From campus to wherever you call home, we welcome you to learn from and connect with the College of Arts & Sciences community through public events spanning the arts, humanities, natural sciences, and social sciences. We hope to see you this June.

ArtSci on the Go

Looking for more ways to get more out of Arts & Sciences? Check out these resources to take ArtSci wherever you go!

Zev J. Handel, “Chinese Characters Across Asia: How the Chinese Script Came to Write Japanese, Korean, and Vietnamese”��()

Black Composers Project engages the School of Music faculty and students ()

Ladino Day Interview with Leigh Bardugo & MELC Professor Canan Bolel ()

Back to School Podcast ��with Liz Copland ()

Featured Podcast: “Ways of Knowing” (College of Arts & Sciences)

This podcast highlights how studies of the humanities can reflect everyday life. Through a partnership between and the 91����, each episode features a faculty member from the 91���� College of Arts & Sciences, who discusses the work that inspires them and suggests resources to learn more about the topic.

Episode 1: Digital Humanities with assistant professor of English and data science, Anna Preus.

Episode 2: Paratext with associate professor of French, Richard Watts.

Episode 3: Ge’ez with��associate professor of Middle Eastern languages and cultures, Hamza Zafer.

Closing Exhibits

Week of June 2

Monday, June 2, 5:00 – 6:20 pm | ONLINE ONLY: (Jackson School)

Join the Jackson School for Trump in the World 2.0, a series of talks and discussions on the international impact of the second Trump presidency.

This week: Daniel Bessner; Anne H.H. and Kenneth B. Pyle Associate Professor in American Foreign Policy at the Henry M. Jackson School of International Studies.

Monday, June 2, 5:00 – 7:00 pm | (Jackson School)

This talk discusses the unconventional forms of care that emerge out of Kurdish resistance in Turkey, where mothering becomes a powerful response against necropolitical state violence. By centering the stories of two Kurdish mothers who had to care for their dead children and mother beyond life under the violent state of emergency regime declared in 2015; the talk examines how Kurdish mothers “rescue the dead” (Antoon, 2021) from the necropolitical state and create their necropolitical power through a radical embrace of death and decoupling of mothering from the corporeal link between the mother and the child.

Monday, June 2, 3:30 – 5:00 pm | (The Ellison Center for Russian, East European and Central Asian Studies)

Why do some protests in autocracies attract popular participation while others do not? Masaaki Higashijima’s, University of Tokyo, paper argues that when opposition elites and the masses have divergent motivations for protesting, anti-regime mobilization struggles to gain momentum. Moreover, this weak elite-mass linkage is further exacerbated when autocrats selectively repress protests led by opposition elites while making concessions to those organized by ordinary citizens.

Tuesday, June 3, 5:00 – 6:30 pm | (Communications)

A conversation with local public media leaders about current challenges–including federal funding cuts–and pathways forward for sustaining public service journalism.

Speakers include:

Rob Dunlop, President and CEO, Cascade PBS
David Fischer, President and General Manager, KNKX
Tina Pamintuan, incoming President and CEO, KUOW
Matthew Powers, Professor and Co-Director, Center for Journalism, Media and Democracy

Wednesday, June 4, 3:30 – 4:30 pm | (Psychology)

Cognitive biases — such as attentional biases toward aversive cues, distorted expectations of negative events, and biased interpretations of ambiguity — are central features of many forms of psychopathology. Gaining a deeper understanding of the neurocognitive mechanisms underlying these biases is crucial for advancing theoretical models and clinical interventions.

In this talk, Prof. Hadas Okon-Singer will present a series of studies exploring emotional biases in both healthy individuals and participants diagnosed with social anxiety, major depressive disorder, and generalized anxiety disorder.

Wednesday, June 4, 12:30 – 1:30 pm | (Center for Statistics & Social Sciences)

Many statistical analyses, in both observational data and randomized control trials, ask: how does the outcome of interest vary with combinations of observable covariates? How do various drug combinations affect health outcomes, or how does technology adoption depend on incentives and demographics? Tyler McCormick’s, Professor, Statistics & Sociology, 91����, goal is to partition this factorial space into “pools” of covariate combinations where the outcome differs across the pools (but not within a pool).

Friday, June 6, 7:30 pm | (School of Music)

David Alexander Rahbee leads the 91���� Symphony in a program of concerto excerpts by York Bowen, Keiko Abe, and Camille Saint-Saëns, performed with winners of the 2024-25 School of Music Concerto Competitions: Flora Cummings, viola; Kaisho Barnhill, marimba; and Sandy Huang, piano. Also on the program, works by Mikhail Glinka, Richard Wagner, and Giuseppe Verdi.

Saturday, June 7 & Sunday, June 8, 10:00 am – 5:00 pm | (Burke Museum)

Stewart Wong will share knowledge and personal experiences about working with Broussonetia Papyrifera. He will talk about the history, uses, and cultivation of the paper mulberry plant. In addition, Stewart plans on dyeing, drawing on, and printing kapa. Stewart will have printed information and material samples to supplement the talk.

