Dr. Emily Carrington is Professor of Biology at the University of Washington.  She leads a marine biomechanics research group based in the Department of Biology in Seattle and at the Friday Harbor Laboratories in the San Juan Islands.  For over two decades, she has focused on the mechanical design of marine invertebrates and macroalgae, especially those that thrive in one of the most physically challenging habitats on earth, the wave-swept rocky intertidal zone.  Her work on the ecomechanics of mussels and their byssal attachment links materials science, fluid mechanics, organismal biology and environmental science to develop mechanistic understanding of how coastal organisms will fare in changing ocean climates.

Dr. Carrington studied Biological Sciences at Cornell University (BA 1985) and  Stanford University (PhD 1992).  She was a postdoctoral fellow in Dr. John Gosline’s laboratory at UBC before joining the faculty of the Department of Biological Sciences at the University of Rhode Island in 1995.  She has been on the faculty of the UW Department of Biology since 2005.  From 2016-2019, served as a Program Director in the Directorate for Biological Sciences at the National Science Foundation in Alexandria VA.