Peter Narins has received the Hugh Knowles Prize for Distinguished Achievement from Northwestern University. A distinguished professor of integrative biology and physiology at UCLA, Narins focuses on how animals extract relevant sounds from the often highly noisy backgrounds in which they live and is an expert on the use of ultrasonic signals by frogs to influence other frogs’ behavior.
He is currently working on a joint project in Malaysian Borneo with scientists from Brunei, Spain and the United States who are trying to identify new amphibian species that produce and can detect ultrasound. Another ongoing joint project with herpetologists from Spain and Romania involves quantifying the effect of anthropogenic vibrations on the communication system of the European Fire-bellied toad. Narins is the lead author of a forthcoming article on the history of amphibian bioacoustics.
“To many of us in the hearing sciences, Peter Narins is the ultimate adventurer,” said Sumit Dhar, Hugh Knowles Professor of Hearing Sciences at Northwestern. “He has asked the most interesting questions of the most interesting species in the most interesting corners of the globe. Through his adventures we know a lot about acoustics, communication, animal behavior and hearing that we would have not known otherwise.”
The Hugh Knowles Prize is awarded for outstanding achievement in research or treatment of hearing disorders and has typically recognized work focused on physiology and anatomy.
“I personally know almost all the people who have received it in the past, and I’m humbled. They’re sensational,” Narins said.
