This year’s winners represent areas of study ranging from aerospace engineering to ocean sciences. The purpose of the GRF initiative, the oldest of NSF’s programs, is to develop experts who will contribute significantly to research, teaching, and innovations in science and engineering. Their awards total more than $9.5 million in funding, the most Georgia Tech has ever had in the program.

This year’s recipients are: 

About SCMB

The Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (SCMB) is one of four NSF-Simons Research Centers for Mathematics of Complex Biological Systems (MathBioSys). The other three are the Center for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Biology at Harvard University, the Center on Multiscale Cell Fate at the University of California, Irvine, and the Center for Quantitative Biology at Northwestern University.

SCMB is headquartered at the Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly known as Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, GA, and has six partner institutions around the southeastern United States — Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, TN; Tulane University in New Orleans, LA; the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL; the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL; Clemson University in Clemson, SC; and Duke University in Durham, NC.

Brandon Legried will work with Christine Heitsch. He recently earned his Ph.D. in Mathematics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Brandon’s interests are in Probability, Applied Mathematics, Mathematical Statistics, and Theoretical Computer Science. Brandon started as a Postdoc with SCMB here at Georgia Tech in Fall 2022.

Francisco Martinez Figueroa is the new Postdoc researcher at the University of South Florida (USF), working with Natasha Jonoska. Francisco recently earned his Ph.D. from Ohio State University (OSU).  Francisco’s interests are Topological Combinatorics, Random Graphs, Chromatic number of distance graphs, Topological Data Analysis, Machine Learning and Applications to Biology.  Francisco is part of SCMB, in which he collaborates with the biology team of Professor Francesca Storici here at Georgia Tech.

About SCMB

The Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (SCMB) is one of four NSF-Simons Research Centers for Mathematics of Complex Biological Systems (MathBioSys). The other three are the Center for Mathematical and Statistical Analysis of Biology at Harvard University, the Center on Multiscale Cell Fate at the University of California, Irvine, and the Center for Quantitative Biology at Northwestern University.

SCMB is headquartered at the Georgia Institute of Technology (commonly known as Georgia Tech) in Atlanta, GA, and has six partner institutions around the southeastern United States — Oak Ridge National Laboratory in Oak Ridge, TN; Tulane University in New Orleans, LA; the University of South Florida in Tampa, FL; the University of Florida in Gainesville, FL; Clemson University in Clemson, SC; and Duke University in Durham, NC.

At the core of each of the projects was a fundamental question with far-reaching implications. Could a “hypertumor” of cancer cells with a selfish phenotype be used to collapse a growing tumor? How strong must a long-range immune signal be in order to quash a spreading short-range infection? How do parasites-of-parasites repeatedly and robustly emerge despite occupying a narrow, unstable niche? How do parasites with multi-host lifecycles calibrate their deleterious effects in order to most effectively climb the food chain?

Watch their final presentations here, and find the list of projects and their contributors below.

Hypertumors: a solution to Peto’s paradox

Team #1 - Cameron Heard, Arnav Hiray, and Sarah Hui (GT)

Interferons: a mathematical approach to innate immunity

Team #2 - Saúl Chavez, Thomas Cutro, Isabella Kulstad (Tulane)

Nature’s Equilibrators: Hyperparasites

Team #3 - Alex Mark, Beau Martin, Aditya Natham, Amy Sims (GSU)

Modeling predator-prey relationships in the presence of a multi-species parasite

Team #4 - Daniel Dale (Clemson) and Andalib Samandari (GSU), with Andrew Callahan (Clemson)

Visiting Assistant Professor in Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology

Posted on October 27, 2021

In October’s Junior Researcher Feature, we have an interview with Dr. Daniel Cruz, Visiting Assistant Professor in Mathematics, Georgia Institute of Technology.

What are the main biological research questions that you are interested in?

In terms of biology, I am interested in understanding the differentiation of pluripotent stem cell colonies into specified tissue types. While it is known that differentiation is possible through local and long-distance intercellular communication, it is still unclear which local mechanisms take priority to determine cell fate in context-specific situations. At present, I am focusing on the differentiation of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) whose therapeutic potential arises from their ability to differentiate into all germ layers.

What mathematical and computational tools do you find useful in your work?

While I use a handful of models for discrete computation (e.g. Boolean networks, cellular automata, etc.) in my work, I am most interested in agent-based models (ABMs). In the broadest sense, an ABM is a computational model in which autonomous agents governed by local rules interact with one another and with their environment. The objective of ABM development is typically to connect those local agent interactions with system-level properties like self-organization or pattern formation. I think that ABMs are appropriate for studying the local mechanisms involved in differentiation among other cellular processes because of how cells can naturally be considered autonomous agents.

What types of questions do you think will be important to answer in the future in your field?

Well, the use of ABMs in the context of cellular biology has grown rapidly over the last decade, even outside of developmental biology. And though there are several interesting and complex ABMs being developed to help answer all sorts of biological questions, I think that there is a growing need for quantitative, general-purpose tools to evaluate these models. The evaluation of an ABM often comes down to approaches which are too computationally expensive or too qualitative in nature (e.g. the simulation outputs “look like” the microscopy images, etc.). So, I think that mathematical (and/or computational) tools need to be (further) developed to efficiently address the following questions: (i) Accuracy - Does the ABM match its target biological system? If so, according to what measure? and (ii) Reproducibility - Do multiple simulations yield “consistent results” while incorporating stochasticity? In other words, is the ABM resistant to the kind of noise one would expect to find in its target biological system?

When did you first become interested in mathematics and biology?

I guess the clearest answer is just after starting my graduate studies in 2013 when I joined the biomathematics research group at the University of South Florida led by my PhD advisor Natasha Jonoska and Masahico Saito. I had a limited notion of how mathematics could be applied to biology prior to joining this group, but I quickly realized how fields that I had considered mostly separate from biology (e.g. discrete mathematics and topology) could be applied to understanding biomolecular processes (e.g. DNA recombination and self-assembly). Moreover, it is through my work in the group that I recognized the synergy between mathematics and biology: not only can mathematics be used as a tool to answer and discover questions in biology, but also biology can be used as a motivator for the development of new mathematical problems and branches of study.

What do you like to do in your spare time outside of work?

I like to balance a mixture of outdoor activities with indoor activities which are more social. For example, my spouse Angela and I have begun hiking quite a bit since moving to Atlanta, and we both really enjoy rock climbing and traveling (when there is not a pandemic). On the other hand, I have been a big fan of board games for several years and now own a non-trivial collection of my favorites. I am always happy to provide recommendations to anybody interested in anything from quick, family-friendly games to lengthy games involving puzzles and overarching story lines. Of course, Angela and I also spend a lot of time with our cats Bittle and Luna.

