eScience Institute Seminar: Joe Hamman, National Center for Atmospheric Research

“Enabling science using open source software, big data platforms, and diverse communities; applications in climate and hydrologic research”

Please join the UW eScience Institute for a special guest seminar by Joe Hamman of the National Center for Atmospheric Research!

When: Thursday, September 19, 3:00 pm – 4:00 pm

Where: WRF Data Science Studio, 6th Floor, Physics/Astronomy Tower

Abstract: Across many data-driven fields, the abundance of data and compute is offering researchers exciting opportunities for scientific discovery. Realizing these discoveries is, however, often impeded by unnecessary constraints on the research process. These constraints stem from a variety of sources, including the complexities of working with very large datasets, and the failure to follow best data science practices. In this talk, I will discuss how open source software, big data platforms, and vibrant and diverse communities are enabling a new paradigm of scientific research. We will explore how this new paradigm is enabling open science and scientific transparency in service of society. I will provide examples from the perspective of climate and hydrologic modeling, demonstrating how pressing challenges in these domains are being addressed through the community development of open software and infrastructure through the Pangeo Project. I will end by highlighting areas in the climate and hydrologic modeling domains where emerging data science methods are likely to play an important role in the research landscape in the coming years.

Bio: Joseph Hamman is a scientist at the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR). He received a PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering from the University of Washington (2016) and additional postdoctoral training in computational hydrology at NCAR (2016-2018). His work focuses on using emerging data sciences approaches in service of climate and hydrologic modeling research. He has made significant contributions to open source scientific software projects (e.g. Xarray, Dask, Jupyter) and helps lead the Pangeo Project – a community effort for big data in the geosciences.


Software Carpentry Workshop

The Carpentries is a non-profit volunteer organization whose members teach researchers how to use computing tools and tools for management, analysis and visualization of data.

Software Carpentry aims to help researchers get their work done in less time and with less pain by teaching them basic research computing skills. This hands-on workshop will cover basic concepts and tools, including program design, version control, data management, and task automation. Participants will be encouraged to help one another and to apply what they have learned to their own research problems.

Who: The course is aimed at graduate students and other researchers. You don’t need to have any previous knowledge of the tools that will be presented at the workshop.

Where: WRF Data Science Studio, 6th floor Physics/Astronomy Tower, University of Washington, 3910 15th Ave NE, Seattle, WA, 98105.

When: October 1st – 4th, 2019.

Requirements: Participants must bring a laptop with a Mac, Linux, or Windows operating system (not a tablet, Chromebook, etc.) that they have administrative privileges on. They should have a few specific software packages installed, including the Bash shell, Git, a text editor like nano or BBEdit, and Python.

Code of Conduct: Everyone who participates in Carpentries activities is required to conform to the Code of Conduct. This document also outlines how to report an incident if needed.

Accessibility: We are committed to making this workshop accessible to everybody. The workshop organizers have checked that:

  • The room is wheelchair / scooter accessible.
  • Accessible restrooms are available.

Materials will be provided in advance of the workshop and large-print handouts are available if needed by notifying the organizers in advance. If we can help making learning easier for you (e.g. sign-language interpreters, lactation facilities) please get in touch (using contact details below) and we will attempt to provide them.

Contact: Please email arokem@uw.edu for more information.

More Details & Registration


What Drives Resource Integration in Lakes?

By Beka Stiling, MS Candidate, School of Aquatic & Fishery Sciences, University of Washington

Graph depicting the reliance on littoral-benthic resources by rainbow trout. Small populations of trout will use the all of the littoral-benthic habitat. Large populations use more littoral-benthic resources as more habitat is available.
Variability in reliance on littoral-benthic derived resources by rainbow trout may be partially explained by an interaction between rainbow trout population density and littoral zone extent.

Evidence suggests that the integration of energetic pathways via the transfer of resources across habitat boundaries can influence community structure, maintain species biomass, and promote food web stability. Despite our ability to measure resource integration, we do not have a strong understanding of the factors that determine the varying degrees of resource integration that we observe in fish.

