Michael Hughes Dickinson

Dr. Michael Hughes Dickinson is the Esther M. and Abe M. Zarem Professor of Bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology. Dickinson makes fundamental contributions to our understanding of the biomechanics and neurobiology of flight behavior using Drosophila melanogaster. The Dickinson lab uses an interdisciplinary approach combining cell physiology, biomechanics, fluid mechanics, mathematics, and robotics in order to study the material basis of insect flight. Dickinson uses further uses the phenomenon of flight in insects as a model to provide insight into the behavior and robustness of complex systems, integrating insights from both the biomechanics and behavior of flight.  Dickinson received his BS from Brown University, his PhD from University of Washington, and has held positions at University of Chicago, University of California, Berkeley, University of Washington, and the California Institute of Technology. He has received numerous awards for his research, including the Larry Sandler Award from the Genetics Society of America, a Bartholomew Award for Comparative Physiology from the American Society of Zoologists, a Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering, the Quantrell Award for Excellence in Undergraduate teaching, and a MacArthur Foundation Fellowship. His publications appear in Nature, Nature Neuroscience, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, and Science.