Discovery Days returns!

On April 30 and May 1, thousands of elementary and middle school students from across Washington state will arrive on the 91爆料鈥檚 Seattle campus to explore more than . Hosted by the 91爆料 College of Engineering, Discovery Days gives students a chance to experience science and engineering concepts for themselves by building batteries, designing videogames, firing air vortex cannons and controlling plasma with their fingertips.聽

This year, more than 9,000 students from 109 schools registered to attend.

For more information, contact William Poor at wpoor@uw.edu.

Even on a campus like the 91爆料鈥檚 鈥� home to particle accelerators, wave tanks and countless other bespoke pieces of equipment 鈥� the machinery in the stands out. Take the dilution fridge, a large, white, cylindrical device that can cool a small chamber to one hundredth of a kelvin above absolute zero 鈥� the coldest possible temperature in the universe.聽

鈥淭his is the coldest fridge money can buy,鈥� said , a 91爆料 assistant professor of electrical and computer engineering and the former director of the lab, which goes by the nickname QT3. 鈥淲hen it鈥檚 running, the chamber inside this device is about 100 times colder than outer space. At that temperature, it鈥檚 much easier to study and manipulate a material鈥檚 quantum properties.鈥�

The lab also houses a photon qubit tabletop lab: a nondescript set of boxes, lasers and lenses that can demonstrate the 鈥渟pooky鈥� 鈥� a term scientists actually use 鈥� phenomenon known as quantum entanglement, where two particles appear to communicate instantaneously with each other despite being physically apart.

Or there鈥檚 the lab鈥檚 latest acquisition, the scanning tunneling microscope, which can image individual atoms within a solid material, allowing researchers to study the structure of materials at the smallest scales.

An interdisciplinary group of researchers has been marshalling resources and expertise to create QT3 for three years, and now, the lab is opening its doors as a unique one-stop shop resource for quantum researchers and educators at the 91爆料.

鈥淭he idea of this lab is to improve access to quantum hardware,鈥� Parsons said. 鈥淚t’s rather hard to acquire equipment like this. And there are a lot of researchers that may have good ideas that they want to test, but don鈥檛 have the resources yet for their own equipment. So we鈥檙e inviting researchers, initially from across campus, but also from other universities and from industry, to come in and test their ideas. This can be a hub for quantum experts to share their ideas and collaborate.鈥�

The lab also boasts hardware that can demonstrate known quantum principles and techniques, making it useful for students in quantum fields. In addition to the entanglement device, Parsons鈥� students developed a machine that can suspend charged particles 鈥� in this case, tiny grains of pollen 鈥� in midair using electric fields. Researchers use the same technique to trap single atoms and manipulate their quantum properties, making the lab鈥檚 ion-trapping machine good practice for more complex work.

Some students even work at the lab through an undergraduate staffing program, and have helped install instrumentation, write code to power equipment and build parts for custom microscopes. The program provides yet another avenue for students to get hands-on experience with unusual machinery and techniques.聽

鈥淨uantum mechanics is inherently counterintuitive, and that makes it a powerful teaching tool,鈥� Parsons said. 鈥淚n the QT3 lab, students will encounter systems where their everyday intuition breaks down, and they must rely on careful reasoning and experimentation instead. They learn how to debug when results don鈥檛 match expectations, how to test simple cases and how to build understanding about hardware step by step.鈥�

The cosmically cold dilution fridge remains something of a centerpiece, even as the lab fills up with specialized equipment. The extreme environment within the device strips heat, light and other stray energy away from materials, allowing researchers to observe the peculiar quantum properties that remain. One such property is superposition, or the ability of a particle like an electron to maintain multiple mutually exclusive properties at the same time. Scientists use superposition to create a powerful, tiny piece of technology: a quantum bit, or qubit.聽

鈥淭raditional computers use bits, which can only be one or zero. A qubit, on the other hand, we can make one plus zero,鈥� Parsons said. 鈥淚t’s both at the same time, and only when we measure it do we find out which one it is. We can use this unusual property to build a new class of computers that excel at tasks like communications and encryption.鈥�

QT3 is part of a collaborative effort to solidify 91爆料 as a leader in quantum research and applications. Most of the lab hardware was funded by a congressional earmark championed by Senator Maria Cantwell鈥檚 office. Departmental funding from across the College of Engineering and the College of Arts and Sciences helped rehab the lab space. The National Science Foundation provided seed funding for the instructional lab equipment.

