Principal Investigator Lydia Bourouiba
Project Website https://lbourouiba.mit.edu/MITBourouibaCOVID19
We are actively engaged with colleagues at MIT, Harvard, and local hospitals in understanding and mitigating the transmission of respiratory infectious diseases, including COVID-19. If you would like to help us accelerate our research during this time of pandemic, we need all the support we can get at this time, please consider making a contribution.
Focusing on the interface of fluid dynamics and epidemiology, The Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory, within the Fluids and Health Network, aims to elucidate the fundamental physical mechanisms shaping the transmission dynamics of pathogens in human, animal, and plant populations where drops, bubbles, multiphase and complex flows are at the core, in addition to broader questions at the intersection of health, broadly defined, and fluid physics.
Key topics of research in the Fluid Dynamics of Disease Transmission Laboratory include:
Fluid Physics and Biophysics • Interfacial flows: pathogen-fluid interactions in bubbles, drops and films • Fluid fragmentation and droplet formation leading to air contamination • Turbulence and multiphase flows • Mixing, transport, and pathogen deposition and contamination • Hydrodynamic instabilities and waves • Viscoelastic and rheology, biological and complex fluids • Phase change and soft matter
Health, Disease Transmission • Contact dynamics and pathogen transport • Nosocomial diseases, respiratory diseases, waterborne diseases, and foliar diseases • Disease transmission and contamination in indoor environments, including hospitals. • Medical devices and physiology
We use a combination of theoretical (applied mathematics, including differential equations, linear algebra, nonlinear dynamics, waves and stability) and experimental approaches (flow visualization, high speed imaging techniques, microscopy, image processing) to elucidate the fundamental physical mechanisms of transmission of nosocomial diseases, respiratory diseases, waterborne diseases, and foliar diseases where fluids are ubiquitous and to design and formulate new control strategies.