The Institute for Data Engineering and Science presents the 2019 IDEaS Distinguished Lecture on Wednesday, November 6. Peter S. Dodds, the Flint Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Vermont, will deliver “The Science of Stories: Measuring and Exploring the Ecology of Human Stories with Lexical Instruments.” The event will be held in the Marcus Nanotechnology Building, Rooms 1116-1118, from 3:00-4:00 p.m.
Abstract
I will survey our efforts at the Computational Story Lab to measure and study a wide array of social and cultural phenomena using “lexical meters” — online, interactive instruments that use social media and other texts to quantify population dynamics of human behavior. These include happiness, public health, obesity rates, and depression. I will explain how lexical meters work and how we have used them to uncover natural language encodings of positivity biases across cultures, universal emotional arcs of stories, links between social media posts and health, measures of fame and ultra-fame, and time compression for news. I will offer some thoughts on how fully developing a post-disciplinary, collaborative science of human stories is vital in our efforts to understand the evolution, stability, and fracturing of social systems.
Bio
Peter S. Dodds is the Flint Professor of Mathematics and Statistics at the University of Vermont. His research focuses on system-level big data problems in many areas, including language and stories, sociotechnical systems, contagion, and ecology. He is the director of UVM’s Complex Systems Center, co-director of UVM’s Computational Story Lab, and a visiting faculty fellow at the Vermont Advanced Computing Core. Dodds is the recipient of an NSF Career Award and has received funding from NSF, NASA, ONR, and the MITRE Corporation, among others.
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On Monday, Nov. 11, 2019, the planet Mercury will pass across the disk of the sun. The rare celestial event can be viewed with the eye-safe telescopes of the Georgia Tech Observatory. This planetary transit is rare, occurring only around 13 times each century. “This will be the last such event visible from Georgia Tech until 2049,” says James Sowell, director of the Georgia Tech Observatory.
The transit begins at 7:36 AM and ends at 1:04 PM. The observatory will have eye-safe telescopes available during the entirety of the transit.
Contact jim.sowell@physics.gatech.edu if you have questions.
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The School of Physics and the Society of Physics Students will host a public debate between faculty from the College of Science and the College of Computing to answer this question. This event is free and open to the all. There will be time at the conclusion of the debate for audience members to direct questions towards the faculty panel.
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Since 2015, Georgia Tech's Three Minute Thesis (3MT®) competition has helped graduate students hone their communication skills by challenging them to share their research in three minutes in a way anyone could understand.
From the College of Sciences, physics Ph.D. student Lin Xin and chemistry/biochemistry Ph.D. student Suttipong "Jay" Suttapitugsakul are finalists in the 2019 Georgia Tech 3 Minute Thesis Competition.
Xin's presentation is titled "Beat the Quantum Limit." His research is about doing precise measurements beyond the most precise quantum limit by using cold atoms. His principal investigator is School of Physics Professor Michael Chapman.
Suttapitugsakul's presentation is titled "Not Just a Sugar Coating! Understanding the Language of Cells through Their Sweet Surface." He studies the roles and functions of cell-surface glycoproteins by integrating mass-spectrometry based proteomics with chemical and enzymatic reactions. The goal is to better understand how cell type, cell state, and extracellular environment affects cell-surface glycoproteins in order to discover new biomarkers and drug targets. His principal investigator is Ronghu Wu, an associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
For more information about 3MT, visit grad.gatech.edu/3MT.
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Professor De Heer will be speaking on the topic of The Future is Paved in Epigraphene. The talk will discuss how Graphene has been widely advertised as the new wonder material that can be produced by exfoliating graphite, using Scotch tape, down to a sheet that is one atom thick. Because it is a 2-dimensional material, it was expected to revolutionize electronics, but 15 years of exfoliated graphene research has failed to even remotely meet this challenge. Starting in 2000, the Georgia Tech epigraphene electronics group has taken a different approach to graphene-based nanoelectronics, by growing it on single crystals of silicon carbide, using a method that was known for more than 50 years. This form of graphene, called epigraphene, has not only shown a wide variety of important new properties, it also is intrinsically compatible with industrial nanoelectronics fabrication methods. In this talk I will discuss the historical development of epigraphene starting in the 1880’s and working up to the present day. I will focus on those aspects that sets graphene apart from other electronic materials as well as our recent discoveries of new ballistic edge states and how their quantum mechanical properties might be utilized in a new generation of electronics that utilizes electronic wave interference, like in optics.
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The ExplOrigins group is hosting the 3rd annual Exploration and Origins Colloquium on January 27th and 28th, in another example of Georgia Tech’s thriving collaboration between the astrobiology and space science communities.The program kicks off with a poster session on Monday, Jan. 27, and continues with plenary lectures, contributed talks, and a networking session on Tuesday, Jan. 28.
The interdisciplinary colloquium will highlight space exploration science, as well as biological, geological, and astronomical origins research in the Georgia Institute of Technology and neighboring universities. The colloquium aims to forge relationships among diverse individuals, encourage collaboration and interdisciplinary understanding, and kick-start fundable projects requiring the skills and expertise of multilab teams.
