College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair Susan Lozier is also the President of the American Geophysical Union (AGU) — yet she shares that while studying in graduate school, she never would have predicted that she would end up serving in these roles.

“I definitely experienced the imposter syndrome in my early career,” she shares. “I remember going through graduate school thinking that once I took my final exams — then they’d figure out that I don't know anything.”

It turns out she knew much more than she gave herself credit for. At the University of Washington, she received a master's degree in chemical engineering before becoming the first woman to graduate from the University’s physical oceanography doctoral program.

“I was a couple of weeks away from my first child’s birth when I defended my Ph.D. After my exam, a member of my committee said to me, ‘So sorry to see you're pregnant, because I was hoping you would have a career in science.’ Though taken aback, I said, ‘Well, I certainly plan to have that career.’ At that time it was still rare for women in academia to have children."

Following graduation, Lozier began her postdoctoral studies at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, where she met her close friend and research partner, Amy Bower. Together, the pair supported each other on research endeavors and learned how to navigate a male-dominated field with few female mentors and colleagues.

While at Woods Hole, Bower was the first person that Lozier wrote a proposal with, and the two were in the first generation of women to complete postdocs at Woods Hole.

“When I started my postdoc, most of the women who worked on the technical side were data analysts, referred to as ‘data dollies’,” remembers Lozier. “For more than a century before my generation started careers in science, women entered science more or less through the side or back door, meaning that they worked in labs as assistants to the head of the research lab and then worked their way up from there. My generation, or actually the generation before me, was the first generation of women that were coming in the front door, leading their own research from the start.”

Lozier also highlights the fact that even though women were often restricted in the roles they could hold in the scientific endeavor, they were nonetheless able to make some remarkable discoveries. She recommends the non-fiction book “The Glass Universe: How the Ladies of the Harvard Observatory Took the Measure of the Stars” by Dava Sobel for anyone interested in learning more about the history of women in science during the early 20th century.

As detailed in the book, Lozier explains, “women working at the Harvard Observatory at the time were considered too fragile to be outside at night looking through the telescope. So, their job was to analyze the data in the daylight hours and, in time, the patterns revealed by the data led these women to some remarkable discoveries.”

Reflecting on the opportunities that helped with her personal success and achievement, Lozier shares that the support of mentors and friends was paramount. This reflection struck her while serving on a National Science Foundation panel to review proposals from early career researchers.

“I was looking at all the proposals that were coming in from early career scientists, and of those that were coming in, women were not faring very well, compared to those coming in from male scientists,” she says. “And I realized that while the proposals from early career male scientists — in this case oceanographers — were mostly written in collaboration with a more senior scientist, the proposals from the female early career scientists were not. These young women were the sole investigators on their proposals.”

This realization became the impetus for Lozier to create the Mentoring Physical Oceanography to Increase Retention (MPOWIR) program, which established a mentoring network of physical oceanographers across the country to support and advance the careers of young women in the field. She received funding from five separate federal agencies to launch and maintain the program.

“From my own experience it was obvious that young women entering the field did not have a network of mentors. And then I read studies at the time confirming my own experience, namely that there was an asymmetry in the collaboration and mentoring network for men and women. It was at the time just much harder for junior women to establish networks because they did not arise organically.”

Though Lozier has since passed the leadership of MPOWIR onto other individuals, she shares that she is incredibly proud of the program’s success in advancing the careers of women in oceanography.

Carrying the tradition of mentorship — at Georgia Tech and beyond

As dean of the College of Sciences, Lozier’s work is focused on leading, guiding, and mentoring students, staff, and faculty members — along with leading AGU and the NSF-funded OSNAP: Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program. Her passion for removing barriers to success translates to her goal of fostering an inclusive and equitable culture at Georgia Tech — and beyond.

“One of the things that attracted me to Georgia Tech, and one that I remain very committed to today, is attracting a more diverse student body,” she says. Lozier came to Georgia Tech in September 2019 from Duke University, where she served in various leadership roles including department chair, faculty senate chair, vice provost for strategic planning, co-chair of Duke’s effort to reimagine graduate education, and as the Ronie-Richele Garcia-Johnson Distinguished Professor of Earth and Ocean Sciences in the Nicholas School of the Environment.

With this goal of increasing representative enrollments in mind, Lozier recognized the importance of first cultivating a community with a strong focus on diversity and inclusivity at Tech. “Before you are able to attract a more diverse student body, you have to make sure that the community they're coming into is one that is attractive. Otherwise, you can’t retain people.”

Lozier created the College of Sciences Task Force on Racial Equity in June 2020 and charged the committee members to propose actionable and sustainable steps to identify and overcome racial inequity in the College of Sciences (CoS).

