Nicholas Battista

• PhD Mathematics
• Associate Professor at College of New Jersey

Tomopterids are mesmerizing holopelagic swimmers. They use two modes of locomotion simultaneously: drag-based metachronal paddling and bodily undulation. Tomopteris has two rows of flexible, leg-like parapodia positioned on opposite sides of its body. Each row metachronally paddles out of phase to the other. Both paddling behaviors occur in concert...

A large diversity of fluid pumps is found throughout nature. The study of these pumps has provided insights into fundamental fluid dynamic processes and inspiration for the development of micro-fluid devices. Recent work by Thiria and Zhang [Appl. Phys. Lett. 106, 054106 (2015)] demonstrated how a reciprocal, valveless pump with a geometric asymmet...

In this paper, we introduce the numerical strategy for mixed uncertainty propagation based on probability and Dempster–Shafer theories, and apply it to the computational model of peristalsis in a heart-pumping system. Specifically, the stochastic uncertainty in the system is represented with random variables while epistemic uncertainty is represent...

Gorgonians, including sea fans, are soft corals well known for their elaborate branching structure and how they sway in the ocean. This branching structure can modify environmental flows to be beneficial for feeding in a particular range of velocities and, presumably, for a particular size of prey. As water moves through the elaborate branches, it...

Multiscale modeling of marine and aerial plankton has traditionally been difficult to address holistically due to the challenge of resolving individual locomotion dynamics while being carried with larger-scale flows. However, such problems are of paramount importance, e.g., dispersal of marine larval plankton is critical for the health of coral ree...

Upside-down jellyfish, Cassiopea, are prevalent in warm and shallow parts of the oceans throughout the world. They are unique among jellyfish in that they rest upside down against the substrate and extend their oral arms upwards. This configuration allows them to continually pull water along the substrate, through their oral arms, and up into the w...

In this paper, we present an open-source software library that can be used to numerically simulate the advection and diffusion of a chemical concentration or heat density in a viscous fluid where a moving, elastic boundary drives the fluid and acts as a source or sink. The fully-coupled fluid-structure interaction problem of an elastic boundary in...

Jellyfish have been called one of the most energy-efficient animals in the world due to the ease in which they move through their fluid environment, by product of their bell kinematics coupled with their morphological, muscular, material properties. We investigated jellyfish locomotion by conducting in silico comparative studies and explored swimmi...

Jellyfish (Medusozoa) have been deemed the most energy-efficient animals in the world. Their bell morphology and relatively simple nervous systems make them attractive to robotocists. Although, the science community has devoted much attention to understanding their swimming performance, there is still much to be learned about the jet propulsive loc...

Jellyfish (Medusozoa) have been deemed the most energy-efficient animals in the world. Their bell morphology and relatively simple nervous systems make them attractive to robotocists. Although, the science community has devoted much attention to understanding their swimming performance, there is still much to be learned about the jet propulsive loc...

While students may find spline interpolation quite digestible based on their familiarity with the continuity of a function and its derivatives, some of its inherent value may be missed when they only see it applied to standard data interpolation exercises. In this paper, we offer alternatives in which students can qualitatively and quantitatively w...

Computational scientists have investigated swimming performance across a multitude of different systems for decades. Most models depend on numerous model parameters and performance is sensitive to those parameters. In this paper, parameter subspaces are qualitatively identified in which there exists enhanced swimming performance for an idealized, s...

Synopsis Computational models of aquatic locomotion range from modest individual simple swimmers in 2D to sophisticated 3D multi-swimmer models that attempt to parse collective behavioral dynamics. Each of these models contain a multitude of model input parameters to which its outputs are inherently dependent, that is, various performance metrics....

Supplemental Materials for: N.A. Battista, Diving into a simple anguilliform swimmer’s sensitivity, Integrative and Comparative Biology, 60(5): 1236-1250 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icaa131

Synopsis Computational scientists have investigated swimming performance across a multitude of different systems for decades. Most models depend on numerous model input parameters and performance is sensitive to those parameters. In this article, parameter subspaces are qualitatively identified in which there exists enhanced swimming performance fo...

