Executive Summary : | Bioconvection, a collective dynamics phenomenon involving single-celled microbes in marine and freshwater ecosystems, is an emergent Rayleigh-Bénard-like hydrodynamic instability. It is crucial for various microbial functions, including harmful algal bloom (HAB) and its interaction with surrounding porous mediums. Despite its interest, understanding its interaction with porous features remains largely elusive. Previous attempts to understand bioconvective instability through porous mediums have mostly been numerical in nature. To develop a porous medium that effectively modulates bioconvective features, a fundamental understanding of the mechanistic link between swimming cells and porous structures is essential. This study proposes a combined experimental, AI-based image processing, and numerical approach to study bioconvective dynamics, induced transport, and feedback of the porous medium on population dynamics. The experiments aim to study the effect of pore-scale topographies on the strength and sustainability of bioconvective instability, exploring the rich interplay of hydrodynamics, porous dispersion, and steric interactions at single-cell and pore-scale levels. The simulation will estimate the variability in transport characteristics of bioconvection phenomena in the presence of a porous medium. Combining experiments, visualization techniques, and computer simulations will help predict transport characteristics in complex porous geometries and lead to the development of swimming microbe-based novel technologies related to CO2 sequestration, region of retention in filtration, desalination, and understanding bloom formation in shallow regions. |