To help find answers, researchers at the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS) are using math, data, and AI to unlock the secrets of thought. Together they are helping turn the brain’s raw electrical “noise” into real insights about how people think, move, and perceive the world.
Fair warning: Prepare your neurons for the complexity of this brain research ahead.
What if artificial neurons in AI programs were arranged as they are in the brain?
AI programs would then help us understand why the brain is organized the way it is. This neuro-AI synthesis would also work faster, use less energy, and be easier to interpret. Creating such systems is the goal of Apurva Ratan Murty, an assistant professor of Psychology who is creating topographic AI models like the one above of three domains — vision, audition, and language inspired by the brain. In the near future, he predicts doctors might be able to use these patterns to predict the effects of brain lesions and other disorders. “We’re not there yet,” he says. “But our work brings us significantly closer to that future than ever before.”
How cats walk keeps Chethan Pandarinath on his toes. This biomedical engineer uses sensors to analyze how two sets of feline leg muscles — flexors and extensors — are controlled by the spinal cord. Understanding how that happens could help patients partially paralyzed from spinal cord injuries, strokes, or progressive neuro-degenerative diseases get back on their feet again. “My lab is using AI tools that allow us to turn complex spinal cord activity data into something we can interpret. It tells us there’s a simple underlying structure behind the complex activity patterns,” says the associate professor.
“The brain is like a symphony conductor,” says Simon Sponberg. “Individual instruments have some independent control, but most of the music comes from the brain’s precise coordination of notes among the different players in the body.” This physics professor studies the fantastically fast-beating wings of the hummingbird-sized hawk moth (Manduca sexta). Its agile flight movement comes as a result of spikes in electrical activity in 10 muscles. Sponberg found something that surprised him — the brain focuses less on creating the number of spikes than in orchestrating their precise patterns over time. To Sponberg, every millisecond matters. “We are just beginning to understand how the nervous system first acquires precisely timed spiking patterns during development,” he says.
Put a mouse in a maze with food far away, and it will learn to find it. But life for mice — and people — isn’t so simple. Sometimes they want to explore, only want water, or just want to go home. What’s more, animals make decisions based on their history, not just on how they feel at the moment. To dig deeper into the decision-making process, Anqi Wu, an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering, is giving mice more options. By using a new computational framework called SWIRL (Switching Inverse Reinforcement Learning), her findings have outperformed models that fail to take historical behavior into account. “We’re seeking to understand not only animal behavior but also human behavior to gain insight into the human decision-making process over a long period of time,” she says.
Connectivity shapes cognition in the cerebral cortex, a layered structure in the brain. The visual cortex, in particular, processes visual data from the retina relayed through the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus (LGN) in the thalamus, and directs it to the correct cognitive domain in the brain. How it does this is the mystery that computational neuroscientist Hannah Choi wants to solve. “The big question I’m interested in is how network connectivity patterns in the architecture of the LGN are related to computations,” says this assistant math professor. To find answers, she shows mice repeated image patterns such as flower-cat-dog-house and then disrupts the pattern. The goal? To grasp how the thalamus’s nonlinear dynamical system works. If scientists and doctors better understand how brain regions are wired together, such knowledge could lead to better disease treatment.
This story was originally published through the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. Read the original publication here.
]]>News and Media Contact: Audra Davidson
]]>“Attending the 75th Lindau Nobel Laureate Meeting is both an honor and a responsibility: a chance to represent my academic community which focuses on the study of elusive particles called neutrinos while learning from those who have shaped the field,” says Papadopoulou, who will join Georgia Tech as a School of Physics assistant professor in August 2026. “I hope to come away with a deeper understanding of how transformative ideas emerge and how to cultivate the kind of leadership and vision needed to guide future large-scale scientific efforts that will unravel some of the mysteries of the universe.”
Papadopoulou obtained her Ph.D. in experimental physics from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. As part of her research, she analyzed neutrino data collected by the MicroBooNE detector at Fermi National Accelerator Laboratory in Illinois and electron scattering data from the Jefferson Lab in Virginia.
In 2022, she joined Argonne National Laboratory as a Maria Goeppert Mayer Fellow, continuing her research as a member of the MicroBooNE, Short-Baseline Near Detector, Deep Underground Neutrino Experiment, and Jefferson Lab’s Electrons-For-Neutrinos collaborations. Her work focuses on testing the performance of simulation predictions against existing and new neutrino and electron data sets.
Papadopoulou currently serves as a J. Robert Oppenheimer Fellow at Los Alamos National Laboratory where she is working to better understand neutrino interactions.
]]>Published today in the journal Nature Communications, the paper “Trivalent Titanium in High-Titanium Lunar Ilmenite” confirms titanium in a reduced, trivalent state in a black, metal-rich lunar mineral called ilmenite. It’s a state only possible in low-oxygen environments, conditions researchers refer to as “reducing.”
“Models have suggested that these reducing conditions may have varied at different locations and times across the surface of the Moon,” says lead author Advik Vira, a graduate student in the School of Physics who recently earned his doctoral degree. “We hope our microscopy technique can be a valuable step in mapping and understanding the Moon’s 4.5-billion-year history.”
The team anticipates that their technique could be used on many of the lunar samples collected more than 50 years ago by the Apollo missions in addition to the Apollo Next Generation Samples — a group of lunar samples that have been stored under pristine conditions — and new samples from the planned Artemis missions, with Artemis II slated for launch this spring. The technique might also be applicable to samples collected from the far side of the Moon and returned in 2024 by the Chang’e-6 mission.
“The Moon holds clues not only to its own past, but also to the earliest eras of Earth’s evolution — history that has long since been erased from our planet,” Vira says. “This study is a step toward understanding the history of both and a reminder that there is still so much left to learn from the lunar rocks we’ve brought back to Earth.”
