The University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents (BOR) appointed 12 Georgia Tech faculty members to Regents Professors and Regents Researchers.

Reappointments to the title of Regents Professor are:

• John Stasko, professor in the College of Computing
• Catherine Ross, Harry West Professor of City and Regional Planning in the College of Design and adjunct professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Timothy Lieuwen, David S. Lewis Jr. Chair in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering and adjunct professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
• Ajay Kohli, Gary T. and Elizabeth R. Jones Chair in Management in the Ernest J. Scheller Jr. College of Business

 

Appointments to the title of Regents Professor are:

• Amy Bruckman, professor in the College of Computing
• John Cressler, Schlumberger Chair in Electronics in the College of Engineering
• Gregory Gibson, Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the College of Sciences
• Charles David Sherrill, professor in the College of Computing and the College of Sciences

 

Appointments to the title of Regents Researcher are:

• David Gottfried, principal research scientist and senior assistant director of the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology
• Glenn Parker, principal research engineer and associate director of the Applied Systems Laboratory in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI)
• Gregory Showman, principal research engineer and GTRI Fellow, Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory

 

And one reappointment to the title of Regents Researcher:

• Michael Rodgers, principal research scientist in the College of Engineering

 

“It was a pleasure to nominate these outstanding faculty members for recognition by the Board of Regents,” said Steven W. McLaughlin, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. “I'd like to congratulate and thank each of them for their exemplary leadership and service, commitment to excellence in research and scholarship, and dedication to the education, growth, and well-being of our students.”  

Each year, the college deans may nominate two academic faculty members for the Regents Professor title and one research faculty member for the Regents Researcher title. GTRI may nominate two research faculty members for Regents Researcher. The titles are awarded upon approval of the USG chancellor and its Committee on Academic Affairs only with unanimous recommendation of the Institute Regents Professor and Researcher Selection Committee, the Institute’s president, the executive vice president for Research, and the provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs.

The BOR approved the nominations on Aug. 10.

Please note that these interviews were conducted, and photos were taken, during the summer semester prior to Institute Operations Updates published August 2, 2021 in preparation for fall semester, which include: “To lower the risk for you and others, you are encouraged to wear a mask in indoor public places, including campus buildings, as recommended by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).”

 

Faith Colbert, a rising senior at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, was born in Dallas, Texas. When her home state experienced a dangerous, deep cold spell in February of this year, the atmospheric sciences and meteorology major figured the best way she could help her family would be to study that catastrophic weather event. 

A National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REU) program at Georgia Tech that she had enrolled in for summer 2021 gave her that chance. More students will soon have a similar opportunity; starting in summer 2022, for the first time, all six College of Sciences schools will offer an REU. 

“My motivation was mainly driven by emotional pulls,” Colbert says. “My family being directly affected by the storm pushed me to find research-based answers for both them and me.”

The REU that enabled her to conduct that research was the Aquatic Chemical Ecology at Georgia Tech summer research program, an interdisciplinary REU with the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS), Biological Sciences, and Chemistry and Biochemistry. EAS also has its own REU: Georgia Tech Broadening Participation in Atmospheric Science, Oceanography, and Geosciences research program. 

Sara Cuevas-Quiñones, a second year student at Purdue University, attended both of those REUs this summer. She’s a physics major but had a chance to explore planetary sciences with her research project on potential volcanic activity near Mars’ Jezero Crater, where NASA’s Perseverance Rover is currently exploring.

“I’ve never had research experiences before,” Cuevas-Quiñones says. “It's been a great environment, great people. It's been wonderful working with all my peers, and just learning about them, seeing where they come from, what they're researching. Many people here are in totally different fields. That's also been interesting, to get exposed to these new things that I had no idea even existed, honestly.”

Georgia Tech’s REUs give Cuevas-Quiñones and other students — particularly those from underrepresented communities and those who are enrolled at universities without research opportunities found at Tech — a chance to get in the lab, or out in the field. The experiences also give students from smaller colleges and universities the opportunity to use state-of-the-art equipment, and to be mentored by top Georgia Tech researchers.

That was the situation for Meredith Clayton, who is set to graduate this December from Stephen F. Austin State University (enrollment: 13,000) in Nacogdoches, Texas. She attended this year’s Mathematics Research Experiences for Undergraduates REU at Georgia Tech. “It was great just to meet other math majors from different universities. Georgia Tech's a great environment and campus — all the faculty are awesome that I've met. It's just been a really good time.”

Last December, Lydia Jefferson, a rising senior at the University of Missouri, did a Google search for REUs that addressed “aquatic chemistry for environmental science, stream ecology, — anything I could find. Georgia Tech popped up near the top,” Jefferson says.

Jefferson was obviously water-focused when it came to REUs. “But it was interesting seeing people interested in the race side of things — of environmental justice problems in flooding issues. Just anything in the environment was free game. And I didn't realize, going in, that it would be that diverse. I assumed all of us would be water-focused.”

“This experience was just eye opening for how other people communicate their science, how other people present,” they add. “I'm learning the ins and outs of presentations.”

Jefferson hopes to get a Ph.D. in aquatic sciences and then apply at a US National Laboratory, or perhaps the United States Geological Survey.

“Wherever the water takes me.”

 

 

Georgia Tech College of Sciences: All about our REUs — and their leaders

 

REUs are sponsored and funded for science and math programs in higher education by the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

This year, 3M also sponsored a student in the EAS REU. Some of the College of Sciences REUs accept Georgia Tech students, while others are limited to out-of-state students. Check the links for acceptance requirements of each REU.

