EDITOR'S NOTE: This story by Victor Rogers was published originally on July 19, 2019, in the Georgia Tech News Center.  It has been slightly revised for the College of Sciences' website.

A couple of Georgia Tech courses are in pursuit of happiness. The newest course was inspired by a New York Times story in spring 2018 about Yale University’s most popular class — a class on happiness.

“After reading the article I thought, ‘This is something our school needs,’” said Irene Daboin, coordinator of Georgia Tech Counseling Center’s Peer Coaching Program and the instructor for PSYC 2803: Psychology and the Pursuit of Happiness. “Working in the Counseling Center, I get to see first-hand the things that students are struggling with and the stress on campus.”

Daboin had been looking for a way to promote a healthy campus culture through a wider lens. So, she talked to John Stein, vice president of Student Life and the Brandt-Fritz Dean of Students, who had read the same article and was also thinking about a happiness course at Tech. He suggested that Daboin collaborate with the School of Psychology to figure out how to make it work.

“It took us a little while,” Daboin said, referring to a couple of failed attempts to offer the class. “We were hoping for a certain number of students to enroll and didn’t get enough. This year we decided to focus less on the number of students, and instead just get the class going.”

The class, offered for the first time this summer, has 10 students.

“It’s a very intimate class, which is great,” said Daboin, who has a Ph.D. in clinical and community psychology from Georgia State University and is a licensed psychologist. “It lends itself to discussion and a more in-depth way of talking about issues and applying it on a personal level. The class is sort of our pilot to see if this is something the students like and if we can do it on a larger scale in fall and spring.”

The class is designed to teach students scientifically-validated strategies for living a healthier, happier, and more satisfying life at Georgia Tech and beyond. Students explore psychological concepts related to mental health and well-being and learn to apply the concepts to better manage their own stress and improve their habits, which will lead to more fulfilling lives.

The class begins and ends by measuring the students’ happiness. It also measures the students’ psychological wealth, including their satisfaction with life and their emotional wellbeing. Students also must envision their best possible self, identify their personal strengths and values, do acts of kindness, and keep a gratitude journal.

Daboin wants students who have taken the class to become wellness ambassadors by sharing strategies they have learned, and promoting a healthier campus culture.

“It’s exciting to see students immediately connecting the lessons learned in class to their personal lives,” said Daboin, who thought she would have to sell the class every step of the way.

“But it’s hitting home,” she said. “If these students can walk out of this class leading healthier lives and their psychological well-being improves, then hopefully it will be a little contagious.”

More Happiness

Chris Martin, a postdoctoral fellow in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, taught a happiness course at Emory University and brought it with him to Tech in 2018.

He teaches BME 2803 Special Topics: Happiness. The class was created by Emory sociology professor Corey Keyes, and Martin taught it for three sessions while earning a Ph.D. in sociology at Emory. Martin taught the course at Tech last fall and spring, and his third session will be this fall.

The class covers three big themes: maximizing pleasure and minimizing pain; the meaning of life; and coping with suffering.

The course explores various theories of happiness, such as how money does or does not help one’s level of happiness.

“In the modern world, we have too many choices and that tends to inhibit happiness,” he said. “Making the choice is burdensome. You think about all of the things you didn’t choose. And, you feel like you lost out on all of the things you didn’t choose because of what you chose.”

Martin said there is an underlying idea that one’s circumstances are the result of their choices. And part of a person’s level of happiness is tied to expectations.

“Happiness can sometimes be elusive because we think a possession or purchase will make us happy for months, but it only makes us happy for a few days,” he said. “This is called the hedonic treadmill; you experience some pleasure and some pain, but you end up pretty much in the same place.”

The two things that seem to help sustain happiness are variety and appreciation. If there is variety in what you purchase, that will help. Also, take time to consciously appreciate what you bought.

“Otherwise, once you purchase something ‘nice’ your aspiration level goes up,” Martin said. “So, you have to keep purchasing things that are significantly more expensive than the last thing you purchased, which is impossible.”

