Twenty scientists and engineers at the 91探花 are among the 38 new members elected to the Washington State Academy of Sciences for 2021, according to a July 15 . New members were chosen for 鈥渢heir outstanding record of scientific and technical achievement, and their willingness to work on behalf of the Academy to bring the best available science to bear on issues within the state of Washington.鈥�

Current academy members selected 29 of the new members. An additional nine were elected by virtue of joining one of the National Academies.

New 91探花members who were elected by current academy members are:

• , professor and Port of Tacoma Chair in Environmental Science at 91探花Tacoma, director of the and science director of the , 鈥渇or foundational work on the environmental fate, behavior and toxicity of PCBs.鈥�
• , professor of psychology, 鈥渇or contributions in research on racial and gender inequality that has influenced practices in education, government, and business鈥� and 鈥渇or shifting the explanation for inequality away from individual deficiencies and examining how societal stereotypes and structures cause inequalities.鈥�
• , professor of chemistry and member faculty at the , 鈥渇or leadership in the innovative synthesis and chemical modification of nanoscale materials for application in light emission and catalysis.鈥�
• , professor of global health and of environmental and occupational health sciences, and founding director of the , 鈥渇or work on the health impacts of climate change, on climate impact forecasting, on adaptation to climate change and on climate policy to protect health.鈥�
• , professor of environmental and forest sciences and dean emeritus of the College of the Environment, 鈥渇or foundational studies of regional paleoenvironmental history and sustained excellence in academic leadership to catalyze and sustain transformative research and educational initiatives.鈥� Graumlich is also president-elect of the American Geophysical Union.
• Dr. , the Joseph W. Eschbach Endowed Chair in Kidney Research and co-director of the , 鈥渇or pioneering contributions and outstanding achievements in the development of the novel wearable artificial kidney, as well as numerous investigator-initiated clinical trials and multi-center collaborative studies.鈥�
• , professor of environmental chemistry and chair of the Physical Sciences Division at 91探花Bothell, 鈥渇or leadership in monitoring and understanding the global transport of atmospheric pollutants from energy production, wildfire, and other sources, as well as science communication and service that has informed citizens and enhanced public policy.鈥�
• , professor and chair of psychology, 鈥渇or contributions demonstrating how psychological science can inform long-standing issues about racial and gender discrimination鈥� and 鈥渇or research that has deep and penetrating implications for the law and societal efforts to remedy social inequities with evidence-based programs and actions.鈥�
• , the Leon C. Johnson Professor of Chemistry, member faculty at the and chair of the Department of Chemistry, 鈥渇or developing new spectroscopy tools for measuring energy flow in molecules and materials with high spatial and temporal resolution.鈥�
• , professor of astronomy, 鈥渇or founding the and leading the decades-long development of the interdisciplinary modeling framework and community needed to establish the science of exoplanet astrobiology鈥� and 鈥渇or training the next generation of interdisciplinary scientists who will search for life beyond Earth.鈥�
• , professor and chair of aeronautics and astronautics, 鈥渇or leadership and significant advances in nonlinear methods for integrated sensing and control in engineered, bioinspired and biological flight systems鈥� and 鈥渇or leadership in cross-disciplinary aerospace workforce development.鈥�
• , associate professor of chemistry and member faculty with the Molecular Engineering and Sciences Institute, 鈥渇or exceptional contributions to the development of synthetic polymers and nanomaterials for self-assembly and advanced manufacturing with application in sustainability, medicine and microelectronics.鈥�
• Dr. , Associate Dean of Medical Technology Innovation in the College of Engineering and the School of Medicine, the Graham and Brenda Siddall Endowed Chair in Cornea Research, and medical director of the 91探花Eye Institute, 鈥渇or developing and providing first class clinical treatment of severe corneal blindness to hundreds of people, for establishing the world premier artificial cornea program in Washington, and for leading collaborative research to translate innovative engineering technologies into creative clinical solution.鈥�
• Dr. , professor of medicine and director of the , 鈥渇or global recognition as an authority on drug and vaccine development for viral and parasitic diseases through work as an infectious disease physician and immunologist.鈥�
• Dr. , professor of pediatrics and of anesthesiology and pain medicine, and director of the , 鈥渇or outstanding leadership in pediatric anesthesiology and in the care of children with traumatic brain injury鈥� and 鈥渇or internationally recognized expertise in traumatic brain injury and direction of the Harborview Injury Prevention and Research Center for the last decade as an exceptional mentor and visionary leader.鈥�

