Dr. Nick Battista, an associate professor of mathematics at TCNJ, has secured a collaborative research grant from the National Science Foundation to develop new computational methods to understand predator-prey interactions underwater.
The three-year, $124,000 grant will fund field studies and quantitative analysis of how cnidarians (a branch of the animal kingdom that includes jellyfish and coral) are affected by fluid dynamics in their attempts to capture the plankton they eat — and how those interactions look from the prey’s perspective.