Moose came to Stanford by way of several years at UC Berkeley. He also worked as a secretary, sold refrigerators (rented them, actually) and did a whole bunch of other things to prepare to study biomechanics.
Moose is fascinated by the way the world appears to organisms that aren't 1-2 meters tall. On the wave-swept, rocky, intertidal shores, small organisms confront a physical environment that can be lethal to humans. Huge waves (and if, like a barnacle, you are only 1 cm high, every wave is pretty huge) sweep through such shores with water velocities that can exceed 50 mph. At the same time, these organisms must deal with daily fluctuations in temperature and salinity as the tide moves up and down, alternately subjecting them to marine and terrestrial environments.
To a human, this looks like a pretty inhospitable place to build a home, yet millions of organisms thrive here. There is good evidence to suspect that small organisms just don't perceive the environment in the same way that we do - big waves might look about the same as medium waves. Moose is trying to figure out what sort of wave-induced forces snails, barnacles and other small critters are feeling when the surf is up.
To this end, Moose spends lots of time building little wave meters. These are tiny versions of the larger dynamometers shown elsewhere on this site. He is also exploring stereo photogrammetry as a way to measure topographical complexity. Basically, Moose loves to build stuff.
He also spends a bit of time scuba diving and tinkering with computers.
Moose thinks that you should buy a Fig. 1 t-shirt to show how cool you are. (www.moosecraft.org/rat)
Helmuth, B., C. D. G. Harley, et al. (2002). "Climate Change and
Latitudinal Patterns of Intertidal Thermal Stress." Science 298(5595):
1015-1017.
Some Publications:
O'Donnell, M. J., PhD Thesis (2005) "Habitats and Hydrodynamics on Wave-Swept Rocky Shores." Stanford University, 174 pgs pdf
K. Mead, M. A. R. Koehl
and M. J. O'Donnell (1999) Stomatopod sniffing: the scaling of
chemosensory sensillae and flicking behavior with body size. J. Exp. Mar.
Biol. Ecol. 241: 235-261