Four faculty members, including two from the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering operated jointly by Georgia Tech and Emory University, have been awarded research fellowships from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation. The fellowships, awarded yearly since 1955, honor early-career scholars whose achievements mark them as among the most promising researchers in their fields.

“Sloan Research Fellows are the best young scientists working today,” says Adam F. Falk, president of the Sloan Foundation. “Sloan Fellows stand out for their creativity, for their hard work, for the importance of the issues they tackle and the energy and innovation with which they tackle them. To be a Sloan Fellow is to be in the vanguard of 21st-century science.”

Past Sloan Research Fellows include many towering figures in the history of science, including physicists Richard Feynman and Murray Gell-Mann, and game theorist John Nash. Forty-seven fellows have received a Nobel Prize in their respective field, 17 have won the Fields Medal in mathematics, 69 have received the National Medal of Science and 18 have won the John Bates Clark Medal in economics, including every winner since 2007. 

The new Sloan Fellows from Georgia Tech and Emory are:

Eva Dyer is an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. She holds a Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Rice University. 

Dyer’s research interests lie at the intersection of machine learning, optimization and neuroscience. Her lab develops computational methods for discovering principles that govern the organization and structure of the brain, as well as methods for integrating multi-modal datasets to reveal the link between neural structure and function. 

Matthew McDowell is an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. His research focuses on understanding how materials for energy storage and electronic devices change, transform and degrade during operation. He holds a Ph.D. from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

His research group uses situ experimental techniques to probe materials transformations under realistic conditions. The fundamental scientific advances made by the group guide the engineering of materials for breakthrough new devices. Current projects in the group are focused on 1) electrode materials for alkali ion batteries, 2) materials for solid-state batteries, 3) interfaces in chalcogenide materials for electronics and catalysis and 4) new methods for creating nanostructured metals.

Chethan Pandarinath is an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and in Emory’s Department of Neurosurgery as well as the Emory Neuromodulation Technology Innovation Center. Pandarinath also leads the Emory and Georgia Tech Systems Neural Engineering Lab. He holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Cornell University.

Pandarinath and an Emory-Georgia Tech team, including biomedical engineers, neurosurgeons and neurologists, are working to better understand how large networks of neurons in the brain encode information and control behavior by using sophisticated methods from the fields of artificial intelligence and machine learning. In studying the activity of these brain networks, Pandarinath’s team hopes to design new brain-machine interface technologies to help restore movement to people who are paralyzed, including those affected by spinal cord injury and stroke, and by Parkinson’s disease and ALS.

Konstantin Tikhomirov is an assistant professor in the School of Mathematics whose work is at the intersection of asymptotic geometric analysis and random matrix theory. He studies the geometry of high-dimensional convex sets with the help of probabilistic tools and using random linear operators, and the spectral distribution of random matrices by applying methods from discrete geometry. He holds a Ph.D. in mathematics from the University of Alberta.

His research directions have multiple connections with applied science, in particular, for numerical analysis of large systems of linear equations, modeling communication networks and studying certain physical systems with large numbers of particles. 

Valued not only for their prestige, Sloan Research Fellowships are a highly flexible source of research support. Funds may be spent in any way a fellow deems will best advance his or her work. Drawn this year from 57 colleges and universities in the United States and Canada, the 2019 Sloan Research Fellows represent a diverse array of research interests.

Open to scholars in eight scientific and technical fields — chemistry, computer science, economics, mathematics, computational and evolutionary molecular biology, neuroscience, ocean sciences and physics — the Sloan Research Fellowships are awarded in close coordination with the scientific community. Candidates must be nominated by their fellow scientists, and winning fellows are selected by independent panels of senior scholars on the basis of a candidate’s research accomplishments, creativity and potential to become a leader in his or her field. Winners receive a two-year, $70,000 fellowship to further their research.

The Alfred P. Sloan Foundation is a philanthropic, not-for-profit grant making institution based in New York City. Established in 1934 by Alfred Pritchard Sloan Jr., then-president and CEO of the General Motors Corporation, the Foundation makes grants in support of original research and education in science, technology, engineering, mathematics and economics.

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Georgia Tech has been selected to the 2019 class of Beckman Scholars Program Awardees. The Arnold and Mabel Beckman Foundation gives these awards annually to colleges and universities that support basic research in chemistry and life sciences.

