Topic: fluid flow

John Dabiri explains how swimming jellyfish reveal efficient ways to manipulate fluid flow. The discussion connects their movement with engineering questions ranging from submarine propulsion and wind-turbine placement to circulation in the human heart, showing how biological observation can inform fluid mechanics.

Biological systems can self-organize in complex structures, able to evolve and adapt to widely varying environmental conditions. Despite the importance of fluid flow for transporting and organizing populations, few laboratory systems exist to systematically investigate the impact of advection on their spatial evolutionary dynamics. In this talk, I will discuss how we can address this problem by studying the morphology and genetic spatial structure of microbial colonies growing on the surface of a viscous substrate. When grown on a liquid, I will show that S. cerevisiae (baker’s yeast) can beha