Faculty from the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, including Associate Professors Gregory Sawicki and Aaron Young, have been awarded a five-year, $2.6 million Research Project Grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
“We are grateful to our NIH sponsor for this award to improve treatment of post-stroke individuals using advanced robotic solutions,” said Young, who is also affiliated with Georgia Tech's Neuro Next Initiative.
The R01 will support a project focused on using optimization and artificial intelligence to personalize exoskeleton assistance for individuals with symptoms resulting from stroke. Sawicki and Young will collaborate with researchers from the Emory Rehabilitation Hospital including Associate Professor Trisha Kesar.
“As a stroke researcher, I am eagerly looking forward to making progress on this project, and paving the way for leading-edge technologies and technology-driven treatment strategies that maximize functional independence and quality of life of people with neuro-pathologies," said Kesar.
The intervention for study participants will include a training therapy program that will use biofeedback to increase the efficiency of exosuits for wearers.
Kinsey Herrin, senior research scientist in the Woodruff School and Neuro Next Initiative affiliate, explained the extended benefits of the study, including being able to increase safety for stroke patients who are moving outdoors. “One aspect of this project is testing our technologies on stroke survivors as they're walking outside. Being outside is a small thing that many of us take for granted, but a devastating loss for many following a stroke.”
Sawicki, who is also an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and core faculty in Georgia Tech's Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, is also looking forward to the project. "This new project is truly a tour de force that leverages a highly talented interdisciplinary team of engineers, clinical scientists, and prosthetics/orthotics experts who all bring key elements needed to build assistive technology that can work in real-world scenarios."
Download photos from this year’s Sciences Celebration on the College of Sciences’ Flickr.
Members of the College of Sciences community gathered at Harrison Square on May 8 to recognize outstanding faculty and staff as part of the 2023-2024 academic year Spring Sciences Celebration.
“It is always a pleasure to honor faculty who excel in teaching and research,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, “and to celebrate staff members across our College who are exceptionally committed to service and excellence.”
During the annual event, Lozier also recognized faculty and staff members who recently retired.
This year’s honorees include:
FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AWARDS
The Cullen-Peck Fellowship Awards were established by Frank Cullen (‘73 Math, MS ‘76 ISyE, PhD ‘84 ISyE) and Elizabeth Peck (‘75 Math, MS ‘76 ISyE) to encourage the development of especially promising mid-career faculty:
- Wenjing Liao, Mathematics
- Jenny McGuire, Biological Sciences
- Elisabetta Matsumoto, Physics
The Gretzinger Moving Forward Award, endowed by Ralph Gretzinger (‘70 Math) and named to honor his late wife Jewel, recognizes the leadership of a school chair or senior faculty member who has played a pivotal role in diversifying the composition of tenure-track faculty, creating a family-friendly work environment, and providing a supportive environment for early-career faculty:
- Michael Lacey, Mathematics
The Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching, endowed by Charles Crawford (‘71 Math), honors exemplary instruction of lower division foundational courses. It honors the late School of Mathematics professor Eric R. Immel, who greatly influenced Crawford’s undergraduate experience at the Institute:
- Samantha Wilson, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
The Leddy Family Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award, established by Jeff Leddy (’78 Physics) and Pam Leddy, supports a faculty member at the associate professor level with proven accomplishments in research and teaching:
Simon Sponberg, Physics
The Faculty Mentor Award, established jointly by the College of Sciences and its ADVANCE Professor, awards the efforts and achievements of our faculty members who mentor fellow faculty:
Shana Kerr, Biological Sciences
RESEARCH FACULTY AWARDS
The Outstanding Junior Research Faculty Award and Outstanding Senior Research Faculty Award honor postdoctoral and non-tenure track research faculty who have made exceptional research contributions with significant impact on their field of study:
Outstanding Junior Research Faculty: Yinghao Wen, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Outstanding Senior Research Faculty: Anna Österholm, Chemistry and Biochemistry
The Research Faculty Community Trailblazer Award recognizes postdoctoral and non-tenure track research faculty who have demonstrated and sustained leadership that strengthens the sense of community among research faculty within the College of Sciences:
- Jessica Bowman, Chemistry and Biochemistry
STAFF AWARDS
The College of Sciences Staff Awards are made possible by funding from the Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Dean’s Chair endowment. They include:
The Exceptional Staff Member Award and Staff Excellence Awards honor College of Sciences staff who exemplify outstanding performance above and beyond the call of duty — positively impacting the strategic goals of their department and the College, consistently providing excellent service within their school or the overall College, and demonstrating exemplary teamwork.
