Emilia Simmons

With streamlined laboratory models, stringent controls over all environmental conditions have allowed scientists to examine and learn much about the world around us, but the natural world is typically far more complex than environments examined experimentally in the lab. With my training in physics, I'm broadly interested in slowly loosening the constraints on model systems. Currently, I work on theoretically examining the impacts that realistic spatial conditions have on these small tractable systems using biofilm simulations, interactions between bacteriophage and the biofilm structure in particular. My future interests include examining systems with higher numbers of species with methods analogous to statistical mechanics in physics.