Georgia Tech is one of only 13 institutions in the U.S. to be named to the 2019 class. The Institute last participated in the program in 2008. 

This award enables Tech to offer through 2021 six undergraduate scholarships – each worth about $20,000. Scholars must commit to working in chemistry or life science research continuously for 15 months with any of the following College of Sciences faculty: 

• School of Chemistry and Biochemistry: M.G. Finn, Stefan France, Nicholas Hud, Raquel Lieberman, Adegboyega Oyelere, Angus Wilkinson, and Ronghu Wu
• School of Biological Sciences: Gregory Gibson, Michael Goodisman, Lin Jiang, Julia Kubanek, Frank Stewart, and Todd Streelman
• School of Physics: Daniel Goldman and Simon Sponberg

"The Beckman Scholars Program provides support for our most talented undergraduates to participate in immersive and extended research experiences," says David Collard, interim dean of the College of Sciences, who serves as director of the program at Georgia Tech. "The participating faculty are among the most accomplished mentors of undergraduate researchers in the College of Sciences".

Previous Georgia Tech Beckman Scholars have published their undergraduate research in prestigious peer-reviewed journals and presented it at national conferences. They have gone to top graduate programs and medical schools and entered into rewarding careers.

Among them is Rebecca Hood, a former biochemistry major who graduated in 2010. Georgia Tech selected her to receive a Beckman scholarship because of her commitment to research. She was first introduced to undergraduate research as part of a course with Nicholas Hud when she was a first-year student, and then she worked with Adegboyega “Yomi” Oyelere for three years.

In Oyelere’s lab, Hood tested the efficacy of anticancer drugs developed and synthesized by Oyelere’s group. That undergraduate research experience yielded two publications, one in Bioorganic Medicinal Chemistry Letters and another in the Journal of Medicinal Chemistry.

“The scholarship allowed me to really focus on my undergraduate research,” Hood says. “Before I got the scholarship, I considering stopping my research to get a job to pay for living expenses. The scholarship meant I could continue my research and get paid.”

Hood is a Ph.D. student at Oregon Health and Science University (OHSU). She believes the undergraduate research made possible by her Beckman scholarship helped her find employment immediately after receiving her B.S. degree. After working in a research lab at Emory University, she moved to OHSU. She hopes to complete her Ph.D. degree in 2019.

“I am positive that I would not be in my current graduate program without having gotten a strong foundation in research during my time as an undergraduate at Georgia Tech. That was made possible by the scholarship and Dr. Oyelere’s mentorship.” 

Relationships based on “you scratch my back and I’ll scratch yours” are everywhere in the biological world. The recently established Center for the Origin of Life (COOL) will harness these mutualisms to unravel the distant past.

“Mutualisms are persistent and reciprocal exchange of benefit. A species proficient in obtaining certain benefits confers those on a reciprocating partner,” Loren Williams says. Williams is a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech. He will lead COOL. The NASA-funded interdisciplinary team based in Georgia Tech is one of several groups cooperating to identify planetary conditions that might give rise to life.

The COOL team itself is enabled by mutualistic scientific collaborations. Joining Williams as co-investigators are Georgia Tech’s Jennifer Glass and Anton Petrov, Kate Adamala and Aaron Engelhart of the University of Minnesota, George Fox from University of Houston, and Nita Sahai from University of Akron.

Glass is an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Petrov is a research scientist in the Schools of Chemistry and Biochemistry and of Biological Sciences. Williams and Glass are members of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.

“We represent a rare symbiosis of biochemists and geochemists,” Glass says. “This gives us a unique vantage point from which to tackle this big question that no single discipline can solve alone.”

Williams and his team have discovered that inanimate species – such as molecules, metals, and minerals – engage in mutualism relationships. Those interactions can explain much about modern biology and the origin of life, Williams says. “Mutualisms are fundamental drivers in evolution, ecology, and economics. They sponsor coevolution, foster innovation, increase fitness, inspire robustness, and foster resilience.”

The COOL team aims to use mutualism phenomena to develop tools to study the origins and evolution of life on Earth. One area of study is the mutualism between metals and biomolecules under ancient-Earth conditions, such as between ferrous iron and proteins to form metalloproteins.

