Whether you’ve always wanted to see a real brain, are curious about the science behind coffee brewing, or anything in between, there’s one event you should have marked on your calendar: the Atlanta Science Festival.

“The festival spans three weeks and includes events all over town,” says Jennifer Leavey, assistant dean for Faculty Mentoring in the College of Sciences, principal academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences, longtime festival volunteer. “It helps me recharge my science enthusiasm batteries every year and lets me approach science education creatively.”

The annual festival features over 150 science-themed events for all ages and has become an Atlanta staple over the past decade. This year, the festival will host events from March 9 to March 22, culminating in the Exploration Expo event in Piedmont Park featuring 100 different demonstrations — on March 23. 

As one of its founding partners, Georgia Tech has served a key role in the Festival for over a decade. Last year’s iteration featured several events hosted by Tech — from a science fashion show to a virtual college prep workshop — hosted by volunteers from across campus.

“As a volunteer, you could help with one of the partner events or the Exploration Expo: the culminating street party at the end of the festival,” says Leavey. “Volunteering is a great way to meet people, learn more about science, get in events for free, and share your love of science with the community.”

Here are a few ways to get involved with this year’s festival. Look out for the full schedule and attendee registration on the Atlanta Science Festival website. 

Volunteer for GT Science and Engineering Day | March 9

For several years, Georgia Tech has opened its doors to the Atlanta community during Science and Engineering Day. With demonstrations on everything from robotics and neuroscience to paper and chemical engineering, there’s always been an activity for everyone. Last year’s event saw over 1,500 attendees, with more than 40 host units and student organizations.

This year, Science and Engineering Day will serve as the kickoff event for the entire festival, taking place on March 9 from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M. Those interested in volunteering or hosting a demonstration of their work should register here by January 25.

Visit research.gatech.edu/ATLScienceFestival to learn more.

High School Math Day | March 9

Science and Engineering Day will also host this year’s High School Math Day, a tradition at Georgia Tech since 1958. A day of logic puzzles, math demonstrations, and friendly competition, last year’s event saw over 250 students, parents, and teachers from 42 schools around the state.

“My favorite part of High School math day is seeing all the students get excited about doing the activities with each other and winning the awards at the end of the day,” says Lea Marzo, program operations director for the College’s Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences (C-PIES) and one of the co-organizers of the event.

If you know a high schooler who is a math expert or even math-curious, encourage them to stop by on March 9 from 10 A.M. to 2 P.M.

“It really is for any level of Math — whether you are in 9th grade Math or more advanced Math,” says Marzo. “There are a lot of activities planned for students and it includes food and a cool T-Shirt!”

Visit hsmd.math.gatech.edu to learn more.

Host a demonstration at the Exploration Expo | March 23

The Exploration Expo is the finale to the Festival, taking over Piedmont park every year with roughly 100 different science demonstrations. Often referred to as “Atlanta’s biggest science party,” this free event has a little something for everyone.

“Whether you’re about to start preschool or volunteering with your grandkids, you’re here because you also believe that Atlanta is a science city — that we’re here to learn, teach one another, and improve our world through shared inquiry,” shares Jess Hunt-Ralston, director of Communications for the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech, who also represents the Institute on the Science ATL Board of Directors. “And there’s nothing quite like seeing the scales of a butterfly wing for the first time, playing brain games with new friends, or peering through a telescope together to help spark and sustain that spirit of curiosity.”

Contact Jennifer Leavey (jennifer.leavey@cos.gatech.edu) for more information.

Volunteer for other events at the Festival

Interested in volunteering at the Festival in another way? Learn more about how to volunteer here.

After the Festival: Georgia Tech Energy Materials Day | March 27

If you're looking for more science after the festival, join us for the Georgia Tech Energy Materials Day on March 27 at the Georgia Tech Exhibition Hall. This event will bring together representatives from academia, government, and industry to accelerate energy materials research. It will also provide an opportunity for key stakeholders to interact with Georgia Tech researchers in this important area.

