Category: News

• Senator Patty Murray visits eScience after securing $10M in federal funding for AI infrastructure

  

  We had the honor of hosting Senator Patty Murray at the eScience Institute after she secured $10 million in federal funds for AI infrastructure at UW. Senator Murray attended four research presentations powered by UW computing resources with practical applications ranging from environmental management to rural hospitals. Check out Geekwire’s coverage of the Senator’s visit…

• Agentic AI for Research Workflows: SSEC hosts AI Panel 

  

  This fall, the UW Scientific Software Engineering Center (SSEC) hosted a community-driven meetup during Seattle AI Week focused on how AI is reshaping research workflows in academia, industry, and startups. The meetup included a panel moderated by SSEC Head of Engineering Vani Mandava and featuring Bodhisattwa Majumder from AI2, Shamsi Iqbal from Microsoft, Luke Kim from Spice AI and Carlos Garcia Jurado Suarez from SSEC. Around sixty audience members listened as panelists discussed…

• The UW Scientific Software Engineering Center is now accepting pilot projects for AI workflows  

  

  The Scientific Software Engineering Center (SSEC) at UW provides researchers and scholars with access to professional software engineers using  state of the art software and hardware to develop open-source, secure, robust, and sustainable software. ​​SSEC software engineers solve challenging  problems across a breadth of disciplinary domains by employing modern software development best-practices to build open source software at scale, leveraging cutting-edge  technologies including agentic-AI, generative-AI, machine learning, cloud computing, scalable deployment optimization, and peta-scale data management.  In collaboration with agencies and…

• The 2025 Humanities Data Science Summer Institute: Celebrating Three Years of Interdisciplinary Collaboration

  

  This summer the UW Data Science Minor, in collaboration with eScience, offered the third iteration of the Humanities Data Science Summer Institute (HDSSI). Undergraduates, graduate students, and faculty from several university departments gathered to work together on humanities data science research projects. During this collaborative process, students attended training sessions with guidance from HDSSI co-founders…

• ICESat-2 Hackweek 2025: Open Software for Earth Satellites

  

  By Kate Rich In 2018, NASA launched the Ice, Cloud, and Land Elevation Satellite 2 (ICESat-2) into space for scientific research. The satellite enables scientists to measure the elevation of tree canopies, oceans, sea ice, and ice sheets across the globe with its photon-counting laser altimeter. With these data, researchers can further explore how the…

• Staff Spotlight: Niki Burggraf

  

  By Kate Rich The eScience Staff Spotlight is a series featuring individual members of our team and their career journey. This week’s featured staff member is SSEC Senior Research Software Engineer Niki Burggraf.  From programming languages to human languages, Niki has always had a knack for translating knowledge across different systems. Growing up in the…

• Staff Spotlight: Cordero Core

  

  By Kate Rich The eScience Staff Spotlight is a series featuring individual members of our team and their career journey. This week’s featured staff member is Cordero Core, a Senior Research Software Engineer at our Scientific Software Engineering Center (SSEC). In and outside of the office, Cordero brings creative insights to technical problems. At SSEC,…

• Staff Spotlight: Curtis Atkisson

  

  By Kate Rich The eScience Staff Spotlight is a series featuring individual members of our team and their career journey. This week’s featured staff member is Data Scientist Curtis Atkisson. Prior to becoming a researcher of human behavior, Curtis explored human nature through a different medium. After graduating from high school at the age of…

• Staff Spotlight: Bryna Hazelton

  

  By Kate Rich The eScience Staff Spotlight is a series featuring individual members of our team and their career journey. This week’s featured staff member is Bryna Hazelton, our Director of Research Programs and Senior Research Scientist.  Given her upbringing, some might find it unsurprising that Bryna developed a passion for research. She grew up…

• How Busy are National Parks and other Public Lands? Researchers Hone Methods for Estimating Visitation

  

  By Kate Rich Visits to national parks are on the rise. In 2024, the National Park Service set a new record of 332 million recreation visits, with over 6 million more visitors than the previous year.  While these numbers indicate growing interest in outdoor recreation, climbing visitation rates present challenges for land managers working to…