The ������Ƶ and Microsoft have announced the expansion of their long‑standing partnership uniting world-class academic research with world-leading technology. UW and Microsoft aim to accelerate AI discovery, prepare students and workers for an AI-driven economy, and help communities understand and use AI responsibly.

The announcement, made today by UW President Robert J. Jones and Microsoft Vice Chair and President Brad Smith during an event at the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, will increase the University’s access to the most advanced AI computing power, expand internship and applied research opportunities for its students, and develop community AI literacy programs, including a foundational AI course for working Washingtonians.

“Our long-standing partnership with Microsoft demonstrates what’s possible when universities and industry come together to support students and our society, and we are grateful for their continued support,” Jones said. “Together, we’re expanding students’ access to hands-on learning, advancing AI research and strengthening our workforce.”

This announcement builds on Microsoft’s decades-long support of the University, including $165 million of investments in student scholarships and enhancements to the UW’s world-leading computer science and engineering programs. In tandem with ongoing state and federal support, these investments have helped increase access to education and contributed to the state’s highly skilled workforce.

“President Jones has outlined a bold vision for the ������Ƶ, one that expands access and affordability in higher ed, forges radical partnerships and strengthens civic health,” Smith said. “It’s essential that this vision includes broad access to AI technology and the skills to use it, so students, workers and communities across Washington are prepared for this new era of computing and can share fully in its benefits.”

The timing of the announcement comes as forecasts predict a need to fill 1.5 million job vacancies in Washington by 2032 — about 640,000 new jobs and 910,000 openings due to retirements, according to Partnership for Learning. Up to 75% of those vacancies will require post-secondary credentials, with four-year and advanced degrees in highest demand. If current trends hold, experts predict a shortfall of nearly 600,000 credentialed workers in Washington over the decade.

“It’s critical that industry, colleges and universities, and policy makers continue to work together to maintain the region’s economy and climate of innovation and discovery,” Smith said. “That includes avoiding going backward by making cuts to core state funding that would make a college degree less accessible to our state’s students.”

The budgets proposed by the Washington State Legislature’s majorities would keep funding for the UW largely stable. Historically, the Legislature has created a fertile environment for workforce growth and training through the Washington Workforce Education Investment Act (WEIA) and the Washington State Opportunity Scholarship (WSOS).

Since passage in 2019, with support from Microsoft and other business leaders, the WEIA has generated more than $2 billion in dedicated funding to expand higher education access in Washington.�� WSOS — a first-of-its-kind public-private partnership in which private employers contribute philanthropic dollars that are matched by the State of Washington to expand access to higher education in high-demand fields — has delivered nearly $150 million in total scholarships statewide, combining private donations and state matching funds. One-third of WSOS scholars attend the UW.

“These new elements of our partnership with Microsoft continue to position the UW and our state as leaders in access to higher education and at the forefront of the emerging technologies that can drive broad-based prosperity,” Jones said.

Microsoft and the UW’s expanded partnership will:

• Provide faculty, researchers and students with access to advanced computing capabilities that enable modern AI training, experimentation and research, and instruction. Microsoft is supplementing this effort by donating Microsoft Azure cloud computing credits to help accelerate the development of a research cloud computing platform.
• Launch a new initiative to connect UW faculty, visiting professors and students with real-world research opportunities at Microsoft. This is based on a new “research marketplace” that will be established and supported by Microsoft’s AI for Good Lab. It will be complemented by 10 additional graduate student-researcher slots per year — eight through the Microsoft Research organization and two in the AI for Good Lab.
• Support undergraduate students as they become civic leaders, helping them build ethical judgment, digital citizenship and agency to co-design how emerging technologies, including AI, will serve communities and democracy.
• Join forces with UW’s Continuum College, an institution serving more than 50,000 learners annually through 400 programs serving young people, working adults and senior citizens. The UW and Microsoft will develop programming that helps Washingtonians navigate AI-related workforce transitions with confidence and purpose. This collaboration will result in new courses and other learning pathways focused on career resilience, evolving job demands and navigating the challenges that accompany shifting career identities.
• Beginning this fall, the UW and Microsoft will launch a new collaboration on Microsoft’s Redmond campus that reimagines how universities and industry work together. This part of the work will deepen workforce‑connected education and applied learning. The collaboration will support the co‑development of select courses and learning experiences for Microsoft employees navigating rapid AI‑driven change, while enabling UW students to learn alongside industry professionals and gain real‑world insight as part of their academic experience. Additional details will be announced later this year.

