Research Overview:

Prof. Rossi has many research interests.  Recent applications in biology include the experimental, analytic and computational study of ant foraging trail dynamics as a model for biologically inspired self-organization.  Ants are arguably the most successful terrestrial creatures in the biosphere owing primarily to their social structure.  Though individually inept, local interactions between individuals in the same colony can produce sophisticated behaviors allowing the society to solve complex problems.  Much of this research project has focused on identification and modeling of key biological mechanisms and scaling individual behavior up into a system that describes the full collective.  The resulting models are partial differential equations that can help scientists understand fluid-like patterns that form within colonies of interacting ants.  This investigation is supported by laboratory experiments in the Math Department’s Modeling Experiment and Computation Lab and collaborations with field biologists.  On the other side of the modeling front, Prof. Rossi is collaborating with computer scientists who apply biologically-inspired mechanisms to technological problems such as data packet routing and forwarding in mobile ad-hoc networks.

Prof. Rossi also maintains active research interests in the computation and analysis of high Reynolds number flows and the rheology of micellar solutions.  In particular, he works to develop novel naturally-adaptive computational methods that can simulate flows using moving basis functions.  Long-standing interests include the emergence of coherent regions of vorticity in the oceans and atmosphere and the fate of these structures.

Delaware Biotechnology Institute
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