CCB Brown Bag Seminar

Title: Hydrodynamics and taxis of microswimmers

The habitats of microswimmers are crowded with obstacles, biofilms, predators and preys. Microorganisms have evolved to thrive in these environments, however, many of their characteristic behaviors can be explained by simple hydrodynamic mechanisms. In fact, it is possible to fabricate artificial swimmers that resemble bacteria, algae or other microbes. In this talk, I will discuss some recent experiments that explore the dynamics of artificial swimmers under gravity or shear flows and the mathematical methods that we use to model the experiments. I will show how to simulate Brownian particles in Stokes flows and a simple method to model artificial swimmers.