Experts in the News

In an article published in The Washington Post, Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences James Stroud provides an overview of his research: 

Every morning in Miami, our fieldwork begins the same way. Fresh Cuban coffee and pastelitos — delicious Latin American pastries — fuel our team for another day of evolutionary detective work. In this case, we are tracking evolution in real time, measuring natural selection as it happens in a community of Caribbean lizards.

Our research takes place on a South Florida island roughly the size of an American football field — assuming we are successful in sidestepping the American crocodiles that bask in the surrounding lake. We call it Lizard Island, and it's a special place.

Since 2015, we have been conducting evolutionary research here on five species of remarkable lizards called anoles. Our team is working to understand one of biology's most fundamental questions: How does natural selection drive evolution in real time?

This also appeared in The Conversation. 

Peter Yunker, associate professor in the School of Physics, reflects on the results of new experiments which show that cells pack in increasingly well-ordered patterns as the relative sizes of their nuclei grow.

“This research is a beautiful example of how the physics of packing is so important in biological systems,” states Yunker. He says the researchers introduce the idea that cell packing can be controlled by the relative size of the nucleus, which “is an accessible control parameter that may play important roles during development and could be used in bioengineering.”

How life on Earth evolved from unicellular to multicellular organisms remains a mystery, though evidence indicates that this may have occurred multiple times independently. To understand what could have happened, Will Ratcliff, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, has been conducting long-term evolution experiments on yeast in which multicellularity develops and emerges spontaneously.

In a recent episode of “The Joy of Why” podcast, Ratcliff discusses what his “snowflake yeast” model could reveal about the origins of multicellularity, the surprising discoveries his team has made, and how he responds to skeptics who question his approach.

Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Professor Jennifer Glass comments on a paper recently published in Science that details “photochemodenitrification,” a nitrous oxide production pathway through which sunlight induces substantial and consistent nitrous oxide formation under oxic abiotic conditions in fresh and marine surface waters. 

“I think it’s a beautiful [study],’ says Glass, noting that researchers have previously shown similar light-driven processes in atmospheric aerosols, but never in aquatic environments. “As we’ve been sequencing more and more genomes in the environment a lot of us have moved really into that -omics space, looking for key markers for genes … This just goes to show that sometimes it’s not biological,” she says. “You have to think outside the box and consider all the chemistry that can be happening, not just the enzymes.”

Nga Lee "Sally" Ng, a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, leads the U.S. National Science Foundation-supported Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurement NeTwork (ASCENT), which includes 12 air quality measurement sites nationwide. Each site has state-of-the-art instruments that help us understand aerosols, or tiny particles in the atmosphere. The network is constantly analyzing the chemical constituents of aerosols with a diameter smaller than 2.5 micrometers, referred to as PM2.5, which contribute to more than 90% of the adverse health impacts associated with air pollution.

"We provide ASCENT data to the public in real time so that people know what's in the air we're breathing," Ng said.

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia named Robert Scott president of Albany State University, effective May 1, 2025. Scott, who holds a Ph.D. in cellular and molecular biology from the Georgia Institute of Technology, will return to higher education after almost two decades working in the private sector. 

Georgia Tech’s campus was recently the site of an interactive celebration of science. The 2025 Atlanta Science Festival launched Saturday, March 8, 2025 at Georgia Tech. Dozens of exhibits were spread out all over the campus, with hands-on STEM activities, demonstrations, and information about the research currently happening on campus. 

(A similar story appeared at WABE.)

Four million Americans suffer from glaucoma, an incurable eye disease that slowly degrades peripheral vision and eventually leads to blindness. A new treatment could potentially stop this degradation and possibly save people’s vision before it’s too late.

Raquel Lieberman, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience, and her lab team have discovered two new antibodies with promise to treat glaucoma. The antibodies can break down the protein myocilin, which, when it malfunctions, can cause glaucoma.

Lieberman’s group recently published this research in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences: Nexus.

National Weather Service staff cuts may put lives at risk, meteorologists say

The firings of hundreds of National Weather Service employees will affect local forecasters’ ability to warn the public about dangerous weather, local meteorologists warn. And that could have deadly consequences when there are tornado outbreaks or an approaching hurricane, some say.

Georgia Tech’s Dean of the College of Sciences, Susan Lozier, says the weather forecasts aren’t just useful for those planning outdoor activities.

“It goes beyond protecting people and personal property, which is great. But it just impacts so many corners of our economy,” Lozier said. “Transportation relies on the weather. Do we really want the safety of our skies dependent on private industry? Or our armed forces? There are just amazing stories about how accurate weather forecasting has won battles."

A shallow magnitude earthquake shook parts of middle Georgia earlier Tuesday evening, less than half a day after tremors were felt in northwest Georgia in Chattooga County.

11Alive meteorologist Melissa Nord (EAS 2013) spoke with a Georgia Tech seismologist, who explained Northwest Georgia is the state's most active seismic region. It is located within the Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone, which experiences frequent, small earthquakes. 

Zhigang Peng, professor of geophysics in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, recently co-authored a research study on the frequency of earthquakes in this Eastern Tennessee Seismic Zone.

"We connected all of the data that has been recorded in that region over the past 15 years or so. And then we carefully relocated, trying to determine exactly where they're located. And after we did that, we found out that many of them occur in small kind of ligament, which is probably an indication that there are some small faults," Peng said. 

It's possible that Tuesday's earthquake in northwest Georgia was one of those small ligaments or faults, but Dr. Peng said he'd need to investigate further. 

The Genomic Enumeration of Antibiotic Resistance in Space (GEARS) experiment, managed by NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, is designed to analyze microbial resistance in space. As part of the study, astronauts collect samples from interior surfaces aboard the ISS to detect antibiotic-resistant bacteria, particularly Enterococcus faecalis, a microorganism naturally found in the human body. This initiative marks the initial phase of broader research on microbial behavior in space and its implications for medicine on Earth.

"Enterococcus is an ancient organism that has coexisted with humans since our evolutionary origins," explained Christopher Carr, co-principal investigator of GEARS and assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Aerospace Engineering. "It thrives inside and outside its host, contributing to its status as the second leading cause of hospital-acquired infections. Our goal is to understand how this microbe adapts to space conditions."

GEARS aims to refine methods for detecting and identifying resistant bacteria, expanding upon ongoing microbial monitoring efforts aboard the ISS.

Mustard gas, or sulfur mustard, is one of the most harmful chemical warfare agents, causing severe blistering of the skin and mucous membranes upon contact. To enhance battlefield detection of this hazardous substance, a team of chemists, including M.G. Finn, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the School of Biological Sciences, will develop a streamlined method for detecting vesicants—a broader class of chemical agents that includes sulfur mustard.

“We will initially focus on model compounds that act like mustards, but that can be handled safely in the laboratory. This will allow us to test different molecular sensor designs, with Professor Jennifer Heemstra's lab and ours working together on complementary approaches,” Finn explains.