“The Task Force on Racial Equality was given two charges. The first one was: how do we build a community where everyone — staff, students and faculty — feels as though they belong? And the second charge was: how do we attract more people of color to this community? I truly believe a more diverse community leads to excellence in teaching and research.”

Lozier has also placed a strong emphasis on ways that scientific discoveries can apply to modern challenges through invention and innovation.

“I'm focused on providing faculty the support they need to work collaboratively on pathways that lead from discovery to solution,” she says.

Lozier also highlights the impact that the pandemic has had on all members of the CoS community and the unique challenges it’s presented to the College and our campus community.

She compares the early, rapid shift to online work to her experience of climbing, one of her passions during graduate school. "At the start of the pandemic, it felt as though I was with a climbing team headed up a mountain and then we somehow lost the map. But adventure in the face of hardship is where strong and trusting relationships are formed — people come together when times are tough to figure out the next steps.”

And back in spring 2020, at the beginning of teleworking and remote teaching and learning, she immediately saw a need to increase communication and create channels for conversation and community support.

“I realized early on that it was better to over communicate than under communicate,” she says. In March, she began writing weekly letters to the College of Sciences staff to share news updates and personal reflections. “I attached a photo of whatever was blooming in my garden and shared news of celebrations in my own life, such as when my mother was vaccinated. And I also started weekly (virtual) drop-ins. These drop-ins are now twice a month for staff and monthly for faculty. I didn’t have these communication pathways on my radar screen before the pandemic, but once we all started sheltering in place, I realized the importance of communication and understood that it needed to be more often — and needed to be more personal.”

Lozier also focuses on the importance of forming one-on-one connections with staff, students, and faculty. She adds that, ultimately, elevating members of the community is her primary passion and the most fulfilling part of her role as dean.

“The most important thing about the College is that at its heart, it is all about people, their ideas and their contributions. Elevating those ideas, and helping people realize their potential — that brings me immense professional and personal satisfaction.”

And in connection with those goals of advancing the representation, stories, and voices of others, Lozier sees International Day of the Girl, marked by the UN each October 11, as an opportunity to share her own story in STEM — and to amplify and advocate for women and girls in STEM around the globe.

As leader of OSNAP (NSF-funded subpolar North Atlantic observing system), Lozier adds that she is proud that the consortium has women from seven different countries representing half of the project’s overall members.

 “When I started as a graduate student, it was very rare to have even a female chief scientist. So, it's remarkably different when I go to conferences now, where half of the speakers are women. Over the course of my career, I've seen quite a change — from when women data analysts were called 'data dollies’ to now, where women are chief scientists, leaders of their organizations, and heading up ocean observing systems. It is amazing to me that my field of physical oceanography now has such a strong representation of women. I know though that there is work to do to bring more underrepresented groups into oceanography. In order for our field to thrive, we must be more fully diverse.”

And finally, Lozier encourages people to use October 11^th to learn more about global and local opportunities to advance women and girls.

“I encourage everyone to take this opportunity to think about they can do individually and collectively to advance the education of women and girls across the globe. We all have a responsibility to make sure that doors of opportunity are open to everyone.”

Celebrating Hispanic and Latinx Heritage:

September 15 to October 15 is also National Hispanic Heritage Month, which celebrates the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latinx individuals in all aspects of American life – history, culture, and achievements. Learn more and get involved with Georgia Tech’s Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month celebrations here.

We recently asked several Hispanic and Latinx faculty in the College of Sciences — and one alumnus, who now serves as our Institute’s President — to share some of their early school day stories, the reasons they chose to study science, and their thoughts on the importance of representation in STEM classes and leadership in higher education.

Read Q&As with Ángel Cabrera, Frances Rivera-Hernández, Facundo Fernández and Carlos Silva-Acuña about early school days, why they chose to study science, and their perspectives on the importance of representation in classrooms, labs, and leadership in higher education here.

Related reading:
The School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech is now an official member of the American Chemical Society’s Bridge Program, which aims to boost the number of underrepresented minority M.S. and Ph.D. students in the discipline. Learn more about that program here; get involved with the College of Sciences Racial Equity Taskforce, Faculty Diversity Council, Graduate Student Diversity Council, and campus organizations for math and science students; and read more community stories on heritage and representation here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera isn’t just the first native of Spain to lead an American university. He’s also just one of a handful of Hispanic and Latinx leaders to serve as presidents of major U.S. institutions of higher education.

“It’s not a big group,” he says. “The President of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology is from Venezuela. The President of the University of Miami is Mexican, and actually served in the Mexican government as Minister of Health. Then there are a few others. It’s not many of us, but there is a small group.”

