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.

Laura Cadonati, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Sciences and a professor in the School of Physics, will serve as a General Councilor for the American Physical Society, following recent APS elections. Her term will begin January 1, 2024. Cadonati, who is also a member of Georgia Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, will join other elected members to advise the Society on all matters regarding science and membership, including science policy. "Throughout my research journey in nuclear physics, astrophysics, and gravity, along with my active participation in large scientific collaborations, I have developed an understanding of the interconnectedness and the different traditions in various branches of physics," Cadonati says. "These insights will enable me to represent the wide constituency of APS."

American Physical Society 2023-09-28T00:00:00-04:00

Researchers are exploring how active matter can be harnessed for tasks like designing new materials with tailored properties, understanding the behavior of biological organisms, and even developing new approaches to robotics and autonomous systems. But that’s only possible if scientists learn how the microscopic units making up active matter interact, and whether they can affect these interactions and thereby the collective properties of active matter on the macroscopic scale. School of Physics Professor Roman Grigoriev and his research colleagues have found a potential first step by developing a new model of active matter that generated new insight into the physics of the problem. They detail their methods and results in a new study published in Science Advances, “Physically informed data-driven modeling of active nematics.” Lead author of the study is graduate researcher Matthew Golden. Co-authors are graduate researcher Jyothishraj Nambisan and Alberto Fernandez-Nieves, professor in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Barcelona and a former associate professor of Physics at Georgia Tech. (This research was also covered in WorldTimeTodays andCityLife.)

Phys.org 2023-09-04T00:00:00-04:00

There’s no artist more vibrant, spiritual, or creative than Mother Earth. Then, we have mortals like Georgia Tech School of Physics alumni Dylan Diamond, who execute Mother Earth’s designs into functional tools or, in this case, a timepiece: “Moss Clock.” The clock has its own gear train and servo, or motors. The bottom line: this technology is a clock composed of living moss. Diamond had the idea to make a “digitally inspired” clock where moving panels of different colored moss resemble a classic digital clock display. "My physics degree helped, but I firmly believe that in the age of information, with public access to so many free tutorials and teachers online, anyone can do something like this," Diamond said. 

Atlanta Jewish Times 2023-08-30T00:00:00-04:00

The science world is remembering W. Jason Morgan, who in 1967 developed the theory of plate tectonics — a framework that revolutionized the study of earthquakes, volcanoes and the slow, steady shift of the continents across the earth’s mantle. Morgan, who died July 31 at his home in Natick, Mass., attended Georgia Tech and received his B.S. from the School of Physics in 1955. 

The New York Times 2023-08-11T00:00:00-04:00

Researchers have developed a method to construct solid objects that roll down pre-determined paths, which they reckon could have applications in quantum mechanics and medicine. To get a ball of malleable clay to roll down a simple path, you can force it down a specific path once, squashing it as you go. Take it to the top again, restart it from the initial starting point on the ball's surface, and it will roll down the same path. The researchers took this principle to develop an algorithm that could produce a shape capable of following almost any pre-determined path, even making the weird-shaped solids out of 3D-printed plastic and solid ball-bearings (for weight) to prove the point. Elisabetta Matsumoto, assistant professor in the School of Physics, co-wrote an accompanying article to the study saying "future work developing for more precise mathematical understanding of the issue would help to connect this work to applications, as well as to open up more purely mathematical veins of research."

The Register 2023-08-09T00:00:00-04:00

J. Robert Oppenheimer, now the protagonist of a much-anticipated film, is today most known for his scientific leadership of the U.S. Manhattan Project, the World War II–era crash program to build the first-ever atomic bombs. But just a few years earlier, Oppenheimer had found himself pondering very different “weapons” of mass destruction: black holes — although it would be decades before that name arose. “It was influential; it was visionary,” says Feryal Özel, professor and chair of the School of Physics, of Oppenheimer’s work on black holes and neutron stars, the superdense corpses of expired massive stars. “He has a lasting impact.” Özel is a founding member of the Event Horizon Telescope Collaboration, which released the first-ever image of a black hole in 2019 — 80 years after Oppenheimer co-authored a paper theorizing that such objects could exist.