In lakes, the carbon that serves as the energetic base of the food web originates in three distinct habitats: pelagic (open water), littoral-benthic (submerged, illuminated edge), and terrestrial (land surrounding the lake). Fish, as mobile consumers, can use resources derived from different habitats, thereby integrating resources from multiple energetic pathways. Floating algae, or phytoplankton, has long been recognized as an important base of aquatic food webs, but increasing evidence points to attached littoral-benthic algae as a substantial contributor of energy to lake food webs as well. Discussions are ongoing about the role of terrestrial carbon, exported from the surrounding watershed into the lake, as a basal resource for aquatic communities.

Attached algae, scrubbed from a rock, is collected on a filter.

My study aims to identify factors that might drive resource integration by rainbow trout in order to better anticipate how alterations to lake littoral habitat from human use and climate change may impact lake ecosystem function in the future. I am testing two potential factors. The first is resource availability. Do fish integrate resource pathways in ratios that reflect the relative extent of the habitats providing carbon to the ecosystem? The second factor is population structure. Does the density of the rainbow trout population influence how fish might rely on different energetic pathways?

To address the challenge of focusing on just two of the many interacting factors that may influence resource integration, I selected study lakes that were similar with respect to climate, geology, human impacts, and species composition, but differed in terms of littoral habitat availability and rainbow trout population structure. From these 17 lakes I collected rainbow trout and samples of primary producers from the pelagic, littoral-benthic, and terrestrial habitats. In the lab I am conducting analyses that leverage naturally occurring differences in molecules formed in these three habitats to elucidate rainbow trout reliance on energy that originated in each habitat.

Map depicting location of the lakes from Stiling's study
The study lakes, located on the western side of the Cascade crest, are naturally fishless mountain lakes stocked with rainbow trout at varying numbers and frequencies, resulting in a gradient of fish population densities.

After I analyzed a subset of my samples, preliminary findings revealed an interaction between habitat availability and rainbow trout density, where at low densities rainbow trout are more reliant on littoral-benthic derived resources regardless of littoral habitat availability, but, as population density increases, reliance on littoral-benthic resources decreases with reduced littoral availability. This interaction between factors suggests that for rainbow trout the utilization of multiple pathways may be a solution to competitive pressure on a preferred resource pathway — an example of how resource integration can contribute to the stability of a top predator population.

Stiling weighs out samples on a microbalance in preparation for stable isotope analysis.

My next steps are to wrap up my lab-based processing and begin to analyze the full complement of my data. I am excited to uncover the full story and see if the trends I found with a subset of my samples persist! I am thankful to the Washington State Lake Protection Association for the Dave Lamb Memorial Scholarship funding that supports this project. The scholarship funding jump-started my field data collection and provides critical assistance for lab-based sample processing.

Beka Stiling is an MS Student in the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences at the University of Washington, advised by Julian Olden and Gordon Holtgrieve.

Email: stilir@uw.edu

Twitter: @rebekahstiling

This article was originally published by the Washington State Lake Protection Association (WALPA) in the September 2019 Waterline newsletter.


UW Engineering Fall 2019 Lecture Series

The Future of Food: Protecting Human and Environmental Health

By 2050, the earth’s population is estimated to reach nine billion which will intensify a growing food security crisis, exacerbated by current agricultural processes, climate change and economic inequality. This fall, hear from three UW professors, including Freshwater faculty Faisal Hossain (civil & environmental engineering) and Gordon Holtgrieve (aquatic & fishery sciences), about how engineers and scientists are working to improve the quality and quantity of food we eat and grow. This lecture series will take place in Kane Hall, and is free to attend.

Register

Growing More with Less: Smart Tech Solutions to Feed the World

Thursday, October 10 | 7:30 PM

Kane Hall 130

Faisal Hossain, Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering

Asia has some of the fastest growing economies in the world, but it is also home to two-thirds of the global hunger population. Regional monsoons impact efficient water management and reduce agricultural yield. Professor Hossain is utilizing global weather models and satellite data to develop technology that will help farmers increase crop yield through sustainable water management.

Human and Ecosystem Health: Arsenic in Food, Water, Plants and Animals

Wednesday, October 23 | 7:30 PM

Kane Hall 130

Rebecca Neumann, Associate Professor, Civil & Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering

Arsenic is a naturally occurring but carcinogenic pollutant. Its ubiquitous presence in natural and agricultural environments threatens global food security and negatively affects the health of millions of people worldwide. Professor Neumann, an arsenic expert, is advancing knowledge of how arsenic in local and global settings affects food and water quality, and the health of ecosystems.