Register for the event here, or click here to learn more.

Ascend, a new career development program for mid-career faculty, launched its cohort for Spring 2024. Supported by the Office of Faculty Professional Development, Ascend cohort members include academic professionals and lecturers from across campus.  

The cohort will build on current strengths and successes and explore ways to thrive mid-career and in the future. Using a faculty learning community model and the Appreciative Inquiry framework, participants will explore their interests, values, and goals, and create an actionable, individual strategic plan while developing skills for career growth and leadership. 

Members of the first cohort include: 

• Whitney Buser - Director of Master’s Programs and Associate Director of Academic Programs, School of Economics 

• Melissa Foulger - Artistic Director for DramaTech, School of Literature, Media, and Communication 

• Laura Sams Haynes - Director of Outreach, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

• Mary Holder - Director of Neuroscience Program, Undergraduate Studies, School of Psychology 

• Christopher Jankowski - Director of Graduate Advising and Assessment, Director of Postdoctoral Teaching Effectiveness, School of Mathematics 

• Ashley McKeen - EXCEL Senior Lecturer, CEISMC

• Nicoly Myles - Director of the Center for Academics, Success, & Equity (CASE), School of Industrial and Systems Engineering 

• Amanda Nolen - Faculty Teaching and Learning Specialist, Center for Teaching and Learning 

• Matt Nusnbaum - Senior Academic Professional, Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience 

• Daniela Staiculescu - Senior Academic Professional, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 

• Cassie Thomas - Associate Director of Undergraduate Transition Seminars, Office of Undergraduate Education 

• Ruthie Yow - Associate Director, Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Development. 

Participants in this program will learn to use the Appreciative Inquiry model to develop a personal development plan that includes a vision and mission; goals for personal learning, professional development, and career momentum; and an action plan. The program is designed to support faculty as they practice skills essential for collegiality and leadership in a cohort environment and explore opportunities for growth and career vitality at Georgia Tech. Participants will also take advantage of four professional coaching sessions during the calendar year with International Coaching Federation-accredited Director of the Office of Faculty Professional Development Rebecca Pope-Ruark.

Learn more about the Ascend program. 

You may be familiar with yeast as the organism content to turn carbs into products like bread and beer when left to ferment in the dark. In these cases, exposure to light can hinder or even spoil the process. 

In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences have engineered one of the world’s first strains of yeast that may be happier with the lights on.

“We were frankly shocked by how simple it was to turn the yeast into phototrophs (organisms that can harness and use energy from light),” says Anthony Burnetti, a research scientist working in Associate Professor William Ratcliff’s laboratory and corresponding author of the study. “All we needed to do was move a single gene, and they grew 2% faster in the light than in the dark. Without any fine-tuning or careful coaxing, it just worked.”

Easily equipping the yeast with such an evolutionarily important trait could mean big things for our understanding of how this trait originated — and how it can be used to study things like biofuel production, evolution, and cellular aging.

Looking for an energy boost

The research was inspired by the group’s past work investigating the evolution of multicellular life. The group published their first report on their Multicellularity Long-Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE) in Nature last year, uncovering how their single-celled model organism, “snowflake yeast,” was able to evolve multicellularity over 3,000 generations.

Throughout these evolution experiments, one major limitation for multicellular evolution appeared: energy.

“Oxygen has a hard time diffusing deep into tissues, and you get tissues without the ability to get energy as a result,” says Burnetti. “I was looking for ways to get around this oxygen-based energy limitation.”

One way to give organisms an energy boost without using oxygen is through light. But the ability to turn light into usable energy can be complicated from an evolutionary standpoint. For example, the molecular machinery that allows plants to use light for energy involves a host of genes and proteins that are hard to synthesize and transfer to other organisms — both in the lab and naturally through evolution. 

Luckily, plants are not the only organisms that can convert light to energy.

Keeping it simple

A simpler way for organisms to use light is with rhodopsins: proteins that can convert light into energy without additional cellular machinery.