Another is the mutualism between minerals and biomolecules, such as between metal sulfide nanoclusters and RNA, peptides, and lipids to form functional biopolymers.

“Understanding how minerals interact with small organic molecules or biopolymers could help predict whether similar processes could occur on other worlds,” Sahai says.

The team will also study mutualisms in the most ancient universal life processes: translation and replication. “We are studying how nucleic acids and proteins joined forces as the biochemical foundation of life,” Petrov says.

The ribosome, the universal cellular machine where proteins are made, is a molecular relict where nucleic and acids and proteins work side by side to translate genotype to phenotype.

“The ribosome is a molecular fossil. It’s a window to the emergence of life,” Engelhart says.

 “We are exploring alternative pathways for the evolution of the translation system,” Adamala says.

“A key to understanding the translation system is by integrating a vast array of information,” Fox says.

COOL is one of four Teams in NASA’s recently launched Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environments (PCE3) Consortium. One of PCE3’s goals is to guide future NASA missions to discover habitable worlds by understanding how conditions on Earth gave rise to life.

Williams is a member of the steering committee of PCE3. “I am particularly excited to frame the beginnings of life within the context of our planet’s early, dynamic habitability and to use those lessons to imagine how planets around distant stars similarly could have favored the origins and evolution of life,” Williams said about PCE3.

Figure Caption
COOL principal investigators are (clockwise from top left) Kate Adamala, Aaron Engelhart, George Fox, Loren Williams, Nita Sahai, Anton Petrov, and Jennifer Glass. 

Editor's Note: This story by Jaimee Francis was published first in the Technique on February 3, 2019. The story headline was modified for the College of Sciences website.

No doubt, Tech students can still fondly remember those early science experiments that sparked their love for the subject and other STEM fields. It is that precise fondness for STEM that the recently chartered Little Einsteins Organization (LEO) aspires to bring to other young students in Atlanta. The Technique chatted with four leaders of the new club to learn more about their initiative. 

The idea for LEO stemmed from the Discovery program, an initiative started by the service organization Hands On Atlanta, which aims to enrich the experience of education in Title I schools in Atlanta. Diana Toro, a third-year BCHM major, and Tessa Stubbs, a third-year CS major, started volunteering for Discovery at nearby Scott Elementary School when they noticed the lack of STEM resources available there. 

Wanting to enrich the STEM opportunities at the school, Toro and Stubbs began by encouraging their friends to volunteer with them at Scott Elementary School until they formed a partnership with Discovery to run their own STEM program. Becoming their own program enabled them to organize and conduct their own science experiments for the students. It also allowed them to become a chartered club at Tech this past year. 

What had started as a volunteering project for a handful of friends has now grown into an active organization with over 40 members and over 1,000 followers on their Instagram, @gatech_leo. Toro explains the rapid success of LEO in terms of its purpose in filling a missing need in the community and school systems.

“We started LEO because we saw a need for it at the elementary school. But it has become so popular at Tech, because there is a need for it at Tech, too,” Toro said. “So many students here want to volunteer with kids and show them science, and we are an active and consistent outlet for doing that.”

The leaders of LEO further attribute the popularity of the club as resulting from the bonds that the members are able to build with the young students. They described the trust and affection of the kids, such as the way in which the kids attach themselves to the older Tech students. 

They also laughed over the mischievousness and cleverness of the kids, describing the fun-loving and energetic environment of the school. Toro recalled a game of Simon Says she had recently played with the children that particularly highlighted the ingenuity of the young students. 

“I was playing Simon Says with the kids and telling them to do little things like ‘Simon Says raise your hand.’ But I was called to help set up something, and I told a boy playing that he was the new Simon. Suddenly, I see all of the students running out of the building, and I am like ‘Oh my gosh,’” said Toro. “I chased after them and asked them what they thought they were doing. They said that the new Simon had said to run outside, so that is what they did! I told them I was now Simon again and that Simon says to sit down and be good.”

In addition to managing the children, the leaders discussed the other challenges that LEO faces. They explained the difficulties that come with designing experiments that are both feasible and fun for the children. 

