<aside> 👥 September 16, 2024 It’s been an exciting summer! From Kaleb Bordner and Francisco Jackson leading experimental studies with our collaborators at ARL to Joshua Booth setting up a new wind tunnel experiment here at Davis, we have some exciting things on the horizon.
This quarter we get to welcome Faiza Alvi, our incoming PhD student, and two new master students Alex Fillman and Evan Wandrocke!
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/departures_purple.svg" alt="/icons/departures_purple.svg" width="40px" /> July 30, 2024 Dr. Christina Harvey had the pleasure to attend ASME’s Smart Materials, Adaptive Structures, and Intelligent Systems (SMASIS) to deliver an invited talk. It was wonderful to see new and old friends alike and get excited about the next steps in the field!
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/departures_purple.svg" alt="/icons/departures_purple.svg" width="40px" /> August 7, 2024 Congrats to Dr. Alfonso Martínez for delivering his first keynote talk at a workshop for the AFOSR-sponsored Bio-Insired Sensing and Control Collaborative International Team (BISCCIT).
</aside>
<aside> 👥 June 14, 2024 As it’s the end of the school year, we have many changes to our team.
Welcome to Cooper Cook, Gaurav Dhirar, and Joshua Booth who will be tackling different projects relating to morphing and feathers.
We are sad to be saying goodbye to Rowan Glenn, Lucas Dahlke, Logan Reuter, Ellie Hintzman, and Alex Kerlee at different points over the summer. They all played important roles getting the lab started and will be missed!
Finally, Kaleb Bordner and Francisco Jackson are headed out (just for the summer!) to ARL to work with our collaborators including the wonderful Dr. Kevin Haughn .
</aside>
<aside> 📄 April 24, 2024 A new paper was published in The Journal of the Royal Society Interface! In this paper, an LPV bird flight dynamics model was implemented and the scheduled elbow and wrist angles used to morph between configurations were optimized to obtain optimal flight dynamics characteristics.
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/departures_purple.svg" alt="/icons/departures_purple.svg" width="40px" /> April 23, 2024 Dr. Christina Harvey visited Brown University for an invited seminar. What a beautiful new wind tunnel and wonderful discussions!
</aside>
<aside> 👥 March 25, 2024 Welcome to Mija Jovchevska who is visiting us supported by the Journal of Experimental Biology ECR Visiting Fellowship to collaborate with the team on our ongoing projects.
</aside>
<aside> 📄 March 21, 2024 A new paper, led by Dr. Kevin Haughn, was published in Communications Engineering! In this paper, we used deep reinforcement learning to develop controllers for a camber morphing wing that were capable of rejecting gust disturbance based on pressure tap readings. Of note, we found that controllers developed with only three pressure taps performed similarly to controllers with six.
Kevin also wrote a blog post about the work!
</aside>
<aside> 👥 February 16, 2024 Welcome to Stevi Dunn and Ellie Hintzman the latest BIRD Lab undergraduate researchers! They will be working in collaboration with BIRD lab grad studentsKaleb Bordner and Francisco Jackson, respectively.
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/cash_green.svg" alt="/icons/cash_green.svg" width="40px" /> February 1, 2024 We are excited to announce that we were selected to receive a DURIP from the Army Research Office to support the establishment of a bird flight research hall in collaboration with Dr. Michelle Hawkins at the California Raptor Center! The new $2.9M equipment grant will allow the purchase of high speed motion capture and photogrammetry of birds in flight to explore maneuverability, adaptability, and to enhance rehabilitation efforts.
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/departures_purple.svg" alt="/icons/departures_purple.svg" width="40px" /> January 17, 2024 Dr. Christina Harvey visited Utah State University to give the Launch Your Engineering Career keynote and meet with collaborators.
</aside>
<aside> 🏆 January 12, 2024 Rowan Glenn won the Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award! This award is given to the highest ranking paper and presentation in aerospace design and structures at AIAA SciTech Forum. Their work was in collaboration with Lucas Dahlke who led the aerodynamic work in the paper and the Museum of Wildlife and Fish Biology. Congrats to all!
</aside>
<aside> 👥 November 27, 2023 Welcome to Dr. Alfonso Martínez, the first BIRD Lab post doctoral fellow! He will be leading work relating to unsteady avian maneuvering in collaboration with Dr. Michelle Hawkins and the team at the California Raptor Center.
</aside>
<aside> 🏆 October 16, 2023 Dr. Christina Harvey was named as a 2023 Packard Fellow! This grant from The David and Lucile Packard Foundation supports blue sky research and will enable the lab to pursue new and exciting questions in the field!
</aside>
<aside> <img src="/icons/cash_green.svg" alt="/icons/cash_green.svg" width="40px" /> October 10, 2023 We are grateful for new funding support from the UC Davis College of Engineering Next Level Research initiative that will supportFrancisco Jackson’s and Alex Kerlee’s projects!
</aside>
<aside> 👥 September 25, 2023 Welcome to Huanglun (Adam) Zhu who will be assisting Kiran Weston who is visiting this quarter and will be running some wind tunnel experiments Stay tuned for the results.
</aside>
<aside> 👥 September 25, 2023 Welcome to Alex Kerlee the latest BIRD Lab undergraduate researcher! She will be working on a project in collaboration with Prof. Seongkyu Lee using FlightStream.
</aside>
<aside> 🏆 August 28, 2023 Congrats to our wonderful collaborator Dr. Michelle Hawkins for winning the T.J. Lafeber Avian Practitioner of the Year Award! We’re so lucky to have you on the team!
</aside>