Thackery Brown has always viewed the mysteries of the human mind as “black box problems.” The assistant professor in the School of Psychology specializes in cognitive neuroscience because it enables him “to get behind the curtain and understand why cognition succeeds and fails, and potentially study ways of improving it.”

Cognition, the mental process of acquiring, using, and storing knowledge, will continue to dominate Brown’s research, thanks to a two-year funding grant from the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation, which has awarded $20 million since its founding in 2006 to research projects that “will lead to significant advances in medicine or scientific knowledge.”

It's part of a busy season for Brown. In addition to the Curci funding, he's just received a research grant from the National Institute on Aging, and he and members of his lab just published a new study on memory recall and spatial navigation. 

The Curci grant “is a great honor,” Brown says. “One of the challenges, especially among young scientists, is having opportunities to do research that’s really on the cutting edge of our field. That’s where it’s more high-risk, high-reward. It’s harder to support big ideas, especially when you’re junior faculty, so this is a great opportunity to get at the forefront of the field’s biggest questions.”

A priority for the Curci Foundation is research dealing with neuroscience and brain science, which lends to the title for Brown’s Curci research project: "Establishing the neural mechanisms behind our cognitive maps through development of a virtual reality and closed-loop neurofeedback platform.”

Cognitive maps are how we view the layout of our physical environment in our minds, and learning more about how we construct them and encode the information in them into memory is key to treating Alzheimer’s and other memory-related disorders, as well as the normal aging process.

What Brown has proposed “could potentially change the way we approach memory research,” he says. Brown wants to combine traditional brain imaging tools like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and electroencephalography (EEG) with machine learning in a unique way. 

“The idea here would be to develop a neurofeedback system, where essentially if we can read out signatures that the brain is attempting to create, we can feed-back stimuli to the brain that can enhance or strengthen those neural signatures.”

Machine learning would allow this to happen in real time. “It could start to interpret neural signals as they’re coming out of the recording device, rather than the researcher needing to go offline and crunch numbers, which is worthless if you’re trying to change someone’s neural function in situ, or as they’re engaged in it.”

Mind-mapping our environments 

In addition to the Curci funding, Brown is also part of a research team whose study, “Episodic memory integration shapes value-based decision-making in spatial navigation”, will soon be published in the Journal of Experimental Psychology: Learning, Memory, and Cognition. The team is made up of Georgia Tech School of Psychology and School of Economics researchers, and the accepted manuscript version of the study was published online April 7. 

The team includes postdoctoral fellow Qiliang He, research assistants Elizabeth Beveridge, Lou Eschapasse, and Vanessa Vargas, all from the School of Psychology; and doctoral candidate Jancy Liu from the School of Economics. All are members of Brown’s Memory Affect Planning (MAP) Lab.

Spatial navigation — knowing where you are, how you got there, and how to get to another destination — is a key cognitive ability. Brown’s research team wanted to know what factors go into the choices humans make when navigating based on memories. Participants learned where various objects were in a virtual environment, and then decided whether to reach those goals from familiar starting locations or unpredictable ones,

“We created a (computational) model of just how much people were integrating prior experiences into their current choices,” Brown says. “We’re hopeful this is a new tool for the field. It may be used for other types of tasks like interpreting neuroimaging data, for example — how much of this behavior or brain activity is being influenced by prior experiences?”

Brown says the recent study is similar to the kind of research he’ll work on with the Curci funding. “What we want to do in the Curci award is try to strengthen people’s mental maps of their environments. The current theory that people broadly hold is that our cognitive maps of environments really come about by integrating different (memory) episodes. When you have two navigational experiences and they cross paths, you stick them together and you start to build a little map.”

The published study tries to determine how good people are in integrating all their different experiences into their cognitive maps, and the decisions that are then made based on that information. “In the Curci award, we want to try to zoom in on the neural signature of the maps themselves, and try to strengthen them to lead to better performance.”

NIH National Institute on Aging grant

Brown was notified in early May that he had won another cognitive neuroscience-related grant, this one a five-year award from the National Institute on Aging (NIA), one of the 27 institutes and research centers that make up the National Institutes of Health.

Brown says the NIA research mission is related to the Curci award. While that grant is more concerned with state-of-the-art method development and understanding cognitive map neural signals by manipulating them, the NIA grant focuses on how the structure of our environment, like the layouts of buildings and roads, is stored by the brain.

“The grant also asks two questions,” Brown adds. “Can we understand individual differences in navigation ability by studying the way our brain stores this structure information? And can differences in how people's spatial memory declines with age be understood in part by how fragmented their neural maps of their environment are?

“This is another huge honor for me. It will support my lab and research program for five years, and combined with the Curci this support touches on many of the big questions about how humans are able to plan and navigate their lives.”

DOI: https://doi.apa.org/doiLanding?doi=10.1037%2Fxlm0001133

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/35389701/

Funding for the Journal of Experimental Psychology study was provided by the National Institutes of Health and their National Institute on Aging, and the Warren Alpert Foundation.

This school year, dozens of College of Sciences undergraduate students have been recognized across Georgia Tech and beyond for significant academic achievements and excellence, including several honored during Tech’s Student Honors Celebration, held on April 21 at the Academy of Medicine.

College of Sciences graduate students and researchers have also been recognized with Georgia Tech Teaching Assistant Awards and special certificates during the Institute’s Teaching Assistant (TA) and Future Faculty Award ceremonies, held on April 20 at the Bill Moore Student Success Center.

Please join us in congratulating these special recipients across our community:

Love Family Foundation Award

Yashvardhan Tomar, a double major in the School of Physics and the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, is the recipient of one of the highest academic honors given to a Georgia Tech graduating senior, the Love Family Foundation Award. 

The accolade is made possible by a generous grant from the Gay and Erskine Love Foundation, and recognizes the undergraduate student with the most outstanding scholastic record of all members of the class. 

