Sept. 26, 2018. Once again, a Georgia Tech student ends up winning a ScienceMatters quiz because of the desire to take a homework break.
For Episode 4, it was Allie Caughman hearing the winning quiz detail during a study break. For Episode 5's quiz, Sachin Sarath Yadav Kothandaraman's need to relax a little resulted in the graduate student joining the ScienceMatters Hall of Fame.
"I heard this particular episode while I was taking a break from my assignments," Kothandaraman says. But it wasn't the first time he listened to the podcast. "I started listening to ScienceMatters after my classmate shared it with me. I've been hooked since."
Kothandaraman is from Chennai, India, where he received a bachelor's degree in biotechnology from Anna University. He is in his first year in the Georgia Tech Bioinformatics Graduate Program.
Working in the lab of Fredrik Vannberg, Kothandaraman is interested in developing a bioinformatics/computational approach toward understanding the dynamics of complex diseases and their treatment. Vannberg is an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences and a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience. 
"I am still in the initial phase of identifying my graduate project," Kothandaraman says. "But I am currently working on machine-learning-based tools for predicting drug response to cancers using patient data."
Kothandaraman may be researching bioinformatics, but it was the astrophysics of Episode 5 that lured him in. That particular ScienceMatters episode focused on how School of Physics Professor John Wise crunches terabytes of data to create visualizations and simulations of the birth of galaxies, stars, and black holes.
The Episode 5 quiz question: What is the name of the University of Illinois supercomputer mentioned in Episode 5 that John Wise uses for visualizations and simulations? The answer: Blue Waters.
Episode 6 of ScienceMatters is out this week. "There's a Moth in My Video Game!" stars Simon Sponberg, an associate professor with joint appointment in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences.
If you would like to join the ScienceMatters Hall of Fame, enter the answer to this question: According to Episode 6, what animal did Simon Sponberg study when he was an undergraduate in Lewis and Clark College, in Oregon?
Submit your answer by 11 a.m. Monday, October 1, at sciencematters.gatech.edu.
