Daniel Coombs
I am currently a third year Applied Mathematics PhD. student at the University of Arizona. I am currently fully funded by the Flinn/IGERT Iniative. Last year I was the recipient of a Flinn Foundation partial fellowship. I graduated from the University of Sheffield, England, in 1995 with first class honours in Mathematics and Applied Mathematics. My research interests lie in finding mathematical descriptions of physical processes occurring at around the cellular level. I am currently particularly interested in investigating the swimming dynamics of bacteria and spermatozoa. To do this requires an understanding of the physical characteristics of tiny immersed elastic objects (the flagellae which the bacteria uses for propulsion) and linking this to the observed swimming behaviour. I am also interested in the mechanics of how an individual bacterium decides which way to swim, and how this can generate macroscopic patterns on the level of cell colonies. These studies are driven by experimental work conducted at the University in the Physics and Molecular and Cellular Biology departments. I intend to continue to develop models, both analytic and numerical, which genuinely represent what is seen in the laboratory.
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