Experts in the News

Carolyn R. Bertozzi, K. Barry Sharpless, and Morten Meldal were jointly awarded this year's Nobel Prize in chemistry for developing a way of “snapping molecules together ... sort of like molecular Lego” that can be used to explore cells, map DNA and design drugs that can target diseases such as cancer more precisely. School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Chair M.G. Finn, who completed his Ph.D. with Sharpless and later collaborated with him on the Nobel-winning work, said click chemistry’s use in biology and drug development was still “at its infancy,” with more exciting discoveries to come.

Related coverage: Smithsonian Magazine, STAT News, Times of San Diego, The Philadelphia Inquirer, Yahoo! Life, Firstpost, Business Mirror, Chemistry World.

October is National Disabilities Employment Awareness Month, and The Able Channel is celebrating by raising awareness about the importance of work for those living and working with disability. Hosted by Paralympic Gold Medal-winning swimmer Mallory Weggeman, "Together We Are Able" showcases the stories of 10 Americans who have redefined perceptions of what the word able is all about. College of Sciences Advisory Board member Paul S. Goggin (Physics 1991, M.S. Atmospheric Sciences 1994) is the founder and chief operating officer of The Able Channel. "Together We Are Able" will air on NBC, CBS, Fox, and other channels, and on The Able Channel's streaming service. 

Astronauts could return to the moon in a few years, and if they do, they might be wearing spacesuits designed with the help of Thom Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and the School of Physics. Orlando, who is also a co-founder of Georgia Tech's Center for Space Technology and Research, spoke with GPB's Peter Biello about the science of spacesuit design.

In a physics lab in Amsterdam, there’s a wheel that can spontaneously roll uphill by wiggling. This “odd wheel” looks simple: just six small motors linked together by plastic arms and rubber bands to form a ring about 6 inches in diameter. When the motors are powered on, it starts writhing, executing complicated squashing and stretching motions and occasionally flinging itself into the air, all the while slowly making its way up a bumpy foam ramp. The odd wheel’s unorthodox mode of travel exemplifies a recent trend: Physicists are finding ways to get useful collective behavior to spontaneously emerge in robots assembled from simple parts that obey simple rules. Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics (who did not work on the odd wheel study), uses the term "robophysics" to describe this latest trend in robotics.

Randall (Randy) W. Engle has received the 2022 Psychonomic Society Clifford T. Morgan Distinguished Leadership Award, which recognizes “those who have made significant contributions to the field of cognitive psychology, and who have demonstrated sustained leadership and service to the discipline.” Engle is a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Psychology who leads the Institute’s Attention & Working Memory Lab. He is joined in receiving this year’s honor by Jeremy M. Wolfe of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.

It used to be that people had to worry about not getting enough water during the course of their day. But this All Things Considered segment busts some dehydration myths to include the risks of drinking too much water, which could throw your water-sodium balance out of whack. Mindy Millard-Stafford, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of the Exercise Physiology Laboratory at Georgia Tech, comments on the effects of mild dehydration on higher-level mental functions. 

Georgia Tech is a Top 50 institution of higher learning, according to the latest annual U.S. News and World Report college rankings. Included in the information about Tech is an 11Alive News video featuring Adam, Rommi, and Zane Kashlan, triplets who recently graduated from the College of Sciences — after just three years — each with a B.S. in Neuroscience.  

President Joe Biden has selected longtime biologist and former government scientist Renee Wegrzyn as the first director of the nascent Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health, ARPA-H for short. Wegrzyn is a double alumna of the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech, holding both a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology and Bioengineering, and a B.S. in Biology from the Institute. 

From bears to moose to lynx, and even squirrels and frogs, animals are leaving their homes in search of cooler climates as the planet warms. In fact, roughly half of the world’s 4,000 species are on the move, with many migrating northwards towards higher latitudes. For ecologists and conservationists, understanding how these species’ viable habitats expand and contract in the context of a rapidly shifting climate is critical. But current models can produce inaccurate, and overly optimistic results, because they fail to consider a key question: can a species realistically reach a suitable climate before it’s too late? A new computer modeling tool, MegaSDM, may help. It includes research from Jenny McGuire, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and the School of Biological Sciences, and Ben Shipley, Ph.D. candidate in the School of Biological Sciences, and it's the first modeling tool that considers dispersal limits for many species, climate models, and time periods at once.

Electrical signals tell the heart to contract, but when the signals form spiral waves, they can lead to dangerous cardiac events like tachycardia and fibrillation. Researchers at Georgia Tech and clinicians at Emory University School of Medicine are bringing a new understanding to these complicated conditions with the first high-resolution visualizations of stable spiral waves in human ventricles. The Georgia Tech School of Physics researchers are Flavio Fenton, professor, and IIija Uzelac, research scientist.

NASA is preparing to enter a new space age from Florida's space coast, and a scientist in Georgia is helping newly tapped Artemis astronauts step onto the moon with next-generation suits. Thom Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and the School of Physics, is a co-founder of the Center for Space Technology and Research. Orlando has been working with NASA to design the space suits that future astronauts will wear as they walk on the lunar surface.

After years of planning and two Covid-induced delays, the TRACER (TRacking Aerosol Convection interactions ExpeRiment) field campaign began last fall in the Houston, Texas, region, collecting data on clouds, aerosols, precipitation, meteorology, and radiation 24 hours a day, seven days a week. A four-month intensive operational period began June 1, bringing many more instruments and detailed measurements to the campaign. This allowed a group of undergraduate and high school interns at Brookhaven National Laboratory to gain firsthand experience analyzing real atmospheric data and contribute to the science coming from TRACER. One of those undergraduate interns is Emily Melvin of the School of Physics, who blogs that she was "allowed to practice my forecasting skills and explore some of the resources available to meteorologists."