College of Sciences

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Meghan Babcock

School of Psychology faculty member and academic advisor Meghan Babcock has been selected to receive NACADA: The Global Community for Academic Advising's Outstanding Faculty Advisor Award. Earlier this year, Babcock was awarded Georgia Tech's Outstanding Undergraduate Academic Advisor – Faculty Honor.

This June, New York City’s government and utility urged households to conserve electricity during an extreme heat wave with temperatures reaching 100 degrees F. People were asked to set air conditioners to 76 degrees, to avoid using more than one air conditioning unit, and to delay using electricity-hungry appliances during peak cooling hours.

The big concern is that when every air conditioning unit is running at full blast, electricity demand can exceed total generating capacity and force the utility to implement rolling blackouts. These rolling blackouts avoid a total system failure but leave people without access to cooling and other electronics as temperatures reach dangerous levels.

As temperatures peak in the United States during the coming weeks, utilities and city governments may follow suit with similar requests for voluntary conservation. Voluntary requests for conservation in the United States are part of the standard energy emergency playbook and go back at least to President Carter’s request for Americans to reduce heating temperatures during the 1977 energy crisis.

So, do voluntary conservation requests work to save energy and prevent blackouts?

Tech Tower

The new center will promote research and collaboration focused on using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence and machine learning techniques to address complex scientific challenges.

Students from Psychology 3000, including Abby Davis, Bailey Benak, and Sarah Peach took their studies global this summer, exploring how culture shapes stress and well-being — one breathtaking view at a time.

Georgia Tech’s inaugural summer study abroad program in southern Italy offered students a unique opportunity to research the science and culture of stress and well-being — while soaking in the Mediterranean sun.

Former Matsumoto Group member Krishma Singal operates a knitting machine used to create fabric samples for a previous study. Singal recently graduated from Georgia Tech with her Ph.D. (Photo Credit: Allison Carter)

Researchers in the School of Physics unravel the secrets of the centuries-old practice of knitting in a new study that explores the physics of ‘jamming’ — a phenomenon when soft or stretchy materials become rigid under low stress but soften under higher tension.

Cameron Perry with Whale Shark

Experts say that more accurate depictions of sharks can help protect them and highlight their role in global ecosystems.  

Experts In The News

As Hurricane Melissa barrels toward Jamaica as a Category 5 storm, some in the meteorological community are questioning if the traditional way of measuring hurricane strength still tells the full story.

Zachary Handlos, director of the Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences Undergraduate Degree Program at Georgia Tech, believes it might be time to rethink how we classify hurricanes. While the Saffir-Simpson Hurricane Wind Scale, which rates storms from Category 1 through 5 based solely on maximum wind speed, has been used for decades, Handlos says it doesn’t always capture a storm’s true impact.

“You don’t have to be a tropical cyclone expert to know that the scale has some limitations,” Handlos said. “It doesn’t necessarily portray how strong or impactful a hurricane can be beyond its wind speed.”

11Alive News October 27, 2025

The Blue Mountains in eastern Jamaica could be a region where landslides occur with heavy rain due to steep hill slopes, said Karl Lang, an assistant professor of geology at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Lang said regions that have been clearcut for agriculture could be susceptible to landslides because the plants that previously grew there helped bind the soil together by the strength of their roots.

Some roads built on steep hills in Puerto Rico were affected by landslides when Hurricane Fiona (2022) and Hurricane Maria (2017) hit, said Lang. “Every time you cut into a steep slope, you make a steeper slope above the road,” he said.

“The real problem there is that you create the road that’s your conduit in and out of the location … and then the landslide dams the road. You create your own problem both by creating the increased probability of a landslide, but also by having those landslides occur where you need to go,” said Lang.

AP News October 27, 2025

Upcoming Events

Nov
05
2025
Featuring Roni Sengupta - Assistant Professor of Computer Science, University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill
Nov
07
2025
Join the Spatial Ecology and Paleontology Lab for Fossil Fridays! Become a fossil hunter and help discover how vertebrate communities have changed through time.
Nov
11
2025
The AI4Science Center hosts a seminar highlighting innovative applications of machine learning in the natural sciences, featuring guest speaker Robert Jernigan, Professor at Iowa State University and Director of the Baker Center for Bioinformatics and Bio
Nov
12
2025
Featuring Changliu Liu - Associate Professor, The Robotics Institute at Carnegie Mellon University
Nov
12
2025
"Translational Neuroscience: Episodic Models Across Animals, Neuroimaging, and Disease" – Tammy Tran, Georgia Tech

Spark: College of Sciences at Georgia Tech

Welcome — we're so glad you're here. Learn more about us in this video, narrated by Susan Lozier, College of Sciences Dean and Sutherland Chair.