This fall, there will be two sections of Martin’s happiness course: a regular section and one for the  Honors Program. The regular class is housed in BME but is open to all undergraduates. Most students who take the class are engineering majors who have an interest in the humanities. About 25 students usually enroll.

The curriculum covers a discussion of happiness, the hedonic treadmill and if it is realistic (for the students) to increase happiness, and students’ idea of a good relationship. The final paper is on what they have learned from the class and also what they have learned about life overall. The class also talks about character strengths, careers, and relationships.

“The students enjoy having discussions,” Martin said. “The assignments are reflections, so I get to know each student’s unique personality. I get to hear stories about their lives, and it’s quite an honor.” 

NOTE: Students may register for BME 2803 Special Topics: Happiness. Students interested in PSYC 2803: Psychology and the Pursuit of Happiness should check the course catalog to see if the course will be offered this fall.

Imagine you’re a drone hovering over Tech Tower. If someone asks which way to Tech Square, you would point in the right direction accurately, because you can see the whole lay of the land unobstructed. On the ground though, barriers exist between Tech Tower and Tech Square. You may point in the general direction, but you would likely be inaccurate.

How navigation manifests in the brain

Studies using rats have shown that navigation in open environments creates a honeycomb-like grid of brain activity. The activity is much like the grid lines on a map with a six-arrow compass and occurs in the entorhinal cortex, a region of the brain’s memory system. In effect, the brain maps an open environment in hexagonal units arrayed like a honeycomb.

When barriers are present, the neural map breaks into fragments, each mapping only the space between the barriers. So instead of one honeycomb-like grid stretching from Tech Tower to Tech Square – as we would draw on a physical map – the rodent brain shows smaller maps corresponding to the different open spaces between the two locations. Instead of a singular map from Tech Tower to Tech Square, the rodent brain has several fragmented maps.

Does the same thing happen in humans? If so, our brains needing to piece together different maps could explain why we struggle to point accurately between two locations separated by barriers

The experiments using rats could not be easily replicated with humans, until now, with help from virtual reality technology and neuroimaging. Qiliang He, a postdoctoral researcher, and Thackery Brown, an assistant professor in the School of Psychology, confirm that signals resembling a honeycomb grid related to navigation in open environments also exist in human brains. In the presence of barriers, the honeycomb-like grid signals also collapse.

The brain activity of someone walking in an open space would draw arrows along six directions, corresponding to the honeycomb grid, as the person moves along. He and Brown discovered that, when barriers are present, the brain maps only the open space in between and with arrows along only four directions. This finding shows that, like the rodent brain, the human brain struggles to draw grid lines from one side of a barrier to the open space on the other side.

Brown says, the results have implications for training in spatial navigation and early detection of diseases that manifest in spatial confusion, such as Alzheimer’s. The findings were published today in Current Biology.

Virtual reality meets neuroimaging

“We didn’t know if those grids exist in humans when you’re following a route,” Brown says. “How could we ask that question for humans? To study them in rodents, we have to put electrodes into the brain. To study them in a physical environment in humans, we would need some kind of portable neural recording device of high enough resolution.”

Instead, Brown and He created a virtual reality environment. Within that virtual reality, He developed navigation tasks that would mirror the environments used in the study of rodent brains. Combined with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), He visualized the neural maps created by open and obstructed spaces.

Study participants lay in the fMRI scanner with a mirror to their face. They were unable to turn their head but could navigate, using controllers, a virtual path projected to them. The fMRI signals showed the honeycomb grid-like activity and how it changes when the environment is obstructed, Brown says. “We were the first to show that they are broken by barriers.”

These findings suggest the potential use of virtual reality to improve spatial memory, Brown says. In virtual reality, you can take a real environment and make the walls all transparent. That could make the brain construct a grid across the environment as if it was barrier-free. The hope is that the constructed grid would persist – that the mental map for the open space stays with the person in the real world.