David Collard, senior associate dean in the College, who previously led the REU program in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry for more than a decade, shares that “NSF REU programs in the College of Sciences have a long record of engaging diverse cohorts of participants in cutting edge research.” 

“Since most of the undergraduate participants are recruited from institutions that do not have extensive research infrastructure, the immersive research experience available to them in these programs can be transformational,” he says. “A measure of success of the REU programs in the College of Sciences is that many of the undergraduate participants subsequently go on to complete their Ph.D., some at Georgia Tech, and others elsewhere.”

Collard highlights that “the new additions to the College's set of NSF REU programs — in neuroscience and in atmospheric science, oceanography, and geosciences — represent a strong commitment of the School of Psychology, the School of Biological Sciences, and the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences to broadening participation and fostering inclusivity in research careers.” 

“In each school, there is very much a team effort in running these programs,” he adds, “and the coordination of these efforts between the schools is a particularly important feature in allowing us to provide high quality programs.”

 

REU: Aquatic Chemical Ecology Summer Research Program (ACE)

 

Hosted by the Schools of Biological Sciences, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Civil & Environmental Engineering, Chemistry & Biochemistry, Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Brian Hammer, associate professor, School of Biological Sciences and ACE co-director:

Our Aquatic Chemical Ecology (ACE) REU program has been running since 2004. Our program hosts about 10 students each summer for a 10-week research experience in the lab of a Georgia Tech scientist. 

NSF's intent is to support research opportunities that recruit students from non-Ph.D. institutions where such opportunities are rare. This summer we hosted 9 ACE students. Joshua Weitz and his Weitz Group also hosted 3 students with support from the Simon's Foundation and they joined our ACE cohort this summer. This summer, two of our ACE REU students (were) on a research cruise in the Gulf of Mexico!

The goal of our ACE REU is to train students in an interdisciplinary setting, where they interact with a variety of other students and faculty to experience how scientific discoveries are made. They learn about career opportunities in scientific disciplines related to aquatic chemical ecology, they develop mentoring relationships that ignite their desire to pursue scientific careers, and they strengthen their ability to do so through enhanced communication skills, professional ethics training, and exposure to career-building information.  

 

REU: Broadening Participation in Atmospheric Science, Oceanography and Geosciences Research 

 

Hosted by the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Zachary Handlos, academic professional and REU professional development lead, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences:

The goal of this REU program is to provide undergraduate students, especially underrepresented students  — as well as those with limited to no research opportunities at their college or university — the opportunity to participate in world-class research at a major research university with leading experts in the fields of atmospheric sciences, oceanography and the geosciences. 

Along with learning the skills and tools required to actively participate within a research project, participants attend a variety of professional development and social events that prepare them for research-based career and graduate school opportunities. They also foster collaborations with experts and colleagues within their field of study, and network and develop lifelong friendships with other participants within their program.

Professional development opportunities focus on best practices for conducting research, strategies for writing research papers/conducting research presentations, tips for applying to graduate school, and discussions on topics related to diversity, equity and inclusion. Social activities, while limited this year due to the Covid-19 pandemic, range from field trips to local Atlanta tourist attractions, to companies/organizations relevant to students' career interests.

To my knowledge, the students are having a wonderful time, and the impression I get is that they are so happy to be working in-person at a college campus performing research with other undergraduate students and Georgia Tech faculty. Since last year was supposed to be our first year running this program, but was cancelled due to the Covid-19 pandemic, this year was really our true first year.

The tone was set immediately on day one when I emailed the students arriving on campus to ask if everything was going okay. One student simply responded to my email question with a picture of the majority of the EAS REU students at the grocery store, buying supplies for the summer, and all were smiling.  

This is the most exciting research program I have ever been a part of. These students are amazing people who are highly talented at research. They’re creative, strongly motivated, and most importantly, they’re kind, respectful, and constantly striving to make the world a better place through their work. While they may have learned a lot from this program, I learned a lot from them! They are excellent role models, and it's an honor and a privilege to have worked with them.

 

REU: Broadening Participation Summer Undergraduate Research Program in Physics 

 

Hosted by the School of Physics

Jennifer Curtis, associate professor and REU director, School of Physics:

The GT Physics REU program offers a wide range of cutting-edge independent research projects to a diverse group of undergraduates from around the country. 

Students have explored a wide range of physical phenomena including Bose-Einstein condensation, quantum properties of magnetic materials, gravitational waves, computational astrophysics, physics of living systems, and soft condensed matter. 

The program stands out for its commitment to broadening participation in physics by a diverse cohort of students. To facilitate its goal to broaden participation in physics, the GT REU program is dedicated to building connections with the Atlanta University Consortium (Morehouse College, Spelman College, Clark Atlanta University), with approximately 20 percent of the students originating from those institutions. Since 2018, AUC students have been offered additional funding to continue their research collaboration with GT research groups. 

Shaun Ashley, faculty support coordinator and REU coordinator, School of Physics:

I had the pleasure and opportunity to create a more engaging and holistic experience for students by serving as a mentor and the “go to person” for any concerns the students experienced during the program. 

This has allowed me to foster long lasting relationships that span from 2016 to present. For example, students continue to reach out to me to guide them with graduate applications, other summer research programs and even to be a sounding board about whether they should continue to graduate school or take a wellness break. 

My responses are always positive and encouraging: Education first, or education and work!