Joy Nish, a second-year BCHM, and Greg Varghese, a third-year CS, also explained how important it was to be flexible and adaptable in LEO, since the local schools often lack the resources and equipment necessary for students to perform experiments. As LEO must provide its own experiments and materials, all leaders agreed that funding is the biggest challenge for the club moving forward. 

Despite the challenges this new club faces, its leaders are optimistic about its future. They hope to expand LEO so that it reaches multiple schools in the Atlanta area, and they envision the possibilities that could form. 

“Teaching STEM is important because we get to show the kids the potential of science and spark their curiosity. We get to be role models to them, and we can model our love for STEM to them. I grew up being told I wasn’t good at physics before I even took a physics class.” Toro explained. “Now I think a lot about the girls at the school and how they can get into science and engineering and all the other things they can do.”

When pursuing something so intensely, it is often easy to forget how much joy that subject once brought you. As the semester picks up and Tech students become more and more overloaded with assignments and exams, childlike enthusiasm and wonder for learning and science seems to diminish more and more. 

It is easy to forget the excitement and stimulation that once came with the science experiments of the past, but revisiting these old experiments and showing them to younger students has the power to serve as a reminder for the joy and benefits of learning. 

As part of Georgia Tech’s year-long celebration of 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements (#IYPT2019GT), the College of Sciences and the College of Design’s School of Music have partnered to present a performance of original music inspired by the periodic table.

Avneesh Sarwate, a student in the Masters of Science in Music Technology program, has composed music for #IYPT2019GT to be played by the School of Music’s laptop orchestra. The orchestra comprises first-year music technology majors enrolled in MUSI 2015 Laptop Orchestra, a required music technology course. They will play the composition using electronic devices, mostly laptop computers and mobile phones.

Technology allows musicians to access a wide palette of sounds, way beyond what traditional orchestral instruments deliver. Electronic sounds can be eerie, out-of-this world. With computer-aided manipulations of harmonics and other sound properties, the possibilities for unique musical experiences are endless.

When Sarwate explored using the periodic table as inspiration for new music, what resonated most with him was structure: how structure is so defining for both music and matter. From various analogies, including carbon allotropes, he selected the physical states of water – because of how familiar a phenomenon it is for water’s macroscopic structure to change before our very eyes.

“Water, in Three Movements” is inspired by the physical assemblies and dynamics of water molecules. The three movements correspond to water’s three phases: gas, liquid, and solid.

In the first movement, corresponding to the gaseous state, performers each control a program that plays the melody in a loop at incredibly high velocity, rendering the notes almost indistinguishable but creating a hazy sonic texture reminiscent of steam clouds or fog. The conductor’s gestures will control the movements of the aural cloud.

In the second movement, the liquid phase, the performers slow down the melody to where the notes are distinguishable, but still at different speeds. Like liquid water molecules, the melodies will slip and flow in and out of coordination as they move at different tempos. Again, the conductor will control the waves of sound.

The final movement, ice, will see the performers slowly coalesce to the same tempo and align their rhythms in lock-step, reminiscent of the freezing of a pond, with a single unified melody concluding the performance.

Sarwate is a multimedia artist, software engineer, and musician specializing in interactive art. He graduated with a B.S. in Engineering, major in Computer Science, from Princeton University in 2014. After stints as a software engineer with Applied Predictive Technologies and Yext, he came to Georgia Tech in 2017 for graduate studies, focusing on audiovisual improvisation.

The College of Sciences thanks School of Music Professor and Chair Jason Freeman for making possible this special collaboration to celebrate #IYPT2019GT.  

“Water, in Three Movements” will premiere in February 21, 2019 at the atrium of the Klaus Advanced Computing Building, 266 Ferst Dr NW, Atlanta, GA 30332. The performance will begin at 11 AM. Stay for a chance to win Georgia Tech's popular periodic table T-shirt.

Kim Cobb testified today before the House of Representatives' Natural Resources Committee hearing on climate change. She urges early action to counter the devastating impacts of climate change. Cobb is a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the director of the Georgia Tech Global Change Program.

Following is the full text of Cobb's prepared oral testimony.