Keisha Cook

Where are you from?

I am a Georgia girl; Marietta to be specific. I come from a family of four; Mom, Dad, Sister, and Myself. We are a very close family with many traditions and much love for each other. 

Please describe an experience (or 2) that helped you discover/ cultivate your interest in the mathematical sciences.

My interest in the mathematical sciences was cultivated throughout my entire life. I began by teaching my sister (lots of math) before she began a formal education. This resulted in her being able to skip Kindergarten and go straight into first grade. Throughout K-12, I was always interested in the next step. I always wanted to know what to use the current mathematics subject for in the future. At this time, I understood that math builds on itself infinitely. The more topics I learned, the more I wanted to know. My PhD advisor Dr. Roger B. Sidje was instrumental in guiding me through the PhD process and teaching me how to become a researcher. His well-rounded academic career and positive demeanor influenced me to become a mathematics professor.

What is/are your most proud accomplishment(s) in regards to your career in the mathematical sciences?

Two events come to mind: (1) regarding myself and (2) regarding students. My first most proud accomplishment was accepting a tenure track position at Clemson University, a Research Level 1 institution. The position begins August 2021 and I am eager to transition into the new role. My second most proud moment occurred when I realized how much of an impact I was making for mathematics students, specifically Black and/or women students. My goal is to increase the visibility and productivity of students of these demographics so that they become well represented in areas where they do not see many people that look like themselves. My favorite story of this occurred upon teaching my first course at Tulane University. A few Black students from Xavier University were enrolled in the course. They expressed how inspired and thankful they were to be welcomed and taught by a Black woman at a university in which they were a very small minority. Learning from me made their experience much more memorable.

What is/are your most proud accomplishment(s) in regards to your personal life?

My most proud accomplishment in my personal life was moving to New Orleans and purchasing my first home! Over the last year and a half, I have grown to love the city. I enjoy getting involved with community service; specifically STEM NOLA. This program is specifically geared towards making STEM accessible to Black children with little to no access to quality STEM education. 

Please share some words of wisdom/inspiration.

I think it is very important to share your knowledge and wisdom. You never know who is listening. You don’t know who needs to hear what you have to say. One of my favorite quotes by Maya Angelou is “When you learn, teach. When you get, give.” This quote stands out because it consists of two very important things that I value in life; teaching and giving. Always use the gifts you are blessed with to bless others.

Kemp lab uses genome-scale modeling to understand tumor metabolism and predict tumors’ responses to radiation therapy.  

Full story by Jerry Grillo may be found here:                                                                 Targeting Radiation Resistance: Why Some Tumors Are So Stubborn (gatech.edu)

“I’m so delighted and honored to have the support of the Flanagan family for my research program,” said Kemp, who also is a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar. “The professorship will provide my research group with the funding flexibility to take bold, intellectual risks in our development of computational tools for cancer precision medicine. We are particularly excited in the upcoming years to investigate the role of metabolism in why individuals respond variably to radiation and chemotherapies.”

Kemp joined the Department in 2006, earning tenure in 2012 and promotion to full professor in 2020. Her research uses computational systems biology to understand how metabolism influences the decisions that cells make. She has produced key insights into the influence of cellular redox processes on chemotherapy drug metabolism.

“Melissa’s models have forced the field of molecular biology to develop new methods for measuring short-lived molecules and protein modifications. She is a leader whose theories have been validated by her colleagues and shifted the paradigm in the field,” said Susan Margulies, Wallace H. Coulter Chair of Coulter BME. “She is an innovative thought leader and an excellent, creative teacher who is more than deserving of this recognition and the resources that come with it.”

Full story by Joshua Stewart may be found here:  Dasi, Kemp Named to Endowed Professorships (gatech.edu)

Kemp has pioneered the use of computational systems biology models to understand and predict cellular behaviors in development, health, and disease, and provide the scientific community with a roadmap for new diagnostic and treatment pathways for a wide range of diseases. Her models have forced the field of molecular biology to develop new methods for measuring short-lived molecules and protein modifications, which she proposes are the unique “fingerprints” of cell communication, post-genetic variability, and cell stress responses that are responsible for biological variability.

Kemp’s models are the key to unlock the basis for (and opportunities of) personalized medicine and patient-specific therapies. Importantly, subsequent experiments by colleagues in the field have validated her paradigm-shifting theories. Her innovative scholarship has been recognized by many awards: NIH New Innovator, the CSF2 Prize for Innovative Measurement Methods, and the Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar award.

Christine Heitsch
BS Mathematics (with Highest Distinction and Magna Cum Laude) 1994
Christine Heitsch is a Professor in the School of Mathematics at Georgia Institute of Technology and is Director of the Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (SCMB), an NSF-Simons Research Center for Mathematics of Complex Biological Systems. She received her PhD from University of California Berkeley in 2000. During her trail-blazing career she has leveraged mathematics, especially combinatorics, to understand the role and function of RNA in biological systems. Read more about Christine Heitsch.

Title: Mathematical Models for Biomolecular and Cellular Interactions

Date & Time: January 7, 2022 (8am - 11:50am PST and 1pm - 5:50pm PST)

Abstract:  Understanding biomolecular and cellular interactions is at the heart of vital questions in biology because such interactions have far-reaching effects on larger, fundamental processes. Mathematical models for these phenomena continue to provide new insights into open biological questions and serve as catalysts for advancing both biology and mathematics. In recent years, techniques from algebra, topology, and combinatorics have complemented more traditional approaches involving ordinary and partial differential equations in the development of tools describing biomolecular and cellular structures and dynamics. This session will focus on current advancements and open problems involving such methods. To highlight the breadth of these mathematical approaches, topics will include models for neuroscience, cancer evolution, genome sequence analysis, regulatory networks, and RNA/DNA structures. Moreover, we have invited junior and senior speakers from under-represented minorities in order to promote inclusivity and diversity within the associated research communities.