Floods, Fish and People: Challenges and Opportunities in the Mekong River Basin

Thursday, November 7 | 7:30 PM

Kane Hall 130

Gordon Holtgrieve, H. Mason Keeler Associate Professor, Aquatic & Fishery Sciences, College of the Environment

Freshwater ecosystems provide food security, energy and water to people in the Mekong River Basin. Habitat alterations, pollution, climate change and over-exploitation are putting the health and livelihood of communities at risk. Professor Holtgrieve is working in the Mekong River Basin to address how energy policy, watershed hydrology and ecosystems interact, in order to mitigate the effects of hydrologic and climatic change around the globe.

Find out more about the speakers’ research in the UW feature Fueled by Floods.


UW College of the Environment Science Communications Fellowship

The University of Washington College of the Environment is pleased to announce a new science communications fellowship opportunity. College of the Environment Science Communications fellows gain skills in science writing. Fellows may write features for the College website, develop social media content or develop their own multimedia projects to connect people with science that matters. Along the way, they build portfolios that help them gain recognition as writers and communicators who can break down the barriers between scientific information and public understanding.

Eligibility

Graduate students in any field from the University of Washington may apply. Applicants must demonstrate strong writing skills, a good general understanding of and interest in natural science and/or policy. Applicants should have at least some social media experience or be interested in developing their digital content skills. The selection committee will consider writing samples, related experience and studies, references and the relevance of the fellowship to future career goals. Samples do not have to be from an academic source. References do not have to be from an academic instructor, but could be from another reputable source. The fellowship is open to graduate students only.

Award

Fellows receive a $3,400 stipend and are expected to work an average of 10 hours per week. Fellows are also expected to meet regularly with College of the Environment communications staff and to maintain consistent email contact when working offsite. The College hopes to work with a few fellows simultaneously.

Application deadline

Applications for the College of the Environment Science Communication Fellowship are due to Washington Sea Grant by 5:00 p.m. PST on September 20, 2019. Finalists for the fellowship will be selected and interviewed in late September, early October 2019.  Reference letters may be sent with the applications as part of the application package or separately.

Note: Applications for the College of the Environment Science Communication Fellowship and the Washington Sea Grant Science Communication Fellowship will be considered concurrently in a joint selection process. Applicants may apply to both opportunities with one application, but must note clearly on the cover letter that they are applying for both and why they qualify.

Fellowship dates

Fall-Winter Quarters: Oct 16, 2019 – March 20, 2020

Application requirements

  1. A cover letter (500 words or less) explaining your qualifications for the fellowship and describing how the experience supports your long-term goals.
  2. Two to three writing samples.
  3. A two-page resume that includes any publications and any personal or work/volunteer- related social media channels that you’ve managed.
  4. Two letters of reference, including one from your professor, instructor or academic advisor.
  5. Unofficial copies of undergraduate and graduate transcripts.

Fellowship selection and placement process

Applications should be submitted electronically to sgfellow@uw.edu or by mail to:

ENV Science Communications Fellowship
Washington Sea Grant
3716 Brooklyn Avenue, NE
Seattle, WA 98105-6716

For additional information, contact Molly M. McCarthy at mollymm@uw.edu.


New Fellowship Supports Global Water Research

August 8, 2019

With water-related challenges on the rise around the world, there is a splash of good news. A newly established Ivanhoe Foundation Endowed Fellowship will support University of Washington graduate students who are gearing up to tackle some of the most pressing water-related challenges in developing countries.

“Threats to water, such as limited access to safe and clean water for health, insufficient water for food and energy, and declining resilience against extremes of floods and droughts, are ever morphing into newer problems requiring newer solutions and outside-the-box thinking,” said UW civil & environmental engineering professor Faisal Hossain, who works on sustainable water resources engineering.

Addressing complex water-related challenges around the globe requires creative problem-solving and the ability to translate cutting-edge research into real-world solutions, according to the Ivanhoe Foundation. Therefore, the fellowship will fund graduate students passionate about tackling the world’s greatest water resource challenges, especially those who are pursuing solutions to challenges faced by developing nations, such as limited access to safe and clean drinking water and insufficient water for food and energy.

