Since 2017, the annual Quantitative Biosciences Hands-On Modeling Workshop has aimed to introduce students and faculty of all skill levels and backgrounds to the use of computational modeling in studying biological systems. For the past two years, these workshops have been held virtually, reaching over 150 attendees from around the world with the apt theme of modeling epidemics.

This summer, organizers welcomed 45 attendees for an in-person workshop for the first time since 2019.

“While virtual workshops have some benefits — for example being able to reach a larger audience — being in-person is so much more conducive to forming connections with people,” shared J.C. Gumbart, associate professor in the School of Physics and associate director of the Quantitative Biosciences Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech. “One of my favorite parts of workshops is just sitting and chatting with participants one-on-one about their research background and interests, something that’s very hard to do over Zoom.”

Organized by the first-year Quantitative Biosciences (QBioS) and the NIH T32 Integrative and Quantitative Biosciences Accelerated Training Environment (InQuBATE) cohorts, this year’s two-day workshop highlighted how computational modeling can be applied to better understand gene expression. As no prior modeling or even programming experience was necessary to attend, the in-person workshop was open to graduate students, scientists, and faculty members from any field of research.

The workshop opened with a lecture on the event’s theme, stochastic gene expression, delivered by Adriana Lucia-Sanz, postdoctoral researcher in the Weitz Group at Georgia Tech, which is led by Joshua Weitz, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair of Biological Sciences and founding director of the Quantitative Biosciences program. The attendees then broke into smaller groups led by organizers to work through hands-on modeling tutorials in various programming languages. 

“The thing that I enjoyed the most was the group cultures that formed among the workshop groups,” shared Chris Zhang, a first-year Ph.D. student in Quantitative Biosciences and one of the workshop’s organizers. “I was incredibly happy at the quantity and quality of new relationships and connections that were made during this workshop.”

For first-year student Siya Xie, “the best memory was definitely the experience of our first-year cohort working together.”

The event closed with a plenary lecture on how randomness affects the biology and behavior of living cells by Ido Golding, professor of biological physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The annual gathering “has been quite revealing,” shared Hameed Sanusi, an attendee and Georgia State University bioinformatics graduate student. “I was glad to be part of this workshop — and more glad to have worked with budding scientists and professionals from the Atlanta area.”

“Hopefully,” added Zhang, “the participants learned a lot about how to think about biology from a quantitative perspective.”

Since 2017, the annual Quantitative Biosciences Hands-On Modeling Workshop has aimed to introduce students and faculty of all skill levels and backgrounds to the use of computational modeling in studying biological systems. For the past two years, these workshops have been held virtually, reaching over 150 attendees from around the world with the apt theme of modeling epidemics.

This summer, organizers welcomed 45 attendees for an in-person workshop for the first time since 2019.

“While virtual workshops have some benefits — for example being able to reach a larger audience — being in-person is so much more conducive to forming connections with people,” shared J.C. Gumbart, associate professor in the School of Physics and associate director of the Quantitative Biosciences Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech. “One of my favorite parts of workshops is just sitting and chatting with participants one-on-one about their research background and interests, something that’s very hard to do over Zoom.”

Organized by the first-year Quantitative Biosciences (QBioS) and the NIH T32 Integrative and Quantitative Biosciences Accelerated Training Environment (InQuBATE) cohorts, this year’s two-day workshop highlighted how computational modeling can be applied to better understand gene expression. As no prior modeling or even programming experience was necessary to attend, the in-person workshop was open to graduate students, scientists, and faculty members from any field of research.

The workshop opened with a lecture on the event’s theme, stochastic gene expression, delivered by Adriana Lucia-Sanz, postdoctoral researcher in the Weitz Group at Georgia Tech, which is led by Joshua Weitz, professor and Tom and Marie Patton Chair of Biological Sciences and founding director of the Quantitative Biosciences program. The attendees then broke into smaller groups led by organizers to work through hands-on modeling tutorials in various programming languages. 

“The thing that I enjoyed the most was the group cultures that formed among the workshop groups,” shared Chris Zhang, a first-year Ph.D. student in Quantitative Biosciences and one of the workshop’s organizers. “I was incredibly happy at the quantity and quality of new relationships and connections that were made during this workshop.”

For first-year student Siya Xie, “the best memory was definitely the experience of our first-year cohort working together.”