Each of Georgia Tech’s six colleges nominates its top graduating student, and the winner is ultimately selected by the academic associate deans in coordination with the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE). 

“I find myself at a loss for words to truly convey how grateful I feel to the institute for selecting me for this really high honor,” Tomar says.

“I still remember my first day as a freshman at Tech—a young boy beyond-eager to learn so many new things and get involved in so much exciting research—an excitement that has stayed with me since," he shares.

"The news of this award comes as a strong boost of encouragement and appreciation to propel with me strengthened promise towards the fulfillment of my aspirations. I express my most heartfelt thanks to everyone who invested their belief in my candidature for this highly prestigious award.”

Roger M. Wartell and Stephen E. Brossette Award for Multidisciplinary Studies in Biology, Physics, and Mathematics

This award is presented to an undergraduate student with demonstrated accomplishments at the interface of biology with either physics or mathematics. The award was established by a generous donation from alumnus Stephen E. Brossette in recognition of the many contributions of Roger M. Wartell to the Georgia Institute of Technology.

The 2022 winner, Lila Nassar, is a physics major with a concentration in the physics of living systems. Nassar has a broad set of research experiences with faculty Martin Mourigal and Jennifer Curtis in the School of Physics. Nassar has also served as the secretary and president of the Georgia Tech Society of Women in Physics.

“Lila has broad interests and lots of ambition,” says Curtis. “She brings both an intensity that is useful for driving forward progress and dealing with setbacks. She brings that same fire and energy to her role as president of the Society of Women in Physics.”

In summer 2021, Nassar also participated in a National Science Foundation Research Experience for Undergraduates program at Vanderbilt University.

A. Joyce Nickelson and John C. Sutherland Undergraduate Research Award 

This award was created by the endowment gift of Joyce E. Nickelson and John C. Sutherland to honor Joyce’s late mother, alumna A. Joyce Nickelson, and Sutherland. The scholarship, which recognizes excellence at the interface of mathematics and physics, is awarded to an undergraduate student who has jointly studied mathematics and physics, and who has engaged in scientific research.

Nickelson-Sutherland award winner Sarah Eisenstadt is completing majors in physics and mathematics, and also studies applied languages and intercultural studies.

Eisenstadt has completed research with Michael Loss in the School of Mathematics on mathematical physics and the development of an energy functional to describe superconductivity, and with Stephanie Boulard on the artist Marc Chagall. She has also served as a teaching assistant for linear algebra and multivariable calculus. 

Cynthia L. Bossart and James Efron Scholarship 

This honor was created by alumna Cindy Bossart to recognize high academic achievement by a student in the College of Sciences who is a non-Georgia resident. 

The 2022-3 recipient of this award, Sena Ghobadi, is a resident of Florida who graduated from American Heritage School in Broward County. Ghobadi has made a strong start as a first-year as a physics major at Georgia Tech: she has already begun work as a teaching assistant for Physics 2211. 

Metha Phingbodhipakkiya Memorial Scholarship 

This honor was established by Maranee Phingbodhipakkiya to honor her father, his love for physics, and the sacrifices he made to assure that she would have the finest education. This award is made to a junior or senior in the College of Sciences based on academic merit.

The recipient of this award, Nabojeet Das, is a graduate of Tucker High School and is a candidate for the Bachelor of Science in Biology with the Research Option designation and Biologically Inspired Design certificate.

Das has served as a teaching assistant for the introductory Organismal Biology course, and as a resident assistant for Georgia Tech Housing. His research with Aniruddh Sarkar, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, focuses on the creation of small and portable biosensors for Covid-19 and other diseases.

He has presented his research at a meeting of the Biomedical Engineering Society. Das is a member of DramaTech, the Minority Association of Premed Students, and Buzz Mobile Health. 

Virginia C. and Herschel V. Clanton Jr. Scholarship 

This scholarship was established by alumnus Herschel V. Clanton Jr. to honor his wife, Virginia. The scholarship is awarded annually to a student in the College of Sciences who has demonstrated outstanding academic achievement.

The 2022 recipient of the Clanton Scholarship, Griffin Wagner, is a graduate of Vero Beach High School in Florida and is currently a biology major.

Wagner’s research with Jennette Yen in the School of Biological Sciences, with collaborators at the Carter Center, the University of Georgia, Texas A&M, and the African country of Chad, focuses on inhibiting the transmission of African guinea worm disease.

He has completed an internship at the Harbor Branch Oceanographic Institute, and a National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program at Georgia Tech. Wagner presented his research at the 2022 Ocean Sciences meeting. 

Robert A. Pierotti Memorial Scholarship

The College of Sciences presents this scholarship in honor of Robert “Bob” Pierotti, past dean of the College and founder of the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC). The award is made to top graduating seniors in the College who have excelled both academically and in research.

The two recipients of the 2022 Pierotti Award are Holly McCann and Soham Kulkarni.

McCann is a biology major who is completing the Biomolecular Technology certificate. She is a researcher with Loren Williams in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, working on the prediction and visualization of the structure of RNA. McCann’s work led to the publication of a paper in the journal Nucleic Acids Research. She has also participated in the BeeSnap Vertically Integrated Project with Jennifer Leavey. McCann has also completed internships with Syngenta and Fidelity Investments.

“Holly is remarkable,” says Williams. “She is highly intelligent, creative, motivated, functional and productive. She is destined to be an extremely successful scientist.”

Kulkarni, a graduate of Chattahoochee High School, is a biochemistry major who will also complete the Health and Medical Sciences and Computational Data Analysis minors.

He has conducted research with Cassie S. Mitchell in the Chronic Myeloid Leukemia laboratory. He is a coauthor of a paper in the journal Pharmaceutics and has presented his research at the Biomedical Engineering Society (BMES) conference. He also serves as an Undergraduate Research Ambassador.

