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Joining the lab: I’m looking for enthusiastic, energetic and talented students to join the lab as Ph.D. candidates. There are opportunities work on existing projects or establish your own research direction using the equipment and resources in the lab, at UNC, Duke and with other collaborators around the United States. Current lab research topics include the biomechanics of animal flight, stability and maneuverability in animal locomotion, and the neural control of movement.

These topics demand an inter-disciplinary approach, so as a student in the lab you’ll likely end up working alongside mechanical and aerospace engineers, neurophysiologists, mathematicians as well as getting a broad education in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology through one of the different Ph.D. tracks in the department. If you think you might be interested, send me an email with your background, goals and interests and we’ll see if UNC might be a good place for you. The University of North Carolina offers two different Ph.D. admissions path – traditional admissions through the Biology department and the campus-wide Biological & Biomedical Sciences Program. Both paths have their advantages; please contact me if you’re interested in applying and we will decide which option works best for you.

Post-doctoral researchers are also welcome, either funded internally to work on lab projects or to write their own grants and pursue independent projects. Feel free to contact me about post-doctoral projects, even if you’re not entirely finished with your Ph.D. and need to develop a plan for what comes next.

My lab also has room for undergraduate assistants. If you’re an undergraduate interested in joining please contact me directly. I currently need research assistants to help with flight experiments on hawkmoths, analyze video data, and create software to help with the aforementioned tasks. Research assistants may be volunteers, be paid either through the campus work-study program or directly by the lab, or receive course credit as a directed undergraduate research project in BIOL 395 or Biology Honors.