, giving people precious time to drop, cover and hold on. An earthquake exceeding magnitude 5 will trigger an automated cell phone alert from the , or WEA, which also sends AMBER alerts. Millions of people benefit from the network as is, but the researchers are still exploring ways to improve it.

“When we launched ShakeAlert, we felt confident that we had enough seismic stations to do a good job with early warning, but that wasn’t the optimal number. Now, with the buildout complete, we have coverage where it was lacking at launch,” said , director of PNSN and a UW professor in Earth and space sciences.

However, expanding the network to include sensors on the ocean floor could help Pacific Northwest residents contend with the area’s greatest hazard — the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

The West Coast is a hotbed for seismic activity. Nestled in the , an array of volcanoes circling the Pacific Ocean where 90% of Earth’s quakes occur, the region’s volatile geology clashes with its growing population. Early warning systems can give people seconds to minutes of time to prepare for shaking, and a sense of how strong it will be.

Just over a year ago, a midsized earthquake under Orcas Island offered ShakeAlert in Washington. Multiple seismometers in the area picked up the signal and ran it back to headquarters for verification. The earthquake wasn’t quite big enough to trigger a WEA automated alert, or cause major damage, but in the affected region it did notify people��with early warning apps such as MyShake, as well as all Android mobile devices.

“The system detected the earthquake rapidly, accurately assessed its magnitude and automatically sent out a warning — all in a handful of seconds,” said Tobin. “It was the first event that met all the criteria in Washington and it worked really well.”

During a larger earthquake, warnings will be automatic no matter the app or operating system. Warnings will also trigger certain public safety measures: Schools can connect PA systems to ShakeAlert for rapid updates, public transit may slow trains to avoid derailment and fire station doors will go up to allow firetrucks out even if electricity is lost.

Right now, the system is most effective for land-based earthquakes because the sensors are on land. Expanding the sensor network to include offshore, ocean bottom seismometers could improve detection and warning time for offshore earthquakes, namely a much-anticipated megathrust earthquake at the Cascadia Subduction Zone.

“The fundamental problem we have is that our seismic network — hundreds and hundreds of stations — is on land, but the biggest earthquake hazard comes from off our coast,” Tobin said. “Earthquake detection works much better when the earthquake is in the area of your network, not off to one side.”

Seismometers can be placed on the ocean floor, but they must be connected to cables for early warning, which is expensive. Japan installed an impressive that cost $120 million following the devastating 2011 earthquake. The country now has more than 200 seismometers covering its subduction zones.

The Cascadia Subduction Zone has a handful of existing offshore sensors — five near Vancouver Island and two off the coast of Oregon. A UW-led project this summer to the Oregon cable, which spans hundreds of seafloor miles, crossing the subduction zone twice. None of the offshore sensors are in the ShakeAlert network, but adding them could be impactful.

, a UW postdoctoral researcher in Earth and space science, recently at the Seismological Society of America’s annual meeting detailing the potential benefits of adding offshore seismic monitoring.

Krauss found with modeling that incorporating just a few ocean bottom sensors improved detection time for offshore earthquakes and warning time for millions of people. In hypothetical earthquake scenarios, the sensors picked up ground motion faster and improved magnitude estimates because they were closer to the fault.

“ShakeAlert is all about figuring out that an earthquake is happening as fast as possible, so having sensors nearby is essential,” Krauss said. “But in these magnitude 8 or 9 scenarios, it’s not just about detecting it, but realizing how big it is, and fast.”

The researchers also explored incorporating telecommunications cables into the sensor network using a method called distributed acoustic sensing (DAS), which records ground motion based on cable stretch. Incorporating DAS could extend the reach of existing cables even further than sensors, translating to “huge warning time improvements,” Krauss said.

Different combinations produced varying improvements in both detection and warning time, depending on where the hypothetical earthquake occurred. Regardless, having sensors always beat not having them. While there are several hurdles to clear before ocean bottom sensors can be brought into ShakeAlert, Krauss said none are insurmountable.

“Although we’ve marked this milestone of completing our station buildout, that doesn’t mean we’re not continuously improving the ShakeAlert system,” Tobin said. “We’re working to make it faster, better and more reliable.”

