College of Sciences

Latest News

Tiny helices emerge during a phase separation process, offering clues about how life's building blocks may have first developed a preference for one 'handed' form over another. (Credit: Jong-Hoon Lee, Ziming Wang, Ying Diao)

A new study reveals that many conjugated polymers, long considered structurally neutral, can spontaneously twist into chiral shapes. This surprising behavior, overlooked for decades, could pave the way for development of a new class of energy-efficient electronics inspired by nature. Collaborative findings across University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Georgia Tech, University of North Carolina, and Purdue University are published in the Journal of the American Chemical Society.

GT NEXT 2025 Recipients

The Office of Technology Licensing has announced the 2025 recipients of the GT NEXT awards, a grant that helps students advance their inventions toward market readiness. Providing early momentum for promising technologies, the grants help students move their research toward real-world impact. 

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Neuroscience experts from across Georgia Tech will soon come together for a new interdisciplinary research institute, the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS), launched in July. Faculty in INNS are helping to solve some of neuroscience’s most pressing problems, and many have promising medical applications. One important aspect of studying the brain is understanding how the brain and the body work together. Meet the researchers who study brain-body interactions, from monitoring the neuron degradation that causes Alzheimer’s to enhancing mobility for stroke survivors, in an effort to improve the health and quality of life for millions of Americans.

A lizard wearing one of the sensors, which weigh just three-hundredths of a gram each — the same as a two grains of rice. (Credit: Jon Suh)

The award will support Stroud as he creates evolution’s first high-definition map — with the help of 1,000 backpack-wearing lizards.

Grace Tang (Left) and Alison Onstine (Right) holding bacteria plates that spell "BIOL 4590" (Credit: Tang and Onstine)

“This course truly underscores Georgia Tech’s commitment to pioneering meaningful undergraduate experiences,” says teacher Vinayak (Vinny) Agarwal. “No other peer institution I know of is exposing undergraduates to bioinformatics at this level.”

Post-hurricane flooding inundates residential areas and transportation infrastructure, with low-lying terrain overwhelmed by storm surge and excessive rainfall.

Georgia Tech researchers are developing solutions to monitor and forecast flooding, as well as restore ecosystems to prevent future flooding. These efforts support communities’ resilience in the face of climate change and keep the U.S. secure.

Experts In The News

Green iguanas (Iguana iguana) are not native to the U.S. but were brought to Florida in the 1960s, where they have, for the most part, flourished—except, that is, when temperatures have dropped below 50 degrees F (10 degrees C). 

These chilly conditions can cause a cold shock in the lizards. And because the iguanas tend to sleep in trees, getting cold shocked can sometimes cause the animals to fall from the skies in an infamous Florida phenomenon. 

“These tropical lizards were experiencing conditions that they’ve never experienced in their entire evolutionary history before, tens of millions of years,” says James Stroud, an evolutionary biologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

But in Florida, colder conditions occur every few years—albeit less often as temperatures rise because of climate change. The experience of the iguanas that have been forced to confront the cold in the state can teach scientists more about how animals respond to new climates more generally, Stroud says.

Scientific American January 16, 2026

Jennifer Glass, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was recently quoted in an article published in Scientific American that discusses the evolution of Wikipedia:

As Wikipedia’s use grew, some educators softened their stance, encouraging its use to find leads to sources that students could dig into directly. Others took a different approach, assigning students to edit Wikipedia entries—many through Wiki Education.

Jennifer Glass, a biogeochemist at Georgia Institute of Technology, is one of those professors; she has incorporated Wikipedia editing into her teaching since 2018. She wanted a student project that emphasized the concise and technical but understandable writing style that the site uses. And although she hadn’t done much editing for Wikipedia herself, she was impressed by the website’s breadth of content.

Each semester, her students write one article from scratch about a topic they research, from dolomitization to the tropopause. Glass says the project teaches them the value of institutional access to published literature and the skill of fact-checking their writing line by line.

Scientific American January 15, 2026

Upcoming Events

Feb
12
2026
This event series aims to showcase research taking place in the College of Sciences to the wider science community.
Feb
13
2026
Join the Spatial Ecology and Paleontology Lab for Fossil Fridays! Become a fossil hunter and help discover how vertebrate communities have changed through time.
Feb
13
2026
EAS 1600 students maintain the Library, and it's open to everyone on Fridays from 3:30 - 4:30 pm when classes are in session. Come learn about houseplants and bring your own plant home!

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.