Professor Lorena A Barba, course instructor — Prof Barba teaches fluid mechanics (undergraduate) and computational fluid dynamics (graduate). Her courses can be found on iTunes U. She also does research in the area of computational fluid dynamics, numerical algorithms, and high-performance computing.

The links next to each student contributor’s name point to their respective blog posts. This list serves as an index to this site’s content.

EK 132 students (Fall 2012)

• Black, Samuel — “The Microraptor- Missing Link or Evolutionary Dead End?” — “The Next Generation of UAV”
• Booth, Virginia — “Evolution of flight : Flying from Gliding” — “The Desert Locust Shows the Importance of Wing Deformation in Insect Flight”
• Chen, Catherine — “Quetzalcoatlus: the SOAR Loser of Dinosaurs” — “To Fly Or Not to Fly? The Infamous Tale of Bumblebees”
• Damoura, Paulo — “The Pygmy Glider” — “Nano Hummingbird”
• Evans, Charles — “Colugos: The Geometrically Efficient” — “Hoverflies: No, They’re Not Bees”
• Fagundes, Dereck — “Recent Discoveries about the Evolution of Flying Fish” — “Ladybugs, a Soft Spot under that Hard Shell”
• Fowler, Cameron — “Flying Without Flapping: The Wandering Albatross and the Mechanics of Dynamic Soaring” — “Robobees: The Future of Micro Air Vehicles”
• Fox, Liam — “Scrawny Dino Couldn’t Have Lifted itself From the Ground” — “The Incredible Eye of the Fly”
• Gordon, Harris — “How different are gliders really?” — “The Fly Flies”
• Le, Melinda — “You’ve Heard of Flying Squirrels, But Have You Heard of Flying Squid?” — “An Unconventional Lift-Enhancing Mechanism: Clap and Fling”
• Leach, Patrick — “On the Day that Pigs Can Fly” — “This Fisherman Doesn’t Need a Pole”
• Lee, Nathan — “How GPS has Helped Uncover the Secrets of the Wandering Albatross” — “Benefits of Quad-Rotor Electric Craft”
• Liang, Victoria — “Cephalotes atratus, the gliding Darth Vader of the ant world” — “Kestrels and Windhovering”
• Lindell, William
• Maita, Anthony — “Mammals: Falling With Style” — “How Hummingbirds Hover”
• Melleby, Matthew — “Having Venom Just Wasn’t Enough: The Flying Snake” — “Ducks: The Familiar Swimmer”
• Miller, David — “It’s a Bird; It’s a Plane; It’s a…Cucumber? An Examination of the Stabilizing Characteristics of Alsomitra Macrocarpa” — “Hummingbird Hovering and the Aerodynamics of Wing Vortices”
• Millward, Alexander — “Gliding- Parlor Trick, or Vanishing Act?” — “Swarming: A Team Sport for UAVs”
• Nelson, Travis — “Quetzalcoatlus: largest flying animal…or not?” — “Clap-flinging to a faster lift-off”
• Owney, Matthew — “Origin of Flight: The Archaeopteryx” — “The World Through the Eyes of a Fly”
• Perry, Galen — “Partridge in a Pear Tree: But How did it Get There?” — “Bio-Inspired is the Future”
• Schiller, Austin — “Gust soaring as a basis for the flight of petrels and albatrosses (Procellariiformes)” — “Insects- How Their Wings Work”
• Soni, Yash — “A Downside to Dynamic Soaring?” — “Winged Robotic Cockroach Informs Debate on Evolution of Flight”
• Vickerson, Zachary — “Don’t rule out the Pterosaur as King of the Skies Yet” — “Indirect flight muscles in insects”
• Yoon, Andrew — “Flying Missiles” — “Humming…Moth?”

EK 131 students (Fall 2012)

• Akbulut, Mehmet — “The Shape Factor” — “Owl: Silent and Swift”
• Basu, Neeraj — “The Ruppells Griffon Vulture; The Highest Recorded Flying Bird” — “Nature vs Nurture: How do baby birds learn how to fly?”
• Brown, Matthew — “Pelecanus Onocrotalus, Great White Pelican” — “Moths: Wings Are For More Than Flying”
• Cardona, Andres — “It’s a Bird, It’s a Plane … It’s a flying draco!” — “The BATtle of flight”
• Chen, Jeffrey — “Fishy Flying” — “Tail-or made for flight”
• Coyle, Emily — “The Plane that Lands Like a Bird” — “Flying Phalanger“
• David, Natalie — “Birds, Planes, and Helicopters, Oh My” — “Robotic Flies“
• De Carli, Dean — “It’s not only fine feathers that make fine birds” — “Finding the Right Tailwind“
• Diorio, Thomas — “The Locust swarm – a threat to the global economy” — “The Galapagos Islands: A Perfect Example Of Why Nature Should Be Preserved”
• Ejorh, Dennis — “Complex flight of the honey bee” — “The Flying Lemur“
• Jung, Samuel — “One of a Kind” — “Who needs wings when you have ribs mmmmmmm”
• Kasper, Matthew — “Need For Speed: The Hawk Moth” — “Microraptor: A Link Between Birds and Dinosaurs?“
• Liang, Henry — “The Pigeon Post” — “They Said It Could Never Fly”
• Liang, Tony — “The Hummincopter” — “Flies: The New Psychics?”
• Lin, Earl — “Drangoflies, the mystical insect” — “Like Spiderman”
• McCullough, John — “Bats: a new evolutionary breed & a new kind of flight” — “Flight of the Honeybee”
• Mcnellis, Christopher — “Archaeopteryx – First Bird or Transitional Species?” — “The Common Swift – Anything but Ordinary“
• Neves, Lucas — “Why do birds fly in formation?” — “Obstacle avoidance in flying robots”
• Quinn, Jamie — “How Butterflies Fly” — “Turning on a Dime”
• Schwartz, Daniel — “Wing-Suits: Humans Surpassing Animals in Flight” — “Flying Snakes, Oh My!”
• Tierney, Joseph — “The Not So Flying Flying Lemur (Which Isn’t Even a Lemur)” — “Synchronized Flight – The Starling”
• Torres Monteagudo, Maria Fernanda — “Human powered ornithopters- Biomechanics at its best!” — “The terror of prehistoric skies may have not been able to fly?”
• Vasilyonok, Daniel — “An Acrobatic Speed Demon-The Peregrine Falcon” — “The Amphibious Bird”
• Zubillaga Herrera, Andres — “Desert locusts: Nature’s marathon flyers” — The Albatross: The Master of Dynamic Soaring
• Zurita, Jeffrey — “Birds Might Dive But Squids Can Fly!” —“Because Hopping Around Is So Last Season!”