For more information, contact Tobin at htobin@uw.edu and Krauss at zkrauss@uw.edu.����

Cauce is the immediate past UW president, having stepped down at the end of her second five-year term in 2025. She is one of five new��councilors��elected to three-year terms on the NAM Council. ��

Cauce arrived at the UW in 1986 as an assistant professor and eventually served as executive vice provost, dean of the UW College of Arts & Sciences,��provost��and president. Cauce’s career has been defined by a commitment to improving the health and well-being of individuals and communities through psychology, public��health��and public service. She has championed health equity and interdisciplinary approaches that bring together medicine, public��policy��and community partnerships, helping reshape how institutions address complex health challenges and improve lives.��

��was first conceived in the 1960s and officially launched in 1970 to provide a source of independent, evidence-based guidance to inform health policy decisions. The organization has national standing and makes recommendations informed by research, rather than business or political interests. ��

The human mouth is full of wonders. It’s home to hundreds of species of bacteria, fungi, viruses and protozoa, which work in delicate harmony to maintain our oral health. Sometimes, though, this complex system — known as the oral microbiome — can fall out of balance. Anaerobic bacteria build up on the tongue and in the little pockets between our teeth and gums. There, they break down organic matter and spew out a foul odor.

To rebalance the oral microbiome and cure chronic halitosis, researchers at the �������� are embarking on a first-of-its-kind experiment. These clinical trials transplant bacteria and other minuscule critters from healthy donors into patients with halitosis. If successful, the healthy microbiota will crowd out the bad and patients’ bad breath will improve.

“We know the oral microbiome can get out of whack. The question is, can you rebalance it? That is the hypothesis we’re proposing,” said , a UW professor of restorative dentistry and co-lead of the project.��

The experimental procedures build off recent breakthroughs in , commonly known as stool transplants, which have become a go-to treatment for gastrointestinal infections and bacterial imbalances.��

The research team has so far completed four transplants, with preliminary evaluations underway. They’re seeking pairs of participants — a patient with chronic halitosis and a donor, ideally an intimate partner, family member or trusted friend — to undergo these relatively simple procedures.

To start, researchers complete a full periodontal exam of the donor to ensure their microbiome is healthy. Then they collect bacteria from the donor and suspend it in a small volume of saline. At the same time, recipients undergo a deep cleaning to remove the harmful bacteria and disrupt the — the thin, sticky layer of microorganisms that lines surfaces in the mouth. Recipients rinse with the donor solution, and researchers inject a concentrated version into the gumline. Ninety days after the transplant, participants self-report whether their breath has improved.��

“What we’re trying to do is severely disrupt the original bacteria, and then we bring in the new guys to take hold and establish a new biofilm,” said co-lead , a research scientist and affiliate faculty member in the UW School of Dentistry. “If we bring enough of the new bacteria and they outcompete the ones that we disrupted, the healthy ones will take over. It’s a numbers game.”��

This research was funded by the Dean and Margaret Spencer Clinical Research Fund. Co-investigators include professor of clinical practice and professor , both of the UW School of Dentistry. For more information, to reach the researchers or to inquire about participating, contact Pozhitkov at pozhit@uw.edu or Wee at awe@uw.edu.

The �������� kicked off Pride Month on Monday with a ceremonial flag raising. Just after noon, the large rainbow flag — the Progress Pride Flag — unfurled to cheers from a crowd of about 100 people, the largest gathering in the history of the Pride Flag raising on campus.

While speakers at Monday’s event reflected on the solidarity and importance of community, the ceremony also served as a time to mourn the loss of Juniper Blessing, the �������� student slain last month. Blessing identified as a part of the UW LGBTQIA+ community. A moment of silence was held in Blessing’s memory.

“Pride Month signifies a time of joy and celebration, but it also marks a time for unity, remembrance, and solidarity,” Alan Galvez, co-chair of the UW Queer Faculty Staff Alliance and a senior advisor in the UW Student Activities Office, told the crowd. “Juniper Blessing lived her life the way she felt was right for her. To live in a world authentically as yourself means that you may face a world that may not understand you, but that’s where we use our voices and stand strong together, so we ensure that no one gets left behind or forgotten in our challenges ahead.”