Current List of Speakers:

1. Mario Banuelos (CSU Fresno)
2. Veronica Ciocanel (Duke)
3. Keisha Cook (Clemson)
4. Adriana Dawes (OSU)
5. Stephanie Dodson (UC Davis)
6. Joel Dokmegang (Northwestern)
7. Lina Fajardo-Gomez (U South Florida)
8. Alvaro Fletcher (UC Irvine)
9. Abdulmelik Mohammed (U South Florida)
10. David Murrugarra (U Kentucky)
11. Asja Radja (Harvard)
12. Alexander Ruys de Perez (Georgia Tech)
13. Suzanne Sindi (UC Merced)
14. Luis Sordo Vieira (U Florida)
15. Imelda Trejo (Los Alamos National Lab)
16. Bin Xu (Clarkson)
17. Nora Youngs (Colby)

Paper: “Moving sidewinding forward: optimizing contact patterns for limbless robots via geometric mechanics” - by Baxi Chong, Tianyu Wang, Bo Lin, Shengkai Li, Howie Choset, Grigoriy Blekherman, Daniel Goldman.

The W.M. Keck Foundation and the G. Harold and Leila Y. Mathers Foundation have awarded grants of $1 million and $300,000, respectively, to boost the research of Francesca Storici, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and principal investigator for the projects. Both grants are directed toward decrypting the hidden message of ribonucleotide incorporation in human nuclear DNA.

The Mathers Foundation will cover work with the Storici lab only. The Keck Foundation is supporting a collaborative effort between Storici and Natasha Jonoska, professor of mathematics at the University of South Florida. Both Storici and Jonoska are founding members of the Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology.

Full article by Jerry Grillo may be found here: https://research.gatech.edu/new-grants-could-transform-scientists-understanding-dna  

Juenemann, who is graduating with a double major in mathematics and computer science and a management minor, has been an NTC Honors student all four years of college, a member of the Math Club, Cookies and Code, Phi Sigma Pi National Honor Fraternity, Circle K, Mortar Board National Senior Honors Society and Jazz Combo. Juenemann was an Undergraduate Teaching Fellow, served as a New Student Orientation Wave Leader and played intramural soccer. Throughout her undergraduate career, she has conducted research in collaboration with Tulane Professor Scott McKinley and Duke University Professor Christine Payne, developing a statistical dashboard to automatically categorize diverse particle movement patterns in live-cell data. Juenemann has completed a Mathematics Honors Thesis and a Computer Science Capstone to expand upon this work.

Professionals have lauded Juenemann’s research, selecting it for recognition. Last summer, she was chosen to take part in the Heidelberg Laureate Forum, which would have given her a funded trip to Germany to meet with a select international group of young researchers in mathematics and computer science. The event, however, was made virtual due to COVID. She followed this up in October by winning a First Place Poster at a regional mathematics conference. In November, Juenemann virtually attended a national mathematical biology conference that Northwestern University hosted and won the First Place Prize for Undergraduate Research in Quantitative Biology. In January, she won the Outstanding Poster Award during an annual meeting of the Joint, one of the largest mathematical societies hosted by the American Mathematical Society and the Mathematical Association of America. 

Professor McKinley described Juenemann as “[embodying] every virtue we could hope for a young scientist: insatiable curiosity; steadfast productivity; a ruthless eye for detail; unshakeable intellectual honesty; creativity in the face of cruel setbacks; and the ability to communicate triumphs and tribulations as they come along.”

Beginning fall 2021, Juenemann will be pursuing a PhD in Computational and Mathematical Engineering at Stanford University. She has won a Graduate Research Fellowship from the National Science Foundation as well as a Stanford Graduate Fellowship and the Enhancing Diversity in Graduate Education Doctoral Fellowship, which will aid her in her studies.

In reaction to receiving the Peery medal, Juenemann said, "I am honored to be selected as the recipient of the William Wallace Peery Medal and inducted into the Peery Society amongst such a talented and dedicated group of peers. I am thankful for the tremendous support I have received over my four years at Tulane, particularly the outstanding mentors who have fostered my intellectual curiosity and resilience in research. I graduate from Tulane exceptionally educated, diversely experienced, and eager to make an impact in my field. As I reflect on this award and my experiences in New Orleans, I highly appreciate this period of personal and academic growth and the impact it has had on my life."

Congratulations to Riley Juenemann, an undergraduate student in Dr. Scott McKinley’s lab at Tulane University, on winning 1^st Place at Northwestern University’s 2020 Prize for Undergraduate Research in Quantitative Biology – NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology (northwestern.edu).  The NSF-Simons Center for Quantitative Biology’s Prize for Undergraduate Research in Quantitative Biology recognizes outstanding undergraduate research in quantitative biology.  This year five finalists competed for the Prize for Undergraduate Research in Quantitative Biology at the 3rd Annual Conference on Quantitative Biology, November 19-21, 2020 hosted virtually. They each presented their work as a 10-minute video hosted on YouTube for conference attendees and judges and participated in an hour Discord chat on Friday, November 20, 2020. Awards were based on the content and presentation of their research projects. In addition to the above honor, Riley won an NSF-GRFP fellowship for graduate school and will be heading to Stanford in the fall.  Moreover, using data that was provided by Christine Payne’s lab (our SCMB partner) Riley built a web-app that automatically categorizes particle tracking data.  You can find more information about her on her website
https://rjuenemann.github.io/ 

Diaz is a Ph.D. student in the Quantitative Biosciences (QBios) program at Georgia Tech, and part of the first wave of junior researchers in the Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology at Tech, one of the four research centers funded by the NSF and Simons. She’s working in the lab of Dan Goldman, professor of physics, member of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and a team lead at SCMB. Diaz is exactly the kind of trainee that SCMB and the national endeavor needs, exemplifying the kind of interdisciplinary acuity necessary to do innovative research at the intersection of mathematics and molecular, cellular, and organismal biology.

Diaz comes by her wide-ranging interests naturally. Growing up in Puerto Rico, she used to follow her father around on his small farm, surrounded by animals and plants, “learning as much as I could,” she says. “Over time, I was convinced that I would eventually pursue undergraduate studies in biology.

“However, this plan changed abruptly when I took my first physics course in 12th grade,” Diaz added. “Physics felt like my ‘calling,’ but living systems remained at the core of what I care most passionately about. When it came to applying to graduate school, it seemed like an obvious choice: to join a Physics Ph.D. program with faculty that carry out research of physics of living systems.”

That made Goldman’s biomechanics lab and the QBioS program perfect fits for her interests. “Tackling biosciences questions with quantitative approaches is intuitive to me,” she says, adding that the SCMB is taking the integrative approach to another level. “Collaborating with people that have a background in math can bridge gaps between biology and math to develop and use mathematical tools to study underlying processes in biology. This is an opportunity to drive both fields forward. As math is further developed to study biology, a repertoire of tools will be available for researchers to use in the biomedical field.”

