Related papers: Finding the ciliary beating pattern with optimal e…
In this paper, we propose a novel approach for controlling surface water waves and their interaction with floating bodies. We consider a floating target rigid body surrounded by a control region where we design three control strategies of…
Natural swimmers rely for their survival on sensors that gather information from the environment and guide their actions. The spatial organization of these sensors, such as the visual fish system and lateral line, suggests evolutionary…
Microorganisms often encounter anisotropy, for example in mucus and biofilms. We study how anisotropy and elasticity of the ambient fluid affects the speed of a swimming microorganism with a prescribed stroke. Motivated by recent…
Natural fliers like bats exploit the complex fluid-structure interaction between their flexible membrane wings and the air with great ease. Yet, replicating and scaling the balance between the structural and fluid-dynamical parameters of…
To mimic the mechanical response of passive biological cilia in complex fluids, we study the bending dynamics of an anchored elastic fiber submitted to a dilute granular suspension under shear. We show that the bending fluctuations of the…
The locomotion of swimming bacteria in simple Newtonian fluids can successfully be described within the framework of low Reynolds number hydrodynamics. The presence of polymers in biofluids generally increases the viscosity, which is…
A particle filter is introduced to numerically approximate a solution of the global optimization problem. The theoretical significance of this work comes from its variational aspects: (i) the proposed particle filter is a controlled…
Hydrodynamic synchronization provides a general mechanism for the spontaneous emergence of coherent beating states in independently driven mesoscopic oscillators. A complete physical picture of those phenomena is of definite importance to…
The present habilitation thesis in theoretical biological physics addresses two central dynamical processes in cells and organisms: (i) active motility and motility control and (ii) self-organized pattern formation. The unifying theme is…
Fish in schooling formations navigate complex flow-fields replete with mechanical energy in the vortex wakes of their companions. Their schooling behaviour has been associated with evolutionary advantages including collective energy…
Particle tracking is common in many biophysical, ecological, and micro-fluidic applications. Reliable tracking information is heavily dependent on of the system under study and algorithms that correctly determines particle position between…
Numerous studies have explored the link between bacterial swimming and the number of flagella, a distinguishing feature of motile multiflagellated bacteria. We revisit this open question using augmented slender-body theory simulations, in…
Dynamic flux balance analysis uses a quasi-steady state assumption to calculate an organism's metabolic activity at each time-step of a dynamic simulation, using the well-known technique of flux balance analysis. For microbial communities,…
Depending on their mechanism of self-propulsion, active particles can exhibit a time-dependent, often periodic, propulsion velocity. The precise propulsion velocity profile determines their mean square displacement and their effective…
A number of swimming microorganisms such as ciliates ($\textit{Opalina}$) and multicellular colonies of flagellates ($\textit{Volvox}$) are approximately spherical in shape and swim using beating arrays of cilia or short flagella covering…
Sorting of microswimmers based on their mobility properties is of utmost importance for various branches of science and engineering. In this paper, we proposed a novel sorting method, where the mixed chiral particles can be separated by…
Cells swimming in confined environments are attracted by surfaces. We measure the steady-state distribution of smooth-swimming bacteria (Escherichia coli) between two glass plates. In agreement with earlier studies, we find a strong…
We derive the bias function that minimizes the statistical error of free energy differences calculated in work-biased fast-switching simulations. The optimum bias function is compared to other bias functions using a particle pulled through…
Active systems comprised of self-propelled units show fascinating transitions from Brownian-like dynamics to collective coherent motion. Swirling of swimming bacteria is a spectacular example. This study demonstrates that a nematic liquid…
We study a model of cell motility where the condition of optimal trade-off between performance and metabolic cost can be made precise. In this model a steadily crawling fragment is represented by a layer of active gel placed on a frictional…