The School of Physics research team included corresponding authors Vira and Professor Phillip First; in addition to graduate student Roshan Trivedi; undergraduate students Gabriella Dotson, Keyes Eames, Dean Kim, and Emma Livernois; and Professor Zhigang Jiang, along with Institute for Matter and Systems Materials Characterization Facility Senior Research Scientist Mengkun Tian; School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Senior Research Scientist Brant Jones and Thom Orlando, Regents' Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry with a joint appointment in the School of Physics.
The Georgia Tech team was joined by Addis Energy Senior Geochemist Katherine Burgess; Macalester College Assistant Professor of Geology Emily First; along with Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory Research Scientist Harrison Lisabeth, Senior Scientist Nobumichi Tamura, and Postdoctoral Fellow Tyler Farr, who recently earned a Ph.D. from Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.
The investigation began with a dark gray rock called a lunar basalt. Formed when ancient magma erupted on the Moon’s surface, minerals crystallized as it cooled — preserving key information in their structures. Billions of years later, the rock was brought to Earth by the 1972 Apollo 17 mission, where a small piece is now stored at Georgia Tech’s Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER), a NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) center led by Orlando.
As a NASA virtual institute, CLEVER supports researchers exploring lunar conditions and developing tools for the upcoming crewed Artemis missions, and provided the lunar samples for this research. The SSERVI also plays a critical role in training the next generation of planetary researchers: both Vira and Farr earned their Ph.D.s while on the CLEVER team.
“At CLEVER, we are very interested in understanding the impacts of space weathering,” Vira says. “We implemented modern sample preparation and advanced microscopy techniques to image samples at the atomic level, and were curious to apply it more broadly to the collection of Apollo rocks in the Orlando Lab. This sample caught our attention.”
“When we imaged an ilmenite crystal from the lunar basalt, what struck us first was how uniform and perfect the crystal structure was,” he recalls. “We found no defects from space weathering and instead saw an undamaged, pristine crystal — undisturbed for 3.8 billion years.”
To investigate further, the team analyzed small chips of the rock with Burgess, a member of the RISE2 SSERVI team and then a geologist at the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory. Using state-of-the-art electron microscopy and spectroscopy techniques, Vira determined the oxidation state of the elements in the ilmenite present.
In spectroscopy measurements, each element leaves a distinct ‘signature,’ Vira explains. “When we brought our results back to Georgia Tech’s Materials Characterization Facility, Mengkun (Tian) noticed something unusual: the signature showed titanium might be present in the trivalent state.”
The presence of trivalent titanium had long been suspected in this lunar mineral. The team was intrigued.
With funding from Georgia Tech’s Center for Space Technology and Research (CSTAR), Vira returned to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory to analyze additional samples. The results confirmed that more titanium was present than the mineral’s formula (FeTiO₃) predicts — indicating a portion of the titanium present was trivalent.
“That led me to place our measurements in terms of the broader geological context,” Vira shares. Working with First, Vira explored how ilmenite with trivalent titanium could help reconstruct the nature of ancient magmas from the Moon, especially the chemical availability of oxygen.
“Because its location on the Moon was noted during the Apollo mission, we know exactly where this rock is from, and we can determine how old the rock is,” he explains. “When coupled with our trivalent titanium measurements, we can use that information to estimate the reducing conditions for this specific region at the specific time our rock formed.”
If the upcoming Artemis missions return samples suitable for the team’s technique, these rocks could provide a new window into ancient lunar geology. The research also highlights that many lunar samples already on Earth could be reexamined to look for trivalent titanium.
“There is still so much to learn from the lunar samples we have already brought to Earth,” Vira says. “It’s a testament to the long-term value of each sample return mission. As technology continues to advance, this type of work will continue to give us critical insights into our planet and our place in the universe for years to come.”
DOI: 10.1038/s41467-026-69770-w
Funding: This work was directly supported by the NASA SSERVI under CLEVER. Researchers were also supported by the NASA RISE2 SSERVI and the Heising-Simons Foundation. Funding for collaborations between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Georgia Tech for the investigation of lunar minerals was provided by the Georgia Tech Center for Space Technology and Research. Sample preparation was performed at the Georgia Tech Institute for Matter and Systems, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. This work utilized the resources of the Advanced Light Source, a user facility supported by the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Office of Basic Energy Sciences, and was supported in part by previous breakthroughs obtained through the Laboratory Direct.
]]>Selena Langner
College of Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Applying the Scheimpflug technique, the researchers are developing inexpensive rangefinder camera technology, advanced sensors and computational techniques to both complement and provide an alternative to established light detection and ranging (LiDAR) technology in certain applications. The technique works best in short- and medium-distance metrology, and can be used passively or in collaboration with laser-based techniques.
“The Scheimpflug technique is a complete alternative to time-of-flight (ToF) LiDAR, and we’re looking for everything we can do with it,” said Nathan Meraz, a GTRI senior research scientist who has been refining the new applications for several years. “It measures things differently, and since it’s a camera sensor, there’s a lot more information to process compared to a LiDAR signal. And there are also data fusion aspects.”
A paper on the technique and its potential remote sensing applications was presented during 2025 at the SPIE Defense + Commercial Systems (DCS) Conference. The research was supported by GTRI’s Independent Research and Development (IRAD) program and also has been advanced by teams of student researchers from the GTRI Research Internship Program (GRIP).
See the complete article on the GTRI news site
“Since I was a student, APS has been my professional home — hosting my first conference talk and networking opportunity, publishing my first paper, and offering me mentoring over the years,” says Cadonati, who is a member of Georgia Tech’s Center for Relativistic Astrophysics. “Serving on the APS Board of Directors now is a privilege and an opportunity to amplify the voices of physicists at every career stage.”
Cadonati’s primary research interests include gravitational wave and particle astrophysics. Since 2002, she has been a member of the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) Scientific Collaboration. Cadonati has held several leadership roles with LIGO, including heading its data analysis and astrophysics division during the discovery of gravitational waves — a breakthrough which led to the project's founders receiving the 2017 Nobel Prize in Physics.