The fellowship will support graduate students in both the College of Engineering and the College of the Environment. Graduate students and faculty from the two colleges are already collaborating on water research through the Freshwater Initiative, which promotes innovative research in the water science and engineering communities to address complex freshwater issues both locally and around the globe.

The endowment is made possible through a longstanding relationship and the strong support of Cheryl Townsend, chair of The Ivanhoe Foundation, which her father, L.F. “Buz” Ivanhoe, founded. An international expert on petroleum exploration in developing countries, Ivanhoe observed the plight of water-deprived localities firsthand, which inspired him to support graduate students working on global water-related challenges.

“In today’s world, this type of support to train the next generation of engineers and scientists for international development is almost non-existent,” Hossain said. “The generous support from the Ivanhoe Foundation will therefore fill a critical void that we see in the 21st century.”


Ecocultural Restoration and Salmon Science in the Klamath Basin: Results and Reflections

Thursday, July 18, 11:00 am–12:00 pm, Allen Auditorium (inside UW’s Allen Library):

Please join students and faculty from the field course on Ecocultural Restoration and Salmon Science in the Klamath Basin as they share scientific results and reflections on water, salmon, fire, and reciprocal relations along the mid-Klamath River. A collaboration with the Karuk Tribe’s Píkyav Field Institute, the course has brought together undergraduate and graduate UW students with high school students from the Karuk and Quartz Valley tribes to study in the field in Karuk and Shasta ancestral territory.

Please help extend a warm welcome to visiting Karuk students and faculty, and to honor all of our students’ work. All are welcome!


Prepare River Ecosystems for an Uncertain Future

As the climate warms, we can’t restore waterways to pristine condition, but models can predict potential changes, write UW SAFS professor Julian Olden and colleagues in Nature Magazine.

Dead fish on the banks of the Guadiaro River in southern Spain during severe drought
Dead fish on the banks of the Guadiaro River in southern Spain during severe drought. (Jose Luis Roca / AFP / Getty)

June 18, 2019

Jonathan D. Tonkin, N. LeRoy Poff, Nick R. Bond, Avril Horne, David. M. Merritt, Lindsay V. Reynolds, Julian D. Olden, Albert Ruhi & David A. Lytle

In January, millions of fish died in Australia’s Murray–Darling Basin as the region experienced some of its driest and hottest weather on record. The heat also caused severe water shortages for people living there. Such harsh conditions will become more common as the world warms. Iconic and valuable species such as the Murray cod (Maccullochella peelii peelii) — Australia’s largest freshwater fish — could vanish, threatening biodiversity and livelihoods.

Rivers around the world are struggling to cope with changing weather patterns. In Germany and Switzerland, a heatwave last year killed thousands of fish and blocked shipping on the River Rhine. California is emerging from a six-year drought1 that restricted water supplies and devastated trees, fish and other aquatic life. Across the US southwest, extended dry spells are destroying many more forests and wetlands.

What should river managers do? They cannot look to tools of old: conventional management techniques that aim to restore ecosystems to their original state. Ongoing human development and climate change mean that this is no longer possible. And models based on past correlations do a poor job of predicting how species might respond to unprecedented changes in future (see ‘Ecosystem change’). A different approach is called for.

A graph projecting cottonwood and sagebrush occupation of floodplains with increasing drought over the next 200 years. A new model that includes biological processes shows a sharp downturn in plant

To maintain water supplies and avoid devastating population crashes, rivers must be managed adaptively, enhancing their resilience and limiting risk. Researchers must also develop better forecasting tools that can project how key species, life stages and ecosystems might respond to environmental changes. This will mean moving beyond simply monitoring the state of ecosystems to modeling the biological mechanisms that underpin their survival.

Model process

Today, river managers track properties such as species diversity and population abundance, and compare them with historical averages. If they spot troubling declines, they might intervene by, for instance, altering the amount of water released from dams. But by the time trends are detected, they can be impossible to arrest.

Understanding how sensitive ecosystems might change is crucial to managing them in the future. For example, in the American west, native cottonwoods (Populus spp.) are valuable, long-lived trees that anchor river banks and offer habitats for many species. They are finely tuned to seasonal flood patterns, releasing their seeds in early summer when river flows peak. The seeds take root in moist ground after the flood recedes2. But if the flood is delayed, even by a few days, many seeds fall on dry ground and die. Drought-tolerant species, such as salt cedar (Tamarix ramosissima), that disperse seeds over a longer period will move in and dramatically alter conditions for native flora and fauna.