Diaz sees herself as part of the vanguard in one of the newest interdisciplinary approaches to understanding the depth and breadth of living systems. And she’s got some good company in the first cohort of SCMB junior researchers, an international group of eager, talented young investigators, like Margherita Maria Ferrari, a postdoctoral researcher from Italy with a classical mathematical training in analytics and statistics.

“During my Ph.D., I went to a conference and met a professor who was giving a talk about mathematics applied to biological processes and chemical processes, which I thought was very interesting, and unexpected,” says Ferrari, who had not been exposed to this kind of integrative research before. “I learned that there were people using tools that I was familiar with, but in a completely different research area.”

So after earning her Ph.D., she sought opportunities that would satisfy her growing interest in this kind of integrative research, and found her current post in the lab of Nataša Jonoska, professor at the University of South Florida and an SCMB team lead.

Ferrari, Diaz, and their fellow junior researchers had a chance to gather and formally meet each other, along with the fourteen faculty team leads and administrators of SCMB, at a center-wide meeting held on September 13 on the Georgia Tech campus. “It was nice to meet all the other researchers and have the chance to give informal presentations of our projects, and to really get an idea of what the center is doing, up close,” Ferrari said.

While the meeting at Tech provided a way for SCMB members to meet and work in person—and a number of junior researchers bonded on Tech’s leadership challenge course while on campus—they’ve been gathering on a regular basis virtually since the center was launched last year. Since this is a center comprised of institutions from across the Southeast, they meet monthly; Georgia Tech personnel gather in one room, and everyone else joins via video conference.

“It was fantastic to have everybody in one space, to hear directly from the junior researchers about the progress of each seed project,” said Annalise Paaby, an SCMB team lead and assistant professor of Biological Sciences at Tech, and a researcher in the Petit Institute. Each project is a collaboration between a faculty member and a trainee from the math side, and a faculty member and trainee from the bio side. “The seed projects have been cooking for a while now, and the trainee pairs gave short, pecha kucha style research reports—so we had a lot of fun with questions and discussion.”

For Kelimar Diaz, SCMB and its interdisciplinary opportunities represents the new leading edge of bioresearch, and will help provide a roadmap for her own future.

“I have not decided what kind of career path to take after I finish my Ph.D., but I believe that the way things are structured in SCMB, I will end up with a repertoire of skills that will allow me to pursue the career of my choosing,” she says. “I am contributing to driving biology and math forward. The Center and all of its members are advancing our knowledge of the living world quantitatively, while providing insight to biological applications and expanding math.”

Meet the first class of SCMB junior researchers who will be advancing that knowledge:

Hector Baños earned his bachelor degree in applied mathematics at Universidad Autónoma de Querétaro in Mexico, then earned a master’s degree in mathematics and statistics at then his Ph.D. in mathematics the University of Alaska (Fairbanks). Now a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Christine Heitsch, mathematics professor at Georgia Tech and director of the SCMB (and also a Petit Institute researcher), he’s working on an SCMB seed project called “RNA structural ensembles in evolution,” a collaboration between Heitsch and Annalise Paaby, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Tech. As he and his fellow researchers work to uncover the processes behind evolution in the species and molecular levels, he’ll work on models for secondary structure inference.

Keisha Cook earned a bachelor’s degree in mathematics at the University of Alabama, where she stayed on to earn both a master’s and Ph.D. in applied mathematics. Now a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Scott McKinley at Tulane University, she’s working on a SCMB seed project entitled “Stochastic modeling in cellular internalization and transport,” a collaboration between McKinley and the lab of Christine Payne at Duke University. “My ultimate research goal is to become well versed in many applications of mathematics and cell biology, in order to teach mathematics students how to speak the language of a scientist,” said Keisha, who will analyzing particle tracking data (collected in the Payne Lab) using probabilistic and statistical methods to provide greater insight into the functions of intracellular particle motion.

Daniel Cruz, who earned both his bachelor’s degree (mathematics with a minor in computer science) and Ph.D. (mathematics) at the University of South Florida, is now a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech, though his primary advisor is Elena Dimitrova, currently at California Polytechnic State University but until recently at Clemson University. His SCMB seed project is a collaboration between Dimitrova and Petit Institute researcher Melissa Kemp, associate professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech, and it’s entitled “Modeling emergent patterning within pluripotent colonies through Boolean canalizing functions.” He’s primarily interested in using discrete models to understand how self-assembly and self-organization arises from molecular and/or cellular interactions. “I’m a math postdoc studying how boolean networks and other discrete models can improve our understanding of pattern and structure formation resulting from the differentiation of pluripotent colonies,” he said.

Kelimar Diaz earned her bachelor degree in physics at the University of Puerto Rico (Rio Piedras campus). Now, as a Ph.D. student based in the lab of Dan Goldman, professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech, she’s working on an SCMB seed project called “Optimization of limbless locomotion via algebraic kinematics,” a collaboration between Goldman and Greg Blekherman at Georgia Tech. She plans to satisfy her interest in biomechanics an locomotion by exploring undulatory locomotion across length scales to understand control principles.

Margherita Maria Ferrari, a postdoctoral researcher, earned an undergraduate degree and a master’s degree in mathematics at Università degli Studi di Modena e Reggio Emilia in Italy, and her Ph.D. in mathematical models and methods in engineering at Politecnico di Milano. Based in the lab of Nataša Jonoska at the University of South Florida, her SCMB seed project, “Discrete and topological models for DNA-RNA interactions,” is a collaboration between that group and the lab of Petit Institute researcher biologyFrancesca Storici, an associate professor of biology at Georgia Tech. My goal is to develop and apply mathematical tools to advance our understanding of biological and chemical processes,” she said. “My role is modeling RNA structure formation and R-loop structures, which we feel will help us in describing the process of DNA double-strand break repair.”

Gemechis Degaga, who earned his Ph.D. in theoretical chemistry at Michigan Technological University, is currently based at Oak Ridge National Laboratory in the lab of Julie Mitchell, director of the Biosciences Division. His SCMB seed project, entitled “Identifying disorder-to-order transitions in post-translationally modified proteins,” is a collaboration between Mitchell and the lab of Matt Torres, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech (and a Petit Institute researcher). “My main research interest involves the use of machine learning models to understand protein folding,” he said, describing his role in the project as building “generative adversarial artificial neural networks to learn, predict, and generate new protein sequences which form beta-hairpin secondary structure.”

Youngkyu Jeon, who earned a bachelor of science in life sciences at Korea University, is a Ph.D. student currently based in the lab of Francesca Storici, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. He contributes to the seed project on DNA-RNA interactions with Storici, Jonoska and Ferrari. The goal is to understand the topology of RNA-mediated DNA modification and/or repair, which Youngkyu is studying through experiments based on mathematical modeling.

