By Yasmine Bassil, Communications Assistant

Balancing academic work and competitive sports can often be difficult, especially for a college student at Georgia Tech, but Elena Shinohara has mastered it.

Elena Shinohara, a rhythmic gymnast on the Senior National Team, was named the Rhythmic Gymnastics Sportsperson of the Year by USA Gymnastics. She received the award after the USA Gymnastics Championship in Des Moines, Iowa, on July 6, 2019. The award is determined by a collective vote from the top 12 gymnasts of the nation. Rhythmic Gymnastics Athlete Representative Rebecca Sereda presented the award.

Elena is a full-time student at Georgia Tech, completing a pre-health track and majoring in biochemistry. Her father, Minoru “Shino” Shinohara, is an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Biological Sciences.

Shino runs the Human Neuromuscular Physiology Laboratory, studying the mechanisms of motor learning and rehabilitation. As an expert in physiology and sports science, Shino is one of Elena’s rhythmic gymnastics coaches. Elena’s second coach is her mother, Namie “Nancy” Shinohara, a former member of the Japanese national rhythmic gymnastics team.

Hard work and dedication permeate Elena’s life; her successes in both her academic degree and gymnastics career are wonderfully exemplified by this award. Congratulations, Elena!

The monthly series "My Favorite Element" is part of Georgia Tech's celebration of 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements, #IYPT2019GT. Each month a member of the Georgia Tech community will share his/her favorite element via video.

July’s edition features Jennifer Leavey, a principal academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences who wears many other hats. By day, she's also he faculty director of Georgia Tech's Explore Living Learning Community and the director of the Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project.

On her free time, Leavey is the lead singer of the science rock band Leucine Zipper and the Zinc Fingers, "the world's first genetically modified rock band."

Leavey's favorite element changes day by day. When we caught up with her for this episode, bismuth happened to be her favorite element of the day. 

Renay San Miguel, communications officer in the College of Sciences, produced and edited the videos in this series. 

Other videos in this series are available at https://periodictable.gatech.edu/.

June 2019, Benjamin Breer, undergraduate double major in physics and aerospace engineering 

May 2019, G. P. "Bud" Peterson, president of Georgia Tech

April 2019: Kimberly Short, Ph.D. candidate

March 2019: Elayne Ashley, scientific glass blower

February 2019: Amit Reddi, assistant professor of chemistry and biochemistry

January 2019: Jeanine Williams, biochemistry major and track star

By Samantha Mascuch and Julia Kubanek

Editor's Note: This article was published originally on June 13, 2019, in The Conversation. It is republished here through the Creative Common License.

Plants, animals and even microbes that live on coral reefs have evolved a rich variety of defense strategies to protect themselves from predators. Some have physical defenses like spines and camouflage. Others have specialized behaviors – like a squid expelling ink – that allow them to escape. Soft-bodied or immobile organisms, like sponges, algae and sea squirts, often defend themselves with noxious chemicals that taste bad or are toxic.

Some animals that can’t manufacture their own chemical weapons feed on toxic organisms and steal their chemical defenses, having evolved resistance to them. One animal that does this is a sea slug that lives on the reefs surrounding Hawaii and dines on toxic Bryopsis algae. Marine scientists suspected the toxin is made by a bacterium that lives within the alga but have only just discovered the species responsible and teased apart the complex relationship between slug, seaweed and microbe.

Ultimately, noxious chemicals allow predators and prey to coexist on coral reefs, increasing their diversity. This is important because diverse ecosystems are more stable and resilient. A greater understanding of the drivers of diversity will aid in reef management and conservation.

As marine scientists, we too study chemical defenses in the ocean. Our laboratory group at the Georgia Institute of Technology explores how marine organisms use chemical signaling to solve critical problems of competition, disease, predation and reproduction. That’s why we were particularly excited by the discovery of this new bacterial species.

Origins of a chemical defense

In a report published in the journal Science, researchers at Princeton University and the University of Maryland discovered that a group of well-studied toxic defense chemicals, the kahalalides, are actually produced by a bacterium that lives inside the cells of a particular species of seaweed.