Exceptional Staff Member Award
- Verene Lancaster, Biological Sciences
Staff Excellence Awards
- Lea Marzo, Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences
Faith Taylor, Dean’s Office
The Leadership in Action Staff Award and Excellence in Leadership Staff Awards recognize College of Sciences staff who have made exceptional contributions to the College through innovative and strategic leadership, change management, business process improvement, special project leadership, and similar accomplishments.
Leadership in Action Staff Award
Erin Nagle, Dean’s Office
Excellence in Leadership Staff Awards
Monica Branch, Chemistry and Biochemistry
Troy Hilley, Academic and Research Computing Services
From her home more than 800 miles away, Georgia Tech online master's student Jasmine Tata is monitoring fish in aquariums at Georgia Tech.
Tata is a New York-based QA analyst and project manager. She started the Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program in Fall 2022 and joined FishStalkers last year.
The student-led research program is part of the School of Biological Sciences' McGrath Lab. Its researchers use machine learning, computer vision, and other technologies to better understand the evolution of animal behaviors.
One of the lab's research projects studies Lake Malawi cichlids to explore connections between observed behavior and brain function.
The FishStalkers are vital to the project. They collect video, depth, and other data from individual fish using Raspberry Pi single-board computers. This information, coupled with open-source code they developed, allows the group to track, monitor, and classify the behaviors of a fish as it builds and maintains its bower, which is a sand structure these cichlids use to attract mates.
Kaixiang Cao, Ph.D
Assistant Professor
Department of Biochemistry
Department of Genetics and Genome Sciences
Case Comprehensive Cancer Center
School of Medicine, Case Western Reserve University
Histone modifications are thought to instruct gene transcription via specific reader proteins; however, recent results suggest that multiple types of histone modifications are not essential for regulating gene expression and cell identity. How histone modifications and histone modifiers function in regulating gene expression and cell fate remains enigmatic. Focusing on the mono-methylation of the lysine 4 residue on histone H3 (H3K4me1), a major enhancer mark deposited by methyltransferases MLL3/MLL4 and removed by the lysine-specific histone demethylase 1A (LSD1/KDM1A), we have previously demonstrated that LSD1 antagonizes MLL4 at enhancers to regulate gene expression and cellular differentiation, suggesting that resetting the perturbed epigenetic balance at enhancers is an effective strategy to treat diseases driven by enhancer malfunction. However, how LSD1 and H3K4me1 regulate such epigenetic balance at enhancers is largely unknown. We now utilize state-of-the-art precise genome engineering, small molecule targeting, transcriptomics, epigenomics, and stem cell biology techniques to dissect the role of LSD1 and the crosstalk of multiple epigenetic pathways in regulating transcription and cell fate. Our results suggest novel molecular mechanisms by which gene expression and cell identity are regulated and provide insight into understanding diseases driven by mis-regulation of epigenetic programs.
