Beginning July 1, 2020, professor Michael Schatz will serve as interim chair for the School of Physics.

“I am eager to work with Mike in the coming year to help move the school’s instructional and research work forward," said College of Sciences dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair Susan Lozier in a note to physics faculty and staff. "He has impressed me with his creativity, energy, and commitment to the school and the college.”

Former School of Physics chair Pablo Laguna, who has served as a professor of physics and director of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics at Georgia Tech since 2008, recently accepted a role with the University of Texas at Austin.

Dean Lozier thanks Laguna “for his many contributions as chair of the school, and for all that he has brought to the astrophysics program since he arrived at Georgia Tech over a decade ago. He will be missed, and we wish him all the best in the years ahead at UT-Austin.”

Meet Michael Schatz

"In these uncertain times, we face a number of challenges ahead,” Schatz says. “However, I am confident that together with my colleagues in the School of Physics, the College of Sciences and elsewhere in the Institute, we will find ways to navigate successfully a path forward."

Schatz started at Georgia Tech in the fall of 1996, and is the associate chair for the Introductory Physics Program within the School of Physics. He leads the Pattern Formation and Control Lab, where he and his team research experimental nonlinear dynamics (pattern formation, chaos and turbulence in fluid flows) and physics education. He was a 1999 recipient of the Cottrell Scholars Award for his commitment to excellence in both research and teaching, and is the winner of the 2020 Teaching Excellence Award for Online Education from the Center for Teaching and Learning.

Schatz is also a former director and associate director of the Hands-on Research in Complex Systems Schools, held annually at the International Centre for Theoretical Physics in Trieste, Italy.