The need to locate chemical sources in turbulent flow environments is ubiquitous for both engineers and organisms alike. This is a highly non-trivial task for engineers trying to build a robot capable of locating a mine underwater or a blue crab foraging for a carcass in an estuary. The transport and dispersion of chemical plumes is both random and structured, reflecting the same duality of turbulent fluid flows. In this project, I designed, built, and validated a state-of-the-art high-speed imaging and 3D laser-induced fluorescence system to quantify turbulent transport and dispersion of chemical plumes in the context of organism olfactory navigation.
Media Coverage: PBS Newshour