David Labonte is a Lecturer at the Department of Bioengineering with an interest in how physical constraints shape biological systems and evolutionary processes (In short, David likes animals, and he likes physics). David’s group is multidisciplinary, and welcomes students, post-doctoral researchers and anyone else with a background in natural sciences or engineering. The group studies fundamental biological phenomena from a mechanical perspective, including the reversible and high-performing adhesives found on the feet of many climbing insects, tree frogs, and geckos, the tricks and secrets of nature’s most iconic herbivores – the leaf-cutter ants – and the odd fracture behaviour of biological ceramics.

David joined the Department in 2018, after holding the Denman Baynes Senior Research Fellowship at Clare College and the Engineering Department at the University of Cambridge. Prior to his postdoctoral research, David graduated from the University of Applied Sciences in Bremen, Germany, with a degree in Biomimetics, and was awarded a PhD from the Department of Zoology, University of Cambridge, in 2015.