Hosted By: Yuhung Fan
Event Details
Mutations in genes encoding histones, which package DNA into chromatin, have been identified as cancer drivers, yielding oncohistones. Most of the validated oncohistones support single amino acid mutations that occur at lysines that support histone posttranslational modification (PTM), which perturbs the histone PTM landscape. Here, we examine the oncogenicity of a series of globular domain histone H3 mutations in which any residue is mutated to a lysine, “H3 X to K,” which were identified as recurrent H3 missense mutations in human cancers. H3 X to K mutation promotes oncogenic growth in immortalized but untransformed human cells. Some H3 X to K mutations alter PTMs at proximal H3 residues. Bulk RNA sequencing comparing H3 X to K mutant expression with wildtype H3 expressing cells identifies alterations in expression of genes implicated in unique cancer-related pathways. To complement studies in human cells, we created a budding yeast model where we express H3 X to K mutants as the sole cellular copy of histone H3 or in the presence of wildtype H3, which simulates the dominant phenotype observed in human cancers. Expression of some H3 X to K mutations in yeast confer growth sensitivity to DNA damage and general cellular stress in a dominant fashion. Together, these studies suggest that H3 X to K mutation within the H3 globular domain creates bona-fide oncohistones that disrupt normal growth through altering histone PTMs, the transcriptome, and/or DNA damage repair.
Event Details
The University System of Georgia Board of Regents has approved a new Neuroscience and Neurotechnology Ph.D. Program at Georgia Tech.
The interdisciplinary degree is a joint effort across the Colleges of Sciences, Computing, and Engineering. The program expects to enroll its first graduate students in Fall 2025, pending approval by the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Commission on Colleges.
The Institute Curriculum Committee has also approved a new Minor in Neuroscience, set to become available in the Georgia Tech 2024-2025 Catalog.
B.S. in Neuroscience
The Ph.D. and Minor offerings build on the recently launched Neuro Next Initiative in Research, and the established Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience, respectively.
Approved by the Board of Regents in 2017, the interdisciplinary B.S. in Neuroscience degree in the College of Sciences enrolled more than 400 undergraduate students in 2022, and has been the fastest growing undergraduate major at Georgia Tech.
The B.S. in Neuroscience is also key to a strong ecosystem of undergraduate neuroscience education across the state, which includes peer programs at Mercer University, Augusta University, Georgia State University, Agnes Scott College, and Emory University.
Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Neurotechnology
The new doctoral degree will provide a path for the rapidly growing pipeline of in-state neuroscience undergraduate students and young alumni — while also welcoming a wider slate of graduate researchers to campus.
The Ph.D. Program’s mission is focused on educating students to advance the field of neuroscience through an interdisciplinary approach, with scientists and engineers of different backgrounds — ultimately integrating neuroscience research and technological development to study all levels of nervous system function.
Biological Sciences Professor Lewis A. Wheaton, who chaired the Ph.D. Program Planning Committee, shares that a cohort model will fuse “experimental and quantitative skill development, creating opportunities for students to work in science and engineering labs to promote collaborations, while also fostering a program and community that’s unique to the state and against national peer offerings.”
Expanding innovation — and impact
Wheaton explains that the new Ph.D. aims to equip graduates for a wide range of employment opportunities and growing specializations, including computational neuroscience, neurorehabilitation, cultural and social neuroscience, neuroimaging, cognitive and behavioral neuroscience, developmental neuroscience, and neurolinguistics.
The new degree will also help meet the country’s growing demand for a neuro-centric workforce. According to the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, job growth for medical scientists (including neuroscientists) tracked around 13% between 2012 and 2022, faster than the average for all tracked occupations.
Wheaton adds that the program will equip neuroscientists to conduct research that can significantly improve lives.
Seeking students
The Planning Committee anticipates a tentative February 1, 2025 application deadline for Fall 2025 enrollments — and encourages students with the following interests to learn more and apply in the coming school year:
- Developing deeper quantitative, computing and/or engineering skills to make scientific discoveries that support innovations in neuroscience
- A clear, comprehensive understanding of the nervous system at all scales from molecular to systems
- Understanding how to use and innovate new tools and approaches to investigate the nervous system at all levels
- Becoming uniquely qualified to translate knowledge across neuroscience and related disciplines to create new knowledge in their professional pursuits
Director search
The participating Colleges will soon conduct a search for a program director, engaging a tenured member of the Georgia Tech faculty to serve as the new program’s administrator. A graduate program committee composed of five faculty members and mentors across the Colleges of Sciences, Computing, and Engineering, will also be created.