Saturday, June 7, 11:00 am – 12:00 pm | On Our Terms with Wakulima USA (Burke Museum)

Join the Burke Museum for a short screening from “,” plus a conversation with co-producer Aaron McCanna and Wakulima USA’s David Bulindah and Maura Kizito about food sovereignty and community building.

Additional Events

June 2 | (Music)

June 2 | (Asian Languages & Literature)

June 2 – June 6 | (Astronomy)

June 3 | (Music)

June 4 | (Music)

June 4 | (Psychology)

June 5 | (Music)

June 5 | (Speech & Hearing)

June 5 | (Labor Studies)

June 5 | (Art + Art History + Design)

June 6 | (Dance)

June 6 | (Geography)

June 7 | (Music)

Week of June 9

Wednesday, June 11 to Friday, June 27 | (Jacob Lawrence Gallery)

At the end of the spring quarter, the academic year culminates in comprehensive exhibitions of design work created by graduating students. The 91���� Design Show 2025, showcasing the capstone projects of graduating BDes students, will be held from June 11 to June 27 in the Jacob Lawrence Gallery.

Additional Events

June 11 | (Henry Art Gallery)

June 11 | (Art + Art History + Design)

June 12 & June 13 | (DXARTS)

June 13 | (Art + Art History + Design)

Events for the week of June 23

June 24 | (Information Sessions)

June 25 | (Information Sessions)

June 26 | (Information Sessions)

June 27 | (Information Sessions)

Commencement

June marks the end of many College of Arts & Sciences students’ undergraduate experience. Interested in attending a graduation ceremony? Click here to find information on ceremonies across campus.

UPDATE April 8,2025: An earlier version of this story included outdated rankings that were erroneously posted by U.S. News and have since been removed from the U.S. News ranking site. This story has been updated to reflect most recent rankings.

Many of the 91����’s graduate and professional degree programs were widely recognized as among the best in the nation, according to .

The 91���� Information School tied for No. 1 alongside the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign for library and information studies. And, more than 80 91���� schools and departments placed prominently in the 2026 rankings.

While the 91���� celebrates the success and impact of the programs recognized by U.S. News — and notes that many applicants use these rankings to help them select schools and discover potential areas of study — the University also recognizes shortcomings inherent in the ranking systems.

The 91���� School of Law and the 91���� School of Medicine withdrew from the U.S. News rankings in 2022 and 2023, respectively, citing concerns that some of the methodology in the rankings for those specific disciplines incentivize actions and policies that run counter to the schools’ public service missions.

91���� leaders continue to work with U.S. News and other ranking organizations to improve their methodologies, to the extent that the organizations are open to it. Schools, colleges and departments continually reevaluate the benefits and potential shortfalls of participating in specific rankings.

“As these rankings demonstrate, the 91����’s outstanding graduate and professional degree programs are leading the way in training highly skilled people to fill critical workforce needs and advance discovery and innovation in a wide range of fields,” said 91���� President Ana Mari Cauce. “It has never been more important to recognize how much graduate and professional education benefit our nation and people everywhere, and the 91���� is proud to see these exceptional programs be celebrated.”

Excluding the School of Law and the School of Medicine, 32 91���� programs placed in the top 10, and more than 80 are in the top 35.

In new rankings released this year, the 91���� placed in the top 10 nationwide in library and information studies, public affairs, nursing, speech and language pathology, education, public health, computer science, psychology and civil engineering, according to U.S. News.

The 91����’s Evans School of Public Policy & Governance has maintained its top-10 ranking for more than a decade and placed seventh in the nation. The Evans School’s environmental policy program was ranked second and nonprofit management and social policy each were ranked at No. 8.

This year’s rankings highlighted 91����’s leadership in nursing and public health: The 91���� School of Nursing held the No. 1 overall ranking for a public school offering a doctor of nursing practice program, and nursing schools at 91���� Bothell and 91���� Tacoma are among the top 10 public institutions that offer a master’s degree. The School of Public Health has maintained its top-10 ranking for more than a decade, coming in this year tied for No. 10. The school also had three programs in the top 10: biostatistics, environmental health sciences and epidemiology. And overall, the U.S. News rankings noted 91����’s strength in health sciences: The School of Social Work was ranked No. 7 and the School of Pharmacy tied for 12th — or third among public institutions on the West Coast — on last year’s list, while dentistry programs are not ranked.

The 91����’s programs in speech and language pathology tied for No. 5, topping schools on the West Coast.�� Three programs from the College of Education placed in the top 10. And the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering this year tied for seventh place overall, and four programs ranked in the top 10, including artificial intelligence, programming language, systems and theory.

In some cases, such as the College of Arts & Science and the Foster School of Business, U.S. News ranks several professional disciplines housed within academic units. The rankings below are based on preliminary data and may be updated. relies on both expert opinions and statistical indicators.