 

REU: Chemistry Function, Application, Structure and Theory (FAST) 

 

Hosted by the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Michael Evans, senior academic professional and freshman chemistry laboratory coordinator, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry:

REUs have been a long-standing priority for our school for many years, for undergraduate chemistry and biochemistry majors outside and inside Georgia Tech. REU programs are a win-win for students and faculty, as students receive valuable training, and faculty can further their research efforts. These programs also increase the visibility and prestige of Georgia Tech research programs nationally.

I think much of our success with REU programs flows from a commitment to building up research by undergraduates at Georgia Tech. Because of that history and the quality of Georgia Tech students, our faculty are very comfortable working with undergraduates. Our expanding list of programs builds on that solid foundation.

 

REU: Human Neuroscience Research and Techniques 

 

First offering: Summer 2022; hosted by Georgia Tech School of Psychology and Georgia State University

Lewis Wheaton, associate professor, School of Biological Sciences, REU co-director (Eric Schumacher, professor in the School of Psychology, is the principal investigator for the Neuroscience REU; Wheaton is co-PI):

There is tremendous interest in neuroscience, and we have seen an incredible expansion of technology in our ability to record from the human nervous system. At the same time, many students do not have access to these technologies at their academic institutions because of expense. 

We feel that it is vital to ensure that students who do not have access to these technologies at their universities get exposure to the tools and approaches to understand the human brain. I am excited to further focus on providing opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities to engage in this research. 

A unique feature of this program allows some students to come back for a two-year experience, which can really provide a great opportunity to enhance their research, and put these students in a stronger position to advance their careers.

 

REU: Mathematics Research Experiences for Undergraduates 

 

Hosted by the School of Mathematics

Dan Margalit, professor and REU co-director, School of Mathematics:

On the face of it, the REU is a chance for undergraduate students to pursue a research project in mathematics with a more senior mentor. As mentors, we do our best to airlift the students into the center of a research problem, where there are calculations to be done, examples to be discovered, or specific arguments to be made. Personally, I am always impressed with the students' fearlessness and their abilities to make meaningful contributions. 

Besides the obvious benefit of being able to contribute to cutting edge research in mathematics, the REU has many other goals and benefits. For many students, the REU is a chance to get a taste of what graduate school might be like, and to decide if they want to apply. We run a professional development program on various topics such as applying to graduate school, creating a poster, and designing a presentation. 

This year, we started a graduate research experience boot camp with several other Atlanta schools. On top of this, the students gain valuable experience learning to work together in groups, to think about the big picture of science and mathematics, and to communicate mathematics effectively.

From my perspective, I get to see the students experience the highs and lows of research — from the excitement of thinking they have a solution, to the despair of thinking that everything they did is wrong, and back again. In the end, our students take many more steps forward than backwards, and I am very proud of what they all accomplished this summer.

 

A key member of Georgia Tech’s Covid-19 response team will continue his research on viruses in the fall of 2021, but will be conducting those studies from Paris, France, thanks to receiving a prestigious award designed to foster more collaboration among international scientists.

Joshua Weitz, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences, is one of four 2021 recipients of the Blaise Pascal International Chair of Excellence. Weitz will be based at the Institute of Biology at the École Normale Supérieure (IBENS) in Paris. Previous winners of the Pascal Chair of Excellence include several Nobel Prize recipients. 

Weitz’s work in Paris, which will last one year, will involve research and educational components that will bring attention to Georgia Tech in the global science community. 

“Altogether, this integrative research and educational program will help connect initiatives developed in the College of Sciences with a broad, international community,” Weitz says. 

“The central aim of my project is to deepen understanding of the entangled fates of viruses and their hosts. In doing so, my research program spans viral ecology, evolution, and epidemiology. It will also be shaped by necessity, as a significant amount of my time — and that of my group — remains directed towards developing mathematical models, real-time dashboards, and public health-centered intervention tools to understand and mitigate the spread of SARS-CoV-2.“

Background on rapid testing, Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool

Weitz came up with the concept for the Covid-19 Event Risk Assessment Planning Tool, which measures the risk that one or more individuals infected with COVID-19 are present in an event of various sizes. Weitz, along with Clio Andris, assistant professor in the College of Design, and researchers from the Applied Bioinformatics Laboratory, Duke University, and Stanford University developed the Tool’s website and dashboard. Weitz says the tool has helped more than 8 million visitors make tens of millions of risk estimates since its July 2020 launch.

Weitz is also part of the team that developed a rapid saliva-based asymptomatic surveillace testing program for the Georgia Tech community — a program credited with keeping infection levels low on campus.

“I am proud of having served, along with Greg Gibson, and many faculty and staff colleagues, as part of an interdisciplinary team to implement an asymptomatic testing program in the 2020-21 academic year in support of the Institute’s response efforts to protect the safety of our community – and support ongoing efforts to ensure that science and public health evidence shapes response policy at Georgia Tech and throughout the University System of Georgia,” Weitz says. Gibson is also a Georgia Tech School of Biological Sciences professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair, and was recently named a Regents’ Professor for his service in research and teaching.

“Moving ahead, the ongoing spread of the Delta variant, and potential spread of variants to come, necessitates a sustained response, bridging fundamental models with public-facing interventions,” Weitz adds. “To this end, I look forward to continuing to work with a network of colleagues to advance a rigorous, data-driven, and open approach to pandemic response, mitigation, and prevention. This will be a long-term effort and I have already begun the process to engage with international colleagues to share approaches and lessons learned.”

Joining international scientists in researching viruses — and how to beat them

The Blaise Pascal Research Chair award will aid in that effort. According to its website, the program “is intended to bring international researchers to French institutions in the Ile de France region (Paris and nearby) for year-long research stays, to facilitate research collaboration with French-based teams, and to support the training of the next generation of France-based junior researchers.” 