Wei Li, a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Matt Torres at Georgia Tech, earned her Ph.D. from Wake Forest University. She’s contributing to the SCMB seed project on protein disorder-to-order transitions with Torres, Mitchell and Degaga. Wei’s role is to test candidate proteins using experimental spectroscopic methods, testing for impacts on biological function.

Bo Lin, who earned a Ph.D. in mathematics at the University of California-Berkeley, is now a postdoctoral researcher in the lab of Greg Blekherman, associate professor of mathematics at Georgia Tech, where he’s working on the SCMB seed project on limbless locomotion with Blekherman, Goldman and Diaz. Basically, Lin is using his expertise in math to analyze data generated from biological experiments.

Eunbi Park, who earned her undergraduate degree in agricultural science from Kyungpook National University in Korea, is now Park a Ph.D. student in Bioinformatics at Georgia Tech in the lab of associate professor of Biomedical Engineering, contributing to the seed project on modeling emergent patterning within pluripotent colonies with Kemp, Dimitrova, and Cruz. Park collects fluorescent microscopy images of live, dividing stem cells, generating time-lapse movies that capture the behavioral dynamics of the cells. With the input of Cruz and Dimitrova, she is using agent-based models to define that behavior mathematically.

Nathan Rayens earned two bachelor degrees at Miami University: one in mechanical engineering and manufacturing engineering, and another in music. Now a Ph.D. student in mechanical engineering and materials science, he’s based in the lab of Christine Payne at Duke University. Now he is working with Payne, McKinley and Cook on the seed project modeling cellular internalization and transport. Rayens said, “this is the first time I’ve been involved in biological research, so my current goal is to learn as much as I can. I’m currently working on analyzing cell samples incubated with and without TiO2 to evaluate lysosome trajectories and see the effect of nanoparticles on cell transport.”

Ashleigh Thomas, who earned an undergraduate degree in electrical engineering and math at the University of Pennsylvania, got her master’s and Ph.D. in mathematics at Duke University. Now based in the lab of Peter Bubenik at the University of Florida, she’s working on an SCMB seed project entitled, “Topological data analysis to understand genetic control of morphological phenotype,” a collaboration between Bubenik and Hang Lu, professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Ling Wang, who earned both her bachelor and master’s degrees in biological science at Georgia State University, is a Ph.D. researcher in the lab of Annalise Paaby, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. Her work is in collaboration with Paaby, Heitsch, and Baños on the RNA folding seed project. Wang’s ultimate research interest is in combining computational and biological approach to study how RNA folding structure matters in biological evolution and she’s currently working with Paaby, “to design experiments to test if RNA’s secondary structure will have an impact on early-stop codon readthrough, and ultimately determine its impacts on biological functions.”

Keren Zhang earned his undergraduate degree in chemical engineering at the University of California-Berkeley. Now he’s a Ph.D. student in the lab of Hang Lu at Georgia Tech, where he’s working with Lu, Bubenik and Thomas on the seed project studying morphological phenotype with topological analysis. Zhang’s goal is to establish pipeline methods to quantify the developmental plasticity in the C. elegans connectome.

The Science of Social Media Persuasion
The first stop in the College of Sciences' 2020 Frontiers in Science lecture series tackled two topics in the spotlight this election year: disinformation and social media. “Information Gerrymandering and Undemocratic Decisions” featured Joshua Plotkin, Annenberg Professor of Natural Sciences and co-director of the Penn Center for Mathematical Biology at the University of Pennsylvania.

Plotkin told the audience that social media has indeed been a game-changer when it comes to the rapid spread of information. Yet it can also lead to what he calls “information gerrymandering,” where biases and opinion bubbles can make people more prone to making misinformed choices during collective decisions like voting. Plotkin also highlighted the importance of governmental regulation and corporate accountability for social media companies. Read a recap of the lecture, co-sponsored by the School of Biological Sciences, in Georgia Tech's student newspaper, the Technique.

Next Up: Manufacturing Memories
The issue of information and disinformation is also part of the second lecture in the Frontiers in Science spring series, slated for the evening of Thursday, February 27: “The Fiction of Memory” featuring Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a Fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory. Learn more about her research through her 2013 TED Talk on the science and ethics of false memories, and find the complete spring slate of Frontiers in Science lectures below.

Frontiers in Science Lectures are intended to inform, engage, and inspire students, faculty, staff, and the public on developments, breakthroughs, and topics of general interest in the sciences and mathematics in an inspiring and accessible way. All lectures are free to attend, and everyone is welcome to come out and connect around the talks, which are held each spring and fall. Directly after each one-hour lecture, enjoy a free reception with the evening's speaker.
 

Spring Slate: 2020 Frontiers in Science

February 6: “Information Gerrymandering and Undemocratic Decisions”

Joshua Plotkin, Annenberg Professor of Natural Sciences and co-director of the Penn Center for Mathematical Biology at the University of Pennsylvania

Held on February 6, 2020, this lecture was co-sponsored by the School of Biological Sciences. Many Americans receive their news and form political opinions through social media. But social media platforms are not shaping up to be the utopian spaces for human connection their founders once hoped. Instead, the Internet has introduced phenomena that can influence national elections and even threaten democracy. This talk will describe recent findings on "information gerrymandering” — how the structure of a social network can profoundly bias collective decisions. Evidence of these effects is found in large-scale human experiments, real-world social-media networks, and networks of legislative actions in the US Congress. These results motivate questions about policy.

February 27: "The Fiction of Memory" 

Elizabeth Loftus, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a Fellow of the Center for the Neurobiology of Learning and Memory

For several decades, Elizabeth Loftus has been manufacturing memories in unsuspecting minds. Sometimes these techniques change details of events that someone actually experienced. Other times, the techniques create entire memories of events that never happened: they create “rich false memories.” Collectively, this work shows people can be led to believe they did things that would have been rather implausible. They can be led to falsely believe they had experiences that would have been emotional or traumatic had they actually happened.

False memories, like true ones, also have consequences for people—affecting their later thoughts, intentions, and behaviors. Can we tell true memories from false ones? In several studies, Loftus created false memories in the minds of people, compared them to true memories, and discovered that once planted, those false memories look very much like true memories: they have similar behavioral characteristics, emotionality, and neural signatures.

Considered as a whole, these findings raise important questions: If false memories can be so readily planted in the mind, do we need to think about “regulating” this mind technology? And what do these pseudomemories say about the nature of memory itself? This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Psychology.

