Dr. Michael Dickinson’s lab studies the flight behavior of insects. Lab members combine their interests in cellular physiology, biomechanics, aerodynamics and neuroscience to build an integrated model of insect flight.
Dickinson studied neuroscience as an undergraduate at Brown University and he developed an interest in insect flight while he was a PhD student in zoology at the University of Washington. Following a short post-doc at the Max Planck Institute for Biological Cybernetics, Dickinson joined the faculty at the University of Chicago in 1991. In 1996, he moved to the University of California, Berkeley, and he moved to his current position as the Esther and Abe M Zarem Professor of Bioengineering and Aeronautics at the California Institute of Technology in 2002. Dickinson co-directed the Neural Systems & Behavior summer course at the Marine Biological Lab in Woods Hole, MA from 2005 to 2007 and he continues to be involved in teaching in the course. He is also a monitoring editor at the Journal of Experimental Biology.
Dickinson’s pioneering research has been recognized by a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship in 2001 and election to the American Academy of Arts and Science in 2008.