During their April 2024 meeting, Regents also announced budget approvals and tuition changes for Georgia's 26 member institutions.
The Ph.D. Program Planning Committee included the following faculty:
- Lewis Wheaton (Committee Chair, Biological Sciences)
- Constantine Dovrolis (Computer Science)
- Christopher Rozell (Electrical and Computer Engineering)
- Eric Schumacher (Psychology)
- Garrett Stanley (Biomedical Engineering)
- David Collard (College of Sciences Office of the Dean)
Robots that can run, jump, and even talk have shifted from the stuff of science fiction to reality in the past few decades. Yet even in robots specialized for specific movements like running, animals are still able to outmaneuver the most advanced robotic developments.
Georgia Tech’s Simon Sponberg recently collaborated with researchers at the University of Washington, Simon Fraser University, University of Colorado Boulder, and Stanford Research Institute to answer one deceptively complex question: Why can’t robots outrun animals?
“This work is about trying to understand how, despite have some really amazing robots, there still seems to be a gulf between the capabilities of animal movement and what we can engineer,” says Sponberg, who is Dunn Family Associate Professor in the School of Physics and School of Biological Sciences.
Recently published in Science Robotics, their study systematically examines a suite of biological and robotic runners to figure out how to further advance our best robotic designs.
“In robotics design we are often very component focused — we are used to having to establish specifications for the parts that we need and then finding the best component solution,” said Sponberg, who also serves on the executive committee for Georgia Tech's Neuro Next Initiative. “This is of course not how evolution works. We wondered if we systematically analyzed the performance of animals in the same component way that we design robots, if we might see an obvious gap.”
The gap turns out not to be in the function of individual robotic components, but rather the ability of those components to work together in the seamless way biological components do, highlighting a field of opportunity for new research in robotic development.
“This means that the frontier is not necessarily figuring out how to design better motors or sensors or controllers,” says Sponberg, “but rather how to integrate them together — this is where biology really excels.”
Read more about man versus machine and the future of bioinspired robotics here.
April is Earth Month, and according to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, 2023 was the warmest year on record for our planet. As the global conversation around the climate and humans’ effect on it continues, Georgia Tech researchers are taking a leading role in quantifying the issues posed by climate change and crafting solutions for the road ahead.
The latest episode of Generating Buzz follows the College of Sciences’ Frontiers in Science event, giving listeners an opportunity to hear from experts, including dean and renowned oceanographer Susan Lozier, Associate Professor Alex Robel, Professor Valerie Thomas, and Associate Vice President of Sustainability Jennifer Chirico as they explore the intersection of science, policy, and human nature.
April 12 is a significant date in the history of exploration, as it marks the first space flight of a human, Yuri Gagarin, in 1961. This year on April 12, the Georgia Tech Space Research Initiative (Space RI) hosted an event highlighting the Institute’s interdisciplinary space research. The Yuri’s Day Symposium was Space RI’s first public event.
A multidisciplinary initiative, the Space RI brings together faculty, researchers, and students from across campus who share a passion for space exploration. Their combined research explores a broad array of space-related topics, all considered from a human perspective.
“Launching Georgia Tech’s Space Research Initiative reinforces our commitment to advancing our understanding of space and our universe,” said Executive Vice President for Research Chaouki Abdallah. “It is also a testament to Georgia Tech's unwavering dedication to pushing the limits of what is possible and to fostering innovations that benefit humankind.”
