Eric Kightley is a first year Applied Mathematics student in the Interdisciplinary Quantitative Biology graduate program who has just won a three-year National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship. He has a background in ecology, mathematics and physics and his research with Professor David Bortz deals with microbial aggregate ecology. Microbial aggregation is a ubiquitous phenomenon with many important industrial applications, such as wastewater treatment and biofuel production. The efficiency with which these aggregates perform their desired task depends upon their distribution in space and in size. Eric will seek to integrate population dynamics with spatial distribution models to improve the processing efficiency.