TOP 10:

Library and Information Studies (overall): Two-way tie for 1st

Public Affairs (environmental policy): 2nd

Library and information studies (digital librarianship): Two-way for 2nd (ranked in 2022)

Library and Information Studies (information systems): 2nd (ranked in 2022)

Nurse practitioner (doctor of nursing practice): 3rd

Physics (nuclear): Two-way tie for 3rd (ranked in 2024)

Library and Information Studies (library services for children and youth): Two-way for 5th (ranked in 2022)

Nursing (midwifery): 5th

Nurse practitioner (pediatric acute care): Two-way tie for 5th (ranked in 2022)

Speech-language pathology: Six-way tie for 5th

Education (elementary education): 6th

Education (secondary education): 6th

Public Health (biostatistics): 6th

Computer science (overall): Four-way tie for 7th

Computer science (programming language): 7th

Public Health (environmental health sciences): 7th

School of Social Work (overall): 7th (ranked in 2025)

Statistics: Tie for 7th (ranked in 2022)

Computer science (artificial intelligence): 8th

Computer science (systems): 8th

Education (curriculum/instruction): 8th

Evans School of Public Policy & Governance (overall): Two-way tie for 7th

Psychology (clinical): Six-way tie for 8th

Public Affairs (nonprofit management): 8th

Public Affairs (social policy): 8th

Public Health (epidemiology): Two-way tie for 8th

Computer science (theory): Three-way tie for 9th

Earth sciences: Five-way tie for 9th (ranked in 2024)

Geophysics: Three-way tie for 9th (ranked in 2024)

Engineering (civil): Three-way tie for 10th

Public Affairs (public finance and budgeting): 10th

School of Public Health (overall): Two-way tie for 10th

TOP 25:

Biological sciences: Three-way tie for 23rd (ranked in 2022)

Business (part-time MBA): Two-way tie for 17th

Business (information systems): Two-way tie for 12th

Business (international MBA): Three-way tie for 20th

Business (supply chain management): Three-way tie for 21st (ranked in 2025)

Business (full-time MBA): Two-way tie for 22nd

Business (entrepreneurship): Three-way tie for 23rd

Business (executive MBA): Three-way tie for 25th

Chemistry (analytical): Four-way tie for 16th (ranked in 2024)

Chemistry: Three-way tie for 24th (ranked in 2024)

Chemistry (inorganic): Three-way tie for 22nd (ranked in 2024)

College of Education (overall): Two-way tie for 22nd

Education (administration): Two-way tie for 12th

Education (policy): Three-way tie for 16th

Education (psychology): 19th

Education (special education): Two-way tie for 11th

College of Engineering (overall): Three-way tie for 20th

Engineering (aerospace/aeronautical/astronautical): Three-way tie for 15th

Engineering (biomedical/bioengineering): Four-way tie for 12th

Engineering (chemical): Two-way tie for 25th

Engineering (computer): Two-way tie for 13th

Engineering (electrical): Four-way tie for 18th

Engineering (environmental/environmental health): Four-way tie for 18th (ranked in 2025)

Engineering (materials engineering): Three-way tie for 24th

Library and Information Studies (school library media): Two-way tie for 11th (ranked in 2022)

Mathematics (applied math): 21st (ranked in 2024)

Nursing master’s (overall): Three-way tie for 12th

Nurse practitioner (family): Three-way tie for 11th (ranked in 2025)

College of Pharmacy (overall): Three-way tie for 12th (ranked in 2025)

Physics (overall): 20th (ranked in 2024)

Public Health (healthcare management): Three-way tie for 16th

Public Health (health policy and management): 13th

Public Health (social behavior): Two-way tie for 12th

Public Affairs (global policy and administration): 14th

Public Affairs (public management and leadership): Three-way tie for 11th

Public Affairs (public policy analysis): 13th

Sociology (overall): Two-way tie for 22nd

Sociology (population): Two-way tie for 15th (ranked in 2022)

TOP 35:

Business (accounting): Three-way tie for 27th

Business (management): Three-way tie for 29th

Business (finance): Three-way tie for 31st

Business (marketing): Two-way tie for 32nd

Engineering (industrial/manufacturing/systems): Three-way tie for 30th

Engineering (mechanical): Three-way tie for 30th

English: Two-way tie for 34th

History: Three-way tie for 31st

Mathematics: Three-way tie for 27th (ranked in 2024)

Political science: Five-way tie for 33rd

Psychology: Nine-way way tie for 30th

During the COVID-19 pandemic, governments around the world implemented restrictive measures — such as stay-at-home orders and school closures — to mitigate the spread of the respiratory illness. It’s been well-documented that this disruption of daily routines and social activities on the mental health of adolescents.

Adolescence, the period of transition between childhood and adulthood, is marked by dramatic changes in emotional, behavioral and social development. It’s also a time when a sense of self-identity, self-confidence and self-control are developed. The pandemic reduced social interaction for teenagers and led to documented reports of anxiety, depression and stress, especially for girls.

New research from the 91����, published Sept. 9 in the , found the pandemic also resulted in unusually accelerated brain maturation in adolescents. This maturation was more pronounced in girls. When measured in terms of the number of years of accelerated brain development, the mean acceleration was 4.2 years in females and 1.4 years in males.

“We think of the COVID-19 pandemic as a health crisis,” said , senior author and co-director of the 91���� (I-LABS), “but we know that it produced other profound changes in our lives, especially for teenagers.”

