Z. Jane Wang, assistant professor of theoretical and applied mechanics at Cornell University, has received one of 26 Office of Naval Research (ONR) Young Investigator Program awards to continue her studies of insect flight dynamics in Cornell's College of Engineering.

The Young Investigator Program supports basic research by exceptional faculty at U.S. universities with grants up to $100,000 per year for three years. ONR Young Investigators are selected on the basis of prior professional achievement, meritorious research proposals and strong support by their respective universities. Out of 191 proposals to ONR for fiscal year 2001, Wang's was the only one selected at a New York state-based university.

Wang, who joined the Cornell faculty in 1999, will use the Young Investigator grant to model the interaction of unsteady, viscous airflow and dynamic boundaries of a moving insect wing, as well as to model insect flight guidance and control. The research is expected to lead to a general theory of insect flight, eventually facilitating the production of micro air vehicles, among other potential applications.

At Cornell Wang teaches classes in applied mathematics, mathematical modeling and biofluid dynamics. She earned her Ph.D. in physics at the University of Chicago and a bachelor's degree at Fudan University in the People's Republic of China. Additional funding to her insect-flight dynamics research comes from a National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career award.