WSU President Betsy Cantwell is a full-on techie.

She spent more than two decades in national laboratories working on space exploration, energy and defense, followed by top leadership roles at state universities in Utah and Arizona driving significant growth in research funding. The longtime sci-fi fan embraces “future-casting” — a systems engineering approach to imagine and prepare for technological shifts a decade out.

But if that leads you to predict that the head of Washington State University is blanketing her campuses with artificial intelligence, you would be wrong.

The essential role of a university is to foster a sense of wonder in students, and that is something AI will never do, Cantwell said in a GeekWire interview on Friday.

That wonder, she said, “is innately human, and when we bring that into everything you do in a university, you create humans that will actually be much better at ideating, managing and creating value out of AI.”

In line with that philosophy, WSU faculty decide individually how to incorporate AI into their research and classrooms, with students actively involved in shaping its use. The technology serves as a tool to reach a goal, but is not the goal itself.

As the head of WSU — which serves 25,400 undergraduate and graduate students across its main campus in Pullman, four branch campuses, and an online program — Cantwell uses AI as a partner. On a $1.3 billion annual budget that also supports 39 county extension offices and research centers, she looks for practical AI applications to streamline and better inform her work.

Drawing on her national lab experience, Cantwell believes AI can bridge the gap between basic research and commercial production. Instead of universities simply “throwing papers over the transom,” she said AI-driven modeling helps build proofs-of-concept and testbeds that help attract private-sector investments.

This approach is at the foundation of WSU’s planned $50 million, federally funded research center using AI to support salmon recovery and sustainable aquaculture, as well as AI-enhanced micro-climate tools from the university to aid Washington’s farmers.

One area where Cantwell is personally using AI is in navigating the turbulent business of college athletics.

In 2023 — two years before Cantwell joined WSU — the University of Washington pulled out of the Pac-12, triggering an implosion of the century-old conference that left only WSU and Oregon State as members.

Cantwell believes strongly in the value of WSU’s athletics program, calling it a vital convener that brings alumni and fans together across political and social spectrums, while also providing an academic doorway for student-athletes who might not otherwise pursue higher education.

To navigate the financial fallout, she built her own custom AI agent to run tabletop scenarios and model financial paths for WSU’s sports enterprise. She treats the exercise much like national security strategic planning.

The AI agent allows her to analyze variables including coaching salaries, stadium operations, student-athlete employment litigation, federal regulatory proposals, and revenues generated through Pac-12 Enterprises, the conference’s business arm. Cantwell sees the grit of WSU rebuilding after the Pac-12 split as a compelling story of innovation and entrepreneurship, one that new digital media channels can help broadcast.

Where Cantwell draws the line, however, is AI use in sports betting, which she views as a concerning manipulation of human behavior that threatens the integrity of college athletics.

GeekWire came prepared for our interview by asking different AI chatbots to predict the outcome of Sunday’s Apple Cup showdown between WSU and UW at Seattle’s Husky Stadium. Suffice to say, the AI says it doesn’t look good for the squad from the Palouse.

But before we could deliver that news, the top Cougar made it clear she wasn’t interested in hearing what Gemini, Claude or any other AI platform forecast for the game.

“The only reason why I would want to know the score in advance is if I was betting and I don’t do that,” Cantwell said. “Why do you need to know in advance?”

"They are trying cause chaos, they are trying to cause disturbances in our daily lives. And water is a great target to achieve that," Ozgur Ozmen.

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Bitcoin Magazine

When the Banks Don’t Work, Bitcoin Does: Cornell University’s Adoption Index

A lot of people have heard of Bitcoin but even among those who hold it, knowledge is shallow. 

Though for those holding the leading cryptocurrency, it appears to be solving a problem: getting around failing banking rails or inflation. 

That’s according to new findings from the U.S. Ivy League research university Cornell, which spoke to nearly 26,000 around the globe about Bitcoin. 

In its new Bitcoin Adoption Index report, the top college found that El Salvador, Venezuela and Nigeria were the countries that had the highest number of people who had ever owned bitcoin. 

“Ranked by the share of all respondents who have ever owned bitcoin, the leaders are not wealthy financial centers — they are economies where the national currency has been unstable and everyday access to dollars or reliable banking is hard,” the report read.  

“In each, bitcoin functions less as a speculative bet and more as a practical workaround.” 

Still, Cornell found that actually being able to explain the fundamentals of the protocol was difficult for most — including how many bitcoins would ever be minted in existence. In fact, 58% of those surveyed said they didn’t know the supply was capped at 21 million coins. 

But technicalities aside, the cryptocurrency has still proved helpful to people wanting to use it, the report found. 

One Venezuelan — who wasn’t named — told interviewers that Bitcoin was “faster, cleaner, and much less risky” than other methods of getting dollars in the country. 

While another Salvadoran was quoted saying: “When nobody controls [bitcoin], it means we all have control of it.”