The symposium was organized by Glenn Lightsey, interim executive director of the Space RI, and the Space RI steering committee, which consists of representatives from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and the Colleges of Engineering, Computing, and Sciences, the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and the Scheller College of Business. The day began with remarks from Research leadership and an overview of the Space RI and its mission. “This is an exciting time for space exploration at Georgia Tech and across the world,” Lightsey said. “Space research is a critical part of solving our world’s most challenging problems and improving life for everyone on Earth.”
Space research and exploration yield many societal benefits that improve life on Earth and even foster economic growth. These advances include rapidly evolving technologies, improvements in medicine, and the development of enhanced materials — such as self-healing materials and those designed for extreme environments. Additionally, space research provides essential tools, data, and insights for climate scientists.
Sessions and panels throughout the day covered space science, space media, NASA’s Moon to Mars program, GTRI’s space research program, commercial space initiatives, and space in popular culture. A.C. Charania, NASA’s chief technologist and a Georgia Tech alumnus, delivered the keynote address. He shared insights into his work at NASA and Moon to Mars.
Following the symposium, the Space RI hosted a “star party” at the Georgia Tech Observatory. People of all ages gathered at the event, where they could use the observatory’s telescope to observe the moon, Jupiter, and the Orion Nebula, an immense cloud of dust and gas from which new stars are born.
“It was a clear night, and we were able to view the lunar terminator — the boundary where the sun is setting on the moon — which accentuates craters and mountains,” said Lightsey. “It was exciting to officially launch our initiative on a day when the world celebrated space exploration and the star party was a fantastic way to end our event.”
In July 2025, the Space RI will transition into one of Georgia Tech’s Interdisciplinary Research Institutes. Learn more about the initiative at space.gatech.edu.
Sign up to receive space news and event updates from the Space RI.
In the weeks after Commencement, Andrew Rogers, a master's medical physics candidate, will begin looking for a place to live in Texas for his residency, take a family vacation to Alaska, and return to his hometown of Augusta, Georgia, to pack for his big move.
But a busy travel schedule is nothing new for Rogers. Diagnosed with hepatoblastoma at the age of 3, he spent over a decade traveling between Augusta, Philadelphia, and Atlanta, with lengthy hospital stays in between, undergoing treatment for the rare childhood liver cancer.
Given a prognosis with a "one-in-a-million" chance of survival, Rogers had two liver transplants before the cancer spread to his lungs and brain. In total, he endured 50 surgeries before his 13th birthday, and it was during the countless trips to Atlanta that he dreamed of two things — attending Georgia Tech and making a difference for kids facing similar struggles.
Unlike chemotherapy or other procedures, Rogers found radiation therapy to be a painless experience, in part thanks to the radiation therapists administering the treatment.
"They may not have thought much of it at the time, but in those moments, by playing with me, making me laugh, making me a Spiderman radiation mask, they helped me forget — even for a second — that I had cancer and helped me enjoy life. I think about that every day. I hope to one day change a child's life like my therapists did for me,” he said.
Now 18 years cancer-free, Rogers earned a bachelor's degree in radiation therapy from Augusta University. A program director told him about Georgia Tech's medical physics program, and, since arriving at the Institute in 2021, he has sought hands-on experience in the field. Completing the clinical portion of the program through a partnership with the Medical College of Georgia in Augusta, Rogers learned each role within the rotation.
"From booting up machines and checking on patients to everything else, I just started wanting to come in every day. I'd go in for free just because I love what I'm doing," he said.
Rogers wasn't immune to the stresses of everyday college life, but he approached them with a positive perspective.
"My parents told me that there's always a light at the end of every tunnel, and it's always going to be worth it in the end. So, I will keep telling myself and everybody else that when they're going through a hard time, keep pushing,” he said. “Things may be painful and stressful now, but think about what you will achieve in the future and the people you will help get through battles of their own. That will always keep me motivated."
Rogers isn't done with medical appointments, but with each yearly checkup, he never tires of hearing the words he hopes to deliver in his career: "All clear."
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