Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

With the research landscape rapidly changing, Georgia Tech must respond to external forces to address local, national, and global challenges and produce novel ideas ​and actionable solutions.​ In alignment with the Institute strategic plan, Research Next positions Georgia Tech to respond to future challenges with innovation, expertise, creativity, and a dedication to improving the human condition.

“Georgia Tech envisions a future in which we continue to educate transformative researchers, strive for inclusive excellence and truth, and leverage our scale and resources to address the most urgent challenges of our time,” said Chaouki Abdallah, executive vice president for research at Georgia Tech. “Our plan is people centered, value based, and data informed. Like the Institute’s strategic plan, this belongs to all of us, and it will be up to us to make it a reality.”

To create the research strategy, Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and students assessed the current landscape for research-intensive universities. They identified the internal and external forces and factors that shape the research ecosystem. Out of this came a research landscape analysis. The Phase II work capitalized on the rich insights from the Phase I to identify 16 goals and 50 objectives for Georgia Tech to work toward over the next decade.

Now, seven initial projects have been identified to support the vision of the Research Next.  They are large-scale, campus-wide projects. Four of the teams have assembled, and efforts are underway, including:

• Project management support: large-scale projects and scaling PI operations
  • This group develops project management recommendations that are proactively supporting researchers and thinking through the needs of both singular, large activities, as well as the demands for larger efforts distributed over a range of projects.
• Research faculty engagement & career development
  • This group takes a deeper look at Georgia Tech research faculty environment, including hiring, mentoring, career development, community and work environment, promotion, and compensation approaches.
• All members of the research enterprise feel connected to and included in and able to contribute to the mission, conduct, and products of research
  • This group makes our community feel appreciated and empowered by creating an environment and culture in which all can grow, thrive, and add value.
• Strategic & operational expansion of historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) & minority serving institutions (MSIs) research partnerships
  • This group identifies and streamlines processes that enable collaborative research with MSIs; develops an ongoing process for identifying, networking, and finalizing potential research collaborations across Georgia Tech and MSIs; and establish/maintain a network of sources, sponsors, and new paradigms for funding long-term research partnerships. 

Three additional teams will be launched in FY23, including:

• Research prioritization & annual strategic analysis
  This team will monitor progress and metrics across all Research Next initiatives, as well advise the research enterprise on large research initiatives and directions.
• Organizational structures & pathways of interdisciplinary research
   This team will address crosscutting educational offering, coordinating faculty hiring with research prioritization, and integrating campus operations with research. It will also create structures for supporting and incubating new ideas; funding models (fundraising); alignment and assessment of existing structures (startup/ sunset); and integration of social sciences, diversity efforts, and the arts.
• Research leader & mentor development
  This team will create a comprehensive research leadership development program for Georgia Tech. It will leverage and build off of other GTRI and Provost office leadership initiatives, but also develop the unique materials associated with research leadership.   

The Research Next plan will leverage trends and thought leadership to prepare for changes in the research landscape, focus Georgia Tech’s efforts, and resolve grand challenges. Stay tuned for regular updates on how the project teams are evolving to meet the needs of the Institute and world.

Check out the full Research Next website.

On Saturday, March 11, Georgia Tech will open its doors to the community for Science and Engineering Day at Georgia Tech.

This annual event aims to inspire the next generation of engineers and scientists and share the breadth of Georgia Tech’s research activities with the local community. Last year more than 500 attendees, ranging from toddlers to retirees, explored the campus and participated in hands-on STEAM activities, tours, and demonstrations designed to engage and educate participants. While attendees were able to get a glimpse into one of the nation’s most research-intensive universities, the community-wide event also allowed Georgia Tech students, researchers, and staff members the opportunity to share their work with the public.

Seeking Demo Groups

To continue the success of Science and Engineering Day, we need members of the Georgia Tech community — including student groups, labs, staff, and faculty — to participate in this year’s event. Last year, 26 units and student organizations across campus provided activities in biology, space, art, nanotechnology, paper, computer science, wearables, bioengineering, and chemical engineering just to name a few.