The event closed with a plenary lecture on how randomness affects the biology and behavior of living cells by Ido Golding, professor of biological physics at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.

The annual gathering “has been quite revealing,” shared Hameed Sanusi, an attendee and Georgia State University bioinformatics graduate student. “I was glad to be part of this workshop — and more glad to have worked with budding scientists and professionals from the Atlanta area.”

“Hopefully,” added Zhang, “the participants learned a lot about how to think about biology from a quantitative perspective.”

Three postdoctoral scientists have received National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellowships to support their research across the College of Sciences in celestial mechanics, microbial dynamics and infection, and host-microbe symbiosis.

Celestial mechanics

Bhanu Kumar, a Ph.D. candidate and NASA Space Technology Research Fellow (NSTRF) in the School of Mathematics, has won a fellowship for work in dynamical systems applied to celestial mechanics and applied astrodynamics for space mission design. His Ph.D. is set to be conferred in August. Kumar received his M.S. from the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech last December, and is also an NSTRF visiting technologist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where he works with his mentor and research collaborator Rodney Anderson. Kumar’s adviser at Tech is Rafael de la Llave, professor in the School of Mathematics. 

Microbial dynamics and infection

Elijah (Eli) Mehlferber is slated to receive his Ph.D. at the University of California, Berkeley this summer, before beginning research in the lab of Sam Brown, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI) at Georgia Tech. Mehlferber received his baccalaureate degree from the University of Georgia. Mehlferber’s research seeks to understand how community dynamics in the microbiome can impact susceptibility to pathogen invasion.

“I was aware of CMDI through talking to Sam before deciding to apply for the fellowship in his lab, and it was definitely one of the factors that influenced my decision to join the program,” Mehlferber says. “I liked the idea of having a cross-disciplinary group of like-minded researchers to work and collaborate with — and a program that encourages that kind of work. I think a lot of my best research has taken place through these sorts of collaborations so I’m very excited to continue that with the folks across CMDI.”

Host-microbe symbiosis

Kayla Stoy is set to receive her Ph.D. this summer at Emory University before joining Mehlferber in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech this fall. Stoy will complete her NSF Postdoctoral Fellowship with research in the lab of William Ratcliff, associate professor and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences program at Tech. Ratcliff’s lab focuses on experimental evolution of multicellular complexity. While at Emory, Stoy researched population biology, ecology, and evolution with a focus on mutualism. 

In a recent email from a fellow University of Georgia institution, colleagues conducting a survey asked Tech for recommendations on the most common textbooks used for introductory biology courses. 

The answer from Jung Choi, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of the Master’s program in Bioinformatics: “At Georgia Tech, we use our own,” with an invitation to check out the open source textbooks.

Choi and senior academic professionals Shana Kerr and Chrissy Spencer, who also serves as associate chair for Undergraduate Affairs in Biological Sciences, don’t just teach those introductory courses. They wrote the two textbooks for the classes “Biological Principles” and “Organismal Biology” specifically for their students, who also get to save money that would have been spent on commercial textbooks for those courses. 

The textbooks are examples of open education resources (OER), which involves the use of digital learning and teaching materials that are either in the public domain, or are under copyrights that allow them to be used, changed, and shared at no cost. 

“We have been using these in lieu of a commercial textbook for over five years now, with a high degree of both instructor and student satisfaction,” Choi says. “Students and teachers all over the country and from all over the world access our online textbook,” thanks to a license from Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that protects copyrights while enabling sharing of knowledge and creativity. 

That license allows for “anyone to use the textbooks as is, or to copy and modify for their own purpose, for non-commercial use with attribution and making any modifications also available under the same license,” Choi says. 

Both Spencer and Kerr credit Choi for moving the School of Biological Sciences toward OER. “To me, the story is about a student educator and faculty mentor (Jung Choi) whose ideas and passion for undergraduate student learning generated this online textbook as the end product,” says Spencer. 

OER: Up-to-date, more accessible textbooks

Both OER textbooks are, as Spencer calls them, “living documents” that are regularly updated, not just with updated editions, but also to incorporate new scientific ideas.

“We built in readings on gene editing using CRISPR/Cas9 (the genetic-editing technique that won its scientists a 2020 Nobel Prize) that are not yet in most commercial textbooks,” Spencer says. “During the pandemic we incorporated content on viruses and specifically on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.”

