Cougs Shine: WSU Grabs National Recognition for Research & Innovation

Recent recognition of the University of Washington includes a Berkeley prize recognizing research on ancient galaxies, a 2026 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award for a doctoral student, and an NSF CAREER Award supporting research on the brain circuits that drive social behavior.

UW astronomer is part of team that receives Berkeley prize for study of ancient galaxies

Gourav Khullar, UW postdoctoral scholar in astronomy, is part of a team of astronomers who received the 2027 Lancelot M. Berkeley–New York Community Trust Prize for Meritorious Work in Astronomy. 

Khullar is one of 60 astronomers who make up the UNCOVER team, an international collaboration built to study tens of thousands of galaxies, black holes and star clusters. The Berkeley Prize recognized the UNCOVER team for its work using the James Webb Space Telescope to study galaxies behind “Pandora’s Cluster,” a massive galaxy cluster. The large mass of this cluster causes it to act as a powerful magnifying glass, bending the light from faraway background galaxies. 

Deep imaging and spectroscopy of this gravitational lens have enabled the UNCOVER project team to identify and characterize distant galaxies from some of the earliest stages of our universe. 

“This team award is a genuine recognition of the incredible work that this new collaboration has conducted, spearheaded by early career astronomers,” Khullar said. “I am fortunate to have played a small part in contributing to studying the first galaxies in the universe which have paused star formation — systems called quiescent galaxies.”

Awarded annually since 2011 by the American Astronomical Society (AAS), the Berkeley prize recognizes research that advances the field of astronomy. The prize includes a monetary award and an invitation to give the closing plenary lecture at the AAS winter meeting in January.

This story was adapted from a press release by AAS.

UW doctoral student receives 2026 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award 

Malek Itani, a doctoral student in the UW Department of Electrical & Computer Engineering, was one of three scholars worldwide to receive a 2026 Marconi Society Paul Baran Young Scholar Award, which recognizes exceptional early-career researchers advancing the future of information and communications technology. 

A researcher in the Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering’s Mobile Intelligence Lab, Itani works with Shyam Gollakota, a UW professor of computer science and engineering, to develop AI-powered  devices that give users greater control over what they hear. The technology could allow someone wearing earbuds or hearing aids to amplify specific voices or sounds they want to focus on while reducing unwanted background noise. 

That ability could make  listening more customizable, from following a conversation in a crowded restaurant to better distinguishing important sounds in noisy environments. Itani and his collaborators are currently advancing systems designed to enable this kind of real-time “superhuman” hearing on earbuds and hearing aids. 

“I feel like I’ve hit a niche that’s going to be so transformational,” Itani said, noting that the technology could eventually reach billions of devices. “It’s going to change the way we hear the world.” 

Because of that potential reach, Itani said he feels a responsibility to continue advancing the technology and its ability to impact people’s  lives. 

Itani and his collaborators have also launched Hearvana AI to commercialize their research. He and his fellow honorees will be formally recognized at the Marconi Awards Gala & Institute Forums, held Nov. 4–6 in San Francisco.  

UW assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience receives NSF CAREER Award to study brain circuits driving social behaviors 

Sama Ahmed, UW assistant professor of psychology and neuroscience, received a 2026 National Science Foundation CAREER Award of more than $1.4 million. 

The NSF CAREER Award is the agency’s most prestigious honor for early-career faculty, recognizing those with the potential to become academic leaders in both research and education. 

With the award, Ahmed and his team will study the brain circuits behind “proceptivity” — the active behaviors animals use to pursue and engage potential mates. Using fruit flies, the most complex organism with a fully mapped brain and a species with well-studied social behaviors, the researchers will use advanced genetic and imaging tools in the Ahmed Lab to watch how different neural networks in the brain talk to each other in real time. 

Instead of looking at how the brain does one thing at a time, Ahmed’s team tracks how the nervous system switches between responding to external social cues and actively generating social behaviors. Understanding how the brain juggles these competing choices helps researchers understand how more complex brains — including our own — prioritize information and decide when to act. 

“I’ve always wanted to understand how our brains generate and respond to social signals,” Ahmed said, adding that the CAREER Award opens a new way for his lab to investigate that question. 

The project will also provide research training opportunities for high school, undergraduate and graduate students and support the development of open-source computational tools and STEM modules focused on coding and automated behavioral tracking. The award will also allow Ahmed to create a new Course-based Undergraduate Research Experience (CURE), where students will use technologies such as connectomics and optogenetics to investigate questions that, as Ahmed put it, “nobody has answered yet.” 

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