Latest
News & Updates
Lab milestones
2026
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September 2026
- Paper led by Adam Zhu in Communications Engineering on nares-inspired sensing for formation flight.
- We're hiring! Applications for a postdoctoral scholar are open until September 30 β details on the Join page.
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August 2026
- This month we said goodbye to Dr. Alfonso MartΓnez-Carmena, the first BIRD Lab post-doc. He will be missed, but we wish him all the best on his next adventures. We also thank the wonderful summer undergraduates Elliot Crowder, Emiliano Godinez, and Adam Halford for their time this summer!
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July 2026
- We're hiring! Applications for our paid, part-time Social Media Coordinator position are open until September 30 β details on the Join page.
- Welcome to Adam Halford who joins us from West Point Academy, as an intern for the month of July.
- The lab received a CITRIS Seed Funding Program award in collaboration with Dr. Grace Gu (UC Berkeley) and Dr. Zhaodan Kong (UC Davis).
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June 2026
- The lab received an NSF CAREER Award to investigate lateral maneuvering in raptors.
- Alex Fillman and Kaleb Bordner presented posters at BISCCITs in Wageningen, The Netherlands.
- Kaleb Bordner and Francisco Jackson presented papers at the AIAA AVIATION Forum.
- Paper led by Dr. Alfonso MartΓnez in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface on raptor perching behavior.
- Adrian Chan graduated and joined Stanford University. We also welcomed undergraduate researchers Prabhat Karthikeyan, Elliot Crowder, Emiliano Godinez, Zak Conte, Ananya Bansal, and Haelie Tweet to the lab.
- Dr. Harvey gave an invited talk at the XXV USβPoland Science & Technology Symposium.
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May 2026
- The Center for Animal Locomotion & Innovation (CALI) celebrated its official grand opening.
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April 2026
- Alex Fillman received the 2026 Maury L. Hull Endowed Fellowship for Musculoskeletal Biomechanics Research.
- Dr. Harvey gave an invited talk at the Janelia Simulated Bodies Symposium.
- Paper by Dr. Harvey in Communications Engineering introduced a transparent framework for reporting how bio-inspired a design really is.
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March 2026
- Kaleb Bordner and Francisco Jackson passed the QE exam advancing to PhD candidacy.
- Kaleb Bordner and Adam Zhu presented at the Gordon Research Conference on Multifunctional Materials & Structures (Ventura, CA).
- Paper by Kiran Weston and Adam Zhu, in collaboration with Dr. Graham Taylor (University of Oxford), was published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface.
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February 2026
- Dr. Harvey gave an invited seminar at Stanford University.
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January 2026
- Alex Fillman passed the FE exam.
- Narihide Fujita and Wyatt Liu joined the lab as undergraduate researchers.
- Ava Lewis was selected as an AIAA Rising Star in Aerospace and attended the AIAA SciTech Forum (Orlando, FL).
- Faiza Alvi and Alex Fillman presented research on avian airfoil aerodynamics and tail range of motion at the SICB Annual Meeting (Portland, OR).
- Dr. Harvey and Dr. Jasmin Wong organized the SICB symposium 'Dinosaurs to Drones: Comparative Approaches to Flight'.
2025
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December 2025
- Dr. Harvey joined the Editorial Board of Communications Engineering.
- The Bird Flight Research Center was completed on schedule and within budget, with the imaging system commissioned ahead of the March 2026 grand opening.
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September 2025
- The lab received new AFOSR support to investigate co-design of morphing and control systems with Dr. Sean Humbert (CU Boulder).
- Dr. Harvey gave an invited seminar at UC Berkeley.
- Joshua Booth and Cooper Cook transitioned from undergraduate researchers to PhD students.
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June 2025
- Stevi Dunn and Gaurav Dhirar graduated and began industry positions.
- Kaleb Bordner and Francisco Jackson returned to the U.S. Army Research Laboratory for summer experiments with Dr. Kevin Haughn.
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May 2025
- Dr. Harvey gave an invited seminar at UC San Diego on bio-informed morphing and flight stability and control.