The 91爆料 has also spent the past decade investing heavily in faculty with quantum expertise.

鈥淰ery few places have expertise across the full quantum stack, from materials up to algorithms,鈥� said , a 91爆料 professor of physics and founder of QT3. 鈥淭he 91爆料 has quantum faculty in electrical and mechanical engineering, physics, computer science, materials science and chemistry. Our faculty work on superconducting qubits, spin defects, photons, trapped ions, neutral atoms and topological qubits. Our advantage is the breadth of our investment.鈥�

The lab is now available to researchers and students across the 91爆料, and private companies are encouraged to reach out about partnering. Parsons has already used the lab to teach a graduate-level class in electrical and computer engineering for students who included employees from Boeing, Microsoft and quantum computing company IonQ. The lab is hiring for a full-time manager to maintain the equipment and help users make the most of the facility.聽

鈥淗ere in academia, we can improve the building blocks for applied technologies like quantum computing, and then transfer those learnings to industry for further scaling,鈥� Parsons said.

For more information, contact Parsons at mfpars@uw.edu.

Plants, like people, have a circadian clock and they sense seasonal changes to light and temperature. Plants that bloom in the spring use the longer days and warmer temperatures as seasonal cues that it鈥檚 time to bloom.

[April 6] UPDATE: Flower petals are falling on the Quad as the trees lose their blossoms. The waning bloom is still quite a site but it’ll be a while before the trees are back on full display.

[March 23] UPDATE: The cherry trees are officially in peak bloom! Visit campus anytime in the next week or so to see the blossoms in all their glory.

[March 18] UPDATE: Recent temperature swings have slowed bud development for the Quad cherries. About half of the trees are still in peduncle elongation stage while half have moved on to the 鈥減uffy white鈥� stage that precedes full bloom. Cool temperatures in the coming days may delay peak bloom as trees gradually blossom. Warm weather could produce a sudden transition. Check the live cams for updates.

[March 13] UPDATE: It’s snowing but the blossoms are still growing! The Quad cherries are now in the “peduncle elongation” stage, where the flower-bearing stalk extends from the bud. Some have also begun to flower.

Each spring, large crowds gather on the 91爆料 Quad to admire 29 puffy pink cherry trees making their seasonal debut. The trees begin to wake up as the weather warms, and this year, estimates suggest that they will reach 鈥減eak bloom鈥� on March 20.

The 91爆料鈥檚 iconic cherry trees achieve peak bloom when 70% of the blossoms have opened, but the week before and after still offer visitors an optimal viewing experience.

The cherry blossom visitors鈥� website provides updates on bloom status as well as details on transportation, activities and amenities. The cherry blossoms also have live video feeds for virtual viewing and their own social media accounts on and .

The cherry trees are both beautiful and ecologically significant. Tracking when the buds burst each year helps researchers predict peak bloom and determine how climate warming is impacting the trees, which were planted in the Washington Park Arboretum in 1936 and then relocated to 91爆料 in 1962.

This year, many plants began to emerge early as a mild winter gave way to spring. Recent 91爆料 research described how plants rely on both temperature and light cues to time their flowering. Temperature is particularly important to cherry trees, which estimate the arrival of spring based on how cold it has been. They accrue 鈥渃hilling units鈥� as winter progresses and 鈥渉eating units鈥� as it yields to spring.

鈥淭he buds need to accumulate a specific amount of chilling units before they can start accumulating the heating units. When it is not as cold, the chilling units accumulate much slower, so it takes them longer to wake up from dormancy, which is very counterintuitive,鈥� said , a 91爆料 doctoral student of environmental and forest sciences.

