What a difference a year makes. Last year James Simmons, professor of neuroscience and an expert in bat echolocation, won the 2012 North American Society for Bat Research Gerrit Miller Jr. Award but he received it only a couple of weeks ago. “I have learned that the Gerrit Miller Jr. Award was made to me at the 2012 NASBR Meeting in San Juan, Puerto Rico, but held in secret from me until this year's meeting in San Jose, Costa Rica,” he said. "At the last minute, I could not go to the Puerto Rico meeting, so they deferred its presentation.” The delayed timing turned out to be serendipitous, Simmons said. "This award comes at a time when my lab has completed a decades-long effort to understand how bat sonar ‘works’ as a system, with the goal of designing a biologically inspired sonar for the Office of Naval Research. The award means a lot to me because it was given by colleagues of long standing whose work I respect.”Read more