Another potential application could be in diagnosing Alzheimer’s. “The first part of the brain the disease hits is the entorhinal cortex,” Brown says.  “One of the first symptoms is spatial disorientation. Virtual reality with fMRI could help us get a behavioral measure for whether someone is starting to show symptoms of Alzheimer’s, and measuring a breakdown of the spatial map in this way could help explain why we see those symptoms.”

This work was supported in part by a NARSAD Young Investigator Grant from the Brain and Behavior Research Foundation awarded to Thackery Brown and the National Institute on Aging of the National Institutes of Health under award number 1-R21AG063131.

The College of Sciences welcomed two development professionals early this month. Courtney Ferencik is the new director of development, and Erin Green is the College’s first development associate. Both started in their new roles on August 1.

Previously, Ferencik led the development efforts in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME) and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences (IBB). During her seven-year tenure, she distinguished herself as a highly effective collaborator. Her individual and collective fundraising results extend well into the tens of millions of dollars in support of faculty research.

Ferencik is a graduate of the University of Alabama (B.A. in communications) and holds the Certified Fundraising Executive (CFRE) designation. 

Says Associate Vice President for Development Philip Spessard of Ferencik’s appointment: “Incoming Dean of the College of Sciences Susan Lozier, her leadership team, and the faculty will benefit significantly from Courtney’s experience, guidance, leadership, and strategic problem-solving skills, just as the BME and IBB leadership and faculty have benefited over the past several years.”

“I am excited to work alongside Dean Lozier and the school chairs in advancing the vision and aspirations of the College through alumni engagement and philanthropic support. Great work is taking place in the College. With Erin Green on the team, we hope to increase support for our students, faculty, and research,” Ferencik says.

“I cherish the relationships that I have built with alumni and faculty in BME and IBB, and I look forward to the new relationships in the College of Sciences,” she adds.

For almost three years, Erin Green was the development associate in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs. In that capacity, she helped staff the Sam Nunn School Advisory Board and assisted in advancing fundraising priorities and donor engagement initiatives. She brings a depth of experience in foundation relations, grant proposals, and donor relations.

Erin is a graduate of Tulane University (B.A. in art history with a minor in Italian) and the Savannah College of Art and Design, in Atlanta (M.S. in arts administration).

“I am excited to work with the faculty, staff, and alumni of the College of Sciences and look forward to learning as much as I can about the important work being done in the schools,” Green says. “My nearly three years of supporting the Ivan Allen College have been incredibly rewarding, and I will do my best to apply my experiences to this new challenge, partnering

“I wanted to be sure to point out that you have in your Convocation tradition bags a collection of Periodic Table scavenger-hunt cards provided by the College of Sciences to help you get out and explore the campus and meet new people this week. As you’ll learn, this is a very ‘Georgia Tech’ kind of game!”

With those words of President G.P. “Bud” Peterson, addressed to the 3,100 new students at the Convocation on Aug. 18, 2019, the Georgia Tech Scavenger Hunt for the Chemical Elements commenced. By 9:30 AM on Aug, 19, Raj Srivastava submitted the first completed playing card, which won him a four-cup, periodic table beaker mug. Srivastava hails from Johns Creek, Georgia, and is a first-year computer science major.  

The scavenger hunt is part of Georgia Tech’s celebration of the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements. Through various events and activities in 2019, the Georgia Tech community has been reacquainting itself with the iconic scientific tool from diverse perspectives.

Public lectures have been expounding on little-known facts about chemical elements and the periodic table. A periodic table section of the 2019 Art Crawl invited artists to find inspiration in the periodic table. A chemical element costume party last June offered humor and periodic table parlor games. Courses in music technology, industrial design, and writing and composition last spring and summer reintroduced the periodic table to students who might never have thought about it since high school.

The scavenger hunt, which runs on Aug. 19-23, takes participants to five buildings on campus. Each building has a partner – the element whose atomic number corresponds to the building’s location number on the campus map. Participants must fill the items in the playing card to claim a prize.

The game encourages participants to learn a few historical facts about some of the most iconic buildings on campus. Participants also discover fun facts about the element associated with each building.

To join the hunt, simply fill a playing card, which can be downloaded from here.