Taking part in Science and Engineering Day gives Georgia Tech students and researchers a unique opportunity to share their work with the community and inspire attendees. Demo space is limited, so reserve your spot today. Opportunities include hands-on STEAM activities, exhibits, demonstrations, and opportunities to meet student researchers. If you have questions about how you can participate, reach out to Leslie O’Neil. All demo groups must register by February 20, 2023.

The Atlanta Science Festival is engineered by Science ATL and community partners, with major support from founders Emory University, Georgia Tech, and the Metro Atlanta Chamber, and from sponsors UPS, International Paper, Georgia Power, Cox Enterprises, Lockheed Martin, Lenz Marketing, and Mercer University.

Learn more and register to demonstrate at research.gatech.edu/ATLscifestGTday23

The Law, Science, and Technology (LST) Program in the School of Public Policy has created a new information portal for Georgia Tech students interested in legal careers.

The portal is open to anyone with an active Georgia Tech login. It offers information for students on every step of the journey, including finding undergraduate legal internships, preparing for the LSAT, getting letters of recommendation, and writing personal statements for law school applications. According to Chad Slieper, LST director, scholarship opportunities will be added soon.

“This resource is a great way to start learning what you need to do to prepare for law school,” Slieper said. “We’re excited to give more options to students and provide a 24/7 supplement to the in-person counseling and advice we’ve always offered.”

LST also offers the Minor in Law, Science, and Technology, which recently celebrated its 20^th anniversary, as well as pre-law advising, a pre-law newsletter, and events of interest to members of the Georgia Tech community with an interest in the intersection of law and technology.

The School of Public Policy is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

The College of Sciences is pleased to welcome Svetlana Jitomirskaya, Distinguished Professor at the University of California, Irvine, and a prize-winning mathematician, as the inaugural Hubbard Chair Professor in the School of Mathematics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Jitormirskaya will arrive on campus in January 2023.

"The School of Mathematics is just delighted to welcome Professor Jitomirskaya,” said Michael Wolf, professor and chair of the School of Mathematics. “We had hoped that the Hubbard Chair would be transformational for the School of Mathematics, and the appointment of Svetlana to this position exceeds our wildest ambitions. Known for her penetrating insights into mathematical physics and dynamics, she adds to our already premiere presence in mathematical physics — an additional depth that rivals any other such center in North America.”

Jitomirskaya is one of seven new faculty members starting in Fall 2022 in the School of Mathematics. That number includes Wolf, who was named school chair in December 2021 and officially arrived at Georgia Tech last summer.

The inspiration for the Hubbard Chair

The chair is named for Elaine M. Hubbard (MATH 1972, M.S. MATH 1974, Ph.D. MATH 1980), who died in 2016 after a 28-year career as a mathematics professor at Kennesaw State University. Hubbard was a long-time friend and supporter of the School of Mathematics and a member of the College of Sciences Advisory Board.

Hubbard “was a true innovator — her delight in mathematics served to inspire her students,” said Paul Goldbart, who spoke at Hubbard’s memorial service six years ago and was then College of Sciences Dean. “She piloted the use of graphical calculators and gained national recognition and the Kennesaw Distinguished Teaching Award for her groundbreaking uses of technology. She spoke on mathematics education at conferences and campuses around the nation and received the Kennesaw State Alumni Association Achievement Award in 1994,” Goldbart said. “Elaine co-authored an amazing 13 textbooks on mathematics, important for their incorporation of the scholarship of teaching and learning to promote student success.”

Hubbard included a provision in her estate that established the Elaine M. Hubbard Endowed Chair for the School of Mathematics. Colleagues note that her passion was teaching, and the fund serves to support robust, leading-edge mathematics education and research at Georgia Tech. 

“Elaine Hubbard was a gentle champion of mathematics at Georgia Tech, and I believe she would be pleased by how this first result of her generosity and vision has propelled forward the school and all of its missions,” Wolf added.