Previously, she was a member of the Borexino Collaboration, focused on solar neutrino detection, and the DarkSide Collaboration, centered on the direct detection of dark matter.
Cadonati earned her Ph.D. in physics from Princeton University and completed postdoctoral research at Princeton University and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Before joining Georgia Tech in 2015, she was an associate professor of physics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Her honors include an APS Fellowship, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Atlantic Coast Conference Academic Consortium Distinguished Lecturer Award, Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Faculty Research Author Award, and the Technische Universität München Institute for Advanced Study Hans Fischer Senior Fellowship, which was awarded in 2025.
]]>The Department of Energy Office of Science recently released two reports through its Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. The reports were produced by workshops that brought together researchers from universities, national labs, government, and industry to set priorities for scientific computing.
Professor Felix Herrmann served on the organizing committee for the Workshop on Inverse Methods for Complex Systems under Uncertainty. Assistant Professor Peng Chen joined Herrmann as a workshop participant, contributing expertise in data science and machine learning.
Inverse methods work backward from outcomes to find their causes. Scientists use these tools to study complex systems, like designing new materials with targeted properties and using past wildfires to map vulnerable areas and behavior of future fires.
The ASCR report highlighted Herrmann’s work on seismic exploration and monitoring through digital twins. Founded on inverse methods, digital twins upgrade from static models to virtual systems that accurately mirror their physical counterparts.
Digital twins integrate real-time data sources, including fluid flows, monitoring and control systems, risk assessments, and human decisions. These models also account for uncertainty and address data gaps or limitations.
The DOE organized the workshop to support the growing role of inverse modeling. The group identified four priority research directions (PRDs) to guide future work. The PRDs are:
“A digital twin is a system you can control, like to optimize operations or to minimize risk,” said Herrmann, who holds joint appointments in the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computational Science and Engineering.
“Digital twins give you a principled way to consider uncertainties, which there are a lot in subsurface monitoring. If you inject carbon dioxide too fast, you will will increase the pressure and may fracture the rock. If you inject too slow, then the process may become too costly. Digital twins help us make balanced decisions under uncertainty.”
Supercomputers, algorithms, and artificial intelligence now power modern science. However, these tools consume enormous amounts of energy. This raises concerns about how to sustain computing and scientific research as we know them in the decades ahead.
Professors Rich Vuduc and Hyesoon Kim co-authored the report from the Workshop on Energy-Efficient Computing for Science. At the three-day ASCR workshop, participants identified five key research directions:
“I’m cautiously optimistic about the future of energy-efficient computing. The ASCR report says, from a technological point of view, there are things we can do,” said Vuduc.
“The report lays out paths for how we might design better apps, hardware systems, and algorithms that will use less energy. This is recognition that we should think about how architectures and software work together to drive down energy usage for systems.”
]]>The Department of Energy Office of Science recently released two reports through its Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. The reports were produced by workshops that brought together researchers from universities, national labs, government, and industry to set priorities for scientific computing.
]]>“This year’s class is a truly impressive cohort,” said Paul R. Sanberg, FNAI, president of NAI. “I commend them on their incredible pursuits, and I’m honored to welcome them to the Academy.”
Raman is a physicist, inventor, and technology entrepreneur whose work is helping shape the future of quantum sensing. As the Dunn Family Professor of Physics, he studies how atoms behave at extremely low temperatures and uses that knowledge to build new kinds of ultra-precise measurement devices.
Best known for the co-invention of chip‑scale atomic beam technology — a breakthrough that makes it possible to build tiny quantum sensors for navigation and timing — Raman and his team’s patented devices can operate where GPS fails. These inventions form the foundation for a new generation of manufactured quantum hardware, offering new capabilities for autonomous vehicles, aerospace systems, and national security.
To bring these technologies from the lab to real-world use, he founded 8Seven8, Inc.:
“By launching 8Seven8 as the first quantum hardware company in Georgia, we are creating high-tech jobs, building a skilled workforce pipeline, and seeding a quantum ecosystem in the Southeast that will see lasting economic benefits,” explains Raman. “We seek to establish the region as a player in the rapidly expanding quantum technology economy.”
He is the principal investigator for the Raman Lab, a Fellow of the American Physical Society, a frequent invited speaker at international conferences, and an advisor to national and space-based quantum initiatives. Raman holds six patents, including three issued U.S. patents and two licensed patents. Through his research, mentorship, and entrepreneurial leadership, he is working to advance scientific discovery and the development of practical technologies with lasting impact.
“This award is the culmination of years of effort in developing innovative approaches to bringing quantum sensing out of the lab,” says Raman. “The NAI is chock-full of wonderful inventors, and I am privileged to be among them. Through this award, I hope to bring useful inventions out of the lab and promote Georgia as a great place to be an entrepreneur.”
Azoulay is the Georgia Research Alliance Vasser-Woolley Distinguished Investigator in Optoelectronics and the principal investigator for the Azoulay Group. His research has pioneered the development of new classes of functional materials and made field-leading advancements in core areas spanning:
· Homogeneous catalysis applied to polymer synthesis
· Electronic, photonic, spin, magnetic, and quantum materials
· Device fabrication and engineering
· Chemical sensing for environmental monitoring
· Synthesis, application, and engineering of high-performance polymers across multiple technology platforms.
Azoulay has demonstrated new classes of organic semiconductors with infrared functionality by exploiting new light-matter interactions, analyzing emergent transport phenomena, and understanding device physics, functionality, and engineering considerations. His work has resulted in nine issued patents and many additional applications.
Additionally, he is the principal investigator for two multi-million-dollar National Science Foundation (NSF) grants. The first grant harnesses an underused part of the electromagnetic spectrum for energy sensing, manufacturing, and more. His team creates organic polymers that can efficiently convert infrared radiation into electrical signals and develop the materials into functional devices. The initiative is the NSF’s principal vehicle to continue the momentum of the decade-long Materials Genome Initiative and takes advantage of the power of machine learning and chemical synthesis to develop new functional materials.
