“This year’s honorees are incredible trailblazers who have built remarkable careers, demonstrated exceptional leadership, and continue to inspire those who follow in their footsteps,” says Susan Lozier, dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair of the College of Sciences and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “It is a privilege to recognize these extraordinary individuals and celebrate the many ways they reflect the strength and spirit of the College of Sciences.”
Honorees will be recognized at the second annual Distinguished Alumni Awards Celebration on Thursday, Oct. 22, from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at the Renaissance Atlanta Midtown Hotel.
Recognition categories include the Distinguished Alumni Awards, honoring one graduate from each school; the Distinguished Young Scientist Award, recognizing early-career excellence; and the College of Sciences Impact Award, honoring transformative contributions to the College’s mission and future.
“The large response to our call for nominations was a powerful reminder of how deeply our alumni contribute to their fields and communities,” says Director of Alumni Relations Leslie Roberts. “We are excited to recognize this year’s amazing honorees and celebrate the lasting influence they have had both within and beyond Georgia Tech.”
B.S. Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 1996
B.S. Applied Biology 1972
Ph.D. Chemistry 2003
M.S. Applied Mathematics 1973
B.S. Physics 1965, M.S. Physics 1967, Ph.D. Physics 1969
Ph.D. Psychology 2000
B.S. Psychology 2014
B.S. Physics 1978
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Georgia Tech is hosting the 2026 MFEM (Modular Finite Element Methods) Community Workshop, Sept. 22-25. MFEM supports research in computational physics, earth systems modeling, engineering, energy, and other fields.
The four-day workshop is being held at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center and will focus on improving software for scientific computing and discovery. Participants can also attend online. Registration for the workshop is open through Sept. 11.
“We're very excited and grateful for the opportunity to have this workshop at Georgia Tech,” said Tzanio Kolev, a computational mathematician at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL).
“Georgia Tech has a great reputation in our field, and hosting at universities is a great way to connect with students. We see students as our future colleagues who will improve MFEM for generations to come.”
MFEM is an open-source software library for solving equations in computational models. Scientists and engineers use it to build and test virtual designs on some of the world’s most powerful supercomputers before creating real-world prototypes.
In fact, MFEM powered a tsunami early-warning model that ran on El Capitan, the world’s second-fastest supercomputer. The framework completed a simulation in a fraction of a second, 10 billion times faster than conventional algorithms. Kolev was part of the team that won the 2025 Gordon Bell Prize for the project.
MFEM’s impact extends beyond its original developers. The AWS Center for Quantum Computing uses the software as the foundation for a tool called Palace. This project runs 3D electromagnetic simulations to aid in the design of quantum computing hardware.
“These workshops have been very beneficial for both the broader user community and also for MFEM developers,” said Kolev.
“Every workshop, we are surprised by the ways people are building on our work, seeing what incredible, interesting, amazing things they do with it.”
Next month’s workshop at Georgia Tech will connect MFEM users and developers from national laboratories, academia, government, and industry.
The United Kingdom Atomic Energy Authority joins LLNL and Georgia Tech in sponsoring this year’s workshop. Nearly 20 scientists from Department of Energy (DOE) laboratories are attending in person. They represent LLNL, Los Alamos National Laboratory, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and the Naval Nuclear Laboratory.
The workshop’s first day features a free, hybrid tutorial. LLNL’s High Performance Computing Innovation Center will lead the tutorial, helping new users get started with MFEM and learn what the software can do. The tutorial requires separate registration for virtual participants.
The workshop will also host a simulation and visualization contest. Participants can submit images and videos of simulations using MFEM, which will be posted in a gallery. The workshop organizers will select an overall winner.
Further workshop activities include:
The MFEM workshop highlights the role open-source software plays in scientific discovery.
By making tools freely available, researchers can build on each other’s work rather than starting from scratch. This shared approach can accelerate innovation, improve software, and make advanced computing tools accessible to a wider community.
Georgia Tech hosts a Center for Scientific Software Engineering and an Open-Source Program Office. This year’s workshop connects these units with the MFEM community to help put the software into the hands of more researchers across science and engineering.
“The MFEM workshop aims to foster collaboration among all MFEM users and developers,” said Qi Tang, a workshop organizer and assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering.
“Hosting its annual community workshop brings researchers from DOE laboratories, universities, and industry to campus, giving Georgia Tech faculty and students direct access to experts from the field.”
]]>Georgia Tech is hosting the 2026 MFEM (Modular Finite Element Methods) Community Workshop, Sept. 22-25. MFEM supports research in computational physics, earth systems modeling, engineering, energy, and other fields.
The four-day workshop is being held at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center and will focus on improving software for scientific computing and discovery. Participants can also attend online. Registration for the workshop is open through Sept. 11.
]]>Georgia Tech’s Itamar Kolvin is aiming to solve that problem using molecular motors powered by tiny chemical reactions, giving researchers a new way to guide how fibers assemble into larger structures in the lab. The work could open the door to advances in wound healing, artificial tissues, and organ repair.
Now, Kolvin, an assistant professor in the School of Physics, has been awarded a $747,000 CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support this research.
The NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program is a five-year grant designed to help promising researchers establish a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in their field. Known as CAREER awards, the grants are NSF’s most prestigious funding for early-career faculty.
“The CAREER award is a crucial opportunity to push this research forward,” says Kolvin. “NSF plays a critical role in advancing science, and we wouldn’t be able to do our work without their support. I’m incredibly grateful for their commitment to advancing science.”
While the body naturally assembles these fibers, their small size makes protein filaments difficult to control in a lab setting. Without guidance, the materials grow randomly, creating weak and disorganized structures. But Kolvin has found that exposing the filaments to controlled fluid flows can help them grow in predictable ways.
That’s where Kolvin’s molecular motors come in. He attaches the motors to rod-shaped particles called microtubules, transforming the otherwise inert particles into microscopic motorboats. Powered by chemical reactions, the microtubules move through the fluid and generate tiny currents. Those currents guide the suspended protein filaments, directing how they align and assemble.
Like sticks in a stream, the current helps the protein filaments align with the flow around them. When millions of filaments interact in this way, they can form bundles, clusters, and large-scale networks.
“How do these rods align, when do they tangle, and when do they form networks?” Kolvin asks. “I’m interested in learning how we may be able to predict and ultimately control that behavior in order to direct the ways these structures can grow.”
Kolvin’s earlier work has already shown success with actin, the filaments responsible for building muscles. When suspended in fluid, the molecular motors helped actin fibers bundle together and form a membrane-like structure.
While that work demonstrated that molecular motors could influence assembly, Kolvin now aims to create a more dynamic, tunable system. Actin is limited, he explains, because of its simple rod-like shape, lack of rigidity, and because its bonds become permanent once the fibers bundle together.
He believes the more rigid, helix-shaped flagella in this new work will offer a wider range of opportunities. “The shape and rigidity of flagella expand the variety of patterns they can form,” he explains. “These new structures could have different applications.”
Through molecular engineering, the Kolvin Lab creates flagella that are temperature-sensitive, meaning that they can make and unmake bonds at different temperatures. This property might be key in creating a system that could be assembled and disassembled on demand.
“This could make it possible to tune materials in real-time by warming or cooling the system," Kolvin explains.
By combining molecular motors with temperature-sensitive protein fibers, Kolvin aims to create systems that can be predictably shaped, assembled, and disassembled on demand, opening the door to new possibilities for tissue engineering and regenerative medicine.
The work could also help answer long-standing problems in physics about active matter and collective behavior, revealing how flow and shape influence the way millions of microscopic building blocks align, pack, and assemble into complex materials.
“This CAREER award provides an exciting opportunity to pursue new ideas and tackle difficult, far-reaching questions,” Kolvin says. “I’m looking forward to seeing where this research leads in the years ahead.”
]]>Launched in 2025, INNS serves as a hub for neuroscience and neurotechnology research, connecting researchers across disciplines to advance discovery, innovation, and societal impact.
“A core part of INNS's mission is helping people find one another, connect around shared interests, and build something bigger than they could accomplish alone,” says Executive Director Christopher Rozell. “Simon has spent his career bringing together people, perspectives, and disciplines to tackle complex challenges. I can't think of a better person to help lead our interdisciplinary research efforts and support the next generation of collaborative neuroscience research.”
A longtime leader in Georgia Tech's neuroscience community, Sponberg helped shape the institute's early foundations through the Neuro Next Initiative, which evolved into INNS. As associate director, he will help guide research strategy, foster new collaborations, and support interdisciplinary work across the neuroscience ecosystem.
“Neuro-related research touches so many fields that we inevitably have a problem of finding all the potential right people and opportunities to tap into,” he said. “A core responsibility of this role is helping catalyze the ideas of new teams of talented researchers, educators, and trainees from inception to realization.”
Sponberg is the Glen Robinson Professor in Complex Systems with appointments in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences, where he directs the Agile Systems Lab. His work also connects him to the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM), underscoring the cross-disciplinary approach that defines both his research and leadership.
Since joining Georgia Tech in 2014, he has built a highly collaborative research program spanning neuroscience, biology, physics, engineering, and robotics while helping foster interdisciplinary connections across campus. He currently leads a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) that brings together neuroscientists and engineers from five universities to understand how brains achieve fast, flexible perception and decision-making in complex sensory environments. He also co-leads the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute, an NSF Biological Integration Institute focused on understanding movement and muscle function across scales.
His contributions have been recognized through numerous honors, including a Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Neuroethology, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in the Neurosciences, and the Leddy Family Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award.
As associate director, Sponberg will focus on helping researchers identify new opportunities for connection and collaboration. In addition to overseeing seed funding programs, he hopes to create pathways for researchers to build teams, access support resources, pursue ambitious interdisciplinary research ideas, and team with Georgia Tech’s undergraduate and graduate neuroscience degree programs.
“I look forward to being a resource for our community when people are looking for help in building teams or finding opportunities to support their ideas,” he said. “Bring your best ideas and please reach out if you want to talk about ideas in the interdisciplinary neuro space that you want to see realized.”