Weitz was selected as part of the 2019 cohort, which includes scientists from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Connecticut, and the University of Glasgow. The 2020 cohort was postponed due to the pandemic.

Weitz will work with his colleagues at the Institute of Biology at the École Normale Supérieure to advance foundational understanding of viral infections of single cell microbes, including the study of infections that don’t necessarily lead to the death of the infected cell. “Latent (or chronic) infections of single-celled microbes can paradoxically provide benefits to both viruses and infected cells, yet the relationship can be tenuous,” Weitz says. “Understanding virus-microbe interactions on a continuum from antagonistic to mutualistic has implications for improving human health and the health of the environment.”

On the human health side, Weitz will be collaborating with Laurent Debarbieux of the Institut Pasteur in Paris to advance the use of bacteriophage for therapeutic treatment of antibiotic resistant bacterial infections. Bacteriophages (also called phages) are viruses that exclusively infect and eliminate bacteria, and they are increasingly being used in therapeutic contexts given the potential for elimination of targeted pathogens. “I am currently the principal investigator, along with Professor Debarbieux, of a National Institutes of Health R01 grant on phage treatment of acute respiratory infections caused by bacterial pathogens. In the coming year, I intend to explore the potential to utilize phage to target pathogens that persist in chronic infections as part of complex microbiomes.”

Environment and education round out Weitz’s work in France

The environmental aspect of Weitz’s work in France will see him build on his group’s existing relationship with a global network of researchers to advance understanding of viral impacts on surface ocean ecosystems. This work, supported by the National Science Foundation and the Simons Foundation, aims to understand how viral infections of key bacteria in surface ocean ecosystems modulates the fate of microbes and ecosystem functioning, including global carbon and biogeochemical cycles.  

“Collaborations with researchers in Israel and in France will help expand study sites for our ongoing work to integrate mathematical models of viral dynamics, along with time-series observations collected in ocean-going research expeditions,” he says. 

The educational component revolves around two major initiatives, one of which could end up on Georgia Tech’s campus. In the fall, Weitz will be co-teaching a short course on quantitative viral dynamics “as part of an effort to characterize how viral infections at cellular scales transform the fate of cells, organisms, and populations. I hope to bring this course back to Georgia Tech as part of an effort to introduce short-form summer courses affiliated with the Quantitative Biosciences Ph.D. Program, and the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection.”

Weitz is also in the process of developing a larger winter school and workshop for spring 2022, part of a joint project with the Q-Life Institute of Paris Sciences et Lettres University (PSL). “In many ways, the Q-Life Institute shares some of the same guiding principles of the Quantitative Biology Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech, and I look forward to learning more of their approach to integrate mechanisms, models, and data analytics into the principled study of living systems across scale.” The planned theme for the winter school/workshop will be viral dynamics, with more information to come later this fall.

This story is an update to the July 2021 announcement of this program: InQuBATE Training Program Integrates Modeling and Data Science for Bioscience Ph.D. Students

Three Ph.D. students — two from the College of Sciences — have been announced as the inaugural cohort for a new Georgia Tech training program designed to give biomedical researchers a deeper dive into quantitative, data-intensive studies. 

The trainees for the 2021 class of the Integrative and Quantitative Biosciences Accelerated Training Environment (InQuBATE) program, areas of study, and their advisors are:

• Kathryn (Katie) Wendorf MacGillivray, Quantitative Biosciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Program (advised by Will Ratcliff)
• Gabriella Chebli, Biological Sciences (advised by Julia Kubanek)
• Maxfield (Max) Comstock, Computational Science and Engineering (advised by Elizabeth Cherry)

As noted in the summer announcement of the program, the three students are part of a new five-year, $1.27 million grant from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) that creates the InQuBATE program to help transform the study of quantitative- and data-intensive biosciences at Georgia Tech. InQuBATE is designed to train a new generation of biomedical researchers and thought leaders to harness the data revolution.

“We want to improve and enhance the training of students to focus on biological questions while leveraging modern tools, and in some cases developing new tools, to address foundational challenges at scales from molecules to systems,” noted Joshua Weitz, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, in that announcement. Weitz is co-leading the program with Peng Qiu, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Biology is undergoing a transformation, added Weitz and Qiu, requiring a new educational paradigm that integrates quantitative approaches like computational modeling and data analytics into the experimental study of living systems.

“Our intention is to develop a training environment that instills a quantitative, data-driven mindset, integrating quantitative and data science methods into all aspects of the life science training pipeline,” added Weitz, founding director of Tech’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences (QBioS).

Meet the inaugural InQuBATE cohort

Kathryn (Katie) Wendorf MacGillivray
Quantitative Biosciences Interdisciplinary Graduate Program (advised by Will Ratcliff)

Katie Wendorf MacGillivray received a Master’s in Biology from New York University where she worked on phenotypic heterogeneity of antibiotic susceptibility in the lab of Edo Kussell. She is now a Ph.D. student in the Quantitative Biosciences program at Georgia Tech. In the Ratcliff Lab, she is interested in engineering yeast that can switch between life cycles – unicellular, clonal, and aggregative. Outside of the lab, she likes to knit, garden, and take road trips with her husband Ian. "I have a biology and chemistry background, and believe strongly that all biosciences research could benefit from the addition of computational modeling and/or data science approaches. That's why I chose QBioS for my PhD program in the first place," she says.