Since becoming the UW’s 34th president in August 2025, President Jones has set out three key priorities for the University: increasing access to education, including through the goal of making a UW degree debt-free for Washington undergraduates; spurring radical collaborations with businesses and communities to advance positive change; and eliminating any artificial barriers between the University and the communities it serves.

Along with strategic planning underway at the UW, Jones is engaging with corporate and civic leaders, as well as organizations throughout the region, to expand existing partnerships with the UW. Through these relationships, he aims to support access and affordability for students and the economic vitality and social fabric of Washington state and beyond.

For more information, contact Victor Balta at balta@uw.edu.

Creative Destruction Lab, a nonprofit organization for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies, will launch its third U.S.-based location, CDL-Seattle, this fall. Based at the UW’s Foster School of Business, CDL-Seattle will be a partnership with Microsoft Corporation, the UW College of Engineering, Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and CoMotion, UW’s collaborative innovation hub. The initial area of focus for CDL-Seattle is computational health.

“The rapid growth of new machine learning applications focused on enhancing human health combined with innovations in sensor technology and other complements has created a flood of new entrepreneurial opportunities that will benefit society,” said Ajay Agrawal, founder, Creative Destruction Lab, and professor at the University of Toronto’s Rotman School of Management. “We’re thrilled to partner with one of the world’s great research institutions, the ������Ƶ, located in such a vibrant hub of global leaders in technology commercialization — the Seattle region.”

In January 2020, UW Provost Mark Richards announced the formation of the��UW Innovation Roundtable,��comprised of some of the region’s leading venture capitalists, angel investors and innovation leaders. One of the roundtable’s working groups, co-chaired by Emer Dooley, Pat Hughes Faculty Fellow at Foster, and Bill McAleer, founder of Voyager Capital, focused on identifying and assessing the best accelerator model to implement at UW. They evaluated five different models and selected Creative Destruction Lab as the best option.

A partnership of investors — Artie Buerk, Neal Dempsey, Bill McAleer, Rob Short and Steve Singh — backed CDL-Seattle, helping the initiative gain early momentum.

“I view CDL as an engine for scaling and funding deep-tech companies, which supports our brand of having an ‘innovation mindset,’” said Frank Hodge, the Orin and Janet Smith Dean of the UW Foster School of Business. “It will also offer students a highly experiential, hands-on entrepreneurial education and opportunities to work with startups in an objectives-based accelerator.”

Over nine months, CDL’s program provides a marketplace for technical startup founders to learn from the insights of experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success.

The first focus area of computational health is well suited to the strengths of UW and the strength of the region in terms of computing, medicine and life sciences. While the past decade saw increasing use of digital health technology, the next decade will center on artificial intelligence and edge computing, with the proliferating use of health sensors. The field of computational health exists at the interface of biomedical signal processing, computational modeling, machine learning and health informatics to drive innovation in research, clinical and customer-facing applications.

“CDL-Seattle is the missing link in the UW innovation ecosystem and our region,” said François Baneyx, director of CoMotion, UW Vice Provost for Innovation, and the Charles W.H. Matthaei Professor of Chemical Engineering. “It has the potential to transform and unify research and commercialization activities in the computational health space and will help establish Seattle as a center of gravity for these sectors, while growing the strengths we already have here.”

“Think of computational health as a powerful tool in unraveling a complex big-data puzzle,” said Dooley. “Whether it’s mapping the immune system, mining population health data to address inequity, or helping optimize individuals’ health care, AI and machine learning are essential tools. Washington state has incredible cloud computing, AI and machine learning expertise and a vibrant biotech sector. We need to bring the two closer together.”

Experienced entrepreneurs who have founded, led and sold successful tech companies, along with world-leading scientists, engineers and economists, will serve as mentors to participating startups. In addition, UW students and faculty will have an opportunity to apply their expertise and learning to advance science- and technology-based companies in computational health. The successful commercialization of cutting-edge science and technology achieved through CDL, which began in Toronto, has already led to the creation of over $8 billion Canadian dollars in equity value.

Creative Destruction Lab is a nonprofit organization that delivers an objectives-based program for massively scalable, seed-stage, science- and technology-based companies. Its nine-month program allows founders to learn from experienced entrepreneurs, increasing their likelihood of success. Founded by Agrawal in 2012, the program has expanded to 10 sites across four countries: Oxford (Saïd Business School, University of Oxford), Paris (HEC Paris), Atlanta (Scheller College of Business, Georgia Institute of Technology), Madison (Wisconsin School of Business, University of Wisconsin-Madison), Seattle (������Ƶ, Foster School of Business), Vancouver (Sauder School of Business, University of British Columbia), Montreal (HEC Montréal), Calgary (Haskayne School of Business, University of Calgary), and Halifax (Rowe School of Business, Dalhousie University).

