Georgia Tech Ph.D. students and postdocs host AbGradCon 2018 this week. AbGradCon stands for Astrobiology Graduate Conference. The popular gathering provides a unique setting for attendees to share research, collaborate, and network.

The meeting is for and by early-career scientists addressing the broad questions of astrobiology: How did life start? Where else does life exist? How could humans search for life outside Earth?

AbGradCon 2018 brings to the fore Georgia Tech’s standing in astrobiology research and education. Georgia Tech leads in training scientists who will direct space exploration in the 21st century.

Organizers

George Tan chairs the organizing committee. He is a Ph.D. student of Amanda Stockton, in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Working with Tan were more than a dozen other Ph.D. students or postdoctoral researchers.

Organizers expect 96 attendees: 72 from the U.S. and 24 from overseas, Tan says. They come from nine countries: Brazil, Canada, Czech Republic, Germany, India, Japan, Mexico, United Kingdom, and United States.  

The program includes an evening for the public, which features Astronaut Lawrence DeLucas.

“We have a big astrobiology community at Tech. This is the perfect opportunity for us to network with students and postdocs with similar interests. I also learned a lot about planning conferences,” says Adriana Lozoya. She is a Ph.D. student of Nicholas Hud, in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Hud is also a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB).

“It’s been a great experience getting all the moving parts to work to make this conference exciting and worthwhile for all attendees,” says Marcus Bray. He is a Ph.D. student of Jennifer Glass, in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Glass is also an IBB member. 

Funding

Major funding for the meeting came from the NASA Astrobiology Institute. Other sponsors are:

•  ACS Earth and Space Chemistry
• Earth-Life Science Institute
• Georgia Tech Astrobiology
• Georgia Tech College of Sciences
• Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology
• John Templeton Foundation
• Nature Publishing Group
• Simons Foundation

“We can’t thank our sponsors enough,” Tan says. “Their generosity markedly enhanced our ability to prepare the best possible program and accommodate close to a hundred participants.”

“I look forward to the many informal discussions over the week,” says Rebecca Rapf. She is a postdoctoral researcher with Kevin Wilson at Lawrence Berkeley National Lab. “I’m sure they will lead to productive collaborations and long-term friendships with people who will be our peers throughout our careers.”

After a year’s hiatus, School of Biological Sciences Professor Greg Gibson returned to teaching BIOL 4803C, “Health, Genes and Society,” in spring 2018.

BIOL 4803C is a nontraditional course. It aims to engage students in problems related to personalized medicine. Students form small teams working throughout the semester on a project.

Gibson summarized the semester’s yield in his blog “The Genome’s Take. The April 30, 2018, blog post reveals Gibson’s delight in what third- and fourth-year students submitted at the end of the semester.  

“The semester flew by,” says Gibson, who is also a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. “Whether students were inspired by projects of previous years or simply have become increasingly media savvy, their efforts pushed the envelope in unique directions this year.”

Following are the seven projects from the spring 2018 class of BIOL 4803C. They reveal students who are curious, skeptical, socially aware, goal-oriented, and intent on providing solutions to societal problems.

For more information about each project and Gibson’s take on the science or policy behind them, see the original blog post or the course website.

CareFull App for Cystic Fibrosis

Amanda Schaefer, Christine Lacek, and Amelia Milas leveraged their interests in public policy, bioinformatics, and medicine. They aimed to provide parents of children with cystic fibrosis a modern solution to care management. CareFull will allow parents to track medications, respiratory exercises, diet, and physical exercise through their smartphones.

BuzzLIfe App for Georgia Tech Students

Caroline Settle, Mikaela Thurman, and Yvonne Nguyen built on a survey of what Georgia Tech students would like to see in an app to help them keep healthy. BuzzLife will link students to resources for campus rides (including late-night safe rides), academic planning, campus dining and nutrition, fitness, and recreation.  BuzzLife will also help users control stress and monitor their sleep patterns.  

Conference on Mental Health

Collin Spencer, Kristen Vossler, Tessa Paet-Brown laid the groundwork for a national intercollegiate conference on student mental health to be held at Georgia Tech on February 15-17, 2019. The team worked to get Institute-wide support. They sought funds to bring in representatives of local schools, other Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) Schools, and peer universities nationwide.  

CRISPR and Human Genome Engineering

Jared Chin-Shue, Emily Yu, and Chloe Baskowitz reviewed the science and policy around CRISPR. CRISPR is a technique that makes it easy to modify the genetic code. Its use in engineering the human genome is a subject of scientific, ethical, and legislative debates.

The team interviewed scientists and legislative aides. They prepared a white-paper and website to explain the science and policies regarding use of CRISPR.

Personalized Genomics

The personalized genomics industry has attracted 12 million consumers. Catherine Johnson, Claudia Varnedoe, and Soha Noorani produced a virtual flier about Helix.com. The new kid on the bloc of the burgeoning industry has attracted $320 M in venture funding.

