Duncan Irschick

Who is Duncan Irschick?

Duncan Irschick is an evolutionary ecologist and functional morphologist in the field of animal athletics, more specifically known as animal performance. He has worked on many kinds of animal species, including reptiles and amphibians, rodents, ungulates, spiders, and humans. He was a faculty member at Tulane University for five years before joining the faculty at the University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2006.

He earned his B.S. in Zoology from the University of California at Davis in 1991. He earned his Ph.D. from Washington University in St. Louis in 1996. He then went on to postdoctoral research at the University of Cincinnati and at the University of California at Berkeley. During this period, he expanded his research to functional themes, including studies of kinetics, and kinematics.

Duncan Irschick is most well known for his work on gecko adhesion, and rapid evolution. He along with several colleagues, conducted the first test of how much force a gecko toepad could produce. Their recorded value of 20 Newtons of force for two front limbs for a Tokay gecko was a starting point for a large body of research on bioadhesion and synthetic production of gecko setae, which has captured significant attention in the public eye. In 2012, he, together with colleagues from the University of Massachusetts published a paper describing the invention of "Geckskin", which shows some elements of the anatomy of geckos, and for which a 100 sq cm piece can hold up to 700 lbs on a smooth surface, yet can be peeled off with little effort, which was widely covered in the popular media