The second NSF-funded program develops CP-based optical and electrical sensing platforms that operate in complex aqueous environments and enable the detection and discrimination of challenging analytes known to negatively impact human, biota, and ecosystem health.
Azoulay holds a joint appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering and leads Georgia Tech’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE). COPE-affiliated faculty create flexible organic photonic and electronic materials and devices that serve the information technology, telecommunications, energy, and defense sectors.
]]>Historically, most engineers believed the former, using heterogeneities, or differences, in materials to make materials stronger and more resilient. However, research from Georgia Tech is showing that, in some cases, heterogeneities make materials weaker and can even accelerate cracks.
Led by School of Physics Assistant Professor Itamar Kolvin, the study, “Dual Role for Heterogeneity in Dynamic Fracture,” was published in Physical Review Letters this fall.
While Kolvin’s work is theoretical, the results of the research are widely applicable. “Predicting this type of toughening effect helps engineers decide how much reinforcement to add to a material, and the best way to do so,” he says. “Cracks are complex — they interact with the material, change shape, and respond dynamically. All of this affects the overall toughness, which impacts safety.”
The study found that the key to crack behavior starts at the microscopic level where the material’s microscopic structure influences how it resists cracks running at different speeds.
“Cracks propagate by breaking bonds, and that costs energy,” he explains. “On top of this, materials experience extreme deformations close to where the crack runs, which costs additional energy. In some materials, the amount of this energy cost can depend on the crack’s speed because of microscopic friction between molecules.”
Other materials, like window glass, are mostly indifferent to the crack speed. These materials are made of simple molecules, allowing a crack to propagate slowly or quickly using the same amount of energy. The researchers found that including heterogeneities can help strengthen these materials.
Materials made of more complex molecules, like polymer plastics and gels, on the other hand, are velocity dependent: it takes more energy for a crack to propagate faster. In these materials, heterogeneities are less effective at toughening, and if the crack is fast enough, heterogeneities could help it advance. “That’s something we didn’t expect when we started,” Kolvin says.
After discovering which types of materials can benefit from heterogeneities, Kolvin wanted to investigate the best way to add them. “Natural materials like rocks are usually very messy and disordered,” he explains, “but in engineering, heterogenous materials tend to be patterned.” For example, imagine a manufactured material: heterogeneities may be added in a grid-like or other patterned way. Now, contrast that with the irregular freckles and inclusions you might see in a rock found in a streambed.
Kolvin’s question was simple: which material was stronger? The results, again, were surprising. The disordered case — similar to what is found in nature — created the toughest material.
Among the patterned materials the team tested, only one was as tough as the disordered case — and every other pattern tested made the material weaker.
At Georgia Tech, Kolvin’s lab focuses on the mechanics of materials — both solid and fluid. “We are using our expertise in physics to explore questions across different fields,” he says. “A common concept is treating materials as continua — zooming out from molecular detail to look at how materials deform and flow at the large scale.”
This current research follows suit with applications ranging from investigating the smallest material microstructures to predicting earthquake fractures. “Earthquake faults are highly disordered, and simulating these ruptures is a major challenge, usually requiring supercomputers to solve crack propagation in three dimensions,” Kolvin says. “But with the tools our study has developed, we can simulate similar conditions and large systems using just a desktop computer.”
“This opens the doors for scientists, engineers, physicists, and geologists to explore problems right from their own computer, allowing more researchers access to more tools,” he adds. “And new tools often lead to new discoveries.”
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/j4vb-y1ng
]]>"The IOP has a long and distinguished history as the primary learned society and professional body for physicists in the U.K., Ireland, and beyond,” says Kamerlin, who completed both a Master of Natural Sciences and a Ph.D. in Theoretical Organic Chemistry from the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom. “As a society, it plays an important role in building community, promoting science, advancing advocacy for our discipline, and supporting the next generation of physicists.”
Kamerlin joins a list of distinguished Fellows that includes legendary physicists such as Dame Jocelyn Bell Burnell, a preeminent astrophysicist responsible for the discovery of pulsars (a previously unknown type of star) and the first female president of the IOP.
“It is a great honor to be awarded Fellowship of the IOP, particularly as women more broadly remain vastly underrepresented in physics,” Kamerlin says. “I look forward to giving back to the physics community, supporting the mission of the society, and working to remind the next generation that physics is for everyone."
Kamerlin’s research in computational biophysics is at the intersection of chemistry and biology, where she focuses on investigating fundamental physical chemistry and using computational tools to understand complex biomolecular problems. Currently, she is interested in leveraging machine learning tools to design new enzymes and in predicting protein structures and behaviors using large language models.
In addition to her roles at Georgia Tech, Kamerlin is a senior editor of Protein Science, the editor-in-chief of Electronic Structure, and was named a 2025-27 visiting professor at Lund University. She was also named a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, received the 2026 Inspiration and Resilience Award from the Biochemical Society, and was the 2023 Biophysical Society Theory & Computation Subgroup Mid-Career Award Winner.
]]>“The Sloan Research Fellows are among the most promising early-career researchers in the U.S. and Canada, already driving meaningful progress in their respective disciplines,” says Stacie Bloom, president and chief executive officer of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. “We look forward to seeing how these exceptional scholars continue to unlock new scientific advancements, redefine their fields, and foster the wellbeing and knowledge of all.”
"This is a wonderful and welcome surprise that will support my ongoing research on mountains across the globe,” says Freeman. “It's a vote of confidence and will let me get out there and get to work."
Freeman is one of 126 scientists selected this year for the honor and will receive a two-year $75,000 grant of flexible funding to support his research.