Theil is now overseeing data collection on campus, with the help of approximately 20 undergraduate students. The researchers make observations as the trees begin to wake up and feed the data into a computer model that incorporates weather forecasts to predict peak bloom.

Historically, the onset of peak bloom has fallen between March 12 and April 3, with an average date of March 23. While the weather impacts peak bloom year to year, climate change drives longer term trends over multiple decades.

Research shows that bloom time has shifted approximately two days earlier each decade since the 1960s. Researchers began monitoring the trees in 2012 and referenced newspaper archives to estimate peak bloom dates for the preceding years.

鈥淲ith the climate warming more rapidly in the spring, I expected to see the flowers blooming earlier,鈥� said lead author , a recent doctoral graduate from the 91爆料 school of environmental and forest sciences. 鈥淏ut as we dove into the literature and examined the data, we saw a delay in bloom, as a result of winter warming in Seattle.鈥�

The study focused on the Somei-yoshino, or Yoshino, cherry tree cultivar. These trees, sometimes called the Japanese flowering cherry, are found throughout Japan. They also line the National Mall in Washington D.C. and paint many Seattle neighborhoods pink in the springtime.

The bloom delay Maust observed applies only to Yoshino cherry trees in Seattle. In colder climates, such as Washington D.C., the trees have ample time to accrue chilling units. Still, the two populations are quite similar, genetically.

Propagation, or breeding more trees, occurs by grafting one tree onto another. This process limits genetic variability in favor of consistency. Because all Yoshino cherry trees are sterile clones of one another, they do not produce fruits or seeds, but they do reliably bloom in beautiful pink hues each spring.

For more information on bloom time, contact Theil at mtheil@uw.edu or Maust at聽 amaust@uw.edu. For information about the Yoshino Genome Project, contact Steinbrenner at astein10@uw.edu.

At the 91爆料 Harris Hydraulics Lab, an odd scene plays out. Over and over again, researchers from the 91爆料 and the (PNNL) pass a small rubber model of a marine animal through a large tank filled with flowing water and fitted with a spinning turbine. On some runs, the model bonks against the turbine blades; on others, it receives a glancing blow or sails past undisturbed. When bonks or knicks occur, a small collision sensor on one of the turbine鈥檚 blades detects the impacts and plots the interactions in a computer program.

The researchers are repeatedly simulating something that they hope will rarely happen in the wild: a collision between marine wildlife like a seabird, seal, fish or whale 鈥� or submerged debris like logs 鈥� and an underwater turbine.聽

鈥淲e want to make sure we鈥檙e minimizing the chances of a collision in the first place,鈥� said Aidan Hunt, a senior research engineer in mechanical engineering at the 91爆料 and member of the (PMEC). 鈥淏ut if a collision were to occur, we want to be able to detect it, and potentially avoid it, in real time. The available evidence suggests that collisions are rare, but we鈥檙e taking a 鈥榯rust-but-verify鈥� approach.鈥�

Marine energy 鈥� power harvested from tides, waves and currents 鈥� has enormous potential as a clean, renewable resource. But more information is needed about how large, commercial installations of underwater turbines or power-generating buoys could affect marine wildlife, whether through increased noise in the environment, habitat change or direct interactions with equipment.聽

The marine collision experiments are part of the , a collection of projects led by PNNL to study the environmental impact of marine energy.聽

The work at Harris Hydraulics follows a by PNNL and the 91爆料 Applied Physics Lab using a four-foot-tall prototype turbine installed at the entrance to Sequim Bay. In that study, researchers trained an underwater camera on the turbine for 109 days and then catalogued every instance of an animal approaching or interacting with the turbine. The camera captured more than 1,000 instances of fish, birds and seals approaching the turbine blades. There were only four collisions, and all were small fish.聽

