Jane Wang

This information is accurate as of the fellowship year indicated for each fellow.

Jane Wang, an associate professor at Cornell University, is interested in the seemingly erratic movement of objects in liquid and air. Her current research is about insect flight and falling leaves, two phenomena through which one can learn about the physical principles of locomotion in fluids, and searches for clues to the evolution of flapping flight in nature.

At Radcliffe, she will investigate the role aerodynamics plays in the evolution of insect flight, but she also hopes to interact with other fellows to explore subjects that are outside her sphere of knowledge.

Wang received her PhD in physics from the University of Chicago, where she studied the statistical physics of turbulence. She was an NSF-NATO Postdoctoral Fellow at Oxford University, where she worked on random matrix theory, and a visiting member at the Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences, where her interest in insect flight took off. She is the recipient of a Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation, an Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program award, and a Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.

The Fleeting Nature of Performance (Harvard Gazette, 5/8/08)