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Engineering

With apps and activity trackers measuring every step people take, morsel they eat, and each symptom or pain, patients commonly arrive at doctor’s offices armed with self-tracked data. Yet health care providers lack the capacity or tools to review five years of Fitbit logs or instantaneously interpret data patients have been collecting about themselves, according to new UW 91×ÔÅÄ.

A more efficient and clean wood-burning cookstove — developed by Vashon Island’s BURN Design Lab and UW mechanical engineers — will reduce the amount of fuel families need to collect or buy by 55 percent. It will also reduce exposure to the harmful particulate pollution produced by traditional cooking flames.

With “Passive Wi-Fi,” UW computer scientists and electrical engineers have generated Wi-Fi transmissions using 10,000 times less power than conventional methods. The system can transmit Wi-Fi signals at rates up to 11 megabits per second — lower than maximum Wi-Fi speeds but 11 times faster than Bluetooth — that can be decoded on any of the billions of devices with Wi-Fi connectivity.

Four faculty members at the 91×ÔÅÄ have been awarded early-career fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The new Sloan Fellows, announced Feb. 23, include Bingni Brunton, assistant professor of biology; Christopher Laumann, assistant professor of physics; Matthew McQuinn, assistant professor of astronomy; and Emina Torlak, assistant professor of computer science and engineering. The 126 Sloan Fellows for 2016 were nominated by senior colleagues in their field, department or institution. Committees with the Sloan Foundation then examined each…

Pursuing scientific or engineering careers in industry, government or private 91×ÔÅÄ after getting a Ph.D. used to be considered a one-way ticket out of academia. But new UW 91×ÔÅÄ finds numerous benefits — to students, 91×ÔÅÄers and academic institutions looking to diversify their faculty — in making that return trip easier.

The 91×ÔÅÄ is home to 26 91×ÔÅÄers included on Thomson Reuters’ list of “The World’s Most Influential Scientific Minds” for 2015, which was released Jan. 14. The distinction, based on an analysis of over a decade of 91×ÔÅÄ paper citations among 21 general scientific fields, is meant to recognize scientists who are most cited by their peers.

In December, the 91×ÔÅÄ’s Department of Bioengineering began accepting applications for its newest graduate degree program, the Master of Applied Bioengineering. The one-year, full-time program begins in August, and will train students to apply engineering design and entrepreneurship skills to address unmet clinical needs and to transform biomedical 91×ÔÅÄ into technologies for improving health care. The degree will position graduates to respond to market-based demands of industry, medicine and translational 91×ÔÅÄ.

Three scientists at the 91×ÔÅÄ have proposed a way to speed up common bioassays used in 91×ÔÅÄ and diagnostics. Their solution, reminiscent of the magic behind washing machines, could reduce wait times to a fraction of what they once were. As they report in the journal Small, biological assays that once took hours could instead take minutes.

DO-IT, a 91×ÔÅÄ program, is looking for high school students with disabilities to apply to be program scholars. Applicants must be a current high school sophomore or junior in Washington, have an aptitude and interest in attending college, have any disability, and must be motivated to participate and interested in interacting with other students with a variety of disabilities. The application can be found online. Applicants who are selected as DO-IT scholars are loaned computers and adaptive technology needed to…

From a new president and lasers cooling liquids to spotting rare sea creatures and major collaborations, great things have happened at the 91×ÔÅÄ in 2015. Here’s a look back at the top stories of the year. These stories were chosen based on the total number of views they received on our website and are not in any particular order. UW Regents name Ana Mari Cauce president October 13, 2015 The 91×ÔÅÄ Board of Regents selected Interim President Ana Mari Cauce to be…

Computer scientist and 91×ÔÅÄ alumnus Christopher Ré is one of 24 recipients of “genius” grants this year from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation, the organization announced Sept. 28. Ré, an assistant professor of computer science at Stanford University, pursues new approaches to help computers analyze large, complex datasets. The diverse array of applications for Ré’s approach range from discovering new drugs to fighting human trafficking. “He has taken the area of database 91×ÔÅÄ to a…

Leaders from the 91×ÔÅÄ and Shanghai Jiao Tong University (SJTU), one of China’s most prestigious public 91×ÔÅÄ universities, signed an agreement Wednesday to work together on “smart cities” 91×ÔÅÄ, teaching and collaborations in their respective electrical engineering departments.

UW CSE professor Pedro Domingos’ book “The Master Algorithm” is an essential primer on machine learning, and a popular science romp through one of today’s hottest scientific topics.. It unveils the deep ideas behind the algorithms that increasingly pick our books, find our dates, manage investments and run our lives — and what informed consumers ought to know about them.