Feng Ling Professor

2010.08 - 2015.12, UT Austin, B.S. in Pure Mathematics and Aerospace Engineering
2016.08 - 2022.05, USC, Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering (Fluid Mechanics), Advisor: Dr. Eva Kanso

2026.01 - now, Nankai University, Professor.
2022.09 - 2025.12, Helmholtz Munich, Bioengineering Center / IBMI，Nawroth Mechanobiology Lab, Postdoctoral Researcher, Advisor: Dr. Janna Nawroth.
2013.08 - 2015.12, UT Austin, Center for Space Research, Undergraduate Research Assistant, Advisor: Dr. Srinivas Bettadpur.

Looking for talented postdocs and doctorate students! Offer is long standing. If you are interested in studying physics of living systems, please email me at ling.feng@nankai.edu.cn

I joined Nankai Physics in January 2026. My research is in the field of complex systems, active matter, and biological fluid dynamics. Subjects of my study include motile cilia, fish schools and migrating cells. I received my Ph.D. in Fluid Mechanics from Dr. Eva Kano’s Bio-inspired motion lab at University of Southern California, and finished my postdoctoral training with Dr. Janna Nawroth in Helmholtz Pioneer Campus/ Helmholtz Munich Bioengineering Center / IBMI. Some of my most representative work was published in Nature Physics, Nature Communications, and PNAS.

Personal Webpage: https://gofling.me/

I spend most of my time thinking about how living systems organize themselves, how motion, form, and function fold into dynamic loops that make biological physics ever so slightly more magical than partial differential equations in a book. My current focus is on cilia, the micrometer-scale, hair-like cellular appendages that line our airways, reproductive tracts, and even brain ventricles. Amazingly, not only is each cilium powered by thousands of dynein motors, but millions;of copies of cilia can also coordinate to fulfill macroscopic flow functions crucial to many ways of life -- from single-cell protists to algae colonies, larvae and embryos, wide variety of animals, and us human beings. These filamentous structures are also great inspirations for artificial micro-manipulators.

    My broader goal is to understand how local interactions produce effective group laws, how the collective dynamics pushes meso/macro-scale physics back onto the active constituent units, and the causal emergence of coordination. Subject of my study spans from cilia to migration of epithelial cells, to macroscopic collective motion of fish schools. I approach most of my study through the lens of coarse-grained modeling, mechanical instabilities, multi-stabilities, reinforcement learning techniques, as well as corresponding bench-top experiments.

Key publications

• F. Ling, T. Essock-Burns, M. McFall-Ngai, K. Katija, J.C. Nawroth*, and E. Kanso*, Flow Physics Guides Morphology of Ciliated Organs, Nature Physics, 2024.

• F. Ling, H. Guo, and E. Kanso*, Instability-driven Oscillations of Elastic Microfilaments, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, 2018.

• A.V. Kanale#, F. Ling#, H. Guo, S.F. Fürthauer, and E. Kanso*, Spontaneous Phase Coordination and Fluid Pumping in Model Ciliary Carpets, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2022.

• Y. Man#, F. Ling#, and E. Kanso*, Cilia Oscillations, Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 2019.

• Y. Jiao#, F. Ling#, S. Heydari#, N. Heess, J. Merel, and E. Kanso*, Learning to Swim in Potential Flow, Physical Review Fluids, 2021.

• D. Roth#, A.T. Sahin#, F. Ling, C.N. Senger, E.J. Quiroz, B.A. Calvert, A. van der Does, T.G. Güney, N. Tepho, S. Glasl, A. van Schadewijk, L. von Schledorn, R. Olmer, E. Kanso, J.C. Nawroth*, and A.L. Ryan*, Structure-function Relationships of Mucociliary Clearance in Human Airways, Nature Communications, 2024.

• C. Huang, F. Ling, and E. Kanso*, Collective Phase Transitions in Confined Fish Schools, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2024.

•   Y. Jiao#, F. Ling#, S. Heydari#, N. Heess, J. Merel, and E. Kanso*, Deep Dive into Model-free Reinforcement Learning for Biological and Robotic Systems: Theory and Practice, Bioinspiration & Biomimetics (under review), 2025.

• F. Ling and E. Kanso*, Octopus-Inspired Arm Movements, chapter in Bioinspired Sensing, Actuation, and Control in Underwater Soft Robotic Systems, 2020.

# Equal Contribution; * Corresponding Author

For other research output (visualizations and demos) and (invited) talk materials, see my personal webpage: https://gofling.me/cv

Worked as "Physical Sciences II" judge for annual USC Viterbi School student research colloquium.

Teaching assitant for two sessions of engineering thermodynamics at USC at once, and one session of gratuate introductory scientific computing (MATLAB) course during the pandemic era that got me nominated for Viterbi engineering school teaching award.

Also participated in various out reach teaching activities to high-schoolers (SHINE USC) and K-12 kids (Introduce a girl to engineering day - now UT Austin STEM girl day).

Recived an EMBO poster award from the Physics of Living Systems Symposium in 2023.

Got second place at AES MATLAB competition by turning my cilia inspired simulation into an audio plugin in 2021.

Made Meritorious Winner for COMAP mathematical modeling competition leading a two-friend team coding overnight in 2015.

Went through as a Finalist for Intel international science fair many many moons ago (2010).