Specials | Welcome 2018 D: Innovations

THE DAILY PRESENTS:

WELCOME EDITION Innovations

Breaking Ground

Rocket Science

New building underway for the Population Health Initiative PAGE 3

TransYouth UW paving a new

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PAGE 7

2 // WELCOME EDITION

Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

INNOVATIONS

UW composer receives award that forces him to quit day job

By Andreas Redd The Daily From an early age, Huck Hodge explored the inner life of any object capable of making noise.

While some may not normally associate certain mundane items with being instruments, Hodge refused to deny them musical potential. Jokingly, Hodge said sometimes he says his first instrument was a bicycle horn, which he recalled not only for the bitter taste it left in his mouth but for the sounds no one thought could come from its bell.

“This was an object that most kids were really familiar with, and everybody had a bicycle horn,” Hodge recalled. But when he took it apart, experimented with the way it was used, he discovered what no one realized could be created “if you just changed your perspective of about what it was.”

As a composer, UW associate professor, and chair of the composition program in the School of Music, Hodge continues to transform the way we understand his genre, contemporary classical music, today. But the process of boundary-breaking in the genre doesn’t come without drawing from the traditional understanding and history of classical music.

“It’s like a conversation between experimentation and rigor,” he said of writing music that reimagines the way you look at instruments. “There are certain things you can learn that are kind of bedrock technique, like how to write for instruments if you want to make them sound good in the most stereotypical way ... [and] knowing those techniques then helps you subvert [traditional thinking] in a way that I think is a lot more interesting than if you just come at it without any background.”

While traditional musical instruments play a large part in Hodge’s work, he incorporates sounds that one may not think would fit the mold of contemporary classical music.

Shrieks of feedback, cell phone interference, and speaker hum can be found throughout his work, with the intention to reshape our perception of sounds we normally resist.

Though for Hodge, there’s a beauty in these sounds that can be found, like the bicycle horn, if we alter the lens through which we see them.

Hodge finds that the relationship we have with audio equipment is one characterized by transparency. Speakers are the silent slaves of sounds they have no business changing. “[Speakers] give a really ‘realistic’ presentation of the sounds that it’s playing back … the idea is that you can hear all the details in the orchestra and the violin actually sounds like there’s a violin standing here,” Hodge said.

But he wants to change that.

“What I want to do is let them speak with their own voices and so I’m really interested in sounds where you become really aware of the materiality of the audio equipment,” Hodge said. “There’s something really beautiful about it, there’s something very complex and multilayered about a lot of these sounds; there’s something very expressive because of how rough and dissonant they are.”

Hodge pointed to his track “re[(f )use]” that uses all of these sounds, and whose title immediately suggests a feeling of rejection. The track opens with cell phone interference played behind a melodica, and builds into a combination of sharp and shrieking noises with

no apparent consistency. But its complexity and reanimation of “refused” sounds are what make it so beautiful. Speaking about the track, Hodge said in using sounds that are banned from concert situations, he was “interested in breaking down those barriers” of what’s permitted in the genre.

“It’s interesting, the way that we respond to otherness and weirdness and things that we think we don’t like in sound, music, art, actually shares many of the same structural relationships to the way that people respond to outsiders … people that they think of as being a problem more than actually having a life of their own,” he said. “And so my approach to [these sounds] in a way is to give that aspect of audio equipment a life of its own.”

For Hodge, innovation in music is about finding new ways to uncover perennial questions of the “why” behind art. While technology has often been driven by the need to forge new ways to problem-solve, using these sounds instead is meant to reveal his urge to create.

“I don’t think that technology is so much redefining the question about why we create art as much as it in a way gives new perspectives on a really ancient question,” Hodge said.

“The case with the cell phone sounds — any of those glitch sounds — we usually think about those as problems to be solved, to be gotten rid of, but what happens when you change your way of experiencing the world from the problem solving ... to just listening to those sounds because they are beautiful?”

