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.
Here are two items that relate to David Hu's previous Georgia Tech research on the ability of fire ants to form rafts made of, well, fire ants in order to stay afloat and alive during floods. Hu, an adjunct professor in the Schools of Biological Sciences and Physics, who is also a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, took closeup photographs of the fire ants in his lab experiments with graduate student Nathan J. Mlot. Meanwhile, in the Overhead at the National Geographic podcast, photographer Anand Varma describes shooting Hu's fire ants during a separate visit to Georgia Tech. (National Geographic photos require registration.)
college of engineering; Lauren steimle; Meghan Meredith; isye; NSF; NSF grfp; graduate research 2021-02-03T00:00:00-05:00Physicist Elisabetta Matsumoto is an avid knitter and has been since taking up the hobby as a child. Matsumoto, now at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, is teasing out the mathematical rules that dictate how stitches impart such unique properties to fabrics.
University of Arizona 2021-01-26T00:00:00-05:00Each year, the University System of Georgia (USG) honors outstanding teachers and departments from its 26 member institutions with Regents Awards. Of the nine awards presented for Fiscal Year 2021, Georgia Tech took home two.
The Writing and Communication Program (WCP) won the Teaching Excellence Award for Department or Program, and School of Physics Interim Chair and Professor Michael Schatz was the unanimous choice for the Award for Excellence in Online Teaching.
Read more on Schatz's award here.
Professional Master's in public safety and occupational health 2021-01-14T00:00:00-05:00For the graduate students and researchers coming to the United States from other countries, the opportunity to study at Georgia Tech is invaluable. But for the spouses who come along with them, it can be a lonely struggle. This feature on the Georgia Tech International Spouses' Group, which provides support for wives and husbands of Institute scientists, features a couple working in the lab of Flavio Fenton, professor in the School of Physics.
We’re not just spouses: Stories of international spouses at Georgia Tech 2021-01-13T00:00:00-05:00Martin Mourigal, associate professor in the School of Physics, gives Redac France Culture and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development an overview of Georgia Tech's Covid-19 testing and surveillance system. (Note: French langauge content.)
Elijah (Eli) Mehlferber 2021-01-12T00:00:00-05:00That's the title of a recently-published biography written by Andrew Zangwill, professor in the School of Physics. Nobel Prize-winner Philip Anderson was considered one of the most influential physicists of the late 20th century, helping to put condensed matter physics on the scientific map. Zangwill also presented a 73-minute virtual lecture on his findings on Anderson in October 2020. It can be found here on the Georgia Tech MediaSpace site.
Storage Farms 2021-01-08T00:00:00-05:00The famous Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, the site of many astronomical accomplishments, including the discovery of the whirling stars known as pulsars, collapsed in early December. Georgia Tech scientists John Wise and Emily Alicea-Munoz, both with the School of Physics, shared their special memories of Arecibo for Puerto Rican television. (Note: the television feature is in Spanish.)
fossil fridays 2020-12-13T00:00:00-05:00This paper refined the current understanding of how fish navigate their underwater world could provide insights that can be applied to underwater robots, according to Science News. Robots are often designed with separate apparatus for movement and sensing, but, as Simon Sponberg, a biophysicist at the Georgia Tech, tells Science News, “biology puts sensors on everything.”
Pranav Kulkarni 2020-11-09T00:00:00-05:00Luckily, a team of researchers from Georgia Tech's Center for Relativistic Astrophysics recently conducted simulations that show what the formation of the first stars looked like. The study that describes their findings, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, was led by Gen Chiaki and John Wise – a post-doctoral researcher and associate professor from the CfRA (respectively).
Advanced Research Projects Agency-Energy 2020-11-08T00:00:00-05:00Physicists and biologists challenge a prevailing evolutionary theory that single-celled organisms can only evolve to become multicellular life forms if doing so increases their overall productivity.
“Rather than each cell producing what it needs, specialised cells need to be able to trade with each other. Previous work suggests that this only happens as long as the overall group’s productivity keeps increasing,” explains lead author David Yanni, PhD student at Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, US.
naclo 2020-11-03T00:00:00-05:00“We can’t see the very first generations of stars,” said study co-author John Wise, an associate professor at the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics at Georgia Tech. “Therefore, it’s important to actually look at these living fossils from the early universe, because they have the fingerprints of the first stars all over them through the chemicals that were produced in the supernova from the first stars.”
Brett Aiello 2020-10-29T00:00:00-04:00"We performed simulations of black-hole collisions using supercomputers and then compared the rapidly changing shape of the remnant black hole to the gravitational waves it emits." Christopher Evans, co-author and graduate student from the Georgia Institute of Technology, said.
Read more:
Ars Technica
Futurism
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Events
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Justin Burton | Emory UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
Soft Matter Seminar| Prof. Justin Burton | Emory UN | Host: Dr. Itamar Kolvin
School of Physics Fall Colloquium Series- Dr. Zhenghan Wang(UCSB)
Dr. Zhenghan Wang(UCSB) Topological fault-tolerance in quantum computing
Special CRA SEMINAR| Prof. Paz Beniamini | The Open UN of Israel | Host: Prof. David Ballantyne
Special CRA SEMINAR| Prof. Paz Beniamini | The Open UN of Israel | Host: Prof. David Ballantyne
State of the School Address- Dr. Feryal Ozel
Dr. Feryal Ozel- GA Tech School of Physics Chair
CRA SEMINAR | Vikram Manikantan | UN of Arizona | Host: Dr. Matthew Liska
CRA SEMINAR | Vikram Manikantan | UN of Arizona | Host: Dr. Matthew Liska
Georgia Tech Space Week
A campus-wide celebration of innovation in the space domain, bringing together academia, industry, and government.
Experts in the News
Researchers 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 2026-04-28T00:00:00-04:00Research led by Georgia Tech physicist Itamar Kolvin has found that the presence of small imperfections or heterogeneities in materials can have a dual effect on their strength and resilience. While heterogeneities were historically believed to make materials stronger by creating an obstacle course for cracks, the new study shows that in some complex materials, heterogeneities can actually accelerate crack propagation and weaken the overall structure. The findings have implications for how engineers design and reinforce materials to optimize their toughness.
Atlanta Today 2026-02-27T00:00:00-05:00
