CNLD Seminar: Watching Microbial Life in Complex Environments

Bacteria are arguably the simplest form of life; yet, they perform complex functions critical to the environment, food, health, and industry. What principles govern how complex behaviors emerge in bacterial systems? And how can they be harnessed to control bacterial behavior? In this talk, Sujit Datta, Professor at the California Institute of Technology, will describe his group's work addressing this question using tools from soft matter engineering, 3D imaging, and biophysical modeling. They have developed the ability to (i) directly visualize bacteria from the scale of a single cell to that of an entire multi-cellular collective, (ii) 3D-print precisely structured collectives, and (iii) model their large-scale motion and growth in complex environments. He will explain how using this approach, they are developing new ways to predict and control how bacterial collectives — and potentially other forms of "active matter" — spread across large distances, adapt shape to resist perturbations, and self-regulate growth to access more space by processing chemical information in their local environments.

Zoom link: https://utexas.zoom.us/j/97250566432