He joins the ranks of nearly 50 faculty from Georgia Tech who have received Sloan Research Fellowships, including School of Mathematics’ Alex Blumenthal in 2024, Hannah Choi in 2022, Yao Yao in 2020, Konstantin Tikhomirov in 2019, Lutz Warnke in 2018, Zaher Hani in 2016, Jen Hom in 2015, and Greg Blekherman in 2012; School of Chemistry and Biochemistry's Vinayak Agarwal in 2018; School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences' Christopher Reinhard in 2015; and School of Physics’ Chunhui (Rita) Du in 2024 and Tamara Bogdanović in 2013.
Freeman joined the Institute in 2023 and was also recently named a 2024 Packard Fellow by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and 2025 Early Career Fellow by the Ecological Society of America.
Known for his groundbreaking research in climate change and bird ecology, Freeman studies birds worldwide from Appalachia to Ecuador. He specializes in tropical populations where his work is centered on understanding how mountain species respond to a changing climate — and how to facilitate their survival.
“Tropical mountains are some of Earth’s largest biodiversity hotspots; they harbor an extraordinary number of species,” shares Freeman. “Additionally, tropical mountain birds are particularly sensitive to environmental change, so they can serve as an early warning system for global conservation efforts.”
Previously, his research has shown that some species are on an ‘escalator to extinction’ with vulnerable groups moving to higher elevations to escape warming temperatures. At the top of the escalator, some summit-dwelling species are disappearing.
“We know that many species are on this escalator,” Freeman says. “The next step is to figure out which species are most vulnerable and why. In order to direct conservation efforts, we need to know who is vulnerable, why small increases in temperature have dramatic effects, and what can be done to help.”
To uncover those answers, Freeman is taking two approaches: mapping global patterns with big picture data and conducting on-the-ground research in the tropics.
To target the former, he created the Mountain Bird Network, which supports community scientists in conducting bird surveys on their local mountains. The goal is to create a system that allows researchers to diagnose vulnerable species before they are too sparse to save.
“When a species is in trouble, we need to know as soon as possible,” Freeman says. “Once a population is small enough to be at risk of extinction, it’s very hard to reverse that process. The Mountain Bird Network collects data on mountain bird abundances and distributions across the globe, which, when used with data from a global citizen science program called eBird, can be leveraged to build models to identify which species might be vulnerable before those populations become critically small.”
Freeman’s other avenue of research involves building an ambitious living laboratory in Pinchincha, Ecuador. The research site will span thousands of meters along the flanks of a local mountain, spanning lowland rainforest, foothill rainforest, and cloud forest ecosystems.
“The mountain is home to thousands of birds from hundreds of species,” Freeman says. “My goal is to track and understand their daily lives — and how climate changes impact them.”
Using cutting-edge tracking technology, he will tag and monitor their daily movements, mapping those against microclimate sensors placed at different elevations along the mountain’s slopes. The challenge of placing and maintaining thousands of tiny sensors in rugged conditions means that it has never been done before.
“We’ll track these birds for at least five years –- but hopefully for decades,” Freeman says. “The data we gather at Tech Mountain will be the first of its kind, and my hope is that it makes a real difference in conservation efforts worldwide.”
]]>When centimeter-long aquatic worms, such as T. tubifex or Lumbriculus variegatus, are placed in a Petri dish filled with sub-millimeter sized sand particles, something surprising happens. Over time, the worms begin to spontaneously clean up their surroundings. They sweep particles into compact clusters, gradually reshaping and organizing their environment.
In a study recently published in Physical Review X, a team of researchers show that this remarkable sweeping behavior does not require a brain, or any kind of complex interaction between the worms and the particles. Instead, it emerges from the natural undulating motion and flexibility that the worms possess.
The study was co-led by Saad Bhamla, associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Antoine Deblais of the University of Amsterdam.
Deblais said: “It is fascinating to see how living worms can organize their surroundings just by moving.” Bhamla added: “Their activity and flexibility alone are enough to collect particles and reshape their environment.”
By building simple robotic and computer models that mimic the living worms, the researchers discovered that only these two ingredients – activity and flexibility – are sufficient to reproduce the sweeping and collecting effects. The result is a self-organized, dynamic form of environmental restructuring driven purely by motion and shape.
Order emerges
The results do not just teach us a surprising lesson about worms. Understanding how these organisms spontaneously collect particles has much broader implications. On the technological side, what the researchers have learned could inspire the design of soft robots that clean or sort materials without needing sensors or pre-programmed intelligence.
Such robots, like the worms, would simply move and let order emerge from motion. “Brainless” machines of this sort could perhaps one day help remove microplastics or sediments from aquatic environments, or perform complex tasks in unpredictable terrains.
From a biological perspective, the results also offer insights into how elongated living organisms – not just worms, but also filamentous bacteria, or cytoskeletal filaments – can structure and modify their own habitats through simple physical interactions. Understanding this structuring and modifying behaviour has been a central question for, e.g., earthworms in their role in soil aeration.
From a biological perspective, the results also offer insights into how elongated living organisms – not just worms, but also filamentous bacteria, or cytoskeletal filaments – can structure and modify their own habitats through simple physical interactions. Understanding this structuring and modifying behaviour has been a central question for, e.g., earthworms in their role in soil aeration.
Team effort
This project grew out of curiosity about how living systems shape their environment without centralized control. Initial experiments with worms, conducted by Harry Tuazon (Bioengineering PhD 2024) at Georgia Tech, showed the unexpected particle collection patterns. This led the team to attempt to reproduce the behavior using robotic and simulated counterparts – something that worked surprisingly well. In the project, experimentalists and theorists worked side by side, allowing the team to uncover the physical principles behind this seemingly purposeful behavior.
Co-first author Rosa Sinaasappel conducted the robot experiments at the University of Amsterdam. “By mimicking the worms’ motion with simple brainless robots connected by flexible rubber links, we could pinpoint the two ingredients that are essential for the sweeping mechanism,” she said.
Co-first author Prathyusha Kokkoorakunnel Ramankutty, a research scientist in the Bhamla Lab at Georgia Tech, performed the computer simulations of the behavior. “Our computational model, built on simple ingredients like propulsion and flexibility, shows that this principle works across different scales and can be adapted for new designs, as demonstrated by a soft robotic sweeper that autonomously ‘cleans’ and reorganizes particles without programmed intelligence,” she explained.
