Eric Sembrat's Test Bonanza

2018 Karlovitz Lecture

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) estimates that 48 million cases of foodborne illness occur annually in the U.S., with most being of microbial origin.

Michael Doyle has spent his career developing better ways to detect and control the harmful microbes associated with foods.

He will address many of the challenges of making food safe, beginning at the farm to consumption at the table.

About the Speaker
Michael P. Doyle is Regents Professor of Microbiology and Director of the Center for Food Safety at the Universtiy of Georgia. His research has focused on food safety and security. He has worked closely with the food industry, government agencies, and consumer groups on issues related to the microbiological safety of food.

Doyle has served on the food safety committees of many scientific organizations and as scientific advisor to many organizations, including the CDC, Environmental Protection Agency, Food and Drug Administration, U.S. Department of Agriculture, U.S. Department of Defense, and the World Health Organization.

He is a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, the International Association for Food Protection, and the Institute of Food Technologists. He is a member of the National Academies’ Institute of Medicine.

About the Karlovitz Lecture
The lecture is made possible by an endowment in memory of College of Sciences Dean Les Karlovitz, who served as dean for 16 years until 1989. Seeking to broaden intellectual discourse on campus, the series focuses on speakers whose work has led them to stretch across disciplinary boundaries. 

Public nights at the Georgia Tech Observatory have resumed for the spring semester.  The observatory will be open one Thursday each month for people to observe various celestial bodies.

The viewing on March 29 includes a 30-minute talk with Sudarshan Ghonge at 8:30 pm. Topic: Cosmological Chirps: The Dance of Black Holes

Public nights are contingent on clear weather.

Potential closures and driving directions are on the official website.

Go here for the full schedule.

ALL ARE WELCOME.

We invite high school students (and their guests) who are interested in learning about undergraduate degree programs in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech to attend the open house “It’s All About Science and Math.” Visitors will learn about opportunities in the degree programs listed below, receive information about admission requirements and financial aid, attend a class, and tour scientific facilities/labs and parts of campus. This program is free to visitors and guests.

Due to limited space, participants are encouraged to sign up early. To schedule a class or group visit, please contact Dr. Cameron Tyson.

Degree programs:  Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, and Psychology.

REGISTER TO VISIT (click on link and select "It's All About Science and Math")

General Itinerary

10:00 - Introduction to Opportunities in Science and Math at Georgia Tech 

11:15 - Attend a science or math class with a student host and meet a professor. Classes/groups will visit a research lab during this time, and learn some science!

12:05 – Visitors will be provided lunch and can chat with College of Sciences faculty, students and advisors.

Optional activities: After lunch, individual prospective students and guests are encouraged to attend a freshmen admission information session and campus tour if they are visiting the campus for the first time. Be sure to sign up for the 1:15pm general session and campus tour when you register for It's All About Science and Math. 

1:15 – Freshmen admission information session, Student Success Building, Clary Theater

2:15 - Campus tour, departs from Student Success Building

3:30 - Meet a financial aid advisor (walk-ins accepted), Student Success Building, 3rd Floor

We invite high school students (and their guests) who are interested in learning about undergraduate degree programs in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech to attend the open house “It’s All About Science and Math.” Visitors will learn about opportunities in the degree programs listed below, receive information about admission requirements and financial aid, attend a class, and tour scientific facilities/labs and parts of campus. This program is free to visitors and guests.

Due to limited space, participants are encouraged to sign up early. To schedule a class or group visit, please contact Dr. Cameron Tyson.

Degree programs:  Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, and Psychology.

REGISTER TO VISIT (click on link and select "It's All About Science and Math")

General Itinerary

10:00 - Introduction to Opportunities in Science and Math at Georgia Tech 

11:15 - Attend a science or math class with a student host and meet a professor. Classes/groups will visit a research lab during this time, and learn some science!

12:05 – Visitors will be provided lunch and can chat with College of Sciences faculty, students and advisors.

Optional activities: After lunch, individual prospective students and guests are encouraged to attend a freshmen admission information session and campus tour if they are visiting the campus for the first time. Be sure to sign up for the 1:15pm general session and campus tour when you register for It's All About Science and Math. 

