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.”

A new study from the Georgia Institute of Technology provides new clues indicating that an exoplanet 500 light-years away is much like Earth.

Kepler-186f is the first identified Earth-sized planet outside the solar system orbiting a star in the habitable zone. This means it’s the proper distance from its host star for liquid water to pool on the surface.

The Georgia Tech study used simulations to analyze and identify the exoplanet’s spin axis dynamics. Those dynamics determine how much a planet tilts on its axis and how that tilt angle evolves over time. Axial tilt contributes to seasons and climate because it affects how sunlight strikes the planet’s surface.

The researchers suggest that Kepler-186f’s axial tilt is very stable, much like the Earth, making it likely that it has regular seasons and a stable climate. The Georgia Tech team thinks the same is true for Kepler-62f, a super-Earth-sized planet orbiting around a star about 1,200 light-years away from us.

How important is axial tilt for climate? Large variability in axial tilt could be a key reason why Mars transformed from a watery landscape billions of years ago to today’s barren desert.

“Mars is in the habitable zone in our solar system, but its axial tilt has been very unstable — varying from zero to 60 degrees,” said Georgia Tech Assistant Professor Gongjie Li, who led the study together with graduate student Yutong Shan from the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics. “That instability probably contributed to the decay of the Martian atmosphere and the evaporation of surface water.”

As a comparison, Earth’s axial tilt oscillates more mildly — between 22.1 and 24.5 degrees, going from one extreme to the other every 10,000 or so years.

The orientation angle of a planet’s orbit around its host star can be made to oscillate by gravitational interaction with other planets in the same system. If the orbit were to oscillate at the same speed as the precession of the planet’s spin axis (akin to the circular motion exhibited by the rotation axis of a top or gyroscope), the spin axis would also wobble back and forth, sometimes dramatically.

Mars and Earth interact strongly with each other, as well as with Mercury and Venus. As a result, by themselves, their spin axes would precess with the same rate as the orbital oscillation, which may cause large variations in their axial tilt. Fortunately, the moon keeps Earth’s variations in check. The moon increases our planet’s spin axis precession rate and makes it differ from the orbital oscillation rate. Mars, on the other hand, doesn’t have a large enough satellite to stabilize its axial tilt.

“It appears that both exoplanets are very different from Mars and the Earth because they have a weaker connection with their sibling planets,” said Li, a faculty member in the School of Physics. “We don’t know whether they possess moons, but our calculations show that even without satellites, the spin axes of Kepler-186f and 62f would have remained constant over tens of millions of years.”

Kepler-186f is less than 10 percent larger in radius than Earth, but its mass, composition and density remain a mystery. It orbits its host star every 130 days. According to NASA, the brightness of that star at high noon, while standing on 186f, would appear as bright as the sun just before sunset here on Earth. Kepler-186f is located in the constellation Cygnus as part of a five-planet star system.

Kepler-62f was the most Earth-like exoplanet until scientists noticed 186f in 2014. It’s about 40 percent larger than our planet and is likely a terrestrial or ocean-covered world. It’s in the constellation Lyra and is the outermost planet among five exoplanets orbiting a single star.

That’s not to say either exoplanet has water, let alone life. But both are relatively good candidates.

“Our study is among the first to investigate climate stability of exoplanets and adds to the growing understanding of these potentially habitable nearby worlds,” said Li.

“I don’t think we understand enough about the origin of life to rule out the possibility of their presence on planets with irregular seasons,“ added Shan. “Even on Earth, life is remarkably diverse and has shown incredible resilience in extraordinarily hostile environments.

“But a climatically stable planet might be a more comfortable place to start.”

The paper, “Obliquity Variations of Habitable Zone Planets Kepler 62-f and Kepler 186-f,” is published online in The Astronomical Journal.

“Movement is a defining feature of animals,” says Simon Sponberg. He is an assistant professor in the School of Physics and of Biological Sciences. How animals navigate their environments is the motivating question of his research program.

