When
Monday, February 17, 2025 - 12:00 p.m.
Mary Salcedo
Project Manager
Ira A. Fulton Schools of Engineering
Arizona State University
"Hydraulics and Design of Insect Wings"
Keating 103
Zoom | Password: BearDown
Hosts: Alex McGhee and Swarna Ganesh
(Instructor permission required for enrolled students to attend via Zoom)
Persons with a disability may request a reasonable accommodation by contacting the Disability Resource Center at 621-3268 (V/TTY).
Abstract: Functioning and healthy insect wings depend on living systems — circulatory, respiratory, and nervous — that extend into tubular wing veins. As an insect biomechanist, I investigate the wing as a hydraulic system incorporating: foundational physiology, quantitative biomechanics of internal flows produced by insects, and environmental pressures of how insecticides affect wing health. To investigate wing hydraulics requires a range of experimental and theoretical techniques, including methods I developed using fluorescent microscopy to track hemolymph in the wings, to mathematical analysis of wing geometries, to high-resolution x-ray tomography to visualize vein tissues. This seminar will showcase the living systems within insect wings, their hydraulics, and how we can learn from them.
Bio: In 2012, Salcedo dual-majored in applied computation mathematics and molecular biology at the University of Washington (Seattle) and worked in a neuromuscular-flight lab. Before graduate school, Salcedo worked as a research technician at the Concord Field Station studying kinematics and predatory flight behavior of dragonflies catching prey. In 2019, she earned her PhD in organismic and evolutionary biology at Harvard University, focusing on fluid dynamics of hemolymph in insect wings supported by a National Science Foundation (NSF) Graduate Research Fellowship. From 2019-2022 she worked as an NSF postdoctoral researcher (Biomedical Engineering & Mechanics Department) at Virginia Tech measuring and quantifying circulation and breathing in insects. Before moving to ASU for her current position as a project manager in biomedical engineering, Dr. Salcedo worked as a USDA National Institute of Food and Agriculture Postdoctoral Fellow Cornell in biological and environmental engineering. Currently she manages a new collaboration with Mayo Clinic to build inter-institutional degree programs with biomedical engineering and Mayo.