Thursday, February 27
6:00pm to 7:00pm
Marcus Nanotechnology Building (Rooms 1116-1118)
Learn more and attend
 

The 2020 Frontiers Lecture with Moon Duchin, originally scheduled for March 26, 2020, has been postponed. Please visit cos.gatech.edu for further updates.

March 26: "Graphs, Geometry, and Gerrymandering"

Moon Duchin, Associate Professor of Mathematics and Senior Fellow in the Jonathan M. Tisch College of Civic Life at Tufts University

The theory of random walks has found a fruitful application in electoral redistricting, by allowing us to sample from the partitions of a state into districts.  By comparing a plan to neutral alternatives, we can measure the extent of gerrymandering—when one party takes advantage of the authority to draw the lines. At this Frontiers in Science Lecture and 2020 Karlovitz Lecture, Moon Duchin will discuss some surprisingly simple questions about graphs and geometry that can help us make advances in policy and civil rights. This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Mathematics.

Thursday, March 26
6:30pm to 7:30pm
Kendeda Building (Auditorium)
Learn more and attend

April 20: "Exploring The Origin of Multicellular Life by Evolving it, From Scratch, in a Test Tube"

William Croft Ratcliff, Associate Professor, School of Biological Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

The evolution of multicellularity is one of the most significant innovations in the history of life, but it happened so long ago that early steps in this process remain poorly understood. We've taken an unorthodox approach to this problem: rather than study ancient multicellular life, we are evolving it from scratch, leveraging the combined strengths of synthetic biology and directed evolution. In this talk, I will describe our work examining how single cells evolve into simple clumps of cells, and how, over thousands of generations, these early multicellular organisms solve fundamental physical and developmental challenges in surprising and ingenious ways. Our work has helped change the way our field views evolutionary constraints on major transitions like multicellularity, lending direct experimental support to the Jurassic Park school of thought: "Life, uh, finds a way".

Monday, April 20
6:30pm to 7:30pm
Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons (Room 152)
Learn more and attend

Rescheduled for Fall 2020 Frontiers: "Time, Einstein, and the Coolest Stuff in the Universe"

The College of Sciences regrets to announce that William Daniel Phillips is unable to present this Frontiers in Science lecture originally scheduled for March 10. We look forward to welcoming Phillips to Georgia Tech for a rescheduled lecture this fall!

William Daniels Phillips, National Institute of Standards and Technology and a co-recipient of the 1997 Nobel Prize in Physics

At the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein changed how we think about time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times lower than any naturally occurring temperature in the universe.   

Atomic clocks, the best timekeepers ever made, are one of the scientific and technological wonders of modern life.  Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the global positioning system (GPS), which guides cars, airplanes, and hikers to their destinations. 

Today, the best primary atomic clocks use ultracold atoms, achieve accuracies of about one second in 300 million years, and are getting better all the time. At the same time, a new generation of atomic clocks is leading us to re-define what we mean by time.  

Super-cold atoms, with temperatures that can be below a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, use and allow tests of some of Einstein's strangest predictions. 

This public lecture will be a lively, multimedia presentation, including exciting experimental demonstrations and down-to-earth explanations about some of today's hottest (and coolest) science. This lecture is co-sponsored by the School of Physics.

In 2019, the inaugural event, also at Georgia Tech, had to be cut short due to inclement weather, but many of last year’s speakers are returning. SCMB Director Christine Heitsch is expecting a great turnout and a jolt of kinetic energy as a world-class community of researchers descends on the Georgia Tech campus to advance the mathematics of complex biological systems, highlighting the challenges and opportunities at the math-bio interface, and sharing their latest research.

The talks will be delivered at a colloquium level of detail, with the aim of engaging mathematicians and biologists alike.

“The research that will be presented at the symposium are motivating examples of the power of pursuing questions at the interface of math and biology,” says Heitsch, professor in the School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech. “And I’m very excited about the new ideas and synergy that will emerge from this event, where there will be lots of time to engage in casual discussions between the formal presentations.”

In addition to the scheduled talks, the symposium will include meals, snack breaks, and a poster session for maximum interaction.

The speakers are among the best and brightest in their field, from across the country:

•  Guo-Wei Wei (Michigan State University)

•  Amina Qutub (University of Texas at San Antonio)

•  Kristen Naegle (University of Virginia)

•  Konstantin Mischaikow (Rutgers University)

•  Alexander Anderson (Moffitt Cancer Center)

•  Amy Shaub Maddox (University of North Carolina/Chapel Hill)

•  Caroline Uhler (Massachusetts Institute of Technology)

The SCMB is one of four National Science Foundation (NSF) ­– Simons Research Centers for Mathematics and Complex Biological Systems. It is headquartered at Georgia Tech; other member regional institutions of the SCMB are the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Tulane University, the University of South Florida, the University of Florida, Clemson University, and Duke University.

SCMB Registration Information

But the long term answer is: This is how you begin to train the next generation of researchers to answer the central questions about living systems and tackle the toughest problems in bio-research. That, in a nutshell, is what the SCMB was created to do, as one of four centers established by The National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Simons Foundation. Together they have invested $40 million to establish the four centers. The global mission of the centers is to interrogate complex biological systems, including parsing the relationship between genome and phenome.

The first step, as SCMB Director Christine Heitsch (professor of mathematics at Georgia Tech and a researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience) has said from the beginning, “is getting mathematicians and bioscience investigators collaborating on research.”

The 24 students who participated in the workshop at Georgia Tech just before the fall semester started represented 18 different colleges, including Georgia Tech. The others were: American University, Calvin College, the College of William & Mary, Converse College, Duke, Olivet College, Robert Morris University, Spelman, Texas A&M, Virginia Commonwealth, Virginia Tech, the University of Chicago, University of Georgia, University of Louisiana-Lafayette, University of South Carolina, University of South Florida, and the University of Virginia.

The idea behind the workshop “was to expose mathematics and biology students to research topics from the other field in an accessible, hands-on manner,” explained Daniel Cruz, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech, and part of the SCMB team, working collaboratively with Elena Dimitrova (associate professor at California Polytechnic State University) and Melissa Kemp (associate professor at Georgia Tech, and a researcher in the Petit Institute). The workshop topic was “Molecular Origami,” an area with rich conceptual interplay between math and biology, and also very contemporary, technology-driven applications. In addition to the research discussions, “we also incorporated advice on career development in and out of academia,” Cruz said.

