Principle Investigator
James C. Liao
Professor
jliao@whitney.ufl.edu
Jimmy received a B.A. in Biology from Weslyan University in 1996 where he worked on elasmobranch electroreception in David Bodznick’s laboratory. He completed his Ph.D. in Biology at Harvard University from 1999-2004 investigating how fish swim in turbulent flows in George Lauder’s laboratory. He then worked as a postdoctoral research assistant at Cornell University from 2004-2008 on the neural circuits of behavior in zebrafsh in Joe Fetcho’s laboratory. He started as an assistant professor in the Biology Department at the University of Florida in 2009. He is currently funded by the NIH and NSF. You can find Jimmy’s publications on his Google Scholar page and learn more about his academic lineage on Neurotree.
Postdoctoral Associate
Ishani Mukherjee
mukherjee.ishani@ufl.edu
Ishani Mukherjee is interested evolution and the underlying mechanisms that drive group behavior. Her Master’s dissertation in integrated Biotechnology at St. Xavier’s College, Kolkata, India, looked at information use during nest relocation by ant colonies (2013- 2018). She graduated in 2024 with a PhD in Behavioral Ecology, investigating the ecological drivers of schooling behavior among wild zebrafish and mixed-species schools under Prof. Anuradha Bhat at the Fish Ecology and Behavior Lab at IISER Kolkata, India. As a postdoc, Ishani is eager to use an interdisciplinary approach to address the mechanisms and energetics of fish schooling. You may know more about Ishani in her ResearchGate, Google scholar, and LinkedIn.
Fan Yang
yangfan3@whitney.ufl.edu
Fan Yang is interested in fish behaviors and multi-factor mechanisms behind fish swimming. Fan pursued her PhD in School of Water Resources and Hydropower Engineering, Wuhan University, China, and spent one year as a visiting PhD student at the Laboratory of Hydraulics, Hydrology, and Glaciology (VAW), ETH Zurich, Switzerland. During this period, Fan conducted her doctoral research on fish swimming as an individual and schools, as well as downstream fish bypass systems. From 2023 to 2024, she worked as a post-doc researcher in the Fish Biology Group at DTU Aqua, where she mainly worked on the advancing tagging technology to discover the European eel spawning area. As a post-doc at Liao Lab, Fan will continue to explore the unsteady swimming behaviors of fish schools. You may know more about Fan in her ResearchGate, Google scholar, and LinkedIn.
Zihao Huang
huang.z@whitney.ufl.edu
Zihao Huang is interested in hydrodynamics in schooling interactions . Zihao pursued his PhD at the University of Virginia (UVa) under the advisory of Dr. Haibo Dong with a focus on the hydrodynamics of fish schooling across various species, categorizing by the body-fin arrangement and swimming kinematics. He proposed a general staggered schooling flow pattern to improve the performance of trailing fish across species. In the Multidisciplinary University Research Initiatives (MURI) program, he extended his interest to the scaling of Reynolds numbers in flow physics, flow sensing, and the stability of schooling formations. As a post-doc, Zihao would like to take on the question of flow sensing in fish swimming through interdisciplinary research at the Liao Lab. You may know more about Zihao in his ResearchGate, Google scholar, and LinkedIn.
Visiting PhD student
Ruiheng Wu
ruiheng.wu@uni-konstanz.de
Ruiheng Wu is a PhD student at the University of Konstanz’s Center for Advanced Study of Collective Behavior. He is working on computer vision and robotics projects including fish 4 dimensional reconstruction from videos, fish eye tracking from video and mesh reconstruction, and vision based robot swarm. He came to visit Liao’s lab from December 2024 to May 2025, funded by the European project ‘iNavigate’. During the visit, he takes care of fish predation behavior recording and analysis with 4 cameras and tracking their eye movements. You may know more about Ruiheng in his ResearchGate and Github page.
Robert Sterling
ros46@aber.ac.uk
Robert Sterling is a PhD student in Computer Science at Aberystwyth University, Wales. He is now working on computer vision and robotics projects as part of the iNavigate program. Robert’s main research includes understanding and implementing sensory systems in robotic vehicles.
Visiting Scientist
Edwin Rajeev
erajeev@whitney.ufl.edu
Edwin Rajeev is a Project Engineer at Cummins Cederberg. He received his bachelor’s in mechanical engineering at the University of Pune, India and a MS in Aerospace Engineering from UF. He then completed his Ph.D. in Civil and Coastal Engineering at UF in 2023, working on CFD models of flow behind multiple cylinder arrays and fish schools. You may know more about Edwin in his ResearchGate and Google scholar.