Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan facts for kids

Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan, often called "Srini", is an Australian scientist born in 1948. He is a bioengineer and neuroscientist who studies how animals see, especially bees and birds.

Srini is a professor at the University of Queensland. He has received important awards like the Prime Minister's Prize for Science. He is also a member of the Australian Academy of Science and the Royal Society, which are groups of top scientists.

Early Life and Education

Srini was born in Poona, India, in 1948. When he was young, he enjoyed building transistor radios with his father. His family moved to different cities in India, including Calcutta and Delhi, before settling in Bangalore. He finished school there in 1962.

After school, he went to university and earned several degrees:

• He got a Bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Bangalore University in 1967.
• In 1970, he earned a Master's degree in applied electronics from the Indian Institute of Science.
• He then went to Yale University in the United States, where he earned his PhD in engineering and applied science in 1977.

Career Journey

After finishing his PhD, Srini moved to Canberra, Australia, in 1978. He worked at the Australian National University (ANU) for a few years. In 1982, he moved to Zurich, Switzerland, for a research job. There, he learned how to train and work with honeybees.

In 1985, he returned to the ANU. He started a special research group to study how bees use their eyesight to find their way around and land very precisely.

In 2007, Srini began working at the Queensland Brain Institute and the School of Information Technology and Electrical Engineering at the University of Queensland.

How Bees See the World

At Yale, Srini first studied how flies see movement. This made him very interested in how insects use their vision.

He focused a lot on honey bees, especially the Western honey bee. He wanted to understand how these small animals, with their simple brains, can do such complex things. This research is very useful for making robots, especially unmanned aerial vehicles (like drones), because they need to be smart but also lightweight.

Bees are amazing fliers! Srini has shown that many of their complex flight skills come from their ability to keep something called "optic flow" constant. Imagine you are in a car: things close to you seem to whiz by quickly, while things far away move slowly. That's optic flow! Bees use this visual information to navigate.

Here are some examples of how bees use optic flow:

• Measuring Distance: Bees can tell how far they have flown. They do this by sensing how much the world seems to move past their eyes. This is important because they tell other bees how far away food is using their waggle dance.
• Landing Safely: When a bee lands, the ground gets closer and appears to move faster. By keeping the apparent speed of the ground steady, the bee automatically slows down smoothly until it lands.
• Slowing Down in Crowds: Bees slow down when they fly through busy areas. This is because nearby objects appear to move faster than objects far away. This helps them avoid crashing into things.
• Avoiding Obstacles: When a bee flies through a narrow space, like a tunnel, it tends to fly right down the middle. This is because it "balances" the optic flow between its two eyes. If it flew too close to one side, that side would appear to move faster, so the bee corrects its path.

Srini's research mainly looks at how animals with simple nervous systems see, understand, and think. He also explores how these ideas can be used to create smart vision systems for machines and robots.

Awards and Honours

Srini's important work has been recognized with many awards:

• 1995 - He became a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
• 2001 - He received the first Australian Federation Fellowship award.
• 2001 - He won the Australasian Science Prize for his excellent research.
• 2001 - He was elected a Fellow of the Royal Society of London, a very old and respected scientific group.
• 2003 - He received the Australian Centenary Medal.
• 2008 - He won the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics from the UK.
• 2012 - He became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM), a special honour for Australians.