Jessica Bowman
(Williams Lab; Chemistry)

Event Details

The Georgia Institute of Technology has been selected as the in-depth cell characterization platform hub for the National Institute of Health’s (NIH) Regenerative Medicine Innovation Project (RMIP). Established under the 21st Century Cures Act, the main goal of the $30 million RMIP is the development of transformative new therapies based on adult stem cells.

A key element of NIH's strategy in implementing the RMIP has been to identify the field's critical challenges and provide resources and tools to address them.  A widely acknowledged challenge in the regenerative medicine field is a limited understanding of how specific stem cell characteristics lead to successful clinical outcomes.  To address this challenge, the NIH in consultation with the scientific community and in collaboration with Food and Drug Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology, developed a proposed framework for in-depth cell characterization (IDCC). 

The University of Maryland, Baltimore (UMB), which serves as the administrative hub for the RMIP in-depth cell characterization activities, issued a request for proposals for a characterization infrastructure hub, where this science would happen.  After a competitive solicitation and review, Georgia Tech was selected to provide IDCC of human adult source stem cells used in RMIP studies, as well as stem cell products that RMIP awardees have developed for clinical application.

“Our analysis will provide researchers a deeper understanding of the cell products in these various clinical and IND-supporting pre-clinical trials – the characteristics that contribute to their safety and efficacy, for example,” said Krishnendu Roy, principal investigator of the new IDCC Platform Hub. Through this kind of in-depth analysis of every cell therapy that is manufactured or used in an RMIP project, researchers will create what Roy and others call a “cell fingerprint.”

 “When we have created a large enough database, scientists will be able to correlate the cell fingerprint with the outcomes of a particular disease in a particular patient and gain insights into the critical quality attributes of the cells that make them most effective for a specific patient.”

The IDCC Platform Hub will benefit from the existing resources at Georgia Tech, which include the Marcus Center for Therapeutic Cell Characterization and Manufacturing (MC3M), and the NSF Engineering Research Center (ERC) for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT). These research centers, along with the core facilities of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, made Georgia Tech highly competitive in the award process, according to Roy.

“We’ve been working on in-depth cell characterization for clinical trials and pre-clinical projects through the Marcus Center and CMaT for several years now, so we’re very well positioned,” said Roy, director of both CMaT and the Marcus Center, and the Robert A. Milton Endowed Chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

“Over the past four years, we’ve developed the broad and deep analytics and characterization infrastructure along with the logistics and data-management know-how necessary to conduct these studies,” Roy added. “So, we can take a cell and learn as much as we can from its gene expression profiles, protein profiles, lipid profiles, metabolite profiles, and its functional properties.”

Roy and Carolyn Yeago, associate director of the Marcus Center, will manage activities for the IDCC Platform Hub at Georgia Tech. The rest of the leadership team includes co-principal investigators Andrés García, executive director of the Petit Institute and Regents Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Greg Gibson, director of the Center for Integrative Genomics and Regents Professor in the School of Biological Sciences; Facundo Fernandez, Professor and Associate Chair for Research in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Craig Forest, professor in the Woodruff School.

The IDCC Platform Hub is supported by $1.7 million for the first year – 50 percent from the NIH and 50 percent from non-federal dollars (as required by the Cures Act).  Most of the non-federal contributions are being made by the Marcus Foundation and Georgia Tech.

 

Nancy Moran, Ph.D.
Department of Integrative Biology
The University of Texas at Austin

Livestream via BlueJeans

SPEAKER BIO
Moran obtained her bachelor's degree from The University of Texas at Austin and her doctoral degree from the University of Michigan. She is an evolutionary biologist whose research intersects the fields of genetics and genomics, microbiology, entomology, and ecology. Moran’s focus is on genome evolution in host-associated microorganisms, especially bacterial symbionts of insects, and on the consequences of symbiotic associations for biological diversity and ecological relationships. She has authored 200 research papers. Moran was elected as a Member of the National Academy of Science in 2004 and of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2005. She was awarded the International Prize for Biology in 2010. Before coming to The University of Texas at Austin, she was Regent's Professor at the University of Arizona (1986-2010) and the William Fleming Professor of Biology at Yale University (2010-2013). Her awards include a John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Award, the International Prize in Biology, the Jim Tiedje award from the International Society for Microbial Ecology and the Lifetime Contribution award from the Society for Molecular Biology and Evolution.

