MacArthur fellow Dabiri ’01 on jellyfish, energy and Princeton

At 30 years old, Dabiri is the youngest of the 23 winners by four years. As an associate professor of aeronautics and bioengineering at the California Institute of Technology, Dabiri studies the hydrodynamics of jellyfish propulsion, which has implications for other fluid systems such as wind energy technologies and blood flow through the human heart.

The MacArthur Foundation recognizes 20–30 individuals each year for their originality and dedication to creative pursuits. The grant is intended to allow fellows to expand their projects.

Dabiri was reached in California just hours after the announcement and talked with The Daily Princetonian about swimming with the jellyfish, making new discoveries and finding inspiration at Princeton.

Q: What is it like to be the youngest MacArthur Fellow by four years?

A: The whole thing has been pretty amazing and shocking, and it hasn’t sunk in yet at all, but I feel very grateful.

Q: What are you going to do with the $500,000?

A: I’m definitely still in the shock phases — one thing I have been telling people is that I’m finally going to take swimming lessons, because my research has to do with jellyfish and my grad students do all the work in the water right now. So I’d like to join them.

Q: The picture from our profile on you last year showed you in the water with a jellyfish. Do you spend a lot of time in the water?

A: I don’t. In fact it took a while for the photographer to convince me that that would be a good shot to take … that’s only about four feet of water that I’m standing in.

Q: How long do you plan on working on this project? Do you think you’ll want to move on from jellyfish at some point?

A: I think there’s two sides to our research. On the one hand, we’re very interested in the basic science that’s behind the form and function of the jellyfish, but the longer–term efforts have been … what we can take from those studies and apply to engineering problems. So, for instance, we do a lot of work designing underwater vehicles that are more efficient, that can go longer distances with less fuel consumption — and that work is something that will be ongoing for some time.

A newer area that we’ve gotten into is wind energy, and in that case, what we’re interested in is the parallel between energetics of how fish schools … can take advantage of [swirling currents and vortices] to reduce the energy of the whole group. So, in the case of the wind farm, what we’re interested in is maximizing the amount of wind energy that gets extracted by the wind turbine.

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And so we’re taking the math and the physics that we’ve applied to study the fish problem, and now we’re using it to show that we can in fact substantially improve the performance of wind farms.

Q: What different kinds of work might you want to pursue in the future?

A: It’s hard to predict the unexpected, but I will say that … the study of animals like jellyfish is relatively new — I mean there aren’t a lot of groups out there doing it. There’s probably 10,000 groups studying fruit flies, genetics, things like that, and maybe 10–20 groups studying jellyfish swimming, so there’s a lot that we don’t know still … It will take some time to get to the point where we would say, “OK, we really understand the system completely; now let’s move on to something else.”

Q: What drives you in your pursuit of this kind of work?

A: At the core, it comes from the fact that as a born-again Christian, I feel that whatever work I do, I want it to have a positive impact on society. So even though studying jellyfish just for the sake of understanding them I think would be a lot of fun, for me, it’s important that I am able to take what I learned and actually apply it to things that can benefit society. I think that’s probably what drives me to find these more practical applications, like diagnosing heart failure, like trying to come up with more effective technologies for clean energy.

Q: So you view it as a religious drive?

A: It is, you can definitely say that … That coupled, I think, with the fact that coming up, going to Princeton, I had so many people investing in me that I feel like I need to do something to try to pay back all of that investment.

Q: Is there anything from your Princeton experience which you think has greatly affected your current path that led to this award?

A: Absolutely. I think before I came to Princeton, I didn’t really see much in the long term ... like everyone else did in my area, [where] you go work for Ford or General Motors or something like that. I come from Toledo, Ohio, where the auto industry was huge, so coming to Princeton opened my eyes to fact that there is a lot that you can do — certainly in the area of academic research you can do anything that you want!

And then along the way I guess the main thing that Princeton probably did was give me the confidence to be able to ask the unusual questions — to try to be creative without fear of failure. It’s a pretty amazing place and certainly pivotal to where I am today.

Q: What advice do you have for Princeton students, especially those who want to pursue innovative research like yours?

A: I really got my start by doing research at an early stage. In [mechanical and aerospace engineering] they offered sophomore independent work when I was there, so as a sophomore I got into research. I think that helped me because especially in the engineering school, you get pretty burnt out from all the problem sets, and you don’t really get to see the big picture of why you’re doing all of those sets.

So because I got into research early, it kind of gave me that bigger picture of why I was doing what I was doing, and it gave me that extra motivation which I think helped me through sophomore and junior years, which I think were especially challenging.

Other than that … it’s good to take a break and have fun. When I look back on my Princeton experiences, it’s hard to remember things that weren’t related to social experiences. I had a great time — we were the last class to do the Nude Olympics back in 1998. It’s just memories like that that really stick with you, more so than the day-to-day problem sets.

Obviously you have to work hard at Princeton, but have lots of fun because it’s really the only time in your life when you’re not going to have all sorts of other responsibilities, and you don’t want to spend all your time studying.

Interview conducted, condensed and edited by Nava Friedman.