“Rhodopsins are found all over the tree of life and apparently are acquired by organisms obtaining genes from each other over evolutionary time,” says Autumn Peterson, a biology Ph.D. student working with Ratcliff and lead author of the study.

This type of genetic exchange is called horizontal gene transfer and involves sharing genetic information between organisms that aren’t closely related. Horizontal gene transfer can cause seemingly big evolutionary jumps in a short time, like how bacteria are quickly able to develop resistance to certain antibiotics. This can happen with all kinds of genetic information and is particularly common with rhodopsin proteins.

“In the process of figuring out a way to get rhodopsins into multi-celled yeast,” explains Burnetti, “we found we could learn about horizontal transfer of rhodopsins that has occurred across evolution in the past by transferring it into regular, single-celled yeast where it has never been before.”

To see if they could outfit a single-celled organism with solar-powered rhodopsin, researchers added a rhodopsin gene synthesized from a parasitic fungus to common baker’s yeast. This specific gene is coded for a form of rhodopsin that would be inserted into the cell’s vacuole, a part of the cell that, like mitochondria, can turn chemical gradients made by proteins like rhodopsin into energy. 

Equipped with vacuolar rhodopsin, the yeast grew roughly 2% faster when lit — a huge benefit in terms of evolution.

“Here we have a single gene, and we're just yanking it across contexts into a lineage that's never been a phototroph before, and it just works,” says Burnetti. “This says that it really is that easy for this kind of a system, at least sometimes, to do its job in a new organism.”

This simplicity provides key evolutionary insights and says a lot about “the ease with which rhodopsins have been able to spread across so many lineages and why that may be so,” explains Peterson, who Peterson recently received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Fellowship for her work. Carina Baskett, grant writer for Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection, also worked on the study.

Because vacuolar function may contribute to cellular aging, the group has also initiated collaborations to study how rhodopsins may be able to reduce aging effects in the yeast. Other researchers are already starting to use similar new, solar-powered yeast to study advancing bioproduction, which could mark big improvements for things like synthesizing biofuels.

Ratcliff and his group, however, are mostly keen to explore how this added benefit could impact the single-celled yeast’s journey to a multicellular organism. 

“We have this beautiful model system of simple multicellularity,” says Burnetti, referring to the long-running Multicellularity Long-Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE). “We want to give it phototrophy and see how it changes its evolution.”

Citation: Peterson et al., 2024, Current Biology 34, 1–7.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.044 

The end of the year is often a time to look back and reflect on what has happened over the past 365 days. For Georgia Tech, it’s no different.

Here are some of the highlights and most widely read stories from the past year at the Institute — including a campus visit from Vice President Kamala Harris to discuss the climate crisis with College of Sciences faculty, record Institute enrollments and rankings, significant research advances, and $4.5 billion in contributions to the state economy.

Lizzie Wright was in 10th grade when she watched a TED Talk about controlling someone else’s arm with your brain.

“It got me thinking — we’re all walking around, talking to people, moving our hands, and just kind of taking it for granted,” she said. “We all have this brain and it looks pretty much the same on the outside, and has the same functions, yet we are all different. And we don’t fully know why. I wanted to know why.”

That curiosity led Wright to Georgia Tech, where she graduates this week with a bachelor’s degree in neuroscience, with minors in health and medical science and philosophy. She leaves behind a community that has become a defining part of her life.

Through EXCEL, Georgia Tech’s postsecondary education program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities, Wright mentored five students and later served in a leadership role overseeing the entire group of mentors.

“EXCEL taught me more than anything else,” she said. “I learned skills like how to budget because we worked on that together, how to manage my time, how to walk into new environments and approach joining new clubs and groups.”

Wright was also selected for Ramblin’ Royalty in 2022, an honor bestowed on two students each year. Ramblin’ Royalty students serve throughout the year at campus events and in other leadership roles.

“I was nominated by my sorority, which was very humbling. I always thought about the idea of applying based on previous winners and what I’ve seen them do over the years, but I didn’t want to get my hopes up. Going through the process made me realize how much I love Georgia Tech and how grateful I am for this place, and it gave me a tangible way to give back.”

