Dear Friends of Engineering,

At the University of Washington, our students benefit from Seattle's long standing as a hub for global innovation — from designing software and airplanes to advancing biotech and data-driven retail solutions. The companies that do business here routinely look to the College of Engineering for the fresh ideas and enthusiasm for problem solving that our students and faculty offer.

In this issue of Washington Engineer, you'll read about several of our groundbreaking industry-academic partnerships. Several years ago, Microsoft took notice of an experimental research program being run by electrical engineering and computer science and engineering faculty. The company committed funding and its own scientists to create the Molecular Information Systems Lab, where UW and Microsoft team members recently broke the world record for the amount of data that's able to be stored in — and retrieved from —synthetic DNA.

At the Boeing Advanced Research Center, undergraduate and graduate students work alongside Boeing's leading industry engineers to devise solutions for real-world Boeing projects focused on robotics, automation and aircraft assembly. UW and Boeing engineers also pioneered and co-taught a new upper-level course on commercial aircraft structural engineering.

I'm also pleased to share that an international team that includes the UW-led Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering was recently selected as one of three finalists in the GlaxoSmithKline Bioelectronics Innovation Challenge. The industry-sponsored competition seeks to produce an implantable wireless device that can stimulate and block nerve activity — which can alleviate troubling medical conditions and improve quality of life for millions of people.

UW Engineering ties to industry and academia extend well beyond Seattle and this spring I took my first trip to Taiwan. While there, I had the great opportunity to visit with academic partners at the National Taiwan University, the National Chiao Tung University, and we finalized an MOU for future research collaborations with the Industrial Technology Research Institute. I also visited with many UW Engineering alumni and saw first-hand how our international alumni have made a significant impact in our global economy. I look forward to expanding our many international collaborations and working closely with our distinguished partners.

We wish you a happy, productive summer and thank you for taking the time to learn more about the exciting, ongoing work at UW Engineering and for reading Washington Engineer.

Michael B. Bragg
Frank & Julie Jungers Dean of Engineering