PhD position Growth and motion of bacterial colonies in streaming fluids

The FOM project 'Population dynamics under flow' focuses on the key fundamental aspects of the growth and motion of bacterial colonies under fluid flow. This is on a global scale an important theme as it takes place in plankton or bacteria colonies in Oceans or lakes. Here organisms live and grow while being transported by water currents. But it can also take place in the human body where the dynamics, multiplication, and transport of bacteria is also affected by fluid flow.

Fluid transport has a key influence on the evolution of bacterial concentrations, e.g. controlling the behaviour of the local concentration, and hence an impact on the dynamics of the whole population. Particularly in the natural ecosystem, the replication times of the individuals can match the time scales of the turbulent fluid flows giving rise to a very complex interplay between the fluid and the population dynamics. On satellite photos the effects of this "population dynamics" can be seen on scales up to 1000 km. Key knowledge of this dynamics is necessary to unravel the evolution of these exciting biological systems.

Job description

The PhD project concerns a combined experimental and computational study of the dynamics of miniature bacterial populations under specified flowing conditions. To this end bacterial colonies will be grown in microfluidic devices in the laboratory. The main emphasis in this project is the development of a controllable microfluidic device to study the bacterial growth, and effects of the flow on the dynamics of the population. The growth of the bacterial populations will be observed by means of microscopes, and recorded with high-resolution cameras.

For the computational modeling of the various cases numerical codes can be used that are already available in the group. These codes will have to be extended to study the flow and population dynamics for various model cases, and conditions in the laboratory. In this way a validation between experiment and model can take place. The PhD project will involve work at the interface between experimental microfluid dynamics, biology, and (computational and statistical) physics. Final goal is to understand the interplay between fluid transport and the biological processes in bacterial populations.

Location and support

The work will be carried out at the Fluid Dynamics Laboratory (www.fluid.tue.nl) of Eindhoven University of Technology under the supervision of Profs. F. Toschi and H.J.H. Clercx and in close collaboration with the group of Biomedical Engineering lead by Prof. L. Brunsveld.

In our groups there is a vast knowledge and support for the further development of the already existing numerical tools needed to master the computational studies. Furthermore use will be made of the well equipped (bio-chemical) laboratories at TU/e as well as already available microscopy equipment to succesfully carry out the needed experiments with the populations. Apart from the basic equipment there is a strong support within the JM Burgers Centre for Fluid Dynamics for PhD's to obtain the needed additional knowledge via courses and seminars.