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 pressing quest in the field of nanoelectronics is the search for a material that could replace silicon. Graphene has seemed promising for decades. But, its potential faltered along the way, due to damaging processing methods and the lack of a new electronics paradigm to embrace it. With silicon nearly maxed out in its ability to accommodate faster computing, the next big nanoelectronics platform is needed now more than ever. Walter de Heer, Regents’ Professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology, has taken a critical step forward in making the case for a successor to silicon. De Heer and his collaborators, including Claire Berger, fellow School of Physics professor, developed a new nanoelectronics platform based on graphene — a single sheet of carbon atoms.
Making the case for a successor to silicon 2023-02-02T00:00:00-05:00Comet Lulin, a rare green comet discovered in 2007, is set to make its closest approach to the Earth around Feb. 24. The comet's green color comes from the gases that make up its atmosphere. Its closest approach to Earth will be 38 million miles. James Sowell, principal academic professional in the School of Physics and director of the Georgia Tech Observatory, joins Atlanta News First to talk about the best times to view the comet, where it may have originated, and how rare green comets are in the universe.
Green comet will pass by Earth this month 2023-02-01T00:00:00-05:00Elisabetta Matsumoto, an associate professor in the School of Physics, will present “Knotty Knits: A Chat about Math and Crafts” beginning at 3 p.m. March 3, at Southern Illinois University's Guyon Auditorium. Matsumoto, whose research interests include soft condensed matter physics and the geometry of materials, uses knitting to illustrate the math and mechanics within the craft, and how studying the physics of knitting could lead to applications such as wearable electronics.
SIU’s Tenney lecture to focus on interdisciplinary teaching of math, art and science 2023-01-27T00:00:00-05:00Pushing a shovel through snow, planting an umbrella on the beach, wading through a ball pit, and driving over gravel all have one thing in common: They all are exercises in intrusion, with an intruding object exerting some force to move through a soft and granular material. Predicting what it takes to push through sand, gravel, or other soft media can help engineers drive a rover over Martian soil, anchor a ship in rough seas, and walk a robot through sand and mud. But modeling the forces involved in such processes is a huge computational challenge that often takes days to weeks to solve. Now, engineers at the Massachusette Institute of Technology and Georgia Tech have found a faster and simpler way to model intrusion through any soft, flowable material. Daniel Goldman, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics, joined MIT researchers for this project.
How to push, wiggle, or drill an object through granular material 2023-01-19T00:00:00-05:00This roundup of news items includes a report updating research on graphene, a possible successor to silicon as the foundation for all electronics, from Walter de Heer, Regent's Professor in the School of Physics. De Heer's latest advance involves developing a new nanoelectronics platform based on graphene. The technology is compatible with conventional microelectronics manufacturing, a necessity for any viable alternative to silicon. In the course of its research, de Heer's team may have also discovered a new quasiparticle. Their discovery could lead to manufacturing smaller, faster, more efficient, and more sustainable computer chips, and has potential implications for quantum and high-performance computing.
Around the Web: Marketing Muster. Creating Crayons. Joe’s Journalism. Going Graphene. Feather Photography. Car Colors. Checking Chuckling. Fish Fiasco. 2023-01-06T00:00:00-05:00Is science better when it disrupts or when there are just incremental improvements to previous knowledge? The topic was analyzed in a recent study, and it seems that researchers have spent these past years improving things rather than trying to revolutionize everything. The study suggests that the level of "disruptiveness" in scientific research has gone way down in the 2000s compared to the last half-century. Yian Yin, a computational social scientist at Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois, highlights how disruptiveness is not inherently good, and incremental science is not necessarily bad. Yin cites the first direct observation of gravitational waves, a landmark discovery that was both revolutionary and the product of incremental science. Georgia Tech researchers, many from the School of Physics, worked with researchers at the Laser Interferomoter Gravitational Wave Observatory (LIGO) on the gravitational wave observations. (This coverage also appeared in Nature and Inside Higher Education.)
Science isn't as disruptive as it used to be. Now we need to understand why 2023-01-05T00:00:00-05:00Skipping a stone across water requires skill and patience and, of course, a great stone. Personal preference may send you to a flat, light one, which seems to skip easier. But scientists have found that is not the only way to get impressive leaps. A recent University of Bristol study researched how shape and mass affect the way objects interact with water. And it found that a heavier rock with a good curve — imagine the shape of a mango but smaller — can get an impressive bounce. David Hu, a professor with the School of Biological Sciences and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and an adjunct professor in the School of Physics, did not take part in the study but comments on how surprised he was that the Bristol scientists studied curved objects.
