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Stories about the Allen School’s people, research and impact. 

Department of Aeronautics & Astronautics researchers teamed up with Taskar Center Director Anat Caspi and computer engineering major Marc Alwan to explore how eye-tracking can help autonomous systems adapt their interactions to individual users’ comfort and safety preferences.

An entrepreneurship class led by Allen School professor Ed Lazowska and Greg Gottesman of Pioneer Square Labs teaches University of Washington students the ins and outs of building a tech company, culminating in the opportunity to pitch their startup ideas to local investors.

A team of Allen School researchers introduced computational illusion knitting — a design framework that helps automate the process, making illusion knitting more accessible and allowing for more complex and multi-view patterns like hidden Mona Lisas that were previously believed to be impossible.

Researchers in the Allen School’s Personal Robotics Lab invited people with motor impairments to help them test the Assistive Dexterous Arm in real-world scenarios — including community researcher Jonathan Ko, who spent five days with ADA in his home.

Feng envisions the work of LLMs as a collaborative endeavor, while Pang is interested in advancing the conversation around unintended consequences of these and other emerging technologies. Both were recently honored among the 2024 class of IBM Ph.D. Fellows for their innovative research.

Nivala, co-director of the Molecular Information Systems Lab (MISL), discusses the groundbreaking potential of DNA-based data storage and its role in the future of AI.

Zhang develops social computing systems that can help online platforms be more democratic instead of top-down, and more customizable as opposed to one-size-fits-all. Her efforts were commended by the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which recognized Zhang among its 2025 class of Sloan Research Fellows.

The company, which is led by Allen School robotics professor Byron Boots, opened the 22,000 square-foot facility to produce its autonomous ground vehicles capable of navigating off-road terrain in challenging environments.

Zhang, who leads the Allen School's Social Futures Lab, was among three University of Washington researchers recognized for early-career contributions marking them as the next generation scientific leaders.

Farhadi, who is also CEO of the Allen Institute for AI, spoke with GeekWire about the importance of open-source AI and enabling researchers to build off of each other's progress.