Section: Overall Objectives

Propose new strategies to pilot and optimize microbial ecosystems

We study optimal design and feedback control laws within the framework of ongoing projects, and distinguish two kinds of contributions:

1. based on already known models of chemostat or fed-batch reactors, but with explicit spatial considerations, for

   • the biological treatment of natural water resources, one of the main objective of the associated team DYMECOS with Chile, in collaboration with B. Ivorra from MOMAT (Madrid) for the numerical computation of the pollutant spreading,

   • the design of interconnected networks of chemostats, in the following of the former ARC VITELBIO and also in collaboration with the MOMAT for the comparison and identification with hydrodynamics models.

2. based on new models developed in the scope of projects:

   • the Euro-Mediterranean project TREASURE coordinated by the team, where membranes are at the heart of a new generation of bioreactors of smaller size and well suited for Southern countries where the temperature is not too low.

   • the ANR DISCO 2010-2013, for which one of the output is expected in terms of control of biofilm reactors.

We plan to contribute to the development of new decision making tools to design, control, observe and optimize current and future bioprocesses, for the preservation of natural (aquatic or telluric) resources, where modelling and numerical simulations are clearly expected, and for the biotechnology industry whose objectives are to improve efficiency of bioprocesses under constraints of sustainable development (energetic consumption, biogas production...)

The tools based on geometric and optimal control of nonlinear systems and possibly on viability theory should be enhanced by software developments. We also expect to contribute to the numerical determination of optimal feedback laws for a class of problems relevant for the mentioned applications.