Author: lgaylord

Louisa believes in expanding horizons and learning - anything that broadens our minds beyond the here and now, allowing us to learn from the past and innovate for the future. She is particularly interested new and inventive methods of sustainability: city planning and green buildings, creating new objects from old trash, and ways that nature can provide examples for new materials and construction. She is also curious about new scientific breakthroughs, technology and discoveries, and how they will shape the future of consumerism and marketing. While science is important to advancing society, Louisa believes that music, education, art and culture are equally necessary, especially on a local community level.

Expanding the Scope of Now, Tech and Media

Assessing Heat Pump Usage Across Alaska

2023 is on track to be one of the hottest years across the globe. Warming occurs at double the global rate in Arctic regions, necessitating the need for viable decarbonization options that help move away from dependence on fossil fuels. This summer, one of the eScience Institute’s Data Science for Social Good (DSSG) teams at the University of Washington has been researching heat pumps for heating and … Continue reading Assessing Heat Pump Usage Across Alaska

lgaylordAugust 16, 2023August 22, 2023Leave a comment

Flavors

An Ottolenghi Feast

Yotam Ottolenghi is a chef, restaurateur, and food writer who is a regular contributor to The New York Times Magazine. He has authored nine bestselling cookbooks, including Plenty (2010) and Simple (2018). With the exception of Simple, many of his original recipes are quite involved, although they are all incredibly delicious. My friends and I are no strangers to combining efforts to make and eat elaborate feasts together – like our Greek Feast in 2019 or the Christmas Quarantine BBQ of 2020. So it’s not surprising that a group of similarly food-obsessed friends got together and pooled our various Ottolenghi cookbooks together.

lgaylordJune 9, 2023June 14, 2023Leave a comment

Books and Literature

2022 Reading List

Forgot to post my reading list from last year! I can’t tell you the number of times I can’t tell you the number of times I will start reading a book, and make it all the way through the intro or first chapter to discover that yes, I’ve read it before. So these lists are helpful, not only to discover personal reading trends and figure out what to read next, but to keep me from rereading the same things over and over.

2022 had lots of great books about history, science fiction, music, social justice, essays – and of course, FOOD! I can’t stop reading cooking memoirs and similar books because of how differently people remember specific dishes and how they are tied to memories (also a lot of them contain recipes too). Pretty proud of myself for averaging 4 books per month for the entire year, and I’m already making great headway on my 2023 list.

Get the full list

lgaylordMarch 21, 2023April 13, 2023Leave a comment

Exploring our World, Flavors

A Full Season of Sandwiches

The second installment of sandwiches contained secrets like how to make perfectly fluffy chickpea and herb falafels, and how to make a 100% vegetarian meatball sub that is so good your Italian friend asks for the recipe. And lots of fresh and grilled vegetables from around the Mediterranean resulted in some excellent summertime dinners. Although the “Summer of Sandwiches” extended through Fall, many of these recipes will reappear at the table in the future. Includes links to recipes and notes about how to make them vegetarian and vegan friendly.

Part 3 of 3 features 11 sandwiches from Argentina, Trinidad, and across Mexico and the United States.

lgaylordOctober 17, 2022November 2, 2022Leave a comment

Tech and Media, The Seattle Scene

Learning Data For Good

Last month the eScience Institute held the “Learning and Doing Data For Good” conference, an event for current students and alumni in university-based data for good programs, their project partners, and data science professionals. The goal was to inspire discussions and networking with others who are motivated to learn from and meet the needs of communities and people using data for change. The eScience Institute co-hosted the conference with the West Big Data Innovation Hub, the Academic Data Science Alliance, and the University of British Columbia’s Data Science Institute.

lgaylordOctober 13, 2022October 13, 2022Leave a comment

Exploring our World, Flavors

Scores of Sandwiches

The first 10 sandwiches of this delicious endeavor featured vegetarian favorites like banh mi with marinated tofu and avocado toast topped with an egg. But it also included new recipes like homemade plant-based sausages with lemongrass, green onions, ginger, and garlic for Laotian khao jee. Let’s continue the sandwich quest in a new region of the world. Includes links to recipes and notes about how to make them vegetarian and vegan.

Part 2 of 3 features 9 sandwiches from Senegal, Israel, the Middle East, the Mediterranean, Greece, England, and Italy.

lgaylordAugust 19, 2022September 19, 2022Leave a comment

Exploring our World, Flavors

Summer of Sandwiches

Everybody loves sandwiches, right? Everywhere you go, there is always some local version made with whatever ingredients are on hand. They are versatile and eaten for breakfast, lunch, or dinner. Many of the most well-known creations have meat: doner kebab sandwiches, the muffaletta, chicken shawarma, a grilled Cuban. But what about the vegetarian and seafood sandwiches of the world? Includes links to recipes and notes on how to make them more vegan friendly.

Part 1 of 3 features 10 sandwiches from India, Pakistan, Laos, Thailand, Singapore, Vietnam, Japan, and Australia.

lgaylordAugust 11, 2022August 30, 2022Leave a comment

Exploring our World, Tech and Media

Discovering How AI is Utilized Across UW

The eScience Institute co-hosted Discovering AI@UW, an event that brought together artificial intelligence experts from across the University of Washington campus to discuss their projects and how they intersect. Over 180 people attended the event, both streaming online via zoom and in person in the Lyceum Room of the Husky Union Building on campus, and included UW faculty and staff, postdoctoral fellows, graduate students, and undergraduates. “The energy around all these [AI initiatives] that people are doing here makes me tremendously excited,” said Nathan Kutz, Senior Data Science Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Electrical Engineering & Physics. “We not only have a university that is incredibly collaborative, but we also have so much work going on in so many different domains.”

lgaylordJune 10, 2022August 22, 2023Leave a comment

Exploring our World, Interview

Evolving the Hackweek Model with ICESat-2 2022

The eScience Institute hosts a variety of hackweeks every year, which are designed to immerse participants in collaborative project work around a specific topic. Hackweeks try to blend elements of a hackathon, where participants work collaboratively in project teams, with tutorials on a variety of data science topics in an immersive and inclusive environment. eScience hackweeks provide a deep dive into an area of science with a focus on how data science methods and tools can be utilized to further research. For each hackweek, the program format evolves and is modified and adjusted to best suit the problem space and the user community. A great example of this process is the ICESat-2 Hackweek, which wrapped up earlier this year.

lgaylordMay 26, 2022Leave a comment

Exploring our World, Interview

Python for Humanities: an Intro for Researchers

The eScience Institute and UW Libraries Open Scholarship Commons recently co-hosted a workshop called “Python, your personal research assistant” for participants studying the humanities to explore the Python programming language and how to use it as a tool to aid in qualitative humanities work. Led by eScience Technical Education Specialist Naomi Alterman, the program encouraged students to decipher lines of Python, and learn how to make use of it to complete repetitive tasks. “I’m expecting folks to show up to the workshop with no experience with computer code,” Naomi Alterman said. “And I want them to leave with a suitable argument as to why it’s useful for them in the future.”

lgaylordApril 27, 2022May 26, 2022Leave a comment