The objective of this project is to study swimming at the micrometer scale. We are interested in addressing the strategies adopted by microorganisms and cells to achieve propulsion in a fluid environment. Cell motility is critical to accomplish essential surviving tasks, like feeding and evading predators, or specialized functions, as fertilizing the egg cell in the case of spermatozoa. While we can easily acknowledge why motility is important, it is more difficult to understand how cells swim. Swimming at the micro-scale is indeed counterintuitive and challenges the physical intuitions we build living in the macroscopic world.
Our focus is on improving the mathematical and numerical modeling of locomotion at scales that range between a few to hundreds of micrometers to provide computational tools with both a descriptive and predictive power. We are in fact guided by the ambition of improving the fundamental understanding of this phenomenon and using this knowledge to inspire biomimetic robot and the design of microfluidic devices to manipulate and sort motile cells.
An improved modeling capability for the motion of microswimmers has the potential of impacting several fields: microswimmers play a crucial role for a wide range of biological, ecological, and industrial processes, e.g. the fertilization of mammalian ova, production of algal biofuels, and the degradation of particulate organic matter by bacteria. As an example, an important and largely unsolved case is biofouling where immersed surfaces become covered by microorganisms, which affect the surface performance and can even lead to its failure.
The main objectives of this project were the training of the researcher in computational modeling of micro-swimming and the development of numerical and computational models for simulating swimming at the micro-scale and study confined and collective motion.