Pride Month commemorates the 1969 Stonewall riots, when queer activists sparked a lasting gay-rights movement. Seattle’s gay pride activities culminate at the end of June with a parade that draws thousands of visitors.

University leaders on Monday also announced the to support students whose leadership, community involvement or lived experience reflects a meaningful connection to the LGBTQIA+ community and who are studying or actively engaged in music at UW. Blessing was an atmospheric sciences and music studies sophomore and a member of the University Chorale.

“As we begin Pride Month, I encourage all of us to celebrate in the spirit of love, resilience, openness, and joy,” said Rickey Hall, vice president for Minority Affairs & Diversity and the UW Diversity Officer. “Even as we grieve, we can honor one another by showing up for community and carrying forward the values that pride represents.”

Two current �������� graduate students and one recent alumnus received this year’s prestigious .

This merit-based program supports outstanding immigrants and children of immigrants pursuing graduate education in the United States. were selected this year from a competitive pool of more than 3,000 applicants nationwide. Their remarkable contributions and potential span a range of fields, including medicine, law, engineering, literature, computer science, public service and the arts.

“Having three members of the UW community receive Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowships for New Americans is a remarkable honor,” said UW President Robert J. Jones. “This fellowship recognizes immigrants and the children of immigrants whose work strengthens communities and advances knowledge, which aligns closely with the University’s mission and values. The accomplishments of these scholars speak to the UW’s commitment to expanding opportunity, advancing research and discovery, and serving the public good. We’re very proud to see their achievements acknowledged.”

Fellows will receive up to $90,000 for their graduate studies, as well as lifelong access to the fellowship’s distinguished alumni network.

This year’s ��fellows are Daniel G. Chen, Class of ’22, who received both a Marshall Scholarship and a Goldwater Scholarship, and is now pursuing a doctoral degree at the University of California, Los Angeles; Briana Martin-Villa, a doctoral student in the UW School of Medicine; and Ethan Shen, a doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering.

Chen is the son of Chinese immigrants who came to the UW at 14 via the Robinson Center for Young Scholars. While at the UW, Chen interned with Meta’s Facebook AI Research team and he interviewed people from Greece with UW’s International Studies Department. He also conducted research at the Institute of Systems Biology and the Fred Hutchinson Cancer Center to identify drivers of the human immune response to COVID-19 and solid tumors in skin, lung and pancreatic tissue.

Chen’s UW education was supported by the Washington Research Foundation and the Goldwater Scholarship. The Marshall Scholarship enabled Chen to continue his research at the University of Cambridge where he studied the athymic organoid system. That work led him to pursue a doctoral degree at UCLA where he aims to develop new lines of therapy that increase immunotherapy efficacy while minimizing off-target side effects.

“I am deeply grateful to the Soros Foundation for this honor. The financial support afforded to me by the Paul & Daisy Soros Fellowship provides me the time and space to investigate new therapeutic strategies to overcome existing and future barriers to cancer immunotherapy,” Chen said.

Martin-Villa, now a first-year student at the UW School of Medicine, experienced rural health disparities firsthand earlier in her life when she, her twin brother and their mother worked long days in orchards in Eastern Washington. She witnessed the effects of heat, physical strain, pesticides and untreated illnesses on farm workers and was compelled to make medical advances more accessible after training in Stanford University research labs as an undergraduate.

Martin-Villa co-developed programs to improve communications between Latine childhood cancer survivors and clinicians. After graduation, she was named a at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. During the fellowship, she worked on the Biden Cancer Moonshot and initiatives to increase community engagement in science. She was drawn to the UW School of Medicine because of its WWAMI model of community-based training in rural and urban areas across a five-state region. She now co-leads Doctor for a Day, an academy that introduces youth to health careers. She also co-manages the Casa Latina Clinic, which cares for King County’s medically underserved communities. She hopes to practice as a physician at the intersection of patient care, research and public policy.

“As the daughter of Mexican immigrants, it is a profound honor to represent my community and to receive support that allows me to continue doing the work I love while creating opportunities to uplift others,” Martin-Villa said. “I’m excited to learn from and grow alongside the other fellows as I continue my medical training.”