"I thank Chairman Grijalva and the rest of the Committee for allowing me to contribute to this important conversation about our nation’s climate future. My message today is simple: there are many no-regrets, win-win actions to reduce the growing costs of climate change, but we’re going to have to come together to form new alliances, in our home communities, across our states, and yes, even in Washington. I know I speak for thousands of my colleagues when I say that scientists all over the country are willing and eager to assist policymakers in the design of data- driven defenses against both current and future climate impacts.

"Many jurisdictions – from the local to the federal level - have developed a range of climate adaptation measures informed by rigorous science, stakeholder engagement, and cost-benefit analyses. Towards that end, The National Climate Assessment provides an actionable blueprint for such adaptive measures, including an in-depth analysis of climate impacts on ecosystem structure, function, and services.

"The other good news is that it’s not too late to avoid the most damaging impacts of future climate change. We have the tools we need to dramatically reduce greenhouse gas emissions. And in doing so, we will enjoy cleaner water, cleaner air, and healthier communities.

"The rapid expansion of renewable energy across the nation demonstrates a strong appetite for carbon-free, clean power on the part of private homeowners and large utilities alike. Even so, US greenhouse gas emissions were up 3% last year. The bottom line is that we are running out of time. Comprehensive federal policies are needed to speed the transition to low-carbon energy sources. Top on the list must be a price on carbon, to reflect the true costs of continued fossil fuel emissions, and to incentivize consumers, companies, and the market to find the cheapest, most effective means of reducing emissions. With or without a price on carbon, increased energy efficiency is a win-win strategy that can deliver energy cost savings, while reducing harmful air pollution.

"Lastly, there is a strong case to be made that we can deploy our vast forests, grasslands, and coastal marshes in service to natural carbon sequestration. At its most basic level, this means designing strategies to preserve our mature forests, grasslands, and wetlands, with their rich carbon reserves, in the face of continued climate change.

"Listening to the stories of those whose lives have already been destroyed by climate change I have to wonder: How bad will it have to get for us to recognize that climate change represents a clear and present threat, and to act decisively to protect ourselves and the natural resources that we all depend on?

"As a climate scientist, I’m heartened by recent polls showing that nearly 3 in 4 Americans are concerned about global warming, and support a range of policy options to address it.

"And as a mother to four young children, I’m heartened by the sea of young people demanding that we not squander their chances for climate stability.

"I urge this committee to center the robust findings of climate science in making critical policy decisions about our nation’s natural resources by:

1. moving to protect these resources, and the communities that depend on them, from the suite of ongoing, well-established climate change impacts
2. ensuring that our use of federal lands is geared towards advancing climate solutions, rather than expanding the scope of the climate change problem."

Cobb's full written statement is available here. 

Conventional wisdom says complex structures should be harder to assemble than simple ones. Their assembly requires more information and presents more opportunities to make mistakes. But in nature, complex assemblies and higher error rates do not necessarily mean higher failure rates. 

A recent study finds a different outcome with materials consisting of hierarchical levels – called hierarchical structures. In this case, more complicated structures are actually easier to assemble than simpler ones.

“Increasing complexity actually makes the assembly process more reliable despite an increasing error rate,” says Peter Yunker, an assistant professor in the School of Physics. He and graduate student Jonathan Michel published their findings today in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (USA).

Hierarchical structures embody distinct structural features on different size scales. They are ubiquitous in nature; a good example is bone. At the nanoscale level, bone consists of fibers made of a mineral and a protein. At the microscale level, the fibers form hollow structures. These structural features impart key physical properties, such as stiffness and toughness.

“It is surprising that making more complicated structures – and making more mistakes – actually produces more reliable final results,” Yunker says. “It goes against intuition.” The work suggests that evolving complex tissues is easier than previously thought.

To study the mechanics of hierarchical materials, Yunker and Michel developed a physical model of how a material’s stiffness relates to each of its distinct length scales. The model system consisted of triangular lattices of nodes connected by springs; distinct connections can be defined on multiple length scales. They examined the dependence of the stiffness on the number of such connections in the presence of random errors.  

“What we found was that each length scale contributed to the overall stiffness in a similar way. There was no preferred length scale,” Yunker says. “This finding gives us a new way to consider the role of physics and mechanics in the early evolution of complexity. To evolve a hierarchical structure with a specific stiffness, an organism doesn’t need to simultaneously evolve an error-correcting mechanism to ensure perfect assembly. The physics of hierarchical structures ensures that stiffness is even more robust against errors.”

