When you’re a professor, researcher, inventor, entrepreneur, and MacArthur fellow, it can be hard to introduce yourself to the person sitting next to you on an airplane. Shwetak Patel keeps it simple. “I always say professor at the University of Washington. Everything else comes out of that,” said Patel, who has a joint appointment in the Department of Computer Science & Engineering and the Department of Electrical Engineering. “I’m passionate about teaching, research, and mentoring students. The other stuff, like being an inventor, is all part of being a professor.”

The third week of June is Men’s Health Week to increase the awareness of preventable health problems and to encourage early detection and treatment of disease. The good news for men is that they’re genetically predisposed to some qualities that make attaining a healthy body easier than it is for women. For starters, their skin [...]

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2015 marks the 41st year of the Seattle Pride Parade and UW is representing! University of Washington faculty, staff, students, and alumni are invited to march at the Seattle Pride Parade. LGBTQ or ally, all are welcome: Sunday, June 28, noon Downtown: UW is contingent #157 and will be staging at Republic Parking lot at 6th Ave [...]

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People take walks to stretch their legs, clear their head, explore their surroundings, or as a social experience. But Assistant Professor Daniela Rosner in Human Centered Design & Engineering noticed that most mapping technologies only promote efficiency. Whether focused on the destination or on hitting a fitness goal, the maps offer little surprise for their [...]

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Ready to try something new? Join the Summer Fitness Challenge! In addition to events at the UW, we’ve partnered with nine of our Discount Fitness Network facilities to offer free gym passes to everyone who is part of the challenge. You can also add team members as guests in your challenge registration, including family, friends, or colleagues. [...]

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Please spread the word!On Wednesday, July 15, help us reach 500k stairs in 24 hours. Need more inspiration? The Whole U team will be out and about with surprises for our stair climbers all day long. We have partnered with Movo, a new affordable fitness tracker, and have 100 trackers to giveaway in addition to [...]

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With 72 volunteers in 44 countries, the University of Washington was the number one producer of Peace Corps volunteers among large colleges and universities in 2015. It’s not a recent trend — UW has had 2,888 volunteers since John F. Kennedy’s administration launched the Peace Corps in 1961 — but the school has performed better [...]

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It's been a while since David Shields followed the NBA. The UW English professor and bestselling author took a sabbatical to cover the Seattle SuperSonics for a season in 1994. The result was Black Planet, a book that probes into race relations and professional sports. Seattle has since lost its team, and Shields his interest in the game. But he can't resist tuning in for this year's NBA Finals, as LeBron James and the Cleveland Cavaliers spar with Steph Curry and the Golden State Warriors. "Thrilling theater," Shields calls it.

I have two special graduates in my life this June, and I’ve been trying to come up with the perfect gift idea for each of them. I want my presents to be celebratory, personalized, and something they’ll actually use, so I asked our student assistants in The Whole U office what their dream graduation present [...]

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A couple months ago I had one of the most wonderful and memorable dining experiences of my life. It was dinner at FareStart Restaurant in Seattle, and I enjoyed much more than a delicious 3-course meal. FareStart, a Seattle non-profit, is a culinary job training and placement program for homeless and disadvantaged individuals. Since 1992 [...]

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Julia Child once said, “Wine is meant to be with food — that’s the point of it!” I couldn’t agree more. To me, a glass of good wine without a good meal is a waste of a good wine. Great food and great wine together can be sublime. After all, Aristotle taught us centuries ago [...]

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Are the feelings of “I have no time to cook” or “I am too tired to cook” preventing you from making home cooked meals during the week? Working parents especially find the thought of cooking dinner at the end of a long day to be overwhelming. The good news is that making home cooked, healthy [...]

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