Gabriella Chebli
Biological Sciences (advised by Julia Kubanek)

Gabriella Chebli graduated from Agnes Scott College with a Bachelor of Science in Biology and Chemistry. While an undergraduate, she conducted research under the direction of Chemistry professor Thomas Morgan to revise the structure of a class of natural products called “hyloins” that are found in the frog species Boana punctata. Chebli also worked in the lab of Biology professor, Iris Levin, studying telomere length in adult barn swallows. Chebli first joined the Kubanek Lab as an REU participant, working on a metabolomics-based project on harmful algal blooms. After graduating from Agnes Scott, she took a gap year, where she volunteered with ecotourism kayak tours with Seaside Adventure in Kachemak Bay, Alaska and interned at the Lammi Biological Station in Lammi, Finland. In the Kubanek Lab, Chebli is researching chemical ecology and assisting with an algal biofuel ponds project and maintenance of phytoplankton cultures.

Maxfield (Max) Comstock
Computational Science and Engineering (advised by Elizabeth Cherry)

Comstock, originally from Seattle, Washington, received his undergraduate degrees in Math and Computer Science from Harvey Mudd College. “I'm honored to be part of the inaugural InQuBATE cohort, and am looking forward to working with all the amazing people involved with the program," he says. "I hope to gain experience collaborating with researchers from different backgrounds who may approach problems from a different perspective, and to learn new ways to apply computational techniques to important biomedical problems. I intend to continue tackling medical problems using these skills throughout the rest of my career.”

 

Georgia Tech continues to take a multipronged approach to preventing and mitigating the risk of coronavirus as more students, faculty, and staff return to campus this fall. Without question, the vaccine offers the best defense against the pandemic, and, if you have not done so, we urge you to consult with a medical professional and consider getting vaccinated now. Doing so at Tech is easy and free.

Additionally, all students, faculty, and staff are encouraged to participate each week in our free asymptomatic surveillance testing program, even if you have been fully vaccinated. We especially urge those who have not yet been vaccinated to get tested weekly. Find campus testing sites and locations.

Beginning today, Georgia Tech is introducing new rewards to encourage individuals to get vaccinated and test weekly:

• All students, faculty, and staff who get vaccinated at Stamps Health Services or participate in our campus surveillance testing program between now and end of day September 30, 2021, will be entered into a drawing to receive a $50 Barnes & Noble at Georgia Tech gift card. 350 individuals will be randomly selected the following week to each receive a gift card.
• Additionally, all students, faculty, and staff vaccinated on campus between now and end of day September 10, 2021, will also receive a $20 Barnes & Noble at Georgia Tech gift card.
• Through September 10, more than 1,000 $5 coupons for local restaurants, 350 limited edition Georgia Tech Athletics t-shirts, and several helmets and footballs signed by Coach Geoff Collins will also be distributed at random to campus test sites and vaccine clinics.
• Cookie drops continue at test sites, along with stickers at test sites and vaccine clinics.

If you are unvaccinated, you are at risk of contracting Covid-19 and infecting others, with potentially severe consequences for you or someone else. Please seek medical advice from your healthcare provider or a member of our Stamps Health Services team, led by Dr. Ben Holton, if you have doubts or concerns about getting vaccinated.

Like you, we want this academic year to be as safe as possible. The best way to achieve that outcome is for every member of the campus community to get vaccinated and continue to test weekly.

New research led by Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering finds that honey bees have developed a way to transform pollen particles into a viscoelastic pellet, allowing them to transport pollen efficiently, quickly, and reliably to their hive. The study also suggests the insects remove pollen from their bodies at speeds 2-10 times slower than their typical grooming speeds.

To collect and transport pollen, honey bees mix pollen particles with regurgitated nectar and form it into a pellet, which clings to each of their hind legs. The honey bees then deposit the pellets into a cell within the hive by carefully scraping them off using their other legs. 

The study, from the lab of George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Professor David Hu, sought to better understand the mechanics of this process which could inspire new ways to manufacture and manipulate soft materials. Hu holds a joint appointment in the School of Biological Sciences.

The paper, “Biomechanics of Pollen Removal By the Honey Bee,” is published in the Journal of the Royal Society Interface. 

“We measured the viscoelastic material properties of a pollen pellet,” said Marguerite Matherne, a recent Georgia Tech mechanical engineering Ph.D. graduate who now teaches at Northeastern University. “We found that the pellets have a really long relaxation time, which means they remain mostly in a solid form during the transport process. This is good because it keeps the pellet from melting or falling apart from vibration during flight.”

Matherne and the Georgia Tech research team also tried to replicate how honey bees remove the pellets from their hind legs in the lab. They built a device that scraped adhered pollen pellets from bee legs. The invention produced two discoveries. The first was that the honey bees were much more efficient in removing the pellet than the scraping device they built (the device left much more pollen residue on the leg). They also found that slower removal speeds reduce the force and work required to remove pellets under shear stress. 

“If you remove it slowly, you can avoid applying the excessive force required to remove it quickly,” said Hu, Matherne’s former Georgia Tech advisor. “Removing a pollen pellet is like the opposite of ripping off a Band-Aid.”

Matherne said that there are two key components to the efficiency of the honey bees transporting these pellets. First, the pellets are gooey, allowing them to stick to the hind legs. But, she said, the bees also have a special structure on their legs called the corbicula. It’s fringed with long, curved hairs and becomes embedded into the pellet, allowing for adhesion.

In addition, honey bees can collect pollen particles in various shapes and sizes, while also developing a way to transport them. This is different from other species of bees, which only collect and carry specific types of pollen that are similar in size. They also use different transport techniques.