Scientific American 2023-07-21T00:00:00-04:00

The heart’s electrical system keeps all its muscle cells beating in sync. A hard whack to the chest at the wrong moment, however, can set up unruly waves of abnormal electrical excitation that are potentially deadly. The resulting kind of arrhythmia may be what caused the football player Damar Hamlin of the Buffalo Bills to collapse on the field after he took a powerful hit during a 2023 National Football League game. In this Quanta podcast, Flavio Fenton, a professor in the School of Physics who studies the electrical dynamics of the heart, tells host Steve Strogatz about a new method under development for treating arrhythmias by stimulating the heart with mild, precisely timed shocks — or possibly even with light.

Quanta Magazine 2023-07-12T00:00:00-04:00

Human beings for millennia have gazed with awe at the vast torrent of stars — bright and dim — shining in Earth's night sky that comprise the Milky Way. Our home galaxy, however, is now being observed for the first time in a brand new way. Scientists said on Thursday they have produced an image of the Milky Way not based on electromagnetic radiation - light - but on ghostly subatomic particles called neutrinos. They detected high-energy neutrinos in pristine ice deep below Antarctica's surface, then traced their source back to locations in the Milky Way - the first time these particles have been observed arising from our galaxy. "This observation is ground-breaking. It established the galaxy as a neutrino source. Every future work will refer to this observation," said Ignacio Taboada, professor in the School of Physics and spokesperson for the IceCube research collaboration in Antarctica that produced the image. (The story was also covered in NPR, Popular MechanicsSmithsonian Magazine, Yahoo! News UKYahoo! News CanadaThe Jerusalem PostKPBSInteractions.org, APS (American Physical Society), Vice, El Pais, VOA Learning Englishbdnews24, SciTechDaily, PetaPixel, and Sinc.)

Reuters 2023-06-29T00:00:00-04:00

Georgia Tech researchers have been selected by NASA to lead a $7.5 million center that will study the lunar environment and the generation and properties of volatiles and dust. The Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER) will be led by Thomas Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics. CLEVER is the successor to Orlando’s pioneering REVEALS (Radiation Effects on Volatiles and Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces) center, and both are part of NASA’s Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) program. 

India Education Diary 2023-06-26T00:00:00-04:00

Researchers at Seton Hill University, Pennsylvania State University, and the Georgia Institute of Technology looked to the mudskipper, the amphibious fish that spends more than half of its adult life on land to study the evolution of blinking. The study, published in an April edition of Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, suggests that blinking may be one of the overlooked and yet important traits that allowed for the successful transition to life on land. Simon Sponberg, Dunn Family Associate Professor in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences, was one of the researchers for the study. (The study was also covered in the Los Angeles Times High School Insider.)

Pittsburgh Post-Gazette 2023-06-10T00:00:00-04:00

In this story about the puzzling behavior that goes on inside black holes, Quanta Magazine uses the 2017 first-ever image of the black hole at the heart of the M87 galaxy captured by an Event Horizon Telescope research team. That team included EHT founding members Feryal Özel, professor and chair of the School of Physics, and Dimitrios Psaltis, a professor in the School. The story also includes the recent machine learning-enhanced version of the image. 