Studying animal movement makes for riveting experiments. For example, Sponberg used high-speed infrared cameras to observe, at low light conditions, moths tracking 3-D-printed flowers oscillating at various speeds. The set-up emulates the natural world of Manduca sexta, or hawk moth. Like a hummingbird, this moth feeds by extending its proboscis into flowers, which may be swaying with the wind – at dusk.   

Such dynamic behavior requires neural systems to organize and coordinate many muscles to control the moth’s wings all in fractions of a second. It creates extreme motor and sensory demands on the moths. How do they do it?

Using tethered moths tracking plastic flowers, Sponberg discovered that the moth slows down certain brain functions to improve its vision in dim light. The moths’ neural circuits are adapting exquisitely to the environment.

Other work shows how this small, but still sophisticated brains of insects collect and act upon multiple sensory signals at the same time. “Surprisingly,” Sponberg says, “some very simple physics-based models can describe a lot of how the moth sees and feels its world.”

These findings are tiny pieces of a huge puzzle. The full picture will likely take a long time to complete.

In three years, however, parts of it may emerge, thanks to a major research grant. The Esther A. & Joseph Klingenstein Fund and the Simons Foundation have awarded Sponberg a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship Award in Neurosciences for a period of three years. The grant will support research described in the proposal “Timing, Learning, and Coordination in a Comprehensive, Spike-Resolved Motor Program for Flight.”

The work is part of Sponberg’s broader research goal: to understand how stable and maneuverable movement emerges from the neural and muscular systems of animals in their natural environments. If we know the biophysics of these movements, we may know how the brain could activate and control muscle to modify movement.

“This award will catalyze a lot of work that would not be otherwise possible,” says Sponberg, who is also a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioengineering and Bioscience. “Specifically my research group has been developing a way to have unprecedentedly complete access to all the signals the animal’s brain is sending to its muscles, all during a challenging and highly dynamic behavior like flight.

“Instead of getting a small piece of the picture of what the brain is trying to do, we want to have complete read-and-write access to its neuromuscular signals to understand how it is executing agile maneuvers.

“The Klingenstein-Simons fellowship will enable us to take this project from is initial stages toward a deeper understanding of learning and coordination during locomotion – ideas that we think are common across all animals.”

The research is informed by myriad disciplines: computational neuroscience, electrophysiology, neuromechanics, and comparative biology. Sponberg group’s research tools -- small force and torque sensors, miniature insect-sized backpacks, virtual-reality worlds that the moth can control like a video game, and many tiny electrodes tapping into the animal’s brain and muscles –will yield high-dimensional datasets of all kinds of physiological signals.

From the vast amounts of data, Sponberg will extract neuromechanical principles. Ultimately, he hopes, the data will enable predictions about neural control and behavior.

More broadly, Sponberg’s research on movement bridges the gap between physics and organismal biology – the study of complex creatures. “The intersection of physics and organismal biology is a very exciting one right now,” Sponberg commented in 2017. “The assembly and interaction of multiple natural components manifests new behaviors and dynamics. The collection of these natural components manifests different patterns than the individual parts, and that’s fascinating.”

NMR – nuclear magnetic resonance – is a powerful tool to investigate matter. It is based on measuring the interaction between the nuclei of atoms in molecules in the presence of an external magnetic field; the higher the field strength, the more sensitive the instrument.

For example, high magnetic fields enable measurement of analytes at low concentrations, such as the compounds in the urine of blue crabs. High-field NMR has also allowed scientists to “see” the structure and dynamics of complex molecules, such as proteins, nucleic acids, and their complexes.

NMR is used widely in many fields, from biochemistry, biology, chemistry, and physics, to geology engineering, pharmaceutical sciences, medicine, food science, and many others.

NMR instruments, however, are a major investment. The most advanced units can cost up to up to millions of dollars per piece. Maintenance can cost tens of thousands of dollars a year. The investment in people is also significant. It can take years of training before a user can perform some of the most advanced techniques. 

For these and other reasons, Emory University, Georgia Institute of Technology, and Georgia State University have formed the Atlanta NMR Consortium. The aim is to maximize use of institutional NMR equipment by sharing facilities and expertise with consortium partners.