1:15 – Freshmen admission information session, Student Success Building, Clary Theater

2:15 - Campus tour, departs from Student Success Building

3:30 - Meet a financial aid advisor (walk-ins accepted), Student Success Building, 3rd Floor

Abstract:

One of the remarkable features of spins in the solid state is the enormous range of time-scales over which coherent manipulation is possible. If one considers gate-controlled manipulation of nuclear spins at one extreme, and strongly-interacting multi-electron qubits at the other extreme, coherent control of spins in semiconductors has been demonstrated with over 9 orders of magnitude variation in the manipulation time. Remarkably, confining three electrons in two neighboring quantum dots enables all electrical control and measurement of spin dynamics on time scales less than one nanosecond.

In this talk I will discuss the interesting commonalities and contrasts between the two limiting cases: qubits composed of a single-spin, be it electron or nuclear, where magnetically-driven manipulation is required, and qubits composed of multiple electrons, for which case direct electric-field manipulation is possible.

Bio:

Mark A. Eriksson is Vilas Distinguished Achievement Professor in the Department of Physics at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.  Prior to joining the University of Wisconsin in 1999, he received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1997 and was a postdoctoral member of technical staff at Bell Labs for two years from 1997-1999. Currently he leads a multi-university team studying semiconductor-based quantum computing and focusing on the development of spin qubits in silicon/silicon-germanium gate-defined quantum dots.  Eriksson is a fellow of the American Physical Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Why did we go to the Moon? Why does the Vatican support an astronomical observatory? These questions mask a deeper question: Why do individuals choose to spend their lives in pursuit of pure knowledge?

Vatican Observatory Director Brother Guy Consolmagno will reflect on the motivations behind our choices, both as individuals and as a society and how they control the sorts of science that gets done. Motivations determine the kinds of answers that are found to be satisfying. And ultimately, they affect how we think of ourselves.

About the Speaker

Guy Consolmagno is a brother in the Roman Catholic Society of Jesus (SJ, the Jesuits), working since 1993 as an astronomer and meteorite specialist at the Specola Vaticana (Vatican Observatory), located in the Papal summer gardens outside Rome. Since 2014, he has been president of the Vatican Observatory Foundation, which supports the work of the Observatory and especially its 1.8-meter Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope (VATT), in Arizona. In September 2015, Pope Francis named him director of the Vatican Observatory.

Consolmagno's research explores connections between meteorites, asteroids, and the evolution of small solar-system bodies. Along with more than 200 scientific publications, he is the author of a number of popular books, including: Turn Left at Orion (with Dan Davis), and most recently, Would You Baptize an Extraterrestrial? (with Fr. Paul Mueller, SJ). He also has hosted science programs for BBC Radio 4, has been interviewed in numerous documentary films, and writes a monthly science column for the British Catholic magazine The Tablet.

A native of Detroit, Michigan, Consolmagno earned two degrees from MIT and a doctorate in planetary sciences from the University of Arizona. He was a postdoctoral research fellow at Harvard and MIT, served in the US Peace Corps (Kenya), and taught university physics at Lafayette College before entering the Jesuits in 1989.

Consolmagno has served as chair of the American Astronomical Society’s Division for Planetary Sciences (AAS/DPS) and on the planetary surfaces nomenclature committee of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

Asteroid 4597 Consolmagno was named in recognition of his work. In 2014, he won the American Astronomical Society’s Carl Sagan Medal for excellence in public communication in planetary science.

A School of Physics Inquiring Minds Public Lecture

Stephen Wolfram is a computer scientist, physicist, and businessman. He is known for his work in computer science, mathematics, and theoretical physics. In 2012, he was named an inaugural fellow of the American Mathematical Society.

As a businessman, he is the founder and CEO of the software company Wolfram Research, where he worked as chief designer of Mathematica and the Wolfram Alpha answer engine. His recent work has been on knowledge-based programming, expanding and refining the programming language of Mathematica into what is now called the Wolfram Language.

We invite high school students (and their guests) who are interested in learning about undergraduate degree programs in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech to attend the open house “It’s All About Science and Math.” Visitors will learn about opportunities in the degree programs listed below, receive information about admission requirements and financial aid, attend a class, and tour scientific facilities/labs and parts of campus. This program is free to visitors and guests.