“Honey bees collect from flowers miles and miles away,” said Hu. “The pollen can change in size by a factor of 10. They must collect all these individual particles and bring it back to one place. And they must do a dozen foraging trips each day, all while keeping their bodies clean. They solve it all by this special method they created to exploit the pellet’s soft material properties.”

The research team believes further studies could lead to new developments in medical patches or fastener applications for soft materials.

“It’s kind of like smart gooey Velcro for soft materials,” said Hu. “It could be a fastener and it knows when you’re trying to remove it so that you don’t have to use an excessive amount of force.”

Matherne suggests that it’s also important to understand the pollinating process since 35% of the world’s crop production depends on pollinators.

“Honey bees are really important pollinators,” said Matherne. “If we want to create a world where we can keep up our pollinators, I think it’s important to understand exactly what they’re doing.”

CITATION: Matherne, M., et.al., "Biomechanics of pollen pellet removal by the honey bee." (Journal of the Royal Society Interface) https://doi.org/10.1098/rsif.2021.0549

With large swaths of the country engulfed in flames, battered by winds, steeped in floodwaters, or parched by drought – tragic and costly conditions that a recent United Nations report links to global warming – Georgia Tech is looking forward to hosting the third annual Global Climate Action Symposium, Sept. 27 – 29.  

Bringing together a wide range of local and global experts to showcase climate change solutions, the event will be held in a fully virtual, online format for the second year due to the pandemic.

The online format has truly put the “global” in Global Climate Action Symposium, says Selena Langner, communications director for Georgia Tech’s Global Change Program, which spearheads the event in partnership with Tech’s Serve-Learn-Sustain, the Atlanta Global Studies Center, and six European consulates in Atlanta (France, Germany, Switzerland, the Netherlands, the U.K., and Belgium).

“One thing we learned during Covid,” Langner says, “was the benefit of having something virtual, beyond the sustainability aspect. The first year, we featured a mix of global and local experts, but our audience was inherently limited to the Tech community. When we went virtual last year, we reached attendees from 20 different countries.”

Free and open to all, each day of the symposium will run from 9 a.m. to 1 p.m. and focus on a specific aspect of the climate challenges ahead (see inset). Each session features a keynote speaker, a panel discussion, “Lightning Talks” by students and organizations, and a Masterclass. Experts include engineers, scientists, business and policy leaders, students, and artists.  

“We have an amazing lineup of speakers, including five student speakers,” Langner says. “We’ve also just added a Lightning Talk from 9-year-old activist Faatiha Aayat, from Bangladesh, who has spoken about climate on the international stage.” Other highlights include a smoothie tutorial from Concrete Jungle and the student art contest, which this year features submissions from Nigeria, the U.S., Switzerland, and South Africa.

“There’s never been a more important time to talk about climate solutions, and our faculty, students, and staff want to be a part of the conversation,” says Kim Cobb, Georgia Power Chair and ADVANCE Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and director of the Global Change Program. “We’re thrilled to showcase some of the many partners that make Georgia Tech the research and education hub that it is.”  

Symposium content will be made available to the general public on YouTube after the fact for those who aren’t able to watch the proceedings in real time as they unfold, Langner says, but she strongly encourages preregistration at bit.ly/GCAS2021.

“Registering in advance makes it really easy for anyone who’s interested,” she notes. “We have additional resources our panelists will be sharing early, we can send all the links by email, and we can share all of the Q&A and chat transcripts – we’ll even be sending out smoothie recipes.”

 

Held outdoors at Harrison Square this week, the inaugural September Sciences Celebration highlighted excellence in research and teaching across the College of Sciences, while also giving guests a chance to welcome new faculty and meet the donors and alumni who support the awards program.

The honors for seven faculty members and a student in the School of Mathematics were originally to be presented in fall 2020, but the recognition event was postponed due to the pandemic. The annual awards for faculty development and a scholarship are funded through the generosity of College of Sciences alumni and friends.

Here are the 2020-2021 College of Sciences awards and recipients, as shared by the College of Sciences Office of Development:

Cullen-Peck Fellowship Awards

This gift from alumni couple Frank Cullen (’73 Math, MS ’76, ISyE, PhD ’84 ISyE) and Elizabeth Peck (Math ’75, MS ’76 ISyE) is meant to encourage the development of promising mid-career faculty.

• Jennifer Curtis, associate professor, School of Physics. Curtis, who has a joint appointment in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences, is the primary investigator for the Curtis Lab, which researches the physics of cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions, in particular within the context of glycobiology and immunobiology.
• Steve Diggle, associate professor, School of Biological Sciences. Diggle, also a member of Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection, was recently selected to be a 2021 American Society of Microbiologists Distinguished Lecturer. Diggle researches cooperation and communication in microbes and how these are related to virulence, biofilms and antimicrobial resistance. 
• Chris Reinhard, associate professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Reinhard’s research explores the ways in which Earth's biosphere and planetary boundary conditions act to reshape ocean/atmosphere chemistry and climate, how these interactions have evolved over time, and how they might be engineered moving forward. Reinhard has also been active in the Georgia Tech Astrobiology community. 

Gretzinger Moving Forward Award

This award, named for Ralph Gretzinger (’70 Math) and his late wife Jewel, recognizes the leadership of a school chair or senior faculty member who has played a pivotal role in diversifying the composition of tenure-track faculty, creating a family-friendly work environment, and providing a supportive environment for early career faculty.