Hodge’s innovations in contemporary classical music led him to be awarded with the highest honor presented

by the American Academy of Arts and Letters in January 2018. The Charles Ives Living Award grants Hodge $200,000 over the course of two years, and recipients of the award must agree to forgo all salaried employment during the time.

Yehudi Wyner, president of the Academy, has praised Hodge as “a brilliant colorist, and creator of gorgeous, lyrical soundscapes.” The New York Times has praised his music as “harmonically fresh” and “full of

both sparkle and thunder.” And the Chicago Tribune praised it for its “immediate impact.”

All that’s missing is the characterization of Hodge as a musical innovator, a composer who understands how to break boundaries in a field that often resists change.

Reach Editor-in-Chief Andreas Redd at specials@dailyuw.com.

Twitter: @Aredd44

Courtesy of Andreas Redd Huck Hodge was awarded the Charles Ives Living Award, which forces him to forgo his academic employment in exchange for $200,000 and focus on composing music for two years.

UW’s Daniel Schwartz wins highest U.S. award for STEM mentors

By Leslie Fisher The Daily UW was recently honored at the national level when professor Daniel Schwartz received the Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics and Engineering Mentoring. The award celebrates instructors from all over the country who have done exemplary work supporting the next generation of STEM workers, particularly students from underrepresented minority groups.

Schwartz’s former students are all over the country, doing work ranging from research at the U.S. Department of Energy to working for Bernie Sanders.

He has mentored dozens of students at all levels including six Ph.D. students, several master’s degree students, and numerous undergraduate students. Many of his students are from the Clean Energy Institute (CEI), which Schwartz is the director of.

Now Schwartz has been honored with the highest

STEM mentoring award in the United States “I’m super grateful,” Schwartz said. “I feel like I was just doing my job.”

One of Schwartz’s most notable works is the interdisciplinary graduate program he launched in 2007. The program partnered students from the UW College of the Environment and the UW College of Engineering with Native American tribal organizations. Students worked with tribal partners for a year to do research that provided valuable tools and information to the tribes.

The work also propelled the students further in their academic careers.

“I thought it would be super cool to bring environmental scientists and engineers together with [the tribes],” Schwartz said. “I think the highest value engineering you can do now is when you combine the human-centered aspects with your knowledge of science and technology.”

CEI supports the

advancement of solar energy, higher-performing battery materials, and a more flexible energy grid that can work with a variety of clean energy sources. So far, Schwartz has contributed to the education of over 60 STEM scholars through the institute.

Schwartz said he believes that everything a professor does should be done with an eye toward enhancing the students’ experience, whether it’s in the lab or the classroom.

Students are the next generation of scientists and engineers, so Schwartz said he thinks it’s extremely important to build them up. “[Professors] are at the university because of students,” Schwartz said. “That is our raison d’être. If we just want to do community service, we could work for a nonprofit. If we just want to do research, we could go to a research laboratory.”

Since students come from different places and have different needs, each studentprofessor relationship can be

unique. Schwartz expressed that he believes mentors should consider where each student is at in their career and life, as well as how the mentor is poised to help that particular individual.

“There’s no right studentmentor relationship,” Schwartz said. “There’s no formula. The one universal thing is to be student-centered in all that you do — think about where they’re at and how you can help them.”

His students agree that his mentorship has had an enormously positive impact on their lives.

“He works to develop the individual not only as an academic or with the work you’re doing for him, but as a human being,” UW doctoral student Laurel James said.

“He always has time for his students, no matter how worldly he becomes.”

James hopes to someday mentor other people the same way Schwartz mentored her.

She stated that he provided a great model of how to develop

Courtesy of University of Washington Professor Daniel Schwartz

students as whole individuals.

“I believe he’s a shining example of how you mentor students,” James said.

Reach Science Editor Leslie Fisher at specials@dailyuw.com.

