Bacterial suspensions as model active matter systems

This talk will show that bacterial suspensions, beyond their intrinsic, dominating importance in biology, are also excellent systems to explore and test theoretical results on active matter, I will present recent experimental results on dense bacterial suspensions obtained in the groups of Masaki Sano (University of Tokyo), Yilin Wu (Chinese University of Hong Kong), and Hepeng Zhang (Shanghai Jiaotong University). I will put them in context, situating them within our current knowledge of active matter, stressing differences and similarities. Particular attention will be paid to the modeling efforts already deployed or to be developed in order to understand the fascinating large-scale phenomena observed by these 3 groups.