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Georgia Tech Launches Two New Interdisciplinary Research Institutes

admin — Tue, 01 Jul 2025 11:59:41 +0000

Georgia Tech Launches Two New Interdisciplinary Research Institutes admin Tue, 07/01/2025 - 07:59

Georgia Tech has launched two new Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs): The Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS) and the Space Research Institute (SRI).

The new institutes focus on expanding breakthroughs in neuroscience and space, two areas where research and federal funding are anticipated to remain strong. Both fields are poised to influence research in everything from healthcare and ethics to exploration and innovation. This expansion of Georgia Tech’s research enterprise represents the Institute’s commitment to research that will shape the future.

“At Georgia Tech, innovation flourishes where disciplines converge. With the launch of the Space Research Institute and the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society, we’re uniting experts across fields to take on some of humanity’s most profound questions. Even as we are tightening our belts in anticipation of potential federal R&D budget actions, we also are investing in areas where non-federal funding sources will grow and where big impacts are possible,” said Executive Vice President for Research Tim Lieuwen. "These institutes are about advancing knowledge — and using it to improve lives, inspire future generations, and help shape a better future for us all.”

Both INNS and SRI grew out of faculty-led initiatives shaped by a strategic planning process and campus-wide collaboration. Their evolution into formal institutes underscores the strength and momentum of Georgia Tech’s interdisciplinary research enterprise.

Georgia Tech’s 11 IRIs support collaboration between researchers and students across the Institute’s seven colleges, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), national laboratories, and corporate entities to tackle critical topics of strategic significance for the Institute as well as for local, state, national, and international communities.

"IRIs bring together Georgia Tech researchers making them more competitive and successful in solving research challenges, especially across disciplinary boundaries,” said Julia Kubanek, vice president of interdisciplinary research. “We're making these new investments in neuro- and space-related fields to publicly showcase impactful discoveries and developments led by Georgia Tech faculty, attract new partners and collaborators, and pursue alternative funding strategies at a time of federal funding uncertainty."

The Space Research Institute

The Space Research Institute will connect faculty, students, and staff who share a passion for space exploration and discovery. They will investigate a wide variety of space-related topics, exploring how space influences and intersects with the human experience. The SRI fosters a collaborative community including scientific, engineering, cultural, and commercial research that pursues broadly integrated, innovative projects.

SRI is the hub for all things space-related at Georgia Tech. It connects the Institute’s schools, colleges, research institutes, and labs to lead conversations about space in the state of Georgia and the world. Working in partnership with academics, business partners, philanthropists, students, and governments, Georgia Tech is committed to staying at the forefront of space-related innovation.

The SRI will build upon the collaborative work of the Space Research Initiative, the first step in formalizing Georgia Tech’s broad interdisciplinary space research community. The Initiative brought together researchers from across campus and was guided by input from Georgia Tech stakeholders and external partners. It was led by an executive committee including Glenn Lightsey, John W. Young Chair Professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering; Mariel Borowitz, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs; and Jennifer Glass, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Beginning July 1, W. Jud Ready, a principal research engineer in GTRI’s Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory, will serve as the inaugural executive director of the Space Research Institute.

To receive the latest updates on space research and innovation at Georgia Tech, join the SRI mailing list.

The Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society

The Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS) is dedicated to advancing neuroscience and neurotechnology to improve society through discovery, innovation, and engagement. INNS brings together researchers from neuroscience, engineering, computing, ethics, public policy, and the humanities to explore the brain and nervous system while addressing the societal and ethical dimensions of neuro-related research.

INNS builds on a foundation established over a decade ago, which first led to the GT-Neuro Initiative and later evolved into the Neuro Next Initiative. Over the past two years, this effort has culminated in the development of a comprehensive plan for an IRI, guided by an executive committee composed of faculty and staff from across Georgia Tech. The committee included Simon Sponberg, Dunn Family Associate Professor in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences; Christopher Rozell, Julian T. Hightower Chaired Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Jennifer Singh, associate professor in the School of History and Sociology; and Sarah Peterson, Neuro Next Initiative program manager. Their leadership shaped the vision for a research community both scientifically ambitious and socially responsive.

INNS will serve as a dynamic hub for interdisciplinary collaboration across the full spectrum of brain-related research — from biological foundations to behavior and cognition, and from fundamental research to medical innovations that advance human flourishing. Research areas will encompass the foundations of human intelligence and movement, bio-inspired design and neurotechnology development, and the ethical dimensions of a neuro-connected future.

By integrating technical innovation with human-centered inquiry, INNS is committed to ensuring that advances in neuroscience and neurotechnology are developed and applied ethically and responsibly. Through fostering innovation, cultivating interdisciplinary expertise, and engaging with the public, the institute seeks to shape a future where advancements in neuroscience and neurotechnology serve the greater good. INNS also aims to deepen Georgia Tech’s collaborations with clinical, academic, and industry partners, creating new pathways for translational research and real-world impact.

An internal search for INNS’s inaugural executive director is in the final stages, with an announcement expected soon.

Join our mailing list to receive the latest updates on everything neuro at Georgia Tech.