Host: Marin Whiteley, Ph.D.

Event Details

Covid-19 is often asymptomatic and can lead infected individuals to spread the disease without knowing it. Yet, regular surveillance testing of a community can catch these cases and prevent outbreaks.

In early 2020, Georgia Tech researchers designed a saliva-based polymerase chain reaction (PCR) test and encouraged community members to test weekly to track the health of the campus. Their strategy confirmed 62% of the campus’ positive cases in the Fall 2020 semester. The method of surveillance testing — focusing on case clusters and then having patients isolate — reduced positivity rates from 4.1% in the beginning of the semester to below 0.5% mid-semester. Their findings were published in the journal Epidemiology.

“One of the ways you can mitigate spread is not to think about testing as just an indicator for how bad things are, but actually use enough testing that you can begin to pull infected people out of circulation to reduce the spread,” said Joshua Weitz, Georgia Tech professor in the School of Biological Sciences who developed the infectious disease models used to monitor campus.

Surveillance testing not only kept the community safe, but also enabled an open campus during a period of the pandemic when vaccines were not available. The strategy showed that combining multiple mitigation efforts — from testing to social distancing — can keep a university operational.

Designing the Test

The program relied on saliva PCR tests compared to the more common nasal swab PCR tests.

“I saw data very early on that the saliva tests were actually probably a little bit more sensitive than the nasal ones,” said Greg Gibson, professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “I just knew that students would be more likely to do something that takes 30 seconds to give us spit. It’s easy and safe, so it was just a no-brainer.”

Saliva-based tests were a practical solution for a campus. The test could be self-administered, requiring fewer medical personnel and creating ease of access for students. The tests were also safer than nasal swabs because the collection tube contained a viral deactivation buffer that killed active virus but preserved the RNA at room temperature for analysis.

The Georgia Tech campus biomedical research labs were also ideal for this type of test. Andrés García, executive director of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering & Bioscience, realized robotics labs could build and run tests and make the program scalable.

“Testing requires precisely distributing different amounts of fluid to volumes, and this is a task really well suited for a robot,” García said. “With the large number of tests that we were expecting to need to administer, there was really no choice because having the robot really cut down on the human error.”

Another novel strategy was double pooling. Each saliva sample was pooled twice into a group of five samples and processed. This had multiple advantages, according to Gibson. One was it prevented false results because each sample had to test positive twice to be considered positive. And, by pooling, the testing system could clear dozens of individuals at once, while also focusing on a positive individual and then referring them for further diagnostic testing.

“A purely surveillance test where you don't give anybody results can be done without much regulation, but it’s minimally useful,” said Gibson, who is a Regents’ Professor, Tom and Marie Patton Chair in Biological Sciences, and serves as director of the Center for Integrative Genomics at Georgia Tech. “The double pooling strategy was a way for us to be able to identify exactly who was responsible for positive tests, and then go back to their original test and do a diagnostic one in a CLIA-certified lab.” CLIA (Clinical Laboratory Improvement Amendments) certification indicates a lab has met federal quality standards for diagnostic testing on human samples.

The Testing Strategy

Creating an effective testing infrastructure was also key to the success of the program. A university is a high-density environment where a community lives, learns, and works. When the program was first implemented in the Fall 2020 semester, Georgia Tech had 7,370 people in residence and 5,000 students, faculty, and staff who visited daily.

With the ability to run 1,500 tests at the beginning of the semester and up to 2,850 by the end, the program enabled most people on campus to test weekly. Testing weekly helped catch cases early with Covid-19’s seven-day incubation period, and positive individuals isolated for 10 days.

Part of why this approach was so successful was because of what Gibson calls “synergistic effectiveness.” By combining testing with mitigation strategies like masking and social distancing, Georgia Tech was able to reduce positivity rates.

“We've shown that testing doesn't have to be comprehensive with everybody testing every other day to be effective,” Gibson said.

