Through outreach, we help ensure a bright future for science and mathematics, attract future talent, and build support for the data-driven approach to problem solving.
By engaging with diverse audiences, we let it be known that doing science and mathematics is fun and great joy can be derived from uncovering the workings of the natural world.
Frontiers in Science
Through this lecture series, the College of Sciences hosts renowned scientists in and outside of Georgia Tech to engage with the public. Invited lecturers share the excitement of their discoveries and give nonexperts a taste of how scientists tackle and solve complex challenges through creativity, experimentation, and rational discussion.
Atlanta Science Festival
Georgia Tech is a founding member and a platinum sponsor of the widely popular Atlanta Science Festival. Institute participation is coordinated through the College of Sciences.
The week-long festival aims to expand the community of science enthusiasts in Atlanta and to inspire a new generation of curious thinkers. In venues throughout the city, curious people of all ages explore science and technology and how they are connected to our lives. Scientists and educators from Atlanta-area museums, schools, universities, and companies share the excitement of discovery and problem-solving through hands-on activities, facility tours, and riveting performances melding science and art.
College of Sciences faculty, staff, and students are fired-up participants, using the occasion to showcase unique hidden talents and share the joy of science. From comedy shows and punk rock band spoofs, to explaining the science of beer and cheese, to a full-blown science fair for Latino students and their families, the College of Sciences programming for the festival has something for all types of science-curious folks to enjoy.
Atlanta Science Tavern
The Atlanta Science Tavern (AST) was founded in 2008 in the tradition of the international science café movement popular at the time. It is now a significant science forum in its own right. Now organized on Meetup.com, it boasts over 5,600 members, making AST one of the largest science outreach organizations in the country.
The core program of AST consists of events that bring a smart general audience to hear from a research scientist or notable science communicator about important scientific topics of the day. AST’s home base is Manuel’s Tavern, a pub in Atlanta’s Poncey-Highland neighborhood. Once or twice a month, a hundred or more science enthusiasts gather to share in the excitement of the latest scientific discoveries with friends over food and drink.
Involvement with the College of Sciences has been a cornerstone of the AST program. Public lectures at Tech are a mainstay of their calendar.
The College of Sciences provides a significant share of the speakers featured at AST-produced meetups. Among the most popular are planetary scientists from the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences. And helping develop AST special events, the College has hosted AST visitors at tours of Geogia Tech campus research facilities, such as the genetics labs of Kiril Lobachev and Francesca Storici in the School of Biological Sciences.
Recent collaborations include a signature event with the School of Physics on the 2015 International Year of Light for the 2015 Atlanta Science Festival at Georgia Tech’s historic Academy of Medicine and a standing-room-only public presentation at the Decatur Recreation Center by researchers from the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics Deidre Shoemaker and Laura Cadonati in February 2016 about their work on the first detection of gravitational waves.