Summary sentence

By uniting experts across disciplines, Georgia Tech is positioning itself at the forefront of neuroscience and space research.

Summary

By uniting experts across disciplines, Georgia Tech is positioning itself at the forefront of neuroscience and space research.

Dateline

Tue, 07/01/2025 - 12:00

Contact

Laurie Haigh
Research Communications

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go-researchnews

go-irim

go-ibb

go-neuro

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Campus and Community

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Aerospace

Engineering

Research

Mercury ID

682962

Source updated

Tue, 07/01/2025 - 07:58

Brain-Inspired AI Breakthrough Spotlighted at Global Conference

dgivens8 — Thu, 26 Jun 2025 16:46:41 +0000

Brain-Inspired AI Breakthrough Spotlighted at Global Conference dgivens8 Thu, 06/26/2025 - 12:46

Researchers at Georgia Tech have taken a critical step forward in creating efficient, useful and brain-like artificial intelligence (AI). The key? A new algorithm that results in neural networks with internal structure more like the human brain.

The study, “TopoNets: High-Performing Vision and Language Models With Brain-Like Topography,” was awarded a spotlight at this year’s International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), a distinction given to only 2 percent of papers. The research was led by graduate student Mayukh Deb alongside School of Psychology Assistant Professor Apurva Ratan Murty.

Thirty-two of Tech’s computing, engineering, and science faculty represented the Institute at ICLR 2025, which is globally renowned for sharing cutting-edge research.

“We started with this idea because we saw that AI models are unstructured, while brains are exquisitely organized,” says first-author Deb. “Our models with internal structure showed more than a 20 percent boost in efficiency with almost no performance losses. And this is out-of-the-box — it’s broadly applicable to other models with no extra fine-tuning needed.”

For Murty, the research also underscores the importance of a rapidly growing field of research at the intersection of neuroscience and AI. “There's a major explosion in understanding intelligence right now,” he says. “The neuro-AI approach is exciting because it helps emulate human intelligence in machines, making AI more interpretable.”

“In addition to advancing AI, this type of research also benefits neuroscience because it informs a fundamental question: Why is our brain organized the way it is?,” Deb adds. “Making AI more interpretable helps everyone.”

Brain-inspired blueprints

In the brain, neurons form topographic maps: neurons used for comparable tasks are closer together. The researchers applied this concept to AI by organizing how internal components (like artificial neurons) connect and process information.

This type of organization has been tried in the past but has been challenging, Murty says. “Historically, rules constraining how the AI could structure itself often resulted in lower-performing models. We realized that for this type of biophysical constraint, you simply can’t map everything — you need an algorithmic solution.”

“Our key insight was an algorithmic trick that gives the same structure as brains without enforcing things that models don't respond well to,” he adds. “That breakthrough was what Mayukh (Deb) worked on.”

The algorithm, called TopoLoss, uses a loss function to encourage brain-like organization in artificial neural networks, and it is compatible with many AI systems capable of understanding language and images.

“The resulting training method, TopoNets, is very flexible and broadly applicable,” Murty says. “You can apply it to contemporary models very easily, which is a critical advancement when compared to previous methods.”

Neuro-AI innovations

Murty and Deb plan to continue refining and designing brain-inspired AI systems. “All parts of the brain have some organization — we want to expand into other domains,” Deb says. “On the neuroscience side of things, we want to discover new kinds of organization in brains using these topographic systems.”

Deb also cites possibilities in robotics, especially in situations like space exploration where resources are limited. “Imagine running a model inside a robot with limited power,” he says. “Structured models can help us achieve 80 percent of performance with just 20 percent of energy consumption, saving valuable energy and space. This is still experimental, but it's the direction we are interested in exploring.”

“This success highlights the potential of a new approach, designing systems that benefit both neuroscience and AI — and beyond,” Murty adds. “We can learn so much from the human brain, and this project shows that brain-inspired systems can help current AI be better. We hope our work stimulates this conversation.”

Subtitle

Summary sentence

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed an algorithm that helps AI models develop internal organization just like the human brain — boosting efficiency by 20 percent.

Summary

Researchers at Georgia Tech have developed an algorithm that helps AI models develop internal organization just like the human brain — boosting efficiency by 20 percent.

Dateline

Thu, 06/26/2025 - 12:00

Contact

Written by Selena Langner

Contact: Jess Hunt-Ralston

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Categories

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Student and Faculty

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Student Research

Mercury ID

682905

Source updated

Thu, 06/26/2025 - 12:46

How New Information Triggers the Brain to Navigate Changing Environments

admin — Tue, 24 Jun 2025 15:54:41 +0000

How New Information Triggers the Brain to Navigate Changing Environments admin Tue, 06/24/2025 - 11:54

Stephanie Prince explains her research with a scenario many Atlantans can relate to.

Imagine you’re driving to the Atlanta airport to pick up a friend. They call to say they’re in the terminal — but they’re not sure which one. North, maybe? You head that direction through the maze of roads around the airport.

Then they call back. They’re actually in the South Terminal. So you make a quick mental adjustment and switch your route to arrive at the correct side of the airport.

