Researchers in the Department of Nuclear, Plasma, and Radiological Engineering (NPRE) have secured over $1 million in funding from the U.S. Department of Energy’s Nuclear Energy Universities Program (NEUP).

By the virtue of their size and speed, birds are uniquely capable of efficient flight while flapping their wings and while gliding. Researchers at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign have duplicated the control functions that allow birds to successfully perform a soft landing—in this case, perching on a human hand.

Professor Petros Voulgaris and Associate Professor Dušan Stipanović, both researchers at the Coordinated Science Laboratory (CSL), recently received a 3-year grant from the Qatar National Research Fund to develop methods for safely coordinating networked vehicles. The overall grant is $950,000, with $320,000 commited to CSL research.