‘A scientific granddaughter’ of Russia’s greatest mathematician

Jitomirskaya was born in Kharkov, Ukraine, to parents who were both mathematicians. She has described both of them as survivors, having barely escaped as young children from the German invasion of Kiev (now Kyiv) in 1941. 

Mathematics excellence runs in her family. Her mother chaired the famed Department of Analysis at Kharkov State University (now V. N. Karazin Kharkiv National University), and was also the only female professor of mathematics in Ukraine for some twenty years. Her father was a long-time chair of the Department of Mathematics at KhADI, an engineering school. 

Svetlana left Kharkov (now Karkiv) at 16 to study at Moscow State University, and graduated under the supervision of Yaklov G. Sinai, himself a student of A.N. Kolmogorov, whom Leonid Bunimovich, Regents’ Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Mathematics called “the greatest Russian mathematician ever.”

Jitomirskaya “brings to Georgia Tech a brilliant scientific genealogy which is really hard to match,” Bunimovich said. “She is a scientific granddaughter of A.N. Kolmogorov and her advisor Sinai is an Abel Prize winner. The spirit of this School is that mathematics is rigorously proved. In other words, mathematicians should not just prove what scientists and engineers already understood, but uncover why their ideas are right and show them the way further, and even bring in new ideas, which mathematicians must rigorously justify, especially in cases when these new ideas contradict ‘preexisting’ physics intuition.”

International recognition

Jitomirskaya was awarded the Ruth Lyttle Satter Prize from the American Mathematical Association in 2005, and the Dannie Heineman Prize for Mathematical Physics awarded by the American Physics Association and the American Institute of Physics in 2020. She has been a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (AAAS) since 2018, and was elected to the NAS in 2022. Jitomirskaya was invited to deliver a plenary lecture at the International Congress of Mathematicians, held as a virtual event in July 2022.

In July 2022, Jitomirskaya was also announced as the first winner of a new award for mathematical physics: the Olga Alexandrovna Ladyzhenskaya Prize. Wolf, the Georgia Tech School of Mathematics chair, said the prize celebrates the “extraordinary mathematical contributions in the middle part of the previous century of the Russian mathematician Olga Ladyzhenskaya.” 

Jitomirskaya has also dedicated a large portion of her career to teaching. She received the University of California, Irvine Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Fostering Undergraduate Research in 2018. She has advised many graduate students and post-doctoral researchers, who eventually found positions in the academic world.

“There is no better choice than Svetlana Jitomirskaya to occupy this inaugural Chair,” added Jean Bellissard, professor emeritus in the School of Mathematics at Georgia Tech, “as she is both a worldwide recognized expert in analysis, and widely appreciated among her students and her university for her dedication to teaching mathematics at the highest level of excellence.”

“Mathematics progresses through a sustained conversation among a community of scholars, and Svetlana will deepen and broaden that dialogue for our scholars while exciting and inspiring our students,” Wolf said.

More new faces at the School of Mathematics 

Michael (Mike) Wolf joined the School of Mathematics as chair and professor in the fall of 2022. Wolf comes to Georgia Tech from Rice University, where he served most recently as Milton B. Porter Professor. During his three-decade tenure at Rice, Wolf has held many positions, including two periods as chair of the Department of Mathematics, head of a residential college, and co-founder and co-director of the Rice Emerging Scholars Program.

“Georgia Tech’s Mathematics faculty is world-renowned for its strength and scope, and it is an honor to participate in its leadership,” Wolf said in the announcement of his new role. “Mathematics is an engine for modern science and technology — from codes for cybersecurity, to differential equations that explain black holes and the interfaces of materials, to machine learning and mathematical neuroscience, and through beautiful advances whose applications will only be revealed to our grandchildren. Mathematics is everywhere, and Georgia Tech’s mathematicians are at the frontier.”  

Three assistant professors joined Wolf in the Fall 2022 semester as new School of Math faculty: Gong Chen, Vesselin Dimitrov, and Tom Kelly; along with Academic Professionals Hunter Lehmann and Kalila Lehmann.