Due to limited space, participants are encouraged to sign up early. To schedule a class or group visit, please contact Dr. Cameron Tyson.

Degree programs:  Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, and Psychology.

REGISTER TO VISIT (click on link and select "It's All About Science and Math")

General Itinerary

10:00 - Introduction to Opportunities in Science and Math at Georgia Tech 

11:15 - Attend a science or math class with a student host and meet a professor. Classes/groups will visit a research lab during this time, and learn some science!

12:05 – Visitors will be provided lunch and can chat with College of Sciences faculty, students and advisors.

Optional activities: After lunch, individual prospective students and guests are encouraged to attend a freshmen admission information session and campus tour if they are visiting the campus for the first time. Be sure to sign up for the 1:15pm general session and campus tour when you register for It's All About Science and Math. 

1:15 – Freshmen admission information session, Student Success Building, Clary Theater

2:15 - Campus tour, departs from Student Success Building

3:30 - Meet a financial aid advisor (walk-ins accepted), Student Success Building, 3rd Floor

Welcome to SMALLab, the coolest classroom you’ve ever seen! Like a room-sized iPad, this unique interactive learning environment is equipped with augmented-reality technology to enable you to explore scientific concepts as you move and interact with projected images.

Brought to Georgia Tech by SMALLab Learning (www.smallablearning.com) and the Georgia Tech members of LIGO (Laser Interferometry Gravitational-Wave Observatory), this augmented-reality classroom offers a kinesthetic approach to learning about gravitational waves, astrophysics, and more.

The augmented-reality classroom is based on peer-reviewed research showing that comprehension and retention are enhanced by movement, a concept known as embodied learning, which SMALLab taps into through motion-capture technology. SMALLab Learning’s development work has been funded by the National Science Foundation, the MacArthur Foundation, Intel Research, and the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.

Bringing SMALLab to Georgia Tech is the brainchild of Karelle Siellez, a postdoctoral researcher in the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics. Funding was provided by the Georgia Tech Parents Fund for Student Life and Leadership and the Georgia Tech Office of the Arts.

WORKSHOP: Create your own content

April 17, 9 AM-5 PM & April 18, 2-5 PM

Using SMALLab's technology, create your own learning games.

Registration is required. Contact sky@physics.gatech.edu to register.

MOVE, LEARN, PLAY in SMALLab

Experience the coolest classroom ever! Learn about astrophysics, gravitational waves, and more by using your mind AND body.

Free and no registration required. Come alone or with friends and have fun with this new way of learning science! 

April 19-20, 9 AM-5 PM For Georgia Tech students, staff, and faculty only

April 21, 9 AM-5 PM Open to the public 

We invite high school students (and their guests) who are interested in learning about undergraduate degree programs in the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech to attend the open house “It’s All About Science and Math.” Visitors will learn about opportunities in the degree programs listed below, receive information about admission requirements and financial aid, attend a class, and tour scientific facilities/labs and parts of campus. This program is free to visitors and guests.

Due to limited space, participants are encouraged to sign up early. To schedule a class or group visit, please contact Dr. Cameron Tyson.

Degree programs:  Biochemistry, Biology, Chemistry, Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, Mathematics, Neuroscience, Physics, and Psychology.

REGISTER TO VISIT (click on link and select "It's All About Science and Math")

General Itinerary

10:00 - Introduction to Opportunities in Science and Math at Georgia Tech 

11:15 - Attend a science or math class with a student host and meet a professor. Classes/groups will visit a research lab during this time, and learn some science!

12:05 – Visitors will be provided lunch and can chat with College of Sciences faculty, students and advisors.

Optional activities: After lunch, individual prospective students and guests are encouraged to attend a freshmen admission information session and campus tour if they are visiting the campus for the first time. Be sure to sign up for the 1:15pm general session and campus tour when you register for It's All About Science and Math. 

1:15 – Freshmen admission information session, Student Success Building, Clary Theater

2:15 - Campus tour, departs from Student Success Building

3:30 - Meet a financial aid advisor (walk-ins accepted), Student Success Building, 3rd Floor