An $18.5 million National Science Foundation grant will fund a new center at the University of Washington focused on developing brain-controlled robotic hands and limbs for amputees and people with spinal cord injuries and neurological diseases. Researchers at the new Research Center for Sensorimotor Neural Engineering will also collaborate with MIT, Microsoft, and others.
A new Web-based UW supplier registration process will make it faster to pay for goods and services, increase compliance with tax reporting and business diversity requirements, and be greener by saving paper. The new process will reduce from 30 days to 2 days the time needed to register some 3100 new suppliers each year. As part of UW Finance and Facilities lean business process improvement efforts, this approach leverages Kuali Enterprise Workflow, managed by UW-IT, to allow routing and approval of supplier data entered directly online. UW Procurement Services launched the Supplier Registration Web portal July 18, and the complete process will be in place by the end of the year.
The UW expects to reduce energy consumption and save about $700,000 in energy costs during its participation in the Department of Energy’s $178 million Pacific Northwest Smart Grid Demonstration Project. Now in the second year of the five-year project, the UW is installing “intelligent” electrical meters, water meters, and lighting controls in most UW Seattle buildings. To ensure reliable and secure communications, the UW Capital Projects Office and Facilities Services are partnering with UW-IT to provide an isolated, secure Facilities Network for the grid. The UW’s Smart Grid project will provide a baseline of energy consumption and test the effectiveness of the new technology.
Beginning Summer Quarter 2011, all UW faculty and instructors are required to submit final grades online and can do so quickly and easily with a new Catalyst Web Tool, GradePage. For those not already using Catalyst GradeBook, available since 2009 for optional online grade submission, GradePage provides a simple alternative. It was developed by UW-IT with the Office of the Registrar, and instructors can access GradePage from MyUW.
Over 400 books published by Wiley-IEEE Press are now available online through the IEEE Xplore Digital Library. Digital television, robotics, electric bicycles, and traffic system design are among the engineering topics covered. Career and technical writing guides also are included. This UW Libraries ebook resource is UW-restricted.
Showing the importance UW students place on being connected, the Student Technology Fee Committee recently awarded $1 million to a three-year UW wireless network (Wi-Fi) upgrade project at UW Seattle. The funds will speed Wi-Fi upgrades to student-centered spaces such as libraries, and expand outdoor coverage. Upgrades are needed to support the latest device technology and provide greater capacity and improved coverage for the 66,000 people who use the UW wireless network each month.
More than 26,000 UW students, faculty, and staff are getting significant discounts (about $3 million a year) available through contracts negotiated by UW-IT with cellular carriers. If you are a AT&T or T-Mobile customer, you can contact them about receiving the discount. The AT&T discounts are 21 percent for cellular services paid by the UW and, for personal plans, are 18 percent for faculty and staff, and 10 percent for students. T-Mobile has a 15 percent discount.
Emergency phones in the UW Seattle Outdoor Alert Towers are now more accessible for people in wheelchairs or with mobility challenges. The towers enable notification of the UW Seattle community during emergencies through a public broadcast system, and house a direct line to UW Police. Some towers were rotated or had their base area repaved to be more accessible, and one was relocated. UW-IT and Facilities Services partnered on the improvements.
