The Simons Foundation announced on June 16 the launch of the Simons Collaboration on Ocean Processes and Ecology (SCOPE), funded through a major grant that will be distributed among numerous universities for research focused on microbes in the ocean. Ginger Armbrust, professor and director of the School of Oceanography at the University of Washington College of the Environment, is one of eight investigators to receive funding to conduct research.
Read more »
The College of the Environment is pleased to announce Meryl Mims and Charlie Waters—both of the School of Aquatic and Fishery Sciences—as the first recipients of the Hall Conservation Genetics Research Award, which is made possible by a generous gift from the Benjamin and Margaret Hall Charitable Lead Trust. Meryl is doctoral candidate working on a project entitled “Conservation genetics of a Distinct Population Segment of the cryptic dryland amphibian Hyla wrightorum (the Arizona treefrog)” along with her faculty advisor Julian Olden.
Read more »
Comb jellies – and not sponges – may lay claim as the earliest ancestors of animals, according to Billie Swalla, University of Washington professor of biology an interim director of Friday Harbor Laboratories. Her contributions helped decode the genomic blueprints for 10 ctenophore – or comb jelly – species, an analysis that suggests these beautiful sea creatures form the first branch on the animal kingdom’s tree of life.
Read more at UW Today »The Washington Research Foundation (WRF), a private nonprofit group that funds research and initiatives to commercialize innovations in the state, is making a $30 million grant to University of Washington efforts in data science, clean energy, protein design, and neuroengineering. The grant will help to attract and retain top tier faculty and post-doctoral researchers who work across multiple disciplines, with an emphasis on entrepreneurial researchers adept at advancing scientific discoveries from laboratory to society.
Read more »
A partnership between the University of Washington and Alaska Department of Fish and Game has yielded a major breakthrough in DNA ‘fin-printing’ this week, improving the ability to conserve diminishing stocks of Chinook salmon. Implementing the new technique will allow scientists and managers to track specific stocks ensuring that no specific stock is overharvested. The results have been published in the journals Canadian Journal of Fisheries and Aquatic Sciences and Evolutionary Applications.
Read more »
