Nuris Figueroa-Morales
University of Colorado Boulder, CO·Physics·Early-career
Bacteria rarely swim through plain water. In the body they move through mucus, and in the ground they squeeze through the water-filled pores of soil.
- Fields
Physics
Engineering
Mathematics & Statistics
- Topics
bacterial swimming
bacterial motility
flagella
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Feb 2029
What they work on
- Derive a slender body theory, a model of thin moving filaments, for a single bacterial flagellum in a nematic liquid crystal, and test it with experiments and simulations of the Ericksen-Leslie and Beris-Edwards fluid models.
- Extend the flagellum models to several flagella forming a helical bundle, as in E. coli, swimming through viscoelastic, direction-dependent fluids such as mucus and liquid crystals.
- Model and analyze how many bacteria interact and move collectively in liquid crystals, linking single-flagellum mechanics to population-level behavior.
- Measure the distances and times swimming bacteria travel upstream and downstream in simple confining geometries, using custom-built equipment, and model the fluctuating fluid flow under tight confinement.
- Quantify and model bacterial transport across scales in complex porous media as a function of water flow, pore-structure statistics and chemoattractants that bacteria swim toward.
More about the research
The classic equations for how microbes swim were written for simple fluids like water, and they fail to explain bacterial motion in these crowded, complex settings. Two projects use experiments, mathematics and computer simulation to work out how bacteria move through complex fluids and porous materials, from a single flagellum (the whip-like tail bacteria spin to swim) up to large populations and distances of meters.
Why it matters
Understanding how bacteria swim through mucus could guide new medicines and help prevent infections of mucosal surfaces, such as in the lungs and gut, and help manage stubborn biofilms. Predicting bacterial movement in soil could help stop pathogens from spreading into groundwater, support sustainable agriculture through the soil microbiome, and improve biofiltration for pollution control and wastewater treatment. It could also inform ways of separating bacteria for biotechnology, pharmaceuticals and biofuels.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Sujit Datta
California Institute of Technology, CA·Biophysics·Early-career
Evaluate how mucin glycans, the sugar chains attached to the proteins forming mucus, select for particular microbes within natural microbial communities.
Xiang Cheng
University of Minnesota, MN·Engineering
Engineer a fluorescent bacterial strain with tunable swimming speed and tumble frequency, and image single cells inside dense suspensions to link individual swimming to local turbulent flow and test competing active-matter theories.
Antal Jakli
Kent State University at Kent, OH·Materials Science
Measure how linear electromechanical coupling in ferroelectric nematic liquid crystals, the conversion between applied voltage and mechanical deformation, depends on the magnitude of spontaneous polarization and on nanoscale structure.
The school
University of Colorado Boulder: 36 labs on PI Pages, $718M a year on research, 447 research doctorates a year.
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