You had a plan. You received new information. You quickly changed your destination.
The question Prince has studied is this: How does that process happen in the brain?

A new research paper in Nature Communications is offering insights into that decision-making. And it could help scientists as they work to better understand when brain disorders such as Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s impair those processes.

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website.

Summary sentence

Biomedical engineers show how two brain regions quickly adapt to shift focus from one planned destination to another.

Summary

Biomedical engineers show how two brain regions quickly adapt to shift focus from one planned destination to another.

Dateline

Tue, 06/24/2025 - 12:00

jstewart@gatech.edu

Contact

Joshua Stewart
College of Engineering

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Annabelle Singer

Biomedical Engineering

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go-bio

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Health and Medicine

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Research

Mercury ID

682871

Source updated

Tue, 06/24/2025 - 11:53

Teaching AI to Collaborate, not Merely Create, Through Dance

dgivens8 — Fri, 30 May 2025 18:14:41 +0000

Teaching AI to Collaborate, not Merely Create, Through Dance dgivens8 Fri, 05/30/2025 - 14:14

Two children are playing with a set of toys, each playing alone. That kind of play involves a somewhat limited set of interactions between the child and the toy. But what happens when the two children play together using the same toys?

“The actions are similar, but the choices and outcomes are very different because of the dynamic changes they’re making with the other person,” says Brian Magerko, Regents’ Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Literature, Media, and Communication. “It’s a thing that humans do all the time, and computers don’t do with us at all.”

Welcome to the next frontier of artificial intelligence (AI) — not just generating but collaborating in real-time.

Magerko and his colleagues, Georgia Tech research scientist Milka Trajkova and Kennesaw State University Associate Professor of Dance Andrea Knowlton, are putting a collaborative AI system they’ve developed to the ultimate test: the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

Dance Partner

LuminAI is an interactive system that allows participants to engage in collaborative movement improvisation with an AI virtual dance partner projected on a nearby screen or wall. LuminAI analyzes participant movements and improvises responses informed by memories of past interactions with people. In other words, LuminAI learns how to dance by dancing with us.

The National Science Foundation-supported project began about 12 years ago in a lab and became an art installation and public demo. LuminAI has since moved into a different phase as a creative collaborator and education tool in a dance studio.

“We’re looking at the role LuminAI can play in dance education. As far as we’re aware, this is the first implemented version of an AI dancer in a dance studio,” says Trajkova, who was a professional ballet dancer before becoming a research scientist on the project.

To prepare LuminAI to collaborate with dancers, the research team started by studying pairs of improvisational dancers.

“We’re trying to understand how non-verbal, collaborative creativity occurs,” Knowlton says. “We start by trying to understand influencing factors that are perceived as contributing to improvisational success between two artists. Through that understanding, we applied those criteria to an AI system so it can have a similar experience with co-creative success.”

“We’re working on a creative arc,” adds Trajkova. “So instead of the AI agent just generating movements in response to the last thing that happened, we’re working to track and understand the dynamics of creative ideas across time as a continuous flow, rather than isolated instances of reaction.”

Students from Knowlton’s improvisational dance class at Kennesaw State spent two months of their spring semester working routinely with the LuminAI dancer and recording their impressions and experiences. One of the purposes the team discovered is that LuminAI serves as a third view for dancers and allows them to try ideas out with the system before trying it out with a partner.

The classroom experiment will culminate in a public performance on May 3 at Kennesaw State’s Marietta Dance Theater featuring the students performing with the LuminAI dancer. As far as the research team is aware the event is the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

While not all the dancers embraced having an AI collaborator, some of those who were skeptical at first left the experience more open to the possibility of collaborating with AI, Knowlton says. Regardless of their feelings toward working with AI, Knowlton says she believes the dancers gained valuable skills in working with specialized technology, especially as dance performances evolve to include more interactive media.

Refined Movement

So, what’s next for LuminAI? The project represents at least two possible paths for its learnings. The first includes continued exploration about how AI systems can be taught to cooperate and collaborate more like humans.

“With the advent of generative AI these past few years, it’s been really clear how great a need there is for this sort of social cognition,” says Magerko. “One of the things we’re going to be getting off the ground is sense-making with large language models. How do you collaborate with an AI system – rather than just making text or images, they’ll be able to make with us.”

The second involves the body movements LuminAI has been cataloging and analyzing over the years. Dance exemplifies highly refined motor skills, often exhibiting a level of detail surpassing that found in various athletic disciplines or physical therapy. While the tools designed to capture these intricate movements—through cameras and AI—are still nascent, the potential for harnessing this granular data is significant, Trajkova says.

That exploration begins on May 30 with a two-day summit being held at Georgia Tech to discuss its application for transforming performance athletics, with interdisciplinary participants in dance, computer vision, biomechanics, psychology, and human-computer interaction from Georgia Tech, Emory, KSU, Harvard, Royal Ballet in London, and Australian Ballet.

“It’s about understanding AI's role in augmenting training, promoting wellness as well as diving deep in decoding the artistry of human movements. How can we extract insights about the quality of athlete’s movements so we can help develop and enhance their own unique nuances?” Trajkova says.