This strategy enabled the researchers to focus on campus hotspots and control spread. In the beginning of the Fall 2020 semester, campus positivity was at 0.5% until a cluster was identified in Greek housing in August. This enabled a targeted campaign where 90% of on-campus residents were tested. The asymptomatic positivity rate peaked at 4.1%, but steadily declined back to 0.5% by mid-September thanks to rapid identification and isolation of positive individuals.

“We are a technical university — that doesn't have a medical school or a school of public health — that developed its own effective testing program and was able to deploy it to test a large segment of the population and keep the campus in operation,” said García, who additionally holds the Petit Director’s Chair in Bioengineering and Bioscience and is a Regents’ Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

Due to the success of surveillance testing, cases were kept at a manageable number. Most importantly, campus was able to stay open throughout the pandemic. The Georgia state legislature also adopted Georgia Tech’s surveillance testing system in January 2021 and is using the program to track and manage cases during this year’s legislative session. The strategy continues to keep Georgia Tech an active campus with in-person learning as the pandemic evolves. Ideally, the program established at Georgia Tech will remain in place, prepared to deal quickly with future infectious disease epidemics should the need arise, according to Gibson.

“We developed a program that in practice – and psychologically – provided a benefit to community members,” said Weitz, who also serves as the Tom and Marie Patton Chair in Biological Sciences and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences. “Many people could go get tested and know that they weren't infectious so that they had a less likely chance of infecting others. Or, if they did end up testing positive, they were able to isolate themselves so they didn't infect others. That is of significant benefit.”

CITATION: G. Gibson, J.S. Weitz, M.P. Shannon et. al, “Surveillance-to-Diagnostic Testing Program for Asymptomatic SARS-CoV-2 Infections on a Large, Urban Campus in Fall 2020.” (Epidemiology, Dec. 2021)

DOI: 10.1097/EDE.0000000000001448

###

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 44,000 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.

Writer: Tess Malone

Media Contacts:
Georgia Parmelee | Georgia.Parmelee@gatech.edu
Steven Norris | Stephen.Norris@gatech.edu

Since it was founded in 2002, the Applied Physiology Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech has had close ties to rehabilitation science. Now, thanks to the generosity of a Georgia Tech and Emory University alum’s family foundation, Applied Physiology will work with the Emory University School of Medicine and Shepherd Center’s Crawford Research Institute to create a new training program for Applied Physiology doctoral students focused on neurorehabilitation. 

The Applied Physiology Ph.D. program, part of the Georgia Tech School of Biological Sciences, focuses primarily on the physical and neural function of the human motor system. “Because of that,” explains T. Richard Nichols, Biological Sciences professor and head of Applied Physiology, “rehabilitation has always been a very strong theme in our program.”

That deeper focus on rehabilitation sciences is now formalized by the creation of the Jack and Dana McCallum Neurorehabilitation Training Program. The new initiative is the result of a $1 million gift from Dana and Jack McCallum (BIO ’66) that will be used over the next four years to support graduate student and faculty research, as well as train new scientists in neurorehabilitation. 

Emory University School of Medicine, where Jack McCallum received his M.D., will be a close partner in developing the program. A course designed to train graduate students in clinical neurorehabilitation will be taught at the school in addition to collaborating closely in research funded by the investment.

“This gift is really going to strengthen the tie between specifically Biological Sciences and the Emory University School of Medicine, which was the intention of the gift,” explains Biological Sciences professor and associate chair of faculty development Young-Hui Chang. “I think it’s going to provide one more, but very strong, avenue for collaboration between the two institutions.”

Refocusing on rehabilitation

With a clinical focus, research funded through the program will target aspects of rehabilitation for people who have neurological diseases like Parkinson disease — or trauma, such as a spinal cord or brain injury.

The investment will also drive new major research focused on understanding the neurophysiological basis for injury and recovery related to central and peripheral nervous system trauma, and on the preclinical development of potential therapies.

“As people survive and live longer with acquired conditions such as stroke and Parkinson disease, and with traumatic injuries such as brain and spinal cord injury, there is a tremendous demand for rehabilitation researchers to meet needs of the large and growing population of persons with neurologic conditions,” explains Edelle Field-Fote, a professor with joint appointments in the Emory University School of Medicine and Applied Physiology at Georgia Tech, who also serves as director of spinal cord injury research at the Shepherd Center. “The goal of the McCallum Neurorehabilitation Training Program is to help address this need. The program will develop rehabilitation scientists with the training to advance knowledge underlying clinical care and the skills to develop interventions that can reduce disability, thereby improving functioning and quality of life for persons with neurologic conditions.”