The researchers will continue to investigate this type of behaviour in the future. While a mathematical model of active sweeping is now presented in a simple form, many challenging questions raised by this complex system remain open for theoreticians.
Multiple groups of students helped greatly with the robot experiments, doing projects in the lab. Their efforts ranged from performing the experiments to replacing the in total about 200 batteries, after perhaps one of the most difficult tasks: wrestling them free from the child-proof packaging.
CITATION:
Particle Sweeping and Collection by Active and Living Filaments, Sinaasappel, R., Prathyusha, K. R., Tuazon, Harry, Mirzahossein, E., Illien, P., Bhamla, Saad, and A. Deblais. Physical Review X (2026)
Busy with her career and family, DeWitt tucked the idea away — until she stepped back from the professional world and knew it was time to pursue keeping bees. She enrolled in a one-day beekeeping class that was offered by the Metro Atlanta Beekeepers Association. From there, DeWitt learned the fundamentals, purchased her first honey bees, and began the fascinating — and sometimes mystifying — work of caring for them in her backyard.
Like many new beekeepers, she faced steep challenges: sick bees, failing colonies, secondary pests, and ensuring her hives had enough resources to survive winter. But DeWitt says that she also discovered how remarkably generous and supportive the beekeeping community is. She connected with mentors and attended local bee club meetings and state conferences where researchers shared their latest findings. Beekeeping became meaningful in ways she had never anticipated.
“I fell in love with honey bees and all things related. There is an innate spirituality in keeping bees,” she says. “Once I put the veil on, life slows to a standstill and becomes a walking meditation into a delicately complex and endlessly fascinating world.”
Her marketing background came full circle too. “Like any creative endeavor, beekeepers must be keenly observant,” DeWitt explains. “We have to think outside the box, pivot quickly, anticipate problems, and plan ahead.”
As her colony numbers grew, so did her reach. DeWitt established apiaries at several metro Atlanta schools and at sites in Chattahoochee Hills, Grant Park, Brookhaven, Arabia Mountain, and Brevard, North Carolina. Along the way, she earned her Master Beekeeper certification from Cornell University, served as the central regional director for the Georgia Beekeepers Association, taught beekeeping to incarcerated individuals through the Georgia Department of Corrections, and partnered with tree companies to rescue wild honey bee colonies living in trees slated for removal.
This breadth of experience prepared her for a unique opportunity: becoming Georgia Tech’s 2025 Beekeeper in Residence with the Urban Honey Bee Project. The one-year residency, DeWitt says, offered “a rare opportunity to be part of the Georgia Tech community,” allowing her to explore new ideas in beekeeping while tending to and expanding the rooftop hives at The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design.
The Urban Honey Bee Project, an interdisciplinary initiative of Georgia Tech’s College of Sciences and Office of Sustainability, established the Beekeeper in Residence program to maintain colonies at The Kendeda Building and in the EcoCommons, mentor student beekeepers, and enrich the program with diverse expertise.
“Deb did so much this year — working closely with the Beekeeping Club, keeping our hives healthy, and even rehoming a wild hive from a dead tree on campus,” says Jennifer Leavey, assistant dean for faculty mentoring in the College of Sciences and director of the Urban Honey Bee Project. “Most importantly, Deb showed our students how an expert beekeeper approaches hive care. She took every opportunity to include them, and it made a real impact.”
Georgia Tech undergraduate Alyssa Zhang agrees. “The Beekeeping Club loved working with Deb. She was always happy to teach us — whether it was managing Varroa mites last summer, when she helped reduce counts from 17% to below 1%, or preparing the hives for winter.”
The Varroa mite is one of many pressures beekeepers face. “The biggest challenges affecting honey bees — as well as native bees and other pollinators — are climate change, habitat loss, pesticide use, pests, and pathogens,” DeWitt explains. “These factors contributed to U.S. commercial beekeepers losing a devastating average of 62% of their colonies last year.”
Honey bees play a critical role in pollinating food crops and producing honey and beeswax. These threats fuel DeWitt’s passion for education, mentorship, and advocacy at the local, state, and national levels. Yet, the most meaningful rewards are personal.
“Honey bee colonies are superorganisms — tens of thousands of individuals working together for the good of the hive,” she adds. “Bees are intelligent, endlessly fascinating creatures, and I never stop learning from them. Beekeeping has made me a better gardener, horticulturist, ecologist, conservationist, carpenter, biologist, scientist, student, teacher, problem solver… you name it.”
Her passion for the craft is unmistakable. In 2025, DeWitt received one of the state’s highest honors: Georgia Beekeepers Association’s Beekeeper of the Year Award.
“I am profoundly grateful to the state’s beekeeping community for recognizing my efforts over the past eight years,” says DeWitt. “This award reflects the mentorship I’ve received from some truly exceptional beekeepers.”
]]>Writer: Annette Filliat
Editor: Selena Langner
]]>Inspired by SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster, a team led by Georgia Tech’s Spencer Bryngelson and New York University’s Florian Schäfer modeled the turbulent interactions of a 33-engine rocket. Their experiment set new records, running the largest ever fluid dynamics simulation by a factor of 20 and the fastest by over a factor of four.
The team ran its custom software on the world’s two fastest supercomputers, as well as the eighth fastest, to construct such a massive model.
Applications from the simulation reach beyond rocket science. The same computing methods can model fluid mechanics in aerospace, medicine, energy, and other fields. At the same time, the work advances understanding of the current limits and future potential of computing.
The team finished as runners-up for the 2025 Gordon Bell Prize for its impactful, multi-domain research. Referred to as the Nobel Prize of supercomputing, the award was presented at the world’s top conference for high-performance computing (HPC) research.
