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The Petit Center is made possible by a transformational commitment from technology entrepreneur, philanthropist, and Georgia Tech alumnus Parker H. "Pete" Petit.

Since 1980, Petit has provided significant philanthropic support across campus, including the naming of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB), one of Georgia Tech’s 11 Interdisciplinary Research Institutes. IBB is an interdisciplinary hub for transforming biological discovery into real-world health impact, bringing together engineers, scientists, and clinicians to accelerate innovations in diagnostics, therapeutics, medical devices, and biomanufacturing. With more than 300 interdisciplinary faculty researchers, 13 research centers, and 1,300 trainees making unprecedented discoveries and generating innovative technologies, IBB is a catalyst for innovative bioengineering and bioscience research. 

The success of IBB led Petit to make his latest investment, which will build on Georgia Tech’s broader commitment to medical innovation: applying engineering, computing, AI, biosciences, and systems thinking to health challenges that require more than any one field can solve. The Petit Center’s work will strengthen the tools, partnerships, and research pathways needed to help more discoveries move from the lab toward real-world patient care. 

A key goal of the Petit Center will be to use AI to build more precise models of how disease works in the body. Its first research initiative will focus on creating virtual models of human cells. Led by Jeffrey Skolnick, Regents’ Professor and Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology in the School of Biological Sciences, researchers will use those models to study how diseases progress and to identify treatments that may work best for individual patients. 

By modeling disease at the cellular level, researchers can test ideas faster, uncover links among different diseases, and focus on therapies most likely to help patients based on their unique biology. The work could expedite the discovery of new therapies for some of the hardest-to-treat diseases, including pancreatic cancer and glioblastoma, an aggressive form of brain cancer. 

“Medical innovation is one of the fastest-growing areas in Georgia Tech’s research, and Pete Petit’s commitment will help us further shape the future of medicine," said Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech. “This new research center will find new ways to harness the power of AI to accelerate critical medical discoveries and move them into clinical settings so patients can get the care they need. We’re deeply grateful for Pete's support, and we’re excited to get started.”

The Parker H. Petit Center for AI-Driven Health Innovation will operate under the Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) and bring together researchers from across Georgia Tech to advance AI-driven approaches to human health. Researchers affiliated with the Petit Center will work across fields and with clinical and healthcare organizations to help close the gap between discovery and practical use. Over time and with additional investments, the Petit Center’s work will expand into areas such as cancer biomarker discovery, healthy aging, advanced cellular therapies, and AI-supported healthcare systems. 

"Georgia Tech has the expertise to redefine what is possible in healthcare through AI," said Skolnick. "By combining advanced computational methods with biological and medical insights, we can create powerful new approaches to predicting disease, identifying treatments, and improving patient outcomes." 

Petit’s commitment will support advanced computing infrastructure, graduate and postdoctoral fellowships, seed research grants, and annual programs that will bring together leading researchers from around the world working at the intersection of AI and health. 

Petit hopes this investment will inspire others to support interdisciplinary research at the Institute. "Georgia Tech has long demonstrated its ability to solve complex challenges," said Petit. "I believe artificial intelligence will fundamentally reshape healthcare, and I am excited to support a center that can help accelerate discoveries to improve and save lives." 

This transformative commitment is included in Transforming Tomorrow: The Campaign for Georgia Tech and is propelling the comprehensive campaign’s success.  

“We are proud to celebrate three outstanding College of Sciences alumni who have been recognized for their professional achievements, leadership, and impact,” says Leslie Roberts, director of Alumni Relations and Corporate Engagement in the College. “Their accomplishments reflect the many ways our alumni are making a difference in their communities, professions, and the world.”

Meet the College of Sciences honorees: 

Elyse Heidelberg, PSY 2008 

Clinical Psychologist, Assistant Member | St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital 

Elyse Heidelberg is a clinical psychologist and assistant member of the clinical faculty in the Department of Psychology and Biobehavioral Sciences at St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee. She is head of the New Oncology Program in Psychology, a clinical program that integrates psychological assessment and intervention into the care of all oncology and transplant patients at St. Jude. Heidelberg’s clinical and research interests include promotion of coping and adjustment through early psychological assessment and intervention, AYA oncology, pain and symptom management, and pediatric palliative care. 

Favorite Tech Memory: Watching Georgia Tech beat Georgia in Athens in 2008 with my brother (also a GT grad!). THWG.

Zuri Hudson, BIO 2013 

Pediatric Hematologist/Oncologist | Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University 

Zuri Hudson is an assistant professor of hematology/oncology at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta (CHOA) and Emory University. She received her bachelor’s degree in biology prior to medical school at Lincoln Memorial University-DeBusk College of Osteopathic Medicine in Cumberland Gap, Tennessee. Prior to matriculation, she served in AmeriCorps focused on emergency management and disaster relief. She did her pediatric residency at Children’s Mercy Hospital in Kansas City, Missouri, where she completed a chief year prior to a fellowship at CHOA/Emory. She stays active on campus at Georgia Tech through Student-Athlete and Pre-Med Mentor Jackets and College of Sciences fairs. 

Favorite Tech Memory: Any rideout, clutching the side of the Ramblin’ Wreck. 10/10 feeling that I’ll never be able to recreate!

Lauren Margulieux, M.S. PSY 2014, Ph.D. PSY 2016

Associate Professor | Georgia State University 

Lauren Margulieux is an associate professor in the Department of Learning Sciences at Georgia State University. She is also the founding director of the Snap Inc. Center for Computing in Teacher Education, where she leads efforts to integrate computing and AI into Georgia State’s pre-service teacher preparation programs across all disciplines. Margulieux’s research focuses on computer science education for computing and programming novices, with a particular emphasis on promoting computational literacy for all learners. 

Favorite Tech Memory: Getting a very supportive end-of-year evaluation from the faculty despite not submitting materials while finishing my dissertation and job search.

Learn more about the 2026 class on the Georgia Tech Alumni Association’s website or by exploring the interactive honoree dashboard.

It’s a role she knows well.

For more than 11 years, Stoinski has served as president, CEO, and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, leading efforts to help the world better understand and protect Rwanda’s mountain gorillas — a species with only about 1,000 left in the wild.

Although she now oversees a multimillion-dollar budget and 400 employees worldwide, she never planned to be a CEO.

“I’m a scientist at my core,” says Stoinski. “Day to day, I function more as a leader and executive, but I still think of myself as a scientist first.”

Her job covers a wide range of responsibilities, including fundraising, public speaking, budgeting, and strategy. One week, she might find herself observing gorilla behavior in Rwanda; the next, she’s back in the U.S., discussing conservation on the popular Armchair Expert podcast. 

“I love my job,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like work; it’s a passion.”

A Helluva Scientist

One of the reasons Stoinski chose Georgia Tech for her Ph.D. was its connection to Zoo Atlanta.

Her doctoral advisor, the late Terry Maple, emeritus professor in the School of Psychological and Brain Sciences, served as director of Zoo Atlanta, giving students rare access to conservation-focused research.

“The zoo was our lab. I studied elephants, lemurs, gorillas, and golden lion tamarins, both in the zoo and in the wild in Brazil and Africa,” says Stoinski.

She appreciates how Georgia Tech prepared her for the challenges of her career.

“The rigor of a Georgia Tech education is something you need as a scientist,” she says. “I also had the opportunity to do a lot of public speaking and teaching, which are huge parts of my job now.”

Leading Global Conservation Efforts

After earning her Ph.D., Stoinski spent 14 years with Zoo Atlanta while also working with the Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. She became CEO in 2014 and now oversees conservation and research programs in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.

Under her leadership, the Fossey Fund has expanded its footprint, including opening its Ellen DeGeneres Campus in 2022, a 12-acre research and education center in Rwanda.

The site includes labs, classrooms, and a restored landscape, where roughly 250,000 plants from 110 species have been planted to reestablish native ecosystems.

“We host hundreds of students — including groups from Georgia Tech, and support dozens of graduate and postdoctoral researchers, from countries all over the world including many from Africa,” she explains. “Seeing their excitement and commitment gives me lots of hope for the future.”

Scientific Storytelling

A Gorilla Story follows the Pablo family of mountain gorillas living on the slopes of Volcanoes National Park in northwestern Rwanda.

“The Pablo group goes back to Dian Fossey’s time,” explains Stoinski. “It’s the largest group of gorillas ever recorded, at one point reaching 65 individuals. An average gorilla family is about 10.”

Due to Rwandan regulations, filming could take place for just one hour each day. Filmmakers and scientists would often have to hike for five to six hours to reach the gorillas.

Because Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund researchers have followed these gorilla families for decades, they were already familiar with the individual gorillas, including six generations of family history, which “makes the story incredibly rich,” says Stoinski.

“You see grief, relationships, alliances — all of it,” she says. “Ultimately, I hope that connection leads people to care and to take action.”

Collaborative Conservation

Stoinski’s career is all about taking action — and inspiring others to do the same.

“We need people on the ground doing this work, but we also need people outside of our field to support and be aware of what’s happening to gorillas and the planet’s biodiversity,” she says.

She encourages Tech students to stay informed:

 “Even if you’re not going into conservation, take a class, listen, learn,” she says. “Unfortunately, there are real challenges facing the next generation.”

She frequently points out that by helping gorillas, we’re saving ourselves, sharing that gorillas live in the Congo Basin, one of the most important ecosystems on Earth. By dispersing seeds and maintaining forest structure, they help sustain environments critical for climate stability and planetary health.

“Protecting gorillas means protecting those ecosystems, which ultimately support human survival.”

A Lasting Georgia Tech Connection

Stoinski maintains strong ties to Georgia Tech through research collaborations and student engagement. Projects over the years have included helping to establish the Center for Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing at the University of Rwanda, geospatial mapping, and architectural design and planning. 

She invites alumni and students to engage with the work firsthand.

“I encourage more Georgia Tech alumni and students to work with us or come see us. And if you want to meet with a Georgia Tech grad, I lead tours: we can put on our Tech gear and take a photo with the gorillas!”

“I am very honored and excited to receive the NSF CAREER Award,” says Zhu. “This award will support research by my fantastic team of students and post-doctoral researchers and give me the opportunity to carry out education and outreach programs that expand our impact.”

Advancing AI Applications

Since joining Georgia Tech in 2024, Zhu’s research has focused on the mathematical foundations of machine learning and their applications in science and engineering.

With support from the CAREER Award, Zhu and his team will explore the two-way relationship between data and structure in machine learning. They aim to understand how known structures in scientific and engineering problems (e.g., symmetries or physical constraints) can help machine learning models learn more accurately and efficiently from limited data. They will also study how machine learning can uncover hidden structures directly from data, revealing patterns or principles that may not be known in advance.

The project focuses on settings where large amounts of high-quality data are difficult or expensive to obtain, as is often the case in science and engineering. Using mathematical analysis, Zhu and his team will examine how much data is required to accurately learn a model, how structural information can reduce this data requirement, and how much data is needed to reliably identify a model’s underlying structure.

According to Zhu, this approach could reduce the amount of data and time needed to build and test accurate models, leading to more reliable, interpretable, and efficient AI for scientific discovery.

“Such advances align with national AI priorities and help strengthen the mathematical foundations needed for future scientific and engineering applications of AI,” he says.

Expanding AI Literacy

Zhu believes it is important to help students understand AI, noting that they must learn how to interpret and evaluate its outputs rather than accept them uncritically. 

“AI has increasingly become incorporated into many fields of study,” he says. “Institutions must determine how to best integrate it into education while also teaching students how it works. The AI education and outreach components of my project aim to help prepare students for careers at the intersection of mathematics, computing, and science.”

Zhu’s CAREER Award will support educational initiatives at multiple levels, including new graduate and undergraduate courses on machine learning. It will also support a machine learning boot camp for high school students, organized by the School of Mathematics in collaboration with Emory University’s Department of Mathematics. The boot camp seeks to introduce students to foundational ideas in AI and machine learning, with an emphasis on the mathematical principles needed to understand and responsibly use these tools.

“Dingjing’s selection for this honor is a remarkable recognition of the originality, impact, and promise of her scholarship,” says School of Psychological and Brain Sciences Chair Tansu Celikel. “This achievement is especially significant for Georgia Tech as she is the first person from the Institute to receive this distinction and only the third recipient from the state of Georgia.”

Shi obtained her Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology from the University of Virginia in 2020. After working as an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma, she joined Georgia Tech in 2025.

“Receiving this award is an honor and a responsibility,” says Shi. “This international recognition of my early work encourages me to keep pushing the scientific boundaries of my field and to continue pursuing research that creates meaningful and lasting real-world impacts.”

Foundational Methodology Development

As a quantitative methodologist, Shi develops statistical and computational models that focus on reducing dimensionality (the number of attributes, features, or independent directions needed to describe an object, dataset, or mathematical space); improving classification; and enabling technology-based, real-time adaptive assessment in psychological, brain, biomedical, and health-related research. Specifically, her research transforms complex brain imaging outputs (such as MRIs and EEGs), real-time ecological assessments, and multi-sensor wearable streams into compact, information-rich representations, and she designs personalized, adaptive intervention systems to deliver context-aware and dynamically updated support for individuals.

Shi’s work has been funded by federal agencies such as the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, the Federal Aviation Administration, and the Department of Homeland Security. She was a recipient of the SAS Institute Advanced Statistical Fellowship as well as the Citation Abstract Award from the Society of Behavioral Medicine. 

“I’m excited to work at Georgia Tech in the School of Psychological and Brain Sciences because its strong focus on technology and psychological brain sciences aligns perfectly with my research program,” says Shi. “Being part of such a stimulating academic environment, with outstanding colleagues and talented students, makes it an ideal place to contribute, collaborate, and grow as a researcher and educator.”

The latest rankings build on a record year for Georgia Tech commercialization. In 2025, the Institute reported advancing hundreds of technologies toward the marketplace, while achieving record levels of invention disclosures, issued patents, and licensed technologies. Those milestones underscore Georgia Tech’s expanding role in transforming research discoveries into products, companies, and partnerships that create economic and societal value.

“The strong performance reflects a commercialization strategy focused not only on protecting IP, but also on helping researchers translate discoveries into practical applications,” said Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, chief commercialization officer at Georgia Tech. “Whether through licensing technologies, launching startups, or partnering with industry, we are building pathways that help researchers transform discoveries into real-world solutions.” 

From advanced health technologies to environmental monitoring tools and next-generation aerospace ventures, Georgia Tech innovations are reaching users and markets in increasingly diverse ways. One example is Kinemo, a startup developed through Georgia Tech research that is helping people with limited mobility regain independence through wearable assistive technology. Founded by researchers from the College of Engineering, Kinemo uses physiological sensing and small intentional movements to enable users to control digital devices. The company works closely with clinicians and patients at Shepherd Center to refine the technology and expand accessibility for individuals living with spinal cord injuries and mobility limitations.

Another example is Skopii, a startup launched from research in the lab of environmental engineering professor Ameet Pinto. The company is commercializing portable imaging and artificial intelligence technology that enables users to rapidly analyze microorganisms in water and environmental systems, eliminating the need for lengthy laboratory testing. The technology has the potential to improve decision-making for water utilities, food production systems, and environmental monitoring efforts.

As research institutions face increasing pressure to demonstrate impact beyond publications and laboratory discoveries, Georgia Tech continues to show how world-class research can translate into technologies, startups, jobs, and solutions that improve lives. The latest AUTM rankings provide another measure of that success, highlighting an innovation ecosystem that consistently moves ideas from the lab to the marketplace.

Startups such as Kinemo and Skopii illustrate the broader commercialization approach reflected in Georgia Tech's AUTM rankings. 

Raman’s company, 8Seven8, produces quantum chips for aircraft navigation and industrial automation. To explain it to investors, he drew on the sport he knows best. “The technology I'm working on needs precision, timing, and teamwork, so I compared that to volleyball,” he said. “You need precision to place the ball, timing to block, and teammates who support you.”

The metaphor helped investors grasp his company’s value, a skill Raman developed in Q-i’s first space-themed cohort, run with the Space Research Institute. The six faculty and student teams learned how to launch startups, from customer discovery to storytelling — soft skills essential to bringing research to market.

“Building a successful startup means recruiting a team, winning customers, and convincing investors, all of which require the ability to rally people behind a world-changing vision,” said Theo Williams III, general partner at Creations VC, a space venture capital firm that funded the cohort. “Soft skills turn brilliant researchers into the kind of leaders people want to follow.”

Sharing the Art of Storytelling

To help faculty connect with investors, Q-i brought in storytelling coaches from Creative Re/Frame, a Boston-based consultancy founded by academics Jen Guillemin and Wendy Swart Grossman. They led a workshop to refine pitches, then worked one-on-one with teams on everything from narrative to presentation.

The biggest hurdle: translating complex research for audiences who aren’t scientists. “We help faculty innovators translate deep knowledge and expertise into relatable human stories that solve real-world problems and create change,” they said.   

Faculty quickly saw the payoff.

“Giving customers or investors the story behind a startup shows how invested you are in its success,” said Panagiotis Tsiotras, who leads Penumbra Autonomy, a spacecraft maneuvering startup.

The workshop also reshaped how some participants framed their work. James Read, founder of ferroelectric memory startup CIMTech.ai, said it shifted his focus beyond novelty. “As researchers, you focus on novelty, but you have to ground it in something anyone can understand,” he said. “Quadrant-i pushes you to focus on customer value, not just what’s publishable.”

Discovering the Customer

That focus starts with customer discovery: listening, asking questions, and validating problems before building solutions.

“In research and development, there is a natural tendency to lead with the solution: build something sophisticated and then look for a market that needs it. But customer discovery flips that instinct on its head,” said Mike Yan, whose startup OpenWerks streamlines supply chain management for space industries. “If you haven't validated that a problem is real, urgent, and worth solving from the customer's perspective, you risk building something technically impressive that no one actually needs. The soft skills of listening, empathy, and intellectual humility are what make genuine customer discovery possible.”

For Q-i director Jonathan Goldman, that mindset shift is the point.

“Faculty are best positioned to drive real-world impact by partnering with experienced entrepreneurs,” he said. “They also have to be the first salesperson before hiring one.”

The approach is already paying off. OpenWerks has secured funding from the Georgia Research Alliance and the Defense Logistics Agency and is prototyping with aerospace and defense manufacturers, validating both its technology and its market.

Programs like Q-i show that research doesn’t have to be paradigm-shifting to matter. Sometimes, the key to impact is simple: meeting people where they are with a story they understand.

“Peatlands are essential carbon stores, but as temperatures warm, this carbon is in danger of being released as carbon dioxide and methane,” says Kostka, who is also the associate chair for Research in the School of Biological Sciences and the director of Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow. Understanding the ratio of carbon dioxide to methane is critical, he adds, because while both are greenhouse gasses, methane is significantly more potent.

Kostka is the corresponding author of a new study unearthing how and why peatlands are producing carbon dioxide and methane. 

The research, “Northern peatland microbial communities exhibit resistance to warming and acquire electron acceptors from soil organic matter,” was published this summer in Nature Communications, and was led by co-first authors Borja Aldeguer-Riquelme, a postdoctoral research associate in the Environmental Microbial Genomics Laboratory, and Katherine Duchesneau, a Ph.D. student in the School of Biological Sciences.