91探花members who will join the Washington State Academy of Sciences by virtue of their election to one of the National Academies are:

• , professor of biostatistics, 鈥渇or the development of novel statistical models for longitudinal data to better diagnose disease, track its trajectory, and predict its outcomes鈥� and 鈥渇or revolutionizing how dynamic predictors are judged by their discrimination and calibration and has significantly advanced methods for randomized controlled trials.鈥� Heagerty was elected to the National Academy of Medicine in 2021.
• , the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in Computer Science and Engineering, 鈥渇or foundational contributions to the mathematics of computer systems and of the internet, as well as to the design and probabilistic analysis of algorithms, especially on-line algorithms, and algorithmic mechanism design and game theory.鈥� Karlin was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , professor emeritus of applied mathematics and data science fellow at the , 鈥渇or inventing key algorithms for hyperbolic conservation laws and transforming them into powerful numerical technologies鈥� and 鈥渇or creating the Clawpack package, which underpins a wide range of application codes in everyday use, such as for hazard assessment due to tsunamis and other geophysical phenomena.鈥� LeVeque was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , the Benjamin D. Hall Endowed Chair in Basic Life Sciences and an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, 鈥渇or advancing our physical understanding of cell motility and growth in animals and bacteria鈥� and 鈥渇or discovering how the pathogen Listeria uses actin polymerization to move inside human cells, how crawling animal cells coordinate actomyosin dynamics and the mechanical basis of size control and daughter cell separation in bacteria.鈥� Theriot was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.
• , professor and chair of biological structure, 鈥渇or elucidating cellular transformations through which neurons pattern their dendrites, and the interplay of activity-dependent and -independent mechanisms leading to assembly of stereotyped circuits鈥� and 鈥渇or revelations regarding the fundamental principles of neuronal development through the application of an elegant combination of in vivo imaging, physiology, ultrastructure and genetics to the vertebrate retina.鈥� Wong was elected to the National Academy of Sciences in 2021.

New members to the Washington State Academy of Sciences are scheduled to be inducted at a meeting in September.

Five faculty members and one affiliate professor at the 91探花 are among 120 new members and 30 international members elected to the National Academy of Sciences. The new members include 59 women, the most chosen in a single year, according to an April 26 by the academy.

• , professor of computer science and engineering
• , professor of biochemistry
• , professor emeritus of applied mathematics
• , professor of biology
• , professor of biological structure

In addition, , a professor of human biology and of public health sciences at the , was elected to the academy. Overbaugh is an affiliate 91探花professor of microbiology.

,聽who holds the Bill and Melinda Gates Chair in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering, works聽in聽theoretical computer science. She earned a bachelor鈥檚 degree in applied mathematics and a doctoral degree in computer science at Stanford University. Before joining the 91探花faculty in 1994, she worked for five years at what was then the Digital Equipment Corporation’s Systems Research Center. At the UW, Karlin is a member of the聽聽group in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Her research centers on designing and analyzing certain types of algorithms 鈥� such as聽probabilistic algorithms, which incorporate a degree of chance or randomness, and聽online algorithms, which can handle input delivered in a step-by-step manner. Karlin also works in algorithmic game theory, a field that merges algorithm design with considerations of strategic behavior. Her studies have also intersected聽other disciplines, including economics and data mining. In 2016, she was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

, who holds the Edmond H. Fischer-Washington Research Foundation Endowed Chair in Biochemistry, studies molecular recognition, particularly how proteins interact in human diseases. One of her laboratory鈥檚 efforts is to study the large, multifunctional protein produced by the BRCA1 gene, which when carrying certain mutations can predispose people to inherited forms of breast and other cancers. Klevit鈥檚 group also studies small heat shock proteins, which are implicated in certain muscle wasting diseases and some cancers. Cells manufacture these under stress due to heat, lack of oxygen and changes in acidity or alkalinity. Klevit鈥檚 team uses different nuclear magnetic resonance approaches to understand the structure and functions of these proteins, which have been difficult to solve. Klevit and her team also use NMR to study a sensor enzyme critical to bacterial virulence. This enzyme responds to environmental signals, such as the presence of antimicrobials, by turning on or off genes involved in infection. Klevit won a Rhodes Scholarship in 1978 鈥� a year after the program was open to women 鈥� to study at Oxford University, where she earned a doctoral degree in chemistry in 1981.

