Section: Partnerships and Cooperations

National Initiatives

DISCO (Multi-scale modeling bioDIversity Structure COupling in biofilms) is a project funded by the ANR SYSCOMM since the end of 2009, that ended in May 2013. Modemic has been the coordinator and other partners were Irstea LISC (Clermont-Ferrand), Irstea HBAN (Antony), Inra LBE (Narbonne) and CNRS/UMPC LPMTC (Paris VI). The objectives were to develop and study computational and mathematical models of biofilm dynamics, taking into account the biodiversity (distribution of bacteria species) and the spatial structure. The project had a strong multi-disciplinary dimension, gathering specialists of IBM study and reduction techniques, mathematical analysis of ecosystems modeling, multi-scale modeling of complex structures and dynamics, wastewater engineering and biodiversity measurements through DNA fingerprints, and solid waste biodegradation and microscopic biofilm structure imaging. During the project, several kinds of models (individual-based up to deterministic continuous) have be developed and confronted to experimental data at both micro and macroscopic scales. For the closing of the projet, the team has organized a one day meeting in Paris, combining a project restitution and and international workshop [ (https://sites.google.com/site/anrdisco/ )].

This year, a partial support of the continuation of the ANR DISCO has been been funded for two years by the RNSC (National Network on Complex Systems). The MnMs (Numerical Models for Microbial ecosystems) project [ (http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Fabien.Campillo/mnms/ )] aims at studying how to articulate existing models (discrete, continuous, deterministic, stochastic...) in a multi-scale framework with interactions between various scales. The team is the coordinator and the other partners are Irstea LISC (Clermont-Ferrand) and CNRS/UMPC LPMTC (Paris VI).

We organized a joint seminar with the project DyLeRBio of the RNSC (M. Desroches, Sisyphe/Mycenae projet-team) in Montpellier (September 30, October 1-2 2013) [ (http://www-sop.inria.fr/members/Fabien.Campillo/projects/mnms/ )].

Since 2012, the team is the coordinator of the ENOC project with the LBE lab (Inra Narbonne) [ (https://sites.google.com/site/enocprojetreversemodelling/ )], funded the by Inra meta-program MEM (metagenomics of microbial ecosystems). This two-years project proposes a multidisciplinary approach shared by microbial ecologists and mathematicians for the reverse modeling of metagenomic data for microbial resource management. The final objective is to develop a generic approach for predicting ecosystem performance from an unknown inoculum.

A new project submitted to the Inra Dept. CEPIA, entitled “New perspectives for the Multi-Stage Continuous Fermentor (MSCF): Study of fermentations with disturbances, and development of a control law”, in which the Montpellier Units SPO and Mistea are involved has been accepted in 2013 and will last 2 years. It is the continuation of the work made within the CAFE project (see Section 8.4 ) about the control of a wine fermentation process. The goal of the project is to study the fermentations with addition nitrogen. From the control point of view, we will study the control of both the sugar concentration and the $C{O}_2$ production rate in each of the 4 reactors of a MSCF.