Experts in the News

To request a media interview, please reach out to School of Physics experts using our faculty directory, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts and research areas across the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech is also available to journalists upon request.

  • One of Evolution’s Biggest Moments Was Recreated in a Year

    The Atlantic's Pulitzer Prize-winning staff writer Ed Yong writes about the unique snowflake yeast experiment conducted by Georgia Tech researchers that shows how multicellular organisms might have evolved from single-celled ancestors. The study, published recently in Nature, provided new insight into how "that change from micro to macro, from one cell to many, was one of the most pivotal evolutionary journeys in Earth’s history." William Ratcliff, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences program led the research team. Other researchers include Ozan Bozdag, research scientist, School of Biological Sciences; Seyed Alireza Zamani Dahaj, computational biologist, Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, and the School of Physics; Thomas C. Day, Ph.D. candidate, School of Physics, and Peter Yunker, associate professor, School of Physics.  Anthony J. Burnetti, research scientist; Penelope Kahn, research technician; Dung T. Lac, research technician; Kai Tong, postdoctoral scholar; and Peter Conlin, postdoctoral scholar, are all from the School of Biological Sciences. ((Atlantic subscription required; read more about the research here.)

    The Atlantic , May 12, 2023

  • NASA Selects Five Teams to Study Lunar Science and Sample Analysis

    A research team from Georgia Tech is one of five chosen by NASA to collaborate on lunar science and lunar sample analysis research to support future exploration of the Moon as part of the agency’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI). SSERVI will support each of the new teams for five years at about $1.5 million per year, jointly funded by NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate. The Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER) is led by Thomas Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics, The team will characterize the lunar environment and volatile inventories required for near-term sustained human exploration of the Moon. Orlando is principal investigator for another lunar-related research team, Radiation Effects on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces (REVEALS), which is also a part of SSERVI. (Read more about this story here. This story was also covered at Newswise and SpaceRef.com)

    NASA, May 11, 2023

  • An Experiment Repeated 600 Times Finds Hints to Evolution’s Secrets

    Precisely how multicellular organisms evolved from single-celled ancestors remains poorly understood. The transition happened hundreds of millions of years ago, and early multicellular species are largely lost to extinction. To investigate how multicellular life evolves from scratch, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology decided to take evolution into their own hands. Led by William Ratcliff, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and director of the Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, a team of researchers has initiated the first long-term evolution experiment aimed at evolving new kinds of multicellular organisms from single-celled ancestors in the lab. In this case, the cells are snowflake yeast, and they grew so large they could be seen with the naked eye. Other researchers include Ozan Bozdag, research scientist, School of Biological Sciences; Seyed Alireza Zamani Dahaj, computational biologist, Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, and the School of Physics; Thomas C. Day, Ph.D. candidate, School of Physics, and Peter Yunker, associate professor, School of Physics.  Anthony J. Burnetti, research scientist; Penelope Kahn, research technician; Dung T. Lac, research technician; Kai Tong, postdoctoral scholar; and Peter Conlin, postdoctoral scholar, are all from the School of Biological Sciences. (This story was also covered at NPR, Interesting Engineering, New Atlas, Newswise, and Tech Explorist. Read more about the research here.)

    The New York Times , May 10, 2023

  • To build a better crawly robot, add legs—lots of legs

    When traveling on rough and unpredictable roads, the more legs the better — at least for robots. Balancing on two legs is somewhat hard; on four legs, it’s slightly easier. But what if you had many many legs, like a centipede? Researchers at Georgia Institute of Technology have found that by giving a robot multiple, connected legs, it allows the machine to easily clamber over landscapes with cracks, hills, and uneven surfaces without the need for extensive sensor systems. Their results are published in a study this week in the journal Science. The researchers from the School of Physics include Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor, and Baxi Chong, postdoctoral scholar and a Ph.D. graduate student in the Quantitative Biosciences program. Two scientists from the School of Mathematics involved in the study are Grigoriy Blekherman, professor, and Daniel Irvine, postdoctoral scholar. And three members of Goldman's Complex Rheology and Biomechanics (CRAB) Lab are study co-authors: Ph.D. graduate students Juntao He and Tianyu Wang, and Daniel Soto, postgraduate research assistant. (This story is also covered in CBC Radio, Tech Briefs, New Atlas, the BBC, and ScienceDaily.)

    Popular Science , May 8, 2023

  • Top 6 Science Facts for Star Wars Day

    On May the Fourth, a.k.a. Star Wars Day, Discover took a look at the science behind Georgia Lucas' pop culture phenomenon. It cited a previous Georgia Tech story that quizzed faculty about various aspects of the movie franchise, including A. Nepomuk Otte, professor in the School of Physics, and his argument that The Force ignores a central pillar of physics by acting in a one-sided manner, as when Yoda raised Luke's X-wing fighter from the Dagobah swamp. “Didn't we learn from physics classes about Newton’s third law?” Otte said in the story. “For every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction. So why doesn't the little fella get squished like a mosquito?” 

    Discover , May 4, 2023

  • Mudskippers could be key to understanding evolution of blinking

    Blinking is crucial for the eye. It's how animals clean their eyes, protect them, and even communicate. But how and why did blinking originate? Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Seton Hill University, and Pennsylvania State University studied the mudskipper, an amphibious fish that spends most of its day on land, to better understand why blinking is a fundamental behavior for life on land. By comparing the anatomy and behavior of mudskippers to the fossil record of early tetrapods, the researchers argue that blinking emerged in both groups as an adaptation to life on land. One  of the researchers, Brett Aiello, an assistant professor of biology at Seton Hill University, is a former postdoctoral fellow in the Agile Systems Lab at Georgia Tech. Saad Bhamla, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is a co-author of the study.  (This story is also covered in Earth.com, SciTechDaily and the Latrobe Bulletin.) 

    ScienceDaily , Apr 23, 2023