Sathej

I am currently a visiting student at the Rainey lab (May - July 2009) and seek to understand the formation of the wrinkly spreader biofilm by constructing mathematical models and simulations.

Background

I am pursuing my Undergraduation majoring in Biotechnology at the Indian Institute of Technology Madras, India and would soon be starting my Fourth and Final year at the Institute.

Research interests

My interests right now are diverse ranging from Pharmacochemistry to Acoustics. Most of my work until now, though, has been on building mathematical models to look at systems that interest me.

Last summer, I worked with Prof. Ronojoy Adhikari at the Institute of Mathematical Sciences, Chennai on modelling Indian Musical drums. The composite membrane presented challenges in terms of mathematical tractability and the generalized eigenvalue problem was solved numerically using a Fourier-Chebyshev spectral collocation method. The work was published.

Sathej, G. and Adhikari, R. (2009) The eigenspectra of India musical drums. The Journal of the Acoustical Society of America. 125(2): 831-838 (2009).

My work at the Rainey lab has been interesting and primarily involves attempts to construct models and simulations of the biofilm (mat) formed by the Wrinkly Spreader (WS) mutant of the SBW25 strain of Pseudomonas fluorescens. The work has been challenging and I have been working with inputs from Professor Rainey and Eric Libby. The approach thus far, has involved implementing random diffusion of different sized and different shaped objects in three dimensional space using Monte Carlo methods on a MATLAB platform. I hope to make some progress in terms of explaining how the rod shaped mutants stick to each other and form a mat.