Unlike other companies, Helix offers exome sequencing rather than whole-genome genotyping. The exome is the part of the genome that encodes proteins. Another difference is that Helix produces the data and then sells it to a third party for interpretation. Consumers learn what the data say from the third party, at a cost of between $50 and $100.

But what about the science behind Helix? For Gibson’s opinion, read his blog post.

Medical Musings

Ann Johnson, Meg Whittling, and Jessie Morris created four podcasts, called “Medical Musings,” related to personalized medicine:

• the science behind the genetic testing company 23andme
• the NORD (National Organization for Rare Disorders) rare-disease network
• the Genetic Information Nondiscrimination Act (GINA)  
• a story about how Ann’s mother found her biological mother and is now learning more about her identity through consumer genomics  

“The podcasts were heart-warming and well received,” Gibson says. “It was a joy to see the pleasure this exercise brought to the team.  Will there be a Season 2?”

Plant a Row for the Hungry

Andi Otto, Hannah Green, and Megan Young created a website to help the Atlanta Community Food Bank solicit donations and attract volunteers.

The Atlanta Community Food Bank delivers 60 million meals to 750,000 people in 29 counties each year. It is always looking for volunteers and donations. The food bank’s website has a Plant-a-Row section encouraging people to donate surplus vegetables from their gardens. The plan is for the food bank to link directly to the team’s website, https://plantarowforthehungry.weebly.com/, which provides information on how donate surplus vegetables.

What’s Next

“Over four cycles now, students have engaged in various projects, producing teaching resources, designing apps, and contemplating policy,” Gibson says. “Two big challenges are to get students out into communities to make a difference and to turn great ideas into actual apps.” 

Gibson hopes to team up with the “Computing for Good” class of the College of Computing to realize these initiatives.

What does flying in a commercial airliner have in common with working at the office or relaxing at home? 

According to a new study, the answer is the microbiome – the community of bacteria found in homes, offices and aircraft cabins. Believed to be the first to comprehensively assess the microbiome of aircraft, the study found that the bacterial communities accompanying airline passengers at 30,000 feet have much in common with the bacterial communities surrounding people in their homes and offices.

Using advanced sequencing technology, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University studied the bacteria found on three components of an airliner cabin that are commonly touched by passengers: tray tables, seat belt buckles and the handles of lavatory doors. They swabbed those items before and after ten transcontinental flights and also sampled air in the rear of the cabin during flight. 

What they found was surprisingly unexciting.

“Airline passengers should not be frightened by sensational stories about germs on a plane,” said Vicki Stover Hertzberg, a professor in Emory University’s Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing and a co-author of the study. “They should recognize that microbes are everywhere and that an airplane is no better and no worse than an office building, a subway car, home or a classroom. These environments all have microbiomes that look like places occupied by people.”

The results of the FlyHealthy™ study were reported June 6, 2018, in the journal Microbial Ecology. In March, the researchers reported on a separate part of the study that examined potential routes for transmitting certain respiratory viruses – such as the flu – on commercial flights.

Given the unusual nature of an aircraft cabin, the researchers hadn’t known what to expect from their microbiome study. On transcontinental flights, passengers spend four or five hours in close proximity breathing a very dry mix of outdoor air and recycled cabin air that has been passed through special filters, similar to those found in operating rooms. 

“There were reasons to believe that the communities of bacteria in an aircraft cabin might be different from those in other parts of the built environment, so it surprised me that what we found was very similar to what other researchers have found in homes and offices,” said Howard Weiss, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Mathematics and the study’s corresponding author. “What we found was bacterial communities that were mostly derived from human skin, the human mouth – and some environmental bacteria.”

The sampling found significant variations from flight to flight, which is consistent with the differences other researchers have found among the cars of passenger trains, Weiss noted. Each aircraft seemed to have its own microbiome, but the researchers did not detect statistically significant differences between preflight and post-flight conditions on the flights studied.

“We identified a core airplane microbiome – the genera that were present in every sample we studied,” Weiss added. The core microbiome included genera Propionibacterium, Burkholderia, Staphylococcus, and Strepococcus (oralis).

Though the study revealed bacteria common to other parts of the built environment, Weiss still suggests travelers exercise reasonable caution. “I carry a bottle of hand sanitizer in my computer bag whenever I travel,” said Weiss. “It’s a good practice to wash or sanitize your hands, avoid touching your face, and get a flu shot ever year.”

This new information on the aircraft microbiome provides a baseline for further study, and could lead to improved techniques for maintaining healthy aircraft.

“The finding that airplanes have their own unique microbiome should not be totally surprising since we have been exploring the unique microbiome of everything from humans to spacecraft to salt ponds in Australia. The study does have important implications for industrial cleaning and sterilization standards for airplanes,” said Christopher Dupont, another co-author and an associate professor in the Microbial and Environmental Genomics Department at the J. Craig Venter Institute, which provided bioinformatics analysis of the study’s data.

