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.
A snake-like robot has been developed that can burrow through sand or loose soil. Researchers at the University of California Santa Barbara & Georgia Institute of Technology have taken their cues from plants & animals that have evolved to navigate subterranean spaces. They say they have "developed a fast, controllable soft robot that can burrow through sand.” The team is working on a project with NASA to develop burrowing for the moon or even more distant bodies, like Enceladus, a moon of Jupiter. The Geogia Tech researchers, all from the School of Physics, include Dunn Family Professor Dan Goldman, former undergraduate research assistant Mason Murray-Cooper, postdoctoral researcher Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin, and research engineer Enes Aydin.
stick-slip motion 2021-06-18T00:00:00-04:00Researchers from Georgia Tech and the University of Tennessee–Knoxville uncovered hidden and unexpected quantum behavior in a rather simple iron-iodide material (FeI2) that was discovered almost a century ago. The new research insights into the material's behavior were enabled using a combination of neutron scattering experiments and theoretical physics calculations at the Department of Energy's (DOE's) Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). The team's findings—published in the journal Nature Physics—solves a 40-year-old puzzle about the material's mysterious behavior and could be used as a map to unlock a treasure trove of quantum phenomena in other materials. The paper's lead author is Xiaojian Bai, an ORNL postdoctoral fellow who received his Ph.D. from the School of Physics. The Georgia Tech-based co-authors are Associate Professor Martin Mourigal and Postdoctoral Fellow Zhilang Dun.
Katherine Roberts 2021-05-20T00:00:00-04:00For the most part, animals don't get heart attacks — not even one of our closest living relatives, chimpanzees. Nonhuman animals experience other cardiac problems, but as far as scientists know, heart attacks are rare in other creatures. One of the scientists looking into this is Flavio Fenton, professor in the School of Physics, who has conducted extensive research into cardiac dynamics in humans and animals.
Do other animals get heart attacks? 2021-05-09T00:00:00-04:00A team of researchers led by Dana Randall, ADVANCE Professor in the College of Computing, and Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics, sought to show that even the simplest of robots can still accomplish tasks well beyond the capabilities of one, or even a few, of them. (This item is a reprint of a College of Sciences story on Goldman's research using "BOBbots.")
Title IX logo 2021-05-08T00:00:00-04:00Researchers from Georgia Tech have been conducting experiments designed to show the simplest of robots can still accomplish tasks. The team created a group of robots they call BOBbots, which stands for “behaving, organizing, buzzing bots.” One of the researchers in Dan Goldman, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics.
CoC Career Services; OEC; Office of Outreach Enrollment and Community; career fair 2021-05-04T00:00:00-04:00Free electron lasers (FELs), which are driven by kilometer-long linear accelerators, emit bursts of short-wavelength light lasting one quadrillionth of a second. As a result, they can act as strobe lights for viewing the fastest events in nature — atomic or molecular motion — and therefore promise to revolutionize our understanding of almost any kind of matter. New research shows how to measure the super-short bursts of high-frequency light emitted from FELs. One of the co-authors of this study is Rick Trebino, professor in the School of Physics.
FITRE 2021-04-14T00:00:00-04:00Georgia Tech's Daniel Goldman gets credit here for the idea of using a certain plant root-mimicking robot for a study on molecular and mechanical strategies that roots have for navigating through soil. The School of Physics professor knew of the robot developed by UC-Santa Barbara's Elliott Hawkes, “and realized it would make a nice model of the real biological system,” Hawkes says. Goldman joined a team of Duke University researchers on the project.
reconfigurable transceivers 2021-03-12T00:00:00-05:00A new study heralds the discovery of Gliese 486 b, an exoplanet in Earth's cosmic neighborhood with an atmosphere, which could help in the search for other primordial atmospheres around small rocky planets. The news has Inverse calling up a previous story on exoplanet research featuring Billy Quarles, a research scientist with Georgia Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics.
Murder Mystery 2021-03-04T00:00:00-05:00This SciTechDaily item is a reprint of a Georgia Tech news release on School of Physics Professor Flavio Fenton and his continuing research into electric cardio signals and arrhythmias. In a study Fenton co-authored, it was found that alligator hearts don't suffer from fibrillations (irregular heartbeats) in the same way that humans do. (The title of Fenton's research paper? “Defibrillate you later, alligator; Q10 scaling and refractoriness keeps alligators from fibrillation.") The study is also highlighted in this Phys.org story.
Title IX logo 2021-02-22T00:00:00-05:00By using time-lapse footage, along with a root-like robot to test ideas, researchers at Duke University and Georgia Tech gained new insights into how and why plant root tips twirl as they grow. The Georgia Tech researchers, all from the School of Physics, are Dan Goldman, Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin, and Mason Murray-Cooper.
Uriarte 2021-02-19T00:00:00-05:00Wired Magazine burrows deeper into how two Georgia Tech researchers from the School of Physics studied California blackworms' collective behavior. The idea is to see how that behavior could lead to building intelligent swarms of robots, or programmable active matter -- materials that can change shape, just like the blobs of blackworms studied by professor Dan Goldman and postdoctoral researcher Yasemin Ozkan-Aydin.
in solidarity 2021-02-17T00:00:00-05:00A new Georgia Tech study that recreated California blackworm swarming activity in simple robots is generating interest in science/engineering media outlets, including this story in Interesting Engineering. The study includes work by Dan Goldman, professor in the School of Physics. IEEE Spectrum also mentioned the study in its weekly Video Friday segment.
we lived happily during the war 2021-02-15T00:00:00-05:00- ‹ previous
- 12 of 24
- next ›
Events
Special Condensed Matter Seminar | Tuesday, October 20, 2026 11:00am - 12:30pm | Speaker: Prof. Ignacio Salgado Linares | Host Dr. Mourigal | Howey N201/N202
Title: Thermal Transport and Chiral Spectroscopy from Semiclassical Spin Dynamics.
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Kimberly Weirich | Clemson UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Kimberly Weirich | Clemson UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
CRA SEMINAR | Federico Testagrossa | DESY Zeuthen | Host: David A. Raudales O.
CRA SEMINAR | Federico Testagrossa | DESY Nat'l Institution | Host: David A. Raudales O.
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.
The Ever-Changing Georgia Coast with President Emeritus G. Wayne Clough
Join us for a special author conversation, reading, and Q&A followed by a book-signing reception with refreshments, Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow swag, and drawing for signed books.
2026 College of Sciences Homecoming Tailgate
Reconnect with fellow College of Sciences alumni, friends, faculty, and students while enjoying food, drinks, and Georgia Tech spirit.
School of Physics Fall Colloquium Series- Dr. Andreas Karch(UT Austin)
Dr. Andreas Karch(UT Austin) Making the Great Desert Bloom
Experts in the News
In an article published by The Conversation, Shiladitya Banerjee, associate professor in the School of Physics, discusses new research suggesting that single bacterial cells exhibit learning-like behavior in changing environments.
This article was also published by The Scientist.
The Conversation 2026-09-10T00:00:00-04:00If 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 2026-05-22T00:00:00-04:00