Through Greek life, Campus Outreach, and the EXCEL program, Wright not only found a path for her career but a path for her life.

“I joined all three my first year and just never really needed to find anything else. They all taught me that the Tech bubble, though it’s beautiful, there’s so much more outside of Tech, and that perspective kept me going. We’re all here for a reason, and that reason is to take what we’ve learned and go forth into the world.”

For Wright, that means completing her EMT certification with Grady Hospital and applying to medical school. Her passion for global health and medicine was solidified during a summer in Ethiopia working on a medical mission.

“It was my first full encounter with medicine. We were doing rounds one day, and the doctor I was working with came across this patient who had just had spinal surgery, but he had bedsores and needed to be lifted off the bed without having his spine compromised. Eventually, the doctor says, ‘My kid has a bike. Let’s take the tire off the bike, put it under his spine, and raise it so his skin can breathe.’ So he goes home, disassembles the bike, sterilizes the tire, and configures it in a way that raises the person up from the bed. And it worked. And it was just because his kid had a bike.

“That type of thinking — engineering thinking, even though I’m a neuroscience major — is so cool because you just work with what you’ve got.”

That unpredictability, and pursuing a career that could take her anywhere, is part of what drew Wright to medicine.

“That’s the reason I want to do EMT. You have no idea what you’re walking into. You have your jump bag, your partner, and your knowledge. What are you going to do? How are you going to help this person before you can get them to the hospital?”

As Wright prepares for Commencement, she’ll be joined by her family — including her brother Bishop, also a Tech graduate, who encouraged her to be a Yellow Jacket in the first place.

“He really pushed me early on to realize this wasn’t just a good school, but way more than that. Georgia Tech offers so much, but I would really advise most students to not just use it as a launchpad, but to acknowledge this place for the community it offers. I think that is key not only to enjoying the college experience, but really to seeing Georgia Tech for everything it has to offer and not waste these years.”

The College of Sciences is pleased to announce several new endowed faculty appointments for the 2023-24 academic year. 

These appointments both recognize existing faculty within the College, and welcome new faculty members to the Institute — furthering the College of Science’s mission to cultivate curiosity, encourage exploration, and foster innovation to develop leaders and scientific solutions for a better world.

Chris Reinhard was appointed Georgia Power Chair this July, for a duration of five years.

The search for a second Georgia Power Chair, with expertise in energy efficiency, is ongoing this fall, led by the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.

An associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Reinhard researches earth system science, with research interests that span astrobiology; biogeochemistry; climate, oceanography and weather; and space and planetary science.

Reinhard is already amplifying impact in his new position — this October, he was awarded a USDA Grant for a project that will aim to trap carbon while boosting crop yields. 

“I am extremely honored and humbled,” Reinhard said, in a recent article about the grant. “I hope to use the position [as Georgia Power Chair] as a platform to collaborate on and advocate for climate-smart agricultural practices in the state of Georgia and beyond, and to amplify efforts that reimagine technically rigorous and socially responsible carbon removal across land and sea.” 

Joel Kostka and Francesca Storici have been appointed Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professors.

Kostka, a professor and associate chair of Research in the Schools of Biological Sciences and Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, studies microbial processes, particularly those that impact Earth’s biogeochemical cycles and provide helpful ecosystem services. Much of Kostka’s work focuses on peatlands and wetlands. 

Recently, Kostka received a $3.2 Million Department of Energy grant to support his research in Minnesota peatlands, which addresses climate change and carbon storage. Kostka is also actively engaged in community-driven science, collaborating on projects that address the impacts of sea level rise on Georgia’s coastal communities and natural wetlands.

Storici, a professor and associate chair for Graduate Education in the School of Biological Sciences, studies genome stability, DNA repair and gene targeting. Storici’s research focuses include cancer research, drug design, drug development and drug delivery. Previously, Storici has been named a Distinguished Cancer Scientist of the Georgia Research Alliance. 