Shen is a doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering advised by Professor Ali Farhadi. Shen was born in Seattle to parents who emigrated from China after the Cultural Revolution and the 1989 Tiananmen crackdown. In the U.S., they had the freedom to pursue their education and better their lives. Shen was inspired by his parents’ story and his experience growing up in a city with a booming technology industry that improved people’s quality of life.

Shen decided to study computer science at the UW with a focus on artificial intelligence. He completed his bachelor’s within three years and continued into the Allen School’s doctoral program, where his research advances affordable, open-source coding agents such as SERA — short for Soft-Verified Efficient Repository Agents — that enable rapid creation of specialized agents for private codebases. With the support of the Soros Fellowship, Shen will continue working on agents for long horizon tasks and scientific discovery, as well as novel model architectures, with the goal of making frontier intelligence accessible and useful to as many people as possible.

“Artificial intelligence is increasingly privatized, and the best AI models are prohibitively expensive. My research focuses on developing new data pipelines and model architectures for cheap, personalized models that are both capable and broadly accessible,” Shen said. “AI has become an essential tool across engineering, computing and the natural sciences, and I believe that everyone should be able to afford and use it.”

Over the past decade, cities around the world have increasingly turned to nature-based infrastructure to become more resilient in the face of a changing climate. Urban forests provide shade during heat waves and improve air quality; wetlands filter stormwater and reduce flooding; and restored oyster reefs filter water, create habitat and reduce wave energy along shorelines. When carefully designed and managed, these “nature-based solutions” can support climate adaptation, biodiversity and public health.

There’s a catch, however: Living things are not static building materials. They evolve and adapt in response to changing conditions, sometimes in unpredictable ways. As the climate shifts, the natural systems that humans depend on shift too.��

, professor of urban design and planning at the ��������, studies how cities and nature influence one another. in Science, Alberti and collaborators explore how evolutionary change can affect the long-term performance of nature-based solutions.

UW News spoke with Alberti about what’s at stake and how city planners can work with evolution rather than simply reacting to it.

Why did you want to study evolution within nature-based solutions?

MA: Today, an increasing share of infrastructure investment is going to nature-based solutions because they can cost-effectively reduce climate-driven risks to cities while supporting biodiversity, public health and climate adaptation. However, their long-term performance depends on a fundamental biological process that is still rarely considered in design: evolution. These systems are not static infrastructure. They depend on living organisms — plants, microbes, oysters, corals and others — whose traits can shift over time as urban environments change. Cities expose these organisms to heat, drought, flooding, pollution, nutrient enrichment, disease, habitat fragmentation and new species interactions. Those pressures influence which organisms survive, reproduce and continue providing the ecological functions that cities rely on. Over time, ecological and evolutionary responses may alter the very processes that allow these systems to cool neighborhoods, filter water, stabilize shorelines or reduce wave energy.

So the central question is not simply whether a project works on day one. It is whether it can continue to perform as the organisms within it respond to climate stress, urban pressures and the intervention itself.

The problem is that implementation of nature-based solutions is outpacing the science needed to evaluate long-term performance. For these solutions to serve as resilient infrastructure, they must be designed as living, dynamic, evolving systems.

Did you find examples where evolutionary change can affect infrastructure performance?

MA: We found examples showing that evolutionary change can affect traits directly linked to the performance of nature-based solutions. Urban or climate pressures can favor traits that alter the processes these systems rely on, affecting their ability to deliver intended functions.

For example, coastal marsh plants such as are used to stabilize sediment, reduce erosion and help buffer waves. In marshes exposed to excess nutrients from sources such as fertilizer runoff, wastewater, stormwater and upstream land use, however, Spartina can shift biomass allocation toward shoots and away from roots. This shift can reduce the sediment-stabilization function that restoration projects depend on.

In another example, urban tree populations may evolve greater drought tolerance to help them survive hotter and drier periods. But evolutionary responses that improve survival do not necessarily preserve the desired functions for cities. Those trees may persist but grow more slowly or produce less canopy, which could in turn reduce shade, carbon uptake or pollutant removal.

When can evolution strengthen nature-based solutions?

