06/12/2024
Congratulations Dr. George Uetz, Professor, Biological Sciences on being elected as a 2023 AAAS Fellow.
George Uetz, Professor of Biological Sciences at the University of Cincinnati, in Cincinnati, Ohio, has been elected as a 2023 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS). UC News article: https://www.uc.edu/news/articles/2024/05/ucs-brett-and-uetz-honored-with-aaas-fellowships.html
After earning a B.A. in Biology at Albion College in Michigan, an M.S. in Entomology and Wildlife Biology at the University of Delaware, and a PhD in Ecology from the University of Illinois, Dr. Uetz joined the faculty of UC in 1976 as an Assistant Professor and rose through the academic ranks to Full Professor in 1988. In 1996-97, he served as Program Officer for Animal Behavior at the National Science Foundation. Uetz was elected a Fellow of the UC Graduate School in 1998, an honor that recognizes distinguished researchers and scholars from throughout the university. Since 2000, Uetz has served as UC Faculty representative to the Federal Demonstration Partnership (FDP) and is a member of the Faculty Steering Committee. He has served as Associate Dean for Research in the College of Arts & Sciences from 2003-2007 and as Head of the Biological Sciences department from 2015-2018. In 2016, he received the George Rieveschl, Jr. Award for Distinguished Scientific Research. In 2020 he received the Animal Behavior Society Exemplar Award, in recognition of major long-term contributions to the field of Animal Behavior, and in 2021 he received a Distinguished Alumni Award from the University of Delaware, College of Agriculture and Natural Resources. Over the span of the last 47 years, Dr. Uetz has mentored 44 graduate students, 7 post-docs and 197 undergraduate research students and repeatedly received the University of Cincinnati Distinguished Undergraduate Research Mentoring Award.
Dr. Uetz is regarded as a national and international leader in the study of animal behavior and arachnology (study of spiders). The impact of Dr. Uetz’s more than 45 years of research extends far beyond spiders, as he is the author of 170 widely cited articles in some of the field’s leading journals. Uetz’s expansive body of work marks a seminal contribution to the larger study of animal behavior and communication.
One of Uetz’s earliest contributions came when, following up on data collected as a doctoral student, he discovered how differences in courtship and communication contributed to the evolutionary origin of a new species of wolf spiders. Another pioneering discovery came in the late 1980s, when he and then-PhD student David Clark developed the use of video playback to study spider behaviors, a breakthrough that is now used by labs worldwide to study birds, mammals, fish, cephalopods and other organisms. Dr. Uetz and his team have since expanded the technique to include other forms of multi-sensory communication, including vibration and chemical signals.