Selected ventures at UW will begin the nine-month CDL program in November 2021. For more questions, contact��cdl-seattle@creativedestructionlab.com. Applications are currently being accepted online at creativedestructionlab.com/apply.

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The was unveiled during a two-day summit at the UW, an event that included scientists and engineers from the three keystone institutions, as well as potential partners in academia and industry from across the Pacific Northwest.

“The technological and societal impact of the upcoming quantum revolution is going to be enormous,” said , UW vice provost for research and professor of chemical engineering and microbiology. “The UW is thrilled to partner with Microsoft and PNNL in this Northwest Quantum Nexus.”

In alignment with the , the Northwest Quantum Nexus aims to develop a quantum-fluent workforce and economy in the Pacific Northwest region of the United States and Canada by accelerating research, technological development, education and training in the quantum information sciences, or QIS. Its objectives include:

• Forming cross-disciplinary research teams working across academia, government and industry toward scalable quantum computing — including quantum algorithms and programming — as well as research and development of quantum materials and devices
• Cultivating a workforce that is expert in quantum science, engineering and technology through education and training — including undergraduate and graduate education, curriculum development; and internships
• Promoting public-private partnerships as platforms to exchange knowledge and resources
• Translating QIS research to testbeds and relevant application areas such as sustainability and clean energy

QIS disciplines include quantum computing, quantum communication, quantum sensing and quantum materials and devices. All of these applications and fields are designed around and enabled by the principles of quantum mechanics, including quantum superposition, which is the property of existing in several different configurations at the same time. ��For example, quantum computing uses the principles of quantum mechanics and quantum-mechanical processes to carry out computations, which could revolutionize fields from cryptography to molecular simulation. Quantum materials include materials in which new behaviors emerge from quantum interactions.

As QIS technologies progress from research and development to applications in clean energy, sustainability, computing and communications, the Northwest Quantum Nexus seeks to boost the region’s quantum workforce as well as research and educational capacity, according to coalition members.

“While there has been a long history of quantum research and education in the UW physics department, the landscape has changed recently,” said , associate professor of both physics and electrical and computer engineering. “People now see that you can harness the quantum nature of matter to realize new technologies.”

“This change means a paradigm shift in education,” added Fu, who is also a faculty member in the UW’s . “Understanding quantum mechanics is no longer an academic question but a required skill for people to develop quantum materials, quantum devices, quantum systems and quantum algorithms.”

These goals also offer opportunities to expand the Northwest Quantum Nexus. Summit attendees included dozens of scientists, engineers and administrators from the keystone partners, as well as potential partners from private companies, startups and universities from across the Pacific Northwest. Three members of Washington’s congressional delegation also attended the summit: Senator Maria Cantwell, Representative Derek Kilmer and Representative Adam Smith.

The keystone partners have complementary strengths in QIS. For the past 15 years, Microsoft has been a major global driver of quantum computing research and software development. The PNNL’s research into QIS includes programming, algorithm development, materials synthesis and characterization, as well as applications in quantum chemistry and sensing.

The UW has deep roots in quantum research and discovery. Two UW scientists have earned the Nobel Prize in Physics for QIS research — Hans Dehmelt in 1989 for developing ion traps and David Thouless in 2016 for theoretical work on topological phase transitions and topological phases of matter. Today, researchers across the UW — in the , the and the — are at the forefront of QIS research. The university recently established , which joins QIS research endeavors across the UW in fields such as quantum sensing, quantum computing, quantum communication and quantum materials and devices. Fu and , associate professor and chair of chemical engineering, serve as co-chairs of Quantum X.

The three institutions also work together in QIS research and development. UW and PNNL scientists collaborate on quantum materials research through the . Scientists with Microsoft Quantum are teaching an undergraduate-level course on quantum computing algorithms in the UW’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Microsoft and the PNNL have collaborated on a chemistry library will inform chemistry research relevant to quantum computing.

The Northwest Quantum Nexus is a natural next step, according to the summit organizers.

“The Northwest Quantum Nexus summit was an amazing success for UW Quantum X and our keystone partners Microsoft and the PNNL,” said Pfaendtner, who is also a faculty member in the UW’s .