Summary sentence

Georgia Tech and KSU faculty are putting a collaborative AI system they’ve developed to the ultimate test: the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

Summary

Georgia Tech and KSU faculty are putting a collaborative AI system they’ve developed to the ultimate test: the world’s first collaborative AI dance performance.

Dateline

Thu, 05/02/2024 - 12:00

Contact

Megan McRainey
megan.mcrainey@gatech.edu

Associated importer

Keywords

artificial intelligence (AI)

go-ai

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Categories

Art Research

Digital Media and Entertainment

Georgia Tech Arts

Mercury ID

674495

Source updated

Fri, 05/10/2024 - 14:03

Can You Upload a Human Mind Into a Computer? A Neuroscientist Ponders What’s Possible

admin — Fri, 30 May 2025 15:24:41 +0000

Can You Upload a Human Mind Into a Computer? A Neuroscientist Ponders What’s Possible admin Fri, 05/30/2025 - 11:24

Is it possible to upload the consciousness of your mind into a computer? – Amreen, age 15, New Delhi, India

The concept, cool yet maybe a little creepy, is known as mind uploading. Think of it as a way to create a copy of your brain, a transmission of your mind and consciousness into a computer. There you would live digitally, perhaps forever. You’d have an awareness of yourself, you’d retain your memories and still feel like you. But you wouldn’t have a body.

Within that simulated environment, you could do anything you do in real life – eating, driving a car, playing sports. You could also do things impossible in the real world, like walking through walls, flying like a bird or traveling to other planets. The only limit is what science can realistically simulate.

Doable? Theoretically, mind uploading should be possible. Still, you may wonder how it could happen. After all, researchers have barely begun to understand the brain.

Yet science has a track record of turning theoretical possibilities into reality. Just because a concept seems terribly, unimaginably difficult doesn’t mean it’s impossible. Consider that science took humankind to the Moon, sequenced the human genome and eradicated smallpox. Those things too were once considered unlikely.

As a brain scientist who studies perception, I fully expect mind uploading to one day be a reality. But as of today, we’re nowhere close.

Living in a Laptop

The brain is often regarded as the most complex object in the known universe. Replicating all that complexity will be extraordinarily difficult.

One requirement: The uploaded brain needs the same inputs it always had. In other words, the external world must be available to it. Even cloistered inside a computer, you would still need a simulation of your senses, a reproduction of the ability to see, hear, smell, touch, feel – as well as move, blink, detect your heart rate, set your circadian rhythm and do thousands of other things.

But why is that? Couldn’t you just exist in a pure mental bubble, inside the computer without sensory input?

Depriving people of their senses, like putting them in total darkness, or in a room without sound, is known as sensory deprivation, and it’s regarded as a form of torture. People who have trouble sensing their bodily signals – thirst, hunger, pain, an itch – often have mental health challenges.

That’s why for mind uploading to work, the simulation of your senses and the digital environment you’re in must be exceptionally accurate. Even minor distortions could have serious mental consequences.

For now, researchers don’t have the computing power, much less the scientific knowledge, to perform such simulations.

New and updated scanning technology is a necessity.

Scanning billions of pinheads

The first task for a successful mind upload: Scanning, then mapping the complete 3D structure of the human brain. This requires the equivalent of an extraordinarily sophisticated MRI machine that could detail the brain in an advanced way. At the moment, scientists are only at the very early stages of brain mapping – which includes the entire brain of a fly and tiny portions of a mouse brain.

In a few decades, a complete map of the human brain may be possible. Yet even capturing the identities of all 86 billion neurons, all smaller than a pinhead, plus their trillions of connections, still isn’t enough. Uploading this information by itself into a computer won’t accomplish much. That’s because each neuron constantly adjusts its functioning, and that has to be modeled, too.

It’s hard to know how many levels down researchers must go to make the simulated brain work. Is it enough to stop at the molecular level? Right now, no one knows.

Technological immortality comes with significant ethical concerns.

2045? 2145? Or Later?

Knowing how the brain computes things might provide a shortcut. That would let researchers simulate only the essential parts of the brain, and not all biological idiosyncrasies. It’s easier to manufacture a new car knowing how a car works, compared to attempting to scan and replicate an existing car without any knowledge of its inner workings.

However, this approach requires that scientists figure out how the brain creates thoughts – how collections of thousands to millions of neurons come together to perform the computations that make the human mind come alive. It’s hard to express how very far we are from this.

Here’s another way: Replace the 86 billion real neurons with artificial ones, one at a time. That approach would make mind uploading much easier. Right now, though, scientists can’t replace even a single real neuron with an artificial one.

But keep in mind the pace of technology is accelerating exponentially. It’s reasonable to expect spectacular improvements in computing power and artificial intelligence in the coming decades.

One other thing is certain: Mind uploading will certainly have no problem finding funding. Many billionaires appear glad to part with lots of their money for a shot at living forever.

Although the challenges are enormous and the path forward uncertain, I believe that one day, mind uploading will be a reality. The most optimistic forecasts pinpoint the year 2045, only 20 years from now. Others say the end of this century.