And a Nigerian interviewee reportedly told Cornell researchers: “I’ve been to six African countries and whenever I go there, I don’t fear it because I know I can spend my bitcoin.”

Bitcoin adoption started growing in Venezuela ahead of other countries years ago, when hyperinflation crippled the economy and strict government currency controls meant getting dollars became difficult. 

El Salvador made bitcoin legal tender — along with the dollar — in 2021. The country’s leader admitted that getting its citizens to use the cryptocurrency was difficult but the Central American nation still says it buys the asset for its government coffers. 

In Nigeria, which has had some of the highest transaction volumes in the world, saving in bitcoin has been used by some to get around the collapse of the naira.

Cornell University’s research was fielded by Morning Consult in partnership with the Tech Policy Institute in Cornell University’s Jeb E. Brooks School of Public Policy, the Cornell Bitcoin Club, the Human Rights Foundation and the Reynolds Foundation.

Researchers interviewed 25,880 people in 25 countries between December 16, 2024 to March 10, 2025, asking 125 individual questions. 

This post When the Banks Don’t Work, Bitcoin Does: Cornell University’s Adoption Index first appeared on Bitcoin Magazine and is written by Mathew Di Salvo.

— Jeff Lyon is now chief information security officer at Seattle’s Remitly. Lyon joins from Coinbase, where he was head of infrastructure security for two years. Past roles include security leadership at Robinhood and Amazon Web Services. Lyon also served as a petty officer with the U.S. Navy for more than nine years.

“Remitly’s mission to transform lives through trusted financial services that transcend borders resonates deeply and is a natural progression of my work building security organizations, secure applications, and safe-by-default platforms across fintech,” Lyon said in a LinkedIn post.

Remitly has seen a reshuffling of leadership since co-founder and CEO Matt Oppenheimer departed in February. Ankur Sinha resigned as chief product and technology officer in June, and Rina Hahn left as chief marketing officer earlier this month. Veteran tech and finance executive Sebastian Gunningham now leads the company.

— Joseph Williams, a longtime Seattle-area leader at the intersection of tech and public service, was named director of Cybersecurity Programs at Western Washington University.

Williams most recently served as the governance, risk management and compliance (GRC) practice director at consulting firm Artemis Connection. His varied career includes working as information and communications technology sector lead for the Washington State Department of Commerce; Seattle office director for Pacific Northwest National Laboratory; and divisional CTO at Microsoft.

In 2025, Williams was named GeekWire’s Public Policy Champion for Innovation.

Williams’ experience “sets the stage for propelling our cybersecurity programs to new heights as we seek to equip and empower our graduates to be successful in exciting careers in a fast-changing technology landscape,” said Filip Jagodzinski, computer sciences’ department chair.

— Kartik Murthy was named vice president of product for Yoodli, a roleplay platform using AI to help people improve their professional skills.

Murthy joins the Seattle-based startup from the cybersecurity company Coalition, where he served as head of product for four years. He has held product management roles at companies including Meta, Google and Uber. 

“In a world where many AI products try to automate workflows, Yoodli is taking a bet on humans and it’s already paying off,” Murthy said on LinkedIn.

— Phoebe Weiser is now an investor at the longtime Seattle venture firm Madrona. She joins from Databricks, where she worked as a product manager, and previously held internship and full-time roles at Microsoft.

“After building in security at Microsoft and data engineering at Databricks, I’m looking forward to partnering with the next generation of founders. I’m especially grateful to the managers, mentors, and teammates over the past few years for everything they taught me about building products at scale,” she said on LinkedIn.

— Salman Taherian is now head of AI for Grant Thornton, a Chicago firm offering audit, assurance, tax and advisory services. Taherian, who is based at the company’s office in Bellevue, Wash., joins from Amazon Web Services where he was global head of agentic AI and strategic partner accounts. Past employers include Wipro Limited and Relx.

— Two Fred Hutch Cancer Center researchers have received endowed chairs:

• Kate Markey, an assistant professor at Fred Hutch and UW Medicine, has received the Innovators Network Endowed Chair. Markey is a bone marrow transplant physician and studies how gut bacteria affect recovery for cancer patients.
• Sita Kugel, a pancreatic cancer researcher and Fred Hutch professor, is the inaugural recipient of the Leung Roy Family Endowed Chair.

— Jeff Weintraub was appointed chief operating officer and chief financial officer for Nabu, a Seattle startup that publicly launched this year that’s building tools for software product teams. Its co-founders are Jon Grant and Eric Thompson.

Weintraub was most recently at Apple for more than 12 years, leaving the role of director of consumer and enterprise support engineering. Earlier in his career he was with Intel and also owned a bathroom fixture manufacturing company.

China-linked UNK_MassTraction targets US and Canadian universities through Roundcube flaws, stealing sessions and opening access to research mail servers.