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.
This roundup of some of the most unique excrement in the animal kingdom, showcasing the fascinating diversity of animal waste, includes a 2018 Georgia Tech study of how wombats manage to produce square-shaped feces. The study's authors include David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics. As it turns out, the elastic nature of the marsupial's intestinal walls is a key factor.
Interesting Engineering 2023-12-01T00:00:00-05:00Blimps are indeed part of this "Innovations" roundup, but it's the collaborative abilities of army ants that have led engineers from Northwestern University and the New Jersey Institute of Technology to speculate that the insects' behavioral principles and brains could one day be used to program swarms of robots. David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering (with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics), is quoted regarding his research on fire ant raft constructions during flooding, comparing the insects to neurons in one large brain.
Mastercard Newsroom 2023-11-30T00:00:00-05:00Ever wondered why your dog’s back-and-forth shaking is so effective at getting you soaked? Or how bugs, birds, and lizards can run across water—but we can’t? Or how about why cockroaches are so darn good at navigating in the dark? Those are just a few of the day-to-day mysteries answered in the new book How to Walk on Water and Climb Up Walls: Animal Movement and the Robots of the Future, by David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics. The book answers questions you probably won’t realize you even had, but they’re questions with serious answers that span the worlds of physics, fluid mechanics, and biology. Throughout the book, Hu demonstrates the extraordinary value day-to-day curiosity brings to science.
WNYC Science Friday 2023-11-27T00:00:00-05:00Georgia Tech scientists will soon have another way to search for neutrinos, those hard-to-detect, high-energy particles speeding through the cosmos that hold clues to massive particle accelerators in the universe—if researchers can find them. "The detection of a neutrino source or even a single neutrino at the highest energies is like finding a holy grail," says Nepomuk Otte, professor in the School of Physics. Otte is the principal investigator for the Trinity Demonstrator telescope that was recently built by his group and collaborators, and was designed to detect neutrinos after they get stopped within the Earth.
Science X 2023-11-18T00:00:00-05:00The American Physical Society (APS) recently honored five MIT community members for their contributions to physics. The recipients include MIT Research Laboratory of Electronics postdoctoral scholar Chao Li, who received his Ph.D. from the School of Physics in 2022. He was awarded the Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Research in Beam Physics Award from the APS.
MIT News 2023-11-16T00:00:00-05:00For the undergraduate students who interned in quantum science laboratories and research groups as part of the second cohort of the Chicago Quantum Exchange’s (CQE) Open Quantum Initiative (OQI) Fellowship Program, this summer was a chance to immerse themselves in a fast-growing field — one that is driving the development of cutting-edge technology by harnessing the properties of nature’s smallest particles. Eight of the 18 fellows contributed to Q-NEXT, a U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) National Quantum Information Science Research Center led by DOE’s Argonne National Laboratory. One of the fellows is Anais El Akkad in the School of Physics, whose research this summer focused on studying the phenomenon of superradiance in a rare-earth doped crystal, which has potential applications to the development of quantum memories.
Argonne National Laboratory 2023-11-16T00:00:00-05:00Isabella Muratore at the New Jersey Institute of Technology says studying army ants comes with certain occupational hazards, like their very aggressive nature. But what's truly remarkable is when the ants encounter obstacles — such as a gap between leaves or branches — they build living bridges out of their bodies, hooking themselves together like a barrel of monkeys. This story includes comments from David Hu, professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics. Hu has studied how fire ants use their bodies to build rafts. He says this type of work reveals how ants make collective decisions, which could have implications for controlling swarms of robots. (This story was also covered on Houston Public Media, Georgia Public Broadcasting, and National Public Radio.)