But in my mind, both of these predictions are probably too optimistic. I would be shocked if mind uploading works in the next 100 years. But it might happen in 200 – which means the first person to live forever could be born in your lifetime.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Summary sentence

The concept, cool yet maybe a little creepy, is known as mind uploading.

Summary

The concept, cool yet maybe a little creepy, is known as mind uploading.

Dateline

Fri, 05/23/2025 - 12:00

Contact

Author:

Dobromir Rahnev, associate professor of Psychology, Georgia Institute of Technology

Media Contact:

Shelley Wunder-Smith
shelley.wunder-smith@research.gatech.edu

Keywords

go-neuro

go-researchnews

News room topics

Science and Technology

Mercury ID

682603

Source updated

Fri, 05/30/2025 - 11:23

New Wearable Device Monitors Skin Health in Real Time

admin — Wed, 14 May 2025 13:40:41 +0000

New Wearable Device Monitors Skin Health in Real Time admin Wed, 05/14/2025 - 09:40

From sun damage and pollution to cuts and infections, our skin protects us from a lot. But it isn’t impenetrable.

“We tend to think of our skin as being this impermeable barrier that’s just enclosing our body,” said Matthew Flavin, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Our skin is constantly in flux with the gases that are in our environment and our atmosphere.”

Led by the Georgia Institute of Technology, Northwestern University, and the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KIST), researchers have developed a novel wearable device that can monitor the flux of vapors through the skin, offering new insights into skin health and wound healing. This technology, detailed in a recent Nature publication, represents a significant advancement in the field of wearable bioelectronics.

“You could think of this being used where a Band-Aid is being used,” said Flavin, one of the lead authors of the study. The compact, wireless device is the first wearable technology able to continuously and precisely measure water vapor, volatile organic compounds, and carbon dioxide fluxes in the skin in real time. Because increases in these factors are associated with infection and delayed healing, Flavin notes that this kind of wireless monitoring “could give clinicians a new tool to understand the properties of the skin.”

The Measurement Barrier

Our skin is our first line of defense against environmental hazards. Measuring how effectively it protects us from harmful pollutants or infections has been a significant challenge, especially over extended periods.

“The vapors coming from your skin are in very, very low concentration,” explained Flavin. “If we just put a sensor next to your skin, it would be almost impossible to control that measurement.”

The new device features a small chamber that condenses and measures vapors from the skin using specialized sensors hovering above the skin. A low-energy, bi-stable mechanism periodically refreshes the air in the chamber, allowing for continuous measurements communicated to a smartphone or tablet through Bluetooth.

“There are other devices that can measure certain parts of what we're talking about here,” said Flavin, “but they are not feasible for a wearable device, can't do this continuously, and are not able to get all the information that our device can get.”

Scratching the Surface

By tracking the skin's water vapor flux, also known as transepidermal water loss, the device can assess skin barrier function and wound healing. This capability is particularly valuable for tracking the healing process in diabetic patients, who often have sensory issues that complicate wound monitoring. “What you see in diabetes is that even after the wound looks like it's healed, there's still a persistent impairment of that barrier,” said Flavin. This new non-invasive device tracks those properties.

“There are many areas where people don't have great access to healthcare, and there aren’t doctors monitoring wound healing processes,” Flavin added. “Something that can be used to monitor that remotely could make care more accessible to people with these conditions.”

The device’s wearable nature also makes it ideal for studying the long-term effects of exposure to environmental hazards like wildfires or chemical fumes on skin function and overall health.

Though the applications in health are numerous, the research team is continuing to explore different ways to use the device. “This measurement modality is very new and we're still learning what we can do with it,” saidJaeho Shin, a senior researcher at KIST and a co-leader of the study. “It's a new way of measuring what's inside the body.”

“This is a great example of the kind of technology that can emerge from research at the interface between engineering science and medical practice,” said John Rogers, a materials science professor at Northwestern and another co-leader of the study. “The capabilities provided by this device will not only improve patient care, but they will also lead to improved understanding of the skin, the skin microbiome, the processes of wound healing, and many others.”

As a new faculty member and a member of Georgia Tech’s Neuro Next Initiative, a burgeoning interdisciplinary research hub for neuroscience, neurotechnology, and society, Flavin attributes the success of this research to its interdisciplinary nature.

“A broad challenge we have in these fields of research is that they integrate a lot of different areas. One of the reasons I came to Georgia Tech is because it's a place where you have access to all those different areas of expertise.”

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08825-2

Funding: Querrey-Simpson Institute for Bioelectronics and the Center for Advanced Regenerative Engineering (CARE), Northwestern University; National Research Foundation of Korea; National Institutes of Health (NIH), National Institute of Diabetes and Digestive and Kidney Diseases, National Institutes of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering.

Summary sentence

The device is the first of its kind to continuously monitor how the skin exchanges gases with the environment, helping to monitor skin health and wound healing.

Summary

The device is the first of its kind to continuously monitor how the skin exchanges gases with the environment, helping to monitor skin health and wound healing.