That story echoes in historical Hispanic and Latinx faculty representation in higher education in the U.S., and in teaching STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) courses in K-12. 

And although the number of Hispanic and Latinx students enrolled in colleges and universities has also steadily increased over the past several generations, national representation for this cohort also remains below their share in the U.S. population. “It’s far less in science and engineering majors,” Cabrera adds. “That’s the key. We tend to be under-indexed in engineering and computing, and most of the scientific disciplines.”

That’s why Cabrera values the importance of having Hispanic and Latinx faculty spend time in the community, showing students in grade school that people like them — with similar surnames, backgrounds, and stories — can be scientists, engineers, even university presidents. 

And at Georgia Tech, the overall number of Hispanic and Latinx students is on the rise, thanks in large part to sustained initiatives across campus, along with a number of mentoring and outreach efforts led by faculty, staff, students, and alumni advocates. Hispanic and Latinx enrollment recently topped 3,500 at Tech — 500 more than the 2020-21 school year — making up nearly 14% of the undergraduate student body. 

Cabrera’s parents weren’t able to go college, but he found a mentor in his uncle as he was growing up in Madrid. “We always looked up to him. He was a great uncle, but also super smart. He was the guy we would call when we had a tough math problem in school. And as I realized that, hey, I’m good at this math stuff, he was always my role model. That’s why I decided to become an engineer.”

Cabrera received a telecommunications engineering degree (equivalent to an B.S. and M.S. in Electrical and Computing Engineering) from Universidad Politécnica de Madrid. He then received a Fulbright Scholarship to attend graduate school at Georgia Tech. That’s when he decided to switch to Cognitive Psychology, and received a Ph.D. in that discipline from the School of Psychology in the College of Sciences.

What did Hispanic representation look like at Georgia Tech when you were here from 1991-95?

Not great. I don't recall a single Hispanic professor in Psychology nor any another graduate student. There were a few graduate students in the College of Computing and one faculty member, Norberto Ezquerra, with whom I did some work at the Graphics Visualization and Usability center. But yeah, there was not great representation. I think Georgia Tech had always had a reasonable number of Puerto Rican students and international students from Latin American countries. There was a good community for that, but on the faculty side, very rare.

Given your experience, what can and should be done to get more Hispanic and Latinx students in STEM classes in higher education?

Well, first of all, why it is important that we do that? We have a clear mission to educate leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. And that requires that people of all backgrounds be included. We simply cannot respond to the issues of our society if different perspectives are not represented at Georgia Tech. We have a responsibility to make sure that everybody's at the table. 

And right now, not just at Georgia Tech but in general — maybe less so in biology — but in physics, math, and definitely computing and most engineering fields — women are underrepresented, Black students are underrepresented, and Hispanic students are underrepresented. And clearly, what the consequences for that will be is technologies and products that don't necessarily respond to every one’s needs. There are plenty of examples of that. Take for example face recognition software, which is notorious for failing with people with dark skins, or machine learning applications that have managed to incorporate many of our society’s stereotypes and prejudices. 

I think, because we are one of the leading technological universities in the country, and because we're large, we not only have the opportunity, but we have the responsibility to lead and to figure out ways to change that reality. It's a complex problem with a complex set of causes and solutions. Clearly, we need to improve the number of faculty from different backgrounds. If you don't see it, you can't be it, you can't become it. 

There is a piece of that which has to do with training Latino teachers in K-12, increasing representation in our faculty. We know it works — giving students early experiences, bringing them to Georgia Tech, like in Project Engages, for example. And also, all the work that CEISMIC (Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing) does. CEISMIC, by the way, started off in the College of Sciences, then became institute-wide. 

That’s the kind of work that we know has an impact — showing up in high schools, training teachers, providing students with a very direct experience. If you haven't been exposed at home — in most cases, it’s having an opportunity to see someone like yourself. Those are the things that can make a difference.

Same question, but let’s make it about faculty. What can and should be done to increase Hispanic and Latinx faculty in higher education?

We have experience with similar programs. We have a program called Focus. Its goal is to bring college students from underrepresented communities, and engage them in a conversation with minority faculty, people like them who have done it, who are succeeding in engineering. And again, we know those interventions work. You just have to be intentional about that, but anything we can do to bring people to a place like Georgia Tech, to engage with peers to look at mentors, faculty members who've done it before you. We know those things work.

Is there anything else you would want faculty and students to know about Hispanic Heritage Month and how it relates to Georgia Tech’s mission?