Heavier, curvy stones can give surprising results in skipping, physicists say 2023-01-05T00:00:00-05:00Henry Segerman, a British American mathematician and mathematical artist at Oklahoma State University, has invented a puzzle to help explain the Earth's annual trip around the sun: Continental Drift, a 3-D sliding puzzle that made its debut earlier this year. The underlying geometric concept is holonomy: When you travel a loop on a curved surface and return to the starting point, you arrive somewhat turned around, rotated, perhaps by 180 degrees. It's just one of Segerman's inventions that help visualize mathematics. A few years ago, Dr. Segerman demonstrated Extensors: a construction kit for making extending mechanisms from scissor-like hinged parts. Sabetta Matsumoto, an associate professor in the School of Physics, applied mathematician, and Dr. Segerman’s partner, gave input into the contraption’s development and came up with the name Extensor. Between them, math is “a pretty common conversation,” said Matsumoto, who was featured in a 2019 New York Times story about her project to investigate the mathematics and mechanics of knitting. (This story also appears in Yahoo! News.)
A New Puzzle Turns Earth Into a Rubik’s Cube, but More Complex 2023-01-01T00:00:00-05:00In this episode of the Talk Nerdy podcast, host Cara Santa Maria is joined by Feryal Özel, professor and chair of the School of Physics. They talk about her incredible career as a theoretical astrophysicist, her important work on the recent imaging of a black hole with the Event Horizon Telescope (EHT) Collaboration, and the critical need for representation in science.
Black Hole Astrophysics w/ Feryal Özel 2022-12-19T00:00:00-05:00The Artemis 1 mission to the Moon, launched from Kennedy Space Center on Nov. 16, did not have astronauts on board. It did have what NASA is calling "moonikins" — dummies wearing special spacesuits that will measure data on vibration, acceleration, and cosmic radiation. Thomas Orlando, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and an adjunct professor in the School of Physics, will study that data. Orlando is also the principal investigator for Georgia Tech's REVEALS (Radiation Effects On Volatiles And Exploration Of Asteroids And Lunar Surfaces), which will help NASA design the next generation of spacesuits and astronaut habitats.
How Artemis rocket launch will prepare astronauts to head back to moon 2022-11-19T00:00:00-05:00Scientists with the IceCube Neutrino Observatory in Antarctica have now analyzed a decade's worth of such neutrino detections and discovered evidence that an active galaxy called Messier 77 (aka the Squid Galaxy) is a strong candidate for one such high-energy neutrino emitter, according to a new paper published in the journal Science. It brings astrophysicists one step closer to resolving the mystery of the origin of high-energy cosmic rays. The IceCube international collaboration of scientists includes Ignacio Taboada, professor in the School of Physics who also serves as IceCube's spokesperson. (Coverage of this story also appears at Space.com, MSN.com, the Wall Street Journal (registration required), Phys.org, CNET, SciTechDaily, and Inverse.)
IceCube neutrino analysis pegs possible galactic source for cosmic rays 2022-11-04T00:00:00-04:00Most people may think of bacteria, regardless of species and shape, as a single cell, or maybe several free-living cells. The problem with this image, according to microbiologists, is that it doesn’t reflect how most bacteria are likely to live. Often, bacteria use sticky molecules to anchor themselves to a surface, growing in collectives called biofilms. A new study shows that even bacteria floating in the open ocean, which lack an anchoring point for forming large conglomerates, exist in multicellular forms. The study builds on 2021 published research from Georgia Tech scientists that showed unicellular yeast forming multicellular clusters. The School of Biological Sciences researchers include Ozan Bozdag, research scientist; William Ratcliff, associate professor; Kai Tong, Ph.D. Quantitative Biosciences student, and Penelope Kahn. School of Physics researchers involved include Peter Yunker, assistant professor; Thomas C. Day, graduate student; and Seyed Alireza Zamani-Dahaj, Ph.D. student.
Ocean Bacteria Reveal an Unexpected Multicellular Form 2022-11-02T00:00:00-04:00- ‹ previous
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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
