Ko joins Department of Mechanical Engineering

The Department of Mechanical Engineering is pleased to announce that Hungtang Ko will join the faculty as an Assistant Professor, effective January 1, 2026.

Ko is currently a James S. McDonnell Foundation Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at Princeton University. His postdoctoral work focuses on the hydrodynamics of schools of fish, using both robotic and organismal experiments to better understand collective underwater behavior. His research has included long-duration 3D recordings of fish schools and the development of a novel tracking pipeline that integrates deep-learning-based multi-animal pose estimation with trajectory re-matching tools. 

Ko earned his PhD in mechanical engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, a master’s degree in mechanical engineering and applied mechanics from the University of Pennsylvania, and a bachelor’s degree in Theoretical and Applied Mechanics from Fudan University.

His innovative research has been featured in international media including CNN, PRI’s The World podcast, and Cosmos magazine. His work has been published in Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, Journal of the Royal Society Interface, and Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. He has presented at leading conferences such as the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology National Meeting and the American Physical Society’s Division of Fluid Dynamics Annual Meeting.

At Tufts, Ko will continue investigating the mechanics of collective behavior while contributing to the mentoring of the next generation of mechanical engineers. The School of Engineering proudly welcomes Hungtang Ko to the Tufts community and looks forward to the expertise and innovation he brings.