The School of Mathematics is also welcoming 15 new visiting assistant professors and postdoctoral scholars for the 2022-2023 academic year.

Four faculty in the College of Sciences have received new funding to help foster student belonging at Georgia Tech. The team’s six-year grant is part of the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s (HHMI) Inclusive Excellence 3 initiative, and is one of 104 new grants funded through an overall initiative that’s allocating $60 million over six years and several phases.

“HHMI’s challenge to us addresses a critical need in U.S. higher education, and it is aligned with Georgia Tech’s strategic plan,” says David Collard, senior associate dean in the College and lead researcher for effort at Tech. “The grant to Georgia Tech will support a team effort in pursuing a number of complementary projects.”

Collard is joined by College of Sciences co-investigators Jennifer Leavey, assistant dean for Faculty Mentoring; Carrie Shepler, assistant dean for Teaching Effectiveness; and Professor Lewis Wheaton, inaugural director of the Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences at Georgia Tech. Collard and Shepler also serve as faculty members in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Leavey and Wheaton in the School of Biological Sciences.

Inclusive Excellence 3

As the third phase of the HHMI program, Inclusive Excellence 3, known as IE3, challenges U.S. colleges and universities to “substantially and sustainably build their capacity for student belonging, especially for those who have been historically excluded from the sciences.”

IE3 is also distinct from previous HHMI science education initiatives because it begins with a learning phase and, during that phase, learning communities envision how to move cooperatively into an implementation phase.

The grant uniquely challenges groups to work collaboratively to address one of three broad efforts. At Georgia Tech, the College of Sciences will work with institutions across the country to help empower colleges and universities to develop and support systems that cultivate teaching and learning in tandem with key concepts in inclusion and equity.

At Georgia Tech, each IE3 team member will concentrate on a distinct area of work.

Inclusive teaching

Leavey will focus on “working with collaborators from other institutions to share faculty development strategies focused on inclusive teaching, such as the Inclusive STEM Teaching Fellows program ,” she shares, “which the College of Sciences piloted last spring along with the Center for Teaching Learning, the College of Engineering, the College of Computing, and the Office of Institute Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.” 

Leavey adds that, a semester after its launch, the Fellows program is already generating interest across campus and at collaborating institutions.

Inclusive impact

Shepler will help faculty assess the impact of their inclusive teaching efforts, working with collaborators to develop an iterative process to help institutions create formative assessment methodologies for teaching and learning that both facilitate and prioritize inclusion and equity in a manner that is consistent with institutional values and missions.

“Throughout the project, our aim is to make sure that students have a voice in defining what it means for them to experience teaching that centers” on these concepts, Shepler says.

The work coincides with a goal of the College of Sciences’ new Teaching Effectiveness, Advocacy, and Mentoring (TEAM) committee, which Shepler leads, to “develop and adapt new processes for the evaluation of teaching that are inclusive and equitable for all faculty.”

C-PIES

Meanwhile, Wheaton’s work as the director of the Center for Promoting Inclusion and Equity in the Sciences — C-PIES, for short — will inform and supplement Leavey and Shepler’s goals for the grant.

Wheaton will also lead a competitive C-PIES Faculty Fellows program that focuses on innovative teaching and research ideas that can transform student learning using key principles.

“The Center will sponsor approximately five C-PIES Inclusive Excellence Faculty Fellows in this effort,” he says. “This is an exciting direction that will provide the tools to develop assessments in our curriculum, leading to a culture that emphasizes and facilitates a growth mindset of continued development.”

Transforming tomorrow

Ultimately, the researchers hope to leverage the Inclusive Excellence Grant to transform teaching and learning for faculty and students of today — and of tomorrow.

“Though much of the HHMI work will focus on faculty, particularly those in instructional roles, the potential impact of these efforts is on the learning experiences of future generations of students,” adds Collard, the grant lead. “I look forward to seeing how the project develops — and how it fosters changes that support student, and faculty, success.”

