  A bacterial biofilm is an aggregate of micro-organisms growing fixed onto a
solid surface, rather than floating freely in a liquid. Biofilms play a major
role in various practical situations such as surgical infections and water
treatment. We consider a non-linear PDE model of biofilm growth subject to
initial and Dirichlet boundary conditions, and the inverse coefficient problem
of recovering the unknown parameters in the model from extra measurements of
quantities related to the biofilm and substrate. By addressing and analysing
this inverse problem we provide reliable and robust reconstructions of the
primary physical quantities of interest represented by the diffusion
coefficients of substrate and biofilm, the biomass spreading parameters, the
maximum specific consumption and growth rates, the biofilm decay rate and the
half saturation constant. We give particular attention to the constant
coefficients involved in the leading-part non-linearity, and present a
uniqueness proof and some numerical results. In the course of the numerical
investigation, we have identified extra data information that enables improving
the reconstruction of the eight-parameter set of physical quantities associated
to the model of biofilm growth.