The scientific community had long speculated that a bacterium might be responsible for producing the kahalalides. So the discovery of the kahalalide-producing bacteria – belonging to the class Flavobacteria – has solved a long-standing scientific mystery.

Bryopsis provides the bacteria with a safe environment and the chemical building blocks necessary for life and to manufacture the kahalalides. In return, the bacterium produces the toxins for the algae, which protect them from hungry fish scouring the reefs. But the seaweed isn’t the only organism that benefits from this arrangement.

The kahalalides, originally discovered in the early 1990s, also protect a sea slug, Elysia rufescens, that consumes it. The sea slugs accumulate the toxins from the algae, which then protects them from predators.

The discovery of a symbiosis between a bacterium and a seaweed to produce a chemical defense is noteworthy. There are many examples of bacteria living inside the cells of invertebrate animals (like sponges) and manufacturing toxic chemicals, but a partnership involving a bacterium living in the cells of a marine seaweed to produce a toxin is unusual.

The finding adds a new dimension to our understanding of the types of ecological relationships that produce the chemicals shaping coral reef ecosystems.

The medicinal potential of toxins

Our lab is home to an enthusiastic multidisciplinary team of marine chemists, microbiologists and ecologists who strive to understand how chemicals facilitate interactions between species in the marine environment.

We also use ecological insights to guide discovery of novel pharmaceuticals from marine organisms. Chemicals used by marine organisms to interact with their environment, including toxins which protect them from predators, often show promising medical applications. In fact, the most toxic kahalalide, kahalalide F, has been the focus of clinical trials for the treatment of cancer and psoriasis.

Currently, we conduct our fieldwork in Fiji and the Solomon Islands in collaboration with a research group led by Katy Soapi at the University of the South Pacific. There you can find us scuba diving to conduct ecological experiments or to collect algae and coral microbes to bring back for study in the laboratory.

During the course of our field work we have had the opportunity to observe Bryopsis and have been struck by how lovely it is, standing out with its bright green color against the pinks, grays, browns and blues of a coral reef.

The story of the kahalalides is a good reminder that even though seaweed-associated bacteria may be invisible to the human eye and to fish predators, microbes and their chemicals play an important role in shaping coral reef structure and diversity, by allowing organisms to thrive in the face of predation.

Samantha Mascuch is a postdoctoral fellow in the School of Biological Sciences. She receives funding from the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health.

Julia Kubanek is a professor in the Schools of Biological Sciences and of Chemistry and Biochemistry and associate dean for research in the College of Sciences. She receives funding from the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and Sandia National Laboratories.

Much of the damage from climate change is in front of our eyes: Bleached-out coral reefs, destroyed homes and flooded neighborhoods ravaged by hurricanes, dangerous wildfires scorching Northern California forests. Worst-case scenarios involve remade coastlines, stunted crops, and social unrest caused by scarce resources.

An international group of microbiologists, however, is warning that as science tries to search for solutions to climate change, it’s ignoring the potential consequences for climate change’s tiniest, unseen victims – the world’s microbial communities.

Frank Stewart, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences, is one of more than 30 microbiologists from nine countries who today issued a statement urging scientists to conduct more research on microbes and how they are affected by climate change.

The statement, “Scientist’s warning to humanity: Micro-organisms and climate change,” was published in the journal Nature Reviews Microbiology. Lead author is Rick Cavicchioli, microbiologist at the School of Biotechnology and Biomolecular Sciences, in the University of New South Wales (Sydney).

“The consensus statement by Cavicchiolli and colleagues is an overdue warning bell,” Stewart says. “Its goal is to alert stakeholders that major consequences of climate change are fundamentally microbial in nature. As a co-author, I'm hopeful this statement finds a wide audience of nonscientists and scientists alike and also serves as a call to action. Microbes must be considered in solving the problem of climate change.”

The impact on microbes

In the statement, Cavicchiolli calls microbes the “unseen majority” of all life on Earth. Their communities serve as the biosphere’s support system, playing key roles in everything from animal and human health, to agriculture and food production.