Through the consortium, students, faculty, and staff of a consortium member can use the NMR facilities of their partners. The cost to a consortium member is the same as what the facility charges its own constituents. 

“NMR continues to grow and develop because of technological advances,” says David Lynn, a chemistry professor at Emory University. To keep up, institutions need to keep buying new, improved instruments. Such a never-ending commitment is becoming untenable and redundant across Atlanta, Lynn says. Combining forces is the way to go.

Immediately, the consortium offers access to the most sensitive instruments now in Atlanta – the 700- and 800-MHz units at Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech invested more than $5 million to install the two high-field units, as well as special capabilities, in 2016.

Through the consortium, partners can gain access to Georgia State’s large variety of NMR probes. Solid-state capability, which is well established in Emory and advancing at Georgia Tech, will be available to partners.

Needless to say, the consortium offers alternatives when an instrument at a member institution malfunctions.

Beyond maximizing use of facilities, the consortium offers other potential benefits.

Building community

“The biggest benefit is community,” says Anant Paravastu. Paravastu is an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He is also a member of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB).

“Each of us specializes the hardware and software for our experiments,” Paravastu says. “As we go in different directions, we will benefit from a cohesive community of people who know how to use NMR for a wide range of problems.”

Paravastu previously worked at the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory, in Florida State University. That national facility sustains a large community of NMR researchers who help each other build expertise, he says. “We Atlanta researchers would benefit from a similar community, and not only for the scientific advantage.”

Both Lynn and Paravastu believe the consortium will help the partners jointly compete for federal grants for instrumentation. “A large user group will make us more competitive,” Lynn says.

“The federal government would much rather pay for an instrument that will benefit many scientists rather than just one research group in one university,” Paravastu says.     

Sharing expertise

“The most important goal for us is the sharing of our expertise,” says Markus Germann, a professor of chemistry at Georgia State. A particular expertise there is the study of nucleic acids. 

More broadly, Georgia State has wide experience in solution NMR. Researchers there have developed NMR applications to study complex structures of biological and clinical importance. Germann offers some examples:

• Structure and dynamics of damaged and unusual DNA
• Structure and dynamics of protein—DNA and protein—RNA complexes
• Structural integrity of protein mutants
• Small ligand-DNA and -RNA binding for gene control
• Protein-based contrast agents for magnetic resonance imaging 

“For me, there’s a direct benefit in learning from people at Georgia State about soluble-protein structure,” Paravastu says. He studies the structures of peptides; of particular interest are certain water-soluble states of beta-amyloid peptide, in Alzheimer’s disease. These forms, Paravastu says, have special toxicity to neurons.

Paravastu also studies proteins that self-assemble. “People at Emory have a different approach to studying self-assembling proteins,” he says. “We have a lot of incentive to strengthen our relationships with other groups.”

“Different labs do different things and have different expertise,” Lynn says. “The consortium lowers the activation energy to take advantage of partners’ expertise.”

Even before the consortium, Germann notes, his lab has worked with Georgia Tech’s Francesca Storici on studies of the impact of ribonucleotides on DNA structure and properties. Storici is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and a member of IBB.

Germann has also worked with Georgia Tech’s Nicholas Hud on the binding of small molecules to duplex DNA. Hud is a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a member of IBB.

“While collaboration between researchers in Atlanta Universities is not new,” Paravastu says, “the consortium will help facilitate ongoing and new collaborations.

Breaking barriers

What will now be tested is whether the students, faculty, and staff of the partners will take advantage of the consortium.

Travel from one institution to another is a barrier, Lynn says. “Are people going to travel, or will they find another way to solve the problem? How do you know that the expertise over there will really help you?” he asks.

“The intellectual barrier is very critical,” Lynn says. “We address that through the web portal.”

The website defines the capabilities, terms of use, training for access, and institutional fees, among others. Eventually, Lynn says, it will be a place to share papers from the consortium partners.

“Like many things in life, the consortium is about breaking barriers,” Paravastu says. It’s about students meeting and working with students and professors outside their home institutions.

