
Adapted from Sammy Katta: https://sammykatta.com/diversity
Some resources for furthering one's education on systemic racism in the US: link
The BICEP Lab
Welcome! We are a lab interested in all things squishy and biomechanics related from The College of New Jersey (TCNJ), led by Nick Battista, an assistant professor in the Mathematics and Statistics Department.
Our central research focus currently is unraveling the swimming performance of a variety of marine invertebrates and pushing their modes of locomotion to their absolute limits (no critters are harmed in our computational models); however, we investigate many other interesting phenomena in biomechanics, math physiology, and fluid-structure interactions.
Nick is the creator and main contributor of a various numerical tools for research, teaching, and recreational purposes, which are available on his GitHub site. In particular we primarily use his software package, IB2d, for studying fluid-structure interaction problems, which allows for a robust construction of an immersed boundary.
OUR LATEST RESEARCH

A recent focus of our lab is studying the limitations of different swimming strategies using a blend of computational fluid dynamics models and organismal experiments. We are fortunate that TCNJ has its own HPC (ELSA) in which we use to perform our widespread locomotion studies.
Part of our research has been developing computational tools that help decrease the learning curve for students and scientists, who have minimal programming experience, to perform fluid-structure interaction models and other CFD simulations at an accelerated rate.

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Tierney Baldwin's, Rose Pereira's, and Zain Moin's ELSA (HPC) usage by in 2020 for fluid-structure interaction simulations:
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Tierney Baldwin and Zain Moin presented at SACNAS 2020! Check out their short teaser videos below! Congrats to Tierney and Zain for delivering great presentations!
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MAT128 Calculus B Online Resources:
https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1r5qGMvBuYJpGeL-yh34uwEglTE_Dkq_nVGOtq-miPBw/edit?usp=sharing
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Congrats to Zain Main who presented at the TCNJ Summer 2020 Presentation Symposium. Check out his poster (and others) here. Zain has been designing a bio-inspired pump, based off of insect hearts. He ran over 2500 fluid-structure interactions simulations this past summer alone using TCNJ's HPC ELSA. Congrats and great work, Zain!
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I'd like to welcome Miruna Baciu, Tierney Baldwin, and Rose Pereira to the lab!!
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Our paper exploring the sensitivity of an anguilliform swimmer's performance was accepted into Integrative and Comparative Biology. N.A. Battista, Diving into a simple anguilliform swimmer's sensitivity, accepted Integrative and Comparative Biology
** I want to thank the anonymous Reviewers for their very constructive, supportive feedback. I really appreciate your numerous quick reviews in the middle of a Pandemic. You really went above and beyond and really helped significantly strengthen this manuscript.**
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Our paper with over 6300 fully-coupled fluid-structure interactions exploring the anguilliform swimming mode was accepted into Integrative and Comparative Biology. N.A. Battista, Swimming through parameter subspaces of a simple anguilliform swimmer, accepted Integrative and Comparative Biology
** I want to thank the anonymous Reviewers for their very constructive, supportive feedback. I really appreciate your numerous quick reviews in the middle of a Pandemic. You really went above and beyond and really helped significantly strengthen this manuscript.**
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Our trabeculated, embryonic heart image was published in The Art of Theoretical Biology: N.A. Battista, L.A. Miller, Bumps, Ridges, and No Flows in Vein, The Art of Theoretical Biology, eds: F. Matthäus, S. Matthäus, S. Harris, Th. Hillen, 106-107 (2020)
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Our collaborative work alongside the Waldrop Lab (Chapman University) and the Miller Lab (U. Arizona) was accepted into J. Royal Society Interface. Very fortunate for being asked to be apart of this collaboration! L.D. Waldrop, Y. He, N.A. Battista, T. Neary, L.A. Miller, Uncertainty quantification reveals the physical constraints on pumping by valveless, tubular hearts
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Our collaborative work on developing a semi-automated finite difference mesh creator alongside the Miller Lab (U. Arizona) and Strickland Lab (U. Tennessee Knoxville) was accepted for publication into Bioinspiration and Biomimetics. D.M. Senter, D.R. Douglas, W.C. Strickland, S. Thomas, A. Talkington, L.A. Miller, N.A. Battista, A Semi-Automated Finite Difference Mesh Creation Method for Use with Immersed Boundary Software IB2d and IBAMR.
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Congrats to Mike Mongelli whose 1st first author manuscript was just accepted in Fluids! In this work, we studied the underlying fluid dynamics of pendulums, compared the results with the canonical reduced-order model of a damped pendulum, and discussed unsuspecting, interesting results! Here's the info:
M. Mongelli, .A. Battista, A Swing of Beauty: Pendulums, Fluids, Forces, and Computers. Fluids 5(2): 48 (2020) LINK
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Our work in which we provide a collection of open-source fluid solver codes (each with numerous built-in examples) to the scientific community has been published. Here's the info:
N.A. Battista, suite-CFD: an array of fluid solvers written in MATLAB and Python. Fluids 5(1): 28 (2020) LINK
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Our manuscript titled, "Fluid-Structure Interaction for the Classroom: Interpolations, Hearts, and Swimming!" was published in SIAM Review (SIREV) 61(1): 181-207 (2021)! Check it out!
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Jason Miles second manuscript, "Naut Your Everyday Jellyfish Model: Exploring How Tentacles and Oral Arms Impact Locomotion" was published in Fluids 4(3): 169 (2019)! Congrats, Jason! Check it out!








BICEP LAB NEWS!
IB2d SIMULATION OF THE MONTH!
"Jellyfish w/ Tentacles/Oral Arms!"
Simulation by:
Jason Miles, Undergraduate Math Major, TCNJ
IB2d simulation of a jellyfish with tentacles and oral arms by Jason Miles. Check out the paper: J.G. Miles, N.A. Battista, "Naut Your Everyday Jellyfish Model: Exploring How Tentacles and Oral Arms Impact Locomotion" Fluids 4(3): 169 (2019) Check it out!

(Image Credit: Gem Perkins, SoS TCNJ)