Playing cards are also available in each of the five participating buildings:

• Brittain Dining Hall, 12 – Magnesium
• Tech Tower, 35 – Bromine
• Carnegie Building, 36 – Krypton
• Coon Building, 45 – Rhodium
• Wardlaw Center, 47 – Silver

 Participants with completed cards should go to the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Room 2100Q of the MoSE Building, to claim a prize.

The College of Sciences welcomes seven members of faculty who joined in 2019. They include Susan Lozier, the new dean, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Six others joined the Schools of Chemistry and Biochemistry, Physics, and Psychology, as well as the Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience. 

Meghan Babcock, Academic Professional, School of Psychology
Meghan Babcock earned her Ph.D. in experimental psychology from the University of Texas, Arlington, with an emphasis in social and personality psychology. As an academic professional, she is responsible for supporting undergraduate education through teaching and academic advising for all undergraduate psychology majors. She teaches undergraduate courses in psychology – including Research Methods in Psychology and Social Psychology – and manages the laboratory sections for the Research Methods course. In addition, she serves as a supervisor for undergraduate senior theses.

Marcus Cicerone, Professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Marcus Cicerone was a former group and project leader for the National Institute of Standards and Technology. His research centers on the development and application of Raman imaging approaches and the dynamics of amorphous condensed matter. His research group has logged many imaging firsts, including the first to obtain quantitative vibrational fingerprint spectra from mammalian cells using coherent Raman imaging and the first to identify specific structural proteins from coherent Raman imaging.

Glen Evenbly, Assistant Professor, School of Physics
Born in New Zealand, Evenbly earned physics degrees from the University of Auckland, in New Zealand (B.S.), and the University of Queensland, in Australia (Ph.D.). After postdoctoral work in California Institute of Technology and the University of California, Irvine, he served as an assistant professor in the University of Sherbrooke, in Canada. He researches the development and implementation of tensor network approaches for the efficient simulation of many-body systems, with additional applications to data compression and machine learning. He received the 2017 Young Scientist Prize in Computational Physics from the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics for developing new renormalization methods to study quantum systems.

Keaton Fletcher, Assistant Professor, School of Psychology
Keaton Fletcher is an industrial-organizational psychologist who studies work team leadership and associated outcomes for individuals, teams, and organizations. Specifically, he explores how a leader's differential treatment of team members can alter team dynamics, such as information sharing, trust, conflict, and cooperation, as well as individual outcomes such as health behaviors, job attitudes, and psychological and physical well-being. He examines these dynamics and implications in the field of healthcare, given the unique challenges healthcare teams face (e.g., interruptions, membership change). He also explores ways to improve leadership behaviors and workers’ well-being through training and intervention.

Joshua Kretchmer, Assistant Professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
Joshua Kretchmer joined Georgia Tech after graduate and postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology. He is a theoretical and computational chemist with the rare ability to combine the two important areas of electronic structure and quantum dynamics for large systems. His research focuses on developing new techniques to understand and predict the transport of charge and energy in complex environments and materials. He will apply his new techniques and insights to various applications, from chemical control in optical cavities, to light-harvesting materials, to surface catalysis.

Susan Lozier, Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Susan Lozier is also the new dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair of the College of Sciences. As dean, she will continue her research, studying the large-scale overturning circulation of the ocean, which impacts regional and global climate through the redistribution of heat. Overturning circulation – also known as the ocean conveyor belt – is also responsible for taking anthropogenic CO2 from the atmosphere and sequestering it in the deep ocean. Lozier leads the Overturning in the Subpolar North Atlantic Program (OSNAP), a National Science Foundation (NSF)-funded, international collaboration that aims “to provide a continuous record of the full-water column, trans-basin fluxes of heat, mass and freshwater in the subpolar North Atlantic.”