Already some partners share a graduate-level NMR course. For the long-term, Paravastu suggests, the partners could work together on training users to harmonize best practices and ease the certification to gain access to facilities.

“We can think of students being trained by the consortium rather than just by Georgia Tech, or Emory, or Georgia State,” Paravastu says. “By teaming up, we can create things that are bigger than the sum of the parts.”

The National Science Foundation (NSF) has awarded a Research Training Groups (RTG) grant to the Georgia Tech Geometry and Topology (GTGT) group. GTGT will use the $2.1 million grant over five years to train undergraduates, graduate students, and postdoctoral fellows. The GTGT project supports NSF’s long-range goal to increase the number of U.S. citizens, nationals, and permanent residents pursuing careers in mathematics.

School of Mathematics faculty members Igor Belegradek, John Etnyre, Stavros Garoufalidis, Mohammad Ghomi, Jennifer Hom, Thang Le, Dan Margalit, and Kirsten Wickelgren make up GTGT and are co-principal investigators of the grant.

Why Study Topology and Geometry
Etnyre answers this question. He explains:

“Topology is the study of spaces. They can be the space we live in or configurations of mechanical systems. Mathematicians also consider spaces of solutions to algebraic equations and partial differential equations, as well as even more abstract space.

“More specifically topology is the study of spaces where some notion of continuity makes sense. What are these spaces? How can we distinguish one space from another? What interesting properties do specific spaces have? These are the basics questions in topology, whose language pervades much of mathematics, science, and engineering.

“Geometry is, loosely speaking, the study of some kind of structure on a space. Riemannian geometry involves spaces on which you can measure lengths of vectors and the angles in between. Symplectic geometry allows one to study dynamical systems akin to classical mechanics on a space.

“Topology and geometry underlie a great deal of science and engineering. Whether trying to understand general relativity and the structure of the universe, design robust sensor networks, unravel DNA recombination, develop string theory, or countless other endeavors, the underlying language and ideas are likely to be that of geometry and topology.”

“Topology and geometry underlie a great deal of science and engineering. Whether trying to understand general relativity and the structure of the universe, design robust sensor networks, unravel DNA recombination, develop string theory, or countless other endeavors, the underlying language and ideas are likely to be that of geometry and topology.”

Expected Outcomes 
Over its five-year run, the grant will enable the training of 60 undergraduate students, 22 graduate students, and 14 postdoctoral fellows. Supplementary funding from the College of Sciences will ensure three years of support for all postdoctoral fellows.

Etnyre says GTGT will leverage its access to Georgia Tech’s engineering programs to spark collaborations between engineers and mathematicians. Similarly, GTGT will use its proximity to institutions serving groups underrepresented in mathematics to help increase the representation of minorities and women in advanced mathematics.

Ultimately, Etnyre says, “we aim to develop students and postdoctoral fellows who are well-rounded scholars, accomplished teachers, and valuable members of the mathematics community.”

Areas of Expertise
The GTGT group is strong in various fields:

• Algebraic Topology: Kirsten Wickelgren
• Contact and Symplectic Topology: John Etnyre
• Geometric Group Theory: Igor Belegradek and Dan Margalit
• Global Riemannian and Differential Geometry: Igor Belegradek, John Etnyre, and Mohammad Ghomi
• Heegard-Floer Theory: John Etnyre and Jennifer Hom
• Low-Dimensional Topology: John Etnyre, Stavros Garoufalidis, Jennifer Hom, Thang Le, and Dan Margalit
• Quantum Topology: Stavros Garoufalidis and Thang Le
• Riemannian Geometry of Submaniforlds: Mohammad Ghomi

All these areas would benefit from the grant.

“We aim to develop students and postdoctoral fellows who are well-rounded scholars, accomplished teachers, and valuable members of the mathematics community.”