• Raquel Lieberman, professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Lieberman, principal investigator in the Lieberman Lab, researches protein folding and misfolding, particularly when it comes to proteins that are linked to early-onset, inherited forms of glaucoma. A second major project involves the study of membrane-spanning proteolytic enzymes that are related to those involved in producing amyloid-beta associated with Alzheimer disease.

Frances O. Hite Memorial Scholarship

This scholarship is established in memory of Frances Orr “Fran” Hite (1950-2019), B.S. Mathematics, Vanderbilt University, by Bruce Hite (’72 Building Construction.) The endowment fund provides scholarships to women studying mathematics at Georgia Tech.

• Esther Gallmeier, 4^th year student, School of Mathematics. Gallmeier is the first recipient of the Hite Memorial Scholarship. Gallmeier attended Oak Ridge High School in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, and decided to attend Georgia Tech based on the experiences of a friend who attended the School of Mathematics. "He loved it here," she says. "Also, Georgia Tech is incredible at providing opportunities for undergraduates in research and internships. We are definitely well-connected with companies from all over."

Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching 

The Immel Memorial Award, supported by an endowment fund given by Charles Crawford (’71 Math), recognizes exemplary instruction of lower division foundational courses.

• Chris Jankowski, Director of Graduate Advising and Assessment and Assistant Director of Teaching Effectiveness, School of Mathematics. 

Jankowski mentors postdoctoral faculty in teaching during their first year, and participates in organizing and running professional development events for them. He also provides a broad range of administrative duties for the graduate program, including serving on the Graduate Committee, writing annual student evaluations, and handling comprehensive exams.

Leddy Family Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award

This award was established by Jeff Leddy (’78 Physics) and Pam Leddy to support a faculty member at the associate professor level with proven accomplishments in research and teaching.

• Stefan France, associate professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

France is the principal investigator for the France Laboratory, which researches synthetic organic chemistry, medicinal chemistry, natural products chemistry, and methodology development. That research is primarily motivated by the interest in developing new synthetic methodologies that can be applied toward the construction of complex natural products and pharmaceutically-interesting compounds. France also led efforts for Georgia Tech to join the American Chemical Society’s Bridge Program, which works to bring more underrepresented minorities into higher education chemistry and biochemistry graduate courses. 

Faculty Mentor Award

The annual College of Sciences Award for Faculty Mentorship, supported by Georgia Tech’s ADVANCE Program, is presented to exemplary senior faculty who provide crucial services by helping new faculty advance in their careers, as they learn to balance their roles as researchers, teachers, and advisors to their own graduate students and post-docs.

• David Sherrill, Regents’ Professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Sherrill, who was chosen as a 2014 Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, researches computational chemistry and is the new Director of Georgia Tech’s Center for High Performance Computing. Sherrill has developed new models in quantum chemistry, with a particular focus on biophysics, drug docking, and molecular crystals. 

New College of Sciences Faculty
(Joined in 2020 and 2021)

School of Mathematics:
Cheng Mao
Rebecca George
Anton Bernshteyn
Benjamin Jaye
Hannah Choi

School of Chemistry and Biochemistry:
Anh Le
William Howitz

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences:
Wing (Winnie) Chu
Pengfei Liu
Samer Naif
Karl Lang
Frances Rivera-Hernández
Shelby Ellis

School of Physics:
Itamar Kimchi
Emily Alicea-Muñoz

School of Psychology:
Hsiao-Wen Liao

School of Biological Sciences; Neuroscience:
Christina Ragan

Eight members of the College of Sciences were honored for their work on expanding representation at Georgia Tech during the 2021 Diversity Symposium on Sept. 15^th, sponsored by Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion.

Lewis Wheaton, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-chair of the College of Sciences’ Task Force on Racial Equity, is the 2021 Diversity Champion Faculty Award winner. The 2021 Diversity Champion Awards recognize members of the faculty, staff, and student body, and a unit (office, department, school, or lab) who are advancing the principles of diversity, equity, and inclusion within the Georgia Tech community.

Wheaton is a lead principal investigator for a $16 million National Institutes of Health-FIRST proposal, a collaborative project across several institutions that includes the aim of hiring 10 new underrepresented minority faculty in the College of Sciences and College of Engineering joint neuroscience program at Georgia Tech. He is also co-principal investigator on an NSF-funded Summer Research Experiences for Undergraduates program in human neuroscience, which focuses on increasing participation by women and underrepresented minorities from limited-resource undergraduate institutions.

During the Sept. 15^th event, seven College of Sciences faculty and staff were named Faces of Inclusive Excellence:

Juan Archila, Director of Facilities and Capital Planning, College of Sciences

Serves as the principal empowerment officer for the HOLA (Hispanics Or Latinos and Allies) Employee Resource Group. Led the steering committee to create the College of Sciences Staff Advisory Council. Served on the team that won the 2020 Process Improvement Excellence Award from Georgia Tech Human Resources.

Ruth Kanfer, Professor, School of Psychology:

Co-author of 2021 book Ageless Talent, on managing work­force age diversity. Founding director of the Work Science Center initiative.

Wenjing Liao, Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics:

Won a National Science Foundation (NSF) award in deep neural networks for structured data as a principal investigator in 2020, representing the third NSF award and fourth award overall she has won since becoming an assistant professor at Tech in 2017.

Stephanie Reikes, Lecturer, School of Mathematics:

Received the Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL) Undergraduate Educator Award in 2021 for contributions supporting at-risk students. Actively fosters classroom en­vironments in which diversity and inclusion are respected by all.