Twitter: @lesliefish3r

Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

INNOVATIONS

WELCOME EDITION // 3

New facility under construction to further the Population Health Initiative

By Alyson Podesta The Daily It’s no secret that the UW is a hub for medical and health sciences. UW President Ana Mari Cauce has made a mission to maximize the school’s resources to expand the UW’s influence in this field with the

Population Health Initiative.

This project will go beyond the scope of medical studies and incorporate community factors into improving the health and well-being of a region.

The field of “population health” may be new to many.

This term refers to the “elimination of diseases and

injuries,” in addition to the ways in which many factors work together to impact the health of a community. In May 2016, Cauce announced the launch of the Population Health Initiative, aiming to make the UW an international leader in the field.

The initiative centers around developing strategies

Caean Couto The Daily UW representatives broke ground on the new population health building April 2018.

to achieve a higher level of health on local, national, and international levels. With thriving departments such as global health, the UW is situated to pursue these strategies in large-scale efforts. The initiative defines “human health, environmental resilience and social and economic equity” as its “pillars,” as this project will take a holistic stand on population health.

The project itself has a 25year goal, and construction on the Population Health Facility (PHF) is slated to be completed by 2020. This building will house many resources and departments, with collaborative work areas, instructional spaces, open workstations, and potentially community spaces to engage the surrounding area.

The Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation, the department of global health, and the School of Public Health will all be represented with locations in the building.

Representatives broke ground on the new facility April 25, 2018. The PHF will be located on 15th Avenue Northeast and Northeast Grant Lane. The total cost of the project is projected to be $230 million. The project is funded by a $210 million gift

from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, which is the largest single donation the school has received. In the Seattle Times, Cauce called the building a “catalyst for this larger vision.”

This larger vision certainly is an important one. The goals of the initiative include evaluating societal factors on health and health care, creating stronger infrastructure in communities, improving healthy starts for children, and facilitating mental health care.

“Big data allows us to diagnose the health of communities, not just individuals,” Cauce said to the Seattle Times. The UW president is confident that the school is situated in the right spot to pursue this work. With strides being made in technology and health care internationally and locally, there is no doubt that many of the goals set by the Population Health Initiative will be achieved inside the new facility.

Reach Special Sections Editor Alyson Podesta at specials@dailyuw.com. Twitter: @alyson_podesta

4 // WELCOME EDITION

Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

INNOVATIONS

UW Society of Advanced Rocket Propulsion launches future careers

By Alexander Tufel The Daily Every year at the UW Society of Advanced Rocket Propulsion (UW SARP), students of various academic pursuits come together to build a rocket and compete internationally.

At the Second Annual Spaceport America Cup held in Las Cruces, NM, last June, UW SARP won first place in its category, which was hybrid rockets.

One of UW SARP’s members, Sabrina Tong, is a computer engineer major in her fifth year.

She was drawn to the program by the prospect of working alongside many of her friends in what is nationally an unusual college club.

“A lot people … [are] incredibly interested in rockets and this is what they want to do,” Tong said. “There’s not a lot of programs over the country

that allows you to get this type of experience.”

According to Tong, many of the students this year at the UW SARP were majoring in aeronautics and aerospace engineering, along with physics, electrical, and mechanical engineering. But the team also included students who were studying business and anthropology. Alumni often go on to work for aerospace companies, such as Systima Technologies and SpaceX. UW Formula Motorsports (UWFM) is a similar club on campus in which students construct and then race two kinds of formula-style race cars.

UWFM and the UW SARP have some shared members. The oxidizer tank for the rocket was designed and built by a former member of UWFM. Since its first year, the UW SARP has revolved around Sabrina Tong, avionics sub-team lead, with various command consoles inside the UW Society for Advanced Rocket Propulsion lab.

the construction of hybrid rockets, Tong said, which use a combination of solid fuel and liquid or gas. Hybrid rockets are generally safer but also more challenging to build.

“Think of a candle,” Tong said while describing hybrid rocket combustion. “The oxidizer for a candle would be the oxygen in the air and then the fuel for the candle would be the wax.”