The study builds on a decade of research at the Oak Ridge National Lab’s Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE) experiment, a long-term research project in Minnesota that allows researchers to warm whole sections of wetland from tree top to bog bottom.

“Over the past 10 years, we’ve shown that warming in this large-scale climate experiment increases greenhouse gas production,” Kostka says. “But while warming makes the bog produce more methane, we still observe a lot more CO2 production than methane. In this paper, we take a critical step towards discovering why — and describing the mechanisms that determine which gases are released and in what amounts.”

Methane mystery

The subdued methane production in peatlands has been a long-standing mystery. In water-saturated wetlands, oxygen is scarce, but microbes still need to respire — a type of ‘breathing’ that allows them to produce energy for metabolic function. Without oxygen, microbes use nitrate, sulfate, or metals to respire — still releasing carbon dioxide in the process. However, if these ingredients aren’t present, microbes ‘breathe’ in a way that releases methane.

Since nitrate, sulfate, and metals are relatively rare in peatlands, methane production should be the most likely pathway, but surprisingly, observations show the opposite. “In both fieldwork and lab experiments, peatlands produce much more carbon dioxide than methane,” Kostka explains. “It’s puzzling because the soil conditions should help methane production dominate.”

To solve this mystery, the team leveraged a suite of cutting-edge genetic tools called “omics” —  metagenomics (studying DNA), metatranscriptomics (studying RNA), and metabolomics (a technique used to study the “leftovers” of metabolism), providing a detailed look under the hood of the microbial “engine” that cycles organic matter in wetlands. It also gave a new window into the diversity of soil microbes in wetlands: 80 percent of the organisms identified in the study were new at the genus level.

‘Omics’ innovations

Over the course of several years, the team collected samples from a peatland enclosed in an experimental chamber that was slowly warmed, then analyzed the samples using omics to see how they changed. Initially, they hypothesized that warming the soil would cause microbial communities to change quickly. “Microbes can evolve and grow rapidly,” Kostka says. “But that didn’t happen.”

The DNA-based methods showed that while the microbial communities stayed largely stable, the bog did release more greenhouse gasses as it warmed. To assess the metabolic potential of the microbes, Duchesneau and Aldeguer-Riquelme constructed microbial genomes, investigating how they were decomposing the organic matter in peatlands and cycling carbon.

“We found that microbial activity increases with warming, but the growth response of microbial communities lags behind these changes in physiological or metabolic activity,” Kostka says. He cautions that this doesn’t necessarily mean that wetland communities won’t change as climates warm — just that these shifts might come behind metabolic ones. 

A diversity of discoveries

And the methane? The team believes that microbes may be breaking down organic matter to access the key ingredients for producing carbon dioxide — nitrate, sulfate, and metals — though more research is currently underway to investigate this.

“Doing this type of integrated omics research in soil systems is still incredibly difficult,” Kostka says. The challenge is multifaceted: the research leverages years of experiments, long-term datasets, advanced laboratory techniques, and fieldwork innovations. 

At SPRUCE, experimental chambers are about 1,000 square feet. While it’s an impressive experimental setup, researchers still must be careful: “We need to take soil samples for many years, so if we take too many, there’d be no soil left!” Kostka explains. “Part of our research involves developing better, non-destructive sampling techniques.”

The other challenge lies in what makes these peatlands so unique: it’s very hard to detect small changes because of the sheer diversity of organisms present. “Every time we conduct this type of research, we learn more about these incredible systems,” he says. “There’s always something new.”

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61664-7

Funding: The Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program and Genomic Science programs, under the US Department of Energy (DOE); the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility sponsored by the Biological and Environmental Research program. The SPRUCE experiment is funded by the Biological and Environmental Research program in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Yuhang Wang and his team studied the factors affecting SO₂ and sulfate concentrations during winter and summer in the “Rust Belt” — from New York through the Midwest — and the Southeast regions of the U.S. over two decades (2004 to 2023). Supported by the National Science Foundation and Georgia Tech’s Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, the team also developed an ensemble machine learning approach to project seasonal patterns until 2050. 

“Power plants, particularly those burning coal and oil, are a major source of SO₂ emissions in these regions,” says Wang, who co-authored, with Ph.D. students Fanghe Zhao and Shengjun Xi, the study recently published in Environmental Science & Technology Letters. 

Seasonal differences in atmospheric chemistry 

In the U.S., the chemistry in the atmosphere varies among the seasons. During summer, solar radiation from ample sunlight activates oxidant reactions that produce hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) in the atmosphere. The supply of H₂O₂ is determined by the amount of emitted air pollution, and once in the atmosphere, H₂O₂ can oxidize SO₂ quickly into sulfate aerosols in the aqueous phase. 

Sulfate aerosols from the oxidation of SO₂ contribute to the formation of particulate matter less than 2.5 micrometers in diameter (PM2.5). Particulate sulfate poses significant environmental and public health risks, including air pollution, acid rain, and circulatory and respiratory issues. 

“The supply of H₂O₂ in summer is eight times greater than in winter — a huge difference — which means sulfate concentrations are generally higher in summer and a reduction in SO₂ emissions leads to a proportional decrease in sulfate concentrations,” explains Wang. “When SO₂ emissions exceed the available supply of H₂O₂ in winter, the reduction in sulfate concentrations can be much smaller because of a ‘chemical damping’ effect that causes sulfate levels to decline more slowly than SO₂ emissions.” 

Narrowing the disparities between seasonal sulfate levels 

The study’s two-decade observations revealed distinct patterns in the reduction of SO₂ emissions and sulfate concentrations during winter and summer. 

While SO₂ emissions significantly decreased in both seasons­ over time — primarily from the Clean Air Act and more power plants transitioning from coal to natural gas — the reduction of sulfate concentrations initially showed large seasonal differences. However, over the past decade, the disparity between winter and summer sulfate levels narrowed as SO₂ emissions decreased.

According to Wang, the seasonal disparity of sulfate was caused by changing chemical regimes in winter over time. Although the lower supply of H₂O₂ remained stable in winter, SO₂ wintertime emissions were higher from 2004 to 2013, then dropped below the level of H₂O₂ after 2013 — reaching parity with the levels of reduced SO₂ emissions in the summer. 

“When you have this complexity of atmospheric chemistry, there is a non-linear effect in winter — as SO₂ emissions decreased, sulfate aerosol production efficiency increased until 2013, then flattened as of today. The reduction in sulfate aerosols initially lagged behind the decrease in SO₂ emissions but eventually caught up as a result of sustained air quality control efforts,” says Wang. “Conversely, there is a simple, linear effect in summer — the more SO₂ emissions, the more sulfate aerosols in the atmosphere — and if you reduce one, the other is reduced by the same proportion.”

Decades-long full impact 

From now until 2050, the researchers’ machine learning projections indicate a continuing decrease of winter and summer sulfate levels, which are currently around 20 percent, as SO₂ emission controls achieve comparable efficacy across the seasons. 

“We’re now seeing the full impact from the Clean Air Act,” concludes Wang, “and the nation’s sustained effort in pollution reduction is key to improving air quality and health outcomes.”

The team leveraged physics, model simulations, and satellite imagery to develop simple mathematical equations that can easily be integrated into existing climate models. It’s a first-of-it’s-kind tool that is already improving climate models.

“Melt lakes play an important role in ice sheet stability, but previously, there were no constraints on what we would expect their maximum size to be in Antarctica,” says study lead Danielle Grau, a Ph.D. student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “I was intrigued by the idea of quantifying how much of a role we could expect them to play in the future.”

The paper, “Predicting mean depth and area fraction of Antarctic supraglacial melt lakes with physics-based parameterizations,” was published in Nature Communications. In addition to Grau, the research team includes School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Alexander Robel, who is Grau’s advisor, and Azeez Hussain (PHYS 2025).

Their predictions show that the majority of these lakes will be less than a meter deep and span up to 40% of the ice sheet surface area.

“Many models don’t include any data about lakes on the surface of ice sheets, while others simulate these melt lakes growing until the ice collapses,” Robel says. “Our results show that the reality is somewhere in between — and that the maximum size of these lakes can be predicted using these new equations. This gives us real, concrete numbers to use in climate models.”

From summer project to satellite discovery 

Grau first started working on the project as an undergraduate student when she applied for a Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates program hosted by the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Inspired by terrestrial lake research, Grau and Robel investigated the “self-affinity” of the Antarctic ice sheet — a property associated with surface roughness across various scales. For example, a landscape like Badlands National Park, with many rolling hills of a wide range of sizes, would have a different self-affinity than a flat prairie with three large volcanoes.

“A previous study had used this property to predict the size of terrestrial lakes and ponds, and we were curious if we could use a similar approach for supraglacial lakes in Antarctica,” Grau says. “Establishing that the Antarctic ice sheet also has this property was the first step in pursuing this research in more depth.” 

The mathematics of melt

Grau continued the investigation as a Ph.D. student in Robel’s lab. Together, they unraveled the physics of how meltwater moves across the ice surface, designing a ‘glacier in a computer’ that mimics meltwater accumulation and movement across various topographies.

“We designed an algorithm and integrated it into a model that the GT Ice & Climate Group has used in the past,” Grau says. “From that, we were able to see how lakes would form on different surfaces across thousands of scenarios. This was the foundation for the mathematical equations I developed, which can predict the lake depth and lake surface area based on the self-affinity property.”

To check their results, Grau enlisted the help of Hussain — then an undergraduate in the School of Physics — to examine satellite data from the Landsat satellite program (which captures detailed photography of the Earth’s surface from space) to measure existing supraglacial lakes and surface topography. 

“It was exciting to see how our predictions lined up with what we were seeing in the satellite imagery,” Robel explains. “This shows that our solution is a concrete avenue for climate models to realistically incorporate supraglacial lakes.”

Grau is already working to incorporate the team’s equations into an atmospheric model used by NASA in addition to an ice sheet model developed by the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Dartmouth College. 

“By turning complicated models and satellite data into simple predictive equations, we’re giving climate models a new lens to see the future,” she says. “It’s a small piece of the puzzle,  but one that helps us understand how ice sheets respond to a warming world.”

Funding: NASA Modeling, Analysis, and Prediction Program

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61798-8 

Artificial intelligence isn't just changing the way we think about human intelligence — it's changing the way we study the mind. "In recent years," says School of Psychology Assistant Professor Ratan Murty, "it has become very apparent to us that we have new ways to study the brain." 

Those new methods were top of mind as over 100 researchers from across Atlanta gathered for this year’s Computational Cognition Conference (CoCo Con). Hosted by Georgia Tech’s Center of Excellence in Computational Cognition (CoCo) on March 13, the conference allowed researchers from Georgia Tech and beyond working at the intersection of the mind and advanced computing to gain insights into both human cognition and artificial intelligence. 

CoCo itself is “a hub for research, education, and community” housed within the Georgia Tech School of Psychology says Robert Wilson, associate professor in Psychology and director of CoCo. Launched in 2023, the center is home to more than 50 affiliate faculty and 100 trainees across Georgia Tech, Atlanta, and beyond using computational methods to study the mind. Through chalk talks, educational programs, and conferences like CoCo Con, the center aims to rethink how we approach the study of the mind. 

The conference featured multidisciplinary talks spanning the full breadth of computation cognition — from exploration and avoidance in anxiety, what makes music memorable, the theory of mind in humans and machines, dynamic drift diffusion modeling, and the structure of memory for narratives — overall highlighting the interdisciplinary nature of the field. 

Additionally, the day featured a robust poster session highlighting work by the eight inaugural CoCo Pilot Grant recipients as well as other postdoctoral scholars, graduate students, and undergraduates doing computational cognition research at Atlanta-based institutions. In total, there were 20 posters ranging from the physics of cognition to naturalistic decision making and beyond.  

A running theme throughout the conference was the growing influence of cutting-edge technologies like artificial intelligence — and how researchers are preparing for the ethical, social and practical challenges that they bring. “The next operating system won’t run on your phone,” said DeBrae Kennedy-Mayo, senior academic professional in the Scheller College of Business and one of the conference speakers. “It will run on your brain.” With such rapidly advancing technology and the growing reach of computational cognition research, institutions like CoCo are looking to rethink the current practices of studying brain data in a modern light.  

Ending the conference was a panel discussion with researchers from across psychology, anthropology, and related fields to reflect on the future of brain research. Together, they explored what it means to do computational cognition research through the central question: What should be in the CoCo canon? 

The discussion emphasized that understanding what we are studying — and how we study it — is particularly important in an interdisciplinary field. While the narrative or canon of a field is defined by shared knowledge, skills, and history, computational cognition blurs those boundaries. Ultimately, as posed by Emory Department Chair and Professor of Anthropology Dietrich Stout, the field is “an interdisciplinary space trying to become a disciplinary space” within the vast array of sciences, technology, mathematics, and engineering.  

With or without a defined canon, the day underscored the importance of computational cognition for understanding not just how the mind works, but the future of cutting-edge technologies that shape how we approach the study of the mind. 

Through a major investment from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Georgia Tech is helping accelerate the development of domestic critical minerals from unconventional and secondary resources. The $7.5 million award positions the Institute to advance supply chain solutions that span resource discovery, processing, recycling, and circular materials management.

Selected by DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, Georgia Tech will lead the Critical Minerals in the Atlantic Seaboard Plain (CM-MAP) project. The regional effort builds on DOE’s Carbon Ore, Rare Earth, and Critical Minerals (CORE-CM) initiative and will examine potential resources across the Atlantic coastal plain.

The CM-MAP project will focus on sedimentary deposits, including kaolin, bauxite, heavy mineral sands, and phosphates, as well as legacy mining residues, coal combustion byproducts, and other unconventional and secondary resources that could support future recycling and circular economy opportunities.

Drawing on existing infrastructure, regional assets, industry bases, and scientific expertise, CM-MAP will establish a regional innovation ecosystem that supports domestic critical mineral production, recycling, and advanced manufacturing, while fostering new economic opportunities throughout the Southeast.

“This is a powerful example of how Georgia Tech brings together leading research capabilities and partnerships from industry, government, nonprofits, and national labs to address complex national challenges,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research. “By identifying and domestically sourcing critical minerals, we are helping secure essential supply chains, while enabling the next generation of energy and materials technologies.”

The DOE award builds on a growing network of research, industry, regional, and international partnerships led by Georgia Tech to translate scientific discovery into real-world supply chain solutions, including:

• Research leadership — Founded in 2024, Georgia Tech’s Center for Critical Mineral Solutions serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research and technology development across the Institute.
• Regional partnerships —Through the Georgia Partnership for Essential Materials, a flagship regional collaboration platform, Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and the Georgia Mining Association convene stakeholders from across the critical minerals sector. The partnership brings together industry, nonprofit organizations, regional economic development agencies, national labs, universities, and technical colleges to connect, collaborate, and stay engaged in the latest developments.
• International engagement — A U.K.-U.S. working group extends partnerships across the Southeastern United States and Southwest United Kingdom, connecting researchers, industry leaders, and government agencies working to strengthen global supply chains.
• Georgia Critical Mineral Supply Chain Manufacturing Demonstration Center — Supported through congressional funding, the center is developing capabilities and regional supply chain demonstrations that connect resource development, materials processing, recycling, and advanced manufacturing.

As part of CM-MAP, researchers will analyze materials collected from natural deposits and industrial sites throughout the Southeast to identify their critical mineral content. The resulting large datasets will be combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches to better understand and predict where resources exist, optimize extraction pathways, and inform future recovery and recycling strategies.

“This project brings together a highly collaborative team from Georgia Tech, national labs, industry partners, and research institutions across the region,” said Yuanzhi Tang, the principal investigator and Georgia Power Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, with a courtesy appointment in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

Tang is also the founding director of the Center for Critical Mineral Solutions and executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute. 

“Through this award, we are working to build secure and resilient critical materials supply chains, from resource discovery and characterization to processing, recovery, recycling, and advanced manufacturing, while also developing the skilled workforce needed to support these emerging industries,” Tang said. “Our vision is to create a regional innovation ecosystem that embraces both unconventional resources and circular economy approaches to maximize the value of materials already in use.”

Learn more about critical materials research and workforce development efforts at Georgia Tech by visiting the Center for Critical Mineral Solutions webpage.   

Gong Chen, assistant professor in the School of Mathematics, has received a $450,000 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award to study the long-term behavior of solitons — coherent, particle-like waves observed across physics and mathematics.

While most waves spread out as they disperse (for example, ripples on water), a soliton is different: it can keep a coherent shape while moving, and in some cases, it can interact with other waves and still emerge recognizable afterward.

“Solitons are important because they appear across many areas of science, including fluid dynamics, optics, plasma physics, field theory, and models from mathematical physics,” says Chen. “From a mathematical point of view, they are a beautiful testing ground for understanding nonlinear behavior.”

Predicting Waves

According to Chen, a guiding idea in the field is that complex nonlinear waves may eventually resolve into a collection of stable solitons alongside dispersive radiation — the more diffuse portion of the wave that spreads out and weakens. Chen’s research focuses on how these waves behave over long periods of time, especially when multiple solitons interact.

“If we start with a complicated nonlinear wave, can we predict what it will look like far in the future?” asks Chen. “I want to understand not just whether a wave is stable, but how it evolves: how stability can fail, how energy is exchanged, and how complicated wave motion eventually organizes itself.” 

His work examines multi-soliton systems and more complex wave structures, including topological solitons, where long-range interactions and internal fluctuations make the mathematics more challenging. 

Chen is developing new mathematical frameworks tailored to these moving and interacting waves, including tools from spectral theory and nonlinear scattering. These approaches allow researchers to analyze wave behavior with new precision in settings where existing methods are limited.

A key part of this work involves nonlinear dispersive equations, which capture the competing effects that shape wave systems. 

“A complicated wave may contain several solitons, some radiation that spreads away, and small oscillations trapped near the solitons,” explains Chen. “Nonlinear dispersive equations allow us to ask precise questions: Which part of the wave persists? Which part disperses? How much energy is released during a collision? Does the system eventually simplify into solitons plus radiation?”

Although the work is theoretical, it strengthens the foundation for models used widely in science and engineering.

“A better theoretical understanding of solitons and dispersive waves improves the reliability of these models,” Chen says. “It helps us know when coherent structures should persist, when they should radiate energy, and when instability or collision effects may change the outcome.”

Beyond Research: Teaching and Impact

Chen plans to use the CAREER Award to integrate research and education. He is organizing a summer school focused on dispersive waves and developing new courses, including a second-level course in partial differential equations that emphasizes connections to physical phenomena.

“The CAREER Award provides the stability and long-term support needed to pursue a coherent research program rather than isolated projects,” says Chen. “For me, the award is especially meaningful because the research and education components are closely connected.”

Chen aims to help students connect mathematical theory with real-world phenomena. 

For Chen, that connection is what makes the field compelling.

“One point I would emphasize is that soliton dynamics is a place where abstract mathematics meets very intuitive physical pictures,” says Chen. “Understanding when that particle-like behavior persists, when it breaks down, and what remains afterward is both mathematically deep and scientifically natural.”

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.