The 229 samples obtained from the aircraft cabin testing were subjected to 16S rRNA sequencing, which was done at the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology in Huntsville, Alabama. The small amount of genetic material captured on the swabs and air sampling limited the level of detail the testing could provide to identifying genera of bacteria, Weiss said. The extensive bioinformatics, or sequence analysis, was carried out at the J. Craig Venter Institute in La Jolla, Calif.  

In the March 19 issue of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, the researchers reported on the results of another component of the FlyHealthy™ study that looked at potential transmission of respiratory viruses on aircraft. They found that an infectious passenger with influenza or other droplet-transmitted respiratory infection will most likely not transmit infection to passengers seated farther away than two seats laterally and one row in front or back on an aircraft. 

That portion of the study was designed to assess rates and routes of possible infectious disease transmission during flights, using a model that combines estimated infectivity and patterns of contact among aircraft passengers and crew members to determine likelihood of infection. FlyHealthy™ team members were assigned to monitor specific areas of the passenger cabin, developing information about contacts between passengers as they moved around.

Among next steps, the researchers would like to study the microbiome of airport areas, especially the departure lounges where passengers congregate before boarding. They would also like to study long-haul international flights in which passengers spend more time together – and are more likely to move about the cabin.

In addition to those already mentioned, the paper’s authors include Josh L. Espinoza and Karen Nelson of the J. Craig Venter Institute, Shawn Levy of the HudsonAlpha Institute for Biotechnology, and Sharon Norris of The Boeing Company.

This work was supported by contract 2001-041-1 between the Georgia Institute of Technology and The Boeing Company.

CITATION: Howard Weiss, et al., “The Airplane Cabin Microbiome,” (Microbial Ecology, 2018).  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s00248-018-1191-3

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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu).

Writer: John Toon

Arguably, the greatest fueler of life on our planet is photosynthesis, but understanding its labyrinthine chemistry, powered by sunlight, is challenging. Researchers recently illuminated some new steps inside the molecular factory that makes the oxygen we breathe.

Though chlorophyll is the best-known part, for the vivid green it colors nature, many compounds work together in photosynthesis. And Georgia Tech chemists devised clever experiments to inspect a small metal catalyst and an amino acid intimately involved in the release of O2 from water in what's known as photosystem II (PSII). 

PSII is a complex protein structure found in plants and algae. It has a counterpart called photosystem I, an equally complex light-powered producer of oxygen and biomaterials.

Photosynthesis Q & A

Some questions and answers below will help elucidate the researchers’ findings about O2 production inside PSII.

“Photosynthesis in plants and algae can be compared to an artificial solar cell,” said principal investigator Bridgette Barry, who is a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “But, in photosynthesis, light energy fuels the production of food (carbohydrates) instead of charging a battery. O2 is released from water as a byproduct.”

Barry, first author Zhanjun Guo, and researcher Jiayuan He published their research on May 11, 2018, in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Their work was funded by the National Science Foundation.

How does photosynthesis II release oxygen from water?

Many details are still unknown, but here are some basic workings that were already well-established going into this new study.

PS II is a biochemical complex made mostly of large amino acid corkscrew cylinders and some smaller such cylinders strung together with amino acid strands. The reaction cycle that extracts the O2 from H2O occurs at a tiny spot, which the study focused on.

For scale, if PSII were a fairly tall, very wide building, the spot might be the size of a large door in about the lower center of the building, and the metal cluster would be located there. Intertwined in the proteins would be sprawling molecules that include beta-carotene and chlorophyll, a great natural photoelectric semiconductor.

“Photons from sunlight bombard photosystem II and displace electrons in the chlorophyll,” Barry said. “That creates moving negative charges.”

What is the metal catalyst?

The metal catalyst acts like a capacitor, building up charge that it uses to expedite four chemical reactions that release the O2 by removing four electrons, one-by-one, from two water molecules. In the process, water also spins off four H+ ions, i.e. protons, from two H2O molecules.

An additional highly reactive compound near the metal cluster acts as a "switch" to drive the electron movement in each step of the reaction cycle. It's a common amino acid called tyrosine, a little building block on that mammoth protein building.

What does the ‘switch’ do?

This is where the new study’s insights come in to describe details of what's going on between the tyrosine and the cluster.

The light reactions remove one electron from tyrosine, making it what’s called an unstable radical, and the radical version of tyrosine strongly attracts a new electron.

It very quickly gets that new electron from the metal cluster. As PSII absorbs photons, the taking of an electron from tyrosine and its radical’s grabbing of a new one from the cluster repeats rapidly, making the tyrosine a kind of flickering switch.