We're very proud of the many contributions of Hispanic and Latino faculty members in the history of Georgia Tech. We now have a small but incredibly influential group of faculty members at Georgia Tech who are making a difference. And I'm really, really proud of what they're doing. Not only that, but how many of them are doubling their efforts, no matter how busy they are with their own careers. They're finding time to reach out to connect with students, to motivate others to follow suit.

I would also highlight the obvious, which is that we are at an institute that values diversity, that values different backgrounds to the point that they hired a guy like me to be president. I think that honestly goes beyond words — this is walking the talk. This is a university that values the contributions of people regardless of their background. 

In fact, the last thing I'll say is that some people sometimes think about efforts of diversity as somehow, in a way, having a negative impact on the quality of Georgia Tech. And what I've always told people is that the more diverse Georgia Tech has become throughout the decades, the more prestigious Georgia Tech has become.

It’s up to you to decide whether there is a cause-and-effect relationship there. But we've never been more diverse than we are today. We've never had the same level of brand recognition and reputation, the same level of applications, the same level of research productivity. We are the living proof that a leading university can benefit tremendously from increased diversity.

September 15 to October 15 is National Hispanic Heritage Month, which celebrates the contributions and influence of Hispanic and Latinx individuals in all aspects of American life – history, culture, and achievements. 

This month, we’re asking Hispanic and Latinx faculty in the College of Sciences to share some of their early school day stories, the reasons they chose to study science, and their thoughts on the importance of representation in STEM classes and leadership in higher education.

Read Q&As with Frances Rivera-Hernández, Facundo Fernández and Carlos Silva-Acuña about early school days, why they chose to study science, and their perspectives on the importance of representation in classrooms, labs, and leadership in higher education.

Learn more and get involved with Georgia Tech’s Hispanic and Latinx Heritage Month celebrations.

Related reading:
The School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech is now an official member of the American Chemical Society’s Bridge Program, which aims to boost the number of underrepresented minority M.S. and Ph.D. students in the discipline. Learn more about that program here; get involved with the College of Sciences Racial Equity Taskforce, Faculty Diversity Council, Graduate Student Diversity Council, and campus organizations for math and science students; and read more community stories on heritage and representation here, here, here, here, here, and here.

Corals are the foundation species of tropical reefs worldwide, but stresses ranging from overfishing to pollution to warming oceans are killing corals and degrading the critical ecosystem services they provide. Because corals build structures that make living space for many other species, scientists have known that losses of corals result in losses of other reef species. But the importance of coral species diversity for corals themselves was less understood.

A new study from two researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology provides both hope and a potentially grim future for damaged coral reefs. In their research paper, "Biodiversity has a positive but saturating effect on imperiled coral reefs," published October 13 in Science Advances, Cody Clements and Mark Hay found that increasing coral richness by ‘outplanting’ a diverse group of coral species together improves coral growth and survivorship. This finding may be especially important in the early stages of reef recovery following large-scale coral loss — and in supporting healthy reefs that in turn support fisheries, tourism, and coastal protection from storm surges.

The scientists also call for additional research to better understand and harness the mechanisms producing these positive species interactions, with dual aims to improve reef conservation and promote more rapid and efficient recovery of degraded reefs.

But the ecological pendulum swings the other way, too. If more coral species are lost, the synergistic effects could threaten other species in what Clements and Hay term a “biodiversity meltdown.”

“Yes, corals are the foundation species of these ecosystems — providing habitat and food for numerous other reef species,” says Clements, a Teasley Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Biological Sciences. “Negative effects on corals often have cascading impacts on other species that call coral reefs home. If biodiversity is important for coral performance and resilience, then a ‘biodiversity meltdown’ could exacerbate the decline of reef ecosystems that we’re observing worldwide.”

Clements and Hay traveled to Mo'orea, French Polynesia, in the tropical Pacific Ocean, where they planted coral gardens differing in coral species diversity to evaluate the relative importance of mutualistic versus competitive interactions among corals as they grew and interacted through time.

“We’ve done the manipulations, and the corals should be competing with each other, but in fact they do better together than they do on their own,” says Hay, Regents Professor and Teasley Chair in the School of Biological Sciences. Hay is also co-director of the Ocean Science and Engineering graduate program at Georgia Tech. “We are still investigating the mechanisms causing this surprising result, but our experiments consistently demonstrate that the positive interactions are overwhelming negative interactions in the reef settings where we conduct these experiments. That means when you take species out of the system, you’re taking out some of those positive interactions, and if you take out critical ones, it may make a big difference.”

Under the sea, in a coral-growing garden, in the shade

Coral reefs are under threat worldwide. Hay notes that according to the EPA, the Caribbean has lost 80 to 90 percent of its coral cover. The Indo-Pacific region has lost half of all its corals over the last 30 years. During the bleaching event of 2015-2016 alone, nearly half of the remaining corals along the Great Barrier Reef bleached and died.

