Computing of Transport Processes in Biological Systems

Flow and thermal transport processes have a vital function in the functioning and operation of many biological and bio-medical systems. In such systems, diagnostic procedures or experiments are often difficult to perform, and reliable numerical simulations can provide great value in our understanding of the functioning of the biological system and in designing suitable diagnostic and treatment procedures. However such simulations are complicated by the need to resolve small scales, complex geometries with compliant moving walls, and sometimes nonNewtonian flow rheology. Thus accurate, properly resolved simulations are extremely challenging, and are only now becoming possible with the availability of powerful parallel computing facilities. The proposed program is a multi-disciplinary effort involving the colleges of engineering and basic sciences and aims to develop computational and visualization tools that will unravel the flow and transport processes in complex biological systems. The program aims to use massively parallel computing coupled with sophisticated visualization tools to resolve and render the flow processes spanning the spectrum of scales in a biological system.