Eric Sembrat's Test Bonanza

School of Physics Soft Condensed Matter & Physics of Living Systems Seminar: Prof. Jeff Wereszczynski, Illinois Institute of Technology

Eukaryotes package and maintain their genetic code in chromatin fibers. The fundamental unit of chromatin is the nucleosome, a complex of approximately equal mass of protein and DNA molecules.  By altering the physical and biochemical properties of the nucleosome, the cell regulates the structure and stability of chromatin and thus tunes gene expression. 

 In this talk, I will discuss efforts by our group to use molecular dynamics simulations in conjunction with data from NMR, SAXS, and Cryo-EM experiments to understand the processes by which chromatin remodeling factors alter the structure and dynamics of single and poly-nucleosomal arrays.  I will focus on the effects of histone variants, post-translational modifications, and linker histones. 

In addition, I will discuss how we can use Bayesian inference to rigorously determine a minimal ensemble of states of flexible biomolecular complexes to describe the results of small angle X-ray scattering experiments from enhanced sampling simulations.   

For the sixth year in a row, the Georgia Tech community will partake of a community meal to discuss the life and legacy of civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr. The meal is called Sunday Supper, even though it takes place during the workweek. The gathering evokes Sunday dinners of yore, when two or more generations of family and friends shared a comforting meal. It was a time to exchange stories, learn family histories, and discuss current events or concerns. 

Conceived by the volunteer organization Points of Light, the Sunday Suppers take place around MLK Day each year. They bring together people from diverse backgrounds to a meal so that they can interact on a personal level and discuss matters that affect their communities.

The event is supported in part by the College of Sciences.

To participate, register here.

The College of Sciences' Thackery Brown and Simon Sponberg are among the nine featured new faculty hires in an evening to welcome new neuroscience faculty while visiting with old friends and colleagues. Also featured is Cassie Mitchell of the College of Engineering.

Each of the new faculty hires will give a 5-minute talk. Afterward, each will host a roundtable for further discussions.

Thackery I. Brown, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Psychology" will talk about "Looking Back to Think Ahead: Neural Mechanisms of Navigational Planning."

Simon Sponberg, an assistant professor in the School of Physics with joint appointment in the School of Biological Sciences, will give a short talk about "Light, Flight, and Sight: How Animals Control Agile Movement."

Cassie S. Mitchell is an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. Her five-minute talk is titled "Integration of Multi-Scalar Experimental and Clinical Records to Forecast Neuropathology."

Here are the other featured faculty, their affiliations, and the topics of their five-minute talks: 

Eyal Aharoni, Psychology, Georgia State. “Imaging Impulsivity: A Search for Neural Markers of Bad Behavior”

Brian Dias, Psychiatry, Emory University. “Multigenerational Imprints of Stress and Trauma”

Angela Mabb, Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State. “Ubiquitin-Dependent Control of Cognition”

Vasiliki Michopoulos, Psychiatry and Behavioral Science, Emory University. “Translational Neuroscience Approaches to Understanding the Effects of the Environment on Brain and Behavior”

Javier Stern, Neuroscience Institute, Georgia State. “Novel Biosensors to Detect Release of Brain Neuropeptides” 

Todd E. White, Neurobiology, Morehouse School of Medicine. “Behavioral and Molecular Characterization of a Rat Model of Chronic Repetitive Mild Traumatic Brain Injury”

The event is FREE, but please fill out the registration form below to ensure that enough food and drinks are available for all. A light supper, beer, wine and soft drinks will be served.

Map and Parking: http://map.emory.edu

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

School of Physics Nonlinear Science & Mathematical Physics Seminar: Prof. Niklas Manz, College of Wooster

Excitation waves are propagating spatiotemporal structures observed in many biological, chemical, and physical systems. They can be described as a reaction-diffusion (RD) wave in which an autocatalytic reaction zone propagates via diffusion without mass transport. More common types of RD waves are the propagation of an action potential in a nerve, the spread of electrical depolarization waves on the heart surface, the (human spectator) stadium wave, or a forest fire.

All RD systems can be described with one set of nonlinear differential equations and experimentally investigated with, for example, a chemical tabletop model system, the Belousov-Zhabotinsky reaction or with match sticks.

I will give an overview of this research field and present two projects which are also relevant to research in the Physics Department at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

School of Physics Soft Condensed Matter Seminar: Prof. Thorsten Ritz, University of California, Irvine

Migratory birds and other animals possess a physiological magnetic compass that helps them to find directions, but the biophysical mechanism underlying this ability remains a mystery. One currently much discussed hypothesis is that light-induced magnetically sensitive radical pair reactions may provide the first step of a magnetic signal.

While this mechanism is well understood in principle, generic radical pairs require magnetic fields about an order of magnitude above the geomagnetic field for effects to be observed. We will discuss what factors optimize sensitivity of radical pairs and address experimental support for the radical pair hypothesis.

A candidate molecule is the blue-green light photoreceptor cryptochrome. We will present recent attempts to observe magnetic field effects on in vivo read outs of cryptochrome activity in biological cells as a step towards an elucidation of magnetic signal transduction and, possibly, magnetogenetic approaches.

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

School of Physics Nonlinear Science & Mathematical Physics Seminar: Prof. Sungyon Lee, University of Minnesota

An inclusion of non-colloidal particles in a Newtonian liquid can fundamentally change the interfacial dynamics and even cause interfacial instabilities. In this talk, we report a particle-induced fingering instability when a mixture of particles and viscous oil is injected radially into a Hele-Shaw cell. 

Our experimental results show that the onset and characteristics of fingering are most directly affected by the particle volume fraction but also depend on the ratio of the particle diameter to gap size. In particular, the formation of a particle band is observed on the interface only when the particle diameter is comparable to the channel gap thickness. 

This work demonstrates the complex coupling between suspensions and fluid-fluid interfaces and has broad relevance in suspension processing, particle self-assembly, and oil recovery processes. The physical mechanism behind the instability and a quantitative model are also discussed

School of Physics Soft Condensed Matter & Physics of Living Systems Seminar: Prof. Max Lavrentovich, University of Tennessee

Certain non-equilibrium systems, including growing microbial colonies, amorphous solids under oscillatory shear, turbulent liquid crystals, and avalanches undergo dynamical phase transitions across which we observe fluctuating, active regions of the system either propagate and grow with time, or go extinct, forcing the system into an absorbing state. 

We will focus on such transitions in two very different systems: a microbial colony in which a fit strain irreversibly converts to a less fit one (leading to the possibility of strain extinction), and a dense, amorphous solid under oscillatory shear. In the case of the microbial colony, we show that the spatial distribution and geometry of the colony profoundly impacts the phase transition, with spatial fluctuations driving extinction of the fit strain. 

In the driven amorphous solid, we show that the dynamical phase transition competes with another phase transition at which the solid loses rigidity: the jamming point.  We show that as the jamming point is approached, the absorbing states associated with reversible, quiescent dynamical behavior become more and more complex.