Along with Choi, Spencer, and Kerr, about a dozen faculty members have rotated through teaching the “Introductory Biology” sequence, Choi says. “All the faculty have readily accepted using the site,” for textbooks, he explains. “Some suggested improvements or pointed out corrections that we quickly incorporated on our pages. We also looked at student performance on midterm and final exam questions, and found no difference in student performance before and after the transition to our web pages.”

Kerr says she was excited to work with Choi and Spencer on a project that she believed “would benefit students — both academically and financially.” 

Before OER, the introductory biology textbook and homework packet cost up to $250 per student. “We adopted a low-cost homework and in-class quizzing system that cost $12,” Choi says. “Estimating that about 500 students take the course each year, that's more than $100,000 per year (in savings) for this single course.”

When the transition to OER began, one class had access to both the faculty-written textbook and a commercial textbook. “We surveyed students to see which resources they used, and they overwhelmingly used our web pages over the alternatives,” Choi says.

From teachers to textbook authors

The idea to use OER resources was initially prompted by Choi’s recognition that students struggled to learn about membranes, molecules, and metabolism from an evolutionary perspective, Spencer says. “The textbooks we used did not integrate evolutionary thinking into that content, and in fact were very human-centered in their approach.” 

Choi had already developed OER readings as blog posts for about a quarter of the “Biological Principles” course in 2012 when the decision was made to develop the School’s own textbook, with Choi, Kerr, and Spencer dividing the writing duties. “Personally, I felt like it was down to the wire to get everything in place, but our mutual commitment to serving our students was a strong motivator to keep at it,” Kerr says.

Chaohua Ou, assistant director of Special Projects and Educational Initiatives at Georgia Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), adds that OER is used in many ways across the Institute, explaining that it includes “many things, not just books. They could be materials for teaching, learning, and research in any format or medium that are publicly accessible.”

Ou says that Choi, Kerr, and Spencer were the second group of Georgia Tech faculty to receive an Affordable Learning Georgia grant in 2015 to fund the textbook initiative, with the first group led by Industrial Design faculty. Affordable Learning Georgia is an organization dedicated to reducing education costs by endorsing the use of OER in Georgia schools.

Crafting a Georgia Tech-specific textbook

Choi, Kerr, Spencer, and other faculty who instruct in the introductory biology courses at Georgia Tech spent a semester crafting very specific learning objectives for every class session of the “Biological Principles” course. “These objectives are designed to let students know precisely what we expect them to know and be able to do by the end of the class session,” Kerr says. “Without the learning objectives, I don’t think we could have written the textbook in such a targeted and streamlined way.”

“Writing this book was focused, fast, and furious,” Spencer says. “I was so excited to be implementing a free textbook resource that was truly focused on only the content and applications that we wanted the students to know for the course. When writing to deadline, I felt more attuned to the course content, and more considerate of what students typically already knew and what they so often struggled with in the course.”

A textbook for the second introductory biology course, “Organismal Biology,” came about because the faculty decided it was not reasonable to require students to buy a full commercial textbook for just one semester of the two-semester course sequence. 

“Our successful development and release of the ‘Biological Principles’ OER spurred me to take on a similar project for ‘Organismal Biology,’” Kerr says. 

Choi says since OER has trended in higher education, commercial publishers have launched lower-cost options such as rentals or online subscriptions. Yet he says students lose access to those when their subscriptions or rentals expire. “Our web pages are accessible to students for as long as we continue to host the site.”

Faculty across Biological Sciences have been supportive of OER, Spencer adds, “after seeing the data that we’ve done ‘no harm’ to student learning — while saving them on textbook and online homework system costs.”

In a recent email from a fellow University of Georgia institution, colleagues conducting a survey asked Tech for recommendations on the most common textbooks used for introductory biology courses. 

The answer from Jung Choi, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of the Master’s program in Bioinformatics: “At Georgia Tech, we use our own,” with an invitation to check out the open source textbooks.

Choi and senior academic professionals Shana Kerr and Chrissy Spencer, who also serves as associate chair for Undergraduate Affairs in Biological Sciences, don’t just teach those introductory courses. They wrote the two textbooks for the classes “Biological Principles” and “Organismal Biology” specifically for their students, who also get to save money that would have been spent on commercial textbooks for those courses. 

The textbooks are examples of open education resources (OER), which involves the use of digital learning and teaching materials that are either in the public domain, or are under copyrights that allow them to be used, changed, and shared at no cost. 