“We are ready to roll up our sleeves and get to work competing for new private and public research funding, continuing UW’s long history of developing innovative and agile graduate and undergraduate education programs in the QIS field, and creating amazing new opportunities for our students and postdoctoral researchers.”

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For more information, contact Fu at kaimeifu@uw.edu and Pfaendtner at jpfaendt@uw.edu.

Researchers from the ������Ƶ and Microsoft have demonstrated the first fully automated system to store and retrieve data in manufactured DNA — a key step in moving the technology out of the research lab and into commercial data centers.

In a simple proof-of-concept test, the team successfully encoded the word “hello” in snippets of fabricated DNA and converted it back to digital data using a fully automated end-to-end system, which is described in a published March 21 in Nature Scientific Reports.

DNA can store digital information in a space that is orders of magnitude smaller than data centers use today. It’s one promising solution for storing the exploding amount of data the world generates each day, from business records and cute animal videos to medical scans and images from outer space.

The team at the UW and Microsoft is exploring ways to close a looming gap between the that needs to be preserved and our capacity to store it. That includes developing algorithms and molecular computing technologies to , which could fit all the information currently stored in a warehouse-sized data center into a space roughly the size of a few board game dice.

“Our ultimate goal is to put a system into production that, to the end user, looks very much like any other cloud storage service — bits are sent to a data center and stored there and then they just appear when the customer wants them,” said principal researcher , a UW affiliate associate professor in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering and a senior researcher at Microsoft. “To do that, we needed to prove that this is practical from an automation perspective.”

Information is stored in synthetic DNA molecules created in a lab, not DNA from humans or other living beings, and can be encrypted before it is sent to the system. While sophisticated machines such as synthesizers and sequencers already perform key parts of the process, many of the intermediate steps until now have required manual labor in the research lab. But that wouldn’t be viable in a commercial setting, said lead author , senior research scientist in the Allen School.

“You can’t have a bunch of people running around a data center with pipettes — it’s too prone to human error, it’s too costly and the footprint would be too large,” he said.

For the technique to make sense as a commercial storage solution, costs need to decrease for both synthesizing DNA — essentially custom-building strands with meaningful sequences — and the sequencing process that extracts the stored information. Trends are , researchers say.

Automation is another key piece of that puzzle, as it would enable storage at a commercial scale and make it more affordable, the team says.

Under the right conditions, DNA can last much longer than current archival storage technologies that degrade in a matter of decades. Some DNA has managed to persist in less than ideal storage conditions for tens of thousands of years in mammoth tusks and bones of early humans, and it should have relevancy as long as people are alive.

The automated DNA data storage system uses software developed by the team that converts the ones and zeros of digital data into the As, Ts, Cs and Gs that make up the building blocks of DNA. Then it uses inexpensive, largely off-the-shelf lab equipment to flow the necessary liquids and chemicals into a synthesizer that builds manufactured snippets of DNA and then pushes them into a storage vessel.

When the system needs to retrieve the information, it adds other chemicals to properly prepare the DNA and uses microfluidic pumps to push the liquids into a machine that “reads” the DNA sequences and converts it back to information that a computer can understand. The goal of the project was not to prove how fast or inexpensively the system could work, researchers say, but simply to demonstrate that automation is possible.

One immediate benefit of having an automated DNA storage system is that it frees researchers up to probe deeper questions, instead of spending time searching for bottles of reagents or repetitively squeezing drops of liquids into test tubes.

“Having an automated system to do the repetitive work allows those of us working in the lab to take a higher view and begin to assemble new strategies — to essentially innovate much faster,” said Microsoft researcher .

The team from the UW’s has already demonstrated that it can store cat photographs, great literary works, pop videos and archival recordings in DNA, and retrieve those files without errors in a research setting. To date they’ve been able to store 1 gigabyte of data in DNA, besting their .

The researchers have also developed techniques to perform meaningful computation — like searching for and retrieving only images that contain an apple or a green bicycle — using the molecules themselves and without having to convert the files back into a digital format.

“We are definitely seeing a new kind of computer system being born here where you are using molecules to store data and electronics for control and processing. Putting them together holds some really interesting possibilities for the future,” said UW Allen School professor .

Unlike silicon-based computing systems, DNA-based storage and computing systems have to use liquids to move molecules around. But fluids are inherently different than electrons and require entirely new engineering solutions.

The researchers are developing a programmable system that automates lab experiments by harnessing the properties of electricity and water to move droplets around on a grid of electrodes. The full stack of software and hardware, nicknamed ,” can mix, separate, heat or cool different liquids and run lab protocols.