Research and practice in motion

The Applied Physiology graduate program is no stranger to clinical research and development, having served as home of a clinical master’s degree in prosthetics and orthotics, which migrated to Kennesaw State University in 2020, and also hosting a training grant from the National Institute of Health (NIH), funding students whose research focused on rehabilitation for persons with limb loss. In 2018, Applied Physiology launched a dual Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Physical Therapy degree program in collaboration with the Division of Physical Therapy at Emory University, with Field-Fote as its director. 

"Emory University’s Division of Physical Therapy greatly values our collaborations with Georgia Tech and its Applied Physiology program,” shares Tami Phillips, associate professor and interim program director of the Division of Physical Therapy. “The opportunity for Ph.D. students to work in research labs across institutions and D.P.T/Ph.D. students to bridge the gap between clinical neurorehabilitation practice and research will lead to innovations that will benefit individuals with neurologic conditions.”

As Nichols points out, these ties between research and the clinic build a solid foundation for the new training program. “Our faculty in Applied Physiology are used to dealing with clinical collaborators and clinical problems, but we're working more at a fundamental level in terms of the science. It really provides a nice environment for this training program and will help move us into a new area of neurorehabilitation.”

New funding for current graduate students in Applied Physiology, as well as those enrolling in the dual Doctor of Philosophy and Doctor of Physical Therapy program, is set to begin this year. Targeted toward advanced students, the efforts are expected to allow the Applied Physiology program to admit more new students and to award competitive McCallum Research Fellowships to help fund thesis research after they reach Ph.D. candidacy.

“I am so grateful to Dana and Jack McCallum for their foresight and generosity,” shares Field-Fote. “I am most excited by the great potential that this program has for advancing the clinical care and foundational sciences related to neurorehabilitation.”

For more information on the Applied Physiology program or the Jack and Dana McCallum Neurorehabilitation Training Program, contact Young-Hui Chang at yh.chang@ap.gatech.edu.

For more information on how to support the School of Biological Sciences or the Applied Physiology Program, contact Leslie Roberts at leslie.roberts@cos.gatech.edu and visit: cos.gatech.edu/giving

Jean-François Louf, Ph.D.
Department of Chemical Engineering
Auburn University

Livestream via BlueJeans

ABSTRACT
Plants live quietly, but dangerously. This danger comes from their singular reliance on water. As a result, plants have become  experts  at  manipulating  water  through  varying  environmental  conditions.  Such  water  flow  is  fine-tuned by poroelastic membranes, responsive hydrogel coatings, colloidal clogging cycles, and liquid phase changes. Thegoalof  our  labistouse  biomimetic  experiments  to  understand  the  physical  mechanisms  at  play  and  improve  our fundamental  knowledge  of  plant  function,and tocombine  this  knowledge  with  soft  matter  for  applications  in agriculture and soft robotics. In  this  presentation, we  will investigate (1) how  plants can feel  without nerves, (2)  how  they can control  water  flow without pumps, and (3) how hydrogels can be used as water reservoir for agriculture.(1) Plants are sessile organisms without nerves. As such, they have developed specific methods for carrying information throughout their body in response to mechanical stimuli. However, the specific mechanisms at play are still debated. Motivated by  experiments  conducted  on  natural  and  biomimetic  tree  branches,  we  propose  a  new  mechanism responsible for the generation of hydraulic pulses in response to bending as a way for long-distance signaling.Such signals can propagate  rapidly  throughout  the  vascular  system  of  the  plant,  acting  like  a  nervous  system  but based solely on physical attributes.(2) Despite the lack of actuators, plants are able to manipulate water exquisitely. Inspired by the shapes of membranes separating  channels  in  the  plant’s  vasculature  and  in  fungi -namely sieve  plates, plasmodesmata,  and  septal nanopores-we investigated the effect of pores inside an elastic membrane to control flow. Our experiments reveal a mechanism where small deformations bend the membrane and constrict the pore, thus reducing flow, while larger deformations  stretch  the  membrane,  expand  the  pore,  and enhance  flow.Together,  our  results  suggest  that intercompartmental flow control in living systems can be encoded entirely in the physical attributes of soft materials. (3) According to the US Drought Monitor, Drought impacted US crops severely in 2021 with near-record lows in soil moisture content. A promising solution for modern agriculture to reduce drought stress in plants is to use hydrogels as water reservoirs. However, confinement in soil can markedly alter the ability of hydrogels to absorb water and swell, hindering  their  widespread  adoption.  Unfortunately,  the  underlying  reason  remains  unknown.  By  combining measurements on  an  ideal  transparent  soil  and  polymer  physics, we  show  that  the  extent  of  hydrogel  swelling  is determined by the competition between the force exerted by the hydrogel due to osmotic swelling and the confining force transmitted by the surrounding grains. We then confront our results to experiments done with hydrogels in real soil,confirming and providing quantitative principles to predict how hydrogels behave in crops.