In a study published in PRX Life, researchers tracked individual E. coli cells as nutrient conditions shifted between rich and poor environments. Instead of responding the same way every time, the bacteria adjusted their growth based on patterns they had experienced before. Cells exposed to rapidly changing conditions were able to adapt better than cells raised in more stable environments.

The findings suggest bacteria do more than just react to their surroundings. They appear to encode memories of past environments and use those memories to guide future behavior.

“For a long time, people assumed bacterial growth was determined only by the environment the cell is currently experiencing,” said Josiah Kratz, first author on the paper and a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Physics. “What we showed is that the history of past environments matters. The cells remember those experiences, and that memory changes how they behave.”

Kratz works in the lab of Shiladitya Banerjee, Associate Professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech and a co-author on the paper. Kratz completed most of the work as a Ph.D. student in the joint Computational Biology training program between Carnegie Mellon University and the University of Pittsburgh. 

Read the full story in the Carnegie Mellon newsroom.

Modern pesticides have helped boost crop yields, but they can also harm the insects that make those yields possible. Sulfoxaflor, a next-generation pesticide introduced in 2013, kills sap-feeding pests like aphids in crops, including soybeans and corn. Sulfoxaflor is also known to be toxic to bees. Scientists are still working to understand how low-dose exposure affects bee reproduction at the molecular level.

Researchers at Georgia Tech have found that sulfoxaflor disrupts reproduction and gene expression. In a study funded by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the team exposed groups of worker bumblebees to low doses of the pesticide and analyzed changes in gene activity. They found that ovarian tissues showed the most significant shifts in gene expression. These changes could contribute to reduced reproductive output and, over time, affect bee populations.

In the study, the researchers flash-froze bee tissues and analyzed RNA to track how gene activity shifted after pesticide exposure. The Georgia Tech team used computational models to pinpoint which biological systems were most affected.

“What makes this study exciting is that it connects molecular changes in gene expression to real-world consequences for individual bees and their colonies,” said Michael Goodisman, a professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “That type of connection is rare and gives us a much clearer picture of how pesticides affect bees.”

The implications of the study highlight a pressing challenge in agriculture. 

“We need pesticides to control crop pests, but they can also harm essential non-target insects like bumblebees,” said Sarah Orr, who led the research as a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech and now works as an assistant professor at the University of Tampa. “As a scientist, my goal is to identify practical solutions that support pest management while also protecting beneficial insects and the food systems that depend on them.”

That balance between pest control and pollinator protection is critical. “We need many bees for successful pollination,” Orr said. “If they’re not producing enough offspring, pollination will decline.”

Pesticides are only one of several threats facing bumblebees. Stressors like heatwaves also play a growing role. By better understanding how chemicals like sulfoxaflor affect bee biology, researchers hope to help farmers protect both their crops and the pollinators that sustain them.

Michael A. Catto, Jixiang Xu, Kayla A. Murray, Emma Leigh M. Bossard, Michael A.D. Goodisman, Sarah E. Orr, Integrative assessment of sulfoxaflor effects on gene expression, reproduction, and behavior in the bumblebee Bombus impatiens, Ecotoxicology and Environmental Safety, Volume 315, 15 April 2026, 120101, ISSN 0147-6513.

https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecoenv.2026.120101

“Our renaming as the School of Psychological and Brain Sciences better captures both who we are and where we are headed,” says Tansu Celikel, School chair and professor. “It reflects a shared vision for the future of our School and the many contributions of our faculty, staff, students, alumni, and partners. I am deeply grateful for the support of the Institute, the College of Sciences, and our School throughout this process.”

“I congratulate Tansu and the entire School of Psychological and Brain Sciences community on this exciting new chapter,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “This is an important milestone in the School’s history and a testament to the vision and dedication of its faculty and staff.”

The Evolution of Psychology at Georgia Tech

Over the past century, psychology at Georgia Tech has evolved along with the Institute, expanding from a handful of courses in applied psychology to a dynamic, interdisciplinary offering. Today, the School is home to nationally ranked research and academic programs serving hundreds of students each year. It also includes more than two dozen laboratories focused on five distinct research areas: adult development and aging; cognition and brain science; engineering psychology; industrial/organizational psychology; and quantitative psychology.

According to Celikel, the new name follows a period of significant educational innovation and growth in the School’s research enterprise.

“In recent years, the School and its partners have advanced new academic opportunities in areas such as neuroscience, computation and cognition, mental health and well-being, learning, people analytics, and accelerated B.S./M.S. pathways,” he says. “These programs prepare students to study human thought, behavior, and brain function using tools and perspectives from psychological science, neuroscience, data science, computation, artificial intelligence, and human-centered technology.”

The School’s new interdisciplinary initiatives and collaborations include centers of excellence in computational cognition, neuroscience and neurotechnology, and human-AI-robot teaming. These areas bring together faculty, students, and partners from across the Institute and beyond to address questions with broad scientific, technological, and societal impact.

The update retains the School’s mission, degree titles, curriculum requirements, and academic programs. The new name also provides a “clearer and more accurate identity for the work already taking place across the School and positions it for continued growth in teaching, research, and external engagement,” says Celikel.

The School will host special events throughout the fall semester to mark the official launch of the School of Psychological and Brain Sciences — and a new era in research and education. 

For more information, visit the School of Psychological and Brain Sciences FAQ. 

“It’s a tremendous honor to be recognized alongside such an inspiring group of scientists,” Manafzadeh says. “I’ve always been motivated by big, fundamental questions, and it’s exciting to see that kind of curiosity-driven research celebrated.”

Manafzadeh will join Georgia Tech in August 2026 as an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences. Her research investigates how joints function and how they evolved, using advanced technology to create animations of moving skeletons with sub-millimeter precision.

“My research is aimed at understanding how joints work and where they come from,” she explains. “Physicians can repair ACL injuries and perform hip replacements, but we still don’t fully understand joint mechanics at a fundamental level.” Because joints are a shared feature of virtually all vertebrates, she adds, nearly all movement — from slithering to sprinting to soaring — depends on them.

Manafzadeh first applied these methods to pterodactyls, “reanimating” the extinct animals to study how they flew. Now, her research could also open doors to personalized surgical treatments for people and new designs for bio-inspired robots.

The seed grant program, administered by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS), reaches faculty members from a diverse array of disciplines due to the generous support provided by broad-based partnerships in addition to the funds provided by the Sustainability Next committee. This year’s partners are the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the College of Design, BBISS, the Renewable Bioproducts Institute, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and the Institute for Data Engineering and Science.

The goal of the program is to nurture promising research areas for future large-scale collaborative sustainability research, research translation, and/or high-impact outreach; to provide mid-career faculty with leadership and community-building opportunities; and to broaden and strengthen the Georgia Tech sustainability community as a whole. The call for proposals was modeled after the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research’s Moving Teams Forward and Forming Teams programs.

This year’s seed grant awards align with the four main thematic areas in which BBISS aims to enhance Georgia Tech’s research to address some of our most pressing sustainability challenges:

• AI and Sustainability, and the Sustainability of AI Infrastructure.
• Climate Science, Technology, and Solutions.
• Healthy Environments and Sustainable Resource Use.
• Resilience and Regeneration.

The 2026 Sustainability Next Seed Grant awards are:

Forming Teams:

• Actualize Shallow Geothermal Systems for Decentralized Heating. Principal Investigator (PI): Sheng Dai.
• Building Community University Research Capacity for PFAS Testing and Treatment. PI: Ruth C. Yow. Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs): Joe Bozeman, Yongsheng Chen, and Ahmed Ibrahim Yunus.
• A Global Sustainability Analysis of Places “Urbanizing from Within.” PI: Gregory Randolph. Co‑PIs: Sabina Dewan, Yiyi He, John Taylor, and Celine Vacchiani‑Marcuzzo.
• Creating a Refusal Taxonomy to Explore Alternate Computing Practices. PI: Richmond Wong. Co‑PIs: Heidi Biggs and Carl DiSalvo.
• Demystifying Data Centers: Examining Georgia Tech’s Coda HPCC in the Context of Sustainability and Resilience. PI: Scott Duncan. Co-PIs: Jung-Ho Lewe and David Solano Sarmiento.
• Physical Transport of Sunlight‑Exposed Dissolved Organic Carbon in the New Arctic. PI: Lilian Dove. Co‑PI: Jennifer Bowen.

Moving Teams Forward:

• Agentic AI Digital Twins for Hurricane Resilience in Coastal Georgia. PI: Ali Sarhadi.
• CLEAR‑SE: Co‑Creating a Center‑Scale Network for Advancing Collaborative, Long‑Term Action Research on Community‑Led Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction in the Southeast. PI: Sofía Pérez‑Guzmán. Co‑PI: Jennifer Hirsch.
• Data Center Effects on Communities in Georgia’s Black Belt. PI: Cindy Kaiying Lin. Co‑PIs: Joe Bozeman, Anthony Harding, Allen Hyde, Nicole Kennard, Jung-Ho Lewe, and Ahmed Saeed.
• Reimagining Southern Forests: Enabling Cost‑Effective Sustainable Production of High‑Value Climate‑Ready Southern Pines. PI: Caitlin Petro. Co‑PIs: Lucas Clay, Ulrika Egertsdotter, and Joel Kostka.
• Human‑Technology Collaborations: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Food Systems. PI: Rosemarie Santa Gonzalez. Co‑PIs: Ashutosh Dhekne, Sylivia Janicki, Nicole Kennard, Yaman Sangar, and Abigale Stangl.
• Guiding Transportation with Community Action through Research, Education, and Service (GT‑CARES). PI: Rounaq Basu. Co-PIs: Sofía Pérez‑Guzmán, Jennifer Hirsch, and Scott Moffat.
• Instability‑Resolved Ocean Mixing for Climate Prediction and Climate Solutions. PI: Suhas S. Jain. Co‑PIs: Mohammad Mohaghar, and Donald Webster.
• Buildings Next: Forming a Transdisciplinary Consortium for Sustainable Building Innovation. PI: Paula Gomez. Co‑PI: Allison Bridges.
• Paper and Natural Dye Living Exhibition. PI: Anna Doll. Co‑PI: Virginia Howell.

Dust-sized meteoroids and solar wind gradually alter lunar soil, producing tiny metallic particles known as nanophase iron. For years, scientists have used sensing data influenced by those particles to estimate the weathering age of the moon’s surface, but they weren’t sure which weather source primarily drives these changes.

To investigate, physics Ph.D. candidate Roshan Trivedi and Advik Vira, a recent Ph.D. graduate, exposed ilmenite, a common mineral on both the Earth and moon, to a synthetic version of solar wind. The experiment produced nanophase iron under controlled conditions, suggesting that solar wind plays a major role in shaping the lunar surface observed today. 

The team presented its findings in “Creation of Lunar-Like Rims in Ilmenite Using Synthetic Solar Wind,” published in The Planetary Science Journal in June. Their work was conducted through the Georgia Tech Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER), a NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) led by Georgia Tech Regents’ Professor Thom Orlando, a co-author of the study. A central aim of CLEVER is to understand the science and effects of space weathering as they pertain to the goals of NASA’s Artemis missions.

By understanding how the moon’s surface morphs on a microscopic level, scientists will be able to better interpret remote sensing data. Soon, we won’t have to rely just on moon missions to learn detailed characteristics of the lunar surface.

The work could also shed light on another longstanding question: how water forms on the moon. 

“Water would be a fantastic resource for humans operating on the moon, but scientifically, we are driven simply by the question of how water gets there in the first place,” said Phillip First, a professor in the School of Physics. “Solar wind is potentially one way, because protons in solar wind provide the hydrogen of H2O molecules while oxygen is present in lunar minerals.”

Using a vacuum chamber in Orlando’s lab to simulate solar wind and high-resolution electron microscopy to analyze the samples, the researchers recreated the effects of thousands of years of solar wind exposure.

“Scientists have been doing laboratory radiation experiments for years, but they haven't been able to characterize the results at this level of detail,” said lead author Trivedi.

The team can now simulate a wide range of exposure ages, which may help explain how water forms. In addition to forming nanophase iron, the experiments created tiny voids within the mineral — potential sites where hydrogen from solar wind could bond with oxygen to form water. 

“Having the ability to recreate the solar wind and having results look so similar to actual lunar samples is excellent,” said co-lead author Vira. 

DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ae6074

Funding: This work was directly supported by the NASA SSERVI under CLEVER. Sample preparation was performed at the Georgia Tech Institute for Matter and Systems, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. Collaborations between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Georgia Tech for advanced electron microscopy were supported by the Georgia Tech Center for Space Technology and Research. 

Over the past four years, these grants have supported the transformation of more than 100 courses reaching thousands of Tech students across six colleges and 26 schools. These awards advance the Institute’s commitment to transformative teaching and learning, preparing students to be globally engaged leaders who improve the human condition.

“Beyond all the transformations in individual classrooms, the program has developed a community of scholars who are thinking deeply about how to make sustainability education relevant and valuable for every Tech student,” said Marc Weissburg, upcoming chair of the Sustainability Education and Curriculum Committee. “The range of innovative ideas and the cleverness and thoughtfulness with which they are deployed says a lot about Tech faculty.”

College of Sciences Grant Recipients

Names: Pamela Pollet and Eric Shen
Department: School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Project: Organic and Sustainable Chemistry: An Open-Source Textbook

Discover the full list of 2026-27 Undergraduate Sustainability Education Innovation Grant Recipients.

Scientists have captured the most detailed structural images to date of a specific type of protein’s DNA repair process. The research could reveal ways to inhibit the effects of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations that heighten the risk for breast, ovarian, and other cancers.

“This work lets us see, step by step, one mechanism by which cancer cells could manage to repair their DNA when BRCA genes mutate and fail,” says study co-author Vicki Wysocki, who is chair of the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “By capturing this process in detail, this study opens the door to understanding how those cancerous cells survive and how treatments might disrupt that mechanism.”

Designated as a Breakthrough Article, the study Mechanism of single-strand annealing from native mass spectrometry and cryo-EM structures of RAD52 homolog Mgm101 was recently published in Nucleic Acids Research.

In addition to Wysocki, who is a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a professor emerita at Ohio State University, the Georgia Tech research team included co-first author Zihao Qi, a Ph.D. candidate in the Wysocki Lab.

They were joined by Ohio State researchers co-first author Carter Wheat and senior author Charles Bell, who is a professor of biological chemistry and pharmacology in the College of Medicine. Additional authors include Metro High School student Miqdad Hussain and CAS researcher Katerina Zakharova.

When BRCA Fails

Normally, BRCA genes help prevent cancer by acting as tumor suppressors — producing proteins that help repair broken DNA. When cancer cells lack the tumor-suppression function of normal BRCA genes, research has shown that a protein called RAD52 performs DNA repair.

Since RAD52 allows cancer cells to survive and replicate without tumor suppression, researchers have wondered if blocking it would kill the cancerous cells. Blocking RAD52, however, requires fully understanding its repair activities, which have been difficult to capture with even the most sophisticated techniques. 

DNA strands break every day in cells, which is why proteins exist to fix the breaks and keep cellular processes running smoothly, the team says. But because repairs must happen quickly and human proteins are often more complex than their ancestral counterparts, even the most advanced imaging equipment can’t capture every step in the process.

In order to understand RAD52 better, the research team turned to its ancestral protein, Mgm101, to observe several key steps in its DNA repair process.

A Clearer Image

The team decided to leverage multiple types of imaging. Wysocki’s lab at Georgia Tech conducted native mass spectrometry and mass photometry, using light to measure masses of protein-DNA complexes. The results showed that the ancestral protein Mgm101 assembled from a single copy of itself into a large multi-unit ring composed of 19 copies of the protein.

“This ring is essentially a template,” Wysocki explains. “The first strand of DNA can come down, and then the second strand comes on and starts being annealed to the first strand.” Annealing occurs when two single strands of DNA come together to form the characteristic double helix structure.

The findings were supported by what Bell’s lab determined using cryogenic electron microscopy, observing structures floating in solution and frozen in a thin layer of ice.

“RAD52 high-resolution structures have been determined with single-stranded DNA, but not with the two DNAs that it’s trying to anneal,” Bell says. “Its job is to bind single-stranded DNA and anneal it to its complement sequence. It’s been captured structurally, but only in a few states relevant to the reaction.”

“Here, we have more of the states along the full pathway from substrate, to intermediate and product. And the duplex intermediate is a conformation that’s never been seen before.”

Previously, researchers were unsure if this DNA repair process used one protein ring or two rings working together, the team says. Their findings show that just one ring is used — and that this is likely consistent across different species.

Paths to Treatment

Next, the team plans to try capturing the same phases of the DNA repair process with RAD52 from humans. A clearer understanding of how this family of proteins binds to DNA strands and coaxes them back together after a break provides insights for drug targets that could halt the process in cancer cells empowered by mutated BRCA genes, they say.

“It’s still a proposed mechanism: Just because we see these snapshots of the process doesn’t mean we know all the details, but we do have the best snapshots for any protein that does this single-strand annealing,” says Bell. “This focuses our strategies for drug development.”

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkag320

Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The cryo-EM data were collected at Ohio State’s Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis and processed using the Ohio Supercomputer Center.

Godavarti, then a second-year chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) student, joined a course on chemical equity focused on reducing chemical exposure in vulnerable communities. The class, part of Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program, embeds students in long-term research teams that span disciplines and semesters.

She and her classmates developed a computational model that estimates how dangerous chemical vapors build up in enclosed spaces, such as tanker trucks. Their work culminated in a paper, “Modeling Time-Dependent Chemical Concentrations in Confined Spaces for General Safety Applications,” published recently in ACS Chemical Health & Safety.

For Godavarti, the experience helped clarify her future career endeavors. 

“I was always motivated to keep going on this project because chemical equity is something I genuinely care about,” she said. “I realized I really enjoyed working on open-ended projects after this class, and this confirmed my desire to pursue a Ph.D.”

She will begin her ChBE doctoral studies at Northwestern University this fall.

Bridging Disciplines

The VIP class grew out of a gap between research labs and reality. Pamela Pollet, a faculty member in Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is used to working in controlled lab settings with safety measures like vent hoods. But after she consulted on a project where commercial workers were accidentally exposed to harmful chemicals, she started to think about safety differently.

“There was a disconnect between what we do with chemicals in our controlled environments, which we understand very well, and how people interact with chemicals every day,” she said.

To bridge that gap, Pollet partnered with Jenny Houlroyd, the occupational group health manager of the Enterprise Innovation Institute’s (EI2) Safety, Health, and Environmental Services Program. Houlroyd works with Georgia businesses to reduce workplace hazards and protect employee health.

“We realized how siloed this work can be,” Houlroyd said. “Chemical safety researchers and chemists often operate separately, but their skills are complementary. That’s how we came up with the idea for the class.”

The VIP format made that collaboration possible. The 20-student team included majors from chemistry, biochemistry, biology, computer science, neuroscience, and ChBE. In addition to research, students heard from guest speakers — including journalists, lawyers, and policymakers — whose work intersects with chemical safety.

Modeling a Real-World Risk

The students focused on a practical problem in industrial hygiene: quickly estimating a person’s exposure to hazardous chemicals after a spill or open container in a confined space.

“If you hire an industrial hygienist like me, it’s going to take time to schedule, and it’s going to be expensive,” Houlroyd said. “But if there’s a chemical spill event happening, you need that safety data right away.”