“The tyrosine radical drives the cycle around, and what they (Guo and He) did in the lab was to develop a way of seeing the radical reaction in the presence of the metal cluster,” Barry said.

Guo and He also found that the calcium atom in the cluster has key interactions with tyrosine.

How did they observe that single chemical component in a living system?

Figuring out how to make the reactions observable was painstaking. The researchers isolated some PSII from spinach, and they slowed it way down by cooling it in the dark.

Then they gave it a burst of red light to prepare one step in the reaction cycle, then a green flash to take the electron from tyrosine. Then the electrons slowly returned to the tyrosine.

The researchers observed the processes via vibrational spectroscopy, which revealed qualities of tyrosine’s chemical bonds. The researchers also examined the calcium and discovered a special interaction between it and tyrosine.

“A new thing we saw was that the calcium ion made the tyrosine twist a certain way,” Barry said. “It turns out that the tyrosine may be a very flexible switch.”

The researchers also swapped out calcium for other metals and found that the calcium fulfills this role quite optimally.

So, why is understanding photosynthesis important?

“Oxygen photosynthesis really is the great fueler life on our planet,” Barry said.

About two billion years ago, the photosynthesis that generates O2 exploded, and as breathable oxygen filled Earth’s oceans and atmosphere, life began evolving into the complex variety we have today. There are also pragmatic reasons for studying photosynthesis.

“You could work with it to make crops more productive,” Barry said. “We may have to repair and adapt the photosynthesis process someday, too.”

Environmental stresses could possibly weaken photosynthesis in the future, calling for biochemical tweaks. Also, natural photosynthesis is an exceptionally good model for photoelectric semiconductors like those used in emerging energy systems.

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The research was funded by the National Science Foundation (grant MCB-14-11734). Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect views of the National Science Foundation.

Media Relations Contact: Ben Brumfield (404-660-1408) (ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu).

Writer: Ben Brumfield

By the end of the 2017-18 school year, four more students joined the roster of Leddy Family Scholars. Meanwhile four previous scholars graduated.

As the 2018-19 school year begins, the Leddy Family Scholarship Fund will be supporting nine students majoring in the College of Sciences. Before the end of the Fall 2018 semester, the College will name another four scholars.

The Leddy Family Scholarship Fund supports awards to undergraduates in the College of Sciences. Recipients are selected on the basis of academic achievement. Scholars are expected to continue participation in experiential educational programs such as research, study abroad, service learning, outreach activities, or campus leadership.

The fund is made possible by a generous donation by the family of School of Physics alumnus Jeffrey Leddy.

The latest additions to the Leddy Family Scholars’ roster are Quazi Ziyan Ahmed, Gabriel Bonilla, Mariel Barnett, and Madison Elizabeth Luker.

New Scholars

Quazi Ziyan Ahmed, from Snellville, Georgia, is studying for a B.S. in Mathematics, as well as a Certificate in Finance. His career goal is to work in the financial industry. For now, he is the marketing manager of the Student Center Tech Rec. In his spare time, Ahmed enjoys playing basketball, soccer, and cricket. He also loves to cook and travel.

Gabriel Bonilla hails from Minnesota. He is a biochemistry major in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Before attending Georgia Tech, he worked as a research assistant in the lab of Carrie Wilmot, professor and associate dean for graduate education in the College of Biological Sciences, University of Minnesota.

Mariel Barnett is a major in the School of Psychology. Even as a first-year student, she volunteered in the Attention and Working Memory Lab, directed Randall Engle. She is interested in cognition and child development. After college, she intends to go to graduate school. Eventually she wants to teach psychology or become a counselor.

From California, Madison Elizabeth Luker came to Georgia Tech to major in biology, with a minor in biomedical engineering. Luker has extensive experience in working with animals. For example, she has rescued miniature horses from auction and retrained them for therapy work. In 2018, she marched with the trained horses in the Rose Bowl Parade. During her first year at Tech, she did research with Young-Hui Chang, in the School of Biological Sciences. Chang directs the Comparative Neuromechanics Laboratory.

Graduates

Meanwhile, in spring 2018, four Leddy Family Scholars graduated:

• Jessica Amero, B.S. in Biochemistry
• Mary Elizabeth Lee, B.S. in Physics
• Elizabeth Stubbs, B.S. in Psychology
• Michael Zott, B.S. in Chemistry

“One of my proudest achievements is receiving the Leddy Family Scholarship,” Stubbs said in a profile just before she graduated. “I was honored to be recognized for my hard work, and it took a huge financial burden off my shoulders. I am incredibly grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Leddy for their generosity and support.”

Meanwhile, Zott is attending California Institute of Technology to pursue a Ph.D. in chemistry. He wants to specialize in inorganic chemistry. He’s exploring research groups developing model systems to study nitrogen reduction as carried out by nitrogenase. He hopes to do outreach volunteer work with faculty and students at nearby Pasadena City College.