Dateline

Mon, 04/14/2025 - 12:00

audra.davidson@research.gatech.edu

Contact

Writer: Audra Davidson
Research Communications Program Manager
Neuro Next Initiative

Media contact: Angela Barajas Prendiville
Director
Institute Media Relations

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News room topics

Health and Medicine

Categories

Biotechnology, Health, Bioengineering, Genetics

Engineering

Life Sciences and Biology

Mercury ID

681759

Source updated

Wed, 05/14/2025 - 09:39

Nunn School's Kosal Helps Lead National Academies Consensus Report on Chemical Terrorism

admin — Fri, 12 Jul 2024 13:47:41 +0000

Nunn School's Kosal Helps Lead National Academies Consensus Report on Chemical Terrorism admin Fri, 07/12/2024 - 09:47

What's happening: Margaret E. Kosal, associate professor in Georgia Tech's Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, played a key role in developing a new consensus report by the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) looking at U.S. strategies to prevent or respond to a chemical attack. Kosal, who has a Ph.D. in chemistry and extensive national security expertise, served as vice chair of the study committee.

What is a NASEM consensus report? These rigorous reports are the gold standard in public science and policy guidance, providing policymakers, industry, and the public with evidence-based, authoritative advice on complex scientific, engineering, and health-related issues. This one was ordered by Congress and took nearly two years to complete.

Why it matters: While the U.S. hasn’t yet seen a major chemical terrorism attack in recent years, terrorists have used chemical agents more often than any other WMD. The committee concluded that the threat remains significant domestically and internationally. Their report highlights the need to maintain robust counter-terrorism measures while adapting to the United States’ shifting strategic priorities.

Among the key findings:

After decades of focusing on terror groups, U.S. strategy now prioritizes state actors and interstate competition. This could potentially affect funding and attention to counter-terrorism efforts, the committee said.

The U.S. needs to align its budget priorities to its new strategic direction to better prepare the nation to deter and, if necessary, respond to such attacks.

Widespread availability of industrial chemicals and little visibility on potential insider threats exacerbate the threat.

The committee also stressed a critical need to support basic scientific and social science research specifically related to countering chemical terrorism, such as understanding social behavior related to emerging threats.

The experts also said that working with international partners to enhance chemical security and identify, prevent, counter, and respond to chemical and other weapons of mass destruction (WMD) threats worldwide help make the U.S. safer.

“We shouldn’t, even unintentionally, shift to a strategy of depending on us ‘being lucky’ to stop terrorists who want to acquire and use WMD,” Kosal said.

The bottom line: Kosal's leadership in this significant national security report underscores the Nunn School's and Georgia Tech's critical contributions to addressing complex global threats and highlights the school's expertise and commitment to shaping effective national security policies.

Summary sentence

Associate Professor Margaret E. Kosal helped lead the National Academies committee study on chemical terrorism.

Summary

Nunn School Associate Professor Margaret E. Kosal helped lead the National Academies committee study on chemical terrorism.

Dateline

Tue, 07/09/2024 - 12:00

michaael.pearson@iac.gatech.edu

Contact

Michael Pearson
Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

Keywords

go-neuro

News room topics

Society and Culture

Mercury ID

675408

Source updated

Fri, 07/12/2024 - 09:46

Fulbright U.S. Student Awards Announced for 2024-2025

dgivens8 — Mon, 17 Jun 2024 15:26:41 +0000

Fulbright U.S. Student Awards Announced for 2024-2025 dgivens8 Mon, 06/17/2024 - 11:26

The Georgia Institute of Technology is pleased to announce that five students and alumni have received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to study/conduct research in the fields of international business and neuroscience and serve as a Fulbright English Teaching Assistant in Mongolia and Taiwan for the 2024-2025 academic year from the U.S. Department of State and the Fulbright Foreign Scholarship Board.

ANISHA KANUKOLANU, B.S. NEUROSCIENCE, 2023, Research at the Technische Universität, Berlin, Berlin Germany. Anisha will conduct research under the guidance of Dr. Sein Jeung in the Berlin Mobile Brain-Body Imaging Lab. Anisha states, “I am very passionate about cultural competency and creating globally inclusive research. I want to conduct research in Germany to learn more about the highly multicultural academic landscape in neuroscience research.”

GINA PIAZZA, B.S. ECONOMICS & BS APPLIED LANGUAGES & INTERCULTURAL STUDIES, 2021, Mexico Binational Business Program. This unique program provides recipients with a ten-month internship in a Mexican or multinational company in Mexico City. Gina is excited about this opportunity to work internationally and develop valuable resources for her future career in global development. Gina states, “This experience will broaden my perspective on the process of development, and immersion in Mexican culture will help me to understand diverse viewpoints. As a result, I anticipate completing the grant period prepared to work with various stakeholders in a global development career.”

TOM (MINSEOK) LEE, B.S. INTERNATIONAL AFFAIRS, 2024, English Teaching Assistant, Mongolia. While completing an internship at the Department of State, Tom was able to help out at the Mongolia Desk. Tom explains, “I chose the English Teaching Assistant program in Mongolia because I wanted to continue learning about Mongolia and its language and culture.”