Brain maturation is measured by the thickness of the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of tissue in the brain. The cerebral cortex naturally thins with age, even in teens. Chronic stress and adversity are known to accelerate cortical thinning, which is associated with an increased risk for the development of neuropsychiatric and behavioral disorders. Many of these disorders, such as anxiety and depression, often emerge during adolescence — with females at a higher risk.

The 91���� research began in 2018 as a longitudinal study of 160 teens between 9 and 17 years, with the original objective of evaluating changes in brain structure during typical adolescence. The cohort was slated to return in 2020, but the pandemic delayed the repeat tests until 2021. By then, the original intent to study typical teen development was no longer viable.

“Once the pandemic was underway, we started to think about which brain measures would allow us to estimate what the pandemic lockdown had done to the brain,” said , lead author and research scientist at I-LABS. “What did it mean for our teens to be at home rather than in their social groups — not at school, not playing sports, not hanging out?”

Using the original 2018 data, researchers created a model of expected cortical thinning during the teen years. They then re-examined the brains of the adolescents, over 80% of whom returned for the second set of measurements. The teens’ brains showed a general effect of accelerated thinning across adolescence, but this was much more pronounced in females. The cortical thinning effects in females were seen all over the brain, in all lobes and both hemispheres. In males, the effects were only seen in the visual cortex.

The greater impact on female brains as opposed to male brains could be due to differences in the importance of social interaction for girls versus boys, Kuhl said. She added that female teenagers often rely more heavily on the relationships with other girls, prioritizing the ability to gather, talk to each other and share feelings. Boys tend to gather for physical activity.

“Teenagers really are walking a tightrope, trying to get their lives together,” Kuhl said. “They’re under tremendous pressure. Then a global pandemic strikes and their normal channels of stress release are gone. Those release outlets aren’t there anymore, but the social criticisms and pressures remain because of social media. What the pandemic really seems to have done is to isolate girls. All teenagers got isolated, but girls suffered more. It affected their brains much more dramatically.”

The cerebral cortex is unlikely to get thicker again, Kuhl said, but the potential for recovery might take the form of slower thinning over time, after the return of normal social interactions and outlets. Further research will be needed to see if this is the case.

“It is possible that there might be some recovery,” Kuhl said. “On the other hand, it’s also possible to imagine that brain maturation will remain accelerated in these teens.”

In older populations, measures of cognitive brain function, such as processing speed and the ability to complete typical tasks, correlate with how much the cerebral cortex has thinned. That kind of data is not yet available for teenagers, Kuhl said, but it could be where future research is headed.

“The pandemic provided a test case for the fragility of teenagers’ brains,” Kuhl said. “Our research introduces a new set of questions about what it means to speed up the aging process in the brain. All the best research raises profound new questions, and I think that’s what we’ve done here.”

, a 91���� research associate professor of psychology and data science fellow at the eScience Institute, is a co-author. The research was funded by a grant from the Bezos Family Foundation.

For more information, contact Kuhl at pkkuhl@uw.edu.

Speech and music are the dominant elements of an infant’s auditory environment. While past research has shown that speech plays a critical role in children’s language development, less is known about the music that infants hear.

A new 91���� study, published May 21 in , is the first to compare the amount of music and speech that children hear in infancy. Results showed that infants hear more spoken language than music, with the gap widening as the babies get older.

“We wanted to get a snapshot of what’s happening in infants’ home environments,” said corresponding author , a 91���� research assistant professor of speech and hearing sciences. “Quite a few studies have looked at how many words babies hear at home, and they’ve shown that it’s the amount of infant-directed speech that’s important in language development. We realized we don’t know anything about what type of music babies are hearing and how it compares to speech.”

Researchers analyzed a dataset of daylong audio recordings collected in English-learning infants’ home environments at ages 6, 10, 14, 18 and 24 months. At every age, infants were exposed to more music from an electronic device than an in-person source. This pattern was reversed for speech. While the percentage of speech intended for infants significantly increased with time, it stayed the same for music.

“We’re shocked at how little music is in these recordings,” said Zhao, who is also the director of the Lab for Early Auditory Perception (LEAP), housed in the Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS). “The majority of music is not intended for babies. We can imagine these are songs streaming in the background or on the radio in the car. A lot of it is just ambient.”

This differs from the highly engaging, multi-sensory movement-oriented music intervention that Zhao and her team had . During these sessions, music played while infants were given instruments and researchers taught caregivers how to synchronize their babies’ movement with music. A control group of babies then came to the lab just to play.

“We did that twice,” Zhao said. “Both times, we saw the same result: that music intervention was enhancing infant’s neural responses to speech sounds. That got us thinking about what would happen in the real world. This study is the first step into that bigger question.”

Past studies have largely relied on qualitative and quantitative parental reports to examine musical input in infants’ environments, but parents tend to overestimate the amount they talk or sing to their children.

This study closes the gap by analyzing daylong auditory recordings made with Language Environment Analysis (LENA) recording devices. The recordings, originally created for a separate study, documented infants’ natural sound environment for up to 16 hours per day for two days at each recording age.

Researchers then crowdsourced the process of annotating the LENA data through the citizen science platform. Volunteers were asked to determine if there was speech or music in the clip. When speech or music was identified, listeners were then asked whether it came from an in-person or electronic source. Finally, they judged whether the speech or music was intended for a baby.