Continuing Scholars

As the 2018-19 school year begins in August, three Leddy Family Scholars will begin their third year of studies at Georgia Tech:

• Jack Peters, major in physics
• Brooke Miller, major in mathematics
• Shanee Mortley, major in biochemistry

In addition, two scholars will begin their fourth year of studies:

• Samuel Wiley, major in physics
• Stephanie Wyman, major in biology.

Vote of Confidence

“Our students are at the very center of everything we do at the College of Sciences. As we attract and retain the most promising students, the quality of our academic programs rises, as well,” says College of Sciences Dean and Sutherland Chair Paul M. Goldbart.

“The Leddy Scholarships are awarded to some of the brightest, hardest working, and broadly engaged students in the College,” Goldbart says. “We’re grateful for the Leddy family’s investment in our students—and the Leddy Scholars are likewise grateful for the vote of confidence in their futures.”

Researchers at Georgia Tech, Scripps Institution of Oceanography, the Smithsonian Institution, and Stanford University are leading an initiative to ensure the health of oceans for generations to come. Called OceanVisions, the initiative envisions healthy oceans for all inhabitants of Earth and for all users and uses of the open seas enabled by advances in science and engineering.

Earth’s oceans have been under intense pressure – from the harvesting and exploitation of the waters’ natural riches and from the impacts of pollution and climate change. The news is rife with the doom and gloom of dying coral reefs and toxic dead zones.

OceanVisions organizers believe positive trends are in sight. They see the dawning of a new phase of optimism for the health of our oceans (#oceanoptimism). They know that solutions are available to help oceans adapt to or mitigate human and environmental assaults.

The organizers of OceanVisions seek to develop robust pathways toward solutions to a diverse array of ocean problems. They are aware of what science and technology can accomplish. They are convinced that current efforts – if coordinated and integrated – could yield a knowledge base for solutions to many of the oceans’ problems (#oceansolutions).

“OceanVisions will create a concrete pathway for scientists and engineers to design and execute research that enables ocean solutions.”  Emanuele Di Lorenzo, Georgia Tech

Objectives

Toward its vision, OceanVisions has four objectives:

• Establish a forum for ocean scientists and engineers to discuss research in the context of ocean solutions  
• Integrate the peer-reviewed science and engineering literature that informs and enables ocean solutions
• Raise public awareness of ocean solutions to inspire the next generation of experts and leaders
• Enable sustained dialogue about ocean solutions among users, stakeholders, scientists, and engineers

2019 Activities

Kickstarting OceanVisions are several activities in 2019.

• OceanVisions2019 – CLIMATE: Successes in Resilience, Adaptation, Mitigation, and Sustainability. This inaugural OceanVisions meeting will take place on April 1-4, 2019, at Georgia Institute of Technology. Speakers will share success stories in protecting the health of oceans while maximizing their benefits to human well-being.

• Ocean Tethys Award. OceanVisions established this award to honor and celebrate individuals who epitomize the promise and fulfillment of translating research to ocean solutions. The first recipient is Jane Lubchenco, former director of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration. She will receive the award on April 1, 2019, during OceanVisions2019.

• Uncommon Dialogue. This event will take place in Stanford University in September 2019. Scientists, engineers, and stakeholders will gather to discuss scalable ocean solutions.

• Frontiers in Marine Science special issue. The issue’s theme is “Successes at the Interface of Ocean, Climate, and Humans.” Contributions will be solicited from presenters at OceanVisions2019.

Organizers

“OceanVisions will create a concrete pathway for scientists and engineers to design and execute research that enables ocean solutions,” says Emanuele Di Lorenzo. He is a professor at Georgia Institute of Technology and the director of Georgia Tech’s Ocean Science and Engineering Ph.D. program.

Joining Di Lorenzo as OceanVisions' lead organizers are

• Mark Merrifield, Scripps Institution of Oceanography
• Nancy Knowlton, Smithsonian Institution
• Chris Field and Fiorenza Micheli, Stanford University

For more information, visit the OceanVisions website.

All over campus this summer, undergraduates are working with Georgia Tech researchers. Many programs are in full swing, modeled after the Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program of the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The School of Mathematics likely takes the prize for the most number of programs by one unit: six.  By summer’s end, seven professors, three postdoctoral mentors, and five graduate students would have worked with 13 undergraduate students. The undergrads come from 11 colleges and universities, including three in Georgia: Agnes Scott College, Georgia Tech, and Spelman College.   

Funding comes from various NSF grants and the School of Mathematics. 

Why REUs

REU programs play the same role for research careers as high school sports do for the NFL and NBA, says School of Mathematics Professor Igor Belegradek. Talent presenting early must be nurtured and honed as soon as possible.

Belegradek organized the summer 2018 REUs with colleague Dan Margalit.