Supplemental Materials for: N.A. Battista, Swimming Through Parameter Subspaces of a Simple Anguilliform Swimmer, Integrative and Comparative Biology 60(5): 1221-1235 (2020), https://doi.org/10.1093/icb/icaa130

Most biological functional systems are complex, and this complexity is a fundamental driver of diversity. Because input parameters interact in complex ways, a holistic understanding of functional systems is key to understanding how natural selection produces diversity. We present uncertainty quantification (UQ) as a quantitative analysis tool on co...

Numerous fluid-structure interaction problems in biology have been investigated using the immersed boundary method. The advantage of this method is that complex geometries, e.g., internal or external morphology, can easily be handled without the need to generate matching grids for both the fluid and the structure. Consequently, the difficulty of mo...

Computational models of aquatic locomotion range from individual modest simple swimmers in 2D to sophisticated 3D individual swimmers to complex multi-swimmer models that attempt to parse collective behavioral dynamics. Each of these models contain a multitude of model input parameters to which the model outputs are inherently dependent, i.e., vari...

In a developing vertebrate heart, the heart does not simply beat just to transport blood, nutrients, and oxygen, but it beats to aid in the formation.

While pendulums have been around for millennia and have even managed to swing their way into undergraduate curricula, they still offer a breadth of complex dynamics to which some has still yet to have been untapped. To probe into the dynamics, we developed a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a pendulum using the open-source fluid-structur...

Supplemental Materials for M. Mongelli, N.A. Battista, A Swing of Beauty: Pendulums, Fluids, Forces, and Computers, Fluids 5(2): 48 (2020), https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids5020048 Includes: (1) Slides for teaching (.pptx, .pdf) (2) Simulation movies (.mp4)

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) models are being rapidly integrated into applications across all sciences and engineering. CFD harnesses the power of computers to solve the equations of fluid dynamics, which otherwise cannot be solved analytically except for very particular cases. Numerical solutions can be interpreted through traditional quanti...

Supplemental Materials for N.A. Battista, suite-CFD: an array of fluid solvers written in MATLAB and Python, Fluids 5(1): 28 (2020), https://doi.org/10.3390/fluids5010028 Contains: (1) Slides for teaching using these materials (.pptx, .pdf) (2) Simulation images from Paper (3) Movies from paper

Jellyfish are majestic, energy-efficient, and one of the oldest species that inhabit the oceans. It is perhaps the second item, their efficiency, that has captivated scientists for decades into investigating their locomotive behavior. Yet, no one has specifically explored the role that their tentacles and oral arms may have on their potential swimm...

Jellyfish - majestic, energy efficient, and one of the oldest species that inhabits the oceans. It is perhaps the second item, their efficiency, that has captivated scientists for decades into investigating their locomotive behavior. Yet, no one has specifically explored the role that their tentacles and oral arms may have on their potential swimmi...

Opioid addiction has become a global epidemic and a national health crisis in recent years, with the number of opioid overdose fatalities steadily increasing since the 1990s. In contrast to the dynamics of a typical illicit drug or disease epidemic, opioid addiction has its roots in legal, prescription medication—a fact which greatly increases the...

Jellyfish have been called one of the most energy-efficient animals in the world due to the ease in which they move through their fluid environment, by product of their morphological, muscular, and material properties. We investigated jellyfish locomotion by conducting \textit{in silico} comparative studies and explored swimming performance in diff...

When is good, good enough? This question lingers in approximation theory and numerical methods as a competition between accuracy and practicality. Numerical Analysis is traditionally where the rubber meets the road: students begin to use numerical algorithms to compute approximate solutions to non-trivial problems. However, it is difficult for stud...