“We have been using these in lieu of a commercial textbook for over five years now, with a high degree of both instructor and student satisfaction,” Choi says. “Students and teachers all over the country and from all over the world access our online textbook,” thanks to a license from Creative Commons, a nonprofit organization that protects copyrights while enabling sharing of knowledge and creativity. 

That license allows for “anyone to use the textbooks as is, or to copy and modify for their own purpose, for non-commercial use with attribution and making any modifications also available under the same license,” Choi says. 

Both Spencer and Kerr credit Choi for moving the School of Biological Sciences toward OER. “To me, the story is about a student educator and faculty mentor (Jung Choi) whose ideas and passion for undergraduate student learning generated this online textbook as the end product,” says Spencer. 

OER: Up-to-date, more accessible textbooks

Both OER textbooks are, as Spencer calls them, “living documents” that are regularly updated, not just with updated editions, but also to incorporate new scientific ideas.

“We built in readings on gene editing using CRISPR/Cas9 (the genetic-editing technique that won its scientists a 2020 Nobel Prize) that are not yet in most commercial textbooks,” Spencer says. “During the pandemic we incorporated content on viruses and specifically on SARS-CoV-2, the virus that causes Covid-19.”

Along with Choi, Spencer, and Kerr, about a dozen faculty members have rotated through teaching the “Introductory Biology” sequence, Choi says. “All the faculty have readily accepted using the site,” for textbooks, he explains. “Some suggested improvements or pointed out corrections that we quickly incorporated on our pages. We also looked at student performance on midterm and final exam questions, and found no difference in student performance before and after the transition to our web pages.”

Kerr says she was excited to work with Choi and Spencer on a project that she believed “would benefit students — both academically and financially.” 

Before OER, the introductory biology textbook and homework packet cost up to $250 per student. “We adopted a low-cost homework and in-class quizzing system that cost $12,” Choi says. “Estimating that about 500 students take the course each year, that's more than $100,000 per year (in savings) for this single course.”

When the transition to OER began, one class had access to both the faculty-written textbook and a commercial textbook. “We surveyed students to see which resources they used, and they overwhelmingly used our web pages over the alternatives,” Choi says.

From teachers to textbook authors

The idea to use OER resources was initially prompted by Choi’s recognition that students struggled to learn about membranes, molecules, and metabolism from an evolutionary perspective, Spencer says. “The textbooks we used did not integrate evolutionary thinking into that content, and in fact were very human-centered in their approach.” 

Choi had already developed OER readings as blog posts for about a quarter of the “Biological Principles” course in 2012 when the decision was made to develop the School’s own textbook, with Choi, Kerr, and Spencer dividing the writing duties. “Personally, I felt like it was down to the wire to get everything in place, but our mutual commitment to serving our students was a strong motivator to keep at it,” Kerr says.

Chaohua Ou, assistant director of Special Projects and Educational Initiatives at Georgia Tech’s Center for Teaching and Learning (CTL), adds that OER is used in many ways across the Institute, explaining that it includes “many things, not just books. They could be materials for teaching, learning, and research in any format or medium that are publicly accessible.”

Ou says that Choi, Kerr, and Spencer were the second group of Georgia Tech faculty to receive an Affordable Learning Georgia grant in 2015 to fund the textbook initiative, with the first group led by Industrial Design faculty. Affordable Learning Georgia is an organization dedicated to reducing education costs by endorsing the use of OER in Georgia schools.

Crafting a Georgia Tech-specific textbook

Choi, Kerr, Spencer, and other faculty who instruct in the introductory biology courses at Georgia Tech spent a semester crafting very specific learning objectives for every class session of the “Biological Principles” course. “These objectives are designed to let students know precisely what we expect them to know and be able to do by the end of the class session,” Kerr says. “Without the learning objectives, I don’t think we could have written the textbook in such a targeted and streamlined way.”

“Writing this book was focused, fast, and furious,” Spencer says. “I was so excited to be implementing a free textbook resource that was truly focused on only the content and applications that we wanted the students to know for the course. When writing to deadline, I felt more attuned to the course content, and more considerate of what students typically already knew and what they so often struggled with in the course.”

A textbook for the second introductory biology course, “Organismal Biology,” came about because the faculty decided it was not reasonable to require students to buy a full commercial textbook for just one semester of the two-semester course sequence. 

