In France, the research culture is highly collaborative. Scientists such as myself usually have a small team that they directly supervise themselves, and a lot of local, national and international collaborations. This is markedly different from other research cultures, where often a single tenured scientist has dozens or even hundreds of subordinates. I called this website “engels-lab” because I could not think of a different name, and I did not want to put a name like “flapping-lab” because my focus might change over the next decades.

M.Sc. students, PhD students and postdocs working directly with me

Eden Getachew (2025-2028). Eden does her French-German PhD at Aix-Marseille Université and Technische Universität Berlin (cotutelle de thèse). Her 36 months contract is split into 18 months in Berlin followed by 18 months in Marseille. Eden is enroled at the école doctorale ED184 (École Doctorale de Mathématiques et Informatique de Marseille, link). Eden works on numerical methods for flapping flight, in particular on improving the volume penalization method (VPM) we use to take into account the insect in our numerical simulations. While very elegant, VPM is at the moment limited in terms of precision. Eden works towards overcoming this barrier while preserving the elegance of the original method.

Julius Bergmann (2024-2028). Julius does his French-German PhD at Aix-Marseille Université and Technische Universität Berlin (cotutelle de thèse). His 36 months contract is split into 18 months in Marseille followed by 18 months in Berlin. Like Eden, Julius is enroled at the école doctorale ED184 (École Doctorale de Mathématiques et Informatique de Marseille, link). Julius works on numerical methods as well, his primary focus is on high-performance computing and wavelet-based turbulence modeling. One of his main topics is coherent-based vorticity simulation (CVS), which is an alternative to classical large-eddy simulations.

Peng Yu (2024-2028). Peng does his PhD as ESCPI Paris and Sorbonne University and is co-supervised by me, Ramiro-Godoy Diana and Benjamin Thiria. His research is on numerical modeling of flexible insect wings – he works towards overcoming our current limitation to rigid wings. The solid model he develops is based on deal.ii, and the fluid-structure interaction solver he develops is based on my WABBIT code.

Maja Moschner (2026). Maja is doing her masters thesis (research internship) with me. She is a student at the Technical University Berlin. She works on quasi-steady modeling (QSM) of flapping flight, in particular on coupling a QSM model with the free-flight equations in a quaternion solver.

PhD students and postdocs I collaborate with

François Schweitzer, ENS Lyon. With François, who is supervised by Mickaël Bourgoin and Nicolas Plihon, I work on the aerodynamics of butterflies. The team at ENS Lyon has constructed a fantastic setup based on event-driven cameras, that allows them to accurately track butterflies for a long time (up to 30 wing beat cycles and more). My CFD is based on this data.