She obtained a doctorate in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Princeton University in 2006 and a bachelor’s in Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering from Cornell University in 2000. Dr. Staples is a Core U.S. Fulbright Scholar for 2015-2016. She directs the Laboratory for Fluid Dynamics in Nature (FiNLab) at Virginia tech and has research focus on two themes: fluid flows in nature, and advanced computational methods for fluid flows. The FiNLab studies natural systems ranging from insect respiratory flows, which occur at the microscale, to human cardiovascular flows, to planetary atmospheric flows with length scales on the order of tens of kilometers. The FiNLab has an emphasis on biomimetics for efficiency, resilience, and sustainability, on high performance computing, and on advanced multiscale computational modeling.