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Schedule including this lecture.
Goddard Space Flight Center Engineering Colloquium
Date: Monday, October 29, 2001
Subjected to the same physical laws and resulting selective processes, animate and engineered flying machines exhibit important -- but limited -- convergence in form and function. While past efforts to completely emulate bird flight may have been inappropriate, in the drive to create small, autonomous flying machines, engineers are again -- and correctly -- looking to birds for inspiration. However, all birds are not the same, and the key to the success of modern emulations may be picking the right bird.
Douglas Warrick grew up in rural northern Nebraska and earned his pilot's license at 17. He earned a PhD in Biology from the University of Montana in 1997. He worked for a biological consulting firm from 1987 until 1992, including work on the Exxon Valdez oil spill. He is currently an Assistant Professor of Biology at Minot State University in North Dakota, with research interests in functional morphology, (with special interest in avian flight structures); behavioral ecology (predator/prey relationships, foraging strategies); locomotor performance (maneuvering performance and prey capture/evasion performance) and biomechanics.
Colloquium Committee Sponsor: Barbara Pfarr
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