Alabama Public Radio 2023-11-14T00:00:00-05:00A new computer simulation of the early universe has been built by researchers, and it closely matches data obtained with the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The results, which were presented in The Open Journal of Astrophysics, were obtained by Maynooth University and Georgia Tech researchers. They demonstrate that the data obtained with JWST are consistent with theoretical expectations. The team’s “Renaissance simulations” are a set of extremely complex computer models of galaxy formation in the early universe. The School of Physics researchers are John Wise, Professor and Director of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics (CRA), and Samantha Hardin, graduate student. (This study was also covered at CityLife, Silicon Republic, SciTechDaily, Phys.org and List23.)
AZoQuantum 2023-10-27T00:00:00-04:00This fall, the Institute will launch a foundational, interdisciplinary program to lead in research related to neuroscience, neurotechnology, and society. The Neuro Next Initiative is the result of the growth of GTNeuro, a grassroots effort over many years that has led in the hiring of faculty studying the brain and the creation of the B.S. in neuroscience in the College of Sciences, and contributed to exciting neuro-related research and education at Georgia Tech. Guided by faculty members Christopher Rozell, professor and Julian T. Hightower Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Simon Sponberg, Dunn Family Associate Professor of Physics and Biological Sciences; and Jennifer S. Singh, associate professor in the School of History and Sociology, the Neuro Next Initiative at Georgia Tech will lead the development of a community that supports collaborative research, unique educational initiatives, and public engagement in this critical field.
India Education Diary 2023-10-23T00:00:00-04:00An annular "ring of fire" eclipse will stretch from Oregon to Texas next Saturday, October 14. During this type of eclipse, the Moon is near its farthest point from Earth, so it does not completely cover the Sun. The Moon appears as a dark disk on top of a larger, bright sun. In Georgia, we will see a partial solar eclipse. James Sowell, principal academic professional in the School of Physics and director of the Georgia Tech Observatory, said over the three-hour event the sun will take on a different appearance. "For those of us in Atlanta, it’s a little more than 50 percent. So you’d have the disk of the sun, and part of it would be blocked out. So you would first see a little blocked out, and ultimately about 50 percent... The sun would be a crescent and then the moon would work its way out," Sowell said. If you want to view the eclipse, you must do so safely. You'll need special protection. Special solar-safe glasses can be purchased online, which are much, much stronger than a normal pair of sunglasses. (11Alive also spoke with Sowell on Oct. 12)
11Alive WXIA 2023-10-07T00:00:00-04:00The World Health Organization has identified antimicrobial resistance as a worldwide concern because most clinical antibiotics are no longer effective against certain pathogenic bacteria. Antibiotics work by targeting specific parts of a bacteria cell, such as the cell wall or its DNA. Bacteria can become resistant to antibiotics in a number of ways, including by developing efflux pumps — proteins that are located on the surface of the bacteria cell. When an antibiotic enters the cell, the efflux pump pumps it out of the cell before it can reach its target so that the antibiotic is never able to kill the bacteria. However, in a new study published in Nature Communications, scientists say they've found a new class of molecules that inhibit the efflux pump and make the antibiotic effective again. The researchers include Katie M. Kuo, Ph.D. scholar in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and James C. Gumbart, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry with an adjunct appointment in the School of Physics.
SciTechDaily 2023-10-06T00:00:00-04:00Some insects can flap their wings so rapidly that it’s impossible for instructions from their brains to entirely control the behaviour. Building tiny flapping robots has helped researchers shed light on how they evolved to do this. For some insects, including mosquitoes, their brain signals and flapping are out of sync. After the initial signal to contract, the insects’ muscles undergo additional contract-relax cycles before they even receive another impulse from the brain. This so-called “asynchronous” flight allows them to flap their wings at exceptionally high rates. Several researchers from Georgia Tech set out to study the evolutionary history of this form of flight. Those researchers include Simon Sponberg, Dunn Family Associate Professor in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences; Brett Aiello, former postdoctoral scholar in Sponberg's Agile Systems Lab; Ethan Wold, Ph.D. scholar in the School of Biological Sciences and the Quantitative Biosciences Graduate Program; and Jeff Gau, Ph.D. scholar in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program. (This research was also covered at India Education Diary, ArsTechnica, UC San Diego, Earth.com and Phys.org.)