, who earned a doctoral degree in computer science at Stanford University, came to the 91探花in 1985 after postdoctoral positions at New York University and the University of California, Los Angeles. While at UW, he was also briefly a faculty member at ETH Z眉rich. LeVeque鈥檚 mathematical research has spanned a variety of topics related to numerical algorithms for solving the partial differential equations that model wave propagation phenomena. He has also developed extensive open source software based on this research. LeVeque鈥檚 mathematical and computational studies have impacted fields ranging from biophysics to astrophysics. Much of his recent work has focused on modeling geological hazards, particularly tsunamis, and he is part of an interdisciplinary team performing hazard assessments for the coast of the Pacific Northwest. LeVeque has also taught extensively and authored several textbooks. He is a data science fellow at the , and was previously elected a fellow of both the American Mathematical Society and the Society of Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

, who holds the Benjamin D. Hall Endowed Chair in Basic Life Sciences and is an investigator with the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, came to the 91探花in 2018 after 21 years as a faculty member at Stanford University. She earned a doctoral degree in cell biology from the University of California, San Francisco, and was a fellow at the Whitehead Institute for Biomedical Research before heading to Stanford. Theriot鈥檚 research centers on the dynamic world within cells. Her work explores how cells self-organize to perform tasks 鈥� like change shape, move, respond to stimuli, and shuttle items through their interiors. Theriot has investigated these questions in a variety of biological settings, such as how white blood cells crawl through our bodies and engulf invading microbes, how fish skin heals wounds, and how the bacterial pathogen Listeria monocytogenes rearranges the proteins of the human cell鈥檚 鈥渟keleton.鈥� She employs many types of experimental approaches, from mathematical modeling to video-based analyses of cellular movements. Theriot has received fellowships from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the David and Lucile Packard Foundation.

, who is chair of the Department of Biological Structure, studies how the circuitries of nerve cells develop, break and reassemble. Her research model is the vertebrate retina, the part of the eye that receives light and converts it into signals sent to the brain. Her team applies a diversity of methods to investigate the structure and connectivity of nerve cells in normal and altered retinas, such as tracking changes in zebrafish retinal neurons from the time they first appear until they form circuits and investigating how retinal neurons rewire during cellular regeneration. In addition, Wong鈥檚 team constructs detailed connectivity maps of neurons in the inner and outer retina, and researches how the transmission of nerve signals helps establish and maintain connectivity between retinal neurons. She is collaborating to study how the eyes encode a visual scene. Wong earned her doctoral degree from the Australian National University, and serves on the steering committee for the National Eye Institute鈥檚 , which seeks to restore vision lost from damage to the retina and optic nerve.

With these new members, the National Academy of Sciences now has 2,461 active members, as well as 511 international members, who are nonvoting and hold citizenship outside of the U.S.

and coverage have reminded residents of the Pacific Northwest that they live in a seismically active region. Stretching offshore from northern California to British Columbia, the could slip at any time, causing a powerful earthquake and triggering a tsunami that would impact communities along the coast.

Scientists from multiple disciplines at the 91探花 and other institutions are learning more about this hazard. Dozens of 91探花scientists are part of , a research endeavor funded by the to study the Cascadia subduction zone and communicate information about potential hazards to government officials and the public. Key goals of the M9 Project include mathematical modeling of tsunami waves, which tries to predict where and how an earthquake-triggered wave will affect the coast.

Two 91探花 scientists 鈥� applied mathematics professor and affiliate professor of Earth and space sciences 鈥� recently talked about how they model tsunami hazards along the Northwest coast.

How did you become involved in the field of tsunami modeling?
Randy LeVeque: In 2003 or 2004, my former doctoral student Dave George started applying Clawpack 鈥� a software we developed here to model wave propagation 鈥� for tsunamis just before the happened. I started working with Frank Gonzalez, who at the time was the director of here in Seattle. Frank had all of these contacts in the tsunami community and the hazard community because he had already been working on this for 30 years.

How do you model tsunami danger on a stretch of coastline?
LeVeque: We use , the tools we adapted from Clawpack to be used specifically for geophysical modeling. We originally geared GeoClaw for tsunamis, but it’s also been used for storm surge modeling and there’s a version now for landslides and debris flows.

What information do you put into your models?
LeVeque: The software is set up so you can easily put in a new region just by having a fine-scale topographic digital elevation model for that particular region. The U.S. is pretty good about doing fine-scale mapping down to a resolution of about 33 feet along the coast. We also need some representation of what the earthquake will be and how the seafloor is moving, because the motion of the seafloor is what’s driving the tsunami.