Quanta Magazine 2023-06-06T00:00:00-04:00

After a three-year hiatus, scientists in the U.S. have just turned on detectors capable of measuring gravitational waves — tiny ripples in space itself that travel through the universe. Unlike light waves, gravitational waves are nearly unimpeded by the galaxies, stars, gas, and dust that fill the universe. This means that by measuring gravitational waves, astrophysicists can peek directly into the heart of some of these most spectacular phenomena in the universe. Since 2020, the Laser Interferometric Gravitational-Wave Observatory — commonly known as LIGO— has been sitting dormant while it underwent some exciting upgrades. These improvements will significantly boost the sensitivity of LIGO and should allow the facility to observe more-distant objects that produce smaller ripples in spacetime. Faculty and students in the School of Physics and Georgia Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics were part of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration when the observatory made the first direct observation of gravitational waves. Laura Cadonati, professor in the School of Physics and associate dean for Research in the College of Sciences, served as LIGO deputy spokesperson and was on its data analysis team.

Inverse 2023-05-28T00:00:00-04:00

Events

Oct 02

School of Physics Colloquium

Oliver Dial (IBM); Error Mitigation and Suppression in Superconducting Quantum Processors

Oct 16

School of Physics Colloquium

Patrick Huber (Virginia Tech)

Oct 23

School of Physics Colloquium

Marc Lavine (AAAS): 101 Mistakes to Avoid Before Submitting a Paper

Oct 26

GT Observatory Public Night: October 2023

A monthly occurrence of the GT Observatory's Public Night open to all who are interested in viewing celestial objects through our many telescopes here on campus.

Oct 30

School of Physics Colloquium

Sarah Vigeland (Nanograv/UWM)

Nov 06

School of Physics Colloquium

Stefanie Milam (NASA)

Nov 07

Physics of Living Systems (PoLS) Seminar - Prof. Floris van Breugel

Physics of Living Systems (PoLS) Seminar| Prof. Floris van Breugel| Univ. Nevada Reno| - Prof. Simon Sponberg

Experts in the News

Laura Cadonati, Associate Dean for Research in the College of Sciences and a professor in the School of Physics, will serve as a General Councilor for the American Physical Society, following recent APS elections. Her term will begin January 1, 2024. Cadonati, who is also a member of Georgia Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, will join other elected members to advise the Society on all matters regarding science and membership, including science policy. "Throughout my research journey in nuclear physics, astrophysics, and gravity, along with my active participation in large scientific collaborations, I have developed an understanding of the interconnectedness and the different traditions in various branches of physics," Cadonati says. "These insights will enable me to represent the wide constituency of APS."

American Physical Society 2023-09-28T00:00:00-04:00

Researchers are exploring how active matter can be harnessed for tasks like designing new materials with tailored properties, understanding the behavior of biological organisms, and even developing new approaches to robotics and autonomous systems. But that’s only possible if scientists learn how the microscopic units making up active matter interact, and whether they can affect these interactions and thereby the collective properties of active matter on the macroscopic scale. School of Physics Professor Roman Grigoriev and his research colleagues have found a potential first step by developing a new model of active matter that generated new insight into the physics of the problem. They detail their methods and results in a new study published in Science Advances, “Physically informed data-driven modeling of active nematics.” Lead author of the study is graduate researcher Matthew Golden. Co-authors are graduate researcher Jyothishraj Nambisan and Alberto Fernandez-Nieves, professor in the Department of Condensed Matter Physics at the University of Barcelona and a former associate professor of Physics at Georgia Tech. (This research was also covered in WorldTimeTodays andCityLife.)

Phys.org 2023-09-04T00:00:00-04:00

There’s no artist more vibrant, spiritual, or creative than Mother Earth. Then, we have mortals like Georgia Tech School of Physics alumni Dylan Diamond, who execute Mother Earth’s designs into functional tools or, in this case, a timepiece: “Moss Clock.” The clock has its own gear train and servo, or motors. The bottom line: this technology is a clock composed of living moss. Diamond had the idea to make a “digitally inspired” clock where moving panels of different colored moss resemble a classic digital clock display. "My physics degree helped, but I firmly believe that in the age of information, with public access to so many free tutorials and teachers online, anyone can do something like this," Diamond said. 

Atlanta Jewish Times 2023-08-30T00:00:00-04:00