Models based on biological processes or mechanisms — that is, how rates of survival, reproduction and dispersal vary with environmental conditions — can follow and predict such shifts. For example, by modelling the impacts of changes in flood timing on aquatic invertebrates, it is possible to predict how the numbers of dragonflies and mayflies in a dryland river will vary with different patterns of dam releases3.

Process-based models can be tailored to particular life stages of a species, or sequences of events4. They can identify tipping points and bottlenecks. For example, they have revealed that the early juvenile stage of coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch) in the northwestern United States is most sensitive to summer droughts. The salmon spawn in streams that flow into coastal rivers, and might spend a couple of years in fresh water before moving to the sea. Juveniles might not survive, or might find it hard to travel downstream, when the river levels are low5.

Such models can also track how interactions among species in communities vary under changing conditions6. For example, the loss of riparian specialists in dryland river ecosystems and invasion by both non-native and upland species in a drier future could create a vicious cycle6. River ecosystems could become more vulnerable to climate change and to alien species.

Trees grow along the banks of the Dolores River in Utah
Native cottonwoods are being displaced by non-native salt cedar in the Dolores River, Utah, owing to flow alteration by damming. (Mark Uliasz / Alamy)

Armed with all this information, managers can intervene before a problem arises. For example, in wet years, conservationists in the Pacific Northwest could find and support habitats that are crucial to juvenile salmon. They could manage water flows in dry years to enable the salmon to migrate. Similarly, in the US southwest, river flows could be increased strategically from reservoirs to protect important species, such as cottonwoods. And in Australia, letting more water pass through dams in spring could stop rivers drying up while the eggs of Murray cod mature7.

Rivers must also be managed for people. Allocating scarce water resources is contentious. Policymakers, water-resource engineers, conservationists and ecologists must work together to decide how much water should be diverted to people, agriculture and industry, and how much is needed to protect ecosystems during drought.

Some river basins are beginning to be managed adaptively — agencies are trying different management practices, learning from them and updating them as needed. For example, in Australia, state and federal agencies periodically reassess and rebalance water allocations, as climate trends, information and assessment tools develop. Similarly, the Bay–Delta Plan in California proposes to revisit relationships between target species, water flows and water quality in San Francisco Bay and the Sacramento–San Joaquin River Delta every five years.

But adaptive management alone might miss conservation targets. Unexpected consequences could emerge over the long term as impacts mount. Process-based models can look further ahead and save time, money and disruption by limiting the number of interventions as well as avoiding adverse impacts. They would help stakeholders and managers to choose which features of ecosystems to maintain, to justify costly interventions such as major engineering works and to weigh trade-offs to build resilience under increasing climatic uncertainty8.

Obstacles to implementation

Process-based models are already used in fisheries and conservation. For example, they have shown conservationists that it is more effective to protect juvenile loggerhead sea turtles from being caught in fishing nets than to safeguard their eggs on beaches9. And such models help to guide the management of wetland habitats in the United States for the endangered Everglades snail kite (Rostrhamus sociabilis), the fledglings of which are susceptible to droughts10.

But they are rarely used in river management, mainly because data on the basic biology of local species are lacking. Such data are costly for scientists and agencies to collect. Measuring fecundity or survival, for example, takes years and thus requires long-term funding and commitment. Such campaigns are usually reserved for endangered or commercially valuable species.

Simplifying models might help to bridge the data gaps in the interim. Species with similar life histories or characteristics might respond similarly to changing river conditions. Studies of one could inform models and management of similar species in other places. For instance, plains cottonwood (Populus deltoides) in North America, river red gum (Eucalyptus camaldulensis) in Australia, and Euphrates poplar (Populus euphratica) in North Africa and Eurasia are all riparian trees that have similar hydrological requirements and drought tolerances. They share characteristics such as shallow roots and furrowed bark that resists flood scour, and can resprout after being buried by sediment. Analytical methods could also be developed to extrapolate across gaps in data sets.

Four steps

River scientists and managers should take the following steps.