Developing and building certain aspects of the rocket were organized in what Tong referred to as a hierarchy, with a chief engineer and a project manager overseeing “sub-team leads.”

Teams are divided into categories based on the parts and functions they are tasked with designing, such as structures, propulsion, recovery, and payload. The project consisted of 70 members, the majority of whom worked on

propulsion.

“Structures is [focused] mainly on the airframe and structural components of the rocket,” Tong said.

“Propulsion ... was anything to do with the motor itself. So, that included the [oxidizer tank] manufacturing and the combustion chamber manufacturing, the nozzle, the fuel grains, [and the] thermal production system. And then recovery … [was] about how to recover [the rocket] safely.”

Tong was the avionics lead for the project. “We took on the control systems for the remote fuel control, as well as the launch sequence control,” she said. “We also took on taking inflight data … telemetry ... [and] tracking systems for once the rocket had landed.”

Most of the parts were built on campus, however some labor required outsourcing,

The rocket carried a payload nicknamed “Little Pup” that was designed to autonomously exit the rocket and explore the landing site.

like welding, Tong said. 3D printers are also commonly used for such projects.

The rocket took a year to design and build. However, the team’s rocket is only the latest version of an ever-evolving design that began with the inception of the program.

“Because we are continually iterating on previous years, you could say that it’s a six or seven year process,” she said.

Beyond developing a new rocket, the UW SARP must also design its payload, which is a device or other piece of technology transported inside the rocket to be delivered to a particular location.

For the past two years, this has been a small, autonomous rover named Little Pup. In 2017, after losing its rocket and Little Pup in the process, this year’s Little Pup 2 would come to replace its missing predecessor. Once deployed, the rover follows a pre-programmed path while avoiding objects and collecting sensor data.

“Rocketry is cool,” she said.

“The experience of working on any engineering team is always enticing to a lot of students to gain real world experience and hands-on knowledge.”

Reach writer Alexander Tufel at specials@dailyuw.com.

Twitter: @alexUWDAILY

Photos by Julian O’Leary The Daily

Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

INNOVATIONS

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UW researchers make it to final round of competition to create device for sexual assault prevention

By Charlotte Houston The Daily A group of UW researchers formulated a wearable device that can aid in sexual assault prevention by sending wireless alerts to emergency responders without being directly activated by the wearer. Instead, the wearer can tap out a call for help, or establish a pattern of breathing to trigger responders, allowing victims to send an alert even if they’re physically restrained or unable to reach a phone.

The group of researchers, Team Saffron, is part of the Global Innovation Exchange (GIX), a UW initiative that facilitates a partnership between the UW, Tsinghua University in Beijing, China, and Microsoft.

They collaborated on this project, some of the members being from the UW and some from Tsinghua University, in order to compete for the Naveen & Anu Jain Women’s Safety XPRIZE, the goal of which was to create affordable and discreet technology that could help reduce violence against women in India.

“Saffron is an inconspicuous device; you can wear it under your clothes and you can operate it to your breathing pattern, so you don’t need to touch it to trigger the device,” Archisa Guharoy, a GIX student who worked on the project, said. “Even if your hands are tied, you can just do a certain breathing pattern and it’ll send out a message to your friends or family.”

Although Team Saffron did

not win the grand prize of $1 million, they were one of the final five contestants. Up against many for-profit companies who already had funding, the fiveperson team made it impressively far. The winning device had to be able to send a location-based, inconspicuous, and autonomous alert within 90 seconds, and had to be no more than $40.

“The device is triggered using a breathing pattern, so finding that pattern was a difficult task,” Guharoy said. “It needs to be different from every other motion you do. We had to collect a lot of data to make sure the pattern was completely unique, but also easy to do.”

The breathing pattern, Guharoy demonstrated, is “sniff-sniff, pause, sniff-sniffsniff, pause, sniff.” They also formulated an app that learns your specific breathing pattern in order to more accurately sense an alert.

