College of Sciences

Nearly a decade ago, global news outlets reported vast ice melt in the Arctic as sapphire lakes glimmered across the previously frozen Greenland Ice Sheet, one of the most important contributors to sea-level rise. A new study reveals the long-term impact of that extreme melt. Using a new approach to ice-penetrating radar data, a team of scientists, including Winnie Chu, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has shown that this melting left behind a contiguous layer of refrozen ice inside the snowpack. Most importantly, the formation of the melt layer changed the ice sheet’s behavior by reducing its ability to store future meltwater.

As studies show that the stress of the Covid-19 pandemic significantly contributes to rising alcohol consumption, two alumni of the Georgia Institute of Technology's College of Engineering now offer an increasingly popular solution to curb or eliminate alcohol abuse: a sobriety app called Reframe. Kimberly French, assistant professor in the School of Psychology, explains how feelings of isolation, with limited remote options for seeking help, caused a spike in alcohol abuse during the pandemic. 

Free electron lasers (FELs), which are driven by kilometer-long linear accelerators, emit bursts of short-wavelength light lasting one quadrillionth of a second. As a result, they can act as strobe lights for viewing the fastest events in nature — atomic or molecular motion — and therefore promise to revolutionize our understanding of almost any kind of matter. New research shows how to measure the super-short bursts of high-frequency light emitted from FELs. One of the co-authors of this study is Rick Trebino, professor in the School of Physics. 

This edition of Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine focuses on the ethical considerations of recent science and technological developments, and how the Institute's vision and values play into researching these issues. Included in articles about top ethical issues such as artificial intelligence, social media, and data privacy, is this explanation from Michael Goodisman, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences, about genetic testing.