MA: Evolution can strengthen nature-based solutions when populations have enough variation in traits to help them survive and retain their function under changing conditions. Coral reefs are a great example of this. Corals build reef structure, support biodiversity, store carbon and help reduce wave energy along shorelines. and functional decline. To increase their resilience, researchers are testing assisted-evolution approaches, . On the Great Barrier Reef, this includes selecting corals that maintain photosynthetic performance and stable symbiotic relationships under heat stress.

These approaches could help sustain reef-based coastal protection as oceans warm, but they also carry risks, including reduced genetic diversity, tradeoffs with other functions and uncertain responses to future conditions.

Oyster reefs show the same principle in another coastal system. filter water, create habitat, support fisheries and build reef structures that reduce wave energy. They face disease, warming, acidification, and low oxygen. Selective breeding and genomic tools can help identify oyster lines better suited to these conditions, but restoration efforts should avoid narrowing genetic diversity. Genetically diverse, site-appropriate stocks are more likely to maintain the functions that coastal communities value.

What were your biggest takeaways from reviewing the available research?

MA: The key lesson is that nature-based solutions are not static assets. Their performance depends on ecological and evolutionary processes that continue after design and deployment.

A second lesson is that context matters. In urban environments, environmental factors, such as temperature, pollution, hydrology and soil conditions, can vary across neighborhoods, blocks and shoreline segments. The same species or design may therefore perform differently in different parts of a city.

Third, variation is central to resilience. Genetic diversity, trait diversity and community diversity can increase the capacity of a system to respond to changing conditions.

Fourth, current adaptation does not guarantee future performance. Populations of organisms in long-urbanized environments may be adapted to present conditions, but those adaptations may not align with future climates.

Finally, a reminder and a caution: Evolution does not necessarily favor the traits that make species effective nature-based solutions. Traits that help organisms persist under urban stress may not be the same traits that support cooling, water filtration, shoreline protection or habitat formation. The challenge for planners is to design and manage these systems so that survival and function remain aligned over time.

What steps can urban designers and planners take?

MA: Planners should design for long-term performance. That means asking: Which organisms provide the desired function? Which traits matter for that function? What environmental pressures will those organisms face? Is there enough genetic, trait or species variation to support future adaptations?

In practice, this means using diverse, site-appropriate source material and considering both local adaptation and future climate conditions. It also means reducing pressures that can weaken performance, such as excess nutrients, contaminants and pollution, while maintaining the habitat conditions organisms need to persist and adapt over time.

It also means monitoring differently. Cities should track not only whether a project is working now, but also whether the organisms, traits and ecological processes that support its performance are changing over time.��

Designing nature-based solutions for changing climate conditions requires sustaining genetic diversity, supporting ecological function and maintaining evolutionary potential.

UW co-authors include , a doctoral student of urban design and planning. A complete list of co-authors is .

This research was funded by the National Science Foundation.

For more information, contact Marina Alberti at malberti@uw.edu.

The �������� today announced the��selection��of Studio Joseph��as the exhibition and storytelling partner��for��the��Ana Mari Cauce Welcome Center.��Based in New York, Studio Joseph is known for its nuanced understanding of brand expression and its skill in co‑creating environments that are both inspiring and authentic to the institutions they��represent.��

The Welcome Center, once completed, will serve as the gateway to the UW, and��showcase��the UW’s mission and the impact��faculty, students,��staff��and alumni have in Washington and around the world.��

, led by Wendy Evans Joseph, was chosen based on its global reputation and distinctive ability to translate brand narratives into immersive, memorable experiences. Studio Joseph’s work blends tactile elements, objects, and human-centered stories with thoughtful, often unexpected uses of technology, an approach that aligns with the UW’s goal of helping visitors see themselves reflected in the University’s mission and impact. ��

The Ana Mari Cauce Welcome Center will serve as��an��entryway��for prospective and current students, families,��alumni��and the public. At a time when the number of high school graduates is projected to decline, the Center will help UW make connections with the future generations of Huskies.����

Construction of the $61 million��project��will be primarily funded through philanthropic support.��Studio Tsien was selected��as��the architect and��Pacific Northwest-based Lease Crutcher Lewis��is��the general contractor.��Construction is expected to begin in late 2026 and be completed in 2028.����

In early April, a powerful typhoon formed over the northwestern Pacific Ocean, as it swirled toward the Mariana Islands, a 15-island archipelago east of the Philippines. By the time it on April 14, the wind was gusting 130 miles per hour, rain fell in sheets and huge waves pounded the shores.