Since this research featured a limited sample, researchers are now interested in expanding their dataset to determine if the result can be generalized to different cultures and populations. A follow-up study will examine the same type of LENA recordings from infants in Latinx families. Since audio recordings lack context, researchers are also interested in when music moments are happening in infants’ lives.

“We’re curious to see whether music input is correlated with any developmental milestones later on for these babies,” Zhao said. “We know speech input is highly correlated with later language skills. In our data, we see that speech and music input are not correlated — so it’s not like a family who tends to talk more will also have more music. We’re trying to see if music contributes more independently to certain aspects of development.”

Other co-authors were , former 91���� undergraduate honors thesis student and incoming master’s student in clinical research speech-language pathology; , LEAP research assistant/lab manager; and , assistant professor of linguistics and adjunct research professor for I-LABS. This study was funded by the National Institute on Deafness and Other Communication Disorders of the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, contact Zhao at zhaotc@uw.edu.

A parent interacting with a baby is a heart-warming and universal scene. The parent speaks in a high-pitched voice — known as “parentese” — as they respond positively to the baby’s babbling and gestures, commonly with eye contact and smiles.

These connections don’t just make for a touching sight. New research from the 91����’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences (I-LABS) shows they’re important for infant language growth, too.

In a study , researchers used a safe and noninvasive brain-imaging technique called magnetoencephalography, or MEG, to monitor infant brain activity during social and nonsocial interactions with the same adult. They found that when the adult talked and played socially with a 5-month-old baby, the baby’s brain activity particularly increased in regions responsible for attention — and the level of this type of activity predicted enhanced language development at later ages. This ‘social’ scenario was compared with a ‘nonsocial’ scenario in which the adult turned away from the baby to talk to another person. This interaction showed lower activity levels in the same brain areas.

“This is the first study to directly compare infant brain responses to adult-infant social interaction versus nonsocial interaction, and then follow up with the children until they reached the age of 2.5 to see how the early brain activation relates to the child’s future language abilities,” said lead author , research scientist at I-LABS.

The MEG brain-imaging technology allowed the baby to move and interact naturally with the adult, which enabled researchers to track the firing of neurons from multiple areas in the baby’s brain as the adult talked to, played with and smiled at the baby. They then monitored the infant’s brain activity a second time as the adult turned away and paid attention to someone else.

These actions naturally occur every day between adults and babies, and the study showed they have different measurable effects on a baby’s brain. Researchers found that increased neural activity in response to the social interaction at 5 months predicted enhanced language development at five later ages: 18, 21, 24, 27 and 30 months. The researchers tracked infants’ language development using a well-documented and validated survey that asks parents about words and sentences their infants say at home.

“The connection between early brain reactions and later language is consistent with scientists’ fascination with the early age period and opens up many new questions that we, and others, will be exploring,” said co-author , I-LABS co-director and a 91���� professor of psychology.

Researchers chose 5-month-old babies for the study because that age is just before the “sensitive period” for speech-language learning, which begins at about 6 months. Once this period begins, it’s especially important for infants to observe adults because attention enhances learning.

Using parentese with infants represents an intuitive desire to connect, said , senior author and co-director of I-LABS.

“There’s an implicit understanding that language is about connection,” Kuhl said. “It’s about a communicative pathway between you and the other. This starts in infancy with the desire to make that communicative connection.”

The study’s results are particularly important for parents and early educators to understand, Kuhl said.

“We knew from previous work that social interaction is essential at 9-months of age for foreign-language learning, but the current study shows that social interaction plays a role much earlier,” Kuhl said. “The study shows that parents’ natural use of parentese, coupled with smiles, touch and their warm back-and-forth responses to the baby’s actions, have a real-world, measurable impact on the baby’s brain. We theorize that this parent behavior, which we call ‘the social ensemble,’ captures and holds infants’ attention and motivates them to learn at a critical time in development.”

Additional co-authors were , , , , and , all of I-LABS. ��The study was funded by The Bezos Family Foundation, the Overdeck Foundation and grants from the National Institutes of Health.

For more information, contact Kuhl at pkkhul@uw.edu.

Three 91���� researchers have been selected as Fulbright Scholars for 2023-2024 and will pursue studies in Portugal, Mexico and Sweden.

The scholars are , an assistant professor in the Foster School of Business; , an assistant professor in the Department of Speech & Hearing Sciences; and , a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Oceanography.

Fulbright Scholars are college and university faculty, administrators and researchers, as well as artists and professionals, who build their skills and connections, gain valuable international insights and return home to share their experiences with their students and colleagues.

for academics and professionals awards more than 1,700 fellowships each year, enabling 800 U.S. scholars to go abroad and 900 visiting scholars to come to the United States. The Fulbright Program is the flagship international exchange program sponsored by the U.S. government. The 91���� is one of 17 institutions nationwide recognized in 2022-2023 as a “Top Producer” of both Fulbright scholars and students.

The 91���� Fulbright Scholar selectees for 2023-2023 are:

Hafenbrack is an assistant professor of management and organization and Evert McCabe Endowed Fellow at the 91���� Foster School of Business.