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Events
Georgia Tech Space Week
A campus-wide celebration of innovation in the space domain, bringing together academia, industry, and government.
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Daniel Sussman | Emory UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Daniel Sussman | Emory UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
Georgia Tech Space Week
A campus-wide celebration of innovation in the space domain, bringing together academia, industry, and government.
Students and Alumni Fireside Chat (The Coca-Cola Company)
Connect with Georgia Tech alumni who work at The Coca-Cola Company and gain insights for your career path.
Georgia Tech Space Week
A campus-wide celebration of innovation in the space domain, bringing together academia, industry, and government.
Observatory Public Night
On select Thursday evenings during the academic year, the Georgia Tech School of Physics invites you to observe various bright celestial objects through telescopes.
Experts in the News
If you dropped the exact same pulse of food onto two identical bacteria, you'd expect the exact same response. That's not what happened. In a study published in PRX Life in May 2026, researchers at Carnegie Mellon University and Georgia Tech found that E. coli exposed to unstable, feast-and-famine conditions adapted to new food far faster than bacteria pulled from a stable environment, even when the immediate conditions in front of them were identical.
You may think that one cell has no place to keep things such as memories. Scientists, including Josiah Kratz, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgia Tech’s School of Physics, observed tens of thousands of individual E. coli bacteria through a special microfluidic apparatus and found that the cause was ribosomes, the components of the cell responsible for building proteins and determining the growth rate.
The News International 2026-09-09T00:00:00-04:00Researchers in the School of Physics, working with King Fahd University of Petroleum and Minerals, have found that standard methods for identifying chirality in topological phases fail when applied to mixed quantum states. The study reveals that established diagnostics, including bulk-boundary correspondence and the modular commutator, are unreliable in these complex systems. Consequently, the research presents two new measures, based on relative entropy, to accurately diagnose chirality and determine the chiral central charge in decohered topological phases, indicating a need for a new set of tools when investigating mixed-state topology.
Quantum Zeitgeist 2026-07-16T00:00:00-04:00Bacteria have no neurons or memories in the human sense. Yet in a new study, researchers at Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon University — including School of Physics Associate Professor Shiladitya Banerjee and Postdoctoral Fellow Josiah Kratz — found that individual E. coli cells carried traces of past hardship into the future. When nutrients repeatedly rose and fell, the cells changed how quickly they grew, suggesting that even simple microbes can use experience to prepare for what may come next.
ZME Science 2026-06-10T00:00:00-04:00Georgia Tech researchers have recreated the effects of solar wind on lunar minerals in a laboratory experiment, providing new evidence that the constant stream of charged particles from the sun plays a major role in shaping the moon’s surface.
The team exposed ilmenite, a mineral commonly found on both Earth and the moon, to a synthetic version of solar wind. The experiment produced nanophase iron, tiny metallic particles that are widely observed in lunar soil and are considered a key signature of space weathering.
Interesting Engineering 2026-06-10T00:00:00-04:00A new study led by researchers, including School of Physics graduate student Julia Esposito and Associate Professor Gongjie Li, used 1,500 virtual planetary systems to examine how planet-planet scattering may have influenced the formation of Jupiter-sized planets.
American Astronomical Society NOVA 2026-05-22T00:00:00-04:00Researchers have long known that when two galaxies approach each other and merge, the supermassive black holes at their centers form a pair and are eventually expected to merge as well. It is precisely these mergers that are considered one of the sources of the gravitational-wave background — a faint “hum” of spacetime detected in recent years. However, the role played by the geometry of the collision in this process has remained an open question.
Graduate student Sena Ghobadi of the Georgia Institute of Technology’s School of Physics, along with her colleagues, has developed three-dimensional dynamic models of such collisions.
A similar story appeared in Sky & Telescope.
Universe Magazine 2026-04-28T00:00:00-04:00