This super typhoon, called Typhoon Sinlaku, was among the strongest early-season storms recorded in the past 75 years. It caused widespread damage on the islands — home to approximately 50,000 people — leaving most without power, tearing roofs off homes and destroying vital infrastructure.

The U.S. Commonwealth of the Northern Mariana Islands, or CNMI, includes 14 of the islands in the archipelago and the remaining island, Guam, is a U.S. territory. The residents, a mix of Indigenous Chamorro people and settlers, are American citizens and U.S. institutions and agencies are well represented on the islands.

On Rota, �������� researchers have been working to stabilize the population of the endangered Mariana crow for decades after research signaled rapid decline. , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, and , a UW professor of environmental and forest sciences, oversee several projects on Tinian, a small forested island roughly 12 miles long and 6 miles wide.

The first project, launched in 2021, focused on a small, formerly endangered songbird called the . It has since expanded into broader study of native birds and plant restoration.

UW News spoke with Gardner, , a research scientist in Gardner’s lab, and , a graduate student in Bakker’s lab, about the impacts of the typhoon and how they plan to resume their work on the islands.

What first brought you to Tinian? What makes the island unique?

Beth Gardner: We were initially approached by a consulting firm with a contract to study the Tinian monarch, which led us to form a relationship with the U.S. Navy based on the island. They were impressed by our work and efforts to integrate into the community and funded our group to continue developing research on Tinian.

Kaeli Swift: Tinian’s unique ecological character reflects its complicated history. The island is about 60% forested but the forests are primarily composed of a mix of introduced species. Centuries of colonization — by the Spanish, Germans, Japanese and now U.S. — has resulted in immense habitat destruction. Tinian was heavily bombed during World War II and then became the U.S. point for the atomic bomb.

Fletcher Moore: By the end of the war, over 95% of the forest had been cleared, obviously to the extreme detriment of all the native plants and animals. Now, over two-thirds of the island is controlled in a lease agreement by the U.S. military. That land is largely undeveloped, but the U.S. military plans to invest in major new projects on Tinian in the next decade.

What does your work involve?

KS: We have been doing on Tinian for five years. We’re trying to understand threats to native birds by studying offspring survival and predator populations — primarily rats and cats. Our recent work involves acoustic monitoring, specifically looking at how birds are impacted by human-related noise associated with development on the island.

FM: We are working on a long-term native forest restoration project based on the observation that the lack of native plants was limiting wildlife populations on Tinian. We are supporting development of a native plant nursery by partnering with local entities to enhance the space, hire full time staff, and collect and propagate plants. We had about 2,000 native trees representing 20 different species in the nursery, and planted about 300 of those trees in the past six months.

How will it be impacted by Typhoon Sinlaku?

FM: The site where we planted the young trees is on an isolated corner of the island that is difficult to get to in the best of times. Right now, the road is totally inaccessible. We’re not sure when we will be able to get out there to assess the damage and resume regular restoration work, like controlling invasive species and planting other species. The nursery also suffered a lot of damage; almost half of its plants were destroyed. So it’s going to require a pretty big reset.

KS: Our work involves venturing into the jungle to set up cameras and acoustic recording devices for monitoring birds. Our access to those sites will be limited until the roads are cleared and even then, the nature of the vegetative landscape will have changed. We can’t really compare data on birds from one year to the next when there have been major changes to vegetation on the island.

BG: That little songbird we study has probably gone quiet for now. As we’ve seen in the past, their populations will likely suffer from this type of devastation. The typhoon sat on top of Tinian and Saipan for somewhere around 50 hours. We don’t know the full extent of the damage yet, but I think things will be completely different when we get back out there.

What happens now?

FM: It is difficult to access resources on the Marianas and especially hard on Tinian. We had to transport everything we needed for these projects from elsewhere. Shipping can take weeks or months and building materials are often twice as expensive as they would be on the mainland U.S.

