UW Bioengineering faculty pivot diagnostics research to support the need for COVID-19 testing. The Lutz and Yager labs have developed prototypes that deliver results in less than 30 minutes, and the groups have also assembled 35,000 tests for the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network at the NanoES building.
The University of Washington Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, Department of Mechanical Engineering, and Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering seek outstanding candidates with expertise in quantum information science and technology to apply for new full-time faculty positions.
Earlier this year, UW scientists announced a nanoparticle-based drug delivery system that can ferry a potent anti-cancer drug through the bloodstream safely. The nanoparticle is derived from chitin, a natural and organic polymer that makes up the outer shells of shrimp.
Some of the most ambitious goals in physics and materials research are to make ordinary-sounding objects with extraordinary properties: wires that can transport power without any energy loss, or quantum computers that can perform complex calculations that today’s computers cannot achieve. And the emerging workbenches for the experiments that gradually move us toward these goals are 2D materials — sheets of material that are a single layer of atoms thick.
A team led by UW Electrical & Computer Engineering professors Mo Li, Arka Majumdar and Karl Böhringer was selected to participate in the National Science Foundation’s Convergence Accelerator, a new initiative to accelerate use-inspired research addressing societal challenges. The team will be working to increase the capacity of quantum computing systems to retain and process information.
The National Science Foundation has awarded $3 million to establish a NSF Research Traineeship at the University of Washington for graduate students in quantum information science and technology. The new traineeship — known as Accelerating Quantum-Enabled Technologies, or AQET — will make the UW one of just a handful of universities with a formal, interdisciplinary QIST curriculum. NanoES member and professor of electrical & computer engineering and physics, Kai-Mei Fu, will direct this new traineeship.
The National Science Foundation has awarded the University of Washington and Oregon State University a five-year, $5 million grant to advance nanoscale science, engineering, and technology research in the Pacific Northwest. Known as the Northwest Nanotechnology Infrastructure (NNI), the UW and OSU partnership is one of 16 sites in the NSF’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI) program. NNCI sites provide researchers from academia and industry access to leading-edge fabrication and characterization tools at university facilities.
A team led by NanoES faculty member Peter Pauzauskie used an infrared laser to cool a solid semiconductor by at least 20 degrees C, or 36 F, below room temperature, as they report in a paper published June 23 in Nature Communications.
Bioengineering professor Barry Lutz, in partnership with Dr. Matthew Thompson, a UW professor of family medicine and global health, is pioneering at home test kits for the Seattle Coronavirus Assessment Network to respond to the COVID-19 pandemic.
Read more about how the Lutz lab is developing new ways to rapidly test.
NanoES faculty member Igor Novosselov and an interdisciplinary team of researchers were awarded $25,000 to develop low-cost sensor networks for hospital operating rooms capable of mapping out the spatial and temporal distribution of long-lived aerosols that may contain SARS-CoV-2 or other infectious agents.