Organized by the undergraduate Student Government Association in collaboration with Greek Week, Tech Beautification Day returns in full force this Saturday, April 1. The event was scaled back in recent years due to the pandemic, but this year, plans are on track to offer a full slate of projects focused on improving the campus landscape — and the campus community is invited to participate.  

Georgia Tech’s Landscape Services collaborates with student leaders to develop projects that have a big impact yet are easily completed in a few hours. This year’s opportunities range from planting wildflowers, shrubs, and trees to laying sod, pulling weeds, and spreading pine straw.  

The event begins with breakfast and a welcome by student leaders. Groups of eight to 10 volunteers are then given tools and gloves and directed to the various worksites across campus. One ambitious goal this year is to plant 200 native azaleas.  

“Our department enjoys working with the students not only because we are able to get a lot of work done in a short amount of time, but it also gives students a small window into the hard work our teams do daily,” says Interim Associate Director of Landscape Services Neil Fuller. “Students also gain a sense of pride when they can look at a completed job and say they did it.  And it gives the students a chance to make their mark on campus and be able to come back and point out a specific plant or tree and tell their family how they planted it years ago.” 

Tech Beautification Day has a long history of engaging students, faculty, staff, and family members on a spring Saturday. Campus archives reveal that during one event more than 1,000 volunteers worked together to beautify campus. Additionally, photographs from 2012 show the entire football team, along with coaches and families, participating. Organizers are working toward increasing participation to pre-pandemic numbers, and this year is just the beginning. Sign up now to spend a morning making the Georgia Tech campus even more beautiful than it already is.  

April 1, 2023 Schedule:

8:30 a.m. – Breakfast, check in, and welcome at The Kendeda Building

9 a.m. – noon: Volunteer projects 

12:30 p.m. – Clean up, return tools, closing remarks 

SIGN UP TO PARTICIPATE 

40 light years away from Earth, the TRAPPIST-1 system of exoplanets shows promise for containing atmospheres that may support life. Yet two recent studies from teams involving Georgia Tech School of Physics and School of Mathematics researchers show a few of the planets could spin themselves into chaotic day-night cycles, which could ultimately result in shared fates becoming uninhabitable snowballs.

“The first paper is about how the day-night cycles of the planets vary,” said Gongjie Li, assistant professor in the School of Physics and a co-author of both studies. “The second paper is about the effects of the day-night cycles on climate. It is the first (work) to combine rigid-body simulations with 3D global climate models.” In this instance, “rigid body” refers to extended planetary bodies, and this is different from traditional dynamical approaches that assume the planets are point masses. 

“We found that the chaotic variations in the day-night cycles led to fast snowball transitions for TRAPPIST-1f,” the fifth planet from the red dwarf star that is the system’s sun. “This can render the planet trapped in a permanent snowball state, and makes it less favorable to life that we know of,” Li said.

The team for the first study, published in The Astrophysical Journal in December 2022, “GRIT: A Package for Structure-Preserving Simulations of Gravitationally Interacting Rigid Bodies,” includes Li and two researchers from the Georgia Tech School of Mathematics: Associate Professor Molei Tao and graduate student Renyi Chen.

Li and Howard Chen, assistant professor at the Florida Institute of Technology, collaborated with Ravi Kumar Kopparapu, a planetary scientist for NASA; and Adiv Paradise, who developed a 3D climate model used for the second study, “Sporadic Spin-Orbit Variations in Compact Multi-planet Systems and their Influence on Exoplanet Climate.” That study was published this month in Astrophysical Journal Letters. 

Rotating into ‘crazy’ day-night cycles

The TRAPPIST-1 system, discovered in 2017 is often called “the miniature solar system with seven rocky planets.”  The system hosts the most Earth-sized planets found in the habitable zone of a single star to date. It is also, according to NASA, the most studied planetary system, second to our own. 

