Published: April 9, 2014
jay stotsky

Jay Stotsky is a first year graduate student in the Applied Math and has just won a four-year Department of Energy Computational Science Graduate Fellowship. Jay began his studies at the University of Colorado last Fall and began working with professor David Bortz on a project to model and simulate the structural properties of bacterial biofilms. Biofilms are surface-adherent communities of bacteria that excrete certain compounds which provide structural support and protection from external environmental conditions. This is problematic since biofilms can cause extremely rapid, microbiologically influenced corrosion (MIC) in many materials, costing billions of dollars per year.  The goal of Jay's research is to develop models and algorithms for simulating biofilm biomechanics in order to develop better strategies for MIC mitigation.