“We have a rich history of undergraduate research in mathematics, as you can see on our website,” Margalit says. “It’s a testament to our faculty’s intellectual creativity and dedication to undergraduate education.”

REUs have important benefits for students, faculty mentors, and the School of Mathematics.

They help bring students to the School’s graduate program. They enable members of underrepresented minorities get advanced training and positive experiences in math research.

REUs advance the research of faculty. “We give students problems that we are genuinely interested in,” Margalit. “They are integral to our research programs.” 

REUs also provide mentoring experience to early-career researchers – graduate students and postdoctoral researchers – serving as mentors. “The training is valuable for them,” Margalit says. “It helps give them confidence in their own research and make them marketable for job searches.”

Undergraduates’ ability to penetrate difficult problems inspires Margalit. “They are fearless and creative, trying approaches that I might not think of,” he says. “They might not understand every bit of background that goes into a problem. But we, as mentors, can airlift them to the front lines of the problem.”

Undergraduates "are fearless and creative, trying approaches that I might not think of. They might not understand every bit of background that goes into a problem. But we, as mentors, can airlift them to the front lines of the problem." Dan Margalit

Cutting-Edge Research

Although Margalit’s program – on mapping class groups – has six students, other REUs have only one or two students. Three began as early as May 21; one will last until Aug. 10. In sessions lasting from five to seven weeks, the mathematicians will tackle problems in various cutting-edge areas.

Following are two examples of problems Georgia Tech undergrads will be confronting.

• Shadow Problem

Mohammad Ghomi has been working with Georgia Tech undergraduate Alexander Avery since May 21. From Ghomi’s list of open problems in geometry of curves and surfaces, Avery chose the “shadow problem” for surfaces.

Ghomi explains the problem thus: Consider a convex object, such as a ball or an egg. When such object is illuminated from any direction, the dark region of the surface, called the shadow, forms a connected set. In other words, the shadow is one piece.

What about the converse? Suppose the shape of a surface is unknown. And suppose the shadow is one piece when illuminated from any direction. Does it follow that the surface is convex?

Ghomi published a solution in Annals of Mathematics in 2002. The answer is yes for surfaces similar to balls and eggs. But not for other shapes, such as donuts.

“Alex is working on the discrete version of this problem,” Ghomi says. Avery is looking at surfaces that are not smooth – like balls and eggs – but instead are composed of polygons glued along their edges. “Alex has been making good progress. It looks like the polyhedral case will be similar to the smooth case.”  

• Legendrian Knots

“In mathematics, knots can be thought of as pieces of string which are tied up and then have the ends glued together,” says Caitlin Leverson, one of the postdoctoral mentors. “An interesting problem is to decide whether two knots are the same or different.”

Legendrian knots satisfy additional conditions. Two Legendrian knots may look very different, but be the same. Invariants are methods of assigning values to knots so that two knots are assigned the same value if they are the same. 

From May 29 to Aug. 10, Leverson will be working with two Georgia Tech fourth-year mathematics majors: DeVon Ingram and Hunter Vallejos. Their goal is to find Legendrian knots that are different yet are assigned the same value by the invariant.

 Since his second year as a mathematics major, Ingram has done research with different professors, including outside the School of Mathematics. For example, he worked on computational complexity theory with Lance Fortnow, professor and chair, School of Computer Science.

Ingram appreciates the beauty of differential geometry and its relation to physics. He sees correspondence between knot invariants and topological quantum field theories. Because of these interests, “I am naturally drawn to a knot theory problem,” he says. 

Vallejos has been doing research since he was in Oak Ridge High School, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee, just 10 miles from Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). One outcome of his stints at ORNL is a 2017 paper in the Journal of Economic Interaction and Coordination, of which Vallejos was first author.

“I love when algebra, geometry, and topology intersect,” Vallejos says. “Legendrian knot theory blends these three distinct fields, which makes it a rich subject to study.”

Visiting Students

Several of the undergraduate researchers this summer come from outside Georgia Tech. Among them are Johannes Hosle and Andrew Sack.

Johannes Hosle hails from South Bend, Indiana. He is a third-year math major in the University of California, Los Angeles. His major interests are analysis and number theory. Starting on June 18, he will work with Galyna Livshyts and Michael Lacey.

“The general area of my problem will be in harmonic analysis in convex geometry,” Hosle says. “My interest stems from a general interest in analysis. The types of problems in this branch of mathematics seem to resonate most with me.”

Andrew Sack hails from Gainesville, Florida. He is a fourth-year mathematics major from the University of Florida. A published author in the International Journal of Mathematics and Computer Science, he is one of two students who have been working with John Etnyre and Sudipta Kolay since May 30.  

Etnyre also studies how to tell knots apart. In his approach, a knot is represented by a diagram of a loop on a paper. The loop can cross over itself as many times. “But each time the loop crosses over itself, you have to specify which of the two strands is on top of the other,” Etnyre says.

