Georgia Institute of Technology College of Sciences

Alex Blumenthal and his coauthors, Jacob Bedrossian and Samuel Punshon-Smith, are in the news for developing the first rigorous proof explaining a fundamental law of turbulence.

Professor Blumenthal is a recent addition to SoM, who works in the areas of dynamical systems and smooth ergodic theory.

Read the full article here:

https://m.phys.org/news/2019-12-mathematical-proof-key-law-turbulence.html

They chose to study at Georgia Tech. Once here, they discovered that the academic rigor and leading-edge science research they’ve heard so much about is true – and demands their best. Some found Tech overwhelming at times, but all succeeded.

Wherever their journey started, our graduates discovered something else in the heart of Atlanta: the Tech experience, which involves forming new and lasting friendships, stretching out of their comfort zones, becoming part of the Georgia Tech family, and more.

Meet six graduating students from the College of Sciences. Headed in various directions, each feels well-prepared for the next step in their professional life because of their Georgia Tech education. Georgia Tech helped them achieve their goals and join a larger community, one that values friendship and collaboration, as well as scholarship.

Congratulations, Fall 2019 graduates! We can't wait to see what comes next for you!

Maria Furukawa, B.S. in Chemistry, Polymers Concentration

Nicholas Pinto, B.S. in Mathematics and B.S. in Economics

Daughtry St. John, B.S. in Neuroscience

Shannon Valley, Ph.D. in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Andrea Welsh, Ph.D. in Physics

Caroline Zabinski, B.S. Biology with a certificate in Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Photo Caption
Top from left: Maria Furukawa, Nicholas Pinto, Daughtry St. John
Bottom from left: Shannon Valley, Andrea Welsh, Caroline  Zabinsky

Ernie Croot of the Georgia Institute of Technology, Vsevolod Lev of the University of Haifa, Oranim, in Israel, and Péter Pál Pach of the Budapest University of Technology and Economics in Hungary, have made a major breakthrough in the cap set problem.

Read the full research paper here:

https://arxiv.org/abs/1605.01506

Read the full Quanta article here:

https://www.quantamagazine.org/set-proof-stuns-mathematicians-20160531/

Highlights from the Quanta article:

The result is related to the card game SET, in which cards with four attributes - color (red, purple, or green), shape (oval, diamond, or squiggle), shading (solid, striped, or empty), and count (one, two, or three) - need to be matched with 3 cards being a match, or "set", if all three cards either all share or all differ in all three attributes.

In a series of papers posted online in recent weeks, mathematicians have solved a problem about the pattern-matching card game Set that predates the game itself. The solution, whose simplicity has stunned mathematicians, is already leading to advances in other combinatorics problems.

The result extends previous results in an unexpected leap, while the proof is quite profound in its simplicity, and is likely to have far reaching implications.

The proof uses the “polynomial method,” an innovation that, despite its simplicity, only rose to prominence on the mathematical scene about a decade ago. The approach produces “beautiful short proofs,” Tao said. It’s “sort of magical.”

The previous results were “already considered to be quite a big breakthrough, but this completely smashes the bounds that they achieved,” said Timothy Gowers, a mathematician and Fields medalist at the University of Cambridge.

There’s still room to improve the bound on cap sets, but in the near term, at least, any further progress is likely to be incremental, Gowers said. “In a certain sense this completely finishes the problem.”

The paper soon set off a cascade of what Ellenberg called “math at Internet speed.”  Within 10 days, Ellenberg and Dion Gijswijt, a mathematician at Delft University of Technology in the Netherlands, had each independently posted papers showing how to modify the argument to polish off the original cap set problem in just three pages.

Mathematicians are now scrambling to figure out the implications of the new proof. Already, a paper has been posted online showing that the proof rules out one of the approaches mathematicians were using to try to create more efficient matrix multiplication algorithms. And on May 17, Gil Kalai, of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, wrote an “emergency” blog post pointing out that the cap set result can be used to prove the “Erdős-Szemerédi sunflower conjecture,” which concerns sets that overlap in a sunflower pattern.

“I think a lot of people will be thinking, ‘What can I do with this?’” Gowers said. Croot, Lev and Pach’s approach, he wrote in a blog post, is “a major new technique to add to the toolbox.”

The fact that the cap set problem finally yielded to such a simple technique is humbling, Ellenberg said. “It makes you wonder what else is actually easy.”

