My lab explores how muscles move limbs to power swimming.  Muscle is a spectacularly efficient and powerful motor which drives behaviors that impress biologists and engineers alike.  

My lab seeks to understand the physiological basis for how nature’s swimming machines (e.g. frogs, fish, aquatic insects) solve the difficult engineering problem of moving rapidly through water.  Using frogs as model systems, we ask questions about how muscle dynamics (force and shortening velocity) relate to hydrodynamics during swimming.  We then develop models for how muscle properties, limb morphology and neural control each contribute to swimming performance.