EMILY YAN, B.S. BIOMEDICAL ENGINEERING, 2024, English Teaching Assistant, Taiwan. Emily is excited to teach young students from another culture and looks forward to fostering empathetic listening skills. With the ultimate goal of attending medical school, Emily explains, “Teaching may seem distant from the field of medicine, but teaching plays a large part in patient care. I aspire to develop into a healthcare professional capable of comprehending and addressing the diverse needs of those under my care.”

CLAIRE LIN, B.S. INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERING, 2023, English Teaching Assistant, Taiwan. One of Claire’s life goals is to bring accessibility to underserved areas around the globe. She explains, “I have yearned to connect with communities through cultural immersion and direct communication to address the root causes of disparities in healthcare and education.”

More than 2,000 Fulbright U.S. Students—recent college graduates, graduate students, and early career professionals from all backgrounds—pursue graduate study, conduct research, or teach English in schools abroad each year.

Since 1946, the Fulbright Program has provided over 400,000 talented and accomplished students, scholars, teachers, artists, and professionals of all backgrounds with the opportunity to study, teach, and conduct research abroad. Fulbrighters exchange ideas, build people-to-people connections, and work to address complex global challenges.

Fulbright is a program of the U.S. Department of State, with funding provided by the U.S. Government. Participating governments and host institutions, corporations, and foundations around the world also provide direct and indirect support to the Program, which has operated in over 160 countries worldwide. In the United States, the Institute of International Education implements the Fulbright U.S. Student and U.S. Scholar Programs on behalf of the U.S. Department of State. For more information about the Fulbright Program, visit https://fulbrightprogram.org.

Georgia Tech’s Prestigious Fellowships Advisor Dr. Karen Mura sees the Fulbright program as an opportunity for recipients to connect with the world as they advance their personal goals and growth. "The Fulbright program is a tremendous opportunity for our students to broaden their horizons and gain valuable experience in their fields of study," she said. "We are incredibly proud of our five recipients for their hard work and dedication, and we look forward to seeing how they will contribute to their host communities while representing Georgia Tech and the United States."

The Office of Undergraduate Education is proud of these talented students and wishes them the best of luck as they embark on their Fulbright journeys.

Students interested in Fulbright, or any nationally or internationally competitive award, can follow up by contacting Shannon Dobranski at shannon.dobranski@gatech.edu.

Pre-Graduate and Pre-Professional Advising is part of Academic Success and Advising (ASA) and the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE).

Summary sentence

College of Sciences graduate Anisha Kanukolanu is among the Georgia Tech students and alumni who have received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to study/conduct research.

Summary

College of Sciences graduate Anisha Kanukolanu is among the Georgia Tech students and alumni who have received a Fulbright U.S. Student Program award to study/conduct research.

Dateline

Mon, 06/10/2024 - 12:00

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by Karen Mura, Office of Undergraduate Education

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Mon, 06/17/2024 - 11:25

Asthma's New Treatment Frontier

admin — Mon, 10 Jun 2024 15:45:41 +0000

Asthma's New Treatment Frontier admin Mon, 06/10/2024 - 11:45

Asthma impacts more than 40 million Americans, and 10% of the world’s population. However, current anti-inflammatory treatments only partially control the disease’s symptoms. Now, Liang Han, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences, has been awarded a $2.47M grant by the National Institute of Health to study the role our nervous system plays in asthma — and the potential for new treatments. The grant will fund five years of research, with work beginning this spring.

“Asthma is typically considered an allergic inflammatory disease,” Han says, “and so the majority of research has previously focused on immune responses. But there is emerging evidence that the nervous system plays a critical role in the disease.”

Han highlights that our lungs are full of sensory nerves, which help monitor their internal state, and play an important role in regulating our breathing patterns and respiratory system. Vagal sensory neurons help send information from the lungs to the brain. Recent data collected by Yanyan Xing, a former postdoctoral researcher in the Han lab and now a scientist at Empress Therapeutics, suggested that blocking a group of vagal sensory neurons stopped the development of asthma symptoms in mice.

“Since these sensory neurons are responsible for responses like coughing, bronchoconstriction, and mucus secretion, all of which are asthma symptoms, we want to investigate whether blocking these neurons can help inhibit asthma in humans,” Han says. “If so, this might prove a promising treatment avenue for asthma.”

The nervous system connection

In her lab at Georgia Tech, Han’s research team investigates the role the nervous system plays in creating and behavioral responses, and how that contributes to chronic diseases. “We want to understand how the nervous system receives, transmits, and interprets various stimuli to induce physiological and behavioral responses,” she explains.

This year, Han also received a $550k grant from the National Science Foundation to investigate the neural circuit controlling itch sensation. The research has the potential to uncover new treatments for sensory conditions like chronic itch.

Subtitle

Liang Han awarded $2.47M NIH Grant to Study Nervous System's Role in Asthma

Summary sentence

Han will investigate whether blocking specific neurons can help inhibit asthma — which may provide a new avenue for developing treatments.

Summary

Asthma impacts more than 10% of the world’s population, but current anti-inflammatory treatments only partially control the disease. Now, with a $2.47M grant, Liang Han is exploring the role our nervous systems play, potentially leading to new treatments.