The work was spurred by ubiquity of hierarchical structures in nature. Nearly every biological tissue is hierarchical, from bones and muscles to cellulose, feathers, crab shells, and flower petals. The question Yunker and Michel asked was, how did so many complex tissues evolve so many different times, in so many different organisms? “The answer,” Yunker says, “is that physics made it easier.”

Most studies of hierarchical structures focus on their benefits or on unraveling the details of specific tissues, such as a bird’s feathers or a lobster’s claw. “We asked a previously unappreciated question,” Yunker says, “thanks to a unique combination of soft-matter physics and evolutionary biology in my lab and at Georgia Tech.”

The role of soft-matter physics in evolution is of prime interest in Yunker’s lab. The new study was inspired by work of 19th-century physicist James Maxwell – best known for equations governing electricity and magnetism. Maxwell was also interested in explaining the rigidity of structures like truss bridges. He found that for a bridge to be rigid, there must be at least as many struts as there are joints multiplied by the number of spatial dimensions. More broadly, this work revealed the general mechanical requirement for structures to be solid: they must have as many constraints as they have degrees of freedom. The heuristic is known as Maxwell counting, and it was recently demonstrated to be useful in describing tissue mechanics.

“Jonathan and I were curious about how Maxwell counting would apply to hierarchical structures,” Yunker says. “Do you just worry about the smallest length scale? Or just the biggest? Do different length scales behave differently? Then we wondered how evolution could ever favor complicated hierarchical structures, let alone so often!”

The findings open new areas of inquiry, according to Yunker. First is the many interesting questions that remain to be answered about the basic physics of hierarchical materials. Next is the potential to translate this basic physics to manufacturing. Finally, the basic physics could lead to a fuller understanding of the evolution of hierarchical materials.

The work received funding from Georgia Tech’s Soft Matter Incubator. Yunker is a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience.

Georgia Tech researchers have uncovered a spacecraft's close encounter with Jupiter’s moon Europa. Evidence had been lurking in data obtained 19 years ago by the spacecraft.

Through remote observations, researchers have discovered plumes of water vapor shooting off the surface of Jupiter’s moon Europa. These plumes, more than 200 meters high, are reminiscent of the geysers in Yellowstone Park.

Like Earth, the giant planet Jupiter has a strong internal magnetic field. Indeed, if it were visible to the naked eye, the region of space dominated by this magnetic field – called the magnetosphere of Jupiter – would be the largest object in our solar system. That’s according to Sven Simon, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS).

Data collected directly by spacecraft indicate that the plumes locally deform Jupiter’s magnetic field near Europa and cause a change in the planet’s magnetospheric plasma flow around the Europa. A water vapor plume at Europa leaves a characteristic “signature” in Jupiter’s magnetic field, which can be identified in data from a spacecraft, Simon says.

Measurements by spacecraft are limited, however, says Lucas Liuzzo, a postdoctoral researcher working with Simon. A spacecraft can measure the magnetic field only along its one-dimensional trajectory, but the interaction between the plumes and their environment is complex and three-dimensional. Therefore, scientists use simulation models to place one-dimensional observations in the context of a three-dimensional interaction.

This approach is used by Simon’s group at EAS, called MOSS (Magnetospheres in the Outer Solar System). Recently, the effort revealed a previously unrecognized encounter between a plume from Europa and a spacecraft almost 20 years ago. The accepted paper was posted Jan. 31, 2019, in Geophysical Research Letters.  The work received financial support from NASA.

In 1989, NASA launched the spacecraft Galileo to study the moons of Jupiter, including Europa. Between 1996 and 2000, Galileo made several close flybys of Europa. On Jan. 3, 2000, the spacecraft completed its final Europa flyby, dubbed E26. 

Fast forward to 2018. For his Ph.D. project, second-year graduate student Hannes Arnold developed a simulation model of the interaction between Jupiter’s magnetospheric plasma and a possible water vapor plume at Europa. Using this model, Arnold analyzed magnetic field data gathered by Galileo.

The analysis identified signatures that could not be explained solely by the interaction of Jupiter’s magnetic field with Europa, Arnold says. “In recent years, we have learned that a plume could potentially be ‘visible’ in the magnetic field near Europa,” he adds. “Including a plume in our model was our best guess, but still a shot in the dark.”