When it comes to our work, it’s really difficult to see the nursery destroyed and to see the materials we spent months and a lot of money gathering torn apart. But, it’s going to be especially hard for the people who live on the island and don’t have grants funding their rebuilding efforts. So there are just a lot of practical challenges to recovery out there that even folks affected by disasters in the mainland U.S. might not face to the same degree.

Micropantries — commonly called “little free pantries”�� — and community fridges are a frequent sight throughout Seattle and the greater Puget Sound region. One estimate suggests that they supply around 4 million pounds of food per year to neighbors in need in the Seattle area, more than the state’s largest food bank. The curbside cupboards are a decentralized, community-driven effort to fight food insecurity and reduce food waste at the neighborhood level, but their ad hoc nature limits their dependability — users don’t know when food is available without repeatedly checking, and donors don’t know what foods are needed most.

Now, anyone who interacts with micropantries or community fridges in the Seattle area can try out an experimental app, made by �������� researchers, that brings a suite of new features to the micropantry network. , maps many local pantries across the region. The app also gives each pantry an activity feed where users can share food they’ve donated, report on stock levels, add requests to a wish list, post photos and leave other notes. The research team also retrofitted some pantries with sensors that anonymously auto-report their usage and stock levels to the app in real time.

“This is an effort to document and quantify the phenomenon of micropantries,” said , a senior research scientist at the UW . “Lots of micropantries and community fridges popped up around the time of the COVID-19 pandemic, and I was curious about who uses them and how they are used.”

The team was cognizant of privacy concerns and designed the smart pantry tech accordingly.

“Putting cameras in the pantries could give us a lot of information about what specific foods are moving through the system, but that may also deter users who are concerned about privacy,” said , a UW doctoral student in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering who designed and built the sensor suite. “Instead, we settled on simpler sensors that measure weight and interactions like opening the door to measure stock levels while preserving everyone’s anonymity.”

The researchers hope that neighbors will find new ways to connect and help one another through these tools. A user might see that stock levels are low in a nearby pantry, for example, and decide to add some food. Another user might request certain foods to accommodate their dietary restrictions.��

The sensor-equipped pantries are a small subset of the dozens of pantries throughout Seattle, but in addition to providing some neighborhoods with enhanced food tracking, they will generate aggregate data that will help Dalla Chiara’s team study donor and usage behavior. Dalla Chiara also plans to survey donors to learn more about what motivates people to provide food to pantries.

“We know that there is a lot of food insecurity in Seattle and in the United States in general,” Dalla Chiara said. “But we know that there is also a lot of food waste — lots of people have a surplus of food. And we want to see how grassroots efforts like micropantries can address both food insecurity and waste at the same time.”

Dalla Chiara and his team recently completed a refit on a cold, sleeting March day at a pantry owned by Saint Paul’s Episcopal Church near Seattle Center. The church keeps the pantry regularly stocked, and rector Stephen Crippen is curious about the data the new system will produce.

“It puts numbers on what we’re actually accomplishing,” Crippen said. “It helps us get in touch with what’s going on on this street.”

The research team is also working with local businesses and nonprofits to encourage and track food distribution throughout the pantry network. In April, Seattle-based recycling startup ran a nonperishable food drive across Seattle and delivered 25,000 pounds of food to the ; from there, volunteers from the Cascade Bicycle Club’s distributed the food to micropantries around the city by bike, giving the network an infusion of both food and usage data. The and the nonprofit helped support the project’s community fridges effort.

Dalla Chiara recognizes that there are other grassroots online, and he doesn’t want his app to replace those services. Nor does he expect the smart pantry network to remain in service indefinitely — it costs about $150 to retrofit each pantry with sensors, and all that tech will be difficult to maintain after the study concludes in October of this year. At its core, the project is an effort to learn about micropantry usage and explore how technology might encourage sharing of resources and mutual aid systems.

“We’re trying to measure and quantify goodwill,” Dalla Chiara said. “Behind each little free pantry there is a whole system of behaviors — people trying to help one another. If we can understand that system better, we can support it better.”

Other UW collaborators include , professor of civil and environmental engineering and director of the Urban Freight Lab; , assistant teaching professor of environmental and occupational health sciences; , assistant professor of food systems, nutrition and health; and , assistant professor in the Allen School.

For more information, contact Dalla Chiara at giacomod@uw.edu.