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Data Science for Social Good Program Launches for Summer 2021
By: Emily Keller On June 14th, the University of Washington’s Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) summer program began with eight student fellows working on two project teams in collaboration with data scientists from the eScience Institute and project leads from academic institutions. Student fellows joined the program from colleges and universities around the country.…
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How UW Medicine is Using Cloud Computing to Aid Seattle’s Covid Response
Over the past year, the University of Washington and UW Medicine have been at the heart of the city of Seattle’s Covid-19 response: researchers studying social distancing and how the virus spreads on our communities, volunteers collecting and distributing supplies, clinical vaccine trials, and a partnership with the city to process over 2 million test…
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Help the Fibr Algorithm Learn to Read MRI Scans
By: Louisa Gaylord The majority of mental health disorders are first diagnosed in childhood or adolescence. The disorders most commonly detected in young people include ADHD, anxiety, depression and behavior problems. Historically, individual labs and researchers interested in understanding the brain basis of mental health only had access to small amounts of data to analyze,…
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Using Social Media to Model Backcountry Use in Rainier National Park
Project Lead: Gabe Wisswaesser, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences eScience Liaison: Spencer Wood As public land use increases, accurate visitation numbers are paramount to managers and researchers interested in mitigating and understanding anthropogenic effects. Alpine water quality, as of late, has been under exceptionally high pressure because human waste mitigation is not keeping up with…
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Detecting Wildflowers in Spectral Imagery
Project Lead: Aji John, Department of Biology eScience Liaison: Nicoleta Cristea and Amanda Tan Alpine wildflowers are integral part of montane ecosystems; they provide a wide variety of ecosystem services like pollination, and nutrient recycling. Numerous studies have found that these wildflower species are sensitive to climate warming as their flowering phenology (development stage) is strongly related to…
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Climate Adaptation for Future Maize – Novel Plant Traits and New Management
Project Lead: Jennifer Hsiao, Department of Biology eScience Liaison: Bryna Hazelton Over the next three decades rising population and changing dietary preferences are expected to increase food demand by 25–75%. At the same time climate is also changing — with potentially drastic impacts on food production. Breeding for new crop characteristics and adjusting management practices have…
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Learning to See the Forest and the Trees: Using Computer Vision to Make Forest Stewardship More Accessible
Project Lead: David Diaz, School of Environmental & Forest Sciences Engineering Postdoctoral Fellow eScience Liaison: Valentina Staneva Maps that delineate and classify forest conditions remain indispensable prerequisites for forest stewardship planning. By developing new reproducible and open-source methods to automate forest mapping, our effort is designed to facilitate conservation and management planning among the 40,000+ non-industrial…
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Dry Thunderstorm Forecast Using Machine Learning Techniques
Project Lead: Wei-Yi Cheng, Department of Atmospheric Sciences eScience Liaison: Scott Henderson Dry thunderstorms (DT) are convective storms that generate lightning flashes without significant rainfall at the ground. The frequent occurrence of DTs has long been an important safety concern in the western United States due to its connection to wildfire events. An accurate forecast for…
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The Universe of International Treaties
Project Lead: Bree Bang-Jensen, Department of Political Science eScience Liaison: Jose Hernandez and Spencer Wood The greatest challenges of the 21st century are cross-national, including climate change, migration, epidemics, inequality and financial corruption. As a result, it is critical that we better understand the factors that endanger international cooperation. Despite a wealth of research on how the design of…
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Using Gliders to Observe Submesoscale Flows
Project Lead: Dhruv Balwada, School of Oceanography, College of the Environment eScience Liaison: Rob Fatland and Scott Henderson Since the industrial revolution 25-30% of the human-created carbon and 90% of the excess heat in the earth system has been sequestered into the deep ocean. These tracers (like heat, carbon and oxygen) are transported from the surface into the…