Floris van Breugel
Floris van Breugel grew up in Walnut Creek, California, and went to the Athenian school in Danville for high school. There he helped start a robotics team with Innovation FIRST – an organization that sets up
“games” for high-school students around the country to design and build robots. Cornell was one of the best places to combine his interests in robotics and biology, especially once van Breugel was awarded a Cornell Presidential Research Scholarship (CPRS). 
After dabbling in extracurriculars like playing guitar and Ultimate Frisbee, van Breugal began to cultivate an interest in photography.
As a freshman, he conducted research in the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab with Hod Lipson, where he worked on hovering flapping flight for the next four years. “The research project was mostly self guided,” van Breugel explains. “It gave me the opportunity to attend several conferences, even one in Switzerland called the 'Flying Insects and Robotics Symposium'!”
After four years in the lab, van Breugel’s final machine consists of four pairs of wings, each acting like a hummingbird or insect, flapping together and powered by a small DC motor.
This summer van Breugel will be traveling through Oregon, Washington, and Montana, exploring, backpacking, and photographing the magnificent landscape. In the fall, he will attend CalTech to study for a Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems under the funding of the Hertz and NSF Fellowship.
If van Bruegel had unlimited money and time, he would explore remote parts of the world, take photographs, and share those amazing places with people who don't get to go there.
“Of course, I couldn't just leave my engineering interests behind, so I'd find ways to incorporate that into my adventurous interests, by designing tools and robots to get me -- or my camera -- to places where one normally could not go,” he says.
“games” for high-school students around the country to design and build robots. Cornell was one of the best places to combine his interests in robotics and biology, especially once van Breugel was awarded a Cornell Presidential Research Scholarship (CPRS).
Floris van Breugel
After dabbling in extracurriculars like playing guitar and Ultimate Frisbee, van Breugal began to cultivate an interest in photography.
As a freshman, he conducted research in the Cornell Computational Synthesis Lab with Hod Lipson, where he worked on hovering flapping flight for the next four years. “The research project was mostly self guided,” van Breugel explains. “It gave me the opportunity to attend several conferences, even one in Switzerland called the 'Flying Insects and Robotics Symposium'!”
After four years in the lab, van Breugel’s final machine consists of four pairs of wings, each acting like a hummingbird or insect, flapping together and powered by a small DC motor.
This summer van Breugel will be traveling through Oregon, Washington, and Montana, exploring, backpacking, and photographing the magnificent landscape. In the fall, he will attend CalTech to study for a Ph.D. in Control and Dynamical Systems under the funding of the Hertz and NSF Fellowship.
If van Bruegel had unlimited money and time, he would explore remote parts of the world, take photographs, and share those amazing places with people who don't get to go there.
“Of course, I couldn't just leave my engineering interests behind, so I'd find ways to incorporate that into my adventurous interests, by designing tools and robots to get me -- or my camera -- to places where one normally could not go,” he says.