Hafenbrack, who spent four years on the faculty of Católica-Lisbon School of Business & Economics in Portugal before joining the 91����, will return in spring 2024 to collect additional interview data for research documenting how Airbnb has changed the culture of Lisbon. He also will collaborate with Portugal-based co-authors on a project about mindfulness meditation.

An expert on the efficacy of mindfulness meditation, Hafenbrack’s research has been published in top management journals and featured in The New York Times, Financial Times, Forbes, Businessweek, NPR and BBC, and other popular media outlets. In 2018, he was named one of the world’s “Best 40 Under 40 Business School Professors” by Poets & Quants. He received the Foster School’s PhD Mentoring Award in 2022.

Pace is an assistant professor in the Department of Speech and Hearing Sciences.

Pace will be hosted by the Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados (CINVESTAV) Unidad Mérida (Mexico) in the Department of Human Ecology. She will pursue a project entitled, “See, Say, Do, Learn: Bilingual Ideologies and Practices in Contemporary Yucatec Maya Families.”

Pace’s research focuses on how children’s language learning skills interact with the structure, quality and contexts of linguistic exposure to support bilingual development in children with and without language disorders.

Prend is postdoctoral researcher in the 91���� School of Oceanography.

Prend will be hosted by the University of Gothenburg, Sweden, where he will pursue a project titled, “Regional Variability of Air-Sea-Ice Interactions in the Southern Ocean.”

Prend is a climate scientist studying ocean-atmosphere exchange and sea ice dynamics in the Antarctic. He received a doctorate in physical��oceanography from Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where he was awarded the Jean Fort Dissertation Prize for his research. He is a NOAA Climate & Global Change postdoctoral fellow with a joint appointment at 91���� and California Institute of Technology.

When the COVID-19 pandemic closed schools nationwide, students of all ages — from high-schoolers in Advanced Placement classes to preschoolers getting the hang of the ABCs — shifted to remote learning on a screen.

And while learning to read in an online setting may seem a tall order, a new study by the 91����’s Institute for Learning & Brain Sciences finds that children can develop key reading skills in a virtual classroom with other students. Researchers say their “Reading Camp” program demonstrates not only the effectiveness of the approach, but also the potential to reach larger numbers of students remotely, by necessity or by choice.

“Children are ready to learn to read at the age of 5. But the pandemic robbed children of the opportunity for in-person reading instruction. What we’ve shown here is that an online Reading Camp designed to promote learning socially works phenomenally well. An online camp can be used all over the world by children anywhere, and that is truly exciting,” said faculty author , co-director of I-LABS and a 91���� professor of speech and hearing sciences.

The , published online March 31 in Frontiers in Human Neuroscience, details a two-week reading program, which teachers provided remotely to 83 5-year-olds beginning in fall 2020.

Learning to read involves a series of steps, from recognizing distinguished sounds in a language (phonological awareness), to identifying the names of individual letters and how they sound (letter-sound knowledge), to decoding words and their meanings.

The study finds that the participants demonstrated learning of specific reading skills, such as phonological awareness and letter-sound knowledge, when compared to a control group of children who did not receive the instruction.

I-LABS researchers, including study co-author (now at Stanford University), in 2019 offered a two-week reading summer camp to teach early literacy skills to pre-kindergarteners and measure brain activity before and after instruction. With the onset of the pandemic in spring 2020, researchers decided to adapt the in-person Reading Camp into an online version over Zoom.

Ahead of the remote camp, researchers mailed parents a kit of materials, which included headphones, worksheets and books, as well as Play-Doh, toys and other fun items for use in the lessons. Children used colored plastic eggs from the kit, for example, to “vote” for the right answer in their virtual classroom, rather than raising a hand.

The Reading Camp grouped children into six-person classrooms, each with two instructors trained in the specific skills lessons. Sessions lasted three hours a day, with several breaks, short lessons broken up by activities, and ending with a story time. The classrooms were often broken into even smaller, three-student breakout rooms, each with a teacher to focus the lessons and games.

“This shows that we can actually teach kids online if we’re using the correct methodology, keeping them engaged, and they’re interacting socially with their peers and teachers,” said , a research scientist at I-LABS and the study’s first author. “Combining all of this made it successful.”

Children in both the Reading Camp and control groups took several standardized and non-standardized tests to assess knowledge of letters, sounds and words. The results showed that the Reading Camp participants improved in all of the reading skills measured, and their phonological awareness and knowledge of lowercase letters and sounds, in particular, more than the children in the control group.

“Frankly, I had my doubts about whether 5-year-olds could learn to read online without a live tutor. But when I saw these 5-year-olds on Zoom laughing and encouraging each other to listen and hold up the right color egg, I was amazed. Their social connections to each other were obvious, and their learning was incredible. They called each other by name and seemed very eager to see each other on the screen,” Kuhl said.

Researchers plan to hold additional online reading camps, and to add brain scans prior to and after the camps to evaluate how learning to read affects brain development.

The study was funded by the Bezos Family Foundation, the Overdeck Family Foundation, and the Petunia Charitable Fund.

Additional co-authors were Suzanne Ender, Liesbeth Gijbels, Hailley Loop, Julia Mizrahi and Bo Woo, all of I-LABS.