Larry O’Hara Graduate Scholarship

This honor is provided by an endowment bequeathed by alumnus Larry O’Hara. It is presented to outstanding graduate students in the College of Sciences. 

All of the 2022 winners have established a strong record of research with multiple publications in peer-reviewed journals, as well as multiple conference presentations:

• Youngho Yoo, Ph.D. candidate, Algorithms, Combinatorics, and Optimization in Mathematics

• Pedro Márquez-Zacarias, Ph.D. candidate, Quantitative Biology program, Biological Sciences

• Jason Tsukahara, Ph.D. candidate, Psychology

Yoo is currently studying graph theory with Xingxing Xu and holds a prestigious NSERC Postgraduate Scholarship to support her doctoral studies.

Márquez-Zacarias’ doctoral research with William Ratcliff focuses on developing theories to understand how multicellular organisms became more complex, and how microbial populations are structured in space.

Tsukahara, who is studying cognition and brain science with Randall Engle, focuses on investigating the nature of attention control with the use of pupillometry and mind-wandering reports. 

Herbert P. Haley Fellowship

This graduate fellowship recognizes significant accomplishments and outstanding academic achievements for students at Georgia Tech.

The 2022 winners are:

• Keun (Kara) Lee, Bioinformatics

• Marisa Cepeda, Chemistry

• Estefania Garcia, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences 

• Christopher DuPre, Mathematics 

• Francisco Martinez, Physics

Teaching Assistant Awards

The College of Science had four winners among the 2022 Georgia Tech Teaching Assistant Awardees, with three hailing from the School of Mathematics. The awards are presented annually by the Center for Teaching and Learning to celebrate the contributions to teaching excellence at Georgia Tech made by graduate and undergraduate teaching assistants:

• Undergraduate Teaching Assistant of the Year:
  Bryan Clark, Mathematics 

• Graduate Teaching Assistant of the Year:
  Tao Yu, Mathematics

• Graduate Student Instructor of the Year:
  Elizabeth (Liz) Jones, Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Online Head Teaching Assistant of the Year:
  Jaewoo Jung, Mathematics

Tech to Teaching Certificates

Tech to Teaching Certificates are designed to prepare Georgia Tech graduate and postdoctoral associates for college teaching positions.

Through this certificate program, participants will develop a thorough understanding of the scholarship of teaching and learning, and will demonstrate their ability to apply these skills in the classroom.

The following College of Sciences students were awarded Tech to Teaching Certificates:

• Thomas Day, Physics

• Alex Draper, Biological Sciences

• Caria Evans, Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Annika Jersild, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

• Maugan Lloyd, Psychology

• Pedro Márquez-Zacarias, Biological Sciences

• Daniyar Omarov, Mathematics

• Alperen Ozdemir, Mathematics

• Tyler Roche, Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Tyler Vollmer, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching, and Learning (CIRTL) Certificates

As a member institution in the CIRTL national network, Georgia Tech joins with 37 other universities on a mission to improve undergraduate education through the preparation of future faculty.

Participants in these certificate programs learn about how students learn, how differences among students affect their learning, evidence-based teaching and assessment practices, and teaching with technology.

Participants who complete these foundation-level learning outcomes through a combination of coursework, workshops, or online learning, receive the CIRTL Associate certificate.   

The following College of Sciences students were awarded CIRTL Certificates:

• Mary Bernhardt, Psychology

• Thomas Day, Physics

• Annika Jersild, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

• Sierra Knavel, Mathematics

• Maugan Lloyd, Psychology

• Pedro Márquez Zacarias, Biological Sciences

• Alexandra Newton, Mathematics

• Jennifer Rattray, Biological Sciences

• Tyler Roche, Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Micah Schaible, Chemistry and Biochemistry

• Danielle Skinner, Physics

Smokies Cognition and Neuroscience Symposium (SCANS) is an informal event featuring cognitive and neuroscience laboratories from the sponsoring schools, sharing information on six main topics:

• Perception
• Attention
• Memory
• Language
• Control Processes
• Emotion and Motivation

There is no fee to attend SCANS, but registration and conference hotel lodging is required. Visit dibs.duke.edu for SCANS news and information.

Registration deadline March 1, 2019

School of Psychology Grad Student Chris Draheim winner of annual Best Paper Award presented at School of Psychology Annual Awards Dinner held February 8, 2019 at the GT Alumni House. 

There’s a long way to go before neuroscience can fathom the vastness of human consciousness, but researchers pushing that envelope have uncovered a mechanism that helps create a simple visual awareness. In a new study, they describe brain functions that give you confidence that you did see what you just saw. 

http://www.news.gatech.edu/2018/05/30/i-saw-brain-mechanisms-create-confidence-about-things-seen

Rahnev and Shekhar published their study in May in the Journal of Neuroscience.

On May 16, 1986, America was introduced to a film that looked and sounded very different than anything before. “Top Gun,” an action-drama film about fighter pilots training at the U.S. Navy’s Fighter Weapons School, was a new kind of American war movie that started a trend of heroic military blockbusters that continues today. The movie also solidified Tom Cruise as a superstar, grossing more than $356 million at the box office.

How did “Top Gun” change movie making, and why does it continue to be relevant 36 years later? To address those questions and much more, the Georgia Tech community reflects on the film and its legacy on the eve of its long-awaited sequel — “Top Gun: Maverick.”

A film studies professor discusses that rebirth of military movies, as well as a memorable soundtrack, and a psychology professor explains adrenaline rush. Three recent ROTC graduates prepare for their own flight school experience. And a current faculty member remembers his days in the real TOPGUN, where he helped Hollywood create a classic.

Read the entire story on the College of Engineering website. 

