…and one garage-built airplane.
Biologist and mechanical engineer. I publish on insect biomechanics, build the pressure housings that go down the Amazon with me, and fly the Cozy Mark IV my father and I riveted together at home. Research that requires a passport, a wrench, and a logbook.
Click a terracotta pin to open its letter. Three plot treatments — orthographic sphere, equirectangular plate, azimuthal radial from KSFB.
Peer-reviewed biomechanics, competitive grants, expeditions on three continents, and the instruments built along the way to finish them.
Lead author. High-speed characterisation of Aedes aegypti takeoff across surface roughness regimes — biomechanics that later fed a micro-drone prototype.
Bioinspiration & Biomimetics 14(1)Short-term behavioural response and long-term gill development under hypoxic conditions in electric fishes. Full in-lab experimental design and build.
UCF Dept. of Biology · adviser Dr. William CramptonFunded proposal to characterise mosquito takeoff and landing leg dynamics across surface roughnesses and translate the findings into a military micro-drone prototype.
DARPADesigned, machined, and field-proved a custom high-pressure underwater housing and deployment rig for Amazon River work. Built end-to-end in-house.
Journeyman3D · AmazonasResearch assistant in Kruger National Park studying artificial watering holes during drought — elephant health, group dynamics, inter-group communication, migration.
Kruger National Park, ZAMicroplastics shed from car tires in Central Florida waterways. Judges’ Choice Award, Research Intensive Division — presented again for oncology inpatients at Nemours.
UCF SURE ShowcaseWinning entry in the UCF ELI² Google Sprint World Problem Challenge — a deployable approach to the global nitrogen crisis.
ELI² Google SprintScientific crew, Tampa Bay and Gulf of Mexico. Species diversity and dispersion, and stormwater runoff effects on bay populations against Gulf specimens.
USF R.V. HogarthRedesigned tracker installation tooling for the UCF Mansfield Lab so devices survived attachment — measurably longer retention on the animal.
UCF Mansfield LabCompetitive research scholarship supporting undergraduate work in biomechanics and biomimicry.
Ronald E. McNair ProgramKeynote presenter at the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology annual conference, San Francisco.
SICB 2018Assisted veterinary surgical teams, ran chelonian research projects, and handled hatchling restabilisation and release across all five marine turtle species.
Volusia Marine Science Center · NMFS 19496Custom pressure housings, CNC and lathe work, scientific glasswork, and high-speed camera rigs. Journeyman3D exists because field biology kept asking for hardware nobody sells.
Discover the workshopTaught 3rd through 8th grade on my own, coached middle-school robotics and physics, and built my own STEM demonstrations — acoustic levitation, linear flow, ferrofluid electromagnetics. I have keynoted SICB and also presented to oncology inpatients at Nemours, which is the harder room by some distance.
Discover outreachGrew Masterfix Corporation from a single operator into a retail facilities partner working with national brands. Co-founded a 501(c)(3) that has moved 15,000 lb of school supplies and about $80,000 to the Dominican Republic across eleven years — it still runs without me, which was the point.
Discover the venturesFirst place in the 2020 Advanced Marine Biology Photography Competition. 14mm for reef walls and fissures, 100mm macro for the high-speed insect rig, 200mm for anything with tusks. Drone documentation for commercial sites through Journeyman Photography.
Discover the galleryTell me who you are and what the role needs. The letter to the right rewrites itself, in my voice, ready to copy.
Dear Hiring Committee,
It is a real pleasure to write to you about the this role at your team. I build things that have to survive contact with the field, and from everything I can see, so do you.
Fieldwork is where I am most useful. Kruger National Park during a third drought year, tracking nine elephant herds against artificial waterholes. Six weeks on the Amazon running hypoxia work on electric fishes, including the full in-lab experimental design. A Gulf research cruise aboard the R.V. Hogarth. I plan the logistics, carry the permits, and bring back clean data.
The through-line is stubborn curiosity applied with tools. First-author work on mosquito takeoff biomechanics that has been cited 181 times; a DARPA undergraduate grant to turn it into a micro-drone; a Cozy Mark IV, N493GC, that my father and I built in our garage and that I have now flown 1,000 hours; 104 countries; five marine turtle species through rehabilitation and release. I am comfortable being the person who both writes the protocol and fixes the pump at 2 a.m.
I would love to talk — about your team, about what the this role actually needs on a hard week, and about anything on my logbook you are curious about.
With genuine enthusiasm,
Grace V. Clayton