Experts in the News

Țară Stoinski, president/CEO and chief scientific officer for the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, doesn't just have to worry about increasing the numbers of the various species of gorillas under her group's conservation care. Stoinski, who received her Ph.D. from the School of Psychology in 2000 and joined the Fossey Fund while working at Zoo Atlanta, also has to try to find more land for the animals, protect them from poachers, and deal with the challenges that arise from civil unrest in countries where the gorillas have their habitats. 

For Homo sapiens, a dry-land species, discussions of the climate and how it is changing tend to revolve around what is going on in the atmosphere. This is a dangerously parochial attitude, for the atmosphere is but one of two fluid systems circulating above Earth’s solid surface. The other, the ocean, is in many ways the more important of the pair. Ocean circulation redistributes heat and swallows carbon dioxide. Susan Lozier, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair of the College of Sciences, spoke about the assumptions many people have about oceans and ocean circulation during the recent American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) annual meeting. (This story was also covered in Yahoo!Finance and Science.)

For Homo sapiens, a dry-land species, discussions of the climate and how it is changing tend to revolve around what is going on in the atmosphere. This is a dangerously parochial attitude, for the atmosphere is but one of two fluid systems circulating above Earth’s solid surface. The other, the ocean, is in many ways the more important of the pair. Ocean circulation redistributes heat and swallows carbon dioxide. Susan Lozier, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair of the College of Sciences, spoke about the assumptions many people have about oceans and ocean circulation during the recent American Association for the Advancement of Sciences (AAAS) annual meeting. (This story was also covered in Yahoo!Finance and Science.)

Plants, like animals and people, seek refuge from climate change. And when they move, they take ecosystems with them. To understand why and how plants have trekked across landscapes throughout time, researchers are calling for a new framework. The key to protecting biodiversity in the future may be understanding the past. Jenny McGuire, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences, spearheaded a U.S. National Science Foundation-supported paper on the topic in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. McGuire and her collaborators highlight the outstanding needs for successful future conservation efforts. The paper brings together conservation research that illuminates the complex and constantly evolving dynamics brought on by climate change and the ever-shifting ways humans use land. These factors, McGuire said, interact over time to create dynamic changes and illustrate the need to incorporate time perspectives into conservation strategies by looking deep into the past. (This research was also covered in Time Magazine.)

A small but growing group of researchers is working to make science more accessible to scientists with limited vision. Innovative software and modes of presentation are helping to broaden access to scientific literature. Sonification provides a way for scientists with visual limitations to "see" data; by translating numerical values into sounds with certain parameters — for example, a star’s brightness might be encoded as pitch — researchers can home in on important changes. Highcharts, a charting library service, developed its free tool for exploring charts with sonification at Georgia Tech's Sonification Lab, an interdisciplinary research group based in the School of Psychology and the School of Interactive Computing.

One of those sessions, Looking to Our Ocean for Climate Solutions, featured Susan Lozier, College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. As greenhouse gases warm our planet, our ocean plays a significant role in regulating heat and absorbing carbon dioxide, absorbing a third of the carbon and more than 90 percent of the extra heat we add to our atmosphere. There are consequences to this, as scientists track warming temperatures, depleting oxygen zones, a more acidic ocean, and rising sea levels. The ocean can also be a potential solution if we can leverage the ocean’s existing ability to remove carbon dioxide.

A recent study finds that concerns about the health effects of Covid-19 are a key variable in determining whether people are hesitant to get vaccinated against the virus. The study also found that an individual’s tendency to plan for the future plays a surprising role in people’s vaccine hesitancy. At issue is a psychological trait called proactive coping that refers to a person’s tendency to think about and plan for the future. The study's first author is MacKenzie  Hughes, Ph.D. student in the School of Psychology; Clara Coblenz, Georgia Tech alumna (B.S. PSYCH) who is now a research technician in the School of Psychology's Adult Cognition Lab, is a co-author.

One of those sessions, Looking to Our Ocean for Climate Solutions, featured Susan Lozier, College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. As greenhouse gases warm our planet, our ocean plays a significant role in regulating heat and absorbing carbon dioxide, absorbing a third of the carbon and more than 90 percent of the extra heat we add to our atmosphere. There are consequences to this, as scientists track warming temperatures, depleting oxygen zones, a more acidic ocean, and rising sea levels. The ocean can also be a potential solution if we can leverage the ocean’s existing ability to remove carbon dioxide.

Plants, like animals and people, seek refuge from climate change. And when they move, they take ecosystems with them. To understand why and how plants have trekked across landscapes throughout time, researchers are calling for a new framework. The key to protecting biodiversity in the future may be understanding the past. Jenny McGuire, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences, spearheaded a U.S. National Science Foundation-supported paper on the topic in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. McGuire and her collaborators highlight the outstanding needs for successful future conservation efforts. The paper brings together conservation research that illuminates the complex and constantly evolving dynamics brought on by climate change and the ever-shifting ways humans use land. These factors, McGuire said, interact over time to create dynamic changes and illustrate the need to incorporate time perspectives into conservation strategies by looking deep into the past. (This research was also covered in Time Magazine.)

A small but growing group of researchers is working to make science more accessible to scientists with limited vision. Innovative software and modes of presentation are helping to broaden access to scientific literature. Sonification provides a way for scientists with visual limitations to "see" data; by translating numerical values into sounds with certain parameters — for example, a star’s brightness might be encoded as pitch — researchers can home in on important changes. Highcharts, a charting library service, developed its free tool for exploring charts with sonification at Georgia Tech's Sonification Lab, an interdisciplinary research group based in the School of Psychology and the School of Interactive Computing.

Even if you failed chemistry in high school, there is guaranteed to be something that sparks your intrigue at the Atlanta Science Festival. With over 150 events taking place across the city leading up to one big scientific soiree in Piedmont Park, dive into myriad topics, from coding to astronomy, and enjoy the fresh air. Several College of Sciences faculty, staff, and students are taking part in many of the events. The Champion Newspaper in DeKalb County also previews the festival, as does the Atlanta Journal-Constitution. (More information on the Atlanta Science Festival can be found here.) 

A School of Mathematics alumna has been elected as the new chief insurance officer for GuideStone, which provides retirement solutions, insurance coverage and investment products and services to churches, ministries, organizations and institutions as well as ministry-minded individuals. Nadeena Kersey, B.S. MATH, will provide executive leadership and oversight to the insurance line of business, including product development, sales and marketing, services and operations of life and health plans, property and casualty coverage and ancillary products.