On Shun Pak received a $232,786 award from the National Science Foundation
On Shun Pak with the Mechanical Engineering and (by courtesy) Applied Mathematics Department has received a $232,786 award from the National Science Foundation to support his project "Robophysical Modeling of Bacterial Swimming Motion."
The long-term goal is to transform the fundamental knowledge gained on the mechanics of bacterial motility into biomedical and technological breakthroughs. These breakthroughs could have significant impacts on a range of fields, including the development of new antimicrobial strategies for bacterial infections, the effective use of bacteria for bioremediation to address environmental pollution, and the creation of bio-inspired micro-/nanorobots. The objective of this project is to capitalize on the robophysical approach to advance our mechanistic understanding of bacterial swimming motion in complex environments. We will design and construct dynamically-scaled ``robo-bacteria" as realistic models for examining bacterial locomotion at low Reynolds numbers. These robo-bacteria can be readily built with different geometric properties and programmed to execute specific swimming gaits, making them uniquely suited to test various theories and hypotheses of bacterial swimming.
Jul 11, 2023