On top of that, Saffron’s device is able to tell whether the user is in a moving vehicle and even what floor of a building they are on. It’s about the size of a half-dollar, and is only about $15.

The user feedback they received commended the device for its long battery life and how easily wearable and hidden it is.

Now that the competition is over, however, the team members are busy with studies and work.

“There’s no progress on the product as of now,” Guharoy said.

“For the future, we’re planning to make it respond to other physiological signals to trigger it.”

Reach writer Charlotte Houston at specials@dailyuw.com.

Twitter: @choustoo

6 // WELCOME EDITION

Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

INNOVATIONS

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Monday, Aug. 27, 2018

INNOVATIONS

WELCOME EDITION // 7

Understanding how trans youth see themselves

By Divya Rajasekhar The Daily The word “transgender” refers to having a gender identity that is different from one’s assigned sex at birth. The number of people publicly identifying as transgender has grown in recent years, with more than a million people identifying as transgender in the United States. Despite their growing numbers and increased acceptance in popular culture, transgender people still fight against discrimination and for basic rights.

Scientific research has largely ignored the trans community, but one UW psychologist is working to understand how trans youth view themselves.

Kristina Olson is director of the Social Cognitive Development Lab at the UW and is the latest recipient of The National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Alan T. Waterman Award. She established the TransYouth Project, which is currently the largest longitudinal study of transgender children in the United States.

The project focuses on how transgender children see themselves, each other, and how the idea of feeling dissonant with one’s sex assigned at birth forms early on in life. Among her findings was the striking observation that 92 percent of

Courtesy of University of Washington Kristina Olson plays with a child in the Social Cognitive Development Lab.

the kids in the study showed signs of being transgender before the age of 4.

“I’m interested in the experience of feeling that you are in a social category that other people don’t think you’re a part of,” Olson said in an interview with the Seattle Times.

The TransYouth Project has a goal of following 300 children from 45 states and some Canadian provinces for a total of 20 years.

It is not just Olson that

thinks that the public’s general awareness regarding transgender people has to change for the better. Geneva Sparkles, one of the founders and a member of Active Minds UW, said that the main thing that has to change is the awareness.

Sparkles identifies as trans and said there are some days they feel like they can’t even leave the house because they’re worried people will assume they’re a girl. Sparkles said they believe raising

awareness through research will help change the confusion surrounding transgender and gender non-binary people.

“I think the biggest thing people can do to raise awareness is to ask people their pronouns,” Sparkles said. “It normalizes the fact that not all people are binary. A lot of queer folks are disproportionately affected by mental health issues.”

The TransYouth project also aims to increase awareness through studying gender nonconforming children and their

social transitions away from their birth gender.

Sparkles said they started considering their queer identity around the age of 15 or 16. ”It was then that I started thinking that maybe I could play around with my gender and see what was a good fit for me,” Sparkles said. “It was then that I started to get over my bias towards queer people.”

The social bias toward transgender people is something that the NSF commends Olson for, stating that her work involves important insights into “how children see themselves and the world.”

Results from the TransYouth study so far show that “children who have socially transitioned to the gender they identify with — firmly embrace their gender, just as children who identify as the gender they were born with.”

As society starts to become more aware of and to accept people that identify outside of the gender binary, research like Olson’s demonstrates how our understanding of gender needs to change.

Reach reporter Divya Rajasekhar at specials@dailyuw.com.

Twitter: @divraj16

Searching for life beyond earth UW astrobiologist Victoria Meadows receives prestigious award

By Leslie Fisher The Daily When you think of extraterrestrial life, do you envision cartoonish martians with three eyeballs and supernatural powers? Awardwinning UW astrobiologist Victoria Meadows has a different idea in mind.

“We’re not looking for little green men,” Meadows said.

“We’re looking for little green microbes.”