“Our successful development and release of the ‘Biological Principles’ OER spurred me to take on a similar project for ‘Organismal Biology,’” Kerr says. 

Choi says since OER has trended in higher education, commercial publishers have launched lower-cost options such as rentals or online subscriptions. Yet he says students lose access to those when their subscriptions or rentals expire. “Our web pages are accessible to students for as long as we continue to host the site.”

Faculty across Biological Sciences have been supportive of OER, Spencer adds, “after seeing the data that we’ve done ‘no harm’ to student learning — while saving them on textbook and online homework system costs.”

This release first published in the NASA.gov newsroom:

NASA's Astrobiology program has announced its newest Research Coordination Network (RCN) ‘LIFE: Early Cells to Multicellularity,’  bringing together a collaboration of researchers from around the world that will spend the next five years investigating the earliest biological processes and the evolution of life into more complex organisms.

The new RCN was officially launched today at the 2022 Astrobiology Science Conference, hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta. The field of astrobiology seeks to understand how life originated and evolved on Earth so we can search for life elsewhere in the universe.

NASA’s RCNs are virtual collaboration structures designed to support groups of investigators to communicate and coordinate their research across disciplinary, organizational, divisional, and geographic boundaries.  

The LIFE RCN is co-led by the University of Wisconsin–Madison’s Betül Kaçar, alongside Georgia Institute of Technology’s Frank Rosenzweig, Arizona State University’s Ariel Anbar, and University of California Riverside’s Mary Droser. 

“LIFE will discern rules of co-evolution (between organisms and their environment) that will enable us to predict how life could evolve on worlds other than our own, and how we might search for it,” said Kaçar. “We know that the journey from single cells to multicellularity relied on critical environmental and biological innovations.”

One of five cross-divisional networks, RCNs are inherently crosscutting and focus on interdisciplinary science questions. LIFE joins:

• Nexus for Exoplanet System Science (NExSS) focuses on the study and characterization of planets with the greatest potential for signs of life.
• Network for Life Detection (NfoLD) investigates life detection research, including biosignature creation and preservation, as well as related technology development.
• Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE3) Consortium strives to transform the origins of life community by breaking down language and ideological barriers and enhancing communication across the disciplinary divide between early earth geoscientists and prebiotic chemists.
• Network for Ocean Worlds advances comparative studies to characterize Earth and other ocean worlds across their interiors, oceans, and cryospheres; to investigate their habitability; to search for biosignatures; and to understand life—in relevant ocean world analogues and beyond.

“Astrobiology has been a part of NASA since its inception and is the focus of a growing number of NASA’s science missions,” said Mary Voytek, senior scientist for NASA’s Astrobiology Program. “We are excited for the important work that members of our LIFE RCN will accomplish in support of NASA’s objective to understand the distribution of life beyond Earth.”

The goal of NASA’s Astrobiology Program is the study of the origins, evolution, and distribution of life in the Universe. The Program is central to NASA’s continued exploration of our solar system and beyond and supports research into the origin and early evolution of life, the potential of life to adapt to different environments, and the implications for life elsewhere. NASA, together with the science community, has developed an Astrobiology Strategy that describes the scientific goals and objectives of NASA’s Astrobiology Program.

Learn more: astrobiology.nasa.gov

Buoyed by Georgia Tech’s interdisciplinary research on the origins of life and the possibility of it beyond Earth, three researchers from the Colleges of Engineering and Sciences are the lead organizers for astrobiology’s largest national conference.

The following members of the Tech community were honored at the 2022 Faculty and Staff Honors Luncheon on Friday, April 29. See photos from this year's event.

Georgia Tech Chapter Sigma Xi Awards

Best Faculty Paper Award

Roman Grigoriev
Professor, Physics

Nga Lee (Sally) Ng
Associate Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Young Faculty Award

Samuel Coogan
Assistant Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Diyi Yang
Assistant Professor, Interactive Computing

Sustained Research Award

Dimitri Mavris
Regents Professor, Aerospace Systems Design Lab

Institute Research Awards

Outstanding Achievement in Research Enterprise Enhancement

Michelle Wong
Assistant Director, Business Operations, Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience

Outstanding Achievement in Advancing Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion in Research

Cassie Mitchell
Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Outstanding Achievement in Early Career Research Award

Matthew McDowell
Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Outstanding Achievement in Research Innovation Award