One highlight that all of the undergrad participants seemed to have enjoyed was a tour of Francesca Storici’s lab. Storici is an SCMB team lead, professor in the School of Biological Sciences, and  Petit Institute researcher. “Students were excited about this tour because it provided them with nontrivial activities in a laboratory setting,” Cruz said.

In Storici’s lab, Ph.D. student and SCMB researcher Youngkyu Jeon demonstrated that DNA fragments can be digested by “cutting” proteins which cleave to DNA molecules at specific recognition sites determined by the DNA sequence itself. Because the recognition sequence is relatively short, longer DNA molecules may contain multiple recognition sites and would therefore be cut into multiple pieces. Jeon visualized the DNA molecules by running them through a gel using an electrical current (a process called gel electrophoresis), which separated out the molecules by size.

The undergrads caught on quickly to the principles of the experiment. “They asked insightful questions,” said Jeon, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in biology. “Different restriction endonucleases target different recognition sites, but there can be overlap in what they recognize. One student correctly figured out that multiple endonucleases could be used to cut the same site, and choosing the best one will depend on things like the state of the DNA ends once they are sheared.”

Student feedback also gave high marks to the lectures provided by Cruz and Margherita Maria Ferrari (a postdoc at the University of South Florida), who together managed the math component of the workshop. “We gave them opportunities to collaborate with their fellow students in applying what we had discussed,” said Cruz, who thought the activities the students engaged in, “gave them an appreciation for mathematics as a way to understand the world outside, apart from just numerical equations.” The development of the mathematics component of the workshop was guided by Nataša Jonoska of the University of South Florida, Ferrari’s academic mentor and Cruz’s former Ph.D. advisor.

Cruz makes an important point here – many people tend to believe that math is only about proofs or calculations, or cold numbers. SCMB and its fellow NSF centers (at Harvard, Northwestern, and the University of California-Irvine) intend to develop and apply mathematics as a useful tool to study nature, and the complex processes that underlie biology.

“I think that mathematicians and biologists are opening up to the idea that there are both interesting mathematical questions that arise from biology settings and plenty of biology questions that can be answered in unexpected ways through mathematics,” Cruz said. “These cross-disciplinary collaborations give both students and researchers a larger perspective when it comes to understanding problems and forming solutions, and I hope that more and more researchers see this as time goes on.”

The Exploration Expo comes at the end of the two week long Atlanta Science Festival, which includes events all over the city. The Expo is Atlanta’s biggest interactive science event and caters to adults, families, and children of all ages and interests. Each year it features over 100 interactive exhibits, hands-on experiments, and mind-blowing demos from local universities, businesses, and community organizations.

Mathapalooza! is supported by mathematics students and faculty and Atlanta universities, including Georgia Tech, Emory, Kennesaw State University, and Spelman College, and was part of the weeklong events around the city coordinated this year by the Atlanta Science Festival.

On the first day of the camp, the middle schoolers explored how the four DNA "letters" (A, T, G, and C) encode the complexity of life by counting the number of strings of a given length that can be built from the four letters, and they used Hamiltonian paths to reconstruct DNA sequences out of fragments. On the second day, the students learned about the heritability of blood type and how to use Punnett squares to calculate the probability of inheriting a particular type based on parental genotypes. On the last day, the students got a taste of robotics and artificial intelligence by playing "Game of Life," an interactive game in complex outcomes can arise from simple rules and initial circumstances.

Dimitrova is a senior researcher at SCMB. As a mathematician, she uses computational algebra to solve problems in molecular and cell biology. Currently, her SCMB-funded seed project in collaboration with Melissa Kemp of Georgia Tech investigates how stem cells form patterns arising from cell-cell communication.

Bubenik is a senior researcher at SCMB. He is a mathematician working in topological data analysis, and currently collaborating with Hang Lu of Georgia Tech to understand the genetic control of morphological phenotype in their SCMB-funded seed project.

The effect of this “mechanical diffraction” allowed researchers to observe how the snakes’ trajectories were altered through passive mechanisms governed by the skeletal and muscular dynamics of the animals’ propagating body waves. The researchers studied live snakes as they slithered through an obstacle made up of six force-sensitive rigid pegs that buckled the animals’ bodies, changing their paths in predictable ways.

The results, described February 25 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, indicate that the Western Shovel-nosed snakes (Chionactis occipitalis) do not deliberately change direction when they encounter obstacles while speeding across the sand. Understanding the movement of these limbless animals could help engineers improve the control of autonomous search and rescue robots designed to operate on sand, grass and other complex environments. 

“The idea behind passive dynamics is that there are waveform shape changes being made by the animal that are driven entirely by the passive properties of their bodies,” said Perrin Schiebel, a recent Ph.D. graduate of the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “Instead of sending a signal to activate a muscle, the interaction of the snakes’ bodies with the external environment is what causes the shape change. The forces of the obstacles are pushing the snake bodies into a new shape.”

The colorful shovel-nosed snake normally uses a sinusoidal S-shaped wave to move across the deserts of the Southwest United States. Running into rigid pegs in a laboratory environment doesn’t lead it to actively change that waveform, which Schiebel and colleagues studied using high-speed video cameras with eight different animals. 

In a study supported by the National Science Foundation, Army Research Office, Defense Advanced Projects Agency, and a National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship, the researchers used 253 snake trips to build up a diffraction pattern. Remarkably, the pattern also revealed that the scattering directions were “quantized” such that the probability of finding a snake behind the array could be represented in a pattern mimicking wave interference. A computational model was able to capture the pattern, demonstrating how the snakes’ direction would be altered by obstacle encounters via passive body buckling.

“One problem with robots moving in the real world is that we don’t yet have principles by which we can understand how best to control these robots on granular surfaces like sand, leaf litter, rubble or grass,” said Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Physics and a researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. “The point of this study was to try to understand how limbless locomotors, which have long bodies that can bend in interesting ways using potentially complicated neuromechanical control schemes, manage to move through complicated terrain.”

The snake experiment was suggested by a robotic study done by postdoctoral fellow Jennifer Rieser, who found similar behavior among robots encountering obstacles.

“The robot tends to have aspects that mimic features of the subatomic world — the quantum world,” Goldman explained. “When it collides with barriers, a robot propagates through those barriers using waves of body bending. Its trajectory deviates as it exits the barriers, and many repeated trials reveal a ‘lumpy’ scattering pattern, analogous to experiments. We realized that we could use this surprising and beautiful phenomenon, classical physics but with self-propulsion a key feature, as a scattering experiment to interrogate the control scheme used by the snakes.”

