Mimi Koehl

Science Steering Committee




Mimi Koehl , a Professor of Integrative Biology at the University of California, Berkeley, earned her Ph.D. in Zoology at Duke University.  She studies the physics of how organisms interact with their environments, focusing on how microscopic creatures swim and capture food in turbulent water flow, how organisms glide in turbulent wind, how wave-battered marine organisms avoid being washed away, and how olfactory antennae catch odors from water or air moving around them. 

Professor Koehl’s is a member of the National Academy of Sciences and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.  Her awards include a MacArthur “genius grant”, a Presidential Young Investigator Award, a Guggenheim Fellowship, the John Martin Award (Association for the Sciences of Limnology and Oceanography, for “for research that created a paradigm shift in an area of aquatic sciences”), the Borelli Award (American Society of Biomechanics, for “outstanding career accomplishment”), the Rachel Carson Award (American Geophysical Union), and the Muybridge Award (International Society of Biomechanics “highest honor”).