Have recent earthquakes and tsunamis helped improve your models?
Frank Gonzalez: Very much so. For example, after the in Japan, geologists and seismologists learned that splay faulting may be more common than was believed before.

What is splay faulting?
Gonzalez: Ordinarily in an earthquake, there’s a lot of slippage far below the ocean floor and it simply raises up the ocean bottom. But in the case of Tohoku, the rupture extended all the way up to the ocean floor 鈥� these are splay faults, which are angled to the main fault, and where the seafloor itself can rupture. And it’s believed that that鈥檚 a very efficient mechanism for generating large tsunamis. We’re now including splay faulting as an option for models.

What areas along the Washington coast have you modeled?
LeVeque: Pretty much up and down the coast. We did some modeling of La Push and Neah Bay to develop tsunami inundation maps, for example. We’re just now starting models for some communities in the Strait of Juan de Fuca 鈥� like Port Townsend and Port Angeles.

How would a tsunami from a large offshore earthquake affect Puget Sound?
LeVeque: The tsunami would be coming from the open ocean, so it would come in through the Strait of Juan de Fuca and come down to Puget Sound. We’re just starting to look down there. But by the time the tsunami gets down into Puget Sound it will be smaller than on the coast.
Gonzalez: But in the case of a big magnitude-9 offshore earthquake, that will create shaking severe enough in Puget Sound to trigger small to moderate landslides, and they’ll create tsunamis as well.

So, is the tsunami danger in Puget Sound not as bad as the open coast?
LeVeque: Not nearly as much danger during an earthquake along the Cascadia subduction zone. But there’s also the Seattle Fault, which runs right across the Sound, and others like the Tacoma Fault and the South Whidbey Island Fault. These faults are actually under Puget Sound and can have big earthquakes and cause tsunamis.
Gonzalez: That Seattle Fault tsunami has been modeled by others. That wave is quite severe, quite high. And the magnitude used to generate that wave is only about 7.5, as opposed to a magnitude-9 earthquake off the coast. And since those models for the Seattle Fault were published, there’ve actually been many more Puget Sound faults discovered.

How useful can your models be for communities in tsunami hazard areas?
Gonzalez: People take the kind of information Randy and I provide about tsunami hazard and assess the vulnerability of communities, and emergency management officials assess preparedness efforts.
LeVeque: In Westport they just had their in January to build a new vertical evacuation structure for tsunamis at Ocosta Elementary. It happens to sit on a relatively high part of that peninsula. From the modeling that we did, it looks like under a worst-case scenario that the area right around the school would have only a couple of feet inundation.

What would you like to improve or change about your approach to tsunami modeling?
LeVeque: Well, they’re based on particular models of possible earthquakes, but we could always get one that’s different or even worse. So, we’re also looking at doing probabilistic hazard assessments of the coast. That’s where we don’t just look at the worst case. We look at many scenarios.
Gonzalez: That approach gets us results to say that one area has a much higher probability of flooding than another area. Eventually I think emergency managers will want those kinds of maps. It provides a more sophisticated view of the hazard. Not just worst-case, but what the probability is of each scenario and if there is a more likely case we should prepare for instead.
LeVeque: That’s useful information to know if you’re deciding where to put a hospital or road.

What do you think the public most misunderstands about tsunami modeling?
LeVeque: Most people probably don’t understand how little is known about what the next earthquake might look like 鈥� all the sources of uncertainty that you have to deal with to come up with any model of what a tsunami will do. That’s why one big goal of the M9 Project is to develop better probabilistic techniques for both tsunamis and earthquakes, and to figure out how to communicate those probabilities to the public and emergency managers.
Gonzalez: There is a big educational effort that is ongoing. Randy and I go to community meetings and handle questions on the science of tsunami risks and give short presentations. You have to be really, really careful and specific in sending a message to the public.

What do you like best about your work on tsunami modeling?
LeVeque: It’s a discovery topic, with people learning things all the time. That makes it interesting.
Gonzalez: What’s really fun about this is you’re on the cutting edge, and you’re collaborating outside of your field. It’s very interdisciplinary. You’re talking to geophysicists, civil engineers, emergency managers. So there’s a lot of variety, and you’re developing projects that are meaningful 鈥� they’ll save lives and property.

###

For more information, contact LeVeque at 206-685-3237 or rjl@amath.washington.edu, and Gonzalez at 206-290-0903 or figonzal@uw.edu.