Experts in the News

To request a media interview, please reach out to experts using the faculty directories for each of our six schools, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts is also available to journalists upon request.

Mega Millions breached the $1 billion mark, and it looks like the Powerball jackpot isn't too far behind. Yet, lottery games are mostly only lucrative for the private companies that states hire to run them, said Lew Lefton, emeritus faculty member with the Georgia Tech School of Mathematics, in a USA Today article. In fact, winning big in Mega Millions and Powerball is even harder now because recent rules make the odds even longer so lottery games can sell more tickets, he added.

The Tennessean - USA TODAY Network March 26, 2024

One of the hallmarks of humanity is language, but now, powerful new artificial intelligence tools also compose poetry, write songs, and have extensive conversations with human users. Tools like ChatGPT and Gemini are widely available at the tap of a button—but just how smart are these AIs? A new multidisciplinary research effort co-led by Anna (Anya) Ivanova, assistant professor in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech, is working to uncover just that. The results could lead to innovative AIs that are more similar to the human brain than ever before—and also help neuroscientists and psychologists who are unearthing the secrets of our own minds.

Tech Xplore March 19, 2024

In new research published in Nature Communications, School of Biological Sciences researchers Mark Hay and Cody Clements and their colleagues demonstrated that when sea cucumbers were removed from coral reef, tissue death of Acropora pulchra, a species of staghorn coral, more than tripled, and mortality of the whole colony surged 15 times. The reasoning is that sea cucumbers are like "little vacuum cleaners on the reef" digesting and eliminating microbes that can lead to coral disease and demise — threats that are exacerbated by a warming and increasingly polluted ocean.

NPR March 13, 2024

The yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae isn’t exactly known for being tough, but when researchers propagated only the biggest yeast cells for thousands of generations, these single-celled fungi went from making snowflake-esque clusters “weaker than gelatin” to clumps “as strong as wood” and 20,000 times the size of initial flakes. Partly to thank for this impressive transformation is the chaperone protein Hsp90, which helps fold other proteins into their proper shapes, School of Biological Sciences Associate Professor William Ratcliff and his colleagues report.

Science Magazine March 12, 2024

Coral reefs play a crucial role in the region’s biodiversity, food security, employment, tourism, and medical research, but many reefs are suffering degradation due to pollution, ocean warming and overfishing. Growing sea cucumbers in underwater nurseries could be a way of restoring their services as “vacuum cleaners” of the ocean to protect the Asia-Pacific’s declining coral reefs, Biological Sciences Researchers Mark Hay and Cody Clements suggest in their recently released study.

SciDev.Net March 11, 2024

In a new study led by Georgia Tech and University of Helsinki, researchers have discovered a mechanism steering the evolution of multicellular life. Co-authored by the School of Biological Sciences’ Dung Lac, Anthony Burnetti, Ozan Bozdag, and Will Ratcliff, the study, “Proteostatic tuning underpins the evolution of novel multicellular traits”, was published in Science Advances this month, and uncovers how altered protein folding drives multicellular evolution. (This research was also featured in Mirage News).

The Times of India March 10, 2024

Odd things can happen when a wave meets a boundary. In the ocean, tsunami waves that are hardly noticeable in deep water can become quite large at the continental shelf and shore, as the waves slow and their mass moves upward. In a recent study led by School of Physics Dunn Family Professor Daniel Goldman and published in the journal Physical Review Letters, scientists have shown that a floating, symmetric oscillating robot will experience forces when it comes close to a boundary. These forces can be used for self-propulsion without the need for more typical mechanisms such as a propeller.

Tech Xplore March 9, 2024

In preparation for NASA's SpaceX 30th commercial resupply mission, the agency streamed an International Space Station National Lab science webinar at 1 p.m. EST Friday, March 8, to discuss the hardware, technology demonstrations, and science experiments headed to the space station. School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Ph.D. Student Jordan McKaig served as an expert participant in the webinar.

NASA March 8, 2024

Northern peatlands store approximately one-third of Earth’s terrestrial soil organic carbon due to their cold, water-saturated, and acidic conditions, which slow decomposition. To learn more, researchers — including School of Biological Sciences and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Joel Kostka — leveraged the SPRUCE experiment, where scientists can combine air and peat warming in a whole-ecosystem warming treatment. Peatlands build carbon stocks over centuries, but rising temperatures and atmospheric carbon dioxide concentrations rapidly changed the equilibrium at SPRUCE within a 4-year timescale, highlighting the vulnerability of these carbon-rich ecosystems to global climate change.

U.S. Department of Energy March 6, 2024

The interdisciplinary nature of the semiconductor industry requires not just one education pipeline but many: Graduates with advanced degrees across the sciences are essential, but so are people with the skills to operate equipment as new fabs go online. Arijit Raychowdhury, chair of Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, praised the College of Sciences for our research in physics, chemistry, and quantum computing that is vital to semiconductors and manufacturing. 

Electrical Engineering Times March 5, 2024

This past summer, waters around the world experienced what has been referred to as marine heatwaves. In this episode of the podcast Grass Roots Health, host Tim Jordan explores the issue of our water and land growing warmer with special guest, Annalisa Bracco, associate chair and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

1795 Group, Grass Roots Health March 5, 2024

For the scientific community, names and labels help organize the world's organisms so they can be identified, studied, and regulated. But for bacteria, there has never been a reliable method to cohesively organize them into species and strains. An international research team sought to overcome this challenge, which has long plagued scientists who study bacteria. Recently published in Nature Communications, Ocean Science and Engineering Ph.D. Student Roth Conrad contributed to the study.

Mirage News March 4, 2024