Alonzo Whyte, Academic Professional, Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience
After Alonzo Whyte earned his Ph.D. in from the University of St. Andrews, in Scotland, he completed an NIH-funded Fellowship in Research and Science Teaching (FIRST) at Emory University, focusing on developmental factors during adolescence that increase vulnerability to drug addiction and maladaptive decision-making. He teaches in the Principles of Neuroscience course and several upper-level neuroscience courses, in addition to coordinating the development of new experiments for the NEUR 2001 lab sections. He also provides academic advising to undergraduate neuroscience majors and serves on the Neuroscience Curriculum Committee for the management and development of neuroscience core and elective courses. 

Where do our thoughts go when we daydream? What does a wandering mind tell us about how we learn? And how does the way we react to suspenseful movies improve our ability to pay attention?

Those are some of the questions that Eric Schumacher, professor in the School of Psychology, attempts to answer with his research into cognitive control, and what it could mean for the future of communications and education. Those studies are the focus of the first episode of Season 3 of ScienceMatters, the official podcast of the Georgia Tech College of Sciences.

Each week for the next 10 weeks, ScienceMatters will highlight the research and discoveries going on in the College of Sciences. The episodes include stories on:

* How microbiology research is giving us not only clues about the early Earth, but what climate change is doing to the environment;

* The concepts under study in the School of Mathematics that could help us reach the outer Solar System's planets and moons faster and cheaper;

* The studies underway to learn how our brains and bodies adapt to serious injuries such as strokes and amputations.

Each episode will also include a quiz that refers to facts mentioned in each podcast. A winner will be chosen randomly from all who submit correct answers. Winners will receive special College of Sciences merchandise such as t-shirts and pens.

The episode 1 quiz question:

The College of Sciences held its annual summer dinner on Sept. 18, hosted by Susan Lozier, the new dean and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair of the College of Sciences. The gathering has become a tradition for welcoming new members; recognizing excellence in research, instruction, and service; and affirming the College’s special community of scholars.

Tim Cope, Christine Heitsch, and Marvin Whiteley received the 2019 Faculty Mentor Awards. Cope and Whiteley are professors in the School of Biological Sciences; Heitsch is a professor in the School of Mathematics.

Nominations for these awards come from early-career faculty. Nominators cite mentors’ willingness to make introductions, review proposals, and develop professional training programs as extremely helpful as they get familiar with and navigate their environment and roles.  

"[Y]our recognition also shines a bright light on your school and the College of Sciences, for which we are grateful.”

Also celebrated at the 2019 Summer Dinner were recipients of distinguished faculty awards, funded through the generosity of alumni and friends.

Greg Blekherman, Martin Mourigal, and Ronghu Wu received the Cullen-Peck Fellowship Awards. These are made possible by a gift from alumni couple Frank Cullen and Libby Peck. The goal is to encourage the development of especially promising mid-career faculty. Bleckherman is an associate professor of mathematics, Mourigal is an assistant professor of physics, and Wu is an associate professor of chemistry and biochemistry.

Kim Cobb, professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences, received the 2019 Gretzinger Moving Forward Award. This is made possible by a gift from alumnus Ralph Gretzinger and his late wife, Jewel.  The award recognizes leadership of a school chair or senior faculty member who has played a pivotal role in diversifying the composition of faculty, creating a family-friendly environment, and providing a supportive environment for early-career faculty.

Jennifer Glass, associate professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences, received the 2019 Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching. This award is supported by an endowment fund given by alumnus Charles Crawford to recognize exemplary instruction of foundational courses.

“I am pleased that your distinction in research, teaching, and mentoring brings recognition your way,” Lozier said. “But your recognition also shines a bright light on your school and the College of Sciences, for which we are grateful.”

Lozier also welcomed faculty who joined in the 2019-20 academic year, herself included as professor of Earth and atmospheric sciences. Also present were Meghan Babcock and Keaton Fletcher, School of Psychology; Marcus Cicerone and Joshua Kretchmer, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Glen Evenbly, School of Physics. Unable to attend were Alex Blumenthal, School of Mathematics, and Alonzo Whyte, School of Biological Sciences.

“As you set out on your academic journey, please know that we are here to support, mentor, and advise you along the way,” Lozier said.  “Your good fortune will be ours as well.”