“Fluid dynamics problems of this style, with shocks, turbulence, different interacting fluids, and so on, are a scientific mainstay that marshals our largest supercomputers,” said Bryngelson, an assistant professor with the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE).
“Larger and faster simulations that enable solutions to long-standing scientific problems, like the rocket propulsion problem, are always needed. With our work, perhaps we took a big dent out of that issue.”
The Super Heavy booster reflects the space industry’s move toward reusable multi-engine first-stage rockets that are easier to transport and more economical overall.
However, this shift creates research and testing challenges for new designs.
Each of Super Heavy’s 33 thrusters expels propellant at ten times the speed of sound. As individual engines reach extreme temperatures, pressures, and densities, their combined interactions with the airframe make such violent physics even more unpredictable.
Frequent physical experiments would be expensive and risky, so scientists rely on computer models to supplement the engineering process.
Bryngelson’s flagship Multicomponent Flow Code (MFC) software anchored the experiment. MFC is an open-source computer program that simulates fluid dynamic models. Bryngelson’s lab has been modifying MFC since 2022 to run on more powerful computers and solve larger problems.
In computing terms, this MFC-enhanced model simulated fluid flow resolution at 200 trillion grid points and one quadrillion degrees of freedom. These metrics exceeded previous record-setting benchmarks that tallied 10 trillion and 30 trillion grid points.
This means MFC simulations provide greater detail and capture smaller-scale features than previous approaches. The rocket simulation also ran four times faster and achieved 5.7 times the energy efficiency of comparable methods.
Integrating information geometric regularization (IGR) into MFC played a key role in attaining these results. This new approach improved the simulation’s computational efficiency and overcame the challenge of shock dynamics.
In fluid mechanics, shock waves occur when objects move faster than the speed of sound. Along with hampering the performance of airframes and propulsion systems, shocks have historically been difficult to simulate.
Computational scientists have used empirical models based on artificial viscosity to account for shocks. Although these approaches mimic the physical effects of shock waves at the microscopic scale, they struggle to effectively capture the large-scale features of the flow.
Information geometry uses curved spaces to study concepts of statistics and information. IGR uses these tools to modify the underlying geometry in fluid dynamics equations. When traveling in the modified geometry, fluid in the model preserves the shocks in a more natural way.
“When regularizing shocks to much larger scales relevant in these numerical simulations, conventional methods smear out important fine-scale details,” said Schäfer, an assistant professor at NYU’s Courant Institute of Mathematical Sciences.
“IGR introduces ideas from abstract math to CFD that allow creating modified paths that approach the singularity without ever reaching it. In the resulting fluid flow, shocks never become too spiky in simulations, but the fine-scale details do not smear out either.”
Simulating a model this large required the Georgia Tech researchers to run MFC on El Capitan and Frontier, the world's two fastest supercomputers.
The systems are two of four exascale machines in existence. This means they can solve at least one quintillion (“1” followed by 18 zeros) calculations per second. If a person completed a simple math calculation every second, it would take that person about 30 billion years to reach one quintillion operations.
Frontier is housed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory and debuted as the world’s first exascale supercomputer in 2022. El Capitan surpassed Frontier when Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory launched it in 2024.
To prepare MFC for performance on these machines, Bryngelson’s lab followed a methodical approach spanning years of hardware acquisition and software engineering.
In 2022, Bryngelson attained an AMD MI210 GPU accelerator. Optimizing MFC on the component played a critical step toward preparing the software for exascale machines.
AMD hardware underpins both El Capitan and Frontier. The MI300A GPU powers El Capitan while Frontier uses the MI250X GPU.
After configuring MFC on the MI210 GPU, Bryngelson’s lab ran the software on Frontier for the first time during a 2023 hackathon. This confirmed the code was ready for full-scale deployment on exascale supercomputers based on AMD hardware.
In addition to El Capitan and Frontier, the simulation ran on Alps, the world’s eight-fastest supercomputer based at the Swiss National Supercomputing Centre. It is the largest available system that features the NVIDIA GH200 Grace Hopper Superchip.
Like with AMD GPUs, Bryngelson acquired four GH200s in 2024 and began configuring MFC to the latest hardware innovation powering New Age supercomputers. Later that year, the Jülich Research Centre accepted Bryngelson’s group into an early access program to test JUPITER, a developing supercomputer based on the NVIDIA superchip.
The group earned a certificate for scaling efficiency and node performance on the way toward validating that their code worked on the GH200. The early access project proved successful for JUPITER, which launched in 2025 as Europe’s fastest supercomputer and fourth fastest in the world.
“Getting the level of hands-on experience with world-leading supercomputers and computing resources at Georgia Tech through this project has been a fantastic opportunity for a grad student,” said CSE Ph.D. student Ben Wilfong.
“To leverage these machines, I learned more advanced programming techniques that I’m glad to have in my tool belt for future projects. I also enjoyed the opportunity to work closely with and learn from industry experts from NVIDIA, AMD, and HPE/Cray.”
El Capitan, Frontier, JUPITER, and Alps maintained their rankings at the 2025 International Conference for High Performance Computing Networking, Storage and Analysis (SC25). Of note, the TOP500 announced at SC25 that JUPITER surpassed the exaflop threshold.
The SC Conference Series is one of two venues where the TOP500 announces updated supercomputer rankings every June and November. The TOP500 ranks and details the 500 most powerful supercomputers in the world.
The SC Conference Series serves as the venue where the Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) presents the Gordon Bell Prize. The annual award recognizes achievement in HPC research and application. The Tech-led team was among eight finalists for this year’s award.
Along with Bryngelson, Georgia Tech members included Ph.D. students Anand Radhakrishnan and Wilfong, postdoctoral researcher Daniel Vickers, alumnus Henry Le Berre (CS 2025), and undergraduate student Tanush Prathi.
Schäfer’s partnership with the group stems from his previous role as an assistant professor at Georgia Tech from 2021 to 2025.
