May 15, 2025 - University of South Florida

Welcome to FFS-IV

On behalf of the Department of Mechanical Engineering & the College of Engineering, we are honored to host you!

Information for Presenters & Attendees

• The talks will follow the APS DFD format. Oral presentations are allotted 10 minutes for presentation, followed by 2 minutes for discussion. This is followed by 1 minute for transition to the next speaker's introduction and setup.  

• Each session room will be equipped with a computer and projector. Presenters are encouraged to use their own laptops via an HDMI connection.

• The nearest parking lots are Lot 3B and Crescent Hill Parking Facility. The map below identifies the closest lots. Please note that parking is not free. More information about daily parking can be found here. 

• The entire symposium will take place at the Marshall Student Center (MSC). Please refer to the schedule below for details. 

• A poster session will be held during the afternoon coffee break for undergraduate participants. Each poster presenter will stand next to their poster during the poster session and engage with attendees one-on-one. Posters should be printed ahead of time and attached to the designated stands at the Oak room at least 30 minutes prior to the start of the session. Poster size should be 4'x3'.

• All sessions will conclude at 5:15 PM. We look forward to an engaging and insightful event!

• Exciting news: This year we will have an "after party" gathering at Mr. Dunderbak's. We have a private room reserved for our graduate student attendees between 5:30pm-8pm on the day of the event. Space is limited, so please contact us to RSVP if interested (sorry, this is for graduate students only). 

Program Schedule   

Keynote Presentation

Flapping flight in air and water: Bio-inspiration from tiny insects and sea butterflies

David Murphy

Department of Mechanical Engineering

University of South Florida

Abstract:  The flapping of wings is a common locomotion technique for tiny animals in both air and water. Insects flap their wings to fly in air, and zooplanktonic marine snails called sea butterflies flap wing-like appendages (called parapodia) to "fly" in water. Despite the thousand-fold difference in density between air and water, the flight systems of these very different animals show surprising similarities in how the wings move and in how they generate lift. These similarities point towards the possibility of designing a bio-inspired micro-aerial vehicle capable of aerial and aquatic flapping flight. We present high-speed body and wing kinematics and time-resolved flow measurements of various pteropod species swimming in water and of tiny, mm-scale insects flying in air in order to examine low Reynolds number flapping flight.

Biography: Dr. Murphy is an Associate Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of South Florida. He received his PhD in Civil and Environmental Engineering in 2012 from the Georgia Institute of Technology and subsequently served as a postdoctoral fellow in Mechanical Engineering at Johns Hopkins University. He also received an MS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech and an MPhil in Biological Science from Cambridge University. His research interests include biological, ecological, and environmental fluid mechanics, and he received an NSF CAREER award in 2019 to research the low Reynolds number fluid dynamics of flapping locomotion by small organisms in both air and water.

Abstract submission

The abstract should follow the style of APS DFD. Contributed oral and poster abstracts are limited to approximately 1,300 characters.

Important Dates

• Abstract Submission will begin Tuesday, April 1, 2025 and close Thursday, April 24 Monday, April 28, 2025 11:59 PM EST

• Registration Deadline: May 1, 2025

• Symposium: May 15, 2025

Registration

• Registration deadline: May 1, 2025. There is no registration fee.  (Closed)

Contact

Please feel free to contact us at sonyat1@usf.edu

Local Organizing Committee

• Sonya Tiomkin (USF)

• David Murphy (USF)

• Wenbin Mao (USF)

• Anshuman Pandey (USF)

Executive Organizing Committee

• Lawrence Ukeiley (UF)

• Kourosh Shoele (FAMU-FSU) 

• Henry Chu (UF) 

• Neda Yaghoobian (FAMU-FSU) 

• Michael Kinzel  (ERAU)

• Steven Miller (UF) 

• Ebenezer Gnanamanickam (ERAU) 

• David Murphy (USF)

• Wenbin Mao (USF)