Grant-Enabled Activities
The grant enables the GTGT group to embark on several major activities:

• Expand the group by supporting graduate and postdoctoral fellowships
• Enhance educational opportunities for all students through new courses, expanded seminars and REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) opportunities, and a direct-reading program for undergraduates
• Firmly establish the annual Georgia Tech Topology Conference and the biennial Topology Students Workshop, continue the Southeastern Undergraduate Mathematics Workshop, and initiate the Georgia Tech Topology Summer School
• Strengthen professional development components of graduate and postdoctoral training
• Increase interaction with colleges and universities serving groups that are underrepresented in mathematics and expand outreach to precollege students
• Create a website to serve as repository of resources

The College of Sciences has named Christopher Stanzione to receive the 2018 Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching. His selection is based on his outstanding contributions to undergraduate education and research, as instructor, mentor, researcher, and advocate.

The award recognizes exemplary teaching by junior faculty members in foundational classes during the current or previous academic year.  It is made possible by an endowment created through the generosity of College of Sciences alumnus Charles J. Crawford (B.S. in Applied Mathematics 1971) in recognition of the contributions and accomplishments of the late Georgia Tech School of Mathematics Professor Eric. R. Immel.

“The effective teaching of foundational courses is critical to Georgia Tech’s mission to educate and train the next generation of scientists, mathematicians, and engineers,” says College of Sciences Dean Paul M. Goldbart. “We are delighted to recognize Chris, and thank him, for the tremendous difference he makes, including via his teaching of foundational psychology.”

Stanzione is a lecturer in the School of Psychology. He teaches Introductory Psychology, Human Development, and Personality Theory. He is remarkable in the classroom with students, a role model for other instructors, and selfless in meeting service responsibilities. He goes above and beyond what he signed up for at Georgia Tech – which is to teach. On his own initiative, he mentors students, conducts research, and leads outreach efforts for the School of Psychology.

“This recognition is a motivator and reminder that my work as an educator is never complete.”

Colleagues say Stanzione’s unparalleled passion for teaching manifests in instructor effectiveness. His ratings for each of his classes, which usually have more than 200 students, are never lower than 4.7 out of 5.0.

Many students say their interest in majoring in psychology was sparked when they took on of Stanzione’s introductory courses. This ability to inspire students and expand their horizons is well known in the School of Psychology. It has earned Stanzione the nickname “major magnet.”

Stanzione conducts research in language development in deaf and hard-of-hearing children. He often offers research opportunities to undergraduates. Because of his research, he was invited to be the keynote speaker at the 2016 meeting of the Georgia Psychological Society.

A passionate believer in Georgia Tech’s psychology program, Stanzione often undertakes outreach activities, including giving presentations about the program at events for accepted students, families, and high school students.

The Immel award is the second for Stanzione in 2018. In April, he received Georgia Tech’s 2018 CTL Undergraduate Educator Award, which recognizes the outstanding contributions of non-tenure-track faculty to the education of Georgia Tech undergraduate students.

“This recognition is a motivator and reminder that my work as an educator is never complete,” Stanzione says. “There is always a new method to deliver content and stronger, more authentic ways to connect with students. If I do not evolve, my students might not either. That said, teaching is a two-way street: it requires not only the right teacher, but also the right student.”

Galina Livshyts, an assistant professor in the School of Mathematics, has received one of the highly competitive early-career grants from the National Science Foundation Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) program.

NSF CAREER grants provide five years of funding to junior faculty. The award is a strong signal of recipients’ potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their organization.

“My research is about geometry in two, three, and higher dimensions,” Livshyts says. The NSF CAREER grant enables her to explore the geometry of convex bodies in high dimensions.

A convex body is a geometric body having the property that any segment joining two of its points is entirely contained within it. Livshyts' research proposal aims to answer the following questions:

• What is the largest hyperplane section of a unit cube?
• How many translates of a slightly smaller copy of a convex body suffice to cover it?
• Can two different polygons have the same collection of normals and the same areas of triangles spanned by their sides?
• How large are the perimeters of convex sets with respect to isotropic log-concave measures?

 “A lot of the geometric properties of convex bodies have important applications,” Livshyts says.