Georgia Tech has named Esther Gallmeier as the first recipient of the Frances O. Hite Scholarship Endowment. Gallmeier is a second-year student in the School of Mathematics.

Georgia Tech alumnus Bruce L. Hite formed the endowment in loving memory of his wife, Frances “Fran” Orr Hite. Bruce graduated from Georgia Tech in 1972 with a B.S. in building construction.

Born in Shelbyville, Tennessee, Fran earned a B.A. degree in mathematics from Vanderbilt University in 1972. After her death in May 2019, friends and family established the scholarship endowment in her honor. The goals are to perpetuate Fran’s memory and to encourage women in mathematics by providing scholarships to deserving students.

"This scholarship came as a surprise to me, and I’m very grateful," Gallmeier says. She adds that she appreciates the Hite family's support for women in mathematics.

Gallmeier completed high school in Oak Ridge High School, in Oak Ridge, Tennessee. She was attracted to Tech by the experience of a former student in her high school who went to Tech to major in mathematics. "He loved it here," she says. "As a result, I was attracted to studying mathematics at Tech. Also, Georgia Tech is incredible at providing opportunities for undergraduates in research and internships. We are definitely well-connected with companies from all over."

One Frances O. Hite scholarship will be awarded annually to a qualified student, preferably a female student, pursuing a degree in the School of Mathematics.

Photo Caption
From left: Hite children Kevin and Pamela; Bruce Hite; Esther Gallmeier; Charlie Crawford, Bruce’s longtime friend; and Erin Green, College of Sciences development associate (Courtesy of Bruce Hite)

Editor's Note: This story by Jerry Grillo was originally published on Nov. 14, 2019, by the Parker H. Petit Institute of Bioscience and Bioengineering. The original story was slightly modified for the College of Sciences. 

The 21st  class of Petit Undergraduate Research Scholars has been selected. These 14 scholars will immerse themselves into the multidisciplinary pool of research at the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at the Georgia Institute of Technology in January 2020. Among them are five from Georgia Tech who are majoring in the sciences or mathematics.

"This is a diverse cohort of students whose expertise spans a wide range of majors, and not only at Georgia Tech, but other Atlanta universities also,” notes Raquel Lieberman, Petit Scholar faculty advisor, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and a Petit Institute researcher.

With eight women and six men in the new class, next year’s group of Scholars reflect a growing trend of more women entering STEM fields. Of the 14 students, 10 are from Georgia Tech, two are from Emory University, with one each from Agnes Scott College and Georgia State University. Five of the students are based in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory.

“I'm excited for all of them, because this is a unique opportunity, an entire year diving deep into an actual research project,” Lieberman says. “They'll also contribute substantially to papers that will be published and have a chance to present their work at conferences and other gatherings.”

“I'm excited for all of them, because this is a unique opportunity, an entire year diving deep into an actual research project. They'll also contribute substantially to papers that will be published and have a chance to present their work at conferences and other gatherings.”   
                                                                                    Raquel Lieberman

Meet the 2020 class of Petit Scholars (listed here with their university, major, and the principal investigator’s lab they’ll be a part of):

• Cindy Aguilera-Navarro, Agnes Scott College, Neuroscience, Tim Cope;

• Berna Aliya, Georgia Tech, Neuroscience, Young Jang;

• Kasey Cervantes, Emory, Biology, Arijit Raychowdhury;

• Ana Cristian, Georgia Tech, Biomedical Engineering, James Dahlman;

• Carolann Espy, Georgia Tech, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Ingeborg Schmidt-Krey;

• Rachel Fitzgerald, Georgia Tech, Chemistry and Biochemistry, M.G. Finn;

• Marina Holguin-Lopez, Georgia State, Neuroscience, Todd Sulchek;

• Brandon Kassouf, Georgia Tech, Biomedical Engineering, Mike Davis;

• Amy Liu, Georgia Tech, Biomedical Engineering, Shuichi Takayama;

• Ananthu Pucha, Emory, Neuroscience, Nick Willett

• Milan Riddick, Georgia Tech, Biomedical Engineering, Andrés García;

• Kevin Tao, Georgia Tech, Biomedical Engineering, Gabe Kwong;

• Paxton Threatt, Georgia Tech, Chemistry and Biochemistry, Neha Garg;

• Kevin Yin, Georgia Tech, Mathematics, Shuyi Nie.