A cited example: An estimated 90% of the ocean’s biomass consists of microbes. That includes phytoplankton, lifeforms that are not only at the start of the marine food chain, but also do their part to remove carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. But the abundance of some phytoplankton species is tied to sea ice. The continued loss of ice as oceans warm could therefore harm the ocean food web.

“Climate change is literally starving ocean life,” Cavicchioli said in a press release about the consensus statement.

The microbiologists are also worried about microbial environments on land. Microbes release important greenhouse gases like methane and nitrous oxide, but climate change can boost those emissions to unhealthy levels. It can also make it easier for pathogenic microbes to cause diseases in humans, animals, and plants. Climate change affects the range of flying insects that carry some of those pathogens. “The end result is the increased spread of disease, and serious threats to global food supplies,” Cavicchioli said.

“Just as microbes in our bodies critically affect our health, microbes in the environment critically affect the health of ecosystems,” Stewart says. “But microbial processes are changing dramatically under global climate change, including in ways that fundamentally alter food webs and accelerate climate change.”

A call to boost research

Georgia Tech researchers such as Stewart, Mark Hay, Kim Cobb, and Joel Kostka have become experts in researching climate change’s impact on diverse ecosystems, from coral reefs to subarctic peat bogs. Much of their work already focuses on microbes and the roles they play in these stressed environments.

“For example, ocean warming is driving the loss of oxygen from seawater, leading to large swaths of ocean dominated exclusively by microbes,” Stewart says. “Our research at Georgia Tech tries to understand how such changes affect the microbial cycling of essential nutrients.”

According to the consensus paper, that kind of research should play a bigger role when governments and scientists work on policy and management decisions that might mitigate climate change. Also, research that ties biology to worldwide geophysical and climate processes should give greater consideration of microbial processes.

“This goes to the heart of climate change,” Cavicchioli says. “If microorganisms aren’t considered effectively, it means models cannot be generated properly and predictions could be inaccurate.”

Microbiologists can endorse the consensus statement and add their names to it here: https://www.babs.unsw.edu.au/research/microbiologists-warning-humanity

Editor's Note: This story – narrative, photography, and slide show – is by the Georgia Tech students in the 2019 NGS-CR Study-Abroad Program, which is an interdisciplnary program co-taught by School of Public Policy Professor Juan Rogers.

In just five weeks, we interviewed a former vice president of Costa Rica, scrambled up the slopes of a volcano, and came face to face with sloths, vipers, and bullet ants. The Nature, Governance, and Sustainability in Costa Rica (NGS-CR) Study-Abroad Program has been an unbelievable experience. From the remote jungles of Sarapiqui to the stunning peaks of Monteverde, Costa Rica has inspired us to explore and learn at every turn.

Our program started in early May in the capital city of San Jose. We experienced new culture every step of the way, through the museums we visited and atop country’s highest volcano. We made a difference in the community by teaming up with Lead University to reduce plastic pollution by sorting and recycling plastic bottle caps. We also met with Kevin Casas Zamora, a former vice president of Costa Rica, and discussed the nation’s history and current policy concerns.

Next, we went deep into the tropical rainforest to La Selva Biological Station, one of the leading research institutions studying tropical ecology. Hundreds of species of trees towered over us, filled with multicolored bromeliads and orchids and teeming with strange insects and birds. Oh yeah, and sloths! 

Mornings were filled with the warbled calls of birds and the bellows of howler monkeys. Strikingly beautiful yellow and green tree frogs leaped into view when our flashlights found them during our night hikes. Cold rain fell seemingly out of nowhere to dash away the heat of day.

We learned about the history of chocolate, known here as the “drink of the gods.” We heard how locals are educating their communities about climate change and sustainable practices. We left knowing that a single hummingbird can effect change – and with a lot of chocolate.

We then traveled to Monteverde, a mountain town enveloped by clouds, where we welcomed the drop in temperature with open arms. We partnered with the Monteverde Institute, which aims to educate the local community about the importance of sustainability. Visiting small, sustainable farms forced us to confront the unique challenges of sustainable, organic farming.

