Thaïsa Way

Way is an urban landscape historian teaching history, theory, and design at the University of Washington, Seattle. In 2015 she was appointed founding Executive Director of Urban@UW, an initiative of the Office of Research to bring urban faculty together to build inclusive data-driven innovations in response the greatest challenges of cities in the 21st century. Way leads faculty in partnering with city governments, communities, and nonprofit organizations to bring research into practice and real problems into university classrooms. In 2016 the focus is on urban environmental justice in a time of climate change and the challenges of affordable housing and homelessness. Partnering social and climate scientists as well as humanists, designers, policy makers, and social workers is necessary to create robust responses to these significant challenges.