Dream Fellowship: Simple Rules for Complex Systems: A shortcut on the path to the "in silico" sewage works.

Lead Research Organisation: Newcastle University
Department Name: Civil Engineering and Geosciences

Abstract

Treating water and wastewater is central to a sustainable urban existence. Biology plays a key role the technologies we employ. However, the technologies we use have mostly been developed by a process of systematic trial and error. We have done this because they are incredibly complex. A single sewage works will contain more than 100 million billion bacteria comprising over 5000 species. That is, there are one million times more bacteria in a sewage works than there are stars in the galaxy. However, my colleagues and I believe that these treatment systems, like the galaxy, are governed by a handful of relatively simple rules that I believe can be determined from very simple principles. This fellowship will give me the opportunity to search for those rules. If my hunch is right, or even half right it will help us devise new ways to understand and predict how such systems work and enable to develop new ideas more quickly and more efficiently. This will not only help engineers make the very best use of the biological resources we have, it will also enable us to determine if some of the more ambitious ideas of biologists, synthetic biology, will ever find application in real open systems. This fellowship is a tremendous privilege. I hope to repay my debt to my colleagues and institution by spending some of my time thinking about how we create an environment where they too can do the most creative work possible. To do this I hope to look at what does and does not promote creativity in the university to use this information to make a creativity index to guide senior managers in the institution promote the best possible environment for exciting research.

Planned Impact

N/A

Publications

10 25 50
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Allen B (2023) Diversity and metabolic energy in bacteria. in FEMS microbiology letters

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Pholchan MK (2013) Microbial community assembly, theory and rare functions. in Frontiers in microbiology

 
Description I have been looking for patterns in the microbial world that might allow me to calibrate a new generation of models that will allow us to accelerate the rate of innovation in open biological systems, especially systems for treating wastewater.
Exploitation Route The pattern I have found and hypothesized should be of interest to anyone who wishes to design a microbial system.
Sectors Environment

URL http://www.ncl.ac.uk/ceg/staff/profile/tom.curtis
 
Description I have used the Dream Fellowship to develop a strategy for the Ab Initio parameterization of multi-scale multi species models of engineered microbial communities. This award has inspired me to write an EPSRC frontier grant on the multiscale modelling of wastewater treatment plants, the 5.7 million pound grant is currently in progress. However, I am still writing up ideas from this proposal and expect to get at least two interesting publications out
First Year Of Impact 2012
Sector Environment,Pharmaceuticals and Medical Biotechnology
Impact Types Economic

 
Description Frontier Engineering
Amount £5,577,007 (GBP)
Funding ID EP/K039083/1 
Organisation Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) 
Sector Public
Country United Kingdom
Start 09/2013 
End 04/2019