Faculty/staff honors: Lifetime achievement award, Plyler Prize, Rome Prize fellowship

March 9, 2026

Faculty/staff honors: Lifetime achievement award, Plyler Prize, Rome Prize fellowship

W statue in front of Memorial Way sycamore trees

Affiliate professor of biology receives 2026 Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award Sue Moore, a research scientist and affiliate professor in the Center for Ecosystem Sentinels in the Department of Biology at the University of Washington, was honored with the 2026 Kenneth S. Norris Lifetime Achievement Award from the Society for Marine Mammalogy. The award recognizes exemplary lifetime contributions to science and society through research, teaching, and service in marine mammalogy. Over a 40-year career, Moore’s research has focused on cetacean ecology,…

February 13, 2025

Q&A: How 12 UW researchers fell in love with their research

A graphic with a heart that says "UW researchers share their love stories"

For Valentine’s Day, UW News asked 12 University of Washington researchers to share their love stories: What made them decide to pursue their career paths?

March 6, 2024

Scientists CT-scanned thousands of natural history specimens, which you can access for free

Natural history museums have entered a new stage of discovery and accessibility — one where scientists around the globe and curious folks at home can access valuable museum specimens to study, learn or just be amazed. This new era follows the completion of openVertebrate, or oVert, a five-year collaborative project among 18 institutions to create 3D reconstructions of vertebrate specimens and make them freely available online. The team behind this endeavor, which includes scientists at the University of Washington and its Burke Museum of Natural History & Culture, published a summary of the project March 6 in the journal BioScience, offering a glimpse of how the data can be used to ask new questions and spur the development of innovative technology.

July 20, 2021

New 3D images of shark intestines show they function like Nikola Tesla’s valve

For more than a century, researchers have relied on flat sketches of sharks’ digestive systems to discern how they function — and how what they eat and excrete impacts other species in the ocean. Now, researchers have produced a series of high-resolution, 3D scans of intestines from nearly three dozen shark species that will advance the understanding of how sharks eat and digest their food.

March 30, 2020

Faculty/staff honors: Outstanding educator in landscape architecture, Royal Society of Edinburgh corresponding fellowship — and the Green Rat Clingfish takes a bow

A Green Rat Clingfish, Barryichthys algicola, from St. Helens, Tasmania.

Recent honors to University of Washington faculty and staff have come from the Council of Educators in Landscape Architecture, the Royal Society of Edinburgh and the World Register of Marine Species.

October 15, 2019

Piranha fish swap old teeth for new simultaneously

With the help of new technologies, a team led by the University of Washington has confirmed that piranhas — and their plant-eating cousins, pacus — lose and regrow all the teeth on one side of their face multiple times throughout their lives. How they do it may help explain why the fish go to such efforts to replace their teeth.

October 2, 2019

Inspired by Northern clingfish, researchers make a better suction cup

A University of Washington team inspired by the clingfish’s suction power set out to develop an artificial suction cup that borrows from nature’s design. Their prototype actually performed better than the clingfish.

June 15, 2018

Study: Undergrad research experiences make a noticeable difference

A new analysis suggests the value of structured research programs for undergraduates extends to society as a whole by encouraging participants to seek advanced degrees in scientific and technological fields.

January 17, 2018

Scale-eating fish adopt clever parasitic methods to survive

A small group of fishes — possibly the world’s cleverest carnivorous grazers — feeds on the scales of other fish in the tropics. A team led by biologists at the University of Washington’s Friday Harbor Laboratories is trying to understand these scale-feeding fish and how this odd diet influences their body evolution and behavior.

December 14, 2017

Loose skin and slime protect hagfishes from sharks

A hagfish, left, is pursued by a predator.

Researchers from the University of Washington, Chapman University and University of Guelph have published new research showing how hagfishes survive an initial attack from predators before they release large volumes of slime to defend themselves.

August 24, 2017

Scientists to create digital encyclopedia of 3-D vertebrate specimens

A $2.5 million National Science Foundation grant will daylight thousands of specimens from their museum shelves by CT scanning 20,000 vertebrates and making these data-rich, 3-D images available online to researchers, educators, students and the public. The University of Washington is a partner institution contributing most of the fish and bat scans.

September 8, 2016

Tag: Adam Summers