Suppose we have a million 10-inch-diameter ball-shaped items, and we need to pack them in an optimal way. What shape should we choose for the package? Some other questions in which the theory of convex bodies is used are directly related to the speed of certain algorithms.

NSF CAREER awards are unique in also requiring grant proposals to include an education component. Supporting junior researchers is the focus of Livshyts’ education component. During the term of the award, she will undertake several educational activities, including a research workshop for junior mathematicians, seminars for women in mathematics at all levels, and workshops for K-12 mathematics teachers.

“It is very important for a junior mathematician to be able to find just one other direction for their research, to create just one collaboration aside from their doctoral and postdoctoral work,” Livshyts says. She hopes her proposed five-day research workshop will give junior mathematicians – those in their final two years of their Ph.D. and those within five years after completing their Ph.D. – “an opportunity to expand their collaboration network and the circle of their interests early in their career.” 

Livshysts has been organizing regular seminars for Women in Mathematics in Northern Georgia. In this activity she is joined by Yulia Babenko, an associate professor of mathematics at Kennesaw State University.

“Having a network of female researchers in Atlanta will bring more female participants to mathematics conferences,” Livshyts says. Mathematicians of all levels are invited to participate, and talks are intended for a general audience. “That will help junior participants expand their interests, as well as practice giving talks to a broad audience,” Livshyts says.

In spring 2018, Livshyts facilitated workshops at the Atlanta Intown Teachers’ Math Circles. Intended for K-12 mathematics teachers, the workshops will focus on nonstandard mathematics problems to increase participants’ mathematical knowledge and encourage creativity.

Livshyts is one of several School of Mathematics faculty members currently enjoying NSF CAREER grants.

“This award makes a great difference in my career,” Livshysts says. “It will allow me to hire a postdoc, as well as organize a series of workshops for junior researchers, aimed to help others early in their career.”

The College of Sciences has selected Tamara Bogdanovic to receive the 2018 Leddy Family Faculty Fellowship. The award recognizes her outstanding research leadership and educational innovation in high-energy astrophysics.

The two-year fellowship goes to a faculty member at the associate professor level. The award recognizes proven accomplishments in research and teaching. It is made possible by a generous gift to the College of Sciences by alumnus Jeffrey A. Leddy (B.S. in Physics 1978) and his wife, Pam. 

Bogdanovic is the second Leddy Family Faculty Fellow. In 2016, Dan Margalit, professor in the School of Mathematics, was named the inaugural recipient of the award.

“I am truly honored to have been selected for the 2018 Leddy Family Faculty Fellowship,” Bogdanovic says. “This award is unexpected but very much appreciated, and I am delighted to have the opportunity to follow in the footsteps of an outstanding researcher, educator, and a colleague, Dan Margalit. I am very grateful to the Leddy family for their generous gift and commitment to research and teaching at Georgia Tech.”

“Tamara is clearly what one envisions of an exceptional faculty member. She is a person with a remarkable creativity in research, passion for teaching, and serious commitment to increasing the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in science.”

Bogdanovic focused her early efforts on likely electromagnetic and gravitational wave signatures from the merger of supermassive black hole binaries. No such event has been observed so far. Her work paves the way toward discovery of such a titanic cosmic cataclysm.

Meanwhile, Bogdanovic has facilitated the search for paired supermassive black holes by identifying specific spectroscopic signatures as efficient criteria. Her approach is used by many other researchers to identify from archival data sets candidates for further monitoring and investigation.

Another phenomenon of interest is tidal disruptions of stars by black holes. When a star is close enough to a supermassive black hole, tidal forces from the black hole disrupt the star. A flash of radiation accompanies the disruption. Recent observations have confirmed Bogdanovic’s theoretical predictions about the characteristic spectral signatures of these events.

As an educator, Bogdanovic is passionate about innovation in teaching. She was a member of the task force that reviewed the introductory physics curriculum. In 2017, she organized a colloquium series on physics education, which helped define the future of introductory physics courses at Georgia Tech. She is proactive in training astrophysics graduate students. The course she developed on high-energy astrophysics is the core foundation for students working with faculty in the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics. 