鈥淭his study was a first step, but a promising one,鈥� said co-author , a research scientist at the 91爆料 Applied Physics Lab. 鈥淲e didn鈥檛 see any endangered species in our study, and the risk of collision for seals and sea birds seemed to be quite low. We鈥檙e excited to get back out there with the camera and learn even more.鈥�

The Sequim Bay experiment generated hours of valuable data, but that degree of intense monitoring may not be practical in large commercial installations in the future. Cheaper impact sensors, like the ones logging bath toy impacts at Harris Hydraulics, could be a solution, researchers say.聽聽

The project is funded by the U.S. Department of Energy鈥檚 Hydropower & Hydrokinetics Office, through the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory鈥檚 Triton Initiative and the TEAMER program.

For more information, contact Hunt at ahunt94@uw.edu or Emma Cotter at emma.cotter@pnnl.gov.

Yiyue Luo鈥檚 at the 91爆料 is full of machinery that鈥檚 oddly cozy. Here, soft and pliable sensors are sewn, knit and glued directly into clothing to give everyday garments new capabilities.聽

One of the lab鈥檚 newest curiosities is a nondescript gray work glove embedded with sensors that enable it to 鈥渇eel鈥� on its own. An array of small wires hidden inside the glove report the location and degree of pressure anywhere along its surface. When in use, the signals from the glove inform a realtime 鈥渉eat map鈥� of pressure that could one day help physical therapy patients track their progress, teach robots to grasp objects, and more.

The project, as it鈥檚 officially known, is led by 91爆料 electrical and computer engineering doctoral student as part of a collaboration with the and at MIT. 91爆料 News caught up with Murphy to learn more about the glove and its potential uses.

What inspired you to create this glove?

Devin Murphy: Our hands are arguably our greatest tools as humans. We interact with the world through our hands in so many different ways. But the nature of how we grasp and manipulate things in our environment is super nuanced and complex, and it鈥檚 hard to capture. We have very mature electronics that record sight and sound 鈥� think of the cameras and microphones in your smartphone. But there aren鈥檛 many electronic devices that record our other senses 鈥� like touch. That鈥檚 what I鈥檝e been working to remedy with the OpenTouch Glove.

How does the glove work? What are its capabilities?

DM: There are two flexible circuit boards inside each glove that form a grid of wires across the gripping surface of the glove. We can measure pressure at any point in that mesh where two wires meet. The circuit boards connect to a little box of electronics at the user鈥檚 wrist, which processes the signals and sends them wirelessly to a laptop.

We can then generate a 鈥渉eat map鈥� image showing where force is being applied on the hand, where the hand is applying force to different objects and how much force the hand is applying.聽

This kind of data gives us extra nuance that a camera can’t capture. For example, if your hand is in a bag or behind an object while it鈥檚 grasping things, a camera wouldn鈥檛 be able to tell what your hand is doing, whereas this glove can follow along.

What are some potential applications for the glove?

DM: I’m particularly excited about how this technology might help patients recovering from an injury. Physical therapists have patients perform a variety of tasks to regain mobility in their hands 鈥� if we can measure how much force people apply during this process, we can provide them with concrete feedback. The patient and therapist can both track progress by monitoring grip strength of the patient over time.聽

We鈥檙e also seeing lots of new companies invest in physical intelligence for robotics 鈥� basically recording how robots interact with the physical world. If we can record human hand grip signals, we might be able to teach robotic hands how to mimic human behavior.聽

One other interesting application is in augmented reality or virtual reality. If we replaced traditional controllers with these gloves, it could give users a more natural way to interact with virtual objects and scenery 鈥� though we鈥檇 need some additional technology for users to feel pressure when gripping virtual things.

How can other researchers access this technology?

DM: It鈥檚 really important to us that the glove is accessible to other researchers and anyone else who might want to use it for their own applications. You can order all of the components of the glove directly from commercial manufacturers, and we have released all of the manufacturing files and instructions for putting the glove together yourself.聽

We’ve also shown some demos of the glove 鈥渋n the wild鈥� to showcase the different kinds of data it can collect, and we鈥檙e planning to release an open source data set collected with the glove in partnership with researchers at MIT.聽

I鈥檓 really excited about developing new wearable technologies that allow people to record less popular sensing modalities like touch. I want to figure out how we can capture the nuances of touch-based interactions, so that ultimately we can get better insights into our daily lives.

