Section: Overall Objectives

Overall objectives

Comore is a joint research team between INRIA (Research Unit of Sophia-Antipolis, France) and CNRS (Laboratory of Biological Oceanography and Marine Plankton Ecology, UMR 7093/ Université P.M. Curie, Villefranche sur Mer, France, Team: Plankton Dynamics, Physical and Chemical Processes).

The endeavor of Comore is to develop and apply methods from control theory (feedback control, estimation, identification, optimal control) and from dynamical systems theory, to the mathematical modelling of living exploited resources (renewable resources) and their management. We apply and validate our results to various fields: phyto- and zooplankton growth, bioprocesses, pest control, fisheries, cell models...

Research themes:

Methodology:

• Mathematical properties of models in biology: mathematical studies of models and of their global behavior.

• Tools for modelling in biology: model design, validation, parameter identification.

• Software sensors for biological systems: using the model and on-line measurements, we estimate the variables that are not measured directly.

• Control and regulation for biological systems: we design laws to maintain a variable at a given level, or to optimize the yield of the system.

Fields of application:

• Modelling and control of the growth of marine phytoplankton: phytoplankton is the basis of food chains in oceans (fishes, etc), and plays a key role in the carbon cycle. In Villefranche-sur-Mer, we develop a fully automated chemostat (open bioreactor where cells grow) which is managed by computers for that objective.

• Modelling, estimation and control of bioreactors: the bioreactors have a growing importance in many domains related to the human environment: food (production), pharmaceuticals (production of medicines), environment (wastewater treatment), etc.

• Dynamics and control of ecosystems: we build models for ecosystems (insects, fishes, zooplankton) and try to achieve optimal regulation.

• Modelling of metabolic and genetic networks: we study the dynamical behavior of regulation networks in cells.

Software for biological modelling.

National, international and industrial relations

• Collaboration with IFREMER (Nantes), INRA (MIA Montpellier, LBE Narbonne, GMPA Grignon, URIH Sophia-Antipolis), CIRAD Montpellier, Centre d'Océanologie de Marseille, LOCEAN (Paris), GIPSA Grenoble, IBIS and MERE INRIA teams.

• Participation in the French groups CoReV (Modèles et théories pour le Contrôle de Ressources Vivantes, Models and Control of Living Resources) and M3D (Mathématiques et décision pour le développement durable).

• Université Catholique de Louvain (Belgium), University of Marrakech (Marocco), Faculté Polytechnique de Mons (Belgium), University of Stuttgart (Germany), Rutgers University (USA), MacMaster University (Canada).

• ANR Biosys project Metagenoreg and ANR Mathematics and Interactions project ANAR

• ANR PNRB project Shamash and ANR Bioénergie project Symbiose.