To address this, the students built a computational model that simulates how chemicals evaporate and spread through air in enclosed environments. Using benzene, a common solvent, as a test case, the model predicts how benzene concentrations change over time, from minutes to hours after a spill or residual pool in an enclosed space. It can also estimate exposure at different heights, accounting for whether someone is standing upright or crouching in a chemical-heavy area.

“We’re addressing important gaps in modeling chemical exposures,” said John Pederson, a chemistry Ph.D. student who mentored the student team. “There’s been strong work in industrial settings, but less attention to environments found in transportation, agriculture, and sanitation, for example. It's an easily overlooked fact that working with paints, coatings, cleaning solutions, and other solvents presents a risk of acute or chronic exposure.”

From Classroom to Impact

The team ultimately hopes to make the model widely accessible and create a user-friendly app. While that work is ongoing, Pollet and Houlroyd say the project already demonstrates the power of interdisciplinary learning.

“This project was a very nice overlap of our fields,” Pollet said. “It helps students understand real-world scenarios in a way you can’t replicate in a traditional classroom.”

For Houlroyd, the collaboration also extended her impact beyond the field.

“I work for EI2, and we’re primarily external-facing and helping businesses out across the state of Georgia, but this has been a great opportunity to take what I'm learning in the field and then share it with the students,” she said. “I am so proud of the students. To see them take this big issue and make it into something the industry can use is so exciting.”

Modeling Time-Dependent Chemical Concentrations in Confined Spaces for General Safety Applications

Diya Godavarti, Waynell Simbafo, John Pederson, Jenny Houlroyd, and Pamela Pollet

ACS Chemical Health & Safety Article ASAP

DOI: 10.1021/acs.chas.6c00021

His project was selected through a competitive, peer-reviewed process involving scientific experts, state and local resource managers, and coastal community stakeholders as part of a biennial research competition sponsored by the University of Georgia’s Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant, supported by the NOAA National Sea Grant College Program.

“I am excited to continue to contribute to Sea Grant’s critical mission of research that strengthens the resilience of coastal ecosystems,” says Kostka.

Strengthening Coastal Marsh Restoration

Kostka’s team will examine how locally sourced Spartina plants and beneficial root-associated microbes can improve marsh restoration outcomes. The research will evaluate plant growth, stress tolerance, and field performance to identify practical, scalable strategies for supporting coastal ecosystems.

Selected projects are intended to “advance the understanding, management, and strategic use of Georgia’s coastal and marine resources,” while producing results that address coastal management needs and remain accessible to communities, according to an article from Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant. In addition to faculty from Georgia Tech, the 2026 research awards will support investigators from Georgia Southern University and Savannah State University.

The Office of Technology Licensing has announced the latest recipients of the Tech Ready Grants, an initiative that helps Georgia Tech faculty advance their innovations toward market readiness. Providing early momentum for promising technologies, the grants help move research toward real-world impact. 

“In particular, what I have been working on the past 20 years is primarily understanding how earthquakes interact with each other, and in some cases, how other processes interact with earthquakes,” explains the professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, who also serves as associate chair for Research and Faculty Development for the School and is incoming president of the Seismological Society of America.

Peng's recent work deploying nodal seismometers in and around Georgia has led him “almost by accident” into the field of environmental seismology. 

The rise of nodal seismometers, fiber Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and machine learning have combined to produce a wealth of seismic data, and “pretty quickly you realize that there are actually quite a lot of non-earthquake events that are also there in the data,” he says.

“If you really wanted to study earthquake events, you better learn to distinguish or throw out those non-earthquake events first. But it turns out that some of those events are also equally interesting or sometimes more interesting, depending on where you are studying,” Peng adds.

Environmental seismologists are turning noise into signal to study a variety of phenomena, from urban traffic to groundwater levels. Peng and his colleagues used seismic sensors to analyze periodic vibrations from shaking homes nearly every six minutes in a neighborhood outside of Atlanta, for instance, discovering that a faulty check valve in a sewer pipe was producing a water hammer effect.

And then there are the exploding rocks. In July 2023, there was a violent spalling of rock off the face of Arabia Mountain in Georgia that scattered large chunks of gneiss. “Normally on these outcrops the outer layer of bare rock can peel off slowly, but in some cases they kind of blast off violently and generate some ground shaking,” Peng says.

Read more in the Seismological Society of America newsroom.

For decades, bird flu was uncommon in the U.S., but that has changed. In the past several years, epidemics have threatened poultry and dairy cattle operations across the country. Higher egg prices, driven largely by bird flu-related supply disruptions, have cost American consumers billions of dollars in losses.

“The H5N1 strain of the bird flu, which has driven recent and current outbreaks, is a highly lethal virus that kills domestic chickens and other bird species in droves,” said David Pattie, GTRI research scientist and branch chief. “It can easily jump from birds to other animal species — and sometimes to humans.”

The research team will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to design and test a probiotic avian flu vaccine that, if successful, could be served to chickens in their feed. Currently, vaccinating a flock means individually injecting every bird. 

“We’re focusing on live bacterial vaccines, which means the vaccine comes from living bacteria you swallow, instead of an injection,” said Mike Farrell, GTRI principal research scientist and the project’s lead investigator. 

“These probiotic vaccines would help protect birds and livestock from flu-like infections and lower the risk of those viruses spreading to humans,” he added.

In addition to Farrell and Pattie, the team includes researchers from an array of disciplines across the Institute: Faramarz Fekri, professor and John Pippin Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; JC Gumbart, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics; Brian Hammer, associate professor in the School of  Biological Sciences; and Anton Bryksin, director of the Molecular Evolution Core at the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. 

Building on Human Influenza Research 

The project builds on Farrell’s ongoing research into developing probiotic vaccine adjuvants for human influenza. The goal is to use probiotic bacteria — the “good bacteria” found in foods like yogurt — to help create immunity for the flu vaccine.

If the researchers can get probiotic bacteria to display pieces of the flu virus (called antigens) on their surface, then they could be swallowed like a normal probiotic pill.

“The gut is a great place for building immunity. When these bacteria reach the gut, your body would recognize the virus pieces on the bacteria and start building flu antibodies,” Farrell explained. “That way, when the chickens get exposed to flu, their immune system would already be prepared to fight it.”

Putting AI to the Test

“The idea behind this oral bird flu vaccine is to leverage artificial intelligence and the vast historical database for H5N1 available to us, because it's a very well-studied virus,” Farrell said. “There is a ton of structural data out there.” 

Gumbart is an expert in protein modeling and simulation. Part of his role is figuring out the best design for a viral protein piece (antigen) — one that looks and behaves like the real virus protein, so it triggers the right immune response. To do this, he will combine Fekri’s AI-generated predictions with computer modeling. 

“That’s where my team adds real value,” Gumbart said. “We use simulations to test how stable and realistic these protein designs are, which allows us to choose the best ones for lab experiments.”

AI has already identified new medicines and antibiotics by studying chemical databases. If the team can use AI to help design virus proteins for vaccines, it could transform how vaccines are made. 

Pattie says that any viral infectious disease with a high mortality rate has the potential to become a national security threat. “At that point, developing countermeasures becomes exceedingly important from a national security perspective,” he said.  

This is the first time several of the team members are working on poultry research. For Gumbart, the project is a full-circle moment.

“I grew up in rural Illinois, and as a kid, one of my daily chores was to take care of chickens, and I kind of hated it,” he said. “It is some sort of universal irony that I am back to taking care of chickens again.”

This concept of “lab tool as lab assistant” is the premise of a recent paper in npj | Computational Materials titled “Thinking Microscopes: Agentic AI and the Future of Electron Microscopy,” by Vida Jamali, assistant professor the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; Amirali Aghazadeh, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Josh Kacher, associate professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. 

In the paper, the team introduces the concept of “thinking electron microscopes,” in which agentic AI systems are directly integrated with the instrument. This allows microscopes to move beyond their conventional role as characterization tools and toward functioning as co-scientists for human users.

Drawing on advances in specialized large language models, or LLMs, that demonstrate their ability to collaborate, reason over data, and integrate prior knowledge, the team envisions specialized LLM-based agents assigned to specific roles and areas of knowledge expertise. By explicitly incorporating domain knowledge into specialized agents and distributing information across multiple agents with focused expertise, the approach enables parallel evaluation of competing hypotheses, clearer separation of roles — such as planning, simulation, and critique — and more transparent and robust reasoning.

Within the experimental pipeline, these agents can analyze materials’ properties, physical data, chemical processes, and other relevant parameters. They could also collaborate with an agent that specializes in experimental design, refining iterative closed-loop experimentation, and real-time scientific discovery.

Although the research focuses on AI collaboration, the team notes that human researchers must retain accountability for the accuracy and integrity of both the experimental process and the results reported. This oversight begins with advocating for greater open access to research materials in all formats, building community-driven data repositories, and adopting standardization in how experimental parameters and metadata are reported. Equally important, researchers should be willing to report data from failed experiments as well as successful outcomes. Finally, organizations should work together to standardize secure APIs that enable shared, remote access to infrastructure across distances.

We see this as a step toward scientific instruments that do more than acquire data; systems that can reason over experiments, adapt measurements, and participate in the scientific discovery process alongside researchers. - Vida Jamali, assistant professor the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

The team is already developing these systems by connecting cloud-based, agentic infrastructures to microscopes at the Institute for Matter and Systems at Georgia Tech. With the addition of agentic AI, the goal is to accelerate discovery and engineering of new nanoscale materials for energy and quantum applications, as well as advance capabilities in cryo-electron microscopy and structural biology. These tools can optimize data collection, link real-time microscope observations with structural models of proteins, and dynamically adjust and prioritize experiments. The team sees this work as the first step toward the next generation of “thinking” electron microscopes, as well as an advancement in scientific discovery across domains. 

 - Christa M. Ernst

This research is supported by the Institute for Data Engineering and Science and the Institute for Matter and Systems

Original Publication
Jamali, V., Aghazadeh, A. & Kacher, J. Thinking microscopes: agentic AI and the future of electron microscopy. npj Computational Materials 12, 149 (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41524-026-02077-y

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia awarded the program the 2026 Teaching Excellence Award for Department or Program.

MSHCI program director Dick Henneman and assistant director Carrie Bruce received the award on May 12 during a Board of Regents (BOR) meeting.

Henneman has served as director of the program since 2015, and Bruce has served as assistant director since 2014. The program began in 1996 and has since expanded to be offered by four Georgia Tech schools:

• Interactive Computing
• Industrial Design
• Literature, Media, and Communications
• Psychology 

“As we put our award submission together, it was nice for us to reflect on all our hard work and to understand the impact this program has had on students,” Bruce said. “We recently surveyed alums, and so many said they were thankful for the way this program shaped their careers.”

Under the leadership of Henneman and Bruce, the program has achieved a 99% graduation rate, with about 60 graduates per year, up from about 30 since 2015. Henneman said the program has become one of the most competitive of its kind in the world, with an admission rate under 10%.

“We have some incredibly qualified students who are a part of the program,” he said. “We’ve had a number of graduates move into design management positions, and some have started their own companies.”

Henneman and Bruce said that one thing that distinguishes Tech’s MSHCI program is its close partnerships and alignment with industry. The program has an industry advisory board that keeps students informed about the skills companies value.

“We adapted our core classes quite a bit to ensure that they weren’t just getting the academic version of HCI methods,” Bruce said. “Our program is practical and focuses on what they are going to do when they get into industry.”

Though the program continues to grow, Henneman says it has maintained a sense of community among students, which he says is another thing that sets it apart. Many alumni keep in touch and return to offer industry advice, critique resumes, and conduct mock interviews with current students.

“A lot of times graduate school can be all about the individual,” he said. “As we prepare students to go work in industry, it’s all about collaboration and the people you’re working with and learning how to work on teams.”

Georgia Tech had 21 faculty and researchers recognized in the 2026 Regents Awards. From the College of Computing, Santosh Vempala was named a Regents’ Professor, while Srinivas Aluru and Ellen Zegura had their Regents’ titles renewed.

Together, they reflect Georgia Tech’s deep commitment to undergraduate research, global engagement, and addressing some of the world’s most pressing scientific and environmental challenges.

From the College of Sciences:

Alysa Jordan

This summer, Alysa Jordan will join the Seib Laboratory at the University of Prince Edward Island to study how maternal antibiotic exposure affects the gut microbiome, placenta, and ultimately fetal neurodevelopment. A neuroscience major, her work integrates immunohistochemistry to identify structural changes in maternal and fetal brain tissue, as well as mass spectrometry to analyze how antibiotics alter the availability of key metabolites. Jordan hopes her research will contribute to a deeper understanding of prenatal health and early developmental outcomes.

“Go after what you’re interested in,” she said, advising future applicants, “and lean on the resources provided by Georgia Tech and the Prestigious Fellowships office.”

Nidhi Shenoy

Biochemistry student Nidhi Shenoy will be conducting her research at Dalhousie University Medical School in Saint John, New Brunswick. She will investigate how transcription factor E3 (TFE3) promotes cellular waste clearance to support mitochondrial and lysosomal health in heart cells under obesity and diabetes. Her work aims to identify targetable pathways to improve cardiac metabolism, survival, and function.

Shenoy expressed how closely the opportunity aligns with both her personal interests and professional goals.

“As someone who loves to travel around the world,” she said, “this opportunity is incredibly exciting and valuable as I can experience research and professional workplace environments globally. International education and experience are so integral to shaping who I am.”

Meet all students here.

The peak of the severe weather season is nearing its end, but in Georgia, it's been a quieter period than residents have become accustomed to in years past, devoid of the flurry of tornado warnings, heavy rain bands, and thunderstorms. Zachary Handlos, director of the B.S. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences degree program, explains that the region lacked a major component of the severe weather formula.  

The Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation funds science-based projects with an emphasis on advancing a healthy and sustainable future for humans, focusing on early-stage research with far-reaching and lasting implications.

“This is a special program that supports junior faculty with particular creativity,” says School of Biological Sciences Chair Todd Streelman. “The best part for me is that representatives from the Curci Foundation visit our campus and conduct in-person interviews, showing they value both the projects and the young scientists.”

Nathan McDonald: Understanding Synapses and Engineering their Repair

The McDonald Lab studies the fundamental biology of synapses, the tiny structures that allow neurons to communicate. Their research focuses on understanding how the nervous system and brain develop, specifically how hundreds of billions of neurons form and connect through trillions of synapses – and how they continue to change throughout adult life. 

“What’s exciting about the grant is that it allows us to apply that knowledge and explore whether and how we might control synapse formation,” explains McDonald.

The McDonald Lab will examine whether the molecular processes neurons use to build synapses during early development can be reactivated later in life.

If successful, the new research could have implications for aging and neurodegenerative conditions in which synapses are lost, potentially revealing ways to repair specific synapses and restore their function.

“Many researchers are interested in repairing or regenerating synapses. Most approaches so far have focused on pharmaceuticals – using drugs to influence synaptic strength. What makes our approach unique is that we are trying to leverage the developmental machinery that neurons already have,” he explains.

McDonald and his team are working with Caenorhabditis elegans, a microscopic roundworm widely used in neuroscience research. The organism offers a simplified, tractable system for examining how synapses are built, dismantled, and potentially rebuilt.

“If we can demonstrate proof of concept in a simple nervous system, that opens the door to scaling these approaches to more complex models,” explains McDonald.

He plans to use the Curci funds to support students and staff as they explore these new methods for engineering synapse formation.

“The work has the potential to be developed into something more translational and applicable to disease,” says McDonald. “These sources of funding are incredibly important for launching new research directions.”

Farzaneh Najafi: Exploring Sleep and the Cerebellum’s Role in Cognitive Health

The Farzaneh Najafi Lab examines predictive processing, how the brain makes and learns predictions about the world. Najafi’s research focuses on deepening understanding of how sleep supports learning and cognitive health across the lifespan. 

Najafi’s Curci-funded research will examine how the brain uses sleep to reorganize itself after learning, with a particular focus on the cerebellum, a region that contains nearly 80 percent of the brain’s neurons. By identifying changes in cerebellar activity during sleep, her work has the potential to improve early detection of neurological disorders.

“We know that sleep stabilizes memories in areas like the cortex and hippocampus, but we know very little about what sleep does in the cerebellum,” says Najafi. “This grant allows us to bring sleep, cerebellar circuitry, and learning together.”

Najafi and her team will combine behavioral experiments with high-resolution imaging to study how cerebellar circuits and synapses change across wake and sleep.

“We’re looking at cerebellar activity during sleep at the circuit and synapse level to see how learning-related changes unfold,” explains Najafi.

In some cerebellar disorders, sleep disturbances can appear five to 10 years before motor symptoms begin. By identifying early changes in cerebellar activity during sleep, Najafi’s research could help pinpoint neurological disease at a stage when intervention may still be possible.

Curci funding will allow Najafi’s lab to collect foundational data needed to establish the first mechanistic links between sleep, cerebellar activity, and long-term brain health.

“Many traditional funding mechanisms are hesitant to support these kinds of higher‑risk directions, especially early on, but this award makes it possible to pursue a new and promising line of inquiry,” says Najafi.

Jain is one of 15 scientists selected this year for “their promise to change their fields by solving nature’s puzzles in a broad range of fields and develop next-generation technologies that can reveal biological function,” according to a Searle Scholars Program press release. 

“We are honored to be part of the Searle Scholars Program,” Jain says. “For a young lab with ambitious goals, this kind of recognition means everything. It gives us the confidence and resources to pursue high-risk, high-reward questions that could one day make a real difference for people affected by neurodevelopmental disorders.”

Jain received his Ph.D. in molecular and cellular biology from the University of Arizona and completed his postdoctoral work at the University of California, Los Angeles. He joined Georgia Tech in 2024.

Biology major Sonali Kaluri is a STEM expert. Spanish major Sonali Kaluri is a language and culture expert. 

This year’s selection committee chose projects focused on artificial intelligence, therapeutic drug development, data privacy, energy efficiency, and cancer treatment.

Awardees

Ryan Kern
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Project: 3-HPT Derivatives for Cancer Treatment

Kern is developing small-molecule chemotherapy drugs to treat metastatic breast cancer and castration-resistant prostate cancer. His team has shown promising in vitro results and will use GT NEXT funding to evaluate the compounds in vivo.

“The ultimate goal is clinical use,” Kern said. “We want to translate this research from the lab bench into patient care.”

James Read
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project: Compute-in-Memory Neural Processor

Read’s team is building a chip that performs AI computations inside memory, reducing energy consumption by up to 80 times compared to GPUs (graphics processing units). The funding will support fabrication of a prototype through GlobalFoundries’ 28-nanometer process.

“Our compute-in-memory circuits let us run AI models without shuttling data back and forth between memory and processors,” Read said. “GT NEXT funding lets us fabricate the prototype chip that proves this concept.”

Jianming Tong
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project: Private Inference as a Service

Tong is developing a privacy-preserving infrastructure for AI systems that does not require hardware modifications. The system supports real-time privacy in sensitive sectors such as healthcare and finance. GT NEXT funding will support testing and validation.

“The future of AI will demand not only performance, but trust,” Tong said.

