Economic Principles of Microbial Growth: Allocation, Trade-offs, and Quantitative Models

This guest lecture was delivered as part of the CoE MicroPlanet Global Ambassador Program (GAP), an outreach initiative by the Cluster of Excellence MicroPlanet at the University of Vienna. The session was delivered together with Catalin Rusnac from Replifactory.

Around 200 students joined in a hybrid format, and the session turned into a lively discussion about microbiology, research, and career paths in science.

Topics Covered

• Microbial growth kinetics and the economics of cellular resource allocation
• Trade-offs in microbial metabolism: growth rate vs. yield, speed vs. efficiency
• Quantitative models for understanding microbial behavior
• Introduction to bioreactors and computational approaches in microbiology
• Research themes from MicroPlanet WP 7.1

This was Day 1 of a three-day program at ITS as part of the CoE MicroPlanet Global Ambassador Program.