Biography
Suzanne Kane is an accomplished American physicist, professor and chair of the Department of Physics and Astronomy at Haverford College.
She is known for her work using video to study the behavior of different bird species.
She is highly appreciated for her contributions in every field she is involved in.
American scientist
Suzanne Kane |
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 Suzanne Kane: History, Biography, Photos |
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| Wiki Events & About Data | |
| Full name: | Suzanne Kane |
| Born: | Do not have |
| Year old: | N/A age |
| Place of birth: | American |
| Nationality: | American |
| Parents: | Do not have |
| Height: | Do not have |
| Siblings: | Do not have |
| Boyfriend • Husband: | Joey Donnelly |
| Job: | Researcher • Physicist • Scientist • Physiologist |
| Net worth: | $500,000 – $4,000,000 |
Early life
Suzanne Kane grew up over the years and developed her thesis titled Optical and X-ray Studies of Important Phenomena in Thin Liquid Crystal Films.
It was published in 1989, focusing on the use of light and X-ray scattering techniques to study biological membranes and low-dimensional soft matter systems.
After receiving her PhD, Suzanne Kane became a postdoctoral research associate at the University of Pennsylvania, working in the laboratory of J. Kent Blasie from 1988 to 1990.
There, she continued her work using dispersion techniques to understand the structure of multilayer membranes and biofilms.
Education
Suzanne Kane received her Bachelor of Science in Physics in 1982 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
She then attended Harvard University for her Master of Science and Ph.D.
Career
In 1991, Suzanne Kane became an Assistant Professor at Haverford College, where she was promoted to Professor in 2016.
Suzanne Kane’s research focuses on the connections between biophysics, soft condensed matter physics, and statistical physics to understand a wide range of topics, from bird behavior to bacterial diversity in ecosystems, using experimental techniques including bioacoustics, computer modeling, and 3D video analysis.
Suzanne Kane’s team has worked to understand a wide range of bird behaviors. In 2016, her team published a study on how birds of prey (like hawks, vultures, and falcons) hunt, turning their heads unpredictably as they visually search for prey.
Birds of prey hunt by alternating periods of rapid head or eye movement—a movement known as saccadic eye movements—with periods in which their eyes focus on a particular point.
To determine if there was a clear pattern in this movement, they attached a small head-mounted camera to a northern hawk to track its head movements as it hunted.
They used the video to determine the mathematical distribution of the time spent on each eye movement and the time spent holding the head still, and found that the time between each eye movement varied depending on external environmental cues, which changed as the hawks aimed at their targets.
Remarkably, this behavior is similar to that of primates when they hunt, suggesting that the basic neural processes underlying hunting are similar between primates and birds of prey. Kane and her team have also studied predator-prey interactions when hawks hunt and their prey escapes.
Study
Suzanne Kane has also studied the biomechanics of peacock courtship rituals. Specifically, her team focused on how feathers influence male peacocks’ performance when they court females by spreading and vibrating their tail feathers, a display behavior known as “stern fluttering.”
Suzanne Kane first discovered high-speed recordings of this behavior, taken by her collaborator Roslyn Dakin, who studies peacock feather color. The two began working together to record more videos of peacock courtship rituals to understand how the tail feathers vibrate and how females perceive those vibrations.
They found that the train-rocking behavior only occurred when females were present, and that the tail eyespots did not appear to move when the tails were vibrating, leading them to conclude that the vibrating behavior increased the appearance of the tail eyespots. In previous research, Dakin found that the color and iridescence of the tail eyespots contributed to the mating success of males.
They also found that tail feathers vibrate at their natural resonant frequency, creating sound waves in the audible range that females can hear. Finally, they discovered, counterintuitively, that the longer and heavier a male’s tail feathers are, the faster they can vibrate.
In a follow-up study published in 2018, Kane and Dakin found that vibrations emitted from the male’s genitals were actually sensed by the female at the top of her head, and the top of her head vibrated as well.
They discovered that a tiny feather, a seta, at the base of the female’s crest feathers, acts as a mechanical sensor. When the crest feather begins to vibrate, the seta activates a nerve cell, which translates the seta’s physical vibrations into nerve signals.
Awards and honors
- New Directions Scholarship, Andrew W. Mellon Foundation, 2004.
Personal life
Suzanne Kane is happily married to Joey Donnelly. Information about her children and marriage is not detailed in the media.
Net worth
American celebrity, Suzanne Kane has amassed an estimated net worth of $500,000 to $4,000,000.
