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Floris van Breugel, PhD
Floris is an assistant professor at the University of Nevada, Reno. He runs the flies, robots, and data lab. Floris is interested in biomechanics, controls, neuroscience, data, system identification, moving sensors, complex behavior, ecology, and data visualization. When not studying flies, programming robots, or analyzing data, you’ll find him in deserts or on mountains, on foot, skis, ropes, or bikes.
Current Lab Members
Austin is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering, building a new kind of wind tunnel for studying how insects explore windy environments.
Arunava is a PhD student Mechanical Engineering, and is working on measuring real world chemical plumes at large spatial scales and developing algorithms to track them.
Toha is a Mechanical Engineering PhD student working on developing algorithms for odor plume tracking.
Jaleesa is a Mechanical Engineering PhD student working on understanding natural wind dynamics, and how they impact insect plume tracking behaviors.
Jaden Mecham is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering working on algorithms for resilient sensing in autonomous UAVs.
Nate Casey is a neurscience PhD student working on understanding the neural circuits involved in free flight olfactory search in Drosophila.
Thane Houghton is a neuroscience PhD student working on understanding how the fly central complex might assess the reliability of different sensory modalities.
Chathura Sumanasiri is a PhD student in Mechanical Engineering working on understanding aeroelastic flutter, co-advised with faculty member Aditya Nair.
Naomi is an undergrad neuroscience major working on understanding olfactory navigation in walking flies.
Nehal Mangat is a Masters student in Mechanical Engineering working on the application of observability tools to data driven modeling.
Former Lab Members
Undergraduates
Andy Tan
Brian Guthrie
Tessa Baker
Molly Allen
Andrew James
Renan Jewell
Ethan Swierski
Mehar Mangat
Carmela Hailey
Marlee Montella,
Zack Dugan
Milen Kumar
Graduate students
Florian McLelland (MS Mech Eng, started at Los Alamos NL in 2022)
Postdocs
(Stanley) David Stupski (started postdoc with Jeff Riffell in 2024)