Megan Ross (M.S. PSY 99, Ph.D. PSY 01), never considered that the time she spent as a child, "always digging in the dirt, looking at the bugs, picking up the worms," would eventually lead to being the first woman president and CEO of Chicago's Lincoln Park Zoo.

Fellow School of Psychology alumni have also ended up in leadership positions at some of the country's most prestigious zoos and conservation societies:

Christopher Kuhar (Ph.D. PSY 04), executive director of the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo

Kristen Lukas (M.S. PSY 95, Ph.D. PSY 99), director of conservation and science at the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo

Estelle Sandhaus (M.S. PSY 04, Ph.D. PSY 13), director of conservation and science at the Santa Barbara Zoo

Tara Stoinski, Ph.D. PSY 00, and CEO of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. (Fun fact: Georgia Tech President and fellow School of Psychology alum Ángel Cabrera was Stoinski's statistics teaching assistant.)

The five School of Psychology alumni are profiled in the spring 2022 edition of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. Read about their time at Georgia Tech and their current roles in wildlife and conservation:

In 2019, when School of Psychology Professor Ruth Kanfer was working on a book that would feature the latest science regarding an aging and age-diverse workforce, Kanfer and her three co-authors wanted to write a manual of sorts for supervisors, human resources managers, and organizational leaders, not necessarily academics and scholars. 

Then 2020 happened, and science, in the form of the pandemic, had other ideas on how to influence Ageless Talent: Enhancing the Performance and Well-Being of Your Age-Diverse Workforce (Routledge, 2021). 

“As we were writing, we started thinking about what managers would need to know post-pandemic, how it was affecting workers of different age groups,” says Kanfer, a member of the Industrial/Organizational Psychology program and founding director of Georgia Tech’s Work Science Center. “Towards the end, we wrote about possible implications and what issues might come up.”

Motivating workers in a disrupted and transformed workforce is one of those issues, she adds. 

Motivation related to work has long been Kanfer’s primary research interest. Kanfer, who first came to Georgia Tech in 1997, was recently notified that a 2017 paper in which she was the lead author, “Motivation related to work: A century of progress,” remains in the top ten list of downloaded articles from the Journal of Applied Psychology. “It’s one of the leading journals in the broad area of applied psychology,” says Tansu Celikel, professor and chair of the School of Psychology. 

Kanfer will continue to study work motivation in the National Science Foundation’s new National AI Institute for Adult Learning in Online Education (AI-ALOE). Led by Myk Garn of the Georgia Research Alliance, University System of Georgia, and Ashok Goel, professor in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech, the AI-ALOE Institute will study foundational AI issues and develop AI systems to enhance adult learning.

Kanfer recently spoke with the College of Sciences about AI-ALOE, where the future of the workforce is heading post-pandemic, and whether older workers will return to the workforce.

What are the biggest lessons for you on how the pandemic changed the workplace and workforce, particularly the aging workforce?

There are four lessons. First, the pandemic caused a real upsetting of the apple cart in terms of labor shortages. That does have to do with the aging workforce. The 55 and older group was the fastest-growing segment of the workforce prior to the pandemic, so you can imagine that their sudden departure would have an outsized impact. I had a manager once say to me that 40 percent of the workplace on the front lines of their company was over the age of 55, but if they managed retirements carefully, it would be fine.

Well, during the pandemic no one could manage workforce exits well, and the pandemic caused a lot of early retirements. Whether those folks will come back is unknown, but the loss was substantial. Almost a third of the workforce shortage comes from older workers who did not want to be exposed to the virus or chose to retire a bit earlier than planned. 

Second is the issue of worker well-being. There wasn’t really a lot of interest in this prior to the pandemic. It was more about productivity and new technologies. The pandemic changed that. If you want to preserve your workforce, not just the older workforce, you must pay attention to well-being, and that has stuck. I think we are much more focused on worker well-being than we were pre-pandemic.

The third lesson comes from the impact of technology. The pandemic caused a massive shift to remote work for many people and has accelerated the development and implementation of new technologies. But it is very clear that technological developments can not fully replace human workers. Technology didn’t obliterate jobs, it changed jobs, and it’s still doing that. What technology can’t do well, yet, in implementation, is make complex decisions about things that are not black and white. Not yet.

Technology also isn’t very good with factoring in emotions. Tech is a double-edged sword. It has helped people, and it has provided tools. It has made some jobs more interesting, some less interesting. It’s also pushed humans into new learning, and usually with the workforce, most of the learning you do is on the job after graduation. It used to be that on the job, someone older would train you, but that is often not the case when it comes to implementing new technologies. Now it’s continuous learning, and new skill-learning as part of your job is front and center.

The fourth lesson has to do with work arrangements. Sending everybody home to do remote work has upended assumptions that organizations have long had — that you need to have your employees at the workplace, that you need to be continuously supervising them, or you’re not going to achieve your goals. Well, during the pandemic workers were still productive. And this has left a lot of organizational leaders asking, what are we going to do with all this real estate if workers want to be remote? And if I let my workers be remote, how am I going to bind them psychologically to the organization? This has not been a temporary disruption. It has changed fundamental motives about work, and what binds people to organizations. I think organizations aren’t used to thinking that what binds their employees to them are human relationships. It’s much easier to think in terms of compensation and perks and the more material goods. Prior to the pandemic, the question was should we be in cubicles or open space in offices. Post-pandemic, I don’t think that’s as relevant. Many people won’t do most of their work in the office. They will go to the office to see other people and connect themselves to the organization. Jobs are no longer eight-to-five; they can and often do work at home.

Ageless Talent was published in 2021. What have you heard from organizations and managers who have read the book?

We have received very positive comments and the book has been popular with a wider audience, so it’s sold well on Amazon.

The advantage of the book is it doesn’t just tell you what we know, but how to use what we know in the workplace. And realistically what some of the challenges are that you’re going to face when you’re trying to manage and support balance.

