Submitted by Dr Otti A. Croze on Thu, 26/07/2018 - 04:30
Many congratulations to Di, who passed her viva with minor corrections.
Di's thesis entitled 'Cell-cycle dependent motility of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii and its collective motion in response to a Hagen-Poiseuille flow'. Using tracking microscopy, Di has for the first time charted several motility and physiological parameters as a function of a diurnal cycle. She made the surprising discovery that Chlamy swims twice as fast during the night phase than during the day. This and the other fascinating findings in her thesis, as well as the new methods she developed, hold great promise for the study of the biology of motility and microbial biofluid mechanics with application to algal biotechnologies. Very well done Di for this remarkable work!
Di will be moving on to do a postdoc on the biophysics of joint lubrication with Prof. Jakob Klein at the Weitzman Institute.