Natalie Stingelin-Stutzmann
Professor, Materials Science and Engineering

Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award

Manos Tentzeris
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Outstanding Faculty Research Author Award

Zhiqun Lin
Professor, Materials Science and Engineering

Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development Award

RADX TEAM (The Rapid Acceleration of Diagnostics)

Oliver Brand
Professor, Electrical and Computer Engineering

Hang Chen
Senior Research Scientist, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology

Sarah Farmer
Research Scientist I, Center for Advanced Communications Policy

David Gottfried
Regents Researcher, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology

David Ku
Regents Professor, Mechanical Engineering

Wilbur Lam
Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Amanda Peagler
Research Scientist II, Center for Advanced Communications Policy

Erika Tyburski
Program and Operations Manager, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology

ANAK Award

Carol Senf
Professor, Literature, Media, and Communication

Joi Alexander
Director, Health Initiatives

Staff Performance Awards

Acting With Ethics First Award

Terry Lee Grumley Bridges
Unit Director, Ethics and Compliance, GTRI

Cultivating Well-Being Award

Denise Ocasio Thomas
Assistant Director, Retention Initiatives, OMED

One Small Step Award

Shandra R. Jones
Public Services Associate Lead, Library

One Giant Leap Award

Office of The Arts

Justin Camp
Theater Production Assistant, Office of the Arts

Paul D. Cottongim
Theater Production Manager, Office of the Arts

Joe T. Davis
Stage Audio Technician, Office of the Arts

Ben A. Dosta
General Operations Manager, Office of the Arts

Dorcas Louise Ford-Jones
Senior Administrative Professional, Office of the Arts

Elizabeth B. Geiger
Communications Officer I, Student Engagement and Well-Being

Rachel C. Haage
Event Coordinator II, Office of the Arts

Almelida Rene Merriewether Baker
Patron and Event Services Assistant, Office of the Arts

Holley E. Mitchell
Box Office Coordinator, Office of the Arts

Twanesia Rucker
Box Office Assistant, Office of the Arts

Aaron David Shackelford
Director, Office of the Arts

Leadership in Action Award

Kevin M. Ellis
Assistant Director, Financial Operations, Aerospace Engineering

Samuel Evans III
Fleet Services Manager, Infrastructure and Sustainability

Leading By Example in Sustainability Award

Emma C. Brodzik
Campus Sustainability Project Manager, Infrastructure and Sustainability

Rising Wreck Award

Samba Diop
Senior Digital Learning Specialist, Office of Information Technology

Service to the Community Award

Richard A. Bedell
Electrical Engineer III, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Sarah Strohmenger
Student Life Program Director, Student Engagement and Well-Being

Putting Students First Award

Laura Tyler Paige
Academic Advisor II, Parker B. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience

ChBE Academic Advising Team

Adrienne Rice Hillman
Academic Advisor II, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Ellen Murkison
Academic Advising Manager, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Ami B. Waller-Ivanecky
Academic Program Manager I, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Excellence Award

Large-Scale Covid-19 Vaccination Clinic

Ina Collins
Nursing Manager, Stamps Health Services

Benjamin Royce Holton, M.D.
Senior Director, Stamps Health Services

John W. Scuderi
Director, Health Operations, Stamps Health Services

Theron Harold Stancil III
Assistant Director, Health Systems, Stamps Health Services

Nina Lee Thoman
Pharmacy Manager, Stamps Health Services

Lettie Pate Whitehead Evans Gender Equity Award

Carol Colatrella
Associate Dean, Literature, Media, and Communications

Sybrina Atwaters
Academic Professional, Institute Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion

Spirit of Georgia Tech Award

Lauren B. Evans
Program and Operations Manager, Honors Program

Robert William Hampson
Administrative Manager II, History and Sociology

Joshua E. Stewart
Communications Manager, Biomedical Engineering

Center for Teaching and Learning Award

Curriculum Innovation Awards

School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Fani Boukouvala
Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Martha Grover
Chair, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

A.J. Medford
Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

J. Carson Meredith
Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

David Sholl
School Chair, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Undergraduate Educator Award

Jacqueline Garner
Senior Lecturer, Scheller College of Business

Amit S. Jariwala
Senior Academic Professional, Mechanical Engineering

Geoffrey G. Eichholz Faculty Teaching Award

Michael Evans
Senior Academic Professional, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Christie N. Stewart
Senior Academic Professional, Biological Sciences

