Prof. Brian Ingalls

March 27th, 2026 – 12:00-1:00 pm, EC4-2101A

Traditionally, most studies of microbes involve bulk population measurements of, e.g. well-mixed populations grown in culture tubes. However, spatial distribution is known to play an important role in microbial ecology. Our group has developed a pipeline to characterize ecological interactions among microbial populations from time-lapse microscopy at single cell resolution. We collect images of mixed populations of ~1000 cells constrained to two dimensions, at a frequency of 3-5 minutes. Image processing (segmentation and object tracking) is implemented with CellProfiler and our custom software package TrackRefiner. We then use processed image data to calibrate agent-based models of cellular activity. These models allow us to assess hypotheses regarding cellular behaviour and build toward predictive model-based design of interventions in natural and engineered microbial systems.