“The frequency of these big bleaching and heating events that are killing off corals has increased fairly dramatically over the last 20 to 30 years,” he says. “There are hot spots here and there where coral reefs are still good, but they’re small and isolated in general.”

In their coral gardens in French Polynesia, Hay and Clements manipulated the diversity of the coral species that they planted on platforms resembling underwater chess tables, to try and see if species richness and density affected coral productivity and survival.

Hay notes that many previous, similar experiments involved bringing corals into a lab to “pit species against each other.” But he points out, “We do all of our experiments in the real world. We’re not as interested in whether it can happen, but whether it does happen.”

An experimental setup suggested by Clements involving Coke bottles helped the scientists arrange their garden. The end tables “have Coca-Cola bottlecaps embedded in the top of them,” Hay says. “We can then cut off the necks of Coke bottles, glue corals into the upside-down necks of these things, and then screw them in and out of these plots.  This allows us to not only arrange what species we want where, but every couple of months we can unscrew and weigh them so we can get accurate growth rates.”

The researchers found that corals benefitted from increased biodiversity, “but only up to a point,” Clements notes. “Corals planted in gardens with an intermediate number of species — three to six species in most cases — performed better than gardens with low, or one, species, or high, as in nine, species. However, we still do not fully understand the processes that contributed to these observations.”

Clements says their research demands more investigation. Why do corals perform better in mixed species communities than single-species communities? Why does this biodiversity effect diminish — rather than continue increasing — at the highest level of coral diversity?
“We need a better mechanistic understanding of how diversity influences these processes to predict how biodiversity loss will impact corals, as well as how we may be able to harness biodiversity’s positive influence to protect corals,” says Clements.

Financial support for the study came from the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant no. OCE 1947522), the National Geographic Society (grant no. NGS-57078R-19), the Teasley Endowment to the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the Anna and Harry Teasley Gift Fund. This work represents a contribution of the Mo’orea Coral Reef (MCR) LTER Site supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation (grant no. OCE 16-37396). DOI: https://doi.org/10.1126/sciadv.abi8592

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

After a year and a half unlike any other, the Georgia Tech community continues to navigate the pandemic with a hopeful eye toward the future. We gave four students the chance to document their lives on campus with 27 exposures on a disposable camera. It’s a new look at the Tech campus through an old-school lens.

See the complete feature here.

Bryan Gomez

Fourth-year student, Biochemistry and Neuroscience

1 The Wreck drives down Yellow Jacket Alley before the start of Tech's first football game of the 2021 season.

2 Students from the Zbar and Maulding residence halls participate in a block party, which included pizza, chalk art, music, and lawn games.

3 Bryan Gomez documents Georgia Tech's first football game of the 2021 season.

4 Students participate in the Georgia Audubon birdwatching tour near The Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design.

Rebecca Hammond

Master's student, Media and Cultural Studies

1 Rebecca Hammond studies outside of the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons.

2 Members of the Omega Psi Phi fraternity pose for a photograph at the National Pan-Hellenic Council convocation.

3 Members of the Phi Beta Sigma fraternity and Zeta Phi Beta sorority pose for a photograph at the National Pan-Hellenic Council convocation.

4 Inside Clough Commons.

Vanesa Vargas

Third-year student, Neuroscience

1 Students use Ferst Drive to walk around campus in Fall 2021.

2 Tech Square at night.

3 Jesús Gomez stands in front of a green screen at the Teaching Studio in the Price Gilbert Library.

4 The Progress Pride Staircase at the Klaus Advanced Computing Building.

5 Vanesa Vargas photographs a Georgia Tech classroom during the Fall 2021 semester.

Karam Jivani

First-year student, Computer Science

1 Students practice juggling near the Einstein statue.

2 The Georgia Tech Yellow Jacket Marching Band lines up near the Koan sculpture.

3 A portrait of the activities going on around the Bunger-Henry Building.

4 Students participate in a fencing orientation at the CRC.

5 Tailgaters enjoy a live band at a fraternity house before Tech's first football game of the 2021 season.

The symptoms and side effects of Covid-19 are scattered across a diagnostic spectrum. Some patients are asymptomatic or experience a mild immune response, while others report significant long-term illnesses, lasting complications, or suffer fatal outcomes.

Three researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and one from Emory University are trying to help clinicians sort through these factors and spectrum of patient outcomes by equipping healthcare professionals with a new “decision prioritization tool.”