Kostka and Storici join Greg Gibson, who continues to hold the Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Chair in the School of Biological Sciences. Kostka and Storici’s appointments recognize continued excellence in research, and were each awarded this September, for a duration of five years.

Tamara Bogdanović, Chandra Raman, and JC Gumbart have been appointed Dunn Family Professors in the School of Physics.

Bogdanović was appointed this August for a period of three years for her exceptional research in astrophysics, including supermassive black holes, accretion physics, and computational astrophysics. 

Bogdanović serves as associate director of the Center for Relative Astrophysics, a Georgia Tech Center that aims to answer how the universe evolves and what our place is in the universe, while providing students outstanding education and training. Bogdanović is also a member and mentor of the Georgia Tech Society of Women in Physics.

Raman’s research investigates experimental atomic physics. By cooling atoms to temperatures near absolute zero, Raman explores a vapor’s unique capabilities for applications in quantum photonics, sensing, and many-body physics. 

Raman also partners with engineers to build cutting-edge atomic quantum sensors, with goals of enabling a mass-producible product. Raman is also an IMat Initiative Lead in the fields of Materials for Quantum Science and Technology at the Georgia Tech Institute for Materials.

Gumbart’s research spans coronaviruses, bacterial cell walls, and Hepatitis B research, focusing on creating computational simulations of complex biophysical phenomena, with the aim of exposing the underlying physical nature of life at atomic resolution. 

Gumbart is also passionate about outreach, collaborating on global hands-on workshops for college and graduate students, while also taking part in classroom demonstrations for K-12 students. “As part of our mission as scientists,” he shares, “we not only need to carry out cutting-edge research, but also train the next (and the next-next) generation of researchers.”

Benjamin Freeman and James Stroud have been appointed Elizabeth Smithgall-Watts Endowed Faculty in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech.

Freeman, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, is working to understand the impacts of climate change on biodiversity, with an emphasis on unraveling how montane birds are responding to climate change through biology and statistics. Freeman also prioritizes mentoring students, teaching, and leveraging citizen-science datasets.

Stroud’s research focuses on ecology and evolutionary biology, with emphasis on climate change and conservation biology. Stroud studies the evolutionary ecology of lizards to understand processes responsible for driving patterns of biodiversity. Stroud also spearheads several outreach programs, including Lizards on the Loose, a program that has reached over 20,000 middle school students.

The search for Smithgall-Watts Assistant Professors in the School of Psychology is ongoing this fall.

Joe Lachance has been appointed a Blanchard Early Career Professor. 

The award is given to an associate professor who is within three years of having received tenure, who shows excellence in their field. First known as the Blanchard Fellowship, and launched in 1999 as a way to honor early career School of Chemistry and Biochemistry scientists, twenty-five scientists have received the award prior to the 2023 announcements. 

Lachance, an associate professor in the School of Biology, studies population genetics and human evolutionary genomics, investigating questions regarding hereditary disease and health disparities. He also researches how human genomes have evolved in modern environments, and what human genomes might look like in the future. Lachance is also known for his support of student researchers, encouraging diverse individuals ranging from post-doc, graduate, and undergraduate levels to collaborate.

Rose McCarty and Xiaoyu He will join the School of Mathematics, School of Computing as Richard A. Duke Assistant Professors.

Rose McCarty, who studies combinatorics, will join the School of Mathematics and School of Computing in January 2024. Her research interests include structural graph theory and its connections to matroid theory, discrete geometry, finite model theory, and algorithms and complexity.

Xiaoyu He will also be joining the School of Mathematics, with research interests in extremal, probabilistic, and algebraic combinatorics, with specific interest in Ramsey theory, graph coloring, additive combinatorics, discrete geometry, and coding theory, with applications to computer science.

The Richard A. Duke Faculty Endowment was created by former Georgia Tech faculty member Professor Richard Duke to commemorate his over 34 year career as a faculty member in the School of Mathematics. His legacy continues through the Richard A. Duke faculty appointments.