The colloquium will begin with a poster session on the evening of the 27th where attendees will show off their latest work in an environment conducive to interdisciplinary collaboration. Activities on the 28th include a day-long seminar with twelve contributed talks, and highlighted keynote addresses by: Mariel Borowitz of Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and Christopher Carr of MIT and Massachusetts General Hospital. This colloquium takes place in the context of a burgeoning astrobiology community at Georgia Tech, with the Institute having recently hosted the Astrobiology Graduate Conference in 2018 and announced the host of Astrobiology Science Conference in 2021.
Register here.
Check here for schedule.
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CANCELLED: The College of Sciences regrets to announce that William Daniel Phillips is unable to host this Frontiers in Science lecture. We look forward to welcoming Phillips to Georgia Tech for a rescheduled lecture this fall.
At the beginning of the 20th century, Einstein changed how we think about time. Now, early in the 21st century, the measurement of time is being revolutionized by the ability to cool a gas of atoms to temperatures millions of times lower than any naturally occurring temperature in the universe.
Atomic clocks, the best timekeepers ever made, are one of the scientific and technological wonders of modern life. Such super-accurate clocks are essential to industry, commerce, and science; they are the heart of the global positioning system (GPS), which guides cars, airplanes, and hikers to their destinations.
Today, the best primary atomic clocks use ultracold atoms, achieve accuracies of about one second in 300 million years, and are getting better all the time. At the same time, a new generation of atomic clocks is leading us to re-define what we mean by time.
Super-cold atoms, with temperatures that can be below a billionth of a degree above absolute zero, use and allow tests of some of Einstein's strangest predictions.
This public lecture will be a lively, multimedia presentation, including exciting experimental demonstrations and down-to-earth explanations about some of today's hottest (and coolest) science.
About the Speaker
William Daniel Phillips is an American physicist who shared the 1997 physics prize with Steven Chu (US) and Claude Cohen-Tannoudji (France). All three developed methods of cooling and trapping atoms using lasers.
Phillips is a physicist in the National Institute of Standards and Technology.
In addition to laser cooling and trapping of neutral atoms, Phillips also researches atomic-gas Bose-Einstein condensates and quantum information with single-atom qubits.
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The 2020 WST Distinguished Lecture with Abigail Stewart, orginally scheduled for April 9, has been postponed. Please visit cos.gatech.edu for further updates.
RSVP: If you'd like to attend this free event, please email: mary.fox@gatech.edu
Please join the College of Sciences and the Center for the Study of Women, Science, and Technology for the 2020 WST Distinguished Lecture with Professor Abigail Stewart, who will speak on "Creating an Inclusive Culture: Recruiting and Retaining the Faculty We Need."
Everyone is welcome to attend and enjoy a reception following the lecture!
About Abigail J. Stewart
Dr. Abigail J. Stewart is the Sandra Schwartz Tangri Distinguished University Professor of Psychology and Women's Studies at the University of Michigan. She served as director of the University of Michigan ADVANCE Program, 2001-2016, before which she held a number of other administrative positions. She holds degrees from Wesleyan University, London School of Economics, and Harvard University. Her current research focuses on academic and life experiences related to race, class and gender, and on political attitudes and activision.
Dr. Stewart's recent book, with Virginia Valian, is called An Inclusive Academy: Achieving Diversity and Excellence (MIT Press, 2018):
How colleges and universities can live up to their ideals of diversity, and why inclusivity and excellence go hand in hand.
Most colleges and universities embrace the ideals of diversity and inclusion, but many fall short, especially in the hiring, retention, and advancement of faculty who would more fully represent our diverse world—in particular women and people of color. In this book, Abigail Stewart and Virginia Valian argue that diversity and excellence go hand in hand and provide guidance for achieving both.
Stewart and Valian, themselves senior academics, support their argument with comprehensive data from a range of disciplines. They show why merit is often overlooked; they offer statistics and examples of individual experiences of exclusion, such as being left out of crucial meetings; and they outline institutional practices that keep exclusion invisible, including reliance on proxies for excellence, such as prestige, that disadvantage outstanding candidates who are not members of the white male majority.
Perhaps most important, Stewart and Valian provide practical advice for overcoming obstacles to inclusion. This advice is based on their experiences at their own universities, their consultations with faculty and administrators at many other institutions, and data on institutional change. Stewart and Valian offer recommendations for changing structures and practices so that people become successful in ways that benefit everyone. They describe better ways of searching for job candidates; evaluating candidates for hiring, tenure, and promotion; helping faculty succeed; and broadening rewards and recognition.
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In the wake of the Covid-19 outbreak, universities have quickly shifted their classes online. But opening up research labs, and ongoing scientific experiments to remote possibilities is a much harder task. As colleges potentially reopen, how do labs and research resources factor in? And how do key funding sources factor into that planning? Hear from College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair Susan Lozier, along with experts from NIH and University of Michigan. Join the virtual seminar at 2 p.m. EDT on July 16.
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Without leaving the comfort of your home, on October 22 you can enjoy an evening under the stars, guided by the Georgia Tech Observatory. This is the Observatory's third online public night, preceded by many years of in-person public nights on the roof of Howey Physics Building. Tune in here at 8 PM ET to watch the live stream.
Viewers will be treated to a live tour of the Moon, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mars by Observatory Director James Sowell, as shown through the lense of a Georgia Tech telescope to a live stream on YouTube. The stream is dependent on clear weather to happen.
Read more about the Observatory's inaugural online public night, which took place on May 7, and save the YouTube channel to your calendar for the October 22 online public night.
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