Faculty

Brad Gemmell

Associate Professor 

bgemmell

CONTACT
Tampa campus
Office: SCA 317
Phone: (813) 974-1228
Lab: SCA 305, SCA 308

Email: bgemmell@usf.edu

Specialty Area Recent Publications
Marine ecology, fluid dynamics and animal behavior

EDUCATION
Ph.D., Marine Science, University of Texas, Austin, TX, 2011
B.S., Biology, University of Victoria, Victoria, BC, 2006

RESEARCH
My research is highly interdisciplinary and lies at the intersection of biology and physics. Specifically, I am interested in the role of animal-fluid interactions in the marine environment and how these govern important biological factors such as predator-prey interactions as well as large-scale ecosystem processes and evolutionary relationships. My work includes a mechanistic approach to investigate how organisms function in fluid environments and extends to sublethal effects of environmental pollutants (e.g. oil spills). I specialize in the use of high speed imaging techniques such as particle image velocimetry (2D) and holographic cinematography (3D) to answer ecologically relevant questions regarding animal interactions with: fluid, predators, feeding, mating, migration, swimming and turbulence. Closely aligned with my study of animal-fluid interactions is a general interest in the evolutionary arms race between predators and prey, convergent evolution in propulsive mechanisms and understanding biological propulsion for use in bio-inspired design.