The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a grant totaling $206,040 over three years to Shuwang Li, associate professor of applied mathematics and principal investigator, to study multi-component and multi-compartment vesicles in complex flow domains. Vesicles have long been considered a model system for studying fundamental physics underlying complicated biological systems such as cells and microcapsules. Vesicles are also increasingly being used as carriers for drug delivery or biochemical micro-reactors operating in physiological environments. This project contributes to the forefront of constructing artificial cells with multiple compartments and designing phase domains on the surface of the vesicle such that specific proteins can anchor on the membrane to initiate subsequent biological reactions.

Li hopes the research also advances numerical method development, analytical theory, and integral equation formulations in the context of bio-membrane mechanics and particulate flows.