Dr. Jeannette Yen, Georgia Tech Professor of Biology will deliver a lecture as part of the Industrial Design Program's Nature in Design Lecture Series.

About Jeannette Yen
Jeannette Yen received her Ph.D. in Oceanography at the University of Washington in 1982. She received tenure at SUNY-Stony Brook in 1995 and was promoted to Full Professor in Biology at the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2002. In 2004, Dr. Yen was Chief Scientist on a twelve day oceanography research cruise to Antarctica. With the formation of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design, Jeannette became Director of CBID at Georgia Tech in 2005. Dr. Yen is an oceanographer working at the interface between animal behavior, fluid mechanics and environmental sciences.
Her research in aquatic ecology examines signal recognition by planktonic copepods in a transitional fluid regime and their capability for three-dimensional information processing. The goal of this research is to determine how aquatic microcrustaceans are able to discriminate biological signals from background small-scale turbulent fluid flow. Using high resolution optical techniques, her laboratory team examines plankton responses to physically-derived flow and biologically-created cues.One current research focus is on 3D mating strategies of oceanic plankton, and how copepods use their asymmetric linear array of sensors to guide chemical trail tracking in a low Re regime. Research is supported by the National Science Foundation