Ali Zamat
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering
Project: Membrane-Bound Immunotherapy Using GATEs

Zamat is developing an mRNA-based cancer therapy that trains tumors to activate immune responses. GT NEXT funding will support early testing in head and neck cancer models.

“This strategy could lead to safer, more precise treatments,” Zamat said. “We hope to expand GATEs to other cancers and eventually autoimmune disease.”

Ashkan Zandi 
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Project: VibraScope — Radiation-Free Detection of Lung Nodules

Zandi is developing VibraScope, a radiation-free platform that uses chest-surface vibrations and AI analysis to detect lung nodules. GT NEXT funding will support testing with patient-derived models to validate the technology.

“This approach could make lung cancer screening more accessible,” Zandi said. “Our goal is to move VibraScope closer to clinical use.”

About GT NEXT

GT NEXT provides early-stage funding to graduate students and postdocs with at least one year of research experience. Eligible applicants must submit a new invention disclosure tied to Georgia Tech-owned intellectual property. Funding can be used for project-related expenses such as materials, equipment, and prototyping. Salary, tuition, travel, and overhead are not allowed.

Awardees are required to submit progress updates at six and 12 months and may be invited to present at Tech Meet, a showcase for emerging Georgia Tech technologies.

To learn more or submit an invention disclosure, visit the Office of Technology Licensing website.

“I’m honored to receive the 2026 Odum Award,” says Weigel, who is a senior academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences. “Georgia Tech is widely recognized for its research excellence, but teaching is mission-critical to the ways we serve the public good. This award reflects the incredible work happening in our classes and communities that drives science, and science education, forward.”

Weigel is among 10 individuals selected nationwide for annual ESA awards. “This year’s award recipients have each contributed something important to ecology, often in very different ways,” says ESA President Peter Groffman. “These are ecologists whose efforts have shaped the field, supported colleagues and created opportunities for others. I’m glad to see that kind of work acknowledged.”

About Emily Weigel

Weigel’s work focuses on improving biology education by examining how student backgrounds, values, and instructional practices shape learning outcomes. Her impact spans K–12 students, undergraduates, graduates, and members of the Atlanta community.

Known for her teaching innovations, she has pioneered new courses in biology, ecology, and statistics, and is also a leader in the Vertically Integrated Projects program at Georgia Tech.

From studying the dynamics of flu, to using drone aerial footage to monitor Georgia Tech’s changing landscape, to a long-term project monitoring the trees of the Campus Arboretum, Weigel shares that “students thrive when they develop skills through real-world experiences."

Weigel has also creatively infused the traditional “nature” topics and fieldwork found in ecology curricula with modern technology and programming skills used in research. “Effectively introducing professional skills, like programming in the language R, is innovative nationally,” she says. By making R, an open-source programming language, more accessible, “we’re preparing undergraduates for success in graduate school and their careers, and empowering them to learn other programming languages in the future.” 

In addition to teaching, Weigel plays a central role in mentoring and supporting students across the Institute. She serves as the undergraduate academic advisor for around one-sixth of Georgia Tech’s Biology majors, mentors graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants, and is an instructor for the “Tech to Teaching” capstone course in the Center for Teaching and Learning.

GT² is a newly established research initiative at Georgia Tech that focuses on discovery science, engineering innovation, and AI-enabled decision tools to address urgent challenges at the intersection of environmental and community resilience in the Southeast. The initiative fosters research in direct service to regional communities through public-private partnerships, and it provides opportunities for graduate student engagement.

The BHIC-GT² research fund and partnership will pursue shared initiatives in the fields of coastal sustainability, ecosystem health, and environmental resilience. By combining BHIC’s applied, field-based conservation work with Georgia Tech’s expertise in technological innovation and data analysis, new opportunities for impactful research will be created through graduate student projects and community engagement.

About the Partnership
Like the GT² initiative, BHIC’s Johnston Center for Coastal Sustainability was created to translate research into real-world impact. BHIC established the Johnston Center as a research partnership and education hub for sustainability initiatives on Bald Head Island, with the broader goal of advancing coastal sustainability across the Southeast. Seed funding for the Center was provided in 2021 by Dick and Pat Johnston, longtime supporters of BHIC. 

Dick, a Georgia Tech IM 1962 alumnus, and Pat Johnston shared their enthusiasm for the BHIC and Georgia Tech collaboration, noting: 

“We are delighted to see our two favorite institutions come together through this partnership. It brings additional resources, expertise, and leadership to our shared focus on keeping the historic tagline ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’ in the hearts of future generations.”

Joel Kostka, Faculty Director of GT² who also serves as Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professor and associate chair for Research in the School of Biological Sciences with a joint appointment in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech added:

“The Bald Head Island Conservancy and its Johnston Center for Coastal Sustainability exemplify how place‑based conservation and rigorous science can work together to create real impact. The Bald Head Island Conservancy’s long‑term stewardship, research infrastructure, and commitment to translating science into action make it an ideal partner for Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow as we advance collaborative research that strengthens coastal resilience across the Southeast.”

This partnership will focus on Georgia Tech graduate student research projects that use innovative technology and data analyses to directly support the conservation work of BHIC.

Graduate student research already plays an important role in BHIC’s conservation efforts. Gabie Krueger, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student in Ocean Sciences and Engineering and BHIC’s 2025-26 Johnston Graduate Fellow in Coastal Sustainability, has been working with BHIC scientists on a salt marsh ecology project that examined how ribbed mussels and fiddler crabs influence the health of Bald Head Island’s dominant salt marsh grass Spartina alterniflora. These flora-fauna interactions serve as primary indicators of marsh health, so her research is important for understanding the resilience of Bald Head Island’s salt marsh to environmental concerns such as sea-level rise and development.

Through the BHIC-GT² partnership, Georgia Tech student researchers who work with the Conservancy will also gain invaluable experience with local conservation efforts and community engagement.

G. Christopher Shank, Ph.D., Executive Director of BHIC, commented:

“The Bald Head Island Conservancy is thrilled about this opportunity to create a formal research partnership with Georgia Tech, one of the nation’s most esteemed research universities. It is recognition of the quality of conservation studies we are currently pursuing at the Conservancy and it also augments the impact of our work for BHI and beyond because of the technological and data analysis talent that Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow will bring to this partnership.”

Why This Matters
This research fund and partnership represents an important step forward in strengthening connections between academic research and applied conservation institutions. Together, BHIC and GT² aim to inform coastal management decisions, support resilience planning, engage students, and advance research that benefits coastal ecosystems and communities across the southeastern U.S.

Looking Ahead
Additional details about joint initiatives, research priorities, and collaborative opportunities will be shared in the coming months.

He first considered Tech while walking to a basketball game with his father back in the ‘90s. Hope wondered aloud if Tech could be in his future.

His father answered: “Sure, IF you can get in.”

Hope took the response as a personal challenge. “It awakened a mission to prove to everyone that doubting me was a mistake,” he remembers.

Years later, Hope did get in, but getting out proved far more difficult.

Building Resilience

As someone who’d always been good in math, Hope began in computer engineering, then switched to industrial engineering. Struggling with his classes, he was faced with a hard choice: sit out a semester or leave Georgia Tech.

He chose to stay.

“It was fight or flight,” says Hope. “I knew I had to find something I was passionate about and catalyze some momentum — or go home.”

He found that passion in the science of behavior.

“I discovered Industrial-Organizational Psychology and realized that the human element; how we work, why we lead, and how we build cultures, is a fascinating and useful science,” says Hope.

Once he found his direction, Hope never faltered. 

Today, he is a people leader at Google, who attributes much of his success to the resiliency honed at Georgia Tech. And, after once coming close to leaving without a degree, he is now returning to give the commencement address at the College of Sciences master’s graduation celebration.

Undergraduate Life

What were you involved with on campus?

Hope: I was a Georgia Tech Student Ambassador and a Co-op Ambassador. I was also a member of Alpha Phi Alpha Fraternity, Inc., the Student Alumni Association, the Minority Recruitment Team, the African American Student Union, the National Society of Black Engineers, and the Freshman Activities Board.

What’s something you’re especially proud of from your time at Tech?

Hope: I was an IT co-op at McKinneys, before I switched to psychology. I was told I couldn’t receive the co-op designation on my diploma because it wasn’t in my major. I read the rules, saw no language that disqualified me, advocated for myself, and persuaded them to change their minds. If that rule is different now, it’s because of me.

Leadership Lessons

What is your leadership philosophy?

Hope: Show up as my authentic self. Part of the reason I'm able to do that is that I work at a company like Google where that's really championed.

How did Georgia Tech influence the way you lead today?

Hope: I learned that even when it looks like there are no options, there is always a way to get it done and move forward.

What concepts from psychology shape your leadership style?

Hope: The scientific method comes to mind. Create a hypothesis, leverage some data, then iterate. Stay open to being wrong. If it’s not exactly what you expect, go back to the drawing board.

How would you describe your leadership style?

Hope: I'm a teacher at heart. Knowledge sharing and helping others grow are important to me. That said, I don’t speak just to talk. I constantly ask myself: Is what I’m about to say useful? Georgia Tech taught me to value thoughtful contribution over volume.

What’s a leadership rule you follow?

Hope: I don’t know if this is a leadership rule or a life mantra, but always act with integrity. Never do or say anything you wouldn’t want printed in The New York Times. I’ve worked hard to get where I am, but it only takes one thing to ruin your reputation, and leadership is built on trust.

In your commencement speech, you talk about the importance of leadership in everyday life. How does leadership show up in your home life?

Hope: My wife and I are very intentional in parenting our two boys. Our instinct is often to teach, but sometimes the best lesson is knowing when to step back. Letting them make mistakes, then talking it through together at the kitchen table, that’s a different — and oftentimes more difficult — kind of leadership.

Paying it Forward

A deeply engaged alumnus, Hope has served on the College of Sciences Young Alumni Board, participates in Georgia Tech Connect and Roll Call, and was recently asked to join the College of Sciences Advisory Board.

What advice would you give to Georgia Tech graduates?

Hope: Constantly build your brand. Mine is important, not just for me personally, but the better my reputation, the more I can help others through the influence I carry.

Why is giving back important to you?

Hope: As a student ambassador, I saw firsthand how alumni support shapes the student experience. I remember realizing that certain buildings and programs exist because alumni gave back. It changed my entire perspective on giving. Today, I like being a part of creating something bigger and better for the next generation of scholars.

At Georgia Tech, undergraduate students are an integral part of the research enterprise – particularly when it comes to neuroscience. That dedication to undergraduate research was on full display on April 8, when more than 100 students from Atlanta-area universities gathered for the annual ATL Neuro Networking and Symposium Night. 

That interdisciplinary focus has earned Huang statewide recognition. He has been selected as Georgia Tech’s 2026 representative for the University System of Georgia’s (USG) Academic Recognition Day, an honor awarded annually to one undergraduate from each USG institution for outstanding scholastic achievement. Georgia Tech’s representative is chosen by the academic associate deans from each of the Institute’s six colleges, in collaboration with the Office of the Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and Student Success.

This honor encourages Huang to keep pursuing the kind of research he believes can make a real difference.

It’s a form of external validation that the work I’m doing is meaningful, not just to me, but to others,” he said. “It confirms that choosing a less conventional path, one guided by impact instead of convenience, is worthwhile.

Huang has also received the 2026 Provost’s Academic Excellence Award. He will graduate in May with bachelor’s degrees in computer science and psychology, along with minors in computation and cognition, health and medical sciences, and the science of mental health and well-being.

He currently leads two projects investigating cognition in neural systems, supported by the President’s Undergraduate Research Award and the Petit-Lanier Research Scholarship. One project uses tobacco hawkmoths as a reduced-complexity model system to identify fundamental principles of neural computation. The other examines human learning and decision-making using a custom sensorimotor paradigm and computational modeling.

Huang has presented his findings at venues such as the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology Annual Meeting and the Southeastern Medical Scientist Symposium, and he is preparing first-author manuscripts for submission later this spring.

According to Professor Simon Sponberg, who has advised Huang in the Agile Systems Lab, it’s Huang’s approach to his work that sets him apart.

“Elliot’s excellence goes beyond easily quantified metrics of academics,” Sponberg said. “He is exceptionally self-motivated and is constantly in pursuit of his goals. Combined with his effectiveness, ambition, and demonstrated responsibility he has already realized outstanding success, and I’m excited to see what he achieves next!”

That same confidence in Huang’s future is shared by Associate Professor Robert Wilson, Huang’s mentor and principle investigator in the Neuroscience of Reinforcement Learning and Decision-Making Lab.

“Elliot stands out as a truly brilliant scholar — a hard worker, deep thinker and all-around wonderful person to have in the lab,” Wilson said. “His research asks deep questions about the role of physical movement in human cognition that has the potential to revolutionize how we think about human learning and psychiatric disorders.”

Huang traces his interest in psychology to deeply personal experiences that reshaped how he viewed the intersection of technology, medicine, and well-being. While he was initially drawn to Tech’s computer science program, his academic focus evolved as he became more involved in mentorship and campus ministry, and as mental health challenges affected those close to him.

Those experiences ultimately solidified his goal of becoming a physician-scientist working at the intersection of computational modeling and psychiatry. Huang hopes to reframe psychiatric disorders not simply as collections of symptoms, but as variations in underlying cognitive processes. He hopes this approach will one day support more precise, mechanistic mental health care.

Huang has also invested significant time in mentoring peers and building his campus community. He leads Bible studies through Navigators Campus Ministry, previously served as director of operations for the Georgia Tech Medical Robotics Club, and has performed with the Institute’s Tenor Bass Choir.

After graduation, Huang plans to spend a year working as a full-time researcher while applying to MD/Ph.D. programs. Wherever that next step takes him, Huang leaves Georgia Tech with a foundation built on academic rigor and a commitment to improving human well-being.

View luncheon photos on Flickr, and see recipients from all colleges here.

College of Sciences

The School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Quarter Century Award
Sophia Buettner (ENVS), Daniel Lamprea (AOS), Rowan Ray (ENVS), Claire Riggs (ENVS)

The School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Arduengo Award
Arya Akbarshahi (BCHM), Ryan Wiebold (CHEM)

The School of Psychology Moll Davenport Award
Kate Cole (PSYCH)

Metha Phingbodhipakkiya Memorial Scholarship
Nick Elidor (NEUR)

A. Joyce Nickelson and John C. Sutherland Prize
Carlos Marcio De Oliveira E Silva Filho (MATH & PHYS)

Roger M. Wartell and Stephen E. Brossette Award
Sara Dixon (BCHM), Nikhita Subramaniarao (PHYS)

Robert A. Pierotti Memorial Scholarship
Zachary Beddingfield (BIO & BCHM), Kate Cole (PSYCH), Kathleen “Katie” Griffin (BIO & ENVS)

Institute Awards

Georgia Tech Women’s Club Scholarships
From College of Sciences:
Isabel O’Connell (ENVS), Clear Holley (PHYS)

The University System of Georgia (USG) Academic Recognition Award
From College of Sciences:
Elliot Huang (PSYCH & CS)

Provost’s Academic Excellence Award
From College of Sciences:
Elliot Huang (PSYCH & CS)

Love Family Foundation Award
From College of Sciences:
Marielle Frooman (BCHM)

Clanton Awards

Virginia C. and Herschel V. Clanton Jr. Scholarship
Chloe Zhang (BCHM), Maryam Aamir (NEUR)

Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) 

Recipients
From College of Sciences:
Matthew Rohan (CHEM), Austin C. Wang (NEUR)

One the oldest existing biological societies in the world, the Linnean Society of London is renowned as the venue where, in July 1858, Charles Darwin and Alfred Russel Wallace first publicly announced the theory of evolution by natural selection — more than a year before Darwin published On the Origin of Species. The annual Bicentenary Medal is considered one of the most prestigious awards for researchers studying natural history.

“This honor is profoundly meaningful to me — both as an evolutionary biologist and a Londoner,” says Stroud. “To be recognized here, at the very heart of evolutionary biology’s history, is deeply personal, incredibly exciting, and very special.”

Stroud is one of 10 exemplary researchers to be recognized by the Linnean Society this year with a medal or award.

“We are thrilled to celebrate the 2026 Linnean Society medal and award recipients, whose work advances our vision of a world where nature is understood, valued and protected,” says Mark Watson, who serves as president of the Linnean Society. “At a time when the importance of biodiversity and conservation has never been clearer, their achievements show the power of curiosity, dedication and scientific endeavor.”

Understanding Lizards — and Life on Earth

At Georgia Tech, Stroud investigates the ecological and evolutionary processes of lizards in order to understand patterns of biological diversity at a larger scale. “Studying lizards in their natural habitats allows us to directly investigate how species adapt and evolve in real time,” he explains, “and this helps us understand how ecological and evolutionary processes shape life on Earth."

For over 10 years, he has run one of the longest-running evolutionary studies of its kind: catching, documenting, and releasing each of the 1,000 lizards who reside on “Lizard Island,” Stroud’s living lab in Florida.

In 2025, he was awarded a Packard Fellowship to further develop the project by equipping each lizard with a tiny sensor backpack to document their behaviors and movements in real time — with the goal of creating evolution’s first high-definition map.

In 2014, Stroud also founded a community science project called “Lizards on the Loose” to introduce middle school students to ecological science. A collaboration with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, the program now reaches students from over 100 schools across South Florida.

This is the third time the class has been offered, but the first to include an extended community-based learning experience. 

“The students were able to see firsthand how concepts discussed in the classroom translated into real infrastructure decisions shaping vulnerable coastal communities,” says Robel, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

In previous years, the course relied on guest speakers, often remote, to provide real-world insights. Robel and Macedo, an associate professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, advocated for this year’s field trip to give students direct exposure to how the concepts taught in class are used in coastal communities.  

“Places like Savannah, Tybee Island, and Charleston aren’t planning for a distant future; they’re making real infrastructure decisions right now,” explains Robel.

Coastal Case Studies

On Tybee Island, city leaders and U.S. Army Corps of Engineers staff discussed with students how to balance tourism, environmental protection, and shoreline preservation. Site visits highlighted tide gates and living shorelines as flood mitigation strategies. 

Then, in Savannah, students met with city staff to explore challenges facing historic, low-lying cities and visited the Pin Point Heritage Museum where Gullah-Geechee community leaders spoke about the cultural, environmental, and equity dimensions of flood planning. 

The trip concluded in Charleston with discussions led by the city’s chief resilience officer and tours of the Low Battery Seawall and a neighborhood pump station, illustrating how flood infrastructure can serve both functional and public-facing roles. Students also visited JMT, the engineering firm behind several of the projects studied, where engineers discussed design trade-offs and career paths in coastal and municipal infrastructure.

Regional Risks, Real Responses

“The regional context is especially important because Georgia Tech graduates are heavily concentrated in the Southeast, and many go on to careers designing, managing, or approving infrastructure projects in coastal communities,” says Robel. “With a more concentrated vulnerability to sea-level rise in the Southeast than any other part of the United States, the most potential flooding is likely to occur here in the Atlantic Southeast and Gulf Coast.”

He adds that “if we’re educating the scientists, engineers, and decision-makers who will be working in these communities, they must understand the practicalities of flood resilience and how to make informed decisions based on the best current science.”