We trudged through mud and cow manure to visit the farm of a direct descendant of one of the first Quaker families to settle in Monteverde. We were treated to delicious home-cooked meals made from all-natural ingredients, such as fresh, soft tortillas filled with hot gallo pinto, Costa Rica’s national dish, consisting of beans and rice.

Our trip to Monteverde also included delicious tasting of local coffee, and of course, the thrill of zip-lining through the forests.

Our experiences have been part of two interconnected classes, BIOL 4813: Tropical Biology & Sustainability and PHIL 3127: Science, Technology, and Human Values. These classes have integrated biological and social sciences so students can better understand how Costa Rica, the United States, and the world construct political mechanisms to organize societies and sustain natural systems.

Our instructors were Michael Goodisman, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences, and Juan Rogers, a professor in the School of Public Policy.

The NGS-CR Study-Abroad Program has been supported by the Office of International Education, the Steve A. Denning Chair for Global Engagement, and the Center for Serve-Learn-Sustain. The program is affiliated with the College of Sciences, and its courses are taught by faculty from the School of Biological Sciences in the College of Sciences and the School of Public Policy in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

We are this story’s authors, the participants (and our majors) of the 2019 NGS-CR Study-Abroad Program:

• Biology: Henry Crossley, Sarah Kuechenmeister, Amelia Smith, and Veronica Thompson
• Biochemistry: Rajan Jayasankar
• Environmental engineering: Miriam Campbell, Abigail Crombie, Catherine Mellette, and Isabelle Musmanno
• Industrial engineering: Laura “CC” Gruber
• Psychology: Katherine Chadwick

When I volunteered for a study that will observe and measure movements during walking, I knew only that my participation would help researchers figure out how to make better prostheses for people missing limbs. I didn’t know that the experience would surface strong feelings of empathy for people with ambulatory problems.

On the day of my appointment, I was met by Kinsey Herrin, a prosthetist/orthotist and the clinical liaison for the study, and Samuel Kwak, the graduate student working with Young-Hui Chang on the research study. Chang is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the principal investigator of the Comparative Neuromechanics Laboratory, where the study took place.  

The study – “Accelerating Large-Scale Adoption of Robotic Lower-Limb Prostheses through Personalized Prosthesis Controller Adaptation” – compares the motions, forces, and muscle activity during walking of people with amputations versus controls. The goal is to develop better ways of controlling prostheses. I was part of the control group. My counterpart, I learned, is a woman who is amputated below the knee on her left leg.

After the orientation to the study and reminders of confidentiality and safety, Sam and Kinsey put me through several walking sessions: normal, with a knee brace locked in extension, with an ankle brace, and with both braces. Each session started with a measurement of base line, followed by walking on a split-belt treadmill three times, each at a different speed. At each speed, I’d walk for three minutes before data are collected.

Data were collected from the force plates beneath the treadmill and by infrared cameras recording the movements. As I walked, I saw on a monitor the motion of my legs – shown as white dots corresponding to infrared sensors tacked on to various parts of each lower limb.

It was easy-peasy with normal walking; the only mildly tricky part was trying to mind the small gap between the two parts of the split-belt treadmill.

With braces on just one leg, it was a different story. The braces were heavy. My left leg was constrained. I never felt so asymmetrical in my life. Walking without the ability to bend the knee, or flex the ankle, is awkward, at best.

“This is tough,” I heard myself saying over and over. If this is tough for me, I thought, how much more for people without limbs; it must be harrowing for them.

Kinsey has worked with patients who have amputations. While prosthetists are quite adept at creating functional passive prostheses for patients, restoring power naturally during walking is much more challenging.

Prosthetists and patients can spend lots of time in the clinic over multiple visits tuning a powered device to be perfect, Kinsey said. The back and forth can create a burden on the patient and the clinician. The ultimate goal of this study – Kinsey and Sam reminded me several times – is to make prosthesis tuning easier and more automatic for patients and clinicians.

I spent three hours volunteering for the study. I consider those among the most useful three hours of my life, considering that my participation could help ease the life of people with lower limb amputations.