CTL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award

Katie Badura
Assistant Professor, Scheller College of Business

John James Blazeck
Assistant Professor, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Neha Garg
Assistant Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Allen Hyde
Assistant Professor, History and Sociology

Natalie Khazaal
Assistant Professor, Modern Languages

Annabelle C. Singer
Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Innovation and Excellence in Laboratory Instruction Award

Christy O’Mahony
Senior Academic Professional, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Faculty Award for Academic Outreach

James R. Sowell
Principal Academic Professional Physics

Innovation in Co-Curricular Education Award

Mary Hudachek-Buswell
Lecturer, Computing

Fisayo Omojokun
Senior Lecturer, Computing

Jake D. Soper
Associate Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Teachinig Excellence Award for Online Teaching

Michael Evans III
Senior Academic Professional, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Scholarship of Teaching and Learning Award

Emily G. Weigel
Senior Academic Professional, Biological Sciences

International Initiatives Award

Steven A. Denning Faculty Award for Global Engagement

Aris Georgakakos
Professor, Civil and Environmental Engineering

Faculty Honors Committee Awards

Outstanding Undergraduate Research Mentor Award

Junior Faculty

Cassie Mitchell
Assistant Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Senior Faculty

Jaydev P. Desai
Professor, Biomedical Engineering

Outstanding Use of Educational Technology

Aselia Urmanbetova
Academic Professional, Economics

Class of 1934 Outstanding Service Award

Pinar Keskinocak
Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering

Class of 1934 Outstanding Interdisciplinary Activities Award

Thomas Orlando
Professor, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Class of 1940 W. Roane Beard Outstanding Teacher Award

Brendan Saltaformaggio
Assistant Professor, School of Cybersecurity and Privacy

Class of 1940 W. Howard Ector Outstanding Teacher Award

Carrie Shepler
Principal Academic Professional, Chemistry and Biochemistry

Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award

Marilyn Brown
Regents Professor, Public Policy

As the academic year nears its end, a season of celebration begins. Several students were recognized for excellence this year at the annual Student Honors Celebration on Thursday, April 21. See photos from the event on Flickr.

The following students were recognized at this year's event:

College of Computing

Donald V. Jackson Fellowship
Shoale Badr, Lohith Burra, Raj Sanjay Shah

Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
Cole Anderson, Tricia Dang, Abrahim Ladha, Pengda Xie

Outstanding Graduate Head Teaching Assistant Award
Rusty Otomo

Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
Sam Jijina

Outstanding Undergraduate Head Teaching Assistant Award
Mitchell Gacuzana

Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award
Anthony Zheng

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

History and Sociology

The Bellon Award
Katie Marchese and Yihua Xu

Modern Languages

Excellence in Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies (ALIS) Award
Ella Tiller

International Affairs

International Affairs Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year
Amelia Rousseau

International Affairs Online Teaching Assistant of the Year
Leslie Dwolatzky

International Affairs Outstanding Graduate Student Award
Brian Stewart

International Affairs Outstanding Undergraduate Student Award
Samuel Ellis

Economics

Outstanding Economics Student Award
Samantha Cameron

Public Policy

Outstanding Public Policy Undergraduate Student Award
Archa Amin, Kathryn Earles, Adam Lederer

College of Design

AIA Medal for Academic Excellence
Weston Byerly and Monica Rizk

AICP Outstanding Student Award
Freyja Brandel-Tanis

Alpha Rho Chi Medal
AnLi French

Industrial Designers Society of America Student Merit Award
Sophia De Lurgio

John and Joyce Caddell Student Merit Award
Blaine Allen and Naomi Censullo

Kim Scott Logan Award
Mir Jeffres

Stanley, Love-Stanley, P.C. Award
Breanna Rhoden and Christian Waweru

Scheller College of Business

Dow Chemical-P.C. McCutcheon Prize for Outstanding Student Achievement in Business
Cindy Qiu

Jennifer R. and Charles B. Rewis Award for Student Excellence in Accounting
Katherine Fishman and Vicky Yang

