Jamie Theobald is Associate Professor of Biological Sciences, Florida International University. His lab studies insect neurobiology and behavior, focusing on visual control during flight. Wings get insects into the air, but like human aircraft, control systems were the real innovation. Vision is centrally important to flight control as it provides instantaneous information about speed, heading, deviations from course, obstacles and navigational targets. They manipulate these variables during free flight, tethered flight and brain recordings, to determine the computations insects rely on to generate their extraordinary performance in the air.

Ravindra Palavalli-Nettimi is a Postdoctoral Research Associate, Florida International University.
“My specializations include animal behavior, entomology, insect vision, neuroethology, navigation, miniaturization, ecology, and evolution. I obtained my PhD for my work on ant vision and navigation from Macquarie University, Sydney.”