David Lentink
Dr. ir. David Lentink, Assistant Professor, Experimental Zoology Group Wageningen University and Associate Concord Field Station at Harvard University.
David Lentink works in the experimental zoology group at Wageningen University. For his PhD (Cum laude) he studied optimal fluid mechanic strategies in animal swimming and flight at Wageningen with Johan van Leeuwen and with Michael Dickinson at Caltech. During his postdoc he worked on bird flight with Andrew Biewener at Harvard. He is fascinated by the implications of Newton’s law of motion on nature and technology, especially in animal locomotion.
His everyday interest is in understanding now the mechanical principles of swimming and flight can inspire design. He designs experiments (numerical and experimental) and bio-inspired robotic vehicles. At all times he tries to intertwine experiments with theoretical insight, which remains challenging in biology. As an aerospace engineer, he finds Jet fighters and submarines far less exciting compared to the flight of insects and birds and swimming fish. Instead he is amazed by how swimming and flight evolved on earth and finds it a pleasure to increase our understanding of it collaborating with biologist, physicist, mathematicians and engineers of several universities around the world.
David Lentinks excitement for flight inspired him to start three unusual and intertwined student projects to share the miracle of natural flight with the world. The students not only developed innovative robots that can fly like insects and birds inspired by nature’s most advanced fliers, they also taught members of the general public how to film nature’s fliers themselves using the world’s most advanced high-speed camera’s – to see the wonders on natural flight that passes by in the blink of an eye first hand.
On how he got interested in this area of research, he says:
‘Like many I first-handed learned about our poor adaptation for flight when I first fell from natures’ green elevations –trees-, as a kid. No wonder that the flight of animals and plants such as birds, bats, insects and autorotating seeds has long since inspired mankind to invent its own flying machines. Just over 100 years old, human-designed aircraft have, however, barely taken off on an evolutionary timescale.’
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