When is good, good enough? This question lingers in approximation theory and numerical methods as a competition between accuracy and practicality. Numerical Analysis is traditionally where the rubber meets the road: students begin to use numerical algorithms to compute approximate solutions to non-trivial problems. However, it is difficult for stud...

Proper heart morphogenesis requires a delicate balance between hemodynamic forces, myocardial activity, morphogen gradients, and epigenetic signaling, all of which are coupled with genetic regulatory networks. Recently both in vivo and in silico studies have tried to better understand hemodynamics at varying stages of veretebrate cardiogenesis. In...

While students may find spline interpolation easily digestible, based on their familiarity with continuity of a function and its derivatives, some of its inherent value may be missed when students only see it applied to standard data interpolation exercises. In this paper, we offer alternatives where students can qualitatively and quantitatively wi...

Opioid addiction has become a global epidemic and a national health crisis in recent years, with the number of opioid overdose fatalities steadily increasing since the 1990s. In contrast to the dynamics of a typical illicit drug or disease epidemic, opioid addiction has its roots in legal, prescription medication - a fact which greatly increases th...

Second IB2d Poster. IB2d is an easy to use immersed boundary method in 2D, with multiple options for fiber-structure models with possible porosity, advection-diffusion, and/or artificial forcing.

Opioid addiction has become a global epidemic and a national health crisis in recent years, with the number of opioid overdose fatalities steadily increasing since the 1990s. In contrast to the dynamics of a typical illicit drug or disease epidemic, opioid addiction has its roots in legal, prescription medication - a fact which greatly increases th...

While many organisms filter feed and exchange heat or nutrients in flow, few benthic organisms also actively pulse to enhance feeding and exchange. One example is the pulsing soft coral (Heteroxenia fuscescens). Pulsing corals live in colonies, where each polyp actively pulses through contraction and relaxation of their tentacles. The pulses are ty...

While many organisms filter feed and exchange heat or nutrients in flow, few benthic organisms also actively pulse to enhance feeding and exchange. One example is the pulsing soft coral (Heteroxenia fuscescens). Pulsing corals live in colonies, where each polyp actively pulses through contraction and relaxation of their tentacles. The pulses are ty...

We explore an embryonic heart model that couples electrophysiology and muscle-force generation to flow induced using a $2D$ fluid-structure interaction framework based on the immersed boundary method. The propagation of action potentials are coupled to muscular contraction and hence the overall pumping dynamics. In comparison to previous models, th...

Effective methods of fluid transport vary across scale. A commonly used dimensionless number for quantifying the effective scale of fluid transport is the Reynolds number, Re, which gives the ratio of inertial to viscous forces. What may work well for one Re regime may not produce significant flows for another. These differences in scale have impli...

Mesoscale filtering and protective layers are replete throughout the natural world. Within the body, arrays of extracellular proteins, microvilli, and cilia can act as both protective layers and mechanosensors. For example, blood flow profiles through the endothelial surface layer determine the amount of shear stress felt by the endothelial cells a...

Effective methods of fluid transport vary across scale. A commonly used dimensionless number for quantifying the effective scale of fluid transport is the Reynolds number, Re, which gives the ratio of inertial to viscous forces. What may work well for one Re regime may not produce significant flows for another. These differences in scale have impli...

Mesoscale filtering and protective layers are replete throughout the natural world. Within the body, arrays of extracellular proteins, microvilli, and cilia can act as both protective layers and mechanosensors. For example, blood flow profiles through the endothelial surface layer determine the amount of shear stress felt by the endothelial cells a...

We explore an embryonic heart model that couples electrophysiology and muscle-force generation to flow induced using a $2D$ fluid-structure interaction framework based on the immersed boundary method. The propagation of action potentials are coupled to muscular contraction and hence the overall pumping dynamics. In comparison to previous models, th...

