Momentum - The Magazine for Virginia Tech Mechanical Engineering Vol. 3 No. 3 Fall 2018 | Page 18

Graduate students
Carolyn Mottley and
Zhou Ye assembling the
experimental bioreactor
setup.
surface of these devices using antimicrobial
compounds. “You can chemically modify the
device, but these chemical coatings have a
limited life-cycle and are known to contrib-
ute to the emergence of antibiotic-resistant
microbes,” Behkam said. “The other method is
to physically modify the surface of the device
by creating a texturized layer that will repel
the microbes and keep them from forming a
biofilm for longer periods of time.”
Non-toxic physical modification of surfaces
as an antifouling strategy is a relatively new
area of research. “For over a decade now, re-
searchers have been working on determining
how surface texture affects microbial adhesion
and biofilm formation process,” Behkam said.
“Experiments involve varying surface texture
MOMENTUM
FALL 2018
material, geometry, size, and spacing to see
what combination provides the best outcome.
However, the main problem is the absence of
theoretical insight into the best surface texture
parameters – so researchers test as many
surface texture designs as they can afford and
choose the best design. However, is it the best
design, or just the best based on the limited
number of tests they have conducted?”
The is sue, as Behkam and her collaborators
saw it, was that microbiologists and chemists
had always focused on high-throughput
testing methods – that is, designing a test that
would maximize the number of results that
could be achieved – instead of a mathematical
model that would provide vastly more data
based on probabilities and then testing those
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