The team’s new artificial intelligence-based tool helps clinicians understand and better predict which adverse effects their Covid-19 patients could experience, based on comorbidities and current side effects — and, in turn, also helps suggest specific Food and Drug Administration-approved (FDA) drugs that could help treat the disease and improve patient health outcomes. The researcher's latest findings are the focus of a new study published October 21 in Nature Scientific Reports.

Artificial intelligence, protein drivers, and ‘24 out of 26 clinical manifestations’ of Covid-19

The team’s new methodology, or tool, is called MOATAI-VIR (Mode Of Action proteins & Targeted therapeutic discovery driven by Artificial Intelligence for VIRuses. Researchers report it predicts 24 out of 26 major clinical manifestations of Covid-19 and their underlying disease-protein-pathway relationships.

Those clinical manifestations cover a range of issues including acute respiratory distress, blood clotting issues, cytokine storms, low blood oxygen and white blood cell counts, and even bone marrow failure. The commonly reported loss of smell or taste, along with unusual neurological symptoms such as “brain fog” have received widespread attention — as have considerations for patients who have previous health problems, or comorbidities, that could place them in higher risk categories related to Covid-19.

“It’s still the question of, what’s causing the side effects?” says Jeffrey Skolnick, professor and Mary and Maisie Gibson Chair in the School of Biological Sciences, and corresponding author for the study. “So, you lost sense of smell and got brain fog — and another (patient) had respiratory distress, and another can’t remember the day of the week. What we’ve identified are the possible mode of action drivers for these various conditions, which is now setting the stage for who’s getting what side effects.”

Skolnick, also Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Computational Systems Biology, notes that it makes sense to predict the side effects based on protein interactions.

“Humans are molecular machines, and presumably there are biological and physical rules to dictate our responses,” Skolnick says . “We basically built an AI-based approach which was designed given the interactive set of proteins in humans which interact with the [novel] coronavirus,” he adds. “We then asked ourselves, ‘Could we predict, based on biochemical pathways, which interactive proteins are associated with side effects?’”

Joining Skolnick from the School of Biological Sciences are Ph.D. student Courtney Astore and senior research scientist Hongyi Zhou, both from the Center for the Study of Systems Biology. Joshy Jacob of the Department of Microbiology and Immunology in the Emory Vaccine Center at the Emory School of Medicine also worked on the study.

MOATAI-VIR methodology

Skolnick explains that most known diseases are due to the “malfunction and interaction of many proteins,” and notes that it’s a collective effect — a “many-targeted protein effect.” His team’s new AI methodology is identifying as many targets as possible of an interacting nature to predict a complex response from a complex set of interactions.

It’s also well-understood in the medical community that comorbidities — existing and chronic health factors such as diabetes, obesity, autoimmune disorders, and other conditions that affect the immune system — can play an outsized a role in risk factors related to Covid-19. Skolnick says those comorbidities can be plugged into the team’s algorithm, too.

 “Alzheimer’s and hyperthyroidism are strongly correlated — as is diabetes. There are six to eight (Covid-19) comorbidities with a patient that has Alzheimer’s,” Skolnick explains. “It’s not just old age — it’s much more complicated.”

The MOATAI-VIR methodology helps identify the common proteins of the comorbidities in relation to the parent disease. A clinician can then target the diseases with drugs. Researchers report that this specific methodology had 72% success in 123,146 drug-indication pair predictions found by Skolnick’s team.

“For a given disease, we prioritize them by the proteins that are most in common with the comorbid diseases to the given disease, giving rise to the particular complication, such as respiratory failure. This identifies the putative (assumed) driver proteins for the given complication,” he says. “Then we select repurposed drugs in two ways — we screen the most common comorbid proteins for their most frequent binding to repurposed drugs. For the set of comorbid diseases to a given complication, choose the drugs that treat the most complications.”

It’s critical to find the right drugs for those complications and side effects — and using the new “decision tool” can help do that, Skolnick says.

He cautions that researchers and clinicians must approach this objectively because “there are deep reasons why you have these ‘off-target’ interactions, where a drug binds to another protein that is not its original intended target — and that’s what these algorithms take in to counter them. It’s not magic” to run this methodology, Skolnick explains. “It’s fractional assistance in a decision-making process — which comes with probabilities [that] it might work. If there’s an 80 percent probability, you probably ought to try it.”

The MOATAI-VIR methodology algorithms (decision prioritization tool) can be downloaded at: https://sites.gatech.edu/cssb/moatai-vir/

This project was funded by R35GM118039 of the Division of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health. DOI: www.nature.com/articles/s41598-021-00368-6

Related News

Skolnick and Team Win Next Stage of NCATS Competition

Jeffrey Skolnick is also part of an award-winning National Institutes of Health effort to create innovative, AI-powered platforms for discovering new pain management drugs, and for identifying immediate solutions. The competition staged by NIH’s NCATS (National Center for Advancing Translational Sciences) addresses the national opioid public health crisis.