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April 2025
- Paper in Global Ecology and Biogeography linked climate and avian morphology, providing evidence for a role of thermoregulation in bird wing evolution.
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March 2025
- The lab received a CCAH award, led by Dr. Alfonso MartΓnez with Dr. Michelle Hawkins, to build an avian flight database for raptor rehabilitation.
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February 2025
- The lab hosted the Northern California Aerospace Symposium (NCAS) at UC Davis.
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January 2025
- Adam Zhu and Francisco Jackson presented research on formation-flight sensing and avian airfoil dynamic stall at the AIAA SciTech Forum (Orlando, FL).
2024
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November 2024
- Groundbreaking began for the Bird Flight Research Center at the California Raptor Center.
- Dr. Harvey gave an invited seminar at EPFL (Lausanne, Switzerland).
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September 2024
- Faiza Alvi (PhD), Alex Fillman, and Evan Wandrocke (MS) joined the lab, and Adam Zhu transitioned to the PhD program.
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April 2024
- Paper in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface demonstrated optimized elbow and wrist morphing trajectories using an LPV flight-dynamics model.
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March 2024
- Paper in Communications Engineering (led by Dr. Kevin Haughn) showed that deep reinforcement learning controllers can reject gusts using as few as three pressure taps.
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February 2024
- The lab received a $2.9M DURIP award from U.S. Army Combat Compatibility Development Command Army Research Office, with Dr. Michelle Hawkins.
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January 2024
- Rowan Glenn received the AIAA Jefferson Goblet Student Paper Award at the AIAA SciTech Forum (Orlando, FL).
- Dr. Harvey was elected Secretary of the AIAA Adaptive Structures Technical Committee.
2023
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November 2023
- Dr. Alfonso MartΓnez joined the lab as its first postdoctoral scholar.
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October 2023
- Dr. Harvey was named a 2023 Packard Fellow.
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August 2023
- Kaleb Bordner (the lab's first PhD student) and Francisco Jackson (the lab's first MS student) joined the lab.
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April 2023
- Review in the Journal of Experimental Biology examined how biological insight has shaped, and can continue to advance, aircraft design.
2022
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October 2022
- Benjamin Tai-Brownlee joined as the lab's first undergraduate researcher.
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September 2022
- Paper in PNAS demonstrated that gulls regulate longitudinal dynamic stability through wing morphing.
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July 2022
- The BIRD Lab officially opened as Dr. Harvey joined the faculty at UC Davis.
In the news
Where our work has landed
Our research has been covered in 53 stories from Quanta to Aerospace America. A few highlights:
UC Davis
What Molting Hawks Can Teach Researchers About Resilient Flight
UC Davis Engineering
Center for Animal Locomotion and Innovation opens
UC Davis Engineering
Engineers, biologists capture the aerodynamic secret behind a hawk's mid-flight transformation
Aerospace America
Birds, wings and sonic booms: researchers adapt shapes to advance flight
Aerospace America
Aeronautics-centered structural adaptivity shares the stage
Comstock's Magazine
Fly like an eagle
Browse all coverage by year
2026
Pressure Sensors Placed Like a Bird's Nostrils Could Help Drones Fly in Formation
Allatra Media
Paper
College of Engineering Celebrates Outstanding Faculty for Teaching, Research
UC Davis Engineering
Award
Engineers, biologists capture the aerodynamic secret behind a hawk's mid-flight transformation
UC Davis Engineering
Paper
2025
AI vision system reveals bird wings evolved for heat regulation, not just flight
Michigan News
Paper
2024
2023
2022
Avian secret: The key to agile bird flight is switching quickly between stable and unstable gliding
University of Michigan News
Paper
2021
2019
Card images are from lab research and facilities; headlines link to the original articles.
Watch & listen
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A note on accuracy. We're grateful for the care most reporters take, and clear, accurate science communication matters to us. Even so, we can't control how every story or interview frames our research, and findings are occasionally simplified or overstated. We stand behind the claims in our peer-reviewed papers — not necessarily the wording of the coverage about them. For precise results and their limits, please return to the original paper (linked wherever available above) or contact its corresponding author.