Although the idea for the field experience had been years in the making, it became feasible only recently with support from an internal grant on sustainability education and community-based learning administered by the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education. Robel also emphasized the importance of long-standing relationships with coastal communities and governments in making the trip a success.

“We reached a point where we had both the resources and the relationships to make the experience meaningful,” he shares.

Career Context

The students met professionals from a wide range of career paths, including federal and local government agencies, private engineering firms, and municipal stormwater departments. 

“A major goal of the trip was giving students the chance to see what career paths in coastal resilience really look like,” says Robel. “Those conversations helped students understand not just the technical work, but also the financing, politics, and community concerns that shape infrastructure decisions — parts of the job that are harder to capture in the classroom.”

Students enjoyed the opportunity to get real-world context:

“This trip made me reconsider my post-graduation plans. I used to think the geology industry was just oil and gas, but this trip showed me different ways I can apply my skills to help the environment as well as local communities in their efforts to adapt to sea-level rise concerns,” says Mandala Pham, a Ph.D. student studying geophysics.

“The most valuable part of the experience was observing sea-level rise mitigation infrastructure in-person, and the trip was a great experience overall to make new friends and gain valuable experiences,” adds Alexander Brison, a fourth-year environmental engineering major.

By grounding classroom concepts in real places and real decisions, the Spring Break field experience reinforced the course’s goal: preparing students to engage thoughtfully with the challenges coastal communities are already facing.

Lloyd George was back in the gym just two weeks after completing 2,002 muscle-ups in 24 hours in July of 2025, which broke the world record. He immediately started training for an even more challenging feat—the world record for the most muscle-ups done on a gymnastic ring in 8, 12, and 24 hours.

On Sunday, April 12, 2026, he surpassed all three, completing 900 ring muscle-ups in 8 hours, 1,100 in 12 hours, and 1,320 in 24 hours. (The records are unofficial until they can be reviewed by Guinness World Records.)

“I’ve sort of got a recipe for these world records now,” says Lloyd George, who used the challenge to raise money for the Wounded Veterans Relief Fund, a charity that helps veterans receive dental care. 

Since the summer of 2025, he steadily increased his training volume, pushing past 17,000 total ring muscle-ups, and completing longer sessions, including a six-hour effort of 722 ring muscle-ups.

A Harder Variant of A Muscle-Up

Ring muscle-ups are a more demanding variant of the standard bar muscle-up. The sway of the rings introduces instability and makes muscles work harder when the ropes move. The grip is also different. 

“You wrap your wrists around the rings almost like you’re trying to arm wrestle them,” Lloyd George says. Put in physics terms—a field he knows well as a doctoral student at Duke University researching trapped ions for quantum computing—the rings introduce four more degrees of freedom. 

The Math Behind His Three Attempts

His decision to attempt three world records came down to simple math. The current 8-hour record is 843, while the 24-hour record is 1,308. No formal record exists for the 12-hour category. 

“I realized that if I do two ring muscle-ups every minute, at that pace I’d get to 960 in 8 hours. There isn’t a 12-hour record, and there are for other calisthenic records, so I thought I could set that one, too,” he says. 

When he broke the bar muscle-up record in 2025, he didn’t know how challenging the final hours would be. The last 50 reps were grueling, and with the support of his friends and family who cheered him on, he pushed past his limits. Knowing what the challenge will feel like changes his mental preparation this time around.

“I think you have to play with the mental game and really ask yourself, ‘Why am I doing this?’ especially on those difficult training days. For those, I think about the charity I’m trying to raise money for that I believe in, and that this is one more opportunity to challenge myself.” 

Working with collaborators at University College London (UCL), Georgia Tech researchers used computer models to reveal how, during early development, forces generated by cells physically pull the neural tube closed — like a drawstring. This discovery offers new insight into a critical process that, when disrupted, can result in severe birth defects such as spina bifida.

“Understanding a complex developmental process like neural tube closure requires a highly interdisciplinary approach,” said Shiladitya Banerjee, an associate professor in the School of Physics. “By combining advanced biological imaging with theoretical physics, we were able to uncover the mechanical rules that drive cells to close the tube. My lab builds computational models to uncover the physical rules of living systems. The neural tube is an ideal focus because its formation requires incredible mechanical coordination.”

The researchers presented their findings in Current Biology. 

Closing the Gap

The UCL team studied mouse embryos, which develop similarly to humans, and Georgia Tech researchers used that data to construct their models. From the data, they identified the fundamental physics mechanism that enables neural tube closure in part of the brain. This mechanism, called a “purse string,” is made of actin, a pivotal protein that forms a cell’s skeletal structure. As the purse strings tighten, the tube closes.

“These actin molecules are very important because they give rigidity and shape to cells,” Banerjee said.

“During neural tube closure, actin filaments form a ring around the opening and engage molecular motors — proteins that generate forces inside cells,” he said. “As these motors pull on the actin, they generate tension that tightens the ring and draws the tube closed.”

Stretching to Fit

As the actin ring tightens, cells stretch and elongate, causing them to align and move together in a synchronized pattern, like a school of fish. This coordination allows the cells to move faster and more efficiently, increasing tension and driving a feedback loop that helps seal the neural tube.

The team built a computer model to show how this feedback loop leads to successful neural tube formation. Further research using the model could help explain why the neural tube fails to close.

“Physics-based modeling of cell and tissue mechanics allows us to connect the dots between developmental stages in a way that is both robust and quantitative, simulating experiments that are impossible in biological tissues,” said Gabriel Galea, the study co-author and UCL group leader. “In this case, it allowed us to explain how a cell’s mechanical experience impacts its current and future shapes during a critical step of brain development.”

Beyond neural tube development, the findings highlight the power of physics-based modeling to explain complex biological processes that can’t be observed directly. The researchers say this approach could be applied to other stages of human development where forces, motion, and timing are just as critical.

The computational research at Banerjee Lab is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Fernanda Pérez-Verdugo, Eirini Maniou, Gabriel L. Galea, Shiladitya Banerjee, “Mechanosensitive feedback organizes cell shape and motion during hindbrain neuropore morphogenesis,” Current Biology, 2026.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.02.068 

The paper, The Borderlands of Foldability: Lessons from Simplified Proteins, is a meta-analysis of six decades of protein research and reveals that ancient proteins may have been far more complicated and dynamic than previously thought. 

Recently published in the journal Trends in Chemistry, the study includes Georgia Tech researchers Lynn Kamerlin, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Georgia Research Alliance Vasser-Woolley Chair in Molecular Design, and Quantitative Biosciences Ph.D. candidate Alfie-Louise Brownless.

Co-authors also include Institute of Science Tokyo graduate student Koh Seya and Liam M. Longo, who serves as a specially appointed associate professor at Science Tokyo and as an affiliate research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.

The research has implications ranging from the origins of life and the search for life in the universe to cutting-edge medical innovation. “One of the biggest unanswered questions in science is how life first began,” says Kamerlin, who is a corresponding author of the study. “Understanding how the first protein-like molecules formed and what the earliest proteins may have been like is a key part of that puzzle.”

“Proteins power our bodies — and all life on Earth,” she adds. “Simply put, the evolution of proteins is the reason that we’re able to have this conversation at all.”

A Protein Folding Paradox

If proteins are the scaffolding of life, amino acids are the components that make up that scaffolding. “Today, an average protein is constructed from a chain of about 300 amino acids, involving 20 different types of amino acids,” Kamerlin shares. Proteins fold when these chains twist into a specific 3-dimensional shape, creating structures critical for biology.

However, while these folds are essential, exactly how a protein knows which way to fold remains a mystery. “We know that proteins didn’t just fold randomly,” Kamerlin shares, “because randomly trying all possible configurations would take a protein longer than the age of the universe.”

It’s a cornerstone problem in biological science called “Levinthal’s Paradox,” and highlights a fundamental mystery: Proteins fold incredibly quickly into very specific combinations — but like a sheet of paper spontaneously folding into an origami swan, researchers don’t know how proteins “choose” the folds they make.

“We can predict what a protein will look like, but can’t tell you how it got there,” Kamerlin adds. “That’s what we’re interested in exploring: how small early proteins developed into the complex proteins that support every living thing on today’s Earth.”

Simple Letters, Sophisticated Structures

Early proteins likely had access to just half of today’s amino acids. “About 10-12 amino acids were likely available on early Earth,” Kamerlin says. Like writing a story with just the letters “A” through “L,” researchers assumed that the ‘vocabulary’ proteins could build from such a limited amino acid alphabet would also be constrained.

“There is a language to protein folding,” Kamerlin explains. “That language is hidden in their structures. Our research is in trying to understand the rules — the grammar and vocabulary that dictate a protein fold.” 

The grammar they discovered was surprising: with a combination of creative techniques and environmental support, complex structures can arise from limited amino acid alphabets. 

“We found that it is possible to develop complex folds with very simple tools — and certain environments, like salty ones, can help support that,” Kamerlin shares. “Early proteins could also cross-link and associate, interacting like LEGO blocks to create more complex structures.”

Pioneering Proteins

Now, the team is conducting research in environments that could mimic conditions on early Earth — aiming to discover more about how these regions could have given rise to today’s complex proteins. “This aspect of our research also ties into the amazing space research happening at Georgia Tech,” Kamerlin says. “While we’re interested in understanding early life on Earth, our work could help inform where best to look for evidence of life beyond our planet.”

Kamerlin specializes in creating computer models that simulate possible scenarios – creating an opportunity to quickly and efficiently test many theories. The most compelling of these can then be tested by her collaborator and co-author at Science Tokyo, Liam Longo, in lab experiments. 

Protein folding is also at the forefront of medical innovation, ranging from diagnostic tools to cancer treatments and neurodegenerative diseases. “In the broader scope, we’re interested in discovering what we can design, what we can stress test, and what we can reconstruct with AI and other computational tools,” Kamerlin says. “Because if you can understand how proteins fold, you gain the ability to design them.”

Funding: NASA, the Human Frontier Science Program, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trechm.2026.03.001

Read the full story here>>

The College of Sciences recognized faculty and staff excellence during the 2026 Spring Sciences Celebration. Held each spring on Tech Tower Lawn, this signature event also honors recent retirees.

“Spring Sciences is a time to celebrate exceptional members of our community,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “We thank this year’s honorees for their outstanding contributions and dedication to our mission.” 

The 2026 honorees are:

Faculty Development Awards

The Cullen-Peck Scholar Awards were established by Frank Cullen (Math 1973, M.S. ISyE 1976, Ph.D. ISyE 1984) and Elizabeth Peck (Math 1975, M.S. ISyE 1976) to encourage the development of especially promising mid-career faculty. 

• William Gutekunst, Chemistry and Biochemistry
• D. Zeb Rocklin, Physics
• Minoru “Shino” Shinohara, Biological Sciences 

The Gretzinger Moving the School Forward Award, endowed by Ralph Gretzinger (Math 1970) and named in honor of his late wife, Jewel, recognizes the leadership of a school chair or senior faculty member who has played a pivotal role in advancing equal opportunity in the composition of tenure-track faculty, fostering a family-friendly work environment, and providing a supportive environment for early-career faculty. 

• Tiffiny Hughes-Troutman, Psychology 

The Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching, endowed by Charles Crawford (Math 1971), recognizes exemplary teaching in foundational undergraduate courses. It honors the late School of Mathematics professor Eric R. Immel, who greatly influenced Crawford’s undergraduate experience at the Institute.

• Zachary Handlos, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 

The CoS Faculty Mentor Awards, established jointly by the College of Sciences and its ADVANCE Professor, recognize the efforts and achievements of faculty members who mentor fellow faculty. 

• Alexander Robel, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Chongchun Zeng, Mathematics 

Research Faculty Awards

The CoS Outstanding Junior Research Faculty Award and CoS Outstanding Senior Research Faculty Award recognize postdoctoral and non-tenure-track research faculty whose exceptional research contributions have had a significant impact on their fields of study.

CoS Outstanding Junior Research Faculty Award 

• Chaebin Kim, Physics 

CoS Outstanding Senior Research Faculty Award 

• Brant Jones, Chemistry and Biochemistry 

The CoS Research Faculty Community Trailblazer Award recognizes postdoctoral and non-tenure-track research faculty who have demonstrated and sustained leadership that strengthens the sense of community among research faculty within the College.

• Dustin Huard, Chemistry and Biochemistry 

Staff Awards

The College of Sciences Staff Awards are made possible by funding from the Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Dean’s Chair endowment. These awards include: 

The Leadership in Action Award recognizes a staff member who has made exceptional contributions to the College through innovative and strategic leadership, change management, business process improvement, special project leadership, and similar accomplishments. 

• Leslie Roberts, College of Sciences Dean’s Office 

The Exceptional Staff Award and the Friend of the Sciences Award recognize performance above and beyond the call of duty. The awardees demonstrate high levels of execution in their primary job duties, auxiliary roles, and citizenship, positively impacting the strategic goals of the College.

Exceptional Staff Award 

• Joshua Crowe, Biological Sciences 

Friend of the Sciences Award 

• Eme Anderson, Office of Sponsored Programs 

The Rising Star Award honors a newer staff member who has made a significant impact during their short tenure by contributing to the strategic goals and initiatives of the College, showing passion for their work, and embracing the Institute’s culture and values.

• Drake Lee-Patterson, Biological Sciences 

2026 Retirees 

Faculty 

• Rafael Bras, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Predrag Cvitanović, Physics
• Martin Jarrio, Physics
• Michael Loss, Mathematics 

Staff 

• Judith Taylor, Mathematics

View luncheon photos on Flickr, and see recipients from all colleges here.

Georgia Tech Chapter Sigma Xi Awards

Best Faculty Paper Award

Jiang Zhigang
Professor
School of Physics

Institute Research Awards

Outstanding Achievement in Research Enterprise Enhancement

Anna Österholm
Research Faculty
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development Award
Human Space Exploration Team

Thomas Orlando — Team Leader
Regents’ Professor
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
School of Physics

Phillip First
Professor
School of Physics

Brant Jones
Senior Research Scientist
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Frances Rivera-Hernandez
Assistant Professor
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Jiang Zhigang
Professor
School of Physics

Human Space Exploration Team co-recipients from the College of Engineering:

Masatoshi Hirabayashi
Associate Professor

Julie Linsey
Professor

Peter Loutzenhiser
Associate Professor

Alvaro Romero-Calvo
Assistant Professor

Meisha Shofner
Professor

Staff Awards

Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Gender Equity Award 

Susan Lozier
College of Sciences Dean
Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair
Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 

Undergraduate Education Awards 

Outstanding Undergraduate Academic Advisor – Faculty Advisor 

Haley Steele
Academic Professional
School of Biological Sciences 

Center for Teaching and Learning Awards

Curriculum Innovation Award

Mary Peek
Principal Academic Professional
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Undergraduate Educator Award

Tiffiny Hughes-Troutman
Professor of the Practice
School of Psychology

Faculty Honors Committee Awards

Junior Faculty Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award

Farzaneh Najafi
Assistant Professor
School of Biological Sciences

Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award

Pamela Pollet
Principal Academic Professional
School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

When you look at your surrounding environment, it might seem like you’re living on a flat plane. After all, this is why you can navigate a new city using a map: a flat piece of paper that represents all the places around you. This is likely why some people in the past believed the earth to be flat. But most people now know that is far from the truth.

You live on the surface of a giant sphere, like a beach ball the size of the Earth with a few bumps added. The surface of the sphere and the plane are two possible 2D spaces, meaning you can walk in two directions: north and south or east and west.

What other possible spaces might you be living on? That is, what other spaces around you are 2D? For example, the surface of a giant doughnut is another 2D space.

Through a field called geometric topology, mathematicians like me study all possible spaces in all dimensions. Whether trying to design secure sensor networks, mine data or use origami to deploy satellites, the underlying language and ideas are likely to be that of topology.

The Shape of the Universe

When you look around the universe you live in, it looks like a 3D space, just like the surface of the Earth looks like a 2D space. However, just like the Earth, if you were to look at the universe as a whole, it could be a more complicated space, like a giant 3D version of the 2D beach ball surface or something even more exotic than that.

While you don’t need topology to determine that you are living on something like a giant beach ball, knowing all the possible 2D spaces can be useful. Over a century ago, mathematicians figured out all the possible 2D spaces and many of their properties.

In the past several decades, mathematicians have learned a lot about all of the possible 3D spaces. While we do not have a complete understanding like we do for 2D spaces, we do know a lot. With this knowledge, physicists and astronomers can try to determine what 3D space people actually live in.

While the answer is not completely known, there are many intriguing and surprising possibilities. The options become even more complicated if you consider time as a dimension.

To see how this might work, note that to describe the location of something in space – say a comet – you need four numbers: three to describe its position and one to describe the time it is in that position. These four numbers are what make up a 4D space.

Now, you can consider what 4D spaces are possible and in which of those spaces do you live.

Topology in Higher Dimensions

At this point, it may seem like there is no reason to consider spaces that have dimensions larger than four, since that is the highest imaginable dimension that might describe our universe. But a branch of physics called string theory suggests that the universe has many more dimensions than four.

There are also practical applications of thinking about higher dimensional spaces, such as robot motion planning. Suppose you are trying to understand the motion of three robots moving around a factory floor in a warehouse. You can put a grid on the floor and describe the position of each robot by their x and y coordinates on the grid. Since each of the three robots requires two coordinates, you will need six numbers to describe all of the possible positions of the robots. You can interpret the possible positions of the robots as a 6D space.

As the number of robots increases, the dimension of the space increases. Factoring in other useful information, such as the locations of obstacles, makes the space even more complicated. In order to study this problem, you need to study high-dimensional spaces.

There are countless other scientific problems where high-dimensional spaces appear, from modeling the motion of planets and spacecraft to trying to understand the “shape” of large datasets.

Tied Up In Knots

Another type of problem topologists study is how one space can sit inside another.

For example, if you hold a knotted loop of string, then we have a 1D space (the loop of string) inside a 3D space (your room). Such loops are called mathematical knots.

The study of knots first grew out of physics but has become a central area of topology. They are essential to how scientists understand 3D and 4D spaces and have a delightful and subtle structure that researchers are still trying to understand.

In addition, knots have many applications, ranging from string theory in physics to DNA recombination in biology to chirality in chemistry.

What Shape Do You Live On?

Geometric topology is a beautiful and complex subject, and there are still countless exciting questions to answer about spaces.

For example, the smooth 4D Poincaré conjecture asks what the “simplest” closed 4D space is, and the slice-ribbon conjecture aims to understand how knots in 3D spaces relate to surfaces in 4D spaces.

Topology is currently useful in science and engineering. Unraveling more mysteries of spaces in all dimensions will be invaluable to understanding the world in which we live and solving real-world problems.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Released on April 7, the latest U.S. News report features the College's six schools, each of which earned top‑tier placements that reflect academic quality and peer reputation across disciplines.

Georgia Tech College of Sciences rankings

• Biological Sciences: No. 41 (tied)
  Tied with Mayo Clinic Graduate School of Biomedical Sciences; Northwestern University; Purdue University–West Lafayette; University of Arizona; University of California, Santa Barbara; and University of California, Santa Cruz.
   
• Chemistry: No. 20 (tied)
  Tied with University of California, San Diego.
   
