Grace Leuchtenberger, UW Biology graduate student, was named a recipient of the 2026 Katherine S. McCarter Graduate Student Policy Award (GSPA) by The Ecological Society of America. Grace is one of 20 students awarded the GSPA award this year. Students in the 2026 cohort are engaged in advocacy with an interest in science policy. Awardees will travel to Washington, D.C., for policy, communication…

Willem Laursen, UW Biology Assistant Professor, has been awarded an early-career fellowship from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. Awarded this year to 126 of the most innovative young scientists across the U.S. and Canada, the Sloan Research Fellowships are one of the most competitive and prestigious awards available to early-career scholars. They are also often seen as a marker of the quality of…

Greetings from the Greenhouse! We are pleased to remind everyone that we have ongoing public hours for 2026. Our hours this year remain the same: Wednesdays 12pm-4pm and 2nd and 4th Saturdays 10am-2pm. On a cold and rainy Seattle winter day the greenhouse is approaching 75°F and always “sunny”. Most days we can offer something new to see or smell and we would love to see you,…

Emma Guerrini Romano, Biology graduate student, was featured in the Chinook Observer on her work researching the basic biology of burrowing shrimp, a native pest species in Willapa Bay, with the goal of helping shellfish farmers control the shrimp populations.Excerpt from the Chinook Observer article:Burrowing shrimp are a well-documented native pest species in Willapa Bay that…

Sievert Rohwer, Biology Professor Emeritus and Curator Emeritus at the UW Burke Museum, and his son Vanya Gregor Rohwer, curator of birds and mammals at the Cornell University Museum of Vertebrates were featured in The New York Times on their work studying filoplumes. They believe that the filoplume - a tiny, hairlike feather on bird bodies - is a key player in the monitoring and maintenance of…

Chris Law, UW Biology Acting Instructor and affiliate curator at the UW Burke Museum, was interviewed in a UW News Q&A about his new research, which suggests that two different climate transitions millions of years ago fueled the diversification of carnivoran body plans. The findings were published on December 16 in Proceedings of the Royal Society B.Excerpt from the UW News Q&A:The…

Melanie Cham (Strömberg Lab) and Felipe Garzón-Agudelo (Rico-Guevara Lab) were awarded a Simons Foundation awards. The purpose of these awards is to provide support for students entering U.S.-based Ph.D. programs with a plan to perform research in ecology and evolution.Sophia Jannetty (Bagheri Lab) was awarded the 2025-26 Washington Space Grant Dissertation Completion Award.…

We are proud to announce the undergraduate and graduate departmental award winners for the 2025 Autumn quarter. We awarded over $60,000 in scholarships and research awards, as well as funded twelve quarters of graduate fellowship support! We are especially grateful to the generous donors and supporters who make these Biology awards, scholarships, and fellowships possible for our…

Alejandro Rico-Guevara, UW Biology associate professor and curator of ornithology at the UW Burke Museum, was featured in a UW News article about research on the bill shape of green hermit hummingbirds. Compared to their female counterparts, male green hermits’ bills are straighter, sharper and structurally stronger. The straighter bills work better as weapons, while female birds’ more…

Berry Brosi, UW Biology Professor, was featured in a story by UW Coninuum College on his work partnering with UW Summer Sessions to develop the online, asynchronous "Introduction to Conservation Biology" (BIOL 126) course. Each year, Summer Sessions invests in the development of new online offerings, and in 2025, BIOL 126 was one of four new courses supported through this…