Project description
Understanding and preventing toxic water blooms
Rising global temperatures are disrupting natural ecosystems in many ways. One serious consequence is the increasing occurrence of cyanobacterialblooms (rapid overgrowths of bacteria in lakes and rivers). These blooms pollute drinking water, harm aquatic life, and cause major economic losses. Scientists struggle to predict when and where they will occur, making it difficult to prevent their harmful effects. To tackle this challenge, the ERC-funded FluMAB project will study how Cyanobacterial blooms form and spread. Using advanced lab experiments and computer simulations, researchers will examine the movement and behaviour of these bacteria at different scales. Their findings could lead to better prediction tools and new ways to control and reduce harmful blooms in the future.
Objective
One of the most life-threatening consequences of global warming is the perturbation of natural ecosystems. Among the detrimental impacts, the increased frequency and intensity of Cyanobacterial blooms (overgrowth of microscopic bacteria in aquatic systems) seriously threaten drinking water and devastate ecosystems and the economy.
The challenge now is to accurately predict the formation of Cyanobacterial bloom and find feasible mitigation strategies. This poses a new paradigm in complex fluids and flows where rheology, fluid mechanics, and biophysics are intertwined across scales: (1) rheological properties on the microorganism level (few microns), (2) mesoscopic phenomena of formation and fragmentation of Cyanobacterial colonies (hundreds of microns), and (3) macroscopic dispersion of colonies under laminar and turbulent flows in the aquatic system (meters). Hence, fundamental knowledge of rheology and fluid mechanics of Cyanobacterial bloom formation is urgently needed.
I will tackle this multiscale problem with a set of highly controlled laboratory experiments and numerical simulations. The novel experimental setups combine rheological methods with advanced mechanical manipulation of cells, tomography, particle tracking, flow visualization, and microscopy. The combination of experiments, statistical modeling, and simulations will result in many first-ever measurements and analyses, unravelling the rheological and mechanical properties of the cells/colonies, and revealing details of aggregation and fragmentation of Cyanobacterial colonies under various hydrodynamic and environmental conditions.
This project lays out an ambitious effort to overcome current limitations and uncover the complex multiscale interactions between rheology, fluid mechanics, cell biophysics, and colony formation and fragmentation. My findings will open new avenues in creating prediction tools and effective solutions to combat Cyanobacterial bloom.
Fields of science (EuroSciVoc)
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
CORDIS classifies projects with EuroSciVoc, a multilingual taxonomy of fields of science, through a semi-automatic process based on NLP techniques. See: The European Science Vocabulary.
- natural sciences biological sciences microbiology bacteriology
- natural sciences biological sciences ecology ecosystems
- natural sciences biological sciences biophysics
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Keywords
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Project’s keywords as indicated by the project coordinator. Not to be confused with the EuroSciVoc taxonomy (Fields of science)
Programme(s)
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
Multi-annual funding programmes that define the EU’s priorities for research and innovation.
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HORIZON.1.1 - European Research Council (ERC)
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Topic(s)
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Calls for proposals are divided into topics. A topic defines a specific subject or area for which applicants can submit proposals. The description of a topic comprises its specific scope and the expected impact of the funded project.
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Funding scheme (or “Type of Action”) inside a programme with common features. It specifies: the scope of what is funded; the reimbursement rate; specific evaluation criteria to qualify for funding; and the use of simplified forms of costs like lump sums.
HORIZON-ERC - HORIZON ERC Grants
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Call for proposal
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Procedure for inviting applicants to submit project proposals, with the aim of receiving EU funding.
(opens in new window) ERC-2023-STG
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1012WX Amsterdam
Netherlands
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