For more information, contact Weiss at ylweiss@uw.edu, Kuhl at pkkuhl@uw.edu or Yeatman at jyeatman@stanford.edu.

Researchers have long known the amygdala is significantly larger in school-age children diagnosed with autism, but it was unknown precisely when that enlargement occurs. Now, for the first time, researchers from the Infant Brain Imaging Study (IBIS) Network, which includes the 91����, used magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to demonstrate that the amygdala grows too rapidly in infancy. Overgrowth begins between 6 and 12 months of age, before the characteristics of autism fully emerge, potentially enabling the earliest identification of this condition.

The , published March 25 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, is the first to document amygdala overgrowth before autism appears clinically. The research was conducted through the IBIS Network, a consortium of 10 universities in the United States and Canada.

The study also showed that increased growth of the amygdala in infants who were later diagnosed with autism differed markedly from brain-growth patterns in babies with another neurodevelopmental disorder, fragile X syndrome, where no differences in amygdala growth were observed.

The research found that infants with fragile X syndrome already exhibit cognitive delays at 6 months of age. Infants who will later be diagnosed with autism do not show any deficits in cognitive ability at 6 months but have a gradual decline in cognitive ability between 6 and 24 months, the age when they were diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder in this study.

“We also found that the rate of amygdala overgrowth in the first year is linked to the child’s social deficits at age two,” said first author , assistant professor of psychiatry and neuroscience at the University of North Carolina Chapel Hill and faculty of the Carolina Institute for Developmental Disabilities. “The faster the amygdala grew in infancy, the more social difficulties the child showed when diagnosed with autism a year later.”

by the IBIS team and others ��revealed that even though the social deficits that are a hallmark of autism are not present at 6 months of age, infants who go on to develop autism have altered attention to visual stimuli in their surroundings in the first year of life. The authors hypothesize that these early alterations with processing visual and sensory information may place increased stress on the amygdala, leading to its overgrowth.

“We are getting closer to understanding why autism occurs by learning more about brain growth alterations early during development, in this case how amygdala growth may be influenced by early sensory processing difficulties and, conversely, how amygdala growth alterations may influence a baby’s interaction with their environment,” said , professor of radiology in the 91���� School of Medicine and an adjunct professor of bioengineering.

As part of the IBIS Network, the 91���� has been involved in several studies over the years. In 2019, the multicenter research team received a five-year, $9.5 million grant from the National Institute of Mental Health to continue their efforts to determine whether brain imaging can help detect infants who are likely to go on to develop autism spectrum disorder.

The 91���� Autism Center established an infant clinic in 2017, which provides evaluations for infants and toddlers and support for caregivers. Just as with older children with autism, psychologists and behavior analysts help create treatment plans with clinic- and home-based activities.

The Autism Center has also evaluated sleep issues as part of both long-term research studies and in the clinical setting. A 2020 study led by the 91���� was the first to show links between growth in the hippocampus – a key part of the brain for learning and memory — and sleep problems in infants who are later diagnosed with autism.

“It is so exciting see the work of so many dedicated families and researchers over the last 16 years come together to reveal things we have never known before about how autism develops,” said , director of the 91���� Autism Center. “By assessing and monitoring development in infants who have a family history of autism, we can learn better ways to support caregivers and work on finding innovative ways to help infants reach their fullest potential.”

The new study was funded by the Eunice Kennedy Shriver National Institute of Child Health and Human Development, National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, and National Institute of Mental Health, Autism Speaks and the Simons Foundation.

Along with the 91���� and UNC at Chapel Hill, other participating institutions are Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Minnesota, New York University, the University of Texas at Dallas, Washington University, the University of Alberta and McGill University. The imaging sites are located in Seattle, St. Louis, Philadelphia, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, and Minneapolis-St. Paul.

For more information, contact Dager at srd@uw.edu or Estes at estesa@uw.edu.

Adapted from a University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill press release.

Many of these online opportunities are streamed through Zoom. All 91���� faculty, staff, and students have access to��.��

Ladino Day 2020 — Revolutionizing Ladino: From the Printing Press to the Smartphone

December 6, 10:00 – 11:30 AM |

Commemorating the Centennial of the Negro Leagues: Racial Justice, Professional Baseball, and American Society

December 2, 3:30 – 5:00 PM |

Confronting Systemic Racism in Communication Sciences and Academia

December 3, 12:00 – 1:00 PM |

Round Table Discussion 3: What Is the Human, Anyway?

Looking for more?

Check out 91����AA’s Stronger Together web page for��more digital engagement opportunities.

Infants spend most of their first year of life asleep. Those hours are prime time for brain development, when neural connections form and sensory memories are encoded.

But when sleep is disrupted, as occurs more often among children with autism, brain development may be affected, too. New research led by the 91���� finds that sleep problems in a baby’s first 12 months may not only precede an autism diagnosis, but also may be associated with altered growth trajectory in a key part of the brain, the hippocampus.

In a published May 7 in the American Journal of Psychiatry, researchers report that in a sample of more than 400 6- to 12-month-old infants, those who were later diagnosed with autism were more likely to have had difficulty falling asleep. This sleep difficulty was associated with altered growth trajectories in the hippocampus.