Experimentally, the researchers used a “snake arena” covered with shag carpet to mimic sand. Undergraduate students Alex Hubbard and Lillian Chen released the snakes one at a time into the arena and encouraged them to slither through the grating.

The eyes of the desert snakes are naturally covered with scales to protect them. The researchers used children’s face paint to temporarily “blindfold” the animals so they would not be distracted by the researchers. The paint did not harm the animals.

“When we put the snakes down in the arena, they started moving using the same waveform they use on desert sand,” explained Schiebel. “They would then encounter the dowel grating, pass through it, and continue on the other side still using that waveform.”

Instead of continuing to travel through the arena in a straight line, the snakes would exit at a different angle, though they did not grab the posts or use them to assist their movement. Schiebel worked with Zeb Rocklin, a Georgia Tech assistant professor of physics, to model the directional changes. The model showed how simple interactions between the snakes' wave pattern and the grating produce patterns of favored scattering directions.

“We think the snake is essentially operating in a model that control engineers would consider ‘open loop,’” said Goldman. “It is setting a particular motor program on its body, which generates the characteristic wave pattern, and when it collides with the obstacle, its body mechanics allow it to deform and move the posts without degrading its speed.”

Goldman believes the work could help developers of snake-like robots improve their control schemes.

“We think that our discoveries of the role of passive dynamics in the snake can facilitate new snake robot designs that will enable them to move through complex environments more fluidly,” he said. “The goal would be to build search and rescue robots that can get into these complex environments and help first responders.”

And as a bonus, Goldman said, “We find that the richness of interactions between self-propelled systems like snakes and robots with their environment is fascinating from the standpoint of ‘active matter’ physics.”

This work was supported by National Science Foundation Physics of Living Systems program awards PHY-1205878, PHY-1150760 and CMMI-1361778; by the Army Research Office through award W911NF-11-1-0514; U.S. DoD National Defense Science and Engineering Graduate Fellowship (NDSEG) 32 CFR 168a; and by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) Young Faculty Award. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor organizations.

CITATION: Perrin E. Schiebel, et al., “Mechanical diffraction reveals the role of passive dynamics in a slithering snake,” (Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2019).

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“We are so pleased to bring Dr. Lozier to Georgia Tech as dean of the College of Sciences,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “She brings with her a rich history of leadership, but also a tremendous legacy as a mentor, colleague, researcher, and educator.”

Lozier has been a faculty member at Duke University since 1992. During her tenure at Duke, she has served in various leadership roles including department chair, faculty senate chair, vice provost for strategic planning, and co-chair of Duke’s effort to reimagine graduate education. She recently completed a term as the president of the Oceanography Society and, as of January 2019, is president-elect of the American Geophysical Union.

“I am thrilled to join Georgia Tech as the next dean for the College of Sciences,” said Lozier. “I look forward to working with the administration, faculty, staff, and students to continue the pursuit of both fundamental and convergent science, and to support mechanisms that encourage bold ideas, entrepreneurial efforts, and productive partnerships.”

Lozier’s research interests include large-scale ocean circulation and its impact on climate, meridional overturning circulation and its variability, pathways of ocean flow, and physical constraints on marine primary productivity. She is currently the international lead for an ocean observing system in the North Atlantic. Over her career, she has been the recipient of numerous awards. She was the recipient of an NSF Early Career Award in 1996, was awarded a Bass Chair for Excellence in Research and Teaching in 2000, and received a Duke University Award for Excellence in Mentoring in 2007, among others. She is an American Meteorological Society Fellow (2008), American Geophysical Union Fellow (2014), and American Association for the Advancement of Science Fellow (2015).  She was awarded the American Geophysical Union Ambassador Award in 2016 for leadership in the ocean sciences community.  

She was one of three finalists in the international search for the dean of the College of Sciences. The search committee was chaired by Pinar Keskinocak, William W. George Chair in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Jennifer Herazy, chief administrative officer for Academic and Research Administration, served as search director. Following the departure of Dean Paul Goldbart, Professor David M. Collard has served as the interim dean since Aug. 1.

Lozier received a bachelor’s degree in chemical engineering from Purdue University and a master of science degree in chemical engineering and Ph.D. in physical oceanography from the University of Washington.

“Many thanks to the hard-working search committee who served under the leadership of Provost Bras, Dr. Keskinocak, and Dr. Herazy,” said. President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “A special thanks also to Interim Dean Collard who has done a tremendous job during the leadership transition. The College has been in his very capable hands, and I know Dr. Lozier’s vision will allow us to continue to advance the goals of the College of Sciences and the Institute as a whole.”

As she was finishing her Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, she found her interest wandering to other disciplines. She took a two-year postdoctoral fellowship in a medical school studying neurogenetics.

“It was partially serendipitous. I didn’t know this was the thing I would do,” she said, referring to her research work. But those two years gave her a chance to test things, explore, and — as she puts it — play.

Read the full story

Dr. Heitsch is Professor of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, with courtesy appointments in Biological Sciences and Computational Science & Engineering as well as an affiliation with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience.

She is also Director of the new Southeast Center for Mathematics and Biology (SCMB), an NSF-Simons MathBioSys Research Center, and finishing her tenure directing the GT Interdisciplinary Mathematics Preparation and Career Training (IMPACT) Postdoctoral Program.

Heitsch's research interests lie at the interface between discrete mathematics and molecular biology, specifically combinatorial problems "as motivated by" and "with applications to" fundamental biomedical questions like RNA folding.

“I’m delighted to represent the Coulter Department in this capacity on the study section,” said Kemp, associate professor with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory.

“We review proposals that are highly relevant to biomedical engineering, such as the advancement of modeling methods, the investigation of human health challenges through systems biology, and applications of engineering principles – like synthetic biology design – to the therapeutic development and studying of diseases,” added Kemp, a researcher with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Georgia Tech.

Study section members are selected based on their demonstrated competence and achievement in their scientific disciplines, as evidenced by the quality of their research accomplishments and publications in scientific journals, among other things. Kemp, a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar, focuses her research on understanding how metabolism influences the decisions that cells make.

The CSR utilizes peer review groups, or study sections, to evaluate 75 percent of the research grant applications sent to NIH. These groups make recommendations to the appropriate NIH national advisory council or board, and survey the status of research in their fields of science, critical functions in the area of medical and allied research in the U.S.

“This appointment represents a true coming-of-age for an investigator,” noted Susan Margulies, Coulter Department chair and Petit Institute researcher. “Dr. Kemp’s section membership brings important visibility to our department.”

Kemp’s term began in July and will run through June 30, 2022.

NSF Article

Simons Article