For more information, contact Murphy at devinmur@uw.edu.

Once the domain of buttons and knobs, car dashboards are increasingly home to large touch screens. While that makes following a mapping app easier, it also means drivers can鈥檛 feel their way to a control; they have to look. But how does that visual component affect driving?

New research from the 91爆料 and Toyota Research Institute, or TRI, explores how drivers balance driving and using touch screens while distracted. In the study, participants drove in a vehicle simulator, interacted with a touch screen and completed memory tests that mimic the mental effort demanded by traffic conditions and other distractions. The team found that when people multitasked, their driving and touch screen use both suffered. The car drifted more in the lane while people used touch screens, and their speed and accuracy with the screen declined when driving. The effects increased further when they added the memory task.聽

These results could help auto manufacturers design safer, more responsive touch screens and in-car interfaces.

The team Sept. 30 at the ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology in Busan, Korea.聽

鈥淲e all know ,鈥� said co-senior author , a 91爆料 professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. 鈥淏ut what about the car鈥檚 touch screen? We wanted to understand that interaction so we can design interfaces specifically for drivers.鈥�

As the study鈥檚 16 participants drove the simulator, sensors tracked their gaze, finger movements, pupil diameter and electrodermal activity. The last two are common ways to measure mental effort, or 鈥渃ognitive load.鈥� For instance, pupils tend to grow when people are concentrating.聽

While driving, participants had to touch specific targets on a 12-inch touch screen, similar to how they would interact with apps and widgets. They did this while completing three levels of an 鈥淣-back task,鈥� a memory test in which the participants hear a series of numbers, 2.5 seconds apart, and have to repeat specific digits.聽

The participants鈥� performance changed significantly under different conditions:

• When interacting with the touch screen, participants drifted side to side in their lane 42% more often. Increasing cognitive load had no effect on the results.
• Touch screen accuracy and speed decreased 58% when driving, then another 17% under high cognitive load.
• Each glance at the touchscreen was 26.3% shorter under high cognitive load.
• A 鈥渉and-before-eye鈥� phenomenon, in which drivers鈥� reached for a control before looking at it, increased from 63% to 71% as memory tasks were introduced.

The team also found that increasing the size of the target areas participants were trying to touch did not improve their performance.聽

鈥淚f people struggle with accuracy on a screen, usually you want to make bigger buttons,鈥� said , a 91爆料 doctoral student in the Allen School. 鈥淏ut in this case, since people move their hand to the screen before touching, the thing that takes time is the visual search.鈥�

Based on these findings, the researchers suggest future in-car touch screen systems might use simple sensors in the car 鈥� eye tracking, or touch sensors on the steering wheel 鈥� to monitor drivers鈥� attention and cognitive load. Based on these readings, the car鈥檚 system might adjust the touch screen鈥檚 interface to make important controls more prominent and safer to access.

鈥淭ouch screens are widespread today in automobile dashboards, so it is vital to understand how interacting with touch screens affects drivers and driving,鈥� said co-senior author , a 91爆料 professor in the Information School. 鈥淥ur research is some of the first that scientifically examines this issue, suggesting ways for making these interfaces safer and more effective.鈥�

, a 91爆料 doctoral student in the Information School, is co-lead author. Other co-authors include , , and of TRI. This research was funded in part by TRI.

For more information, contact Wobbrock at wobbrock@uw.edu and Fogarty at jfogarty@cs.washington.edu.

Choosing highlights from 2025 for a video roundup is a tough task. 91爆料 video producers meet students, faculty and community members during some of the most exciting moments of their lives 鈥� from earning a degree to finding answers that will impact the world.

