SDSU's Basu receives NSF funding to kickstart a European collaboration

Saikat Basu, assistant professor of mechanical engineering in South Dakota State University's Jerome J. Lohr College of Engineering, has received a supplemental National Science Foundation grant to establish a new collaboration Simon Jochems, assistant professor of infectious diseases at the Leiden University Medical Center in the Netherlands.

The new supplemental funding will cover yearly visits for Basu and his Ph.D. student to Leiden over the next five years and is connected to his ongoing NSF CAREER award. Earlier this year, Basu was awarded the CAREER grant — one of the foundation's most prestigious awards for university-level researchers — to explore the flow physics of inhaled air and particles in respiratory cavities.

"This new funding from NSF will allow me to connect our basic fluid mechanics findings with biological parameters for different respiratory viruses and bacteria afflicting children," Basu said. "This will be a major step forward toward a comprehensive model for the transmission of respiratory diseases."

Leiden University is one of the oldest universities in Europe and one of the continent's leading research institutions. The award is facilitated by an implementation arrangement signed in 2019 between the NSF and the European Research Council, to connect researchers with complementary strengths and shared interests in solving the world’s most challenging problems.

Jochems and his research team will provide the viral and bacterial data needed for Basu's modeling.

"This collaboration can eventually help establish a new niche subfield that integrates fluid mechanics and virology," Basu said.

Basu, who has been with SDSU since 2019, directs the Biomedical and Bioinspired Fluid Dynamics Lab, which specializes in developing theoretical and computational fluid dynamics models of transport inside complex biophysical systems, like upper airways, lungs and throats, and cancer microenvironments.

"I am very pleased to hear that the NSF has offered a supplemental award to Dr. Basu," said Yucheng Liu, head of SDSU's Department of Mechanical Engineering and the Duane Sander Endowed Professor. "I believe this additional support will significantly enhance the success of his CAREER project and broaden the impact of his cutting-edge research."

The long-term vision for this research is to understand the mechanics of respiratory infection onset in the upper airway and could play a crucial role in the fight against airborne diseases.