Ph.D. alumna Jessica Schiffman's award-winning squid sucker image.Humor site Cracked.com has selected Ph.D. alumna Jessica Schiffman's (Ph.D. 2009; advisor: Caroline Schuaer) award-winning micrograph, "Squid Suckers: The Little Monsters That Feed the Beast" as the #1 out of "11 Everyday Things That Are Terrifying Under a Microscope."
Schiffman's image received Honorable Mention in the Photography category of the sixth annual International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge (SciVis), sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the journal Science, published by the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in September 2008. Schiffman's image, compiled while researching chitin properties in the lab of Dr. Caroline Schauer, portrays the fanglike structures, 400 micrometers in diameter, that a squid uses to latch onto its prey.