This year at the 91爆料, we saw cosmic images from a brand new telescope and supercharged a . We used a novel device to regain mobility, and sent a robot out of the lab to help feed people who can鈥檛 eat on their own. We launched an aeronautics professor into the sky in a Blue Angels Navy jet and we learned about using nuisance seaweed to help grow healthy crops. We reached out across our state to help solve problems, from calming traffic in Yakima to giving tribal fisheries on the Columbia River critical water temperature data. We welcomed a new president, new students and celebrated commencement. We were also inspired and heartbroken by 91爆料 women鈥檚 soccer player Mia Hamant鈥檚 brave fight with kidney cancer and effort to raise awareness of the disease before she passed in November.

Over the course of 2025, the 91爆料 News office, the and our Be Boundless site shared these stories and more from across the 91爆料, including our researchers鈥� impactful work, and how we prepare students for successful careers and share our knowledge in teaching and in partnerships all over Washington and the world.

You can follow us and find more stories on the 91爆料 News website, , , and , as well as the , , and .

For more information, contact Kiyomi Taguchi, 91爆料 News video producer: ktaguchi@uw.edu or 206-685-2716. Happy New Year!

, artist in residence and head of organ studies at the 91爆料, will be joined by students and colleagues on Friday, Oct. 31, to perform a concert of spooky organ classics and Halloween fun.

The concert will open with 鈥淭occata and Fugue in D minor,鈥� which Price will play on the organ. Most likely written by Johann Sebastian Bach in the Baroque period, the composition is strongly associated with Halloween and spooky films, including the Disney movie 鈥淔antasia.鈥�

鈥淧eople will recognize that piece and sort of expect it,鈥澛� Price said. 鈥淲e will then have vocal students and instrumentalists from the 91爆料 School of Music, which will show how the organ can be an accompanying instrument, outside of just being a solo instrument. Each organist will bring their own character and style to their performances.鈥�

Other concert selections include 鈥淭he Ballad of Sweeney Todd,鈥� 鈥淧ink Panther,鈥� the Mexican folk song 鈥淟a Llorona,鈥� , and the American folk tune 鈥淭he House of the Rising Sun.鈥澛�

鈥淓vents like this are important because they expose people to organ music that may not ever take the chance to go and hear an organ concert,鈥� Price said. 鈥淚t is a very popular event, and it’s oriented around popular music and familiar music. That makes it a fun experience.鈥�

After graduating from Western Connecticut State University, Price received a Fulbright Scholarship to Toulouse, France, where he studied historical and modern performances practices of French organ music. He went on to earn a master鈥檚 degree and a doctoral degree in music.

鈥�I have a colleague here in Seattle who believes the instrument chooses you, and I think there may be some truth to that,鈥� Price said. 鈥淭he first time I saw an organist play, I knew instantly that’s what I wanted to do.鈥�

The 91爆料鈥檚 incoming classes were welcomed Sunday at the University鈥檚 42nd annual New Student Convocation inside Alaska Airlines Arena at Hec Edmundson Pavilion.聽 The ceremony was attended by thousands of students, family and friends.

Welcome, Huskies! Thousands of incoming @uofwa.bsky.social students gathered for an annual 'W' formation today after kicking off the school year with a convocation ceremony. #newhuskies2025 #uwdawgdazeMedia assets: drive.google.com/drive/folder…

—

Preliminary figures show the incoming freshman class will be about 7,175 students, with around 4,550 from Washington.聽 An additional 1,650 transfer students are expected to arrive this fall, including 1,375 of whom will be from Washington community colleges, according to preliminary university data. All figures are approximate. Official census information is announced later in the quarter.

New Student Convocation is one of two landmark occasions where the University president, the Board of Regents, the deans of the schools and colleges and the faculty gather for an academic ceremony focused on students. The other, of course, is the graduation ceremony, Commencement. These two events are the seminal 鈥渂ookend鈥� events of a college career.

Following the early morning ceremony, incoming students formed a giant block 鈥淲鈥� on the field inside Husky stadium.