In September, a team with Skolnick, Hongyi Zhou, senior research scientist in the School of Biological Sciences, Andre Ghetti with ANABIOS Corporation, and Nicole Jung with Karlsruhe Institute of Technology in Germany, was one of four winning the 2020 (NCATS) ASPIRE (A Specialized Platform for Innovative Research Exploration) Challenge, Stage 2, Milestone 1 Award. Skolnick and Zhou won the previous stage in May.

Their platform, Development of a Comprehensive Integrated Platform for Translational Innovation in Pain, Opioid Abuse Disorder and Overdose, will face the final stage, Prototype Delivery, Independent Validation and Testing in 2022.

Read this story in the fall 2021 edition of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine

Movement science at Georgia Tech has evolved through four transformations over the past half century. No original unit on campus has experienced a more radical reconfiguration — from physical training courses in athletics to state-of-the-art research in the School of Biological Sciences. Phillip B. Sparling, professor emeritus in the School who spent his entire career at Georgia Tech, pens this mini-course on how movement sciences at the Institute came to be.

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Georgia Tech’s College of Sciences is pleased to announce that Jennifer Curtis, professor in the School of Physics, has been appointed the new ADVANCE Professor for the College. 

Curtis will serve as one of six ADVANCE Professors, one for each college at Georgia Tech. Her appointment is effective July 1, 2023.

“It is an honor,” Curtis says. “Having personally benefited from ADVANCE initiatives, I am grateful for the opportunity to build on my predecessors' work and to contribute to the well-being of all faculty at Georgia Tech. I look forward to partnering with the current ADVANCE professors, the College’s Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences (C-PIES), and Georgia Tech leadership. 

“Jennifer has been a strong advocate for diversity, equity and inclusion for many years, and I am confident she will bring that advocacy to this new role,” says Susan Lozier, Dean of the College of Sciences, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair and Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “In this role, Jennifer will work with ADVANCE professors from the other five colleges to advance Georgia Tech’s mission and will play an integral role in the College of Sciences Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences. For my part, I look forward to a close partnership with her in the months and years ahead.”

"Jennifer has been a true champion of diversity and inclusion at Georgia Tech,” adds Feryal Özel, professor and chair in the School of Physics. “She has been working tirelessly toward providing education and career opportunities as well as a welcoming environment for everyone who is interested in physics and the sciences. I am looking forward to seeing all the exciting things she will do with her ADVANCE professorship."

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has served as the College’s ADVANCE Professor since 2022. Lynch-Stieglitz is among nine Jefferson Science Fellows selected this year by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine to build STEM expertise in the State Department and the U.S. Agency for International Development. 

“This announcement also gives me the opportunity to thank Jean for her service as our ADVANCE professor over the past year,” added Lozier. “As a reminder, Jean’s term in this role was limited since she accepted a prestigious Jefferson Fellowship that will take her to the U.S. State Department in Washington, D.C. next year.” 

Lynch-Stieglitz will be joined in that fellowship by Olga Shemyakina, associate professor in the School of Economics at Georgia Tech. 

“As the College of Sciences ADVANCE professor, there are three areas where I will focus my attention,” Curtis says. “The first area is the continued support for College women and minority faculty, including non-tenure track faculty members. A second area unique to my interests — and an extension of my ongoing work —  is to collaborate closely with C-PIES to identify accelerated solutions to increase the diversity of our faculty at Georgia Tech.”

Curtis adds, “The third area that I will pursue is at the Institute level in coordination and collaboration with the other Georgia Tech ADVANCE professors: I will leverage the experience and wisdom of my colleagues to guide my efforts in the College of Sciences and to support and lead Institute-wide ADVANCE initiatives.”

About ADVANCE

Supported by Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, Georgia Tech’s ADVANCE Program builds and sustains an inter-college network of professors who are world-class researchers and role models to support the community and advancement of women and minorities in academia by “advocating for diversity, equity, and inclusion, advising campus leadership on policy and structure, increasing awareness and reducing the impact of implicit bias, and making data-driven recommendations for faculty retention, advancement, and satisfaction.”

About Jennifer Curtis

Since 2016, Curtis has served as director or co-director of the School of Physics’ Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, funded by the National Science Foundation, which focuses on broadening participation in physics and strengthening ties with the Atlanta University Consortium (AUC), which includes Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Clark Atlanta University. At least 10 REU students have since entered graduate programs at Georgia Tech.