Around the third week after gestation in embryonic development, the human heart consists only of a valveless tube, unlike a fully developed adult heart, which is multi-chambered. At this stage in development, the heart valves have not formed and so net flow of blood through the heart must be driven by a different mechanism. It is hypothesized that...

The immersed boundary method (IB) is an elegant way to fully couple the motion of a fluid and deformations of an immersed elastic structure. In that vein, the IB2d software allows for expedited explorations of fluid-structure interaction for beginners and veterans to the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). While most open source CFD codes...

The immersed boundary method (IB) is an elegant way to fully couple the motion of a fluid and deformations of an immersed elastic structure. In that vein, the IB2d software allows for expedited explorations of fluid-structure interaction for beginners and veterans to the field of computational fluid dynamics (CFD). While most open source CFD codes...

First IB2d Poster. IB2d is an easy to use immersed boundary method in 2D, with multiple options for fiber-structure models with possible porosity, advection-diffusion, and/or artificial forcing.

Recent \emph{in vivo} experiments have illustrated the importance of understanding the hemodynamics of heart morphogenesis. In particular, ventricular trabeculation is governed by a delicate interaction between hemodynamic forces, myocardial activity, and morphogen gradients, all of which are coupled to genetic regulatory networks. The underlying h...

The development of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) software involves trade-offs between ease of use, generality, performance, and cost. Typically there are large learning curves when using low-level software to model the interaction of an elastic structure immersed in a uniform density fluid. Many existing codes are not publicly available, and th...

Recent \emph{in vivo} experiments have illustrated the importance of understanding the hemodynamics of heart morphogenesis. In particular, ventricular trabeculation is governed by a delicate interaction between hemodynamic forces, myocardial activity, and morphogen gradients, all of which are coupled to genetic regulatory networks. The underlying h...

The development of fluid-structure interaction (FSI) software involves trade-offs between ease of use, generality, performance, and cost. Typically there are large learning curves when using low-level software to model the interaction of an elastic structure immersed in a uniform density fluid. Many existing codes are not publicly available, and th...

Around the third week after gestation in embryonic development, the human heart consists only of a valvless tube, unlike a fully developed adult heart, which is multi-chambered. At this stage in development, the heart valves have not formed and so net flow of blood through the heart must be driven by a different mechanism. It is hypothesized that t...

The immersed boundary method is a numerical approach to solving fluid-structure interactions. By decoupling the mesh for the object or boundary (a beating heart, a pulsing jellyfish, a leaf flapping in the wind…) and the fluid grid, the immersed boundary enables one to model both the effects of the fluid on the boundary and the effects of the bound...

\emph{In vivo} experiments have highlighted the importance of understanding hemodynamic forces, i.e., shear stress and pressure, in vertebrate cardiogenesis. In particular, the formation of the cardiac trabeculae is governed by a delicate interaction between hemodynamic forces, myocardial activity, and epigenetic signaling mechanisms, which are cou...

The use of illicit drugs has been on the rise in United States. It is very detrimental on society, as fatal overdose is the fourth leading cause of death in the United States, which is about the same as motor vehicle crashes. Of all illicit drugs, one drug that has an severe adverse effect on a community as a whole is heroin. This paper will discus...

This article provides models and code for numerically simulating muscle-fluid-structure interactions (FSIs). This work was presented as part of the symposium on Leading Students and Faculty to Quantitative Biology through Active Learning at the society-wide meeting of the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology in 2015. Muscle mechanics and...

There is growing notion that black holes may not contain curvature singularities (and that indeed nature in general may abhor such spacetime defects). This notion could have implications on our understanding of the evolution of primordial black holes (PBHs) and possibly on their contribution to cosmic energy. This paper discusses the evolution of a...

Einstein's theory of general relativity has radically altered the way in which we perceive the universe. His breakthrough was to realize that the fabric of space is deformable in the presence of mass, and that space and time are linked into a continuum. Much evidence has been gathered in support of general relativity over the decades. Some of the i...