To identify the origin of these peculiar signatures, Arnold carried out more than 250 simulations of Europa’s plasma environment during Galileo’s final flyby, E26. He arrived at a groundbreaking conclusion: the magnetic field data from this flyby almost 20 years ago contains unambiguous evidence of Galileo’s passage through a plume of water vapor, emanating near a distinct fracture line on Europa’s surface.

The intense outgassing from the plume locally pushes Jupiter’s magnetic field away from Europa, generating a distinct bulge in the magnetic pattern observed by Galileo, Liuzzo says.

Other scientists have modeled the magnetic field signatures from E26, Simon says, but “all of them had overlooked this important feature in the Galileo data.”

In combination with a 2018 study from University of Michigan researchers, the results “provide compelling evidence of persistent plume activity at Europa during the Galileo era,” Arnold says.

“They have immediate relevance for the planning of synergistic measurements during upcoming missions that aim to further characterize plume activity at Europa through in-situ observations.”

Figure Caption
Geometry of the Galileo E26 flyby of Europa as seen (a) from the upstream, Jupiter-averted side and (b) when looking from the Europa’s southern hemisphere. The white line denotes the spacecraft’s trajectory. (Courtesy Geophysical Research Letters)

The American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) has elected 109 new fellows in 2019. Among them are Joel Kostka and Joshua Weitz.

Kostka is a professor in the Schools of Biological Sciences and of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Weitz is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences. Both are members of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.

AAM is an honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). Fellows of the AAM are elected annually through a selective, peer-review process, based on records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology.

The election of Kostka as AAM fellow comes shortly after another high recognition of his contributions to microbiology. In 2018, he was named Distinguished Lecturer by ASM. In this capacity, Kostka speaks at ASM branch meetings throughout the U.S. His visits provide opportunities for students and early-career research microbiologists to interact with prominent scientists.

Kostka is well-known for his research in environmental microbiology. His lab characterizes the role of microorganisms in the functioning of ecosystems, especially in the context of bioremediation and climate change. He is co-principal investigator of C-IMAGE-III. This consortium is funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to study the environmental consequences of the release of petroleum hydrocarbons on living marine resources and ecosystem health.

Weitz holds courtesy appointments in the Schools of Physics and of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also the founding director of Georgia Tech’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, a Simons Foundation Investigator in Ocean Processes and Ecology, and author of an award-winning book on quantitative viral ecology.

"I'm grateful for the recognition and excited to continue our ongoing, collaborative efforts to understand the role of ecology and evolution in shaping microbial and viral life," Weitz says.

Weitz’s research focuses on the interactions between viruses and their microbial hosts, that is, the viral infections of microbial life. Weitz is motivated by seemingly simple questions: What happens to a microbe when it is infected by a virus? How do infections of single cells translate into population- and system-wide consequences?

AAM fellows represent all subspecialties of the microbial sciences and are involved in basic and applied research, teaching, public health, industry, or government service. They hail from all around the globe. Kostka and Weitz join fellows from France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Israel, Korea, Taiwan, and China.

Waves of annihilation have beaten coral reefs down to a fraction of what they were 40 years ago, and what’s left may be facing creeping death: The effective extinction of many coral species may be weakening reef systems thus siphoning life out of the corals that remain.

In the shallows off Fiji’s Pacific shores, two marine researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology for a new study assembled groups of corals that were all of the same species, i.e. groups without species diversity. When Cody Clements snorkeled down for the first time to check on them, his eyes instantly told him what his data would later reveal.

“One of the species had entire plots that got wiped out, and they were overgrown with algae,” Clements said. “Rows of corals had tissue that was brown – that was dead tissue. Other tissue had turned white and was in the process of dying.”

36 ghastly plots

Clements, a postdoctoral researcher and the study’s first author, also assembled groups of corals with a mixture of species, i.e. biodiverse groups, for comparison. In total, there were 36 single-species plots, or monocultures. Twelve additional plots contained polycultures that mixed three species. (More details below.)

By the end of the 16-month experiment, monocultures had faired obviously worse. And the study had shown via the measurably healthier growth in polycultures that science can begin to quantify biodiversity’s contribution to coral survival as well as the effects of biodiversity’s disappearance.