Kathy Sims, Development Assistant, College of Sciences:

Serves as chair of the College of Sciences’ Staff Advisory Council. Served on the Task Force for Racial Equity. Member of the Employee Engagement Leadership Council and a recipient of the Women of Georgia Tech ERG Safeguard Freedom of Inquiry and Expression Award.

Emily Weigel, Senior Academic Professional, School of Biological Sciences:

Received the Ecological Society of America’s Education Scholar award for the creation of environmental justice materials on Atlanta’s water quality using open-source coding software readable by screen readers (Inclusive Pedagogy, Data Access Faculty).

Mayya Zhilova, Assistant Professor, School of Mathematics:

Recipient of the 2021 National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development Program Award for research in statistical analysis, outreach, and mentorship plans for students and high schoolers from underrepresented communities.

“All honorees featured in Faces of Inclusive Excellence share one thing in common: They epitomize excellence in their research, teaching, leadership, and service, or have been honored and otherwise recognized by their peers within their respective fields of endeavor,” says IDEI Vice President Archie Ervin. “When you dive deeper to explore the source of Georgia Tech’s greatness, you discover that this diverse group of faculty, staff, and students reveals the true faces of inclusive excellence.”

For many stroke victims with upper limb motor function impairment, previously simple tasks like reaching for that pen or grabbing that glass of water feel impossible. But the power of imagination and intention may help: If you can think it, eventually you can grab it.

Mental practice – such as motor imagery and action observation – is an effective intervention in restoring upper limb functionality. The challenge is that the performance quality and efficacy of mental practice can vary significantly between individuals.

A team of researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, led by principal investigator Minoru “Shino” Shinohara, is addressing that challenge, developing what he calls, “a new paradigm of motor imagery” – integrating proven methods of neuromotor facilitation with robotic prostheses. The researchers want to help stroke survivors turn thoughts and intentions into useful actions.

Shinohara, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences, is collaborating with co-investigators Frank Hammond, assistant professor of mechanical engineering and biomedical engineering, and Woo-Hong Yeo, associate professor of mechanical engineering. And the National Institutes of Health (NIH) is supporting their work with a $275,000, 18-month R21 grant for the project titled: “Robotically Augmented Mental Practice for Neuromotor Facilitation.”

“The idea here is that people who have had a stroke often have a kind of contracted posture, like this,” said Shinohara, who illustrated his point by contorting his upper body accordingly.

“And when they try to reach for something, or to extend the reach of their arm, they use their trunk, because they don’t have good, fluid arm motion,” Shinohara added, hiking up his right shoulder and thrusting it forward, as an example.

This kind of intentional synergistic movement is common in people with motor impairment caused by stroke or other neurological impairments. Lacking the fine motor skills to activate their arms or hands, this broad movement often is the best that they can do, particularly in the early stages of recovery.  The movement is a sign that the brain can’t correctly send signals to affected muscles. But it is also a sign that the brain is trying to relearn how, and that’s what Shinohara and his team want to build upon.

“It’s possible that this motion can increase neural excitability of the hand muscles for opening – that it is related to a more coordinated motion, like grabbing the glass,” Shinohara said. “We want to utilize this trunk motion for actually opening and closing a robotic prosthesis.”

The researchers hypothesize that control and observation of robotic grasp and release actions via this shoulder and trunk motion – synergistic proximal muscle activation – will increase hand excitability, due to the cognitive engagement with an externally present and visible robotic prosthesis. That is, the individual thinks about grabbing the object and makes the corresponding shoulder and trunk motion, activating a robotic hand.

Shinohara believes this robotically augmented mental practice can help the brain efficiently relearn how to produce and send the right signals at the right time to the affected hand muscles.

“You may not be able to use your own hands, but you’ll see the corresponding action of the prosthetic reacting, as if it’s your grip and you are opening and closing,” he said. “That’s action observation. So, if you see the robot and you’re engaged in controlling the action, we expect to see an increase in the ability of the brain to control the hand. That’s the basic idea.”

To test the idea, Shinohara, director of the Human Neuromuscular Physiology Lab and a member of both the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (all at Georgia Tech), is partnering with the labs of Yeo and Hammond.

Yeo has developed cutting edge motor imagery-based brain-machine interface (BMI) systems – rehabilitation technology that analyzes a person’s brain signals, then translates that neural activity into commands enabled by flexible scalp electronics and deep-learning algorithms.

A member of several Georgia Tech research institutes, Yeo is principal investigator of the Bio-Interfaced Translational Nanoengineering Group and director of the Center for Human-Centric Interfaces and Engineering. Currently. He is developing an algorithm for detecting trunk motion in this project.

As principal investigator of the Adaptive Robotic Manipulation (ARM) Laboratory, Hammond’s research is focused on a variety of topics in robotics, including sensory feedback enabled human augmentation devices.

For this project, Hammond’s lab is developing a robotic arm that could potentially restore some neuromotor functionality to patients in the future, he said, “and provide greater degrees of motor imagery. The data we generate will be helpful in creating a robotic device that will be a lot more effective in treatment and maybe more versatile, allowing us to accommodate a broader population of patients undergoing rehabilitation.”

The NIH’s R21 grants are intended to encourage developmental or exploratory research at the early stages of project development, with the hope that the work can lead to further advances in the research. Shinohara believes he and his collaborators are moving in that direction.

“Development of this new paradigm and its integration with able-bodied and post-stroke disabled individuals will open new scientific and clinical concepts and studies on augmented motor imagery,” Shinohara said. “And that can lead to effective treatment strategies for people with neuromotor impairment.”