My name is Ethan (he/him). I’m a fourth-year PhD student at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the Quantitative Biosciences (QBioS) program. My thesis explores the nexus of muscle physiology, materials science, and dynamical systems models of insect flight. I’m a Rhode Island native and completed my undergraduate degree at Brown University in Biology and Geophysics.

Feel free to connect with me if you have questions about my work or would like to chat.

muscle physiology x insect flight x evolution

Insects flap at very particular frequencies - think of the sound a mosquito makes as it buzzes by your ear. Why is it nearly always the same pitch? And why that pitch specifically? The answer turns out to be complicated, and depends on interactions between specialized flight muscle, springy exoskeleton, and tiny wings moving through a fluid environment.

I perform experiments on insect exoskeleton and muscle, and develop biophysical models of insects as mechanical resonators to understand why and how insects are capable of such remarkable feats of agility. Whenever possible, I place my measurements in the context of phylogeny to better understand how integrated biomechanical systems evolve. Along with my engineering collaborators, we then apply principles of insect flight actuation and control to develop cutting-edge flapping-wing micro-aerial robots.

I’m currently on the lookout for postdoc or job opportunities that will allow me to apply my expertise in experimental muscle physiology and biomaterials testing, quantitative data analysis, and biophysical modeling. I excel at communicating complex topics across disciplines and routinely collaborate with evolutionary biologists, neuroscientists, engineers, physicists, and computer scientists in my work.