To request a media interview, please reach out to School of Biological Sciences 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.
Two College of Sciences alumni are included in Atlanta Magazine's 2023 list of the Atlanta 500, highlighting the city's leaders in a variety of fields. Georgia Tech President Angel Cabrera, MS Psy 93, PhD Psy 95, is the Institute's 12th president. During his first year as president, he steered the institution through the Covid-19 pandemic and produced a new strategic plan focused on impact, access, and inclusive innovation. Also, Valerie Montgomery Rice, BS CHEM 83, is the President and Dean of Morehouse School of Medicine, and was the first woman to serve in that role. Montgomery Rice was founding director of the Center for Women’s Health Research at Meharry Medical College in Nashville, one of the nation’s first research centers devoted to studying diseases that disproportionately affect women of color.
2023 Atlanta 500: Education & HealthcareIt sounds like a firework, a bang followed by a crackle of faint sparkles. Then, a background hum builds. Soon, that is overtaken by what sounds like crashing waves. In between them, random notes beep. This is the sound of a black hole. Specifically, a “black hole-star system” around 7800 light years from Earth called V404 Cygni. The firework is the sound of the black hole. This isn’t what a black hole would sound like in reality. It is a soundscape created by NASA to represent data from telescopes. Using sound this way, known as sonification, isn’t new. But in recent years, more and more astronomers are realizing the benefits of “listening” to the universe. “Our auditory system can often discern patterns and extract meaning, even when our visual system is not able to do so,” says Bruce Walker, professor in the Schools of Psychology and Interactive Computing who directs the Georgia Tech Sonification Lab.
How sounds from space are revealing otherwise hidden cosmic phenomenaRandall (Randy) W. Engle has received the 2022 Psychonomic Society Clifford T. Morgan Distinguished Leadership Award, which recognizes “those who have made significant contributions to the field of cognitive psychology, and who have demonstrated sustained leadership and service to the discipline.” Engle is a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Psychology who leads the Institute’s Attention & Working Memory Lab. He is joined in receiving this year’s honor by Jeremy M. Wolfe of Harvard Medical School and Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston.
Randall W. Engle Receives Morgan Distinguished Leadership AwardCognitive fatigue is viewed as an inflated cost of cognitive control. It is characterized by more impulsive decisions in which people lose the ability to manage their brain processes as easily and make more spur-of-the-moment judgments. It occurs when we must use our heads for extended periods of time, whether it is while researching, writing an article, making a timetable, or reading a book. Several scientists are interviewed, including Phillip Ackerman, professor in the School of Psychology, who says engaging in enjoyable activities makes you less prone to experiencing cognitive tiredness than engaging in boring activities.
Why It’s Harder for Your Brain to Work When You’re TiredNew research in psychology, neuroscience, cognitive science, and other fields is published every day, but the gap between what is known and the capacity to act on that knowledge has never been larger. Scholars and non-scholars alike face the problem of how to organize knowledge and to integrate new observations with what is already known. Ontologies — formal, explicit specifications of the meaning of the concepts and entities that scientists study — provide a way to address this and other challenges, and thus to accelerate progress in behavioral research and its application. A new consensus study on the matter from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, includes contributions from NAS member Randall Engle, professor in the School of Psychology and principal investigator of Georgia Tech's Attention and Working Memory Lab.
Ontologies in the Behavioral Sciences: Accelerating Research and the Spread of KnowledgeAmerican workers are anxious, and navigating the ongoing uncertainty around management’s return-to-office expectations is only making things worse. As more Americans establish a hybrid work routine, many are struggling to understand employer expectations in this new working world order. What relics from our past work lives remain? And what is thrown out in the rebooting process? It’s confusing — and at times anxiety-inducing. Adding to the uncertainty is the argument some CEOs keep making that workers absolutely need to be in the office to recapture the same level of productivity as before the pandemic. “That’s just not true,” says Kimberly French, assistant professor in the School of Psychology.
Why so anxious? Return-to-office uncertainties are stressing us all out, but experts say there’s a simple fixIn the early 1980s, Atlanta’s zoo was known as one of the country’s worst — a depressing and woefully managed city-owned-and-operated mess. Animals died or disappeared, when they weren't confined to cages with little to no shade and with no access to open-air environments. Terry Maple — then a Georgia Tech primatologist, now a member of the School of Psychology's emeritus faculty — was the one who called it "a national disgrace." Maple was appointed executive director after an investigation, and is given credit for turning around the zoo's fortunes. Maple rallied investments and donations. Now named Zoo Atlanta, the facility has grown in size, diversity of animals, and is one of Atlanta’s biggest draws.
Remember when... the Atlanta zoo was a "national disgrace?"Georgia Tech President Angel Cabrera (MS Psy 93, PhD Psy 95), and alumna Valerie Montgomery Rice (Chem 83), Morehouse School of Medicine president and CEO, are named to Georgia Trend Magazine's 2022 “Top 100 Most Influential Georgians” list. From Georgia Trend: "Last year, Cabrera and Georgia Tech celebrated historic growth on many levels, including recruitment of its most diverse class, graduation of the largest class ever, record-breaking endowment totals and a University of Georgia study that concluded Georgia Tech is the largest contributor to the state economy among all public universities."
Georgia Trend Magazine's 100 Most Influential GeorgiansThirty early career researchers — including Kimberly French, assistant professor in the School of Psychology — have been chosen for the 2022 Early Career Fellowship Program from the Work + Family Research Network. Fellowship recipients share a common interest in identifying connections and consequences of work and family arrangements, as well as working together to advance mutual career interests and goals. As a group, this year’s ECFs share a passion for examining the experiences of groups traditionally left out of work-family research, including low-wage workers, precarious workers, women of color, immigrants, and workers in the Global South.
The WFRN Welcomes 2022 Early Career Fellowship RecipientsKeaton Fletcher, an assistant professor in the School of Psychology, was invited to participate in the inaugural Workplace Mental Health and Wellness Summit, sponsored by the Society for Human Resource Management. Much of the agenda concerned the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic on worker mental health, with Fletcher joining other Industrial-Organizational Psychology researchers on what makes some workplaces healthier than others. Video from his presentation and discussion can be found here. Fletcher's research focuses on how leaders can improve the efficacy and well-being of their subordinates.
Workplace Mental Health and Wellness Summit
