Michael Dickinson

Department of Integrative Biology
University of California, Berkeley

Michael Dickinson was born in Seaford, Delaware in 1963. He attended college at Brown University, originally majoring in Visual Arts and Physics, but eventually receiving a B.S. in Neurobiology. While in college, he worked with on the roles of neurons and neurotransmitters in the control of leech feeding behavior. Dickinson received a Ph. D. in Zoology at the University of Washington in 1989 with a dissertation project focused on information processing in mechanosensory cells fly wings. It was this study of wing sensors that led to an interest in insect flight aerodynamics and flight control circuitry. Dickinson worked briefly in Tübingen, Germany, where he started his experimental studies on flight aerodynamics, before beginning as an Assistant Professor at the University of Chicago in 1991. He moved to Berkeley in 1996, and is now the Williams Professor in the Department of Integrative Biology. Since starting his own lab, Dickinson has studied the flight behavior of insects at multiple levels of analysis, in an attempt to integrate cellular physiology, biomechanics, aerodynamics, and behavior. His awards include the Larry Sandler Award from the Genetics Society of America, The Bartholemew Award for Comparative Physiology from the American Society of Zoologists, a Packard Foundation Fellowship in Science and Engineering, and The Quantrell award for Excellence in Undergraduate Teaching at the University of Chicago.

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