ECR Spotlight is a series of interviews with early-career authors from a selection of papers published in Journal of Experimental Biology and aims to promote not only the diversity of early-career researchers (ECRs) working in experimental biology but also the huge variety of animals and physiological systems that are essential for the ‘comparative’ approach. Zixuan (Mark) Zhang is an author on ‘ Hummingbirds excel at maneuvering and flying through tight spaces’, published in JEB. Zixuan conducted the research described in this article while a Research Assistant in Andrew Biewener/Nicolai Konow's lab at Concord Field Station, USA. Zixuan is now an undergraduate student at Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, USA, investigating computational modeling of biological and physical systems.
Zixuan Zhang
How did you become interested in biology?
I used to love collecting cicada shells in the woods after they molt in the summer. I could hear them day and night, but I could never seem to find an actual living cicada. The shells and their ‘cicada noises’ were the only evidence I had of a creepy yet beautiful alien world. How did they just take off their skin and leave it on a tree? Why did they leave it on a tree? What on earth did they do all day? What other strange worlds exist out there beyond my own? Studying biology has been my way of answering such questions, of revealing the intricacies behind the many hidden lives around us. I unfortunately no longer live in a place with an abundance of cicada shells, but I still love seeing the many unusual and creative solutions that nature comes up with to solve problems.
Describe your scientific journey and your current research focus
I was very fortunate to get the chance to work at the Concord Field Station with Profs Andrew Biewener and Nicolai Konow during the summers of my junior and senior year of high school, where I spent the majority of my time watching bemused hummingbirds fly through a fence. I'm currently studying for degrees in Applied Mathematics and Biophysics at Johns Hopkins University, and I'm working with Prof. Paulette Clancy to create atomic scale models of laser–metal interaction while also exploring the application of various machine learning algorithms for process optimization.
How would you explain the main findings of your paper to a member of the public?
Hummingbirds can move in pretty weird ways! They're extremely agile fliers and adopt unique methods to navigate difficult flight paths – in our case, a gap narrower than their wingspan. We digitally reconstructed their movement in 3D space and performed a thorough characterization and comparison of the two observed modes of gap traversal: ‘swept-wing’, where they tuck their wings in and dive ballistically through the gap, and ‘sideways’, where they turn and, as the name suggests, fly sideways. Our study builds on existing literature by performing a significantly more detailed examination of wing and body movement.
Hummingbirds traverse the fence in two different ways: sideways (left) and swept (right).
Hummingbirds traverse the fence in two different ways: sideways (left) and swept (right).
What do you enjoy most about research, and why?
I love the feeling of discovery, of encountering something that maybe no one has ever seen or thought of before, especially when it runs contrary to my prior knowledge and intuition (that is, assuming I did not make a mistake). I also enjoy dwelling on an idea or question for days, weeks or months, gradually working towards a solution. It's very gratifying when the dots connect and things finally start to make sense. Working in a lab gives me the resources to test things out and dig far deeper than I ever could alone. More importantly, I get the chance to trade ideas with and learn from some very cool people.
What is the most important lesson that you have learned from your career so far?
I've learnt that it's very important to never stop looking for potential improvements to an experimental workflow. Our data was all captured in the field: we'd use a feeder to lure wild hummingbirds through gaps in a fence. Unfortunately, the birds would often fly around the fence to access the feeder instead of going through like we wanted. I was content with just sitting there for hours and getting maybe 3–4 decent videos in a day? After doing this for perhaps a little too long, someone put forth the idea to set up a net around the feeder so that the birds would be forced to go through the fence. Such an easy, obvious and effective solution to a rather important problem – a problem I never even thought existed. Simple optimizations like this can save a lot of time, both in the lab and in day-to-day life.
What's next for you?
In the next few years, I hope to explore as many different fields as I can and gain a wide variety of experiences. Eventually, I'd like to tackle projects that examine the same phenomena across many degrees of organization, from atomic to organismic or whatever lies beyond, where many different disciplines can come together.
Zixuan Zhang's contact details: Whiting School of Engineering, Johns Hopkins University, 3400 N Charles St, Baltimore, MD 21218, USA.
E-mail: [email protected]