• Earth Sciences: No. 29 (tied), up four spots
  Tied with Johns Hopkins University; Oregon State University; Texas A&M University–College Station; and Washington University in St. Louis.
   
• Mathematics: No. 26 (tied)
  Tied with Rice University; Rutgers University–New Brunswick; and the University of Washington.
   
• Physics: No. 22 (tied)
  Tied with Brown University; Duke University; Northwestern University; The Ohio State University; and the University of Wisconsin–Madison.
   
• Psychology: No. 39 (tied)*
  Tied with Michigan State University; Stony Brook University–SUNY; University of Arizona; University of California, Santa Barbara; University of Florida; and University of Iowa.

*Psychology rankings were carried forward from the most recent U.S. News social sciences rankings cycle.

These new rankings — based on peer perception surveys, as well as statistical indicators measuring faculty resources, research activity, and student outcomes — continue to highlight the College of Sciences’ breadth across core scientific disciplines and its role in advancing discovery, training future researchers, and supporting Georgia Tech’s research and mission.

Specialty Rankings: Chemistry and Mathematics

In addition to overall program rankings, Georgia Tech continues to earn national recognition in existing specialty graduate rankings within the College of Sciences, which carry forward from April 2023:

• Chemistry remains consistently ranked among the nation’s top programs, reflecting strength across sub‑disciplines and sustained research impact.
• Mathematics continues to earn recognition for both applied and theoretical strengths, supported by interdisciplinary connections across engineering, computing, and the sciences.

Chemistry specialty graduate programs

• Analytical Chemistry – No. 11
• Inorganic Chemistry – No. 20
• Physical Chemistry — No. 14
• Theoretical Chemistry — No. 18 

 Mathematics specialty graduate programs

• Analysis — No. 20 (tie)
• Applied Math — No. 16 (tie)
• Discrete Mathematics and Combinatorics — No. 5 (tie)

Full rankings: gatech.edu/about/rankings

Caleb Adams, a business administration major, and Marielle Frooman, a biochemistry major, have charted their own distinct paths, yet both equally embody the academic excellence, leadership, and impact at the heart of the Love Family Foundation Award.

The winners are selected by the academic associate deans in coordination with the Office of Undergraduate Education and Student Success, and each recipient will receive a $6,000 monetary award.

“The selection committee felt that both finalists exemplified the spirit and intent of this award,” said Steven Girardot, vice provost for Undergraduate Education and Student Success. “From a pool of six outstanding finalists, it was clear that these two students stood apart. Rather than forcing a distinction between equally exceptional individuals whose achievements span very different disciplines, the committee chose to recognize both. Caleb and Marielle represent an exceptional level of achievement, curiosity, and commitment to impact that defines the very best of Georgia Tech undergraduates.”

Building a Business Career

Finance captured Caleb Adams’ attention early, sparked in part by conversations with his father — a Georgia Tech mechanical engineering alumnus — and solidified when Adams bought his first stock at 13. Captivated by the way investing touches everything and everyone in the economy, Adams set his sights on an education in Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business.

A Stamps President’s Scholar, Adams embraced the scholarship’s emphasis on academic excellence, leadership, and service. His academic path was shaped as much by the classroom as by the opportunities he pursued beyond it.

Adams has immersed himself in campus life, seeking experiences that have allowed him to explore finance in academic and extracurricular settings while consistently finding opportunities to give back to his peers. One of the most influential was his role on the Georgia Tech Student Foundation Investments Committee, where he served as technology sector head and managed a $300,000 portfolio. Working with actual money and real stakes, he sharpened his financial modeling and presentation skills while directing funding back to student organizations across campus.

As a Scheller Business Ambassador, Adams welcomed prospective students and families and had the space to share student perspectives with college leadership. That commitment to helping others navigate business and finance also showed up in his participation in the Scheller Mentor Program, hosting personal finance education workshops, and working as a teaching assistant for an accounting course he took as a first-year student. In earlier semesters, Adams explored finance and strategy through the Venture Capital Club, Undergraduate Consulting Club, and Emerging Leaders Advisory Board.

His journey was intentional from the start, and faculty who have worked with him recognize him for his accomplishments and everything it took to get there.

“Even as a first-year student, Caleb wasn’t just chasing the next opportunity,” noted Craig Womack, associate dean for undergraduate programs at Scheller. “He was thoughtful about how each experience connected to the kind of person and leader he wanted to become.”

Womack was instrumental in Adams’ decision to attend Georgia Tech, providing guidance before Adams began as a first-year and helping connect him with professors and organizations that would influence his academic and professional journeys.

Adams’ intentionality extended beyond the classroom, and when finance wasn’t capturing his attention, travel offered another way for him to feed his curiosity of how the world works. In 2025, Adams helped organize the Academic Search for Knowledge trip to Japan for fellow Stamps President’s Scholars, which helped his goal of visiting every continent and further broadened his global perspective.

The focus and discipline characterizing Adams’ academic journey has also guided him through a demanding slate of internships, including roles at Capital One, Airbnb, AeroVect, and ultimately Morgan Stanley, where he earned a full-time offer and will begin his career as an investment banking analyst in New York City after graduation. Working for Morgan Stanley had been his goal long before his first day of college.

“It’s definitely an intense job,” he acknowledged, “but it’s incredibly interesting, high-value work. The exposure you get, the training you get, the skills and networks — they’re unbeatable and unmatched.”

As he prepares to graduate and step into the fast pace of Wall Street, Adams sees the award less as a finish line and more of a reminder of where he started and the community that shaped him along the way.

“More than anything, it’s solidified how connected I feel to Tech,” he said. “I want to stay involved and give back so future students have the same kind of support and opportunity I did.”

Finding Joy — and Purpose — in the Lab

Where Adams found his footing in finance, Marielle Frooman discovered hers in the lab, driven by an insatiable curiosity and infectious enthusiasm for chemistry.

Frooman was drawn to Georgia Tech by its research culture and the energy of its student community. She joined her first lab early in her undergraduate career, unsure of exactly where that path would lead, but eager to get hands-on experience as soon as possible.

For two years, Frooman conducted biochemistry and structural biology research in the McShan Lab, working under Andrew McShan, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Frooman’s time in the McShan Lab was foundational in shaping her technical abilities and preparing her for a research-intensive career.

“I had never done research before, and I wasn’t equipped to handle the amount of failure that comes with it,” Frooman said, reflecting on the formative experience. “Professor McShan really helped me change my outlook, to see failure as a learning experience and to use it to push a project forward.”

McShan described Frooman as an exceptional undergraduate researcher and peer leader.

“Marielle is not only an extremely talented researcher, but also a caring mentor and motivated future leader who wants to change the world,” they said. “She is the best undergraduate researcher I have ever worked with, and I guarantee she will make a big impact in whatever field she chooses to pursue.”

That strong biochemistry foundation gave Frooman the confidence to follow where her curiosity led next. After falling in love with organic chemistry through coursework and serving as a synthesis lab Teaching Assistant and organic chemistry peer tutor, she transitioned into researching with Will Gutekunst, associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. The shift built directly on the skills she developed in the McShan Lab while clarifying her long-term goals of pursuing graduate study and eventually contributing to the synthetic field as an academic researcher.

That trajectory has already earned her national recognition. Frooman is a 2026 recipient of the National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program for chemical synthesis and was also named one of the year’s Outstanding Undergraduate Biochemistry or Chemical Biology Students by the American Chemical Society’s (ACS) Division of Biochemistry and Chemical Biology.

Outside of research, Frooman’s energy spills into nearly every corner of campus life. She has served as president of the Student Affiliates of the ACS, president of Cleanup Crew, president of public relations for the GT tour guides, and an active member of Greek life — all while pursuing research and mentoring fellow students.

“Everything I do, I do because I love it,” she said. “If I wasn’t this busy, I’d feel like I was missing out on something that really matters to me.”

As Frooman heads toward graduation and prepares to pursue a Ph.D. in Chemistry at the University of Michigan, receiving the Love Award feels deeply validating, both personally and for those who helped get her here.

“It’s invigorating,” Frooman said, reflecting on the honor. “It’s a culmination of my undergraduate work, but even more, it’s a testament to how supportive this community has been over my four years here. I would not be receiving this award without everyone who was right next to me along the way.”

A Shared Recognition

Adams and Frooman took different routes at Georgia Tech, but each approached their time here with intention. While one followed markets and global finance and the other immersed herself in scientific discovery, their stories converge in the values the Love Family Foundation Award was created to recognize: academic excellence and a commitment to making a difference.

The Truman Scholarship is awarded annually to a select group of students nationwide who demonstrate outstanding leadership potential, academic excellence, and an enduring commitment to making a difference. Named after President Harry S. Truman, the scholarship supports students in their graduate education and careers addressing society’s most pressing challenges.

“Taylor exemplifies the kind of leader we strive to develop,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “Her commitment to strengthening public institutions reflects our motto of Progress and Service. Her selection as a Truman Scholar, one of the nation’s most prestigious fellowships for public service, is an exceptional achievement, and we are incredibly proud of her.”

A Commitment to Rebuilding Trust in Public Institutions

Witte, who hails from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, is pursuing dual bachelor’s degrees while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She balances an ambitious academic load with dedicated involvement in campus leadership, undergraduate research, and national public service experiences.

Motivated by the erosion of trust in American public institutions, Witte aims to strengthen government decision-making through rigorous economic analysis, transparent data practices, and effective regulation. Instead of viewing public trust as just another policy area, Witte sees it as the very foundation upon which all governance rests.

“While several social issues, from the climate crisis to criminal justice, demand our attention,” she explains, “our ability to tackle these challenges is only as strong as our collective faith in the institutions meant to do so. Responsible data stewardship is the first step to ensuring that communities see themselves represented in the policies that shape their lives.”

That philosophy was shaped in part by her work at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she served as a statistics and data management intern in 2025. The experience reinforced her belief that sound regulation, grounded in high-quality evidence and community realities, is essential to restoring confidence in government.

It’s a perspective that also guides her long-term goals. As a Truman Scholar, Witte plans to pursue a joint J.D. and Ph.D. in economics. She hopes to work in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, specifically the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, where economic analysis and regulatory oversight intersect.

Leadership at Georgia Tech and Beyond

Witte’s leadership record at Georgia Tech is extensive. She has served as an advisor for the Seek Discomfort First-Year Leadership Organization and is currently a justice on the Undergraduate Judiciary Committee within Georgia Tech’s Student Government Association.

She has also played a key role in institutional service and advocacy. As an ambassador for the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Witte helps lead Shadow Day, the College’s largest outreach event for prospective students. Previously, she sat on the Ivan Allen College Advisory Board and is now the sole undergraduate member of the School of Economics Chair Search Committee.

In addition, Witte has helped oversee the Georgia Tech Stamps Summit as conference chair, building intellectual community among fellow scholars committed to leadership and service.

Chaffee Viets, executive director of the Office of Scholar Programs, notes that Witte’s leadership is defined as much by reflection as ambition.

“Taylor is a thinker,” Viets said. "Someone who asks the same questions of herself that she might ask of society: How is this path I am on going to lead to real impact? In her answers, I see deliberative leadership and extraordinary potential.”

Bridging Liberal Arts and Technical Education

As a liberal arts student at a leading technical institute, Witte has made it a personal mission to demonstrate the essential role of economics, public policy, and the humanities in shaping technological innovation and governance. She currently serves as a teaching assistant in the School of Mathematics, one of only a handful of liberal arts majors among a large cohort, where she works to make complex mathematical concepts accessible and applicable for all her students.

“In everything I do on campus, I want to show that liberal arts majors can learn alongside STEM-focused students, and also lead among them and contribute meaningfully to the Institute’s mission of advancing technology and improving the human condition,” she said. “My experiences at Tech have left me better prepared to navigate a public-sector career in an increasingly technical world.”

Looking ahead, Witte remains focused on the long-term work of strengthening democratic institutions.

“To say we are navigating difficult and uncertain times would be an understatement,” she says. “But the most powerful force in this moment is one within our control: our collective decision to believe in the institutions we build, and to demand that they rise to meet us. It’s our choice to make.”

Students interested in applying for the Truman Scholarship can visit the Prestigious Fellowships website or contact the team at fellowshipsadvising@gatech.edu.

Academic Faculty

Faculty members newly awarded tenure are indicated with an asterisk (*).

Promoted to Professor

• André Brock - School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Hailong Chen – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Sonia Chernova – School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing
• Elizabeth Cherry – School of Computational Science and Engineering, College of Computing
• Seung-Kyum Choi – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• John A. Christian – Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering
• Jonathan E. Clarke - Scheller College of Business
• Alex Endert – School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing
• Joshua P. Kacher – School of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
• Neha Kumar – School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing
• Suzanne S. Lee - Scheller College of Business
• Patrick T. McGrath - School of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences
• Cecilia Montes-Alcala - School of Modern Languages, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Susana M. Morris - School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Marius Florin Niculescu - Scheller College of Business
• Ameet J. Pinto - School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
• Christopher Thomas Reinhard – School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences
• Lawrence Peter Rubin - Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Minoru 'Shino' Shinohara - School of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences
• Mark Zachary Taylor - Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Iris Tien - School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
• Jingfeng Wang - School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
• Aaron J. Young – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Professors Awarded Tenure

• Antonio Facchetti – School of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
• Larry P. Heck – School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
• Karthikeyan Sundaresan – School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering

Promoted to Associate Professor

• Leila Aflatoony - School of Industrial Design, College of Design*
• Brian AN - Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts*
• Dylan Brewer - School of Economics, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts*
• Christopher E. Carr – Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering*
• Hannah Choi - School of Mathematics, College of Sciences*
• Winnie Chu – School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences*
• Paige Clayton - School of City and Regional Planning, College of Design*
• Lelia Glass - School of Modern Languages, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts*
• Sehoon Ha - School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing*
• Itamar Kimchi - School of Physics, College of Sciences*
• Srijan Kumar - School of Computational Science and Engineering, College of Computing*
• Pan Li - School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering*
• Shaolan Li - School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering*
• Frank Li - School of Cybersecurity and Privacy, College of Computing*
• Pengfei Liu – School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences*
• Nikki Mackenzie - Scheller College of Business*
• Christopher J. MacLellan - School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing*
• Cheng Mao - School of Mathematics, College of Sciences*
• Anirban Mazumdar - George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering*
• David Alan Muchlinski - Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts*
• Samer Naif – School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences*
• Hyun Joo Oh - School of Industrial Design, College of Design*
• Juergen Rauleder - Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering*
• Sourabh K. Saha - George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering*
• Hongchen Wu - School of Modern Languages, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts*
• Xueqing Yan - School of Economics, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts*

Associate Professors Awarded Tenure

• Alberto Dainotti – School of Computer Science, College of Computing
• Leandro Miletto Tonetto – School of Industrial Design, College of Design

Promoted to Principal Academic Professional

• Shannon P. Dobranski - AS&A, ProvEVP-AA
• Michael J. Evans – School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences
• Melissa Foulger - School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Diley Hernandez - Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty, Office of the Provost
• Jillann Hertel - School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Jennifer Lynn Hirsch - SCRE, ProvEVP-AA
• Kenyetta Alicia Johnson Taylor – School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences
• Amanda Nolen - CTL, ProvEVP-AA
• Matthew Nusnbaum - School of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences
• Christopher Wayne Reaves - EEL, ProvEVP-AA
• Carol Subino Sullivan - CTL, ProvEVP-AA
• Catherine E. Thomas - EEL, ProvEVP-AA
• Kate Williams - CTL, ProvEVP-AA
• C. Andrew Helm - EI2-RI, ProvEVP-AA

Promoted to Principal Lecturer

• Kathrin Koppe - School of Modern Languages, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Robert William Myers - Scheller College of Business
• Michele L. Rosbruck - School of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences
• Tatiana Rudchenko - Scheller College of Business
• Yonathan S. Thio - School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Engineering 

Promoted to Senior Academic Professional

• Sybrina Y. Atwaters - OOSA, ProvEVP-AA
• Meghan J. Babcock - School of Psychology, College of Sciences
• Brian Michael Beck - School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
• Onur Birol - School of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences
• Benjamin T. Galfond - School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Engineering
• Mioy T. Huynh  – School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences
• Gregory Stuart Mayer - School of Mathematics, College of Sciences
• Rachael S. Pitts Hall - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Gaeun (Gwenn) Seo - VPGE&FD, ProvEVP-AA
• Kevin D. Shankwiler - School of Industrial Design, College of Design
• William Stern - School of Psychology, College of Sciences

Promoted to Senior Lecturer

• Nivedita Bhattacharya - College of Engineering
• Aibek Musaev - College of Computing
• Melanie S. Ruefli - GTPE-Lang, College of Lifetime Learning

Promoted to Librarian/Archivist IV

• Charlie  Bennett – Georgia Tech Library
• Heather Leigh Jeffcoat – Georgia Tech Library
• Aisha M. Johnson – Georgia Tech Library

Promoted to Librarian/Archivist III

• John Mack Freeman  – Georgia Tech Library

Promoted to Librarian/Archivist II

• Justin Ellis – Georgia Tech Library
• Stephanie Galipeau – Georgia Tech Library

Research Faculty

Promoted to Principal Research Scientist

• Ira C. Benoy - GTRI-CIPHR
• David A. Gaul – School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences
• Jessica Inman - GTRI-CIPHR
• Laura O'Farrell - DepAnimRsc-EVPR
• Peter W. Presti - IMTC-EVPR
• Wesley Daniel Robertson - GTRI-CIPHR
• Paige O'Neil Rohrig - EI2-EVPR
• Daniel Elliot Sabo - GTRI-ATAS
• Robert W. Wright - GTRI-CIPHR
• Hongwei Wu – School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences

Promoted to Principal Research Engineer

• Daniel Joseph Clancy - GTRI-SEAL
• Christopher Robert Clark - GTRI-CIPHR
• Christopher Timothy Coen - GTRI-ACL
• Austin William Foote - GTRI-SEAL
• Don David Fullmer - GTRI-ELSYS
• Kyle W. Harrigan - GTRI-EOSL
• Mark Johnson - GTRI-ELSYS
• Olga G. Kemenova - GTRI-ATAS
• Kyle Christopher Keppler - GTRI-ASL
• Jeong Woo Lee - School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Engineering
• Michael J. Macdonald - GTRI-CIPHR
• Milad Navaei - GTRI-CIPHR
• Thomas William Norris - GTRI-ELSYS
• David Joyner Pate - GTRI-SEAL
• Michael Edward Shearin - GTRI-ELSYS
• Michael Houston Spratley - GTRI-ASL
• Joel Glen Vinson - GTRI-EOSL
• Jason Paul Zutty - GTRI-EOSL

Promoted to Principal Research Technologist

• Hezekiah Barge, Jr. – CIPHR, ICSD (GTRI)

Promoted to Principal Research Associate

• Matthew Sandberg – CIPHR, ICSD (GTRI)

Promoted to Principal Extension Professional

• Donna M. Ennis – Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Juli Golemi – Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Damon C. Nix – Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Wendy White – Enterprise Innovation Institute