What are those challenges? What’s the one big takeaway from Ageless Talent that would help organization leaders manage their age-diverse workforces?

Age diversity is here to stay. First, people are living longer and working longer, often for financial reasons (insufficient financial resources for retirement), but often also for non-financial reasons such as to structure time, maintain social relationships, and sustain professional identity. Second, as jobs require less physical labor due to automation, and organizations increase flexibility in employment options — flexible scheduling, contract work — it is no longer unusual to see work teams made up of three or more generations/cohorts.  

Knowing the facts about aging and using PIERA (Planning, Implementation, Evaluation, Reflection, Adjustment, a key strategy from the book) to manage an age-diverse workforce helps create a stronger, more collaborative workplace culture. The book provides important information about how and why age differences manifest in the workplace, and a clear set of evidence-based tools to use when managing an age-diverse workforce. 

What is it about the aging workforce that makes it ripe for research, particularly post-pandemic?

One of the things about studying the aging workforce is that when young people first enter the workforce, they typically focus on doing well, learning a lot, and advancing their careers. They’re on a trajectory.

In contrast, in an older workforce — let’s take pilots for example — people have different levels of expertise, different patterns of age-related decline in cognitive abilities, and very different non-work lives. A lot of motives can be satisfied by spending time at home. Others don’t have that option. It’s a much more complicated environment for being able to predict and understand things like retirement, and how people want to retire.

One of the things we have learned is that people are motivated. They generally don’t lose motivation for jobs that allow them to have some autonomy, control, and to make a meaningful contribution.They remain motivated, and there’s a lot that organizations can do to reinforce that with support and training and reducing age stereotypic norms. That will keep older people interested in continuing in the workforce. That’s why I think some of them will come back.

Speaking of motivation, it was the topic of a paper you co-authored five years ago that is still on the Top Ten Most Cited List from the Journal of Applied Psychology. Motivation also gets its own chapter in Ageless Talent. What are the challenges in motivating an age-diverse workforce?

When I started my career I focused on understanding the role of motivation in complex skill learning for jobs like air traffic control. I was really interested in the processes by which motivation impacts performance, irrespective of adult development. Drawing from motivation theory and cognitive psychology we examined when and for whom motivation during training might wane. Over the years there has been a gradual shift away from understanding motivation processes and toward understanding the why of motivation — what are the reasons? How do reasons for action affect what people do and how hard they try to accomplish a goal? For example, some of this has to do with mindset. If you approach a task with the idea of learning, then when you make errors early on, it doesn’t cause you to drop out.  On the other hand, if you have different expectations — you want to look good to your supervisor — and you make errors early, you’re much more likely to back away from further learning. Holding a learning mindset is really important when you’re training working adult learners to use new technologies. Adults in the workplace always want to look competent. We know a lot more now about older workers, and we know that self-paced training is much preferred to instructor-based pacing. Mature individuals work at different speeds. You want to take advantage of that, which can really change the nature of training design.

I think we’ve learned a lot about adult development that we can use to help people. Particularly about “why” people exert effort. It’s usually not a single reason, but what motive is dominant. Am I doing this to get a promotion, because I like to learn, to help others, or maybe to teach younger people? That last generativity motive is typically stronger in middle to late adulthood.

You’re part of the NSF’s cross-disciplinary, collaborative National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE) at Georgia Tech. Tell us about that research and what you hope to accomplish there.

The broad goal of AI-ALOE is to develop new AI technologies to improve adult learning. That’s why I’m involved. I’m interested in adult learning for reskilling, upskilling, and lifelong learning. I am using my expertise in age-related changes in cognitive and motivational/affective processes to help in the development of  agents and tools that will help us with theory of mind and benefit adult learners and teachers. The project is less than a year old, and it’s a five-year project. It’s an ambitious project to develop these technologies, and what the Institute learns and develops is expected to be useful to public and private sectors who are concerned with building the 21st century workforce.

The Institute is not just about older people, but adults of all ages who will need or want to update or retrain. The Institute focuses on adult learning, which is not the same as K-12 learning. Adults have different goals and issues. Adults are typically very practically oriented with specific work goals. Adults are impatient. They have other things to do in their life. You want learning to be efficient. AI offers the potential for personalized learning at scale. Personalization is critical for inclusivity and for helping people with different levels of knowledge and learning styles; at scale is important given the rapidity of changes in the workplace that demand new skills. Online learning has taken hold in part because it is asynchronous. That makes the learning experience flexible.  For adult learning to be successful, it must also be relevant, affordable, and enjoyable. 

Kanfer is an elected Fellow of the Academy of Management (AoM), the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association for Psychological Sciences (APS), and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology (SIOP). She has received scientific awards for her work from SIOP (William R. Owens Scholarly Achievement Award; Distinguished Scientific Contributions Award) and the AoM (Outstanding Publication of the Year in Organizational Behavior Award, 2004; 2008). Kanfer’s research has been supported by federal agencies, national foundations, and private organizations, and she has served on journal editorial boards, scientific advisory boards, as the AoM Organizational Behavior Division Chair, and as representative on the AoM Board of Governors. She is a member of the Sloan Research Network on Aging and Work Steering Committee, and recently served on the National Academy of Sciences Science and Practice of Learning Committee that produced How People Learn II (2019).

As the mercury climbed across Atlanta this summer, student research heated up across the College of Sciences, thanks to special summer programs for undergraduates from around the globe that help undergraduates get a head start on research experience for STEM careers in academia, industry, and beyond.

This year’s initiatives included National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REU) programs, a new initiative to engage Georgia community college students, summer workshops in computational chemistry and quantitative biosciences, and more.