Three of the planets, TRAPPIST-e, f, and g, are considered to be in their sun’s habitable or “Goldilocks” zone, because their distance from their sun means temperatures aren’t too hot or cold. Liquid water may also flow near or on the surface of these planets. The research done by Li and her colleagues for the first study included formulas for computer simulations that take into account gravitational pulls from these planets and their sun, along with their tidal forces. 

The tidal forces in the TRAPPIST-1 system bring up a similarity to Earth’s moon. “The planets reside very close to their host star and experience strong tidal interactions with that star, and thus were expected to be tidally locked, similar to the case of our own Moon, with one face always towards Earth, and permanent dayside and nightside,” Li said. 

The formulas produced results that suggested the planets’ rotation could become asynchronous, or chaotic, in 10 years, as those dynamics significantly affect their rotation. Those factors “can kick the outermost three planets” — TRAPPIST-1f, 1g, and 1h — “out of a tidally locked stage, and into having crazy day-night cycles,” Li said.

A potentially habitable planet could become an uninhabitable snowball

The second research study combined those algorithms with a 3D climate model. “We include clouds, rainfall, and solar radiation in 3D in these models, and we coupled the spin-dynamics of the planets with 3D global climate models, the first time in the literature to do so.” said Chen, the lead author of the second paper.

The researchers knew that existing climate modeling had shown that tidally-influenced terrestrial exoplanets — particularly those orbiting M-dwarf stars like TRAPPIST-1 — have unique atmospheric dynamics and surface conditions that may boost their likelihood to host livable habitats. 

Yet imagine a planet showing a different “face” to its host star than it usually does. Different cooling and warming cycles would take over, especially for those exoplanets farthest away from TRAPPIST-1.

“TRAPPIST-1e is very warm, and the crazy day-night cycles don’t affect the climate much. However, TRAPPIST-1f is a lot colder, and a change in day-night cycles can make it a snowball.” The reason: when the planet rotates, the new hot dayside doesn’t have enough time for the existing ice to melt, and when the new nightside forms ice, it leaves the planet covered in snow.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), launched in December 2021, recently began focusing on the outermost TRAPPIST-1 planets. The Telescope’s instrument package includes ways to detect carbon dioxide, methane, and oxygen molecules in an exoplanet’s atmosphere, which may yet yield clues to life.

 “We do not know what the climate is like on those planets yet,” Li said. “However, future studies by JWST on the atmosphere compositions of the planets will help us know more about its climate, and test our results.”

Funding for the two TRAPPIST-1 studies is provided by NASA. 

Citations: Citation Renyi Chen et al 2021 ApJ 919 50
DOI 10.3847/1538-4357/ac0e97

Howard Chen et al 2023 ApJL 946 L32
DOI 10.3847/2041-8213/acbd33

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its more than 46,000 students, representing 50 states and more than 150 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning.

As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

This feature article is a written version of a lecture that Dan Margalit, professor in the School of Mathematics, gave at the 2022 Joint Mathematical Meetings of the American Mathematical Society (AMS). The Society established the Maryam Mirzakhani Lecture in 2018 to honor the memory of Mirzakhani, the first woman and first Iranian to win the Fields Medal, one of the highest honors in math. Margalit writes that on a basic level, Mirzakhani’s work centers around the geometry of surfaces, as understood through their simple curves: "Starting from this humble-seeming topic, Mirzakhani made surprising and sweeping connections between numerous fields of mathematics, including algebraic geometry, Teichmüller theory, moduli spaces, dynamics, homogeneous spaces, symplectic geometry, and billiards."

Download photos from this year’s Sciences Celebration on the GTSciences Flickr.

The College of Sciences community gathered in Harrison Square on April 18 to honor faculty and staff with awards for the 2022-2023 school year during the Spring Sciences Celebration.

“It is nothing short of a pleasure to recognize outstanding faculty who excel in teaching and research,” said Susan Lozier, College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, “and to celebrate the leadership and commitment to excellence of remarkable staff members across the College.”