Meadows, who is the leader of NASA’s Virtual Planetary Laboratory (VPL) and a UW professor of astronomy, will soon become the first woman to receive the Drake Award from the SETI Institute. She is considered a pioneer in her field because of her work on detecting biosignatures, or evidence that there is life on a planet. Biosignatures can include anything from gases in the atmosphere to complex organic molecules in rocks.

One of the first things Meadows said she would look for on another planet is large quantities of oxygen, which is an important biosignature on Earth. Earth’s oxygen primarily comes from some of the tiniest members of our ecosystem: cyanobacteria. These bluegreen algae use sunshine, water, and carbon dioxide to produce oxygen.

“If we wanted to try to detect giraffes on another planet, that would be impossible,” Meadows said. “Giraffes do not leave enough of an impact on the environment for us to be able to see. But the microbes, yes.”

Meadows is looking for more than just oxygen. Life existed on Earth for more than a billion years before there was a significant amount of oxygen in the atmosphere, so Meadows’ team is researching non-oxygen biosignatures by looking at the Earth’s geological rock record.

She is also researching false positives, or markers that seem like evidence of life when it isn’t really there.

Meadows’ research at the VPL is primarily theoretical.

However, it could have an enormous impact on the practical search for life on other planets.

“She always has her eye on being relevant for observations of terrestrial exoplanets, that may have the possibility of being habitable or harboring life,” UW graduate student Andrew Lincowski said. “That intersection is imminent with the upcoming 2020 launch of the James Webb Space Telescope.”

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) will observe several Earth-size planets at habitable distances from their parent stars. The size of a tennis field, JWST will be seven times more powerful than the Hubble Space Telescope.

Meadows’ interest in astrobiology began at a very young age. She recalls reading a book about the planets when she was 6 or 7 years old.

“I was really fascinated by that book,” Meadows said. “I can remember it to this day.”

Meadows has also been an outstanding mentor to

many successful scientists.

As the director of the UW’s astrobiology program, she instituted a dual-title Ph.D. program whose graduates have gone on to work at NASA and NOAA. “As a mentor, Vikki is incredibly selfless,” NASA scientist and UW alumna Giada Arney said. “She gives an incredible amount of her time every day to help train her students to be good scientists and good members of the scientific community. I know I wouldn’t be where I am today if it weren’t for Vikki’s mentorship.

In challenging situations, I frequently find myself asking ‘What would Vikki do?’”

Astrobiology is an extremely interdisciplinary field. Meadows’ team includes biologists, chemists, planetary scientists, physicists, and many others.

“It takes a village to model a planet,” Meadows said. “It’s super exciting, because we get to learn from each other. If you can’t pick a science, astrobiology is great, because you get to get immersed in a whole bunch of different sciences.”

Part of Meadows’ contribution to the field is that she was one of the first to recognize the value of an interdisciplinary team.

“Vikki’s always been way ahead of her time in the ways she thinks about exoplanets and astrobiology,” Arney said.

“She has long recognized that exoplanets are most effectively studied through highly interdisciplinary research. I think it’s pretty remarkable that

Karissa Shutt The Daily

Vikki was able to recognize what this community needed well before practically anybody else.”

In addition to her work at the VPL and the UW, Meadows is currently a senior editor at Astrobiology, the premier journal for interdisciplinary astrobiology research. She sits on the Exoplanets and Astrobiology Science Strategy panels at the National Academies of Sciences. While Meadows has achieved an enormous amount in her field, she emphasizes that she didn’t do it alone.

“I’m getting this Drake

award, but really it’s been the work of [my team] for the last 18 years,” Meadows said. “I want to give a shoutout to the team, who has just been incredible.

They are scientists who want to learn from other disciplines, who have that openness. Having a biologist who is willing to talk to astronomers about the types of signals we might see is rare, and very valuable.”

Reach Science Editor Leslie Fisher at specials@dailyuw.com.

Twitter: @lesliefish3r

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INNOVATIONS

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