Section: Contracts and Grants with Industry

DISCO

Participants : Bart Haegeman, Fabien Campillo, Jérôme Harmand, Claude Lobry, Alain Rapaport.

DISCO (Multi-scale modelling bioDIversity Structure COupling in biofilms) is a three-years project from the ANR programm SYSCOMM, started in November 2009.

The objectives of the project is to generate new insights in

• microbial ecology, contributing to a better understanding of the links between the spatial structures (physical and morphological characteristics) and the biodiversity of biofilms, and how these links at the same time impact and depend on macro-variables (concentrations, flow rates, ...) and studying biological properties( e.g., functional differences between fresh and mature biofilm, mechanisms such as the “barrier effect”);

• waste and waste-water treatment processes, investigating how these links impact on the biological and physical performances of the biofilm (surface colonization, substrate degradation, detachment resistance,...) and proposing improvements of decision making tools (e.g. criteria for detecting the maturity of the biofilm, strategies of improving the start-up phase of biofilm reactors).

The consortium is composed of

• the team MERE,

• the Cemagref LISC (Laboratoire d'Ingénierie pour les Systèmes Complexes, Clermont) and HBAN (Hydrosystèmes et Bioprocédés d'ANtony),

• the INRA LBE (Laboratoire de Biotechnologies de l'Environnment), Narbonne,

• the UMR LPTMC (Laboratoire de Physique Théorique de la Matière Condensée), Univ. P. et M. Curie, Paris,

and will hire two postdoctoral fellows and one engineer.