“Tamara is clearly what one envisions of an exceptional faculty member,” says School of Physics Chair and Professor Pablo Laguna. “She is a person with a remarkable creativity in research, passion for teaching, and serious commitment to increasing the participation of women and underrepresented minorities in science.”

“I couldn’t agree more,” says College of Sciences Dean and Sutherland Chair Paul M. Goldbart. “I congratulate Tamara on her selection as the second Leddy Family Faculty Fellow. And I thank the Leddy family for its generous support of the College of Sciences.” 

Bogdanovic was a 2013 Sloan Research Fellow, a 2016 Cottrell Scholar, and a 2016 Cullen-Peck Fellow.

An international team of scientists, including two researchers from Georgia Tech, has found the first evidence of a source of high-energy cosmic neutrinos, ghostly subatomic particles that can travel unhindered for billions of light years from the most extreme environments in the universe to Earth.

The observations, made by the IceCube Neutrino Observatory at the Amundsen–Scott South Pole Station and in coordination with telescopes around the globe and in Earth’s orbit, help resolve a more than a century-old riddle about what sends subatomic particles such as neutrinos and cosmic rays speeding through the universe.

Since they were first detected over one hundred years ago, cosmic rays—highly energetic particles that continuously rain down on Earth from space—have posed an enduring mystery: What creates and launches these particles across such vast distances? Where do they come from? 

Because cosmic rays are charged particles, their paths cannot be traced directly back to their sources due to the magnetic fields that fill space and warp their trajectories. But the powerful cosmic accelerators that produce them will also produce neutrinos. Neutrinos are uncharged particles, unaffected by even the most powerful magnetic field. Because they rarely interact with matter and have almost no mass—hence their sobriquet “ghost particle”—neutrinos travel nearly undisturbed from their accelerators, giving scientists an almost direct pointer to their source. 

Two papers published July 13 in the journal Science have for the first time provided evidence for a known blazar as a source of high-energy neutrinos detected by the National Science Foundation-supported IceCube observatory. This blazar, designated by astronomers as TXS 0506+056, was first singled out following a neutrino alert sent by IceCube on September 22, 2017. 

“The evidence for the observation of the first known source of high-energy neutrinos and cosmic rays is compelling,” said Francis Halzen, a University of Wisconsin–Madison professor of physics and principal investigator for the IceCube Neutrino Observatory. 

“The era of multi-messenger astrophysics is here. Each messenger gives us a more complete understanding of the universe and important new insights into the most powerful objects and events in the sky,” said NSF Director France Córdova. “Such breakthroughs are only possible through a long-term commitment to fundamental research and investment in superb research facilities.”

A blazar is a galaxy with a super-massive, rapidly spinning black hole at its core. A signature feature of blazars is that twin jets of light and elementary particles, one of which is pointing to Earth, are emitted from the poles along the axis of the black hole’s rotation. This blazar is situated in the night sky just off the left shoulder of the constellation Orion and is about four billion light years from Earth. 

“Scientifically, this is very good news,” said Ignacio Taboada, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Physics and member of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics also at Georgia Tech. As leader of the “Transients Science Working Group” within IceCube, he oversaw all the studies that inquired on the correlation TXS 0506+056’s gamma ray flare and the neutrino alert of September 22, 2017. “For years, we’ve had a long list of potential sources for high-energy neutrinos. Now we have a specific source – blazars – that we can look at very carefully.” 

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The National Science Foundation (NSF) – in consultation with the Department of Education, NASA, and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) – has appointed Lizanne DeStefano as one of 18 inaugural members of its STEM Education Advisory Panel.

DeStefano is the executive director of the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC). She is also an associate dean in the College of Sciences and a professor in the School of Psychology at  Georgia Institute of Technology.

DeStefano’s research interests include the evaluation and sustainability of innovative science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) education programs and initiatives; including those serving special populations, such as students with disabilities or those at-risk for academic failure. She contributes to efforts that improve the quality of teaching and the student experience, such as the Georgia Tech Commission on Creating the Next in Education. DeStefano is a former special education teacher and a clinical and school psychologist.