“The hippocampus is critical for learning and memory, and changes in the size of the hippocampus have been associated with poor sleep in adults and older children. However, this is the first study we are aware of to find an association in infants as young as 6 months of age,” said lead author , a postdoctoral researcher at the 91���� Autism Center.

As many as 80% of children with autism spectrum disorder have sleep problems, said , director of the and senior author on the study. But much of the existing research, on infants with siblings who have autism, as well as the interventions designed to improve outcomes for children with autism, focus on behavior and cognition. With sleep such a critical need for children — and their parents — the researchers involved in the multicenter , or IBIS Network, believed there was more to be examined.

“In our clinical experience, parents have a lot of concerns about their children’s sleep, and in our work on early autism intervention, we observed that sleep problems were holding children and families back,” said Estes, who is also a 91���� professor of speech and hearing sciences.

Researchers launched the study, Estes said, because they had questions about how sleep and autism were related. Do sleep problems exacerbate the symptoms of autism? Or is it the other way around — that autism symptoms lead to sleep problems? Or something different altogether?

“It could be that altered sleep is part-and-parcel of autism for some children. One clue is that behavioral interventions to improve sleep don’t work for all children with autism, even when their parents are doing everything just right. This suggests that there may be a biological component to sleep problems for some children with autism,” Estes said.

To consider links among sleep, brain development and autism, researchers at the IBIS Network looked at MRI scans of 432 infants, surveyed parents about sleep patterns, and measured cognitive functioning using a standardized assessment. Researchers at four institutions — the 91����, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, Washington University in St. Louis and the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia — evaluated the children at 6, 12 and 24 months of age and surveyed parents about their child’s sleep, all as part of a longer questionnaire covering infant behavior. Sleep-specific questions addressed how long it took for the child to fall asleep or to fall back asleep if awakened in the middle of the night, for example.

At the outset of the study, infants were classified according to their risk for developing autism: Those who were at higher risk of developing autism — about two-thirds of the study sample — ��had an older sibling who had already been diagnosed. Infant siblings of children with autism have a 20 percent chance of developing autism spectrum disorder — a much higher risk than children in the general population.

A 2017 study by the IBIS Network found that infants who had an autistic older sibling and who also showed expanded cortical surface area at 6 and 12 months of age were more likely to be diagnosed with autism compared with infants without those indicators.

In the current study, 127 of the 432 infants were identified as “low risk” at the time the MRI scans were taken because they had no family history of autism. They later evaluated all the participants at 24 months of age to determine whether they had developed autism. Of the roughly 300 children originally considered “high familial risk,” 71 were diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder at that age.

Those results allowed researchers to re-examine previously collected longitudinal brain scans and behavioral data and identify some patterns. Problems with sleep were more common among the infants later diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder, as were larger hippocampi. No other subcortical brain structures were affected, including the amygdala, which is responsible for certain emotions and aspects of memory, or the thalamus, a signal transmitter from the spinal cord to the cerebral cortex.

The 91����-led sleep study is the first to show links between hippocampal growth and sleep problems in infants who are later diagnosed with autism.

Other studies have found that “overgrowth” in different brain structures among infants who go on to develop those larger structures has been associated, at different stages of development, with social, language and behavioral aspects of autism.

While the 91���� sleep study found a pattern of larger hippocampal volume, and more frequent sleep problems, among infants who went on to be diagnosed with autism, what isn’t yet known is whether there is a causal relationship. Studying a broader range of sleep patterns in this population or of the hippocampus in particular may help determine why sleep difficulties are so prevalent and how they impact early development in children with autism spectrum disorder.

“Our findings are just the beginning — they place a spotlight on a certain period of development and a particular brain structure but leave many open questions to be explored in future research,” MacDuffie said.

A focus on early assessment and diagnosis prompted the 91���� Autism Center to establish an infant clinic in 2017. The clinic provides evaluations for infants and toddlers, along with psychologists and behavior analysts to create a treatment plan with clinic- and home-based activities — just as would happen with older children.

The 91���� Autism Center has evaluated sleep issues as part of both long-term research studies and in the clinical setting, as part of behavioral intervention.

“If kids aren’t sleeping, parents aren’t sleeping, and that means sleep problems are an important focus for research and treatment,” said MacDuffie.

The authors note that while parents reported more sleep difficulties among infants who developed autism compared to those who did not, the differences were very subtle and only observed when looking at group averages across hundreds of infants. Sleep patterns in the first years of life change rapidly as infants transition from sleeping around the clock to a more adult-like sleep/wake cycle. Until further research is completed, Estes said, it is not possible to interpret challenges with sleep as an early sign of increased risk for autism.

The study was funded by the National Institutes of Health, Autism Speaks and the Simons Foundation. , professor of radiology at the 91���� School of Medicine and , research scientist at the 91���� Autism Center, were co-authors. Additional co-authors, all at IBIS Network institutions, were , , and at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; , now at the James S. McDonnell Foundation; at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia; and at the University of Minnesota; at the University of Texas at Dallas; at Washington University in St. Louis; and at the University of Alberta.

###

For more information, contact Estes at estesa@uw.edu.