ITHS Welcomes University of Washington President Robert J. Jones at Annual Expo

Engineering and medicine were the focus of the 2026 ITHS Expo, which featured a keynote address from Dr. Robert J. Jones, President of the University of Washington, and a translational talk from Dr. Tueng Shen, MD, PhD, Associate Dean for Medical Technology Innovation, and inaugural director of the future Kren Engineering-based Medicine Institute (KEMi). With nearly 130 people in attendance, ITHS hosted a record crowd for this event on a beautiful May afternoon in Seattle.

In his speech, President Jones talked about how critical it is to connect engineering and medicine for the future of medical innovation, saying, “Many of the world’s challenges are too large and too complex for any one professor, any one scholar, or any one physician, or any one innovator, or engineer to solve alone. That’s why it takes this integrated system. And I say this because things are much more complex than they ever have been, and we have the tools to find sustainable solutions to get past this complexity.” He went on to say, “What can be accomplished when the rigor and the purpose of medicine is deeply integrated with the notion of problem-solving, which is a core mindset of engineering? When all of that comes together, it creates the opportunity for us to redefine and improve health outcomes at scale.” President Jones brought humor and wisdom in equal measure in his keynote address, and his insights were well-received across Expo attendees.

Dr. Shen’s translational research talk, “Engineering-based Medicine at the University of Washington and Beyond,” began by juxtaposing her experience as an engineer and an artist – a theme effectively woven into her presentation to highlight the similarities and parallels of the two. She and her KEMi colleagues presented on their exciting, ongoing projects:

• Quansan Yang, PhD & Stephen A. McCartney, MD, PhD: Millimeter-Scale, Bioresorabable Uterine Sensors for Real-Time, Ultrasensitive Cytokine Monitoring During High-Risk Pregnancies
• Nathan White, MD, MS & Richard B. Utarnatchitt, MD, MS: Real-Time Machine Vision to Enhance Emergency Intubation
• Xu Chen, PhD, Jeng-Neng Hwang, PhD & Tueng T. Shen, PhD, MD: Towards Ubiquitous Hospital-Level Personalized Healthcare: Doctor Robot (DocBot): Healthcare Engineering with AI & Robotic Technology (HEART)

Teddy Johnson, the ITHS Director of Technology, introduced the audience to our three innovators offering lightning talks,

• Ali Bouge, MS, RAC: Master’s Program in Biomedical Regulatory Affairs
• Vickie Ramirez: Healthcare through the Human-Animal Bond: Integrating Human and Veterinary Health Care for Unhoused Populations
• Jeanne Gallee, PhD, CCC-SLP: Acoustic Characteristics of Prosody in Stroke and Neurodegenerative Disease

Following our speaker symposium, attendees made their way into the garden for our ITHS poster session, featuring ITHS-supported research from TL1 Trainees, KL2 Scholars, Pilot Awardees and other partners. Later, the Carlos De La Peña Award for Excellence in Translational Science was presented to Brenda Zieler, Co-Director of the Team Science Core at ITHS.

Things are much more complex than they ever have been, and we have the tools to find sustainable solutions to get past this complexity.

-Dr. Robert J. Jones, President, University of Washington

Past Expos

Previous ITHS Expos have been held at the University of Washington Husky Union Building, virtually during the Covid lockdown, and more recently at Burke Museum in 2022, at wǝɫǝbʔaltxʷ – Intellectual House in 2023, and at the Center for Urban Horticulture (CUH) since 2024. Read about Expo 25 here.

With attendees and presenters coming from across the region and from many different areas of health research, the event has always proven to be the perfect chance to network, learn and to celebrate translational science.