Epilepsy, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease — as a Jim Pope Fellow, Adam McCallum is dedicated to helping students search for solutions to these and other devastating diseases. McCallum is a translational research advocate in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, currently ranked No. 2 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. He hopes to accelerate the commercialization of the most promising biotech advances.  

When McCallum learned about the Jim Pope Fellowship, he saw it as a tremendous opportunity. “Biomedical engineering research has so much potential to be translated into products and solutions that tackle unmet clinical needs, that could be shaped to enhance society in general,” he says. “It’s a collaboration between biology, medicine, and engineering. The Pope Fellowship is a unique opportunity to explore new projects dedicated to entrepreneurship.” 

McCallum is one of five faculty members to receive the Jim Pope Fellowship, which supports faculty in becoming entrepreneurial instructors and mentors in CREATE-X. He hopes to leverage this fellowship to instill entrepreneurial confidence in biomedical engineering graduate students and faculty and help them translate their research into IP and healthcare-focused products to be used in and out of the clinic.

Since being named a fellow, McCallum has applied the funding to attend conferences to learn more about new methods for teaching commercialization and entrepreneurship, develop programming to enhance the student experience, increase student understanding and interest in entrepreneurship, and explore creative new projects he has envisioned while at Georgia Tech.

Establishing a New Commercialization Course

Beginning in the fall, he will teach a new course, Fundamentals of Biotechnology Commercialization, targeting BME graduate students. McCallum developed the curriculum, which begins with an overview of technology commercialization and the commercialization process, followed by modules on IP — how to protect one’s inventions; financing, with a focus on early-stage commercialization funding opportunities; and choosing a commercialization path.

“In the second part of the course, students will simulate a patent filing,” says McCallum. “It’s a really important step in the commercialization process. In future iterations of the course, I would love to have students file real disclosures and provisional patent applications with our Tech Transfer Office and have a licensing associate talk to them about managing the IP.”

BME Innovations Pivotal to Georgia Tech’s IP Ecosystem

McCallum sees Georgia Tech BME researchers as an important driver of innovation, and the Institute’s patent track record reflects their critical role: More than 21% of U.S.-issued patents to Georgia Tech have at least one BME inventor listed, according to the Office of Commercialization. 

In the past year, he has already seen the value of infusing an entrepreneurial spirit into his curriculum. Annabelle Singer (BME) and Levi Wood (ME) were mentored by McCallum while they were developing an audiovisual device to help stimulate brain activity in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. Through this mentorship, Singer and Wood recognized possible use cases and commercialization pathways for their technology.

“Their device has potential applications in a wide range of other neurological conditions — to lessen the impact of these disorders on people in their everyday life,” says McCallum, adding, “I’m excited about Georgia Tech and Emory’s commitment to developing programs to enhance neuroscience and neural engineering research. There’s so much potential in that space, especially for being able to significantly impact diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease, as well as strokes and epilepsy. We are moving in the right direction with being able to improve the efficacy of the modalities to diagnose and treat these conditions.”

According to McCallum, his close connection to CREATE-X has given him a unique opportunity to see the impact of the program on the entrepreneurial endeavors of students and even faculty members. 

“Previous fellows have been very successful with developing new educational programs and courses, as well as creating new spaces to spawn innovation, to instill entrepreneurial confidence in undergraduate students, and I want to use those successes as inspiration to make an impact on graduate student entrepreneurial confidence in BME, with much more to come,” he said.

As one of President Ángel Cabrera's four Big Bets, the drive for entrepreneurial education and opportunities has accelerated at Georgia Tech. In 2023, over a third of all Georgia Tech applicants selected entrepreneurship as an interest. Pope Fellows have a unique opportunity to help students tap into entrepreneurial pathways with CREATE-X, access an abundance of resources, and solve real-world problems. For faculty interested in joining, applications are open for the 2025 Jim Pope Fellowship until Sept. 2. For more information, visit https://create-x.gatech.edu/faculty/jim-pope-fellowship.

Candace Washington never thought she’d one day run her own business or teach the next generation of project management leaders in construction and engineering. But that’s exactly what she’s doing thanks to Georgia Tech. 

In 2012, Washington, a seasoned construction veteran with 25 years of expertise and a master’s degree in building construction from Georgia Tech, noticed a shortage of project managers. She oversaw capital improvements and construction buildouts nationally and was consistently getting asked by clients to oversee the construction buildouts. This would spark the idea to start her business and launch Cancave Management & Engineering. 

Over the next decade, Washington built a successful company and yet she continued to see this recurring shortage of project managers. According to Associated Builders and Contractors, the construction sector still grapples with a significant talent shortage that extends beyond the skilled trades to include construction management positions, with a projected need for nearly half a million additional workers in 2025 alone.

“We have fewer people entering the industry. With the pandemic, we had a great exodus where a lot of people decided to get out of the industry and retire early, and then you have the emerging housing market and infrastructure needs, creating demand for construction in general — the perfect storm,” Washington said.

Determined to find more ways to address the problem, she joined Georgia Tech’s School of Building Construction as a part-time instructor and, in 2024, began pursuing her Ph.D. at Tech, where she learned about the Jim Pope Fellowship.

“Being a Pope Fellow