Promoted to Senior Research Scientist

• Ahmaad A. Adesola - GTRI-ACL
• Sankaraleengam Alagapan - School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering
• Gulcin Arslan Azizoglu - School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Engineering
• Erkan Azizoglu - School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Engineering
• Mark McLain Bolding - GTRI-ICL
• Lori A. Burns - School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences
• Wei-Wen Chen - School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences
• Jonathan Scott Ciak - GTRI-CIPHR
• Karim Farhat - School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen
• Sarah Katherine Farmer - CACP, Ivan Allen
• Charity Anne Hilton - GTRI-ICL
• Adam Jacobs - GTRI-SEAL
• Jeffrey David Krug - GTRI-ICL
• David La Mantia - GTRI-CIPHR
• Soojung Lee - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Anthony Lien - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Miroslav Malesevic - GeoInfoSys, College of Design
• Ryan Lee Mueller - GTRI-CIPHR
• Julie Niklas - School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, College of Sciences
• Zerrin Ondin-Fraser - CATEA-RC, College of Design
• James B. Parson - GTRI-CIPHR
• Carlo Andrea Riccardo Perini - School of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering
• Oliver Clements Pierson - GTRI-EOSL
• Noah Posner - IMTC-EVPR
• Ronald O. Rahaman - OIT-PACE
• Abeera P. Rehmat - CEISMC, College of Lifetime Learning
• Rachel A. Schneider - Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Richard Thomas Starr - IPT-EVPR
• Ploy Thajchayapong - IDSE-EVPR
• Gretchen Wyland - GTRI-ASL 

Promoted to Senior Research Associate

• Sara Blevins - GTRI-CSO
• Benjamin Clough - GTRI-ACL
• Kelly Creasy - GTRI-PMO
• Theodore Avery Evans - VPRIARSIA-EVPR
• Katherine Boice King - CEISMC, College of Lifetime Learning
• Haley May - GTRI-PMO
• Shivon A. Scott - GTRI-ICL

Promoted to Senior Research Engineer

• Jai Sanjay Ahuja - ASDL, College of Engineering
• Daniel S. Bennett - GTRI-SEAL
• Eric A. Brown - GTRI-EOSL
• Jack Casey - GTRI-SEAL
• Richard Seth Cohen - GTRI-ELSYS
• Ken Curtis - GTRI-CIPHR
• Shaun J. Hoyt - GTRI-SEAL
• Yongwon Lee - George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Dan Lev - Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, College of Engineering
• Daniel Ellis Levy - GTRI-ASL
• Christian Perron - ASDL, College of Engineering
• Thomas O. Pettet - GTRI-ASL
• Joel D. Rasmussen - GTRI-ATAS
• Gershom M. Richards - GTRI-ELSYS
• Shamaria Rivers - GTRI-CIPHR
• Kyle S. Saleeby - GTMI-EVPR
• Humaira Shah - GTRI-CIPHR
• Michael Jaewoo Son - GTRI-ELSYS
• Woong Je Sung - ASDL, College of Engineering
• Laura Katherine Morgan Vinson - GTRI-EOSL
• Thomas Williamson - GTRI-SEAL

Promoted to Senior Research Technologist

• Trever C. Nightingale - OIT-PACE

Promoted to Senior Extension Professional

• Clarence Edward Anthony - Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Allison L. Bridges - Scheller College of Business
• Sean P. Castillo - Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Melissa B. Heffner - VP-Commercialization-EVPR
• Viviana  Montenegro - Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Brandon Jamal Philpot - Enterprise Innovation Institute 

Promoted to Research Scientist II

• Spencer Clifton Brown - GTRI-CIPHR
• Steven J. Crow - GTRI-ICL
• Raven M. Davis - Georgia Tech Library
• Kenneth Eaton - GTRI-CIPHR
• Lauren Michelle Fowler - GTRI-SEAL
• Charles Hoff - GTRI-ELSYS
• Kala V. Jordan - IMTC- EVPR
• Hannah D. Mahon - GTRI-CIPHR
• Ryan McGill - GTRI-CIPHR
• Ritheshkumar S. Neelamagam - GTRI-CPHR
• Brenna M. Phelps - CACP, Ivan Allen
• Eric Conrad Schneider - GTRI-ELSYS
• Giuseppe P. Scoppino - GTRI-ELSYS
• Rebecca Graham Sheiner - CACP, Ivan Allen
• Marco Sun - GTRI-SEAL
• Samuel Adam Sutter - GTRI-ELSYS
• Joshua S. Valdez - GTRI-CIPHR
• Yu Wu - IMS-EVPR
• Andrew H. Zhao - IPT-EVPR

Promoted to Research Associate II

• Travis Merritt Meeks - GTRI-ACL
• Carolyn Sims - VPRIARSIA-EVPR

Promoted to Research Engineer II

• Stefan Abi-Karam - GTRI-CIPHR
• Thomas Boyle - GTRI-SEAL
• Zachary D. Brunson - George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Alexander William Bustos - GTRI-ELSYS
• Roger Anthony Campbell - GTRI-EOSL
• Alex Carney - GTRI-ELSYS
• Larry Davis - GTRI-SEAL
• Jacob C. Faile - GTRI-EOSL
• Paul Andrew Farmer - GTRI-ELSYS
• Brianna A. Faulkenberry - GTRI-ELSYS
• Jeffrey Filkins - GTRI-CIPHR
• Austin Forgey - GTRI-ATAS
• James N. Foshee - GTRI-ELSYS
• Hunter Lewis Gallahair - GTRI-ELSYS
• Keegan L. George - GTRI-ATAS
• Niko Giannakakos - GTRI-ELSYS
• Eric M. Glunn - GTRI-ATAS
• Taryn Harvey - George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Sadi D. Johnson - GTRI-ASL
• Kevin Lee Kamperman - GTRI-ATAS
• Grace Kaylor - GTRI-ELSYS
• James D. Kenny Jr - ASDL, College of Engineering
• Mary Elizabeth Lichtenwalner - GTRI-SEAL
• Viviana G. Lopez - GTRI-ELSYS
• Parth Mandrekar - GTRI-ATAS
• David S. Maye - GTRI-ELSYS
• Jeffrey T. McNabb - ASDL, College of Engineering
• Pawel Michalski - GTRI-EOSL
• Michael Rousseau Molder - GTRI-ELSYS
• David T. Murphy - GTRI-SEAL
• Thangam Natarajan - BME
• Brooke A. Oden - GTRI-ELSYS
• Edward Abraham Paz - GTRI-ICL
• Nam Phan - GTRI-SEAL
• Tyler Christian Rhodes - GTRI-SEAL
• John Roberson - GTRI-SEAL
• William Robertson - GTRI-ELSYS
• Stephen D. Ruigh - GTRI-SEAL
• Tyler K. Russell - GTRI-ATAS
• Edward Steven Stevens - GTRI-ATAS
• Brennan Tyler Stewart - ASDL, College of Engineering
• Jonah W. Urquhart - GTRI-ASL
• Rebecca Jane Volk - GTRI-ATAS
• Abigail Williams - GTRI-ELSYS
• Daniel R. Wygant - GTRI-ELSYS
• Maxwell Yarter - GTRI-CIPHR

Promoted to Research Technologist II

• Larissa O. Doudy - Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Drew Lunceford - GTRI-ACL
• Andrew Mcneil - GTRI-HAC
• Moi Reilly - GTRI-ELSYS

Promoted to Extension Professional II

• Grace Barrett - Enterprise Innovation Institute
• Doreen Kincaid - Enterprise Innovation Institute

Georgia Tech's 11th annual Three Minute Thesis (3MT) competition took place on Tuesday, April 7th, where 12 scholars presented their innovative research in just three minutes to a non-specialist audience. After five preliminary rounds and Tuesday’s climactic competition, five graduate students were named winners and awarded research travel grants. 

“There is incredible power in alumni stories,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. “It’s inspiring for students to speak with alumni in the workforce, hear how they landed their first jobs, and learn from their successes — and their setbacks.”

Claire Haskell (Mathematics 2025) recently obtained her first job with Deloitte and attended the dinner to offer perspective to current students.

“I want to reassure students still in school that, even in today’s uncertain times, getting a job is still really doable and not as out of reach as it seems. Meeting Tech alumni is a great first step.”

A Night of Networking

College of Sciences Career Educator Program Manager James Stringfellow and Director of Alumni Relations Leslie Roberts organized the annual signature career event.

“We put on events like this because we want all of our students ready for their next opportunity,” says Stringfellow.

Second-year psychology major Aleena Sange attended the event for the first time, and says she will be back next year. “The alumni were really helpful and reassuring,” says Sange. “I learned what employers look for in a resume and even received advice about contract negotiations and retirement.”

First-year astrophysics student Shannon Callahan agrees. “What struck me the most was hearing how well Georgia Tech prepares you for the workforce. It gave me a lot of confidence to hear that Tech alumni hit the ground running because they’re used to learning quickly.”

The evening included casual and more structured networking, with students rotating between tables on topics such as “Using AI in the Workplace,” “Handling Conflict,” and “How to Get Hired in the Real World.”

Janessa Rowland (Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 2014) works as an operations program manager for the Georgia Department of Natural Resources. She encouraged students to think beyond their major

“Sometimes an internship or class outside your major can open up the door for what you can do after Georgia Tech.”

Morgan Foreman (Psychology 2017), a technical product manager at IBM, offered encouraging insight: “People often tell you college is the best years of your life. Georgia Tech also sets you up for your dream life after college.”

2026 Internship Employer of the Year

During the festivities, Stringfellow announced Boehringer Ingelheim as the Internship Employer of the Year. The award honors a company that provides a high-quality learning environment for student interns. 

Arya Akbarshahi, a biochemistry major who spent a semester doing a co-op job at the company, presented the award, thanking the biopharmaceutical company active in both human and animal health for the learning experience provided.

“Co-oping at Boehringer Ingelheim was one of the most formative experiences in my training. From day one, I was trusted as a scientist, which allowed me to formulate hypotheses and execute experiments with direct implications for drug development strategy and decisions,”  says Akbarshahi. 

After presenting the award to Boehringer Ingelheim Senior Scientist Marc Sprouse, Akbarshahi also presented a surprise mentorship award to Sprouse.

“Marc was an exceptional mentor,” says Akbarshahi. “He challenged me to think critically about the biology, not just the assay, and consistently created space for me to take ownership and operate at a higher level.”

Sprouse accepted both awards and spoke of the benefits of working while still in school: “Getting real-world work experience while in school sets students up for success. I encourage all College of Science students to check out our website and apply for future co-ops and internships."

The two‑day event took place Feb. 4 – 5, coinciding with the Critical Minerals Ministerial hosted by U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio in Washington, D.C., on Feb. 4, which brought together more than 50 nations to strengthen and diversify global critical mineral supply chains. During this ministerial, U.K. Minister Seema Malhotra and U.S. Under Secretary of State Jacob Helberg signed a Critical Minerals Memorandum of Understanding, strengthening bilateral cooperation between the United States and the United Kingdom on critical mineral supply chains. 

These broad efforts are supported by White House Executive Order 14363, which defines the Genesis Mission and aims to accelerate scientific discovery through AI. The order identifies critical minerals supply chain resilience as a national security imperative.

In Atlanta, these themes were brought to life in real time. The GEMs-4 workshop brought together researchers, policymakers, national labs, industry leaders, and workforce organizations from both the U.S. and the U.K. to address shared challenges in technology translation, permitting, investment, and talent development. 

The state of Georgia’s integrated ecosystem, linking research universities, legacy industries, technical colleges, national labs, and public‑private partnerships, served as a case study. Presenters highlighted how existing industrial assets in the Southeast are being incorporated into emerging clean energy and critical minerals supply chains, offering a model for other regions seeking to build capabilities around extraction, processing, and manufacturing.

A U.K. member of Parliament representing Cornwall, where the U.K. has lithium reserves and deep critical mineral expertise, joined the convening, as well as representatives from the U.K. Critical Mineral Association, Camborne School of Mines, and the University of Kent. Together, they explored opportunities and challenges, from a fundamental science to a commercialization perspective grounded in real-world experience. 

The alignment between the ministerial in Washington and the expertise present in Atlanta demonstrated the value of state-level engagement and how national agreements translate into practical collaboration on the ground. 

“The Southeast has the research depth, industrial footprint, and collaborative spirit needed to lead in critical minerals innovation,” said Yuanzhi Tang, Georgia Power Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute, and founding director of the Center for Critical Mineral Solutions at Georgia Tech. “GEMs‑4 showed what’s possible when universities, industry, and government partners align around shared priorities.” 

Day one featured strategic dialogue on critical mineral resources, innovation pathways, and partnership models. A recurring theme was the co-production of critical minerals alongside major mineral commodities. “Many critical minerals are produced as byproducts of larger mining operations, making it essential to integrate recovery strategies into existing mineral industries rather than developing entirely new extraction systems,” noted Crawford Elliott, professor of geosciences at Georgia State University.

Day two transitioned to field‑based learning, led by Paul Schroeder, professor of geology at the University of Georgia. Participants visited active operations to better understand how regional industrial strengths can support national and international supply chain goals. Schroeder said, “Connecting people to the long-standing mineral extraction economy at the mining and plant sites, where the work gets done with an amazingly skilled workforce, underscores the unique role of Georgia’s place‑based capacity in advancing national and transatlantic supply chain goals.”

Organizers emphasized that resilient supply chains rely on regional capabilities built over time through university collaboration, industry partnerships, and community engagement. With three years of inter‑university coordination now underpinning the GEMS platform, the 2026 workshop demonstrated how the Southeast is contributing actionable models for U.S.-U.K. cooperation.

“Ecosystem-building at this scale requires participation from every part of the value chain, and we are encouraged by the model GEMs presents,” said Rachel Galloway, Consul General at British Consulate General Atlanta. “The collaboration across universities, industry, and government is exactly what enables long‑term impact on both sides of the Atlantic.”

Through focused dialogue and partnership-building, the symposium strengthened transatlantic collaboration, highlighted regional strengths, and accelerated innovation and translation across the critical minerals value chain, from resource characterization and processing to recycling, manufacturing, and deployment.

For more information about the GEMS initiative, visit: https://gems.research.gatech.edu/.

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Though this scholarship is typically given to 50 exceptional incoming first-year students, a select few second- and third-year students are chosen to receive the honor for exemplifying the program’s pillars of scholarship, leadership, progress, and service.

“Annie and Madeline are exemplary campus leaders and will be able to build on their progress and service with the support of the Stamps Program. We are thrilled for the contributions they bring to the environmental science community,” says Linda Green, principal academic professional and interim director of the Environmental Sciences (ENVS) program.

About Annie Lin

Lin is a second-year ENVS major conducting undergraduate research on methane and natural gas in the Glass Research Group. Previous research highlights include quantifying microplastics in Georgia’s coastal water and working with a student group to publish the first publicly available data on microplastics pollution in the Chattahoochee River.

“I hope to build a career in environmental policy and justice — developing and implementing scientific, holistic, and equitable solutions to environmental issues and bridging the gaps between research, policy, and communities,” says Lin.

She is a student coordinator for Georgia Tech’s Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education and the Georgia Tech student engagement and network coordinator for the United Nations Regional Centre of Expertise Greater Atlanta.

Why environmental science? 

“I was born and raised in Atlanta and grew up close to the Chattahoochee River,” explains Lin. “In high school, I was very involved with Chattahoochee Riverkeeper, including an 11-mile, eight-hour paddling cleanup; field and lab work to track bacterial contamination caused by sewage spills; and speaking to state legislators about environmental bills. These experiences taught me the importance of helping make the necessary systemic changes to address environmental issues.”

About Madeline Weller 

Weller is a second-year ENVS major working in the Tang Research Group, characterizing rare earth elements from Georgia kaolinite clay minerals for renewable energy applications. She also works on the Georgia Tech Methane Vertically Integrated Project to pioneer local methane measurements and in Georgia Tech’s Office of Sustainability to further sustainability efforts and outreach with Solar Stewards.

“Through experiences with Solar Stewards, I saw firsthand how community and rooftop solar can impact people, reducing their energy burden…,” says Weller. "Being at Georgia Tech has provided me with the resources and courage to act on my passion for achieving sustainability through energy equity, ensuring everybody has access to reliable and affordable electricity."

Outside of research, she is a member of Energy Club @ GT; Sigma Gamma Epsilon, the national honor society for the Earth Sciences;  Association of Environmental Engineers and Scientists; Photography @ GT; and Runnin’ Wreck.

Why environmental science?

“I chose environmental science because I was inspired to use my science skills to help find a solution to environmental issues, including climate change,” she explains. “Improving environmental conditions is not just important for biodiversity and ecosystems, but essential for human health and the longevity of future generations.”

“We certainly didn’t think of ourselves as pioneers,” says Whatley. “We were just trying to get through.”

Today, Whatley is no longer a hidden figure as she is now recognized for her trailblazing role.  She has been honored by the Institute’s Pathway of Progress art installation, Women of Distinction Award, and scholarship endowment established by the Georgia Tech Black Alumni Organization.

As Georgia Tech celebrates Women’s History Month, Whatley’s barrier-breaking legacy is a reminder of how women in STEM expand what’s possible, not only for themselves, but for those who follow.

Following the math path

Whatley grew up in Chubbtown, a self-sufficient Black community established pre-Civil War in Cave Spring, Georgia. The first Black valedictorian of Cave Spring High School after desegregation, she loved math from an early age. Whatley often tagged along with her father who was always building or fixing something — inspiring her to use numbers to solve problems.

She majored in math at Clark (now Clark Atlanta University), graduating magna cum laude. Encouraged to attend a predominantly white institution for graduate school by Joseph James Dennis, head of Clark’s Mathematics department, Whatley and Hammonds applied to Georgia Tech and Emory University. Tech responded first with an unexpected bonus: a teaching assistantship.

“Earning money to teach math and help pay for school appealed to me,” she shares.

Finding her footing at Tech

Entering the Institute as one of the few Black women on campus came with challenges. Whatley enrolled only nine years after Georgia Tech became the first university in the Deep South to admit African American students without a court order. 

“I’m not sure they wanted us there,” she admits. “But I wasn’t nervous. I was excited to learn more math — and teach it as well.”

As a graduate teaching assistant, Whatley taught undergraduate calculus, algebra, and trigonometry. Students were often surprised to see her at the front of the classroom, as most instructors were white males. She remembers professors who encouraged her, particularly her advisor Professor Emeritus Robert Kasriel.

“He believed in me, especially my knowledge of math,” Whatley says. “He encouraged me to speak up with confidence.”

Another professor pushed her to contest a grade he felt was unfair. She chose instead to stay focused on completing her degree. Despite the obstacles, Whatley remembers her time at Tech fondly. “I really enjoyed the classroom interaction with the undergraduates and teaching subjects I loved.”

She appreciates the toughness of the education she received. “Georgia Tech rewards tenacity. If you can make it through here, you can make it through just about anything — and that problem‑solving confidence stays with you.”

Choosing to serve

After graduation, Whatley joined BellSouth as a junior engineer, working on depreciation studies and writing early computer programs in Basic and Fortran.

“I took a class at Morehouse to learn programming. We used ticker tape, punch cards, and computers that took up an entire room,” remembers Whatley.