Bhuvnesh Bharti
Louisiana State University, LA·Engineering·Early-career
Tiny particles that move on their own, and groups of them that move together, could one day carry drugs through the body, inspect pipelines, or pull contaminants out of water. Getting there means solving a physics problem: at micrometer scales, gravity, thermal jostling and friction with surrounding fluid dominate, so a small object's path is easily pinned to a surface or randomized.
- Fields
Engineering
Materials Science
Physics
- Topics
active colloids
magnetic swarms
colloidal particles
- Grants
- 2 known grants, through Sep 2029
What they work on
- Use large-scale simulations of coupled magnetic, hydrodynamic and contact interactions, plus analytical theory, to derive design rules for how micron-scale magnetic colloids aggregate and move cooperatively in porous media and open three-dimensional fluids.
- Apply inverse-design algorithms to identify particle shapes, magnetic moments and time-varying field protocols that produce targeted swarm behaviors such as adaptive aggregation, obstacle navigation and cargo transport.
- Test swarm predictions experimentally with lithographically fabricated and chemically synthesized magnetic particles, measuring structure, flow fields and cargo transport efficiency by high-speed imaging, particle tracking and force mapping.
- Determine how particle and surface-patch symmetry set the trajectories of metal-patched microspheres self-propelled by alternating-current induced-charge electrophoresis, establishing a structure-kinematic relationship for active colloids.
- Relate a particle's spatial orientation to its direction of propulsion to guide directional motion, and test how trajectory shape governs the efficiency with which active colloids tunnel through porous membranes.
More about the research
Both projects in this lab ask how particle shape, surface chemistry and externally applied fields can be used to control motion, individually and collectively, well enough to navigate crowded, porous environments.
Why it matters
Design rules for steering self-propelled and magnetically driven colloids could support miniature devices that deliver medicine inside the body, inspect subsurface pipelines, or remove contaminants from water, and could improve transport of particles through structured environments such as extracellular matrix or porous rock. The work also builds training pathways for community college undergraduates and outreach for visually impaired students.
Known grants
From NIH and NSF research grants. Labs often have other funding we can't see.
Closest labs
Michael Bevan
Johns Hopkins University, MD·Engineering
Measure and model how spherical and ellipsoidal colloidal particles interact on spherical, cylindrical and wavy surfaces as a function of particle aspect ratio, surface coverage and substrate curvature, using optical microscopy paired with simulation.
Harishankar Manikantan
University of California-Davis, CA·Engineering·Early-career
Use asymptotic theory to calculate hydrodynamic interactions between pairs of particles in realistic non-Newtonian interfaces, including membranes and monolayers whose resistance to flow changes with deformation.
Jonathan Rothstein
University of Massachusetts, MA·Engineering
Measure how self-propelled Marangoni surfers move on levitating spherical water drops in microgravity aboard the International Space Station, focusing on how the drop's overall curvature changes their propulsion.
The school
Louisiana State University: 15 labs on PI Pages, $431M a year on research, 323 research doctorates a year.
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