At the annual celebration, Lozier and the College also recognized the 25 new faculty members who joined Georgia Tech for the 2022-2023 academic year.

This year’s awardees include:

FACULTY DEVELOPMENT AWARDS

The Cullen-Peck Fellowship Awards, established by Frank Cullen (‘73 Math, MS ‘76 ISyE, PhD ‘84 ISyE) and Elizabeth Peck (‘75 Math, MS ‘76 ISyE), to encourage the development of especially promising mid-career faculty.

Cullen-Peck Faculty Fellows:

• Thackery Brown, Psychology
• Alex Robel, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Amanda Stockton, Chemistry and Biochemistry

The Gretzinger Moving Forward Award, endowed by Ralph Gretzinger (‘70 Math) and named to honor his late wife Jewel, recognizes the leadership of a school chair or senior faculty member who has played a pivotal role in diversifying the composition of tenure-track faculty, creating a family-friendly work environment, and providing a supportive environment for early-career faculty:

• Cam Tyson, Chemistry and Biochemistry

The Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching, endowed by Charles Crawford (‘71 Math) recognizes exemplary instruction of lower division foundational courses. It honors the late School of Mathematics professor Eric R. Immel, who greatly influenced Crawford’s undergraduate experience at Tech:

• Christina Ragan, Biological Sciences

The Leddy Family Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award, established by Jeff Leddy (’78 Physics) and Pam Leddy, supports a faculty member at the associate professor level with proven accomplishments in research and teaching:

• Amit Reddi, Chemistry and Biochemistry

The Faculty Mentor Award, established jointly by the College of Sciences and its ADVANCE Professor, awards the efforts and achievements of our faculty members who mentor fellow faculty:

• Andrzej Swiech, Mathematics

RESEARCH FACULTY AWARDS

The CoS Outstanding Junior Research Faculty Award and CoS Outstanding Senior Research Faculty Award recognize postdoctoral and non-tenure track research faculty who have made exceptional research contributions with significant impact on their field of study:

• Junior Research Faculty: Claudia Alvarez-Carreño, Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Senior Research Faculty: Mu Gao, Biological Sciences

The CoS Research Faculty Community Trailblazer Award recognizes postdoctoral and non-tenure track research faculty who have demonstrated and sustained leadership that strengthens the sense of community among research faculty within the College of Sciences:

• Eric Shen, Chemistry and Biochemistry

STAFF AWARDS

The College of Sciences Staff Awards are made possible by funding from the Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Dean’s Chair endowment. They include:

The Exceptional Staff Member Award and Leadership in Action Staff Member Awards recognize College of Sciences staff who exemplify outstanding performance above and beyond the call of duty, by positively impacting the strategic goals of their department and the College, consistently providing excellent service within their school or the overall College, and demonstrating exemplary teamwork.

• Exceptional Staff Member: Aria Higgins, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Leadership in Action Staff Member: Gary Longstreet, Physics

The Excellence in Leadership Staff Awards and the Staff Excellence Award recognize College of Sciences staff who have made exceptional contributions to the College through innovative and strategic leadership, change management, business process improvement, special project leadership, and similar accomplishments.

Excellence in Leadership Staff

• Shameka Fahie, Dean’s Office
• Nguyen Nguyen, Academic and Research Computing Services

Staff Excellence Award

• Jenny Eaton, Chemistry and Biochemistry 
• Danny Hardwar, Academic and Research Computing Services
• David Murray, Academic and Research Computing Services
• Shebbie Murray, Psychology