The study needs more volunteers. If you can spare three hours to advance the science of prosthesis control, contact Kinsey at kinsey.herrin@biosci.gatech.edu for more information.

Georgia Tech has selected Troy Hilley as the recipient of the 2019 Process Improvement Excellence Award. Hilley is an academic and research IT support engineer lead in the College of Sciences’ Academic and Research Computing Services (ARCS).

The award celebrates staff who consistently invent or improve tools, processes, or systems and ask: How can we do this better? Why do we do it that way?

For years Hilley was responsible for the day-to-day operations and maintenance of faculty, research group, and administrative computing infrastructure in the School of Biological Sciences. In that capacity he established himself as a leader in thinking creatively and acting proactively to prepare the school for the rapidly changing environment for integrative computing.

“With no budget and limited resources, he used free open-source software to completely overhaul OS X management from installation to end-user software management.”

Hilley’s leadership is evident in the improvements he initiated with the management and support of Apple OS X computers on campus. This problem had been adversely affecting faculty, staff, and students and causing substantial frustration.

Whereas other IT staff merely accepted the status quo, “Troy did a clean sweep of the status quo,” according to a colleague. “With no budget and limited resources he used free open-source software to completely overhaul OS X management from installation to end-user software management.”

Hilley then implemented a system to completely automate most of the software updates. This ensured that systems and end users have the latest security and feature updates immediately.

Still seeing room for improvement, Hilley then put in place a system that enables IT staff to get detailed information on the status of the computers under ARCS management. With this system, IT staff could proactively assist users, saving time and frustration.

The process and tooling improvements Hilley established increased the speed and accuracy of support while simultaneously decreasing the frustration among both IT staff and end users. That they were achieved at no cost is a “rare optimization gem,” a colleague says.

Hilley “continues to innovate and improve tools, processes, and systems that directly help our clients and enhance the organization’s effectiveness,” another colleague says. 

Georgia Tech has named William Ratcliff and Peter Yunker as recipients of the 2019 Sigma Xi Faculty Best Paper Award.

Ratcliff was recently promoted to associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and a member of the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection. Yunker is an assistant professor in the School of Physics. Both are members of the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience.

The award recognizes the authors of an outstanding paper. Ratcliff and Yunker are co-principal authors of the paper “Cellular packing, mechanical stress and the evolution of multicellularity,” published in Nature Physics in 2018.

“[The paper] exemplifies the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and best reflects Georgia Tech’s institutional culture of creative and rigorous exploration.”

The paper was the first to recognize the role of mechanics in the early evolution of multicellular organisms. Ratcliff and Yunker showed “how physical stress may have significantly advanced the evolutionary path from single-cell to multicellular organisms,” according to a 2017 story about this work. “In experiments with clusters of yeast cells called snowflake yeast, forces in the clusters’ physical structures pushed the snowflakes to evolve.

“Like the first ancestors of all multicellular organisms, in this study the snowflake yeast found itself in a conundrum: As it got bigger, physical stresses tore it into smaller pieces. So, how to sustain the growth needed to evolve into a complex multicellular organism?

“In the lab, those shear forces played right into evolution’s hands, laying down a track to direct yeast evolution toward bigger, tougher snowflakes.”

The partnership has profoundly shaped the two scientists’ research programs. “The paper reflects the deep collaboration between the Yunker and Ratcliff labs,” a colleague says. “It exemplifies the power of interdisciplinary collaboration and best reflects Georgia Tech’s institutional culture of creative and rigorous exploration.”

 “There are few things better than doing exciting, creative science with good friends,” Ratcliff says.

“I’m delighted to share this recognition with such a great team,” Yunker says.

Editor's Note: This story by Audra Davidson originally appeared on April 9, 2019, in Charged Magazine.

For as long as I can remember, I have been obsessed with how people move. Now, hear me out. Even simple movements are fascinating if you really think about it. Electrical signals from your brain and spinal cord communicating with hundreds of muscles, forcing them to work together in a perfectly balanced symphony of contractions. All to maneuver our unwieldy skeletons gracefully through space.