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Tue, 05/21/2024 - 12:00

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Written by Selena Langner

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Mon, 06/10/2024 - 11:44

Flicker Stimulation Shines in Clinical Trial for Epilepsy

admin — Thu, 09 May 2024 21:13:41 +0000

Flicker Stimulation Shines in Clinical Trial for Epilepsy admin Thu, 05/09/2024 - 17:13

Biomedical engineer Annabelle Singer has spent the past decade developing a noninvasive therapy for Alzheimer’s disease that uses flickering lights and rhythmic tones to modulate brain waves. Now she has discovered that the technique, known as flicker, also could benefit patients with a host of other neurological disorders, from epilepsy to multiple sclerosis.

Previously, Singer and her collaborators demonstrated that the lights and sounds, delivered to patients through goggles and headphones, have beneficial effects. Flicker has been successful in animal studies and in early human feasibility trials, where it was tested for safety, tolerance, and patient adherence.

Now, thanks to a clinical trial for people with epilepsy, the researchers quantified flicker’s effects with unprecedented precision. They also made an unexpected, but encouraging, discovery: The treatment reduced interictal epileptiform discharges (IEDs) in the brain.

These large, intermittent electrophysiological events are observed between seizures in people with epilepsy. They appear as sharp spikes on an EEG readout.

“What’s interesting about these IEDs is that they don’t just occur in epilepsy,” said Singer, McCamish Foundation Early Career Professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “They occur in autism, multiple sclerosis, Alzheimer’s, and other neurological disorders, too.” And IEDs disrupt normal brain function, causing memory impairment.

Singer and her team published their findings recently in Nature Communications.

The Rhythm in Our Heads

Inside the brain are elaborate symphonies of electrical activity: brain waves, or oscillations, that compose our memories, thoughts, and emotions. Singer wants to modulate those oscillations for therapeutic purposes.

At specific frequencies of light and sound, the flicker treatment can induce gamma oscillations in mice. This helps the brain recruit microglia, cells responsible for removing beta amyloid, which is believed to play a central role in Alzheimer’s pathology. Part of the work is in recording what’s happening in the brain during treatment to verify how it’s working.

The patients in the trial were under the care of physician Jon Willie at the Emory University Hospital Epilepsy Monitoring Unit. (Willie, co-corresponding author of the study with Singer, is now at Washington University in St. Louis.) They were awaiting surgery to remove an area of the brain where seizures occur. Before that could happen, they had to undergo intracranial seizure monitoring — recording electrodes are placed in the brain to pinpoint the seizure onset zone and determine exactly which tissue should be removed. Then, patients and their care team wait for a seizure to happen. It can take days.

“In human studies, we’ve used noninvasive methods like functional MRI or scalp EEG, but they have real downsides in terms of resolution,” Singer said. “Working with these patients was a game changer. These are people with treatment-resistant epilepsy, which means that drugs aren’t working for them.”

Pathway to Healing

Singer’s team recruited 19 patients. Lead author of the study, Lou Blanpain, a former Ph.D. student in Singer’s lab and now a medical student at Emory, went from patient to patient with the flicker stimulation and recording equipment.

“Because these patients already had recording probes implanted for clinical reasons, we were able to record directly from the brain,” Singer said. “We’ve never been able to get recordings of this quality during flicker treatment before.”

As the researchers expected, flicker modulated the visual and auditory brain regions that respond strongly to stimuli. But it also reached deeper, into the medial temporal lobe and prefrontal cortex, brain regions crucial for memory. And across the brain, in regions Singer hadn’t fully explored before, she found IEDs were decreasing.

“That has important implications for whether flicker is therapeutically relevant for people with Alzheimer’s, but also in general if we want to target anything beyond the primary sensory regions,” she said. “All of this points to the potential use of flicker in a lot of different contexts. Going forward, we’re definitely going to look at other conditions and other potential implications.”

Citation: Lou T. Blanpain, Eric R. Cole, Emily Chen, James K. Park, Michael Y. Walelign, Robert E. Gross, Brian T. Cabaniss, Jon T. Willie, Annabelle C. Singer. “Multisensory Flicker Modulates Widespread Brain Networks and Reduces Interictal Epileptiform Discharges,” Nature Communications.

Funding: National Institutes of Health (R01 NS109226, RF1NS109226, RF1AG078736, R01 MH120194, P41 EB018783, MH12019), DARPA, McCamish Foundation, Packard Foundation.

Competing interests: Annabelle Singer owns shares in Cognito Therapeutics, which aims to develop gamma stimulation-related products. These conflicts are managed by Georgia Tech’s Office of Research Integrity Assurance.

Summary sentence

Biomedical engineer Annabelle Singer has spent the past decade developing a noninvasive therapy for Alzheimer’s disease that also could benefit patients with a host of other neurological disorders, from epilepsy to multiple sclerosis.

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Dateline

Thu, 05/09/2024 - 12:00

jerry.grillo@ibb.gatech.edu

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Thu, 05/09/2024 - 17:13

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Flicker Stimulation Shines in Clinical Trial for Epilepsy

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