That was the idea behind a $3 million (WRF) grant to hire four biology professors. It鈥檚 called a cluster hire and will help maintain the 天美影视传媒鈥檚 leading reputation in primary research and life sciences.

鈥淲RF has been assisting UW Biology for more than a decade with recruiting and retaining key faculty.聽 We wanted to support (Department Chair) Toby Bradshaw鈥檚 plan for a cluster hire because we believe it will lead to great collaborations and research with significant impact.聽 We look forward to getting to know the new investigators and their areas of research,鈥� said WRF CEO Ron Howell.

The Department of Biology has been planning for the hires for about six years, said . It鈥檚 important to enhance the region鈥檚 research capability in integrative and collaborative biology. The new faculty, recognized as Washington Research Foundation Distinguished Investigators, will help train the next generation of life scientists in what is already the largest STEM undergraduate degree program in Washington.

And the new hiring process will reinvent the way faculty at the UW are recruited by explicitly seeking faculty who will foster connections with other academic departments at the university.

The UW screened more than 1,000 applicants for the four positions.

鈥淭hese are the top young scientists in the field of biology, and they鈥檙e being recruited by everyone,鈥� Bradshaw said.

The challenge, then, is how to recruit them to the UW.

A brand-new building is one way, and having backers like the WRF is another, Bradshaw said. 鈥淭he new Life Sciences Building is a tremendous draw,鈥� he said

WRF has been a leading supporter of innovations at the UW spanning the life sciences, engineering, data science and more since 1985.

鈥淭hey鈥檝e been incredibly generous. This grant is another example of that,鈥� Bradshaw said.

The Biology Department鈥檚 been bursting at the seams for years, unable to bring on new people because of a lack of space in Kincaid, Hitchcock, and Johnson Halls. Now, that鈥檚 changed.

UW鈥檚 Biology Department is known for its integrative approach. The new facility will play to that strength, Bradshaw said.

鈥淭he best ideas are generated and pursued in collaboration,鈥� he said. 鈥淭here are key features in this building designed to promote social interactions and vital collaboration.鈥�

Gone are the days of each faculty member having her or his own lab, Bradshaw said. Instead, space is shared to encourage comingling of faculty, researchers and students. It should help the department continue to soar and build on its already strong national reputation.

鈥淲e would like to be the hub for basic life sciences research,鈥� Bradshaw said.

The Washington Research Foundation Distinguished Investigators will start in fall 2018.

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A involving hawk moths 鈥� a close relative of the species made famous by the film “Silence of the Lambs” 鈥� was published April 15 in the ‘s journal .

Since long before Charles Darwin, ecologists have been fascinated by flower shape, and in particular how animal pollinators have shaped the evolution of floral traits.

But studying the impact of flower shape on pollinator behavior is difficult.

Ecologists have either relied on plant breeding (which means they can only study flower shapes found in nature) or have made flowers by hand from papier mache (which can be time consuming and could make it difficult for ecologists to test each other’s results).

Now, graduate student and fellow UW biologists have used 3-D printing to make artificial flowers so they can investigate how flower shape affects foraging behavior in the , or Manduca sexta.

Also known as the tobacco hornworm because the larvae feed on tobacco, the hawk moth is common in the southern and southeastern regions of the U.S. With a thumb-sized body and fist-sized wingspan, adult moths are adept at flying and hovering, which they do to feed from trumpet-shaped flowers such as petunias.

The researchers made flowers of two different shapes, one curved like a trumpet and the other a flat disc with a hole in the center. After filling each artificial flower with sugar water to simulate a real flower’s nectar, they arranged equal numbers of curved and flat flowers on a square grid. They then allowed hawk moths to fly freely around the artificial flowers for five minutes and compared how many of each flower shape the moths emptied.

“With their long proboscis and nocturnal habits, finding a flower’s nectar source isn’t easy for the fist-sized hawk moths we used in our study,” Campos said. “Imagine being given a garden hose that’s almost twice your height in length. Now imagine trying to thread the other end through a hole that’s scarcely wider than the hose itself 鈥� at dusk as the sun is setting or at night during a full moon. It may seem like a silly proposition, but it’s not too far off from what night-flying hawk moths have to contend with to get a meal.”They found the moths fed much more successfully from the curved than the flat flowers, which suggests that this nocturnal species is using touch rather than sight as the primary means of finding nectar.

By showing how 3-D printing can be used to make artificial flowers, the research opens up new ways for ecologists to study animal pollinators and the evolutionary role they play in shaping the flowers we see in nature today.

“3-D printing is a unique opportunity to explore the interactions between floral form and pollinator performance,” Campos said. “Such studies can help elucidate the details of how pollinator visitation influences the evolution of floral shape in nature, and the extent to which floral forms are the result of specializations between one plant and one pollinator species.”

Co-authors are , chair and professor of biology, and , professor of biology and director of the new at the UW.

The research was funded by the Office of Naval Research, the National Institutes of Health and a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship.

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This story was adapted from a British Ecological Society news release. For more information or to see the 3-D printed flowers, contact Campos at eocampos@uw.edu.