Insect Flight: From Newton’s law to Neurons

Department of Mechanical Engineering & Materials Science Fall Seminar Series

"Insect Flight: From Newton's law to Neurons"

Jane Wang
Cornell University

Abstract: Insects are the first evolved to fly, and to fly is not to fall. How does an insect fly, why does it fly so well, and how can we infer its 'thoughts' from its flight dynamics? We have been seeking mechanistic explanations of the complex movement of insect flight. Starting from the Navier-Stokes equations governing the unsteady aerodynamics of flapping flight, we worked to build a theoretical framework for computing flight. This has led to new interpretations and predictions of the functions of an insect's internal machinery that orchestrate its flight. I will discuss our recent computational and experimental studies of the balancing act of dragonflies and fruit flies: how a dragonfly recovers from falling upside-down and how a fly balances in air. In each case, the physics of flight informs us about the neural feedback circuitries underlying their fast reflexes.

Bio: Jane Wang is a professor of Physics and of Mechanical Engineering at Cornell. She received her PhD in Physics from University of Chicago in 1996. She was then a NSF-NATO postdoctoral fellow at Oxford and a visiting member at Courant Institute, before joining Cornell in 1999. She has a broad interest in the physics of living systems, and has devoted much of her work to understanding insect flight.

Host: Mitchell Smooke