Through the workshops, students learned to navigate new methods of research that involve data analysis and computational aspects of disciplines like chemistry and biology — as well as communicate connections across concepts like group theory, topology, combinatorics, and number theory.

Meanwhile, the NSF REU programs across the College’s six Schools of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Physics, Psychology, and Mathematics, as well as the Undergraduate Neuroscience Program, allowed early-year students to get their first taste of in-depth research with unique expertise and equipment available at Georgia Tech. 

Other students took advantage of special fellowships to attend summer conferences in their chosen disciplines, where they networked with fellow young scientists and mathematicians while soaking up knowledge from peers and mentors. 

Here’s a roundup of some of the 2022 summer undergraduate student research programs and events led by the College of Sciences at Georgia Tech:

The Summer Theoretical and Computational Chemistry (STACC) Workshop 

Undergraduates eager to try calculations in areas such as quantum dynamics, electronic structure theory, and classical molecular dynamics — and who want to know more about new data science and machine learning tools — got their chance during this two-week early summer computational chemistry workshop.

“Theoretical and computational studies provide a necessary complement to experimental investigations because they are able to obtain the atomistic level of detail that is near impossible to probe with experiment,” said Joshua Kretchmer, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

“It is becoming more and more routine to use these techniques, even outside of pure theory research groups, as computers have become more powerful and more easy-to-use software is being developed to perform these calculations,” Kretchmer said. “It is thus important for students to be exposed to these techniques early on in their undergraduate education so they have a basic understanding of how and when the slew of different computational techniques are best utilized.”

2022 was the first year for the STACC Workshop, and Kretchmer added that the students “seem to be engaged and excited by the material, both in terms of learning the technical skills necessary to utilize high-performance computers and the unique aspects that can be learned about chemical systems from computer simulations.”

Those thoughts were echoed by University of South Florida student Nicholas Giunto. “After simulating and calculating these various processes, I realized how theoretical chemistry can do so much more than just simulate these scenarios. This technique of chemistry can be used in many other fields of science as well,” Giunto said. “This workshop has broadened my perspective of chemistry, and taught me a whole new field of science that is innovative and prudent.”

For more information, check out the STACC website here. 

Summer College Research Internship 

Thanks to a grant from the Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Dean’s Chair, community college students in Georgia were paired up with a Georgia Tech College of Sciences lab — at no cost to the students — for the inaugural Summer College Research Internship (SCRI).

The idea for SCRI grew from Shania Khatri’s experiences conducting research for the first time. Khatri, a fourth-year Biological Sciences major scheduled to graduate in December 2022, began research in high school through a program at a local university that placed students, especially those historically underrepresented in STEM, in labs to complete their own summer research projects. 

“I felt firsthand how important mentorship was in building confidence in STEM, promoting belonging, and ultimately influencing my decision to pursue higher education and research,” Khatri said. “Research shows that students who complete high school and undergraduate programs are more likely to pursue STEM majors and consider doctoral degrees, underscoring that mentorship early in careers can improve achievement and retention of these students.”

SCRI students helped design experiments, collected and analyzed data, and presented the results of their work. They worked closely with their Ph.D. student mentors, learning from them as well as the broader community of their host labs. They also heard weekly lectures from College of Science faculty as they learned about the broader research environment at Georgia Tech. 

“The accepted students have strong scholastic potential, and we hope that we can excite them about the research happening at Georgia Tech and potentially recruit them to join our programs, either as transfer students or future graduate students,” said William Ratcliff, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences Program. Ratcliff also co-leads the SCRI with Todd Streelman, professor and chair of the School of Biological Sciences at Tech.

Three students from two-year community college programs in Georgia were chosen for the inaugural SCRI, Ratcliff said. With diverse interests, all three researched in labs within the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI). 

“While this was not part of our review criteria, two of the three students are members of groups that are underrepresented in science according to National Institutes of Health criteria, so this is a great opportunity to broaden participation in academic research,” Ratcliff added.

“When discussing diversity in STEM and retention of underrepresented minorities, community college students should be at the forefront of the discussion,” Khatri said. “It is my hope that through this program the students will gain confidence in their own abilities, and learn skills of science communication, data analysis, critical thinking, collaborative work, and problem solving that will aid them in any career path.”

More information on the Summer College Research Internship is available here. 

Child Lab Day

Child Lab Day is the capstone assignment for students in the School of Psychology course PSYC 2103 Human Development. Christopher Stanzione, senior lecturer and associate chair for undergraduate studies for the School, said his students conducted cognitive, language, and conceptual assessments in June on children ranging in age from four months to nine years old. 

“This is a great applied experience for the Georgia Tech students,” Stanzione said. “All semester we study these concepts, but to see development in action is special. They’ll likely see the gradual change between concepts by administering the assessments to kids of different ages.”

The first Child Lab Day was in 2019. This summer, students majoring in psychology, biomedical engineering, computer science, biology, neuroscience, and economics took part in this second one. “They loved it,” Stanzione said.

National Science Foundation Research Experiences for Undergraduates (NSF REUs)

For the first time, this year all six schools across the College of Sciences — plus the Neuroscience program at Tech — led Research Experiences for Undergraduates, a National Science Foundation initiative. 

Each student was associated with a specific research project, and worked closely with school faculty and other researchers. Students were given stipends and, in many cases, assistance with housing and travel to help cover the experience.

“Since most of the undergraduate participants are recruited from institutions that do not have extensive research infrastructure, the immersive research experience available to them in these programs can be transformational,” said David Collard, professor and senior associate dean in the College, who previously led the REU program in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry for more than a decade. 

“A measure of success of the REU programs in the College of Sciences is that many of the undergraduate participants subsequently go on to complete their Ph.D., some at Georgia Tech, and others elsewhere,” Collard added.

The following are the details for each College of Sciences school’s REU program. Learn more about future Summer Research Programs for Undergraduates here.