NEW COLLEGE OF SCIENCES FACULTY

Academic Year 2022-2023

• Jason Azoulay, Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Isaiah Bolden, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 
• Gong Chen, Mathematics
• Aditi Das, Chemistry and Biochemistry 
• Anjuli Datta, Biological Sciences 
• Chunhui Du, Physics
• Benjamin Freeman, Biological Sciences
• Qiliang He, Psychology 
• Svetlana Jitomirskaya, Mathematics 
• Shina (Lynn) Kamerlin, Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Thomas Kelly, Mathematics 
• Hunter Lehmann, Mathematics 
• Kalila Lehmann, Mathematics
• Andrew McShan, Chemistry and Biochemistry
• Farzaneh Najafi, Biological Sciences
• Feryal Özel, Physics
• Michael Porter, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Dimitrios Psaltis, Physics 
• Stephanie Reikes, Mathematics 
• Surabhi Sachdev, Physics
• Deborah Santos, Chemistry and Biochemistry
• William Stern, Psychology
• Tiffiny Hughes-Troutman, Psychology
• Hailong Wang, Physics
• Michael Wolf, Mathematics

Matt Baker is one of 39 researchers around the country named to the 2023 Class of Simons Fellows. Baker is a professor in the School of Mathematics, and will soon depart his role as the inaugural College of Sciences associate dean for Faculty Development to focus on the new fellowship.

The Simons Fellows are part of the Simons Foundation’s mission to support discovery-driven scientific research undertaken in the pursuit of understanding the phenomena of our world. It provides funds to faculty for up to a semester-long research leave from classroom teaching and administrative obligations.

“I’m really excited to have the opportunity to pursue some intellectual projects next year that I haven’t had time for in the recent past,” Baker said. “And I’m grateful to the School of Mathematics, the College of Sciences, and the Simons Foundation for their support.”

Baker has announced his intention to use the fellowship, along with a Georgia Tech Faculty Development Grant, for a sabbatical he will take during the 2023-2024 academic year.

Over the past five years, as the College’s first associate dean for Faculty Development, Baker has instituted important processes regarding the hiring and retention of faculty, said Susan Lozier, College of Sciences Dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair.

“Matt will be leaving an indelible mark on the College,” said Lozier. “Over these past five years, he has tirelessly worked to recruit, retain, promote and support faculty. Under his leadership, we now have annual faculty hiring plans that guide our growth. We have a set of robust new faculty mentoring workshops, a more inclusive faculty development grant program, a consistent distribution of best practices in faculty hiring, and a more open process for the solicitation of faculty awards.

“It has been nothing short of a pleasure to work with Matt these past few years, and I will miss the wisdom and wit that he brought to his position.”

Plans for a research-centric year

“The Simons Fellowships have become a principal distinction for senior mathematicians,” explains Michael Wolf, professor and chair of the School of Mathematics. Annually, “only about 40 mathematicians in the U.S. and Canada receive these awards, and they go to the mathematical scientists with the best research records in the previous five years, whose potential to use a semester to think promises the greatest possibilities. The awardees are the household names of the mathematicians doing the best current work nationally, and while it is natural to see Matt included, it is still a wonderful statement of how his impact is appreciated by his colleagues in this country.”

Baker’s research includes his work on matroid theory, which the American Mathematical Society (AMS) describes as “a combinatorial theory of independence which has its origins in linear algebra and graph theory, and turns out to have deep connections with many other fields.” Baker will turn the notes from his Spring 2020 graduate course, Topics in Matroid Theory, into a freely available AMS Open Math Notes resource.

Baker said he plans to travel for collaborations with other math researchers, and to attend workshops and conferences. He will also resume regular blogging about math research; his blog recently surpassed 300,000 views.

About Matt Baker

Baker received his B.S. in Mathematics in 1994 from the University of Maryland at College Park, where he graduated summa cum laude. He earned a Ph.D. in Mathematics from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1999.

Baker was a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow and an assistant professor at Harvard University from 1999-2002. He was a visiting professor at the University of Paris, and an assistant professor at the University of Georgia before joining Georgia Tech in 2004. He was elected as a Fellow of the American Mathematical Society in 2012, and was named the College of Sciences’ first associate dean for Faculty Development in 2018.

Baker has written three books about math. His fourth book, “The Buena Vista Shuffle Club,” published in 2019, details his lifelong love of magic and how he explores its connections to mathematics. The Georgia Magic Club selected Baker as its Greater Atlanta Magician of the Year in 2015 and 2019.