The Petit Undergraduate Research Scholarship program began in 2000 with the goal of developing a new generation of leading bio-researchers by providing them with an opportunity to conduct independent research in Petit Institute labs, and other bio-related labs at Georgia Tech, for a full year. Since 2000, the program has funded more than 300 students, with about 80 percent of them moving on to pursue graduate degrees.

News Contact Info: 

Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

An associate professor in the School of Mathematics is the latest College of Sciences faculty member to be invited to a National Academy of Sciences (NAS) Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium.

Michael Damron, who researches probability theory and mathematical physics, attended the fourth annual Israeli-American Kavli Frontiers symposium, on Sept. 18-19, in Jerusalem, Israel. The event was co-sponsored by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities (IASH). Several countries host Kavli symposia each year.

As described on the NAS website, the Kavli Frontiers of Science Symposium “is the Academy’s premiere activity for young distinguished scientists. Attendance at a symposium is by invitation only, and attendees are selected from among award winners for early career scientists in the U.S. and abroad.”

“The conference was very interesting,” Damron says. “All of the talks were meant to introduce the audience to the research area, and they were mostly very engaging, sort of like TED talks. I particularly liked the session on CRISPR, a gene editing tool, and also the session on cancer immunotherapy. It was a great opportunity because I have never attended a conference with such a wide array of topics, and spent so much time with top scientists in so many disciplines. The whole experience was extremely inspiring, not only for ideas in my own research, but also to cultivate a general creative mode of thinking. You never know where new ideas will come from.”

“This symposium series is the Academy’s premiere activity for distinguished young scientists,” NAS president Marcia McNutt wrote in her invitation letter to Damron. “Unlike meetings that cover a single, narrow slice of science, these symposia are designed to provide an overview of advances and opportunities in a wide-ranging set of disciplines and to provide an opportunity for the future leaders of science to build a network with their colleagues.”

The attendees are designated Kavli Fellows. They include Sloan Fellows, Packard Fellows, MacArthur Fellows, Pew Fellows, Searle Scholars, and Presidential Early Career Awardees for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE).

More than 250 Kavli alumni have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences. Twelve have been awarded Nobel Prizes.

Since the inception of the program in 1989, over 5,000 distinguished young scientists have attended a Kavli symposium. Forty-five Georgia Tech researchers in a various disciplines have been invited.

Following are College of Sciences professors who have attended Kavli Frontiers of Sciences Symposia since 2009:

• Vinayak Agarwal, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, 2019
• Kenneth Brown, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, 2013
• Kim Cobb, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, 2009
• Michael Damron, School of Mathematics, 2019
• Josef Dufek, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, 2014
• Kostas Konstantinidis, School of Biological Sciences, 2014
• Martin Mourigal, School of Physics, 2019
• Zhigang Peng, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, 2013

Michael Damron has recently been selected as a 2019 Kavli Fellow by the National Academies of Sciences.

As a 2019 Kavli Fellow, Prof. Damron attended the fourth Israeli-American Kavli Fronters of Science Symposium in Jerusalem, Israel, in September. The symposium, co-sponsored by the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities, provided an overview of advances and opportunities in a wide-ranging set of disciplines including chemistry, physics, medicine, biology, mathematics, and climate science.

A directory of fellows can be found here:

http://www.nasonline.org/programs/kavli-frontiers-of-science/public-directory.html

Attendees to the Kavli symposia are selected by a committee of Academy members from among young researchers who have already made recognized contributions to science, including recipients of major national fellowships and awards and who have been identified as future leaders in science. The program began in 1989, and from its over 5000 alumni, more than 250 have been elected to the National Academy of Sciences, with 12 having been awarded Nobel Prizes. More about the program is available here:

http://nasonline.org/programs/kavli-frontiers-of-science/

An article, co-authored by SoM NSF Postdoc Marissa Loving, about increasing diversity and inclusion in math culture was picked up by AMS Notices.

Read the full article here:

Broadening the Horizons of Teaching and Diversity in Mathematics Departments

https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1831.pdf

The article, which appears on Johns Hopkins university news site and has been picked up by Phys.org, is an interview with Hopkins professor Joel Spruck highlighting the mathematical and emotional difficulties of proving the long standing Cartan-Hadamard conjecture with his former student and Georgia Tech School of Math professor, Mohammad Ghomi.

Read the full article here:

https://hub.jhu.edu/2019/11/07/joel-spruck-mathematics-cartan-hadamard-manifolds-proof-science/