Like his research, Andrew Gordus’s office is filled with bugs and spiders. “I like embracing the scope of our research and surrounding myself with these things that remind me of the work we’re doing and the people who are doing it,” says the assistant professor in the Department of Biology.
The sea lion skull was a gift from a coworker when Gordus was a postdoctoral fellow at The Rockefeller University. The LEGO sets—including the Harry Potter spider Aragog—were built by Gordus’s son, Oliver, when he was 5. The stuffed worm and the Dr. Worm hat were gifts from former employees in honor of their research on the nematode C. elegans. The spider cutout was hanging on Gordus’s door to welcome him when he joined the department. The print of arachnids was a gift from Gordus’s wife, and the microscope was a gift from his parents and sister.
See the Research
Andrew Gordus and his team’s research discovered precisely how spiders build webs by using night vision and artificial intelligence to track and record every movement of all eight legs as spiders worked in the dark.