“This was a starter experiment to see if we would get an initial result, and we did,” said principal investigator Mark Hay, a Regents Professor and Harry and Linda Teasley Chair in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences. “So much reef death over the years has reduced coral species variety and made reefs more homogenous, but science still doesn't understand enough about how coral biodiversity helps reefs survive. We want to know more.”

The results of the study appear in the February issue of the journal Nature ecology & evolution and were made available online in January. The research was funded by the National Science Foundation, by the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center, and by the Teasley Endowment.

The study’s insights could aid ecologists restocking crumbling reefs with corals -- which are animals. Past replenishing efforts have often deployed patches of single species that have had trouble taking hold, and the researchers believe the study should encourage replanting using biodiverse patches.

[Ready for graduate school? Here's how to apply to Georgia Tech.]

40 years’ decimation 

The decimation of corals Hay has witnessed in over four decades of undersea research underscores this study’s importance.

“It’s shocking how quickly the Caribbean reefs crashed. In the 1970s and early 1980s, reefs consisted of about 60 percent live coral cover,” Hay said. “Coral cover declined dramatically through the 1990s and has remained low. It’s now at about 10 percent throughout the Caribbean.”

“You used to find living diverse reefs with structurally complex coral stands the size of city blocks. Now, most Caribbean reefs look more like parking lots with a few sparse corals scattered around.”

84 percent loss

The fact that the decimation in the Pacific is less grim is bitter irony. About half of living coral cover disappeared there between the early 1980s and early 2000s with declines accelerating since.

“From 1992 to 2010, the Great Barrier Reef, which is arguably the best-managed reef system on Earth, lost 84 percent,” Clements said. “All of this doesn’t include the latest bleaching events reported so widely in the media, and they killed huge swaths of reef in the Pacific.”

The 2016 bleaching event also sacked reefs off of Fiji where the researchers ran their experiment. The coral deaths have been associated with extended periods of ocean heating, which have become much more common in recent decades.

10 times more species

Still, there’s hope. Pacific reefs support ten times as many coral species as Caribbean reefs, and Clements’ and Hay’s new study suggests that this higher biodiversity may help make these reefs more robust than the Caribbean reefs. There, many species have joined the endangered list, or are “functionally extinct,” still present but in traces too small to have an ecological impact.

The Caribbean’s coral collapse may have been a warning shot on the dangers of species loss. Some coral species protect others from getting eaten or infected, for example.

“A handful of species may be critical for the survival of many others, and we don’t yet know well enough which are most critical. If key species disappear, the consequences could be enormous,” said Hay, who believes he may have already witnessed this in the Caribbean. “The decline of key species may drive the decline of others and potentially create a death spiral.”

864 abrasive animals

Off Fiji’s shores, Clements transported by kayak, one by one, 48 concrete tables he had built on land. He dove them into place and mounted on top of them 864 jaggy corals in planters he had fashioned from the tops of plastic soda bottles.

“I scratched a lot of skin off of my fingers screwing those corals onto the tables,” he said, laughing at the memory. “I drank enough saltwater through my snorkel doing it, too.”

Clements laid out 18 corals on each tabletop: Three groups of monocultures filled 36 tables (12 with species A, 12 with species B, 12 with species C). The remaining 12 tabletops held polycultures with balanced A-B-C mixtures. He collected data four months into the experiment and at 16 months.

The polycultures all looked great. Only one monoculture species, Acropora millepora, had nice growth at the 16-month mark, but that species is more susceptible to disease, bleaching, predators, and storms. It may have sprinted ahead in growth in the experiment, but long-term it would probably need the help of other species to cope with its own fragility.

“Corals and humans both may do well on their own in good times,” Hay said. “But when disaster strikes, friends may become essential.”

Also read: Swapping cooties may help "Nemo" fish cohabitate with fish-killing anemones

The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (grant OCE 0929119), and the National Institutes of Health’s Fogarty International Center (grant 2 U19 TW007401-10), and the Teasley Endowment. Any findings, conclusions, and recommendations are those of the authors and not necessarily of the funding entities.

Media relations assistance: Ben Brumfield

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ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu

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Writer: Ben Brumfield