A coloring of a knot is a labeling of the strands by a method that has consistency at the crossings. The coloring can tell two knots apart. “The work is related to research trying to figure out how three-dimensional spaces can be put inside a five-dimensional space.”

 “I’m interested in this research because, after taking two years of topology, I find it fascinating,” Sack says. “Previous research I’ve done centered on graph coloring. I can use some of the intuition I built around graph coloring to help better understand knot coloring.”

Liquid water on Mars fired everyone’s fancy in 2015. Water on Mars today exists in the form of hydrated perchlorates, said the researchers who led the work. They include James Wray, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS).

The finding boosts the possibility of life on the red planet. Water tied to perchlorate meets life’s two needs: water and energy. Perchlorate emits huge amounts of energy when it reacts. For this reason, its salts are ingredients of rocket boosters and fireworks.

Perchlorate as Food for Microbes

Some organisms use perchlorate as an energy source. So-called perchlorate-reducing microorganisms (PRM) would likely live in places where perchlorate naturally occurs. Yet coexistence of PRMs with naturally occurring perchlorate has not been detected until recently.

One likely place where such coexistence may occur is Pilot Valley, in the Great Salt Lake Desert of Utah. Pilot Valley is a hypersaline, perchlorate-rich, and closed basin. It loses water mainly from evaporation.

Yet perchlorate vanishes from Pilot Valley to an extent that cannot be explained by water loss, says Kennda Lynch. She’s a postdoctoral researcher working with Wray and School of Biological Sciences Professor Frank Rosenzweig.

Perchlorate is soluble in water, but it will not evaporate with water. Perchlorate salt residues should accumulate as water evaporates. Yet Pilot Valley shows a decline of such salt remains. The perchlorate is just disappearing.  

Lynch believes PRMs in Pilot Valley must be using the perchlorate. While doing her Ph.D., Lynch found the first known coexistence of PRMs and naturally occurring perchlorate in Pilot Valley. Because no one knows what these PRMs are, Lynch will spend the next year finding out. Supporting her work is a recently announced Ford Foundation fellowship.

Ford Foundation Fellowship

“I’m extremely honored to be a Ford Fellow,” Lynch says. “This funding will allow me to continue this important research, which will aid the search for evidence of life on other planets.”

Ford Foundation Fellowship Programs seek to increase diversity in academia by increasing ethnic and racial diversity. As a fellow, Lynch will gain access to one of the largest communities of academic professionals committed to creating and fostering diverse environments in higher education.

The fellowship presents a “unique opportunity to forge connections with extraordinary individuals as I continue efforts to broaden diversity within the field of astrobiology,” she says.

Lynch’s Ford Foundation research aims to find out what microbial communities use perchlorate. What are the mechanisms at their disposal?

Lynch will examine whether active perchlorate metabolism takes place in Pilot Valley. If so, what other metabolic processes occur when that process is on?

Then she will use the findings to help define a model for perchlorate-driven life on Mars. 

Filling the Knowledge Gap

The work will help NASA’s Mars Exploration Program understand the extent of habitable environments on Mars, including energy sources that could drive microbial systems. “Perchlorate is one of the most abundant and most energetic metabolic resources on Mars,” Lynch says. Yet basic questions abound about its use to support life in a place that looks like Mars.

Working in Pilot Valley – an Earth stand-in for Mars – Lynch aims to fill the knowledge gap. She will run experiments to detect perchlorate use. She will apply state-of-the-art techniques to find genes for, and expression of, perchlorate metabolism. She will also isolate PRMs. 

Lynch will continue to work with Wray and Rosenzweig. However, she will be based mostly in the lab of EAS Assistant Professor Jennifer Glass.

“My lab members and I are very excited to have Kennda join us,” Glass says. “Kennda will bring a new perspective on Mars’s relevance to our group. Serendipitously, we have cultivated microbes similar to PRMs in our recent studies, and we look forward to helping Kennda grow new, exciting microbes from Pilot Valley.”

The 2018 National Graduate Research Polymer Conference (NGRPC18) recognized three Georgia Tech Ph.D. students for outstanding presentations.

• Aditi Khirbat – top oral presentation
• Brian Schmatz – runner-up oral presentation
• Young Jun Yoon – top poster presentation

Held in the Twin Cities campus of the University of Minnesota on June 10-12, the conference aims to facilitate interactions between graduate students, postdocs, faculty, and industry representatives.

Aditi Khirbat is a second-year Ph.D. student in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). She is a member of the research group of Natalie Stingelin. Organic functional materials are a major research area for Stingelin.  

In the Stingelin lab, Khirbat studies polymer blends for organic electronics applications, including photovoltaics. Her work includes processing, characterizing, and developing structure-property relations.