Collaborators on the project included Nikolaos Tselepidis and Benedikt Dorschner from NVIDIA, Reuben Budiardja from ORNL, Brian Cornille from AMD, and Stephen Abbot from HPE. All were co-authors of the paper and named finalists for the Gordon Bell Prize.
“I’m elated that we have been nominated for such a prestigious award. It wouldn't have been possible without the combined and diligent efforts of our team,” Radhakrishnan said.
“I’m looking forward to presenting our work at SC25 and connecting with other researchers and fellow finalists while showcasing seminal work in the field of computing.”
]]>Inspired by SpaceX’s Super Heavy booster, a team led by Georgia Tech’s Spencer Bryngelson and New York University’s Florian Schäfer modeled the turbulent interactions of a 33-engine rocket. Their experiment set new records, running the largest ever fluid dynamics simulation by a factor of 20 and the fastest by a factor of over four.
To construct such a massive model, the custom software ran on the world’s two fastest supercomputers, as well as the eighth fastest.
The team finished as runners-up for the 2025 Gordon Bell Prize for its impactful, multi-domain research. Referred to as the Nobel Prize of supercomputing, the award was presented at the world’s top conference for high-performance computing (HPC) research.
]]>“This fellowship with the Archive is a fantastic opportunity for me as a physicist. There is an incredible community of creatives that I get to be a part of and draw inspiration from,” he says. “It’s also very validating that an organization with as much prestige as the SJA finds value in the work we’re doing here in the lab. I’m so grateful that people believe in me and the work that we’re doing.”
Cachine is one of just eight individuals selected this year from a nationwide pool. The one-year fellowship supports work at the intersection of technology and the liberal arts, and will provide essential support for his creative trajectory, including a stipend, mentoring, and a robust community of peers.
At Georgia Tech, Cachine is the lab manager and lead experimentalist for the Matsumoto Group where he works alongside his advisor, School of Physics Associate Professor Elisabetta Matsumoto.
“As a physicist who studies craft, I often see that this is an overlooked area of research, especially in women’s health,” Cachine says. “I hope that beyond building a pathway to improved patient outcomes, my work this year will show people that crafting traditions are incredible technological feats — they are entire knowledge systems waiting to be explored. There is so much we can learn from craft.”
]]>“It is a great honor to receive this recognition, which I share with the students and postdocs who have contributed to our research at Georgia Tech,” says Chapman. “I am also deeply grateful for the Institute’s outstanding research environment. It has been a privilege to advance the frontiers of quantum science and technology together.”
“We are delighted by this honor for Professor Chapman,” says Feryal Özel, chair and professor in the School of Physics. “The award highlights Mike’s decades-long contributions to atomic physics and the pioneering techniques he has introduced to the field throughout his career. We are especially proud that most of these contributions happened during his time at Georgia Tech.”
Chapman is a leading experimental quantum physicist whose research centers on developing and applying novel experimental methods in the areas of ultracold atoms, quantum optics, and quantum information. Before joining Georgia Tech in 1997, Chapman received his Ph.D. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the California Institute of Technology.
]]>Simon’s research team has been awarded $1.4 million through NASA’s Precursor Science Investigations for Europa (PSI-E) program. Their project is one of seven selected to provide essential insights that, according to the program announcement, “will maximize the science return during the radiation-limited lifetime of the Europa Clipper.”
Simon also serves as the institutional lead co-investigator of a second $1.4 million project, led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley, which seeks to decipher how Europa's atmosphere and ionosphere contribute to the magnetic field near the moon. This project was selected during the same call for proposals.
“The research award is a fantastic opportunity to contribute to a mission centered on Europa’s complex plasma and electromagnetic environment,” says Simon, referencing the Georgia-Tech led proposal. “Our project combines foundational plasma physics from our School of Physics and geophysical knowledge from our School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences to understand how the magnetic field near Europa is affected by the plasma populating Jupiter’s environment.”
The research team includes Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Ph.D. students Ariel Tello Fallau and Charles Michael Haynes. Neil Baker, a Ph.D. student in the School of Physics, is contributing to the Berkeley-led PSI-E project that also includes Georgia Tech alumnus Lucas Liuzzo (Ph.D. EAS 2018), now an assistant research scientist at the University of California, Berkeley’s Space Sciences Laboratory.
With a radius of only 1,560 kilometers, Europa is one of Jupiter’s four largest moons, known as the Galilean moons, discovered by Italian astronomer Galileo Galilei in the 1600s.
More than two decades ago, data from NASA’s Galileo mission — specifically magnetic field measurements collected far above Europa’s surface — pointed to the existence of a global subsurface ocean. This ocean, which may contain more liquid water than all of the Earth’s oceans combined, has made Europa a prime candidate in the search for life beyond Planet Earth.
“Finding evidence of a saltwater ocean lurking beneath Europa’s surface was a serendipitous discovery during the Galileo mission,” Simon explains. “NASA’s Europa Clipper mission picks up where the Galileo mission left off.”
Launched in October 2024, the Europa Clipper space probe is expected to reach Jupiter’s orbit in 2030. That gives Simon and his team only a few years to complete their analysis.
“Our research is doing the preparatory work to determine what and where we can measure further magnetic evidence of the ocean beneath Europa’s surface,” says Simon. “When the spacecraft arrives, we will find out whether our predictions are correct.”
Using advanced computer simulations, the team aims to better understand the magnetic fields near Europa. Part of these fields is generated by electric currents in the moon’s saltwater ocean; the other part is created by fast-moving flows of plasma — ionized matter that fills much of space — as it interacts with Europa’s atmosphere and surface.
“Our project focuses on how the magnetic fields from plasma flow patterns compete with the magnetic signal from Europa’s ocean,” says Simon. “We want to determine which part of the magnetic field near Europa originates from the ocean and which part is a disruptive effect from the plasma.”
Deciphering these magnetic signals will provide essential context for interpreting Europa Clipper’s measurements, helping to not only confirm the ocean’s existence but also reveal details about its structure.
]]>