The goal is to automate lab experiments that are currently being done by hand or by expensive liquid handling robots — but for a fraction of the cost.

Next steps for the team include integrating the simple end-to-end automated system with technologies such as PurpleDrop and those that enable searching with DNA molecules. The researchers specifically designed the automated system to be modular, allowing it to evolve as new technologies emerge for synthesizing, sequencing or working with DNA.

“What’s great about this system is that if we wanted to replace one of the parts with something new or better or faster, we can just plug that in,” Nguyen said. “It gives us a lot of flexibility for the future.”

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For more information, contact Ceze at luisceze@cs.washington.edu, Strauss at rrt@we-worldwide.com��or Takahashi at cnt@cs.washington.edu.

Adapted from by Microsoft.

The average preschooler watches more than three hours of TV, film and other video programming each day — just one of many examples illustrating the huge role that entertainment plays in children’s lives.

But parents don’t need to fear their children playing with iPads and other devices, researchers say. Mindful play with an adult, combined with thoughtful design features, can prove beneficial to young developing minds.

New research shows that thoughtfully designed content that intentionally supports parent-child interactions facilitated the same kind of play and development as analog toys.

“I want to arm families with data to create consumer demand for thoughtful designs,” said , an assistant professor in the ������Ƶ’s Information School. Hiniker co-authored two papers on children’s interactions with devices that were discussed at , scheduled April 21 – 26, in Montreal, Canada, an academic conference that focuses on interactions between people and technology.

The research found that app designers have choices, Hiniker said. The designers have the power to hijack kids’ attention or to respect it, to create experiences that enhance daily life or disrupt it. And parents, through their purchasing power, have the ability to spur the industry to create better apps.

“Kids are going to consume content,” Hiniker said. “If they’re going to consume content it should be high-quality.”

In the first paper, “,” the researchers demonstrated that when parents and children share play with a digital device, both parent and child are less engaged than when they play with a traditional, non-digital toy. That doesn’t necessarily make playing with the device a negative experience, said Hiniker.

But studies on how parents and children engage with both digital devices and traditional toys can help guide app developers and device makers.

The researchers recommended incorporating a role for parents when designing apps for children, such as:

• Easily permitting multiple users in apps
• Designing apps that can be interrupted
• Including specific roles for parents in the app

The content also should be presented in a way that allows children to make decisions on their own about whether to continue to play with the digital device or put the iPad down.

That was what the researchers had in mind when they created “Coco’s Videos,” which they presented in their second CHI 2018 paper, “.”

“We wanted a more rigorous understanding about what our kids experience with these apps,” Hiniker said.

The research team designed the app “Coco’s Videos” to see what pre-schoolers would do when presented with different options about watching online videos. The kids in their study were given iPads containing three different versions of an app that showed the kids a pre-planned playlist of videos from YouTube. One version would lock them out of watching future videos, allowing only one video per session. Another version simply prompted them to play another activity, encouraging the child to put down the player. A third version used auto-play to continue watching new videos. This allowed the researchers to observe how likely the kids were to put down the iPad during play, even when the videos continued uninterrupted.

“We demonstrated experimentally that you can systematically change the design of an app to undermine kids’ autonomy or to foster it,” Hiniker said.

It’s not surprising that the pre-schoolers were overwhelmingly tempted to continue to watch when the video automatically kept serving up a new selection. Just like adults with services like Netflix or YouTube, the children stayed put to watch what was played next. The researchers also found that these auto-play features frustrated parents and gave the child fewer opportunities to decide on their own to put down the device.

“One thing that came up a lot was how frustrating auto-play was,” Hiniker said.

With auto-play, the child continued watching the video despite being prompted by the app to make plans for other kinds of playtime. It’s as if the app developer wanted to attract and hold the child’s attention indefinitely.

“As soon as the next one starts, it’s so much harder to stop,” said co-author , an associate professor of human centered design and engineering at the UW.

As informed consumers, grownups can help improve apps for kids by making thoughtful purchase decisions and supporting apps that both educate and offer breaks. They should demand quality designs.

“You have power as parents to request this,” Kientz said. “Vote with your dollar.”

Co-authors on “Coco’s Videos” include Sharon S. Heung and Sungsoo (Ray) Hong of the UW Human Centered Design and Engineering department. Co-authors on “Let’s Play,” include Jenny S. Radesky at the University of Michigan and Bongshin Lee of Microsoft.

The research was funded by the UW Royalty Research Fund and Microsoft.

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For more information, contact Hiniker at alexisr@uw.edu and Kientz at jkientz@uw.edu.