School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences REU:

Georgia Tech Broadening Participation in Atmospheric Science, Oceanography, and Geosciences

Working under the supervision of a School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) faculty member, participants focused on a single research project, but also gained a broad perspective on research in Earth and atmospheric sciences by participating in the dynamic research environment. This interdisciplinary REU program had projects ranging from planetary science to meteorology to oceanography. In addition to full time research, undergraduate researchers participated in a number of professional development activities, seminars with faculty and research scientists, presentation and research poster symposiums, and social activities with other summer REU students.

Schools of Biological Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering REU:

Aquatic Chemical Ecology (ACE) at Georgia Tech

The Aquatic Chemical Ecology REU gave students the opportunity to perform research with faculty from five Georgia Tech schools. 

Students participated in research with one or more faculty members, learned about careers in science and engineering, and saw how scientists blend knowledge and skills from physics, chemistry, and biology to investigate some of the most challenging problems in environmental sciences. 

This was the first REU experience for Jenn Newlon, a rising senior at the University of North Carolina Wilmington. In fact, “I’d actually never heard of an REU before I came here,” she said. “It’s been a really good experience. I never really saw this side of research in my institution. While I did get to do undergraduate research, it was more of, ‘do this in a lab, this is what happens.’ I had to present my findings every week to my PI (principal investigator), who gave really good feedback. And all the people in my lab were really kind and helpful.”

Schools of Psychology, Biological Sciences REU:

Neuroscience Research Experience for Undergraduates

The first week of the inaugural Neuroscience/Psychology REU was a Neuroscience Bootcamp, where students engaged in hands-on activities to learn about brain anatomy, functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), encephalography, and other techniques.  Then the student researchers spent time working on projects in the laboratories of mentors in either the School of Psychology, School of Biological Sciences, or with researchers at Georgia State University. They also attended professional development and social activities with other REU students.

“There is tremendous interest in neuroscience, and we have seen an incredible expansion of technology in our ability to record from the human nervous system,” said Lewis Wheaton, associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Neuroscience/Psychology REU. 

“At the same time, many students do not have access to these technologies at their academic institutions because of expense,” Wheaton said. “We feel that it is vital to ensure that students who do not have access to these technologies at their universities get exposure to the tools and approaches to understand the human brain. I am excited to further focus on providing opportunities for women and underrepresented minorities to engage in this research.”

A unique feature of the Neuroscience REU program is that it allows some students to come back for a two-year experience, “which can really provide a great opportunity to enhance their research, and put these students in a stronger position to advance their careers,” Wheaton added.

“It is also great that we can show them the research and educational environment at Georgia Tech and in the broader Atlanta area,” said Eric Schumacher, professor in the School of Psychology and co-director of the Neuroscience/Psychology REU. “This is an opportune time to showcase our two schools and the Institute, given that both schools are working with the College and Institute to offer a cross-disciplinary Neuroscience Ph.D. program soon.” 

That was the impression that Alexa Toliver came away with. The fourth year student at Arizona State University is majoring in neurobiology, “but I always wanted to do neuroscience research,” she said during the recent REUs poster session at the Ford Environmental Science and Technology Building. “It was a little new, but it was a great opportunity and I never felt uncomfortable with any of the topics. This was the only neuroscience REU that I could find, and I applied to it and I got it, so I was excited.”

School of Physics REU:

Georgia Tech Broadening Participation in Physics

Working under the supervision of a physics faculty member, participants focused on a single research project but also gained a broad perspective on research in physics by participating in the dynamic research environment. 

Available projects for the REU spanned the field of physics ranging from quantum materials, quantum simulation/sensing, astrophysics, physics of living systems, and non-linear dynamics. 

In addition to full time research, undergraduate researchers participated in a number of professional development seminars, research horizon lunches, and social activities with other summer REU students.

Brendan D’Aquino, a rising senior at Northeastern University in Boston, had planned to use his computer science background to get an industry job after graduation. Then he attended the 2022 School of Physics REU. 

“After doing an internship last year at a software company that does physics, I kind of realized I wanted to make the switch,” D’Aquino said. “So I applied to the program. I got to work here. And I thought it was super cool. So this was my first time doing research. I kind of had grad school in the back of my mind for a while. But 10 weeks here kind of makes me more sure that I want to get into that in the future.”

School of Mathematics REU:

The School of Mathematics has a rich tradition of offering summer undergraduate research programs. The projects have been mentored by faculty and postdocs covering a range of topics, such as graph coloring, random matrices, contact homology, knots, bounded operators, harmonic analysis, and toric varieties. 

Previous Math REU students have published many papers, won a number of awards, and have been very successful in their graduate school applications.

“The main purpose of our REU is to give students research experience which should help them decide if they want to do math research for a living, and in particular, go to a math grad school,” said Igor Belegradek, professor and director of Teaching Effectiveness in the School of Mathematics. Belegradek also coordinates the Math REU. “Also, if there is a publication or poster at a conference, their grad school application will definitely become more competitive.”

Sometimes that application is sent to Georgia Tech. “We did have a few students who were accepted to our grad school after attending an REU with us,” Belegradek said. “It definitely helps put Georgia Tech Mathematics on the map. This summer we have 22 REU students, and only two of them are from Georgia Tech.”

Mathematics topics for the 2022 REU included aspects of graph coloring, Legendrian contact homology, Eigenvectors from eigenvalues and Gaussian random matrices, and applications of Donaldson's Diagonalization theorem.

Read more about the 2021 Mathematics REUs here.

In July, the School of Mathematics also hosted its biennial Topology Students Workshop, organized by Professor Dan Margalit since 2012. 

Events included a public lecture on campus, “Juggling Numbers, Algebra, and Topology”, accessible for curious people of all ages and backgrounds.