John R. Battle Award for Student Excellence
Ben Barnett and Kara Pomerantz

Naresh K. Malhotra Scholarship for Marketing Research
Clara McKay

College of Sciences

A. Joyce Nickelson and John C. Sutherland Prize
Sarah Eisenstadt

Cynthia L. Bossart and James Efron Scholarship
Sena Ghobadi

Larry S. O’Hara Fellowship
Jason Tsukahara, Youngho Yoo, Pedro Marquez Zacarias

Mehta Phingbodhipakkiya Undergraduate Memorial Scholarship
Nabojeet Das

Roger M. Wartell, Ph.D., and Stephen E. Brossette, M.D., Ph.D. Award for Multidisciplinary Studies in Biology, Physics, and Mathematics
Lila Nassar

Virginia C. and Herschel V. Clanton Jr. Scholarship
Griffin Wagner

College-Wide Award

Robert A. Pierotti Memorial Scholarship
Holly McCann and Soham Kulkarni

College of Engineering

Aerospace Engineering

Aerospace Engineering Outstanding Senior Scholar Award
Anonto Zaman

Donnell W. Dutton Outstanding Senior in Aerospace Engineering Award
Stacey Tian

Biomedical Engineering

G.D. Jain Outstanding Senior in Biomedical Engineering Award
Kevin McCoy

Outstanding Academic Achievement in Biomedical Engineering Award
Adith Srivasta

S.K. Jain Outstanding Research Award in Biomedical Engineering
Mary Kate Gale

Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Chair’s Award — Outstanding Chemical and Biomolecular Junior
Ethan Guglielmo

Chair’s Award — Outstanding Chemical and Biomolecular Senior
Christina Whetzel

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Buck Stith Outstanding Junior Award in Civil Engineering
Anthony Sanseverino

Buck Stith Outstanding Junior Award in Environmental Engineering
Aidan Labrozzi

Buck Stith Outstanding Senior Award in Civil and Environmental Engineering
Zoe Zhang

School Chair’s Outstanding Senior Award in Civil Engineering
Thomas Papageorge

School Chair’s Outstanding Senior Award in Environmental Engineering
Johanna Hall

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electrical and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Research Award
Pradyot Yadav

Outstanding Computer Engineering Senior Award
Zachary Olkin

Outstanding Electrical Engineering Senior Award
Katherine Roberts

Industrial and Systems Engineering

Alpha Pi Mu Academic Excellence Award
Oscar Aguilar and Xufei Liu

Evelyn Pennington Outstanding Service Award
Hung Doan and Duncan Siebert

Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers Excellence in Leadership Award
Dany Shwayri

Materials Science and Engineering

American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists (AATCC) Student Chapter Award for Graduating Senior
Alp Kulaksizoglu

School of Materials Science and Engineering Outstanding Senior Award
Alp Kulaksizoglu and Matthew Kuner

Mechanical Engineering

George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Outstanding Scholar Award
Andrew Galassi

George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering School Chair’s Award
Joseph Stein

Richard K. Whitehead Jr. Memorial Awards
Julia Binegar, Blake Castleman, Sarah Chen, William Compton, Rebekah Travis

Nuclear and Radiological Engineering

Outstanding Scholastic Achievement Award — Nuclear and Radiological Engineering Program, School of Mechanical Engineering
MaryEmma Hughes

College-Wide Awards

College of Engineering (COE) Honors Awards
Evan Beckley, Denzel Carter, Eliezer Zavala Gonzalez, Zhiyi Li, Matthew Liu,
Bain McHale, Kristina Malinowski, Jana Shade, Taryn Trigler, Sophia Ung, Nick Vu

Davidson Family Tau Beta Pi Senior Engineering Award
Zachary Olkin

Institute Awards

Alvin M. Ferst Leadership and Entrepreneur Scholarship Award
Adam Lederer and Chris Ozgo

Naugle Communication Center Assistant of the Year Award
Jose Miranda-Hernandez

Georgia Tech Faculty Women’s Club Scholarships
Alexander Emelianov, Kelly Haas, Ben Howard, Parth Parashar, Shiloh Emma Thomas-Wilkinson

Jordan Lockwood Peer Tutor of the Year Award
Emily Nguyen and Raneem Rizvi

Outstanding Learning Assistant Award
Aboubacar Barrie

Outstanding PLUS Leader Award
Jerry Schweiger

Outstanding Student Assistant Award
Vivi Tran

Outstanding Tutor Award
Raymond Copeland

Provost’s Academic Excellence Award
Kathryn Earles, Jocelyn Kavanagh, Emily Salmond, Conner Yurkon

Love Family Foundation Award
Yashvardhan Tomar