“I am honored to serve on the inaugural panel and look forward to sharing Georgia Tech’s STEM education innovation and learning from other across the country,” DeStefano said.

STEM Education Advisory Panel

NSF’s STEM Education Advisory Panel was created to encourage U.S. scientific and technological innovations in education. Under the American Innovation and Competitiveness Act, Congress authorized the creation of the panel to advise a group of federal organizations called the Committee on Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics Education (CoSTEM).

In particular, Congress authorized the panel to help identify opportunities to update the 2013-2018 Federal STEM Education 5-Year Strategic Plan, which CoSTEM developed to improve the efficiency, coordination, and impact of federally supported STEM education investments.

In addition, the panel will assess CoSTEM’s progress in carrying out responsibilities mandated by the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act.

“This new panel has an opportunity to bring fresh eyes and novel approaches to CoSTEM’s next five-year strategic plan, which will help enhance the nation’s entire STEM ecosystem,” said NSF Director France Córdova, who co-chairs CoSTEM. “NSF continues to generate benefits for society through STEM research. To fulfill that mission, we and our federal partners need to make strategic investments to create new generations of discoverers.”

“This advisory panel is another strong step taken by this administration to advance educational options in the STEM fields,” said Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos, a CoSTEM member. “I look forward to working with this exceptional new group of STEM leaders to ensure we are constantly rethinking what education means for America’s students.”

“STEM is vital for NOAA to protect lives and property, enhance the economy, and conserve natural resources,” said NOAA acting undersecretary of commerce for oceans and atmosphere, retired Navy Rear Adm. Tim Gallaudet. “As a member of CoSTEM, I look forward to working with this distinguished panel and hearing their recommendations that will help advance these efforts.

“NASA is proud of the many ways that its missions inspire the next generation of STEM leaders. Across the spectrum of our work, students and educators have many opportunities to learn from and engage with our work,” said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine, who co-chairs CoSTEM. “We’re going back to the moon and on to Mars, and we’re going to keep doing the amazing things that will help fill the pipeline of new explorers and create a bright future.”

Inaugural Panel Members

Gabriela Gonzalez, Greater Americas Region deputy director of Intel Corporation, will chair the new panel. David Evans, executive director of the National Science Teachers Association, will serve as vice chair.

The panel is composed of individuals from nonprofit, business, academic and informal education organizations. The members are:

• Vince Bertram, president, and CEO, Project Lead the Way, Inc.
• Douglas Clements, Kennedy Endowed Chair in Early Childhood Learning, executive director of the Marsico Institute for Early Learning and Literacy, and professor, University of Denver
• Lizanne DeStefano, executive director, Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC), Georgia Institute of Technology
• Arthur Eisenkraft, distinguished professor of science education and director of the Center of Science and Math in Context (COSMIC), the University of Massachusetts, Boston
• David Evans, executive director, National Science Teachers Association
• Gabriela Gonzalez, Greater Americas Region deputy director, Intel Corporation
• Jacqueline Huntoon, provost and vice president for Academic Affairs, Michigan Technological University
• Aimee Kennedy, senior vice president for education, Battelle
• Laurie Leshin, president, Worcester Polytechnic Institute
• Robert Mathieu, director, Wisconsin Center for Education Research, University of Wisconsin-Madison
• Ray Mellado, chairman of the board and founder, Great Minds in STEM
• Ioannis (Yannis) Miaoulis, president, and director, Museum of Science, Boston
• K. Renae Pullen, K-6 science curriculum instructional specialist, Caddo Parish Public Schools
• Larry Robinson, president, Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University (FAMU), and director of NOAA’s Center for Coastal and Marine Ecosystems at FAMU
• Kimberly Scott, professor of Women and Gender Studies, Arizona State University
• Robert Semper, associate executive director, Exploratorium
• William (Yslas) Velez, emeritus professor of Mathematics, The University of Arizona
• Bruce Wellman, Chemistry, Engineering, and Robotics teacher, Olathe Northwest High School