Do me a favor and stand up.

For most of us, this movement feels like one of the simplest things we can do.

Now, look at your legs.

There are over 50 muscles below your hips alone. Yet, all these muscles just contracted in expert harmony to use the precise amount of force needed to move your body against gravity, all while maintaining near perfect balance. Precisely how we can perform these seemingly simple yet crucial movements on a whim is an active and exciting area of research, leading us toward innovation in movement rehabilitation, robotics, and beyond. These are movements we don’t even notice, like activating our muscles to breathe, blink, maintain our balance, or even walk. If you did notice these movements, you likely wouldn’t be able to focus on much else, transforming a simple grasp into an impossible and difficult task.

Luckily, you don’t need your brain to do any of these things.

More than just a cord

Many people think of the spinal cord as just that, a cord. The cords and cables we typically interact with are charged with a very important but relatively simple task: bringing electricity from point a to point b. While the spinal cord is very important for bringing electrical signals from your brain to your muscles and organs, it does so much more.

Picture an orchestra with a smart but rather lazy conductor performing for an audience. The musicians are like the motor neurons in the spinal cord, connecting to and contracting the muscles when the neurons fire, allowing you to move. Complicated musical pieces require guidance by our lazy conductor, just like throwing a dart or grasping an object requires guidance by the brain.  The audience’s cheers allow the orchestra to adapt, just like you use sensations from your body to improve or guide movements.

Yet, just like our experienced musicians don’t need the conductor to play simple or repetitive musical pieces, you don’t need your brain to perform “classic” movements. “The spinal cord is able to achieve so many behaviors by itself, completely isolated from the brain,” explains Dr. Cope, spinal cord neurobiology researcher and Georgia Institute of Technology professor.  “You can completely isolate the spinal cord in a living animal from the brain and it can walk on a treadmill. It can change speeds as the treadmill changes speed. You put an obstacle in its way, it can learn to lift its leg over that obstacle,” all without our lazy conductor.

It was discovered in the early 1900’s that your motor neurons are fully capable of running the show. “What that tells you is that there is this rich circuitry that in fact the whole motor system relies upon,” Dr. Cope explained. All in all, it looks like the spinal cord has the classics all worked out for you. Feel free to tell your conductor they can take the day off.

How to run around like a chicken with its head cut off

Unsurprisingly, experienced musicians are able to play complicated, intricate music without their conductor. Surprisingly to many, however, your spinal cord is able perform complicated, intricate behaviors without any input from the brain. How exactly are these behaviors possible? It’s all in the organization.

If you’ve ever gotten a physical, you have probably experienced the odd sensation of your leg flying through the air without your consent. In the right spot, a simple tap on your knee by the doctor sends your foot on a trip automatically. We commonly refer to these types of movements as “reflexes,” in which no approval by the brain is required. This reflex pathway is relatively simple in organization; only two neurons are required, making this one of the fastest reflexes we have. One neuron senses the stretch of your muscle caused by the tap and immediately tells the second neuron to flex that same muscle. This flexion rapidly moves your leg before you can stop to think about it. This can happen in less than a few milliseconds! You use your stretch reflex more often than your visits to the doctor, however. The stretch reflex helps you keep your balance without a second thought and is believed to be crucial for general sensory feedback and movement control.

What if we make things a little more complicated? Instead of just two neurons, let’s add in two sets of neurons in the spinal cord: set A controlling muscle a, and set B controlling muscle b. Much like a seesaw, these sets of neurons rhythmically alternate in activity. A neurons fire until they run out of juice, then B neurons take over and the cycle continues. With this small set of neurons, a pattern of alternating activity emerges. Together, A and Bneurons form a central pattern generator. For humans, however, a 2-muscle central pattern generator isn’t very useful. Adding in more sets of neurons allows your spinal cord to rhythmically control more muscles in a more complicated pattern. With anything from breathing and scratching an itch to walking and running, the spinal cord is in charge.

