Hungtang Ko

Organizers: Yangfan Zhang and I
Confirmed speakers (sort by last name): Saad Bhamla, Michael C., Danielle Chase, Ty Hedrick, Roy Harpaz, Arnold Mathijssen, Nina Mohebbi, Di Ni, Ashley Peterson, and Steven Portugal
sponser by: @sicb.bsky.social @sicb-dcb-dvm.bsky.social @biologists.bsky.social

Call for contributions to our symposium on animal collective movement in complex environments at SICB 2026 in Portland, OR! Submit your abstract to our complementary sessions and join us for two days of fun discussing and exchanging research on the biomechanics and energetics of animal movement!

I had a lot of fun transitioning from playing with fire ants 🐜 in my PhD to experimenting with live fish 🐠! Hopefully, my other projects during the postdoc, one on fish robots and another on the vibration of dead fish, will be out soon too.

We think the ladder formation could provide fish schools hydrodynamic benefits similar to the diamond formation, but further research is required. We are also excited about future research adopting our computer vision pipelines to research the internal structures of other fish species and in nature.

While fish constantly rearranged in three dimensions as we often observe in aquariums and in nature, our data showed that fish prefer a vertically-staggered formation, which we called "ladder formation". This formation has never been characterized before but appeared in as much as 79% of fish pairs.

We recorded 3D fish schools swimming in uniform water flow for ten hours at a time and tracked their relative positions. We found that fish rarely adopt the classical diamond formation, less than 0.1% of the time!

A classical work in 1975 suggested that a planar "diamond" formation is the most hydrodynamically efficient, and still shapes the direction of the fish school research today. Half a century later, we decided to comprehensively test this hypothesis, using cutting-edge computer vision techniques.

Have you ever wondered about how fish self-organize in 3D? Due to various reasons, experimental and theoretical research of fish schools has been limited to planar formations.

I am excited to share that my first postdoc research paper is out!! Thanks to the great collaboration with Radhika Nagpal and Abigail Girma at Princeton Engineering and @georgelauder.bsky.social , Yangfan Zhang, and Yu Pan at @harvardoeb.bsky.social

www.nature.com/articles/s41...

I'm thrilled to embark on this new chapter of my academic career at Tufts. I look forward to collaborating with researchers at Tufts and beyond to continue to advance the frontiers of robotics, biomechanics, and collective behavior.

Our goal: robotic swarms capable of adapting to and exploring unstructured underwater ecosystems, from coral reefs to kelp forests.

My future lab, the Kollective Organization Lab (KOLab!), will explore the mechanical interaction within biological collectives like fish schools and develop robotics swarms that harness mechanical intelligence for self-organization.

I'm committed to paying it forward by nurturing the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers who not only excel in their fields but also have a passion for activism and societal impact.

I am deeply grateful for my postdoctoral advisor Prof. Radhika Nagpal, my PhD advisor Prof. David Hu, and the many mentors who have provided invaluable guidance and support throughout my academic journey. It truly takes a village!

I'm thrilled to announce that I will be joining Tufts Mechanical Engineering in January 2026!! 🐘🐘🐘

My future lab, the Kollective Organization Lab (KOLab!), will explore the collective behavior of biological organisms and biomimetic robots in fluid environments.

Our goal: robotic swarms capable of adapting to and exploring unstructured underwater ecosystems, from coral reefs to kelp forests.

I'm committed to paying it forward by nurturing the next generation of interdisciplinary researchers who not only excel in their fields but also have a passion for activism and societal impact.

I am deeply grateful for my postdoctoral advisor Prof. Radhika Nagpal, my PhD advisor Prof. David Hu, and the many mentors who have provided invaluable guidance and support throughout my academic journey. It truly takes a village!

National Science Foundation fires roughly 10% of its workforce NSF fired 168 employees, leaving the agency less equipped to fund a wide range of scientific research.

Yesterday was the darkest day of my professional life so far. Many of NSF’s best and brightest people fired indiscriminately. The terms of their firing cruel. My colleagues matter, they are valued and they make a difference. I have no words. www.npr.org/2025/02/18/n...

*POSTDOC JOB* If you are excited about animal sociality/cognition, are computationally-inclined, and are looking for a postdoc, I'll be hiring soon! Please come talk to me today or tomorrow at #SICB2025, or reach out over email. Official ad coming soon!

Looking forward to #SICB2025! I'm presenting in two symposiums on elephants and bio-inspired materials! The first symposium is Saturday, January 4, from 10:00 am-10:30 am in Marquis C. If you are interested in entanglement, collagen imaging techniques, or biological composites, come by!

What is the significance of the tremendous diversity of #shark skin #denticles? Presenting our experimental approach to understanding this at the Atlanta #SICB2025 meetings. Come to the session for all things shark skin!

Be yourself? You'll do great!!

Non-native English speakers need 50% more time to write a paper

When they do, they face a 2.5 times higher chance of being rejected because of language

journals.plos.org/plosbiology/...

Thank you!

Presenting my postdoctoral project designing a free-swimming fish-like robot called BlueGuppy at #APS #DFD ! meetings.aps.org/Meeting/DFD2...

Would love to be added/connect!

I just love that there is now a butterfly 🦋 on my home screen and there are many great biologists in there

BLACK WOMEN IN #STEM

i made a starter pack for black women in the field of science, technology, engineering and mathematics and would really love to keep adding to it so please hmu if you fit the criteria or know someone who does! 🧪

go.bsky.app/9jYkUK1

Join the Fins and Limbs Lab! https://sandykawano.weebly.com/ Picture of a tiger salamander on the left and a mudskipper on the right. Both are laying on a yellow/brown platform that is partially submerged in water, so it looks like they are hanging out on a shoreline. Their bodies are angled towards each other, but they are looking at you.

Join the #FinsAndLimbs lab in Washington, DC, USA! We study the comparative biomechanics, physiology, and functional morphology of locomotion in #fishes and #herps 🐟🧪🦎. We are hoping to recruit two #PhD students to start in Fall 2025! Link to full recruitment ad: drive.google.com/file/d/1m_HB....