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The Simulation of Open Engineered Biological Systems

A scalable simulation of microbial communities for use across many industrial sectors.

Project leader

Prof Nick Wright

Dates

October 2013 to August 2019

Project staff

Prof Tom Curtis, Dr Jinju Chen, Dr Yasmine Ammar, Dr Saikat Jana, Dr Jayathilake Pahala Gedara, and other colleagues from across Newcastle University.

Sponsors

EPSRC

Partners

Northumbrian Water Group plc

Description

Biology will lie at the heart of many new technologies. It will provide solutions to the sustainability challenges facing the world. These include waste, energy, water, healthcare, new chemicals and materials, and agriculture. To engineer biological systems, we need to understand the behaviour of microbial communities.

This project will develop software for simulating the 3D dynamics of microbial communities. Our software will be flexible, efficient, and open source.

We will base the tool on the Individual-based Modelling (IbM) approach. IbM represents microbes as discrete units. Their behaviour changes over time due to a variety of processes. Using this approach, we will study population behaviours emerging from interactions between individuals and their environment.

Undergraduate
Postgraduate Research
Postgraduate Taught