The patterns are there in your spinal cord, all you need to do is press start. “One of the things the brain does and can take full advantage of is to just send a ‘go’ signal to the spinal cord,” Dr. Cope explained. “[The brain] can say ‘Hey, all of the complicated things you do with timing and organizing … different muscles in different patterns, you do it. You’ve worked all that out. I don’t have to complicate my life with that.’” And while the brain can initiate and influence this pattern of alternating activity, it isn’t required. This pattern can just as easily be started by sensory input from your environment, or by sensory signals from throughout your body.

At the end of the day, it seems like the spinal cord has it all figured out for us. But do we have the spinal cord all figured out? Not even close.

The Mysterious Cord

In the past year, the news has been abuzz with instances of paralyzed patients regaining the ability to walk. Paralysis is typically caused by spinal cord damage. Up until recently it seems, spinal cord injuries often left patients with limbs that were difficult or impossible to move willingly, oftentimes without hope for improvement. So how are these patients taking these miraculous steps?

A better question might be what happens to the spinal cord when it’s injured? We know some things about how it repairs itself, but we are far from the whole story. This means we are a far cry from fully repairing spinal cords ourselves. While these recent miraculous findings may make it seem like we have it all figured out, don’t let that fool you. “I think it’s exciting and I think it’s encouraging. I would say that we shouldn’t let our encouragement overshadow the fact that it’s nowhere close to what we want,” laments Dr. Cope.  “It’s going to require some basic neuroscience information about what the mechanisms are that are limiting recovery.”

Researchers like Dr. Cope at Georgia Tech are working on a piece of this puzzle, studying to understand how the healthy and injured spinal cord contributes to and controls movement. Even with the great strides achieved recently by clinical studies, Dr. Cope explains that “We’re encouraged, but we have a long way to go.”

Audra Davidson is a third-year Applied Physiology Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech. 

Charged Magazine is an online magazine about science and math produced by students and faculty on the STEMcomm VIP team at Georgia Tech.

Georgia Tech has named Emily Weigel as the recipient of the 2019 Outstanding Undergraduate Academic Advising Award – Faculty. Weigel is an academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences.

Trained as an ecologist, Weigel views the world through organismal-environment interactions, including understanding individuals and how they are shaped by their environment. As she gets to know each student personally, she challenges them to investigate and engage in new ways with their college environment and the broader world. Her goal is to endow advisees with the skills they need to succeed on campus and out in the world.

Weigel cares deeply for her advisees, colleagues say. She empowers students by presenting options rather than prescriptions. She adjusts recommendations on the basis of students’ developmental needs. She is available to students outside of usual times when needed. She looks out for students in trouble. She keeps tabs on paperwork students need to advance and graduate. She cares about her students beyond their academic activities.

"Sometimes it can be a challenge to let students struggle in weighing their options, but it has been so rewarding to watch the growth in students that results."

Students hold Weigel in high esteem. “She not only exhibits the qualities of a great advisor, but also exemplifies what is meant to be a mentor: Someone who sees what you are capable of and encourages you to take risks,” says one former advisee. This advisee adds: “I have always left an appointment with her feeling confident about my decisions. There is no doubt in my mind that the attention and support she has given me is widespread among the students she advises.”

A student who is not an advisee credits Weigel for opening her eyes to an ecology career after getting a biology degree. “She always made herself available to answer any question I have regarding ecology. She never made me feel bad for asking questions even though I was not among her advisees,” this student says.

Weigel has had a strong impact on students who deeply value their interactions with her as an advisor, a colleague observes. This colleague adds: Weigel’s “extraordinary effort and effectiveness as a faculty advisor are evident throughout her work at Tech.” 

"I’m honored to be recognized, particularly in encouraging my advisees to find and forge their own paths,” Wiegel says. “Sometimes it can be a challenge to let students struggle in weighing their options, but it has been so rewarding to watch the growth in students that results.

“I am delighted to hear that students, too, recognize the effort it requires to provide them the tools and space to tackle problems on their own. Thanks, too, go out to my colleagues for helping foster such a collectively positive, exploratory environment for our students to define and reach their goals.”