Collect data on mechanisms. We call for a fresh global campaign to gather natural-history data on the responses of biodiversity to changes in river flow. Estimates of fecundity and survival at various life stages will require monitoring in the field. Other information, such as flood-induced mortality rates, could be gathered through field and laboratory experiments. Data from different sources can also be combined, including species traits, population abundances across life stages and remote-sensing data about the states of ecosystems on wider scales4.

We urge local, state and federal agencies, as well as researchers, non-governmental organizations and other bodies, to make existing data available. Facilities for hosting these already exist, such as the COMPADRE and COMADRE global databases, which hold population models for hundreds of plant and animal species, respectively. Organizations such as the Alliance for Freshwater Life, the wildlife charity WWF and the Group on Earth Observations Biodiversity Observation Network should lobby global funding bodies to support data collection.

Describe key processes in models. Scientists need to better articulate the relationships between population dynamics and water-flow patterns in process-based models. For example, the models need to describe how well different life stages of plants reproduce or survive under flood or drought conditions, the flow conditions and timing that are required for fish to reproduce or the growth rates of insect populations after floods of different sizes35,7. Outputs need to be expressed clearly so that river managers and decision makers can understand and use them.

Focus management on bottlenecks. Targeted interventions to avoid populations collapsing during extreme flows will be a cornerstone of managing rivers for resilience in future. Accordingly, dam managers should focus on the most vulnerable or responsive life stages, not just population abundance. Sadly, as flow extremes become more common, scientists and managers will be able to observe die-offs and calibrate the models.

Pinpoint uncertainty. The level of confidence that managers have in the results of models will influence how willing they will be to deal with varying levels of risk. Predictions should thus quantify the level of trust that can be placed in them. Scientists must present uncertainties in forecasts clearly. Models should be tested by hindcasting (predicting past or present population size, for example), and uncertainty in model inputs should be traced through to the outputs. The knowledge gaps that most compromise accuracy should be identified. The models should be regularly updated, tested and improved as new data arrive.

Freshwater biodiversity is disappearing on our watch. As the crisis deepens, we must model and manage rivers to safeguard the services they provide.

This article was originally published in Nature magazine.


UW APL Open-Source Software Research Technician

The University of Washington’s Applied Physics Laboratory is looking for a research technician to assist with the development of open-source software tools in the geosciences. This is a part-time, temporary position with the possibility of extension after the first year depending on the availability of funds.

The project: NASA is funding us to test and deploy Pangeo, a community platform for Big Data geoscience, as a prototype to enable transition of scientific workflows to a cloud environment. See http://pangeo.io for more information.

The team: we are a small team of research scientists (climatology, hydrology, glaciology, volcanology), technicians and data science experts in academia and industry. We collaborate via in person meetings, Slack and GitHub. We stay connected with a global Pangeo community.

The work: many of the core tools for deploying Pangeo are in place. Now, we need help with developing scientific use cases that make full use of Pangeo’s parallel workflow capabilities, connecting Pangeo tools to existing NASA products, and helping educate scientists in using these tools.

Education and background: Minimum two years Bachelor’s level training in computer science, data science, and/or a domain scientist with demonstrated data science skills. Required experience with Python, Jupyter, Linux and GitHub; desirable experience with AWS, Kubernetes and satellite imagery applications.

Location: The team is distributed across multiple locations. The core team at the University of Washington is affiliated with the eScience Institute, where much of the work occurs. There may be opportunities for telecommuting.

Opportunities: We are committed to building an open and inclusive community that is dedicated to principles of reproducible science. We foster opportunities for professional development and immersion in leading edge data science tools.

Contact us: for more information e-mail Anthony Arendt, arendta@uw.edu.


Data Science Software Carpentry Workshop

Water data fans and foes,

Are you the data rockstar that you want to be? Do you want to spend less time coding and wrestling data and more time on research?

The eScience Institute is holding a Software Carpentry workshop on July 15-18 (9 AM – noon each day) in the WRF Data Science Studio. The Carpentries is a non-profit volunteer organization whose members teach researchers how to use computing tools and tools for management, analysis and visualization of data

The workshop focuses on software tools to make researchers more effective, allowing them to automate research tasks, automatically track their research over time, and use programming in Python to accelerate their research, and make it more reproducible.

More Details & Registration

Email Sarah Stone (sstone3@uw.edu) or Ariel Rokem (arokem@uw.edu) with any questions about the workshop.