Straw Lab Faculty of Biology University of Freiburg

Funding and research impact

The Straw Lab uses grant funding to connect fundamental research on insect vision and navigation with reusable experimental capabilities. Major outputs include peer-reviewed discoveries, open datasets, and open-source instruments that enable experiments within the lab and with collaborators.

Recent funding and outcomes

These programs contributed to research such as individualized honey bee foraging flights, Fast Lock-On outdoor insect videography, and path integration in freely walking Drosophila.

Open research infrastructure

The lab publishes animal-tracking and experimental software, data, and online resources alongside its papers. These outputs support reproducibility, lower the cost of adopting specialized methods, and provide a technical basis for new scientific collaborations.

See publications and research outputs for the complete lists of papers, preprints, datasets, software, and online resources.

Selected funding and awards

2024-2027 DFG Project 543356743
Enhancing Insect Tracking Precision from Drones: Fusing Multiple Sensor Data to Estimate Insect Position with Quantified Uncertainty 		300K EUR
2021-2026 VolkswagenFoundation Momentum Programme 98692
Bee Tracked 		650K EUR
2020-2023 DFG Project 455779009
Neural circuits and behavioral algorithms of path integration in freely walking Drosophila 		250K EUR
2019 DFG Major Research Instrumentation grant 
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    <td>230K EUR</td>

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    <td style="padding-right: 1em">2012-2017</td>

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      ERC Starting Grant 281884

      

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    <td>1.5M EUR</td>

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    <td style="padding-right: 1em">2012-2016</td>

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      Vienna Science & Technology Fund (WWTF)

      

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    <td>360K EUR (2 labs)</td>

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    <td style="padding-right: 1em">2014-2016</td>

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      EU FP7 289941 “FLiACT”

      

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    <td>3.1M EUR (8 labs)</td>

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    <td style="padding-right: 1em">2010</td>

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      US AFOSR Young Investigator Award

      

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    <td>360K USD</td>

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    <td style="padding-right: 1em">1998-2003</td>

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      Howard Hughes Medical Institute Predoctoral Fellowship in Biological Sciences

      

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    <td style="padding-right: 1em">1993-1997</td>

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      University of Southern California Trustee Scholarship

      

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Fellowships awarded to lab members

2019-2021 Humboldt Postdoctoral Fellowship to Dr. Julie Gaburro 
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    <td style="padding-right: 1em">2019-2022</td>

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      Human Frontier Science Program Cross-disciplinary Fellowship to Dr. T. Thang Vo Doan LT000221/2019-C

      

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