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.
Should Ph.D. students put their research work on hold for internships? It can be a challenge, but this story argues for its consideration. The real-world experience one acquires as an intern can help round out research students' résumés, give them an early taste of the professional world, and provide them with networking opportunities. Margot Paez, a Ph.D. student in the School of Physics, recounts her experiences interning at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory during summer and winter breaks.
college of engineering; ISyE; fellowships; grad students; student awards; orise; cdc 2017-08-02T00:00:00-04:00The latest research led by David Hu on fire ants and their tower-building capabilities is compelling enough on its own. But video really adds a "wow" factor to it, and this Vox entry is a great example. In addition to an interview with Hu, it also has lab video showing living blobs of entangled ants being handled by researchers like they were lumps of Play-Doh. Hu is an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics.
Ramblin' Royalty 2017-07-25T00:00:00-04:00When fire ants studied by David Hu escaped his Georgia Tech lab and invaded a nearby professor's office, their method of breaking out – building an Eiffel Tower-shaped structure out of their own bodies – became part of Hu's research. That's how this New York Times story begins regarding Hu's new study of ant tower-building abilities. (Here's a New York Times video on Hu's research.) Quartz also covered the study; its story describes how speeding up the research video of the ants provided a better look at how the insects cycled themselves through the tower-building process. Hu is an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics.
Blanchard Early Career Professorship 2017-07-17T00:00:00-04:00
It's a story right up Science Friday's alley: the remarkable ability of fire ants to build soaring towers out of their own bodies. The new research from School of Biological Sciences Associate Professor David Hu gives public radio host Ira Flatow a chance to ask Hu not only about ant engineering, but also about what a fellow Tech professor thought when things got a little antsy in his office. Hu is also an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics.
John Lewis Student Center 2017-07-14T00:00:00-04:00
New research focusing on the remarkable tower-building abilities of fire ants continues to attract attention from top media outlets, such as this story from the Washington Post. Also, study co-author Craig Tovey, a professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, takes us behind the scenes of the research in this post for The Conversation. David Hu also worked on the study. Hu is an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. He is also an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics.
graduation 2023 2017-07-13T00:00:00-04:00Ants as energetic engineers – that's clear from the latest study led by School of Biological Sciences Associate Professor David Hu. The work reveals in great detail how fire ants can build Eiffel Tower-like structures with their own bodies. Applications could lead to structure-building robots. This New York Times video shows off the Tech research team's experiments, including an X-ray video highlighting the ants' remarkable ability to quickly build wide-base towers. Hu is also an associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and an adjunct associate professor in the School of Physics.
Extension of Self 2017-07-12T00:00:00-04:00For the past nine years, Georgia Tech President G.P. "Bud" Peterson, along with faculty and other Institute officials, have taken summer tours of the state to meet with business leaders, lawmakers, alumni, and others with an interest in Tech's mission. This year's tour of South Georgia is the most extensive yet: nearly 1,000 miles, 44 counties, and 12 cities. The Tech entourage includes School of Physics Professor Deirdre Shoemaker, who at 1:48 into the video talks about what she hopes to learn on the tour.
sophia university 2017-06-21T00:00:00-04:00
The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO), an international group of scientists that includes Georgia Tech researchers, is being recognized for its recent work confirming the existence of gravitational waves. The Princess of Asturias Foundation, established by Spain's monarchy to celebrate worldwide achievement in the arts and sciences, has announced that LIGO and its founders/principal investigators will receive the Princess of Asturias Award for Science and Technical Achievement during ceremonies in October. The award puts LIGO in good company; previous winners include primatologist Jane Goodall, human genome pioneer Craig Venter, Internet founding fathers Vinton Cerf and Tim Berners-Lee, and physicist Peter Higgs (of Higgs boson fame.) Laura Cadonati, School of Physics associate professor, is the deputy spokesperson for LIGO.
phased array systems 2017-06-14T00:00:00-04:00Here is Yahoo! News reprinting a Reuters story on the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO) and its recent announcement that it had detected a third gravitational wave signal. This particular ripple through space and time originated from a black hole collision approximately 3 billion light-years from Earth. Georgia Tech researchers are well-represented within LIGO, and Laura Cadonati, professor in the School of Physics, is the international research team's deputy spokesperson.
Jerel Harris 2017-06-01T00:00:00-04:00
A "black hole tango," the imagery in the headline for this Science story, hints at the implications of the latest news coming from the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). The international team of scientists, which includes Georgia Tech faculty and students, says it has recorded evidence of a third black hole collision and the gravitational waves it produced. "These black holes are not like two aligned tornadoes orbiting each other, but like two tilted tornadoes," says Laura Cadonati, School of Physics associate professor and LIGO deputy spokesperson, adding that the research may prompt new theories regarding how these massive collapsing stars pair up in the first place. The latest LIGO findings are also covered at Space.com and National Geographic.
sustainability award 2017-06-01T00:00:00-04:00
More than a dozen Georgia Tech faculty members, students, and postdoctoral fellows are working with the large international research team that makes up the Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO). This is the team that made its own splash in the science world in 2015 with the first detection of a gravitational wave signal, the result of a black hole collision 1.5 billion light years from Earth. Now LIGO announces that a third gravitational wave was observed and confirmed in January from even farther away: about 3 billion light years. Once again, Albert Einstein has been proven right, and once again the science media can't resist a story that features black holes acting mysteriously and ripples of space and time flying through the cosmos at lightspeed. In addition to this USA Today story, coverage includes the Washington Post, BBC News, Scientific American, The Verge and Phys.org, among others. School of Physics associate professor Laura Cadonati is LIGO's deputy spokesperson, and research scientist James Clark from the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics worked on the latest discovery.
sustainable fuels 2017-06-01T00:00:00-04:00
This story does indeed sing the praises of the humble honeybee, focusing on special Atlanta projects designed to study and provide homes for our four-winged pollen pals. One of those is the Georgia Tech Urban Honeybee Project, located on the roof of Clough Undergraduate Learning Center. That's where Jennifer Leavey, program director and senior academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences, rules the hives. The story also mentions a recent study from School of Biological Sciences associate professor David Hu, who used the Project to research honeybee hairs and the role they play in pollen collection.
All hail the bee 2017-05-11T00:00:00-04:00- ‹ previous
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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