SPEAKER BIO
Jean-François Louf received his Bachelor degree in Physics at University of Côte d’Azur (France), his master in Mechanical engineering at University of Lyon I (France), and was awarded a Laboratory of excellence PhD fellowship for his doctoral work at Aix-Marseille University(France). He did short postdocs in few different places: one year at Virginia Tech with Sunny Jung, one year with Philippe Marmottant at CNRS in France, one year with Kaare H. Jensen at the Technical University of Denmark, and two years with Sujit S. Datta at Princeton University. He started as an Assistant Professor in Chemical Engineering at Auburn Universityin August 2021. His research operates at the intersection of soft matter physics, fluid dynamics, and organismal plant biology,to tackle both fundamental and applied problems.

Hosts: Drs. David Hu and Saad Bhamla

Event Details

Kausik Chakrabarti, Ph.D.
Department of Biological Sciences
University of North Carolina at Charlotte

Livestream via BlueJeans

SPEAKER BIO
Dr. Chakrabarti is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Biological Sciences. Prior to joining UNC Charlotte, Dr. Chakrabarti was a Special Faculty in the Department of Chemistry at Carnegie Mellon University (CMU) and led an independent research group at the Center for Nucleic Acids Science & Technology (CNAST). After completing his Ph.D at the University College of Science and Technology, Calcutta, India followed by postgraduate programs in ICGEB, in collaboration with LSTM, UK, he did his postdoctoral research on RNA biology in the lab of Dr. Manual Ares Jr., HHMI at the University of California Santa Cruz. Dr. Chakrabarti’s Lab currently focuses on genomics and molecular mechanism of RNA function in human parasites and viruses.

Host: Greg Gibson, Ph.D.

Event Details

Little Einsteins Organization (LEO) is a chartered Georgia Tech campus organization that conducts science, technology, engineering, and math focused activities with children in Atlanta.

Each week, LEO works with more than 150 kids at various elementary schools in Atlanta. The organization has more than 100 Georgia Tech student members and nearly 2,000 followers on Instagram. Membership is open to all undergraduate and graduate Georgia Tech students.

The past two years have presented many challenges for those involved in education, but that hasn’t stopped Georgia Tech’s Little Einsteins Organization from helping provide students in K-5 schools with instruction and activities focused on STEM. 

They’ve accomplished that by changing how they bring science and engineering to the kids — meeting at Hands on Atlanta for science demonstrations, and sending kits to local libraries for children and their families to take home — so that children can perform experiments found in do-it-yourself kits assembled by Georgia Tech volunteers.

“I think they have done wonderful outreach activities, and have been so creative and committed to reach out, despite the very different pandemic landscape,” says Pamela Pollet, LEO academic advisor and senior academic professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “This project is unique because it gives Georgia Tech students the opportunity to support the education of young children in Atlanta during a time of isolation and online schooling.”

Pollet says the pandemic hasn’t kept LEO student and instructor volunteers from keeping their commitment to Atlanta’s students, especially those in underserved communities. 

