How do birds fly south? Birds, bats, robots and adventures in flapping flight fluid mechanics

with Kenny Breuer, Professor of Engineering
Brown University

NEW LOCATION: Assembly Hall 
(Holtzman Alumni Center, The Inn)

12:30 – 1:30 PM
Friday, May 8, 2026

Who amongst us has not marveled at birds flying in formation or wondered how they achieve the amazing flight performance. While we humans have been flying for only a century or so, insects, birds and bats have ruled the skies for over 300 million years, and we are just beginning to understand some of the secrets that have enabled them to move with such elegance, economy, and agility. In this talk I will outline some of the work in my lab on fluid mechanics inspired by flying animals and describe some of our experiments and theories that characterize and model flapping flight. I will draw from a decade of work with live birds and bats as well as a series of engineered flapping-wing robots. I will focus on both experiments that characterize and quantify live animal flight, as well as on experiments that use engineered robotic systems that allow us to probe nature’s secrets in a controlled manner (“engineering-inspired biology”) as well to create motion that is inspired by nature (“biology-inspired engineering”).

Kenny Breuer received his Sc.B. from Brown University in Mechanical Engineering (1982) and his Ph.D. from MIT in Aeronautics and Astronautics (1988). He spent two years back at Brown as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Applied Mathematics and nine years on the faculty at MIT, before finally returning to Brown in 1999, where he is currently Professor of Engineering. In 2010 he received a courtesy appointment as Professor of Ecology, Evolution and Organismal Biology. From 2011 to 2014 he served as Senior Associate Dean of Engineering for Academic Programs. Professor Breuer has received a number of honors and awards including Fellow of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers (2013), Fellow of the American Physical Society (2010), Associate Fellow if the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (2013), Chair of the APS-Division of Fluid Dynamics (2012), National Merit Scholar (1978), ONR Graduate Fellowship (1982-7). He was selected as the Midwest Mechanics lecturer in 2008, and was the Paris Sciences Professor at ESPCI in 2015.