Abstract below

 

Eleni Katifori

University of Pennsylvania, USA

Designing Flow Networks for Uniform Transport

A major role of flow networks—whether biological or engineered—is to carry and distribute solutes. However, a generic network will rarely distribute its load uniformly. Proximal regions to the source are often oversupplied, while distal regions remain undersupplied. Yet uniform delivery is crucial for tissue survival and system robustness. In this talk, we will discuss how adaptive mechanisms enable flow networks to overcome this challenge. First, we will show how a local geometric rule coupling tissue growth with nutrient density allows a network to self-organize into a configuration that distributes nutrients evenly. This rule can be generalized to mechanics-based models, illustrating how spatial gradients of nutrients or growth factors shape network design. We will then turn to microvascular networks, where continuous absorption drives a trade-off between equalizing perfusion, minimizing energy dissipation, and reducing material cost. This process generates morphologies ranging from hierarchical trees to uniform meshes. Using data from the rat mesentery and the mouse brain, we show how our reduced-order model predicts oxygen absorption rates consistent with in vivo measurements, without the need of any fitting parameters. We finally discuss how the interplay between metabolic demand, adaptive rules, and network design principles governs the emergence of efficient, robust transport in living systems—and how these lessons can inform the design of engineered flow networks.