“One goal of mathematics is to describe the patterns in the world, from weather to population growth to disease transmission,” event organizers said. The workshop used mathematics to describe juggling patterns, count the different kinds of patterns, and create new patterns, “making surprising connections to group theory, topology, combinatorics, and number theory.”

The 36th Annual Symposium of the Protein Society 

From microproteins, protein condensates, synthetic biology and biosensors, to the latest developments in machine learning and imaging technologies, to addressing health disparities, the Protein Society Symposium, held in San Francisco in early July, provided a state-of-the-art view of the most exciting areas of research in biology and medicine.

Four students of Raquel Lieberman’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry lab attended, thanks to Protein Society travel fellowships: 

• Lydia Kenney, fourth-year undergraduate and Beckman Scholar in the Lieberman lab. Kenney was also selected to give an oral presentation in a dedicated session to undergraduates

• Minh Thu (Alice) Ma, fourth-year Ph.D.student

• Emily Saccuzzo, fourth-year Ph.D. student

• Gwendell Thomas, first-year Ph.D. student

Kenney and Ma won Best Poster awards at the symposium, and Saccuzzo won an honorable mention.

“The conference was amazing! We saw so many great speakers and presentations about protein science, and it was a great way to meet scientists from all over the world,” Kenney said. “I’m so grateful for this experience, especially as I begin to apply to graduate school and think about my future career in science. It was a great experience, and one that has truly deepened my appreciation for science and research.”

“To have each of these superstars selected for travel fellowships puts them in an elite cohort of trainees at this 500-plus person meeting,” Lieberman said. “I am so excited for them to present their thesis research and to get feedback from colleagues in our field from all over the world. I’m sure new ideas, collaborations, and other opportunities will emerge from this experience. It’s just the boost they and I need after a challenging couple of years as experimental biochemists.”

The College of Sciences has three new Blanchard Early Career Professors to celebrate: Martin Mourigal, School of Physics; Dobromir “Doby” Rahnev, School of Psychology; and Yuanzhi Tang, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

All three are associate professors. This year marks the first time that the honor, named after the late School of Chemistry and Biochemistry alumnus Elwood P. “Doc” Blanchard (BS CHEM '53, MS CHEM '54), has gone to more than one faculty member in the College. The reasons include a growing endowment fund and an expansion of the honor to make the distinction available to scientists from all six College of Sciences schools. 

“The College of Sciences is very pleased to be able to recognize some of our most outstanding mid-career faculty with the ‘Doc’ Blanchard Professorship,” said Matt Baker, associate dean for Faculty Development for the College and professor in the School of Mathematics. “The Blanchard Early Career Professorship will enhance the College's ability to attract and retain tenure-track faculty members in the early stages of their careers to this position of academic leadership.”

The College of Sciences Dean's Office also recently modified the eligibility criteria for the award, specifying that the Blanchard Professorship would go to an associate professor who is within three years of having received tenure. “The primary criterion for the award was excellence in research. Excellence in mentoring, service, and teaching were also considered,” Baker said. 

Blanchard, who received his B.S. in Chemistry in 1953, earned his M.S. in the same discipline a year later. He joined DuPont in 1959 as a staff member in the company’s research and development division, and rose through management ranks to become vice-chairman of what was then the world’s largest chemical company in terms of sales in 1990. Blanchard was also named chairman of DuPont Canada in 1991. He died in 2021 at the age of 90 at his home in Pennsylvania. 

What was first known as the Blanchard Fellowship was launched in 1999 as a way to honor early career School of Chemistry and Biochemistry scientists. Twenty-two scientists received the award before the 2022 announcements. 

Meet the new Blanchard Professors

Yuanzhi Tang, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

“I'm very honored to receive this professorship,” Tang said, “which was created to celebrate the many contributions that Blanchard made for promoting chemical research.”

Tang’s research group seeks to understand the molecular scale processes of biogeochemical reactions at solid-liquid interfaces, and to connect the observations across spatial and temporal scales in natural and engineered systems.  “This honor will provide important support to test new research ideas and kick off early-stage projects, such as those related to understanding the fate and transport of critical metals in natural environments, resource recovery, and carbon sequestration.”

“Tang’s highly interdisciplinary research focuses on the chemistry of the interface between minerals and natural waters, and has implications for a range of fields such as water quality, sustainable agriculture, and the recycling of battery materials,” Baker said.

Dobromir (Doby) Rahnev, School of Psychology

“I am extremely honored,” Rahnev said. “This professorship will provide invaluable resources in our quest to understand the working of the human mind and brain. My lab seeks to understand the workings of the human visual system by examining different types of neural and behavioral data, as well as building computational models that uncover the underlying mechanisms. The Blanchard Professorship will allow us to secure necessary equipment and personnel to advance this research program.”

“Doby Rahnev’s research in cognitive neuroscience and psychology, specializing in perceptual decision making and processing of sensory information, is groundbreaking,” Baker said.

Martin Mourigal, School of Physics

Mourigal is a leading researcher in neutron scattering techniques that help search for new properties in materials. He recently won the 2022 Science Prize from the Neutron Scattering Society of America “for significant and insightful use of neutron inelastic scattering in the study of quantum materials." 

“Neutron scattering can only be performed on specialized large-scale instruments at national facilities,” he said. “The award will allow my group to get more deeply immersed in the design of next-generation spectrometers,” while also giving Mourigal more flexibility in hiring undergraduate researchers, and building more direct connections to theory collaborators across the U.S.

“It is a very special honor to be chosen for a Blanchard Professorship,” Mourigal said. “I am very excited that the College recognizes my group's work decoding the strange magnetic behavior of quantum materials. My team and I are focusing on fundamental questions about magnetism that do not have direct applications yet but are stringent tests to our understanding of the quantum world. This award comes at a perfect time to accelerate my team's work and support new experimental and modeling work.”