And before Covid, Pollet saw firsthand LEO’s impact when volunteers helped the younger students conduct experiments in their schools. “Their friend’s volcano erupted much more than theirs. Why? What was different? ‘How come my catapult is not working?’ It is okay if it does not work — let’s take a look and think how we can make it work," she shares. "LEO members created a welcoming and vibrant atmosphere in which students were so engaged and curious.”

There was also the opportunity for Atlanta children to see future versions of themselves in the Georgia Tech students. “They recognized themselves or connected with LEO members as if they were in an age group of older sisters or brothers. It demystified the image given to a scientist or engineer.”

Olivia Gravina, a fourth-year undergraduate in the School of Mathematics, serves as LEO president for the 2021-22 school year. Gravina says one of the group’s latest efforts to get creative during Covid challenges involved putting together at-home STEM kits for kids involved in Hands On Atlanta’s "Disco" program, formerly known as the Discovery program. Disco is a Saturday morning enrichment program which currently offers STEM, social emotional learning, fitness, and health-related activities to K-5 youth across nine Atlanta-area schools.

“We made 150 homemade ice pack kits, and 150 soap Silly Putty kits,” Gravina says. Teams of LEO members made instructional videos for each of the activities which included explanations of the science behind them. Then, Tech's LEO members joined Zoom calls with students from schools involved in the Disco program. 

“The young students had the opportunity to ask questions, and Georgia Tech students were able to encourage the younger students and see the impact of the kits they had provided,” Gravina shares.

Another recent activity, a collaboration with Fulton County Libraries, saw LEO members assembling kits for building small catapults, which also included instructional videos. “We delivered 620 catapult-making kits, which translates to 20 kits in each of the 31 branches of the Fulton County Library System,” Gravina explains.

“It was absolutely brilliant to use the libraries, kits and videos to maintain the excitement of hands-on experimenting,” Pollet adds.

“It was needed even more, especially for younger kids. Being virtual all day leaves many of them disconnected from the material and what science is about: Experiments, observations, questions, analysis," Pollet shares. "And again, they can connect the experiments with Georgia Tech students they can easily relate to.”

Gravina says LEO is still working through plans for the season ahead, but hopes to continue coordinating activities in Atlanta libraries. She encourages other Georgia Tech students to join those activities.

Pollet says the ability to show younger students that they could eventually pursue science careers is critical, pandemic or no pandemic.

“Young, dynamic Tech students who are doing science, and taking the time to do it with them,” Pollet says. “That is really inspiring.”

More information on Little Einsteins Organization is available on their website, and on their Instagram page. Learn more about Hands On Atlanta’s Disco program here

Little Einsteins Organization (LEO) is a chartered Georgia Tech campus organization that conducts science, technology, engineering, and math focused activities with children in Atlanta.

Each week, LEO works with more than 150 kids at various elementary schools in Atlanta. The organization has more than 100 Georgia Tech student members and nearly 2,000 followers on Instagram. Membership is open to all undergraduate and graduate Georgia Tech students.

The past two years have presented many challenges for those involved in education, but that hasn’t stopped Georgia Tech’s Little Einsteins Organization from helping provide students in K-5 schools with instruction and activities focused on STEM. 

They’ve accomplished that by changing how they bring science and engineering to the kids — meeting at Hands on Atlanta for science demonstrations, and sending kits to local libraries for children and their families to take home — so that children can perform experiments found in do-it-yourself kits assembled by Georgia Tech volunteers.

“I think they have done wonderful outreach activities, and have been so creative and committed to reach out, despite the very different pandemic landscape,” says Pamela Pollet, LEO academic advisor and senior academic professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “This project is unique because it gives Georgia Tech students the opportunity to support the education of young children in Atlanta during a time of isolation and online schooling.”

Pollet says the pandemic hasn’t kept LEO student and instructor volunteers from keeping their commitment to Atlanta’s students, especially those in underserved communities. 

And before Covid, Pollet saw firsthand LEO’s impact when volunteers helped the younger students conduct experiments in their schools. “Their friend’s volcano erupted much more than theirs. Why? What was different? ‘How come my catapult is not working?’ It is okay if it does not work — let’s take a look and think how we can make it work," she shares. "LEO members created a welcoming and vibrant atmosphere in which students were so engaged and curious.”

