Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan facts for kids

Mandyam Veerambudi Srinivasan, also known as "Srini", was born in 1948. He is an Australian scientist who studies how animals see. He is especially interested in the eyes of bees and birds.

Srini is a professor at the University of Queensland. He has won 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 for top scientists.

Srini's Early Life and School

Srini was born in Poona, India, in 1948. When he was young, he liked building transistor radios with his dad. His family moved around India before settling in Bangalore. He finished school there in 1962.

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

• 1967 - He got a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering from Bangalore University.
• 1970 - He earned a master's degree in applied electronics and servo mechanisms from the Indian Institute of Science in Bangalore.
• 1973 - He received an M.Phil. degree in engineering from Yale University in the United States.
• 1977 - He completed his PhD in engineering at Yale University.
• 1994 - He earned a DSc degree in neuroethology from the Australian National University. This degree is for advanced research in how animals behave.

Srini's Career Journey

After finishing his PhD in the US, Srini moved to Canberra, Australia, in 1978. He worked at the Australian National University (ANU). In 1982, he moved to Zurich, Switzerland, to research how insects behave. This is where he learned to train and work with honey bees.

In 1985, he came back to the ANU. He started a research team to study how bees use their eyesight. They wanted to know how bees navigate and land very accurately.

In 2007, Srini started working at the Queensland Brain Institute and the University of Queensland.

How Bees See and Move

At Yale, Srini first studied how flyes see movement. This made him very interested in how all insects see.

He focused on honey bees, especially the Western honey bee. He wanted to understand how these small animals can do such complex things. His research helps in building robotics, especially unmanned aerial vehicles (drones). This is because drones need to be light but also smart enough to fly on their own.

Bees are amazing fliers. Srini has shown that many of their complex flight skills come from a simple rule. Bees try to keep the "optic flow" constant. Optic flow is how fast things seem to move in your vision as you fly past them.

Here are some examples of how bees use optic flow:

• Bees can measure how far they have flown. This is important because they tell other bees distances using their waggle dance.
• When a bee lands, the ground gets closer and seems to move faster. By keeping the apparent speed of the ground steady, the bee slows down smoothly until it lands.
• Bees also slow down when they fly through crowded areas. This is because nearby objects appear to move faster than things far away. This helps them avoid crashing into things.
• When bees avoid objects, they tend to fly in the safest path. They do this by balancing the optic flow between their two eyes. For example, a bee will fly right down the middle of a tunnel. If it flew too close to one side, things on that side would seem to rush by faster.

Srini's research mainly looks at how animals with simple brains see and understand the world. He then tries to use these ideas to improve machine vision and robotics.

Awards and Special Honours

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

• 1995 - He was elected as a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
• 2001 - He received the first Australian Federation Fellowship from the Australian Research Council.
• 2001 - He won the Australasian Science Prize for excellent research.
• 2001 - He was elected as a Fellow of the Royal Society of London.
• 2003 - He received the Australian Centenary Medal.
• 2006 - He was a Distinguished Visitor for the Royal Society of New Zealand.
• 2006 - He became a Fellow of the Academy of Sciences for the Developing World.
• 2008 - He received the Queensland Smart State Premier's Fellowship.
• 2008 - He won the Rank Prize for Optoelectronics from the UK.
• 2009 - He received the Distinguished Alumni Award from the Indian Institute of Science.
• 2012 - He became a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).