Khirbat’s award-winning oral presentation at NGRPC18 described how various properties of polymer blends can be manipulated by controlled blending and processing. “I hope to obtain insights in the correlation of structure, optics, and device characteristics of these multicomponent systems,” Khirbat says. Ultimately, the goal is to improve the performance of devices made with polymer blends.

When he attended NGRPC18, Brian Schmatz was a fifth-year Ph.D. student in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a member of the research group of John Reynolds. Reynolds’ research revolves around conducting and electroactive polymers.

In the Reynolds lab, Schmatz  has prepared and characterized electroactive conjugated polymers. These materials may be used in various printed-electronics applications.

For his runner-up oral presentation at NGRPC18, Schmatz talked about his work on ways to print conjugated polymers from aqueous solutions. The goal is to enable scalable and environmentally benign processing of electronic materials. Using the new method, Schmatz printed a transistor device using only environmentally benign solvents.

On June 18, Schmatz successfully defended his Ph.D. dissertation, “Processing Components in π-Conjugated Polymers: Controlling Solubility, Morphology, and Functionality through Structural Design.”

Young Jun Yoon is a fifth-year Ph.D. student in MSE. He works with Zhiqun Lin, whose research focus is nanostructured functional materials. 

Under Lin’s direction, Yoon synthesizes and characterizes organic-inorganic hybrid materials for optoelectronics. Applications of these materials includes LEDs, lasers, and photodetectors. At NGRPC18, Yoon’s award-winning poster presentation described his work on a new way to prepare perovskite quantum dots.

The method uses star-like block copolymers as nanoreactors. “Our polymer nanoreactors enable precise control over optical properties,” Yoon says. The method drastically improves the stability of perovskite nanocrystals, he adds.

Khirbat, Schmatz, and Yoon were among 20 or so members of the Student Polymer Network at Georgia Tech (SPN@GT) who attended NGRPC18. They joined more than 250 attendees from 58 universities and nine companies with shared interest and passion for polymer science and engineering.

SPN@GT is part of the Georgia Tech Polymer Network, which Reynolds directs.

A tidal-energy harvester inspired by the human heart. A soil-erosion solution that mimics a kingfisher’s eyelid. A mosquito-control device that functions like carnivorous plants. These technologies are among the eight finalists in a global competition that asks innovators to create radically sustainable climate-change solutions inspired by the natural world.

Among the finalists is Team FullCircle,  a multidisciplinary team from Georgia Institute of Technology. The team wanted to find a more resilient way to harvest renewable energy, so they created a nature-inspired energy generator that produces clean renewable electricity from underwater sea currents.

The design was informed by the bell-shaped body of jellyfish, how schools of fish position themselves, how heart valves move liquid, and how kelp blades adapt rapidly to flowing water to maximize photosynthesis. Their goal is to create a more efficient way to generate power, decrease cost, and make this approach available to areas vulnerable to electricity shortage.

Members of Team FullCircle are students from the College of Sciences and College of Engineering:

• Ananya Jain, research leader, School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE)
• Kenji Bomar, School of Physics
• Heyinn Rho, MSE
• Anmbus Iqbal, School of Mechanical Engineering
• Sara Thomas Mathew, School of Mathematics
• José Andrade, School of Aerospace Engineering
• Savannah Berry, School of Biological Sciences

School of Biological Sciences Professor Jeannette Yen served as primary faculty mentor.  Yen is also director of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design at Georgia Tech. MSE Professors Preet Singh and Zhong Lin Wang also served as official research mentors. In addition, the team had access to second and third lines of researchers, graduate student advisors, and investors.

The team acknowledges the assistance, guidance, and support of various units of Georgia Tech, including:

• CREATE-X at Georgia Tech  
• Georgia Tech Library
• Georgia Tech Communication Center (CommLab)
• Georgia Tech LMC CoLab
• Materials Innovation & Learning Laboratory (MILL)
• Scheller College of Business
• School of Aerospace Engineering
• School of Materials Science and Engineering
• School of Mechanical Engineering

Over 60 teams from 16 countries entered the Biomimicry Global Design Challenge, submitting nature-inspired inventions to reverse, mitigate, or adapt to climate change. Finalist teams – four from the U.S. and one each from the Netherlands, Taiwan, Israel, and China – receive cash prizes and an invitation to the 2018-19 Biomimicry Launchpad, an accelerator that supports the path to commercialization. They will compete for the $100,000 Ray C. Anderson Foundation Ray of Hope Prize®.

Read more about the winners and their innovations here.

Watch Team FullCircle describe its proposal here.

“I am so, so, so thrilled!” Yen says. “I can't wait to see what happens next.”

According to Jain, the team will coordinate the engineering project and assemble a prototype remotely, from different parts of the world – India, Japan, Pakistan, Spain, and the U.S. “We have a great challenge to be working from different time zones and schedules,” Jain says. “But we will do our very best and work even harder moving forward.”