Working with Morehouse leadership, Curtis has arranged for College of Sciences faculty to present once a month in Morehouse’s weekly research seminar series. Curtis and School of Physics undergraduate Julianne Tijani are a Georgia Tech chapter of the National Society of Black Physicists.

Curtis’ research is primarily focused on the physics of cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions, in particular within the context of glycobiology (the study of sugar chains in nature) and immunobiology. 

Her lab’s newest projects focus on questions of collective and single cell migration in vitro and in vivo; immunophage therapy — an immunoengineering approach — that uses combined defense of immune cells plus viruses (phage) to overcome bacterial infections; and the study of the molecular biophysics and biomaterials applications of hyaluronan synthase, an enzyme. Learn more.

People with weakened immune systems are at constant risk of infection. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common environmental bacterium, can colonize different body parts, such as the lungs, leading to persistent, chronic infections that can last a lifetime – a common occurrence for people with cystic fibrosis.

But the bacteria can sometimes change their behavior and enter the bloodstream, causing chronic localized infections to become acute and potentially fatal. Despite decades of studying the transition in lab environments, how and why the switch happens in humans has remained unknown.

Read the rest of the story here. 

Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will take her climate research experience to Washington D.C. as a recipient of the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine Jefferson Science Fellowship. Lynch-Stieglitz is one of nine fellows selected this year, and she will be joined by Olga Shemyakina, associate professor in the School of Economics. 

The Jefferson Science Fellowship Program engages American science, technology, engineering, and medical faculty in critical service to U.S. foreign policy and international development through a one-year agency assignment with the Department of State or U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Fellows return to their academic careers after a year of service, but remain available to the U.S. government as experienced consultants for short-term projects. 

Lynch-Stieglitz researches the behavior of the Earth’s oceans and climate over the last 100,000 years. Work in this area has helped in understanding the full range of behavior possible for the ocean/climate system, and which parts of this system may be vulnerable to change in the future. 

“I was very pleased to be named a Jefferson Fellow, and am particularly excited that I was matched to the Office of Global Change, which is responsible for implementing and managing U.S. international policy on climate change,” Lynch-Stieglitz says. “I hope to be able to use some of my expertise in the oceanic carbon cycle and the role of the ocean in climate change to the work of the office.

“The Jefferson Fellowship is also a unique opportunity for me to learn something new and do something completely different from my normal duties as a faculty member.  I hope to enjoy the fast-paced environment at State, and learn a lot about U.S. and international climate policy and climate diplomacy.”

“Lynch-Stieglitz’s selection as a Jefferson Science Fellow is certainly an honor that recognizes her expertise in climate science,” says Greg Huey, professor and chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “However, more importantly she will bring her knowledge and experience to the State Department to address key climate-related challenges and promote sustainable solutions. I do regret losing her from campus for a year as we will miss her leadership.”

Over the past year, Lynch-Stieglitz has also served as ADVANCE Professor for the College of Sciences, one of six representing each Georgia Tech college. Supported by Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion, the ADVANCE Program builds and sustains an inter-college network of professors who are world-class researchers and role models to support the community and advancement of women and minorities in academia. 

"She has left an indelible stamp in many areas, including reform of our hiring procedures and our curriculum," Huey adds.

Jennifer Curtis, professor in the School of Physics, will step into that role on July 1, 2023 as Lynch-Stieglitz travels to Washington, D.C. for the fellowship. 

“It is bittersweet in that I have to relinquish the College of Sciences ADVANCE Professorship in order to take on this full-time position in Washington,” Lynch-Stieglitz says. “I really enjoyed getting to know more of the women faculty across the college, and representing their interests to the Institute. But I can’t imagine a better person to take this role forward than Jennifer Curtis. She will do wonderful things.”

Applying for a Jefferson Science Fellowship

The Jefferson Science Fellowships are open to tenured, or similarly ranked, faculty from U.S. institutions of higher learning who are U.S. citizens. After successfully obtaining a security clearance, selected Fellows spend one year on assignment at the U.S. Department of State or USAID serving as advisers on issues of foreign policy and international development. Assignments are tailored to the needs of the hosting office, while taking into account the Fellows’ interests and areas of expertise.

Learn more and apply here.

People with weakened immune systems are at constant risk of infection. Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common environmental bacterium, can colonize different body parts, such as the lungs, leading to persistent, chronic infections that can last a lifetime – a common occurrence for people with cystic fibrosis.

But the bacteria can sometimes change their behavior and enter the bloodstream, causing chronic localized infections to become acute and potentially fatal. Despite decades of studying the transition in lab environments, how and why the switch happens in humans has remained unknown.

Read the rest of the story here.