There was also the opportunity for Atlanta children to see future versions of themselves in the Georgia Tech students. “They recognized themselves or connected with LEO members as if they were in an age group of older sisters or brothers. It demystified the image given to a scientist or engineer.”

Olivia Gravina, a fourth-year undergraduate in the School of Mathematics, serves as LEO president for the 2021-22 school year. Gravina says one of the group’s latest efforts to get creative during Covid challenges involved putting together at-home STEM kits for kids involved in Hands On Atlanta’s "Disco" program, formerly known as the Discovery program. Disco is a Saturday morning enrichment program which currently offers STEM, social emotional learning, fitness, and health-related activities to K-5 youth across nine Atlanta-area schools.

“We made 150 homemade ice pack kits, and 150 soap Silly Putty kits,” Gravina says. Teams of LEO members made instructional videos for each of the activities which included explanations of the science behind them. Then, Tech's LEO members joined Zoom calls with students from schools involved in the Disco program. 

“The young students had the opportunity to ask questions, and Georgia Tech students were able to encourage the younger students and see the impact of the kits they had provided,” Gravina shares.

Another recent activity, a collaboration with Fulton County Libraries, saw LEO members assembling kits for building small catapults, which also included instructional videos. “We delivered 620 catapult-making kits, which translates to 20 kits in each of the 31 branches of the Fulton County Library System,” Gravina explains.

“It was absolutely brilliant to use the libraries, kits and videos to maintain the excitement of hands-on experimenting,” Pollet adds.

“It was needed even more, especially for younger kids. Being virtual all day leaves many of them disconnected from the material and what science is about: Experiments, observations, questions, analysis," Pollet shares. "And again, they can connect the experiments with Georgia Tech students they can easily relate to.”

Gravina says LEO is still working through plans for the season ahead, but hopes to continue coordinating activities in Atlanta libraries. She encourages other Georgia Tech students to join those activities.

Pollet says the ability to show younger students that they could eventually pursue science careers is critical, pandemic or no pandemic.

“Young, dynamic Tech students who are doing science, and taking the time to do it with them,” Pollet says. “That is really inspiring.”

More information on Little Einsteins Organization is available on their website, and on their Instagram page. Learn more about Hands On Atlanta’s Disco program here

The Georgia Tech College of Computing has received an $11 million grant from Schmidt Futures to create one of the four software engineering centers within the newly launched Virtual Institute for Scientific Software (VISS). The new center will hire half-a-dozen software engineers to write scalable, reliable, and portable open-source software for scientific research.

“Scientific research involves increasingly complex software, technologies, and platforms,” said Alessandro Orso, the software engineer and professor of computer science who is heading up the project. “Also, platforms constantly evolve, and the complexity and amount of data involved is ever-growing.”

The result is that these software systems are often developed as prototypes that are difficult to understand, maintain, and use, which limits their efficacy and ultimately hinders scientific progress.

Software engineers are trained to address these kinds of issues and know how to build high-quality software, but their time is too expensive for a typical research project’s budget. In typical grants, software is often treated as a byproduct of research, meaning that limited funding is allocated for it.

That’s where Schmidt Futures comes in. Schmidt Futures is a philanthropic initiative founded by Eric and Wendy Schmidt that bets early on exceptional people making the world better. They are investing $40 million in VISS over five years at four universities: Georgia Tech, University of Washington, Johns Hopkins University, and University of Cambridge.

“Schmidt Futures’ Virtual Institute for Scientific Software is a core part of our efforts to mobilize exceptional talent to solve specific hard problems in science and society,” said Executive Vice President Elizabeth Young-McNally.

At Georgia Tech, the funds will hire a software engineering lead, as well as three senior and two junior software engineers. A faculty director and an advisory board will help guide the group’s work, which will include collaborations with Georgia Tech scientists.

"We are very proud to host one of the four inaugural Schmidt Futures Virtual Institute of Scientific Software centers,” said Charles Isbell, Dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair of Computing.

“Georgia Tech’s center will advance and support scientific research by applying modern software engineering practices, cutting-edge technologies, and modern tools to the development of scientific software. The center will also engage with students and researchers to train the next generation of software engineering leaders.”

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