- Sep 29, 2022
- 11 min
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Bacterial spreading
Spreading of flagellated bacteria is mediated by the fluid landscape around the bacteria which dynamically changes as the yeast cells grow and occupy the common territory.
Inferring agents in a Heterogeneous Collective
It becomes very hard for an observer to classify agents based on how they are moving in a short time window while they are in a collective. The interactions between agents mask the true identities of these agents. We propose a novel inference framework that uses the movement information of the neighbours in addition to an agent's own movement info to classify agents more accurately.
Collective phenomena in traffic
We learn a traffic rule for an elite agent to move through a crowd of other agents by comparing the phenomenon to an intruder moving through granular medium. We identify key features of the flow fields around an intruder that have to be taken into account while resorting to develop traffic rules for the elite agent.
Bacterial spreading
Spreading of flagellated bacteria is mediated by the fluid landscape around the bacteria which dynamically changes as the yeast cells grow and occupy the common territory.
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Welcome to CoPhe Lab
'CoPhe' is short for Collective Phenomena and is pronounced as 'coffee'
We are a new group in the Department of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering at IIT Madras.
Our research interests broadly encompass understanding the nonlinear interactions and group level dynamics of collective systems (which are made up of several interacting entities/agents). We study a variety of systems that range from droplets in a microchannel to cells that migrate as a group, collective movement exhibited by social animals for survival to human traffic systems where agents are capable of making intelligent decisions. We use a combination of physics & data-driven approaches to study broad questions that surround the mechanics of these finite collectives. For instance, we are interested in the phenomenon of emergence: how group level behaviour emerge from interactions that are local to the agents. We like to work on inverse problems where we want to engineer the collective, i.e. tune the agent-interactions or design the surroundings, to make the collective behave as desired. We are also interested in inference problems where we derive the equations governing the dynamics of the collective from real data or develop frameworks to infer the hidden characteristics of agents from movement data. (click here for more)
The work we do @CoPheLab has components of both fundamental and applied research. Some of our work finds applications with Microfluidics industry and Health-care research. (Click here to check out current research interests)
If you are interested in joining our group, please write to me with your resume attached, stating reasons why you would like to be part of the lab.
Open positions are available. We welcome applications for Postdoctoral fellows. (Click here for more information)
Featured blog posts
Contact
Contact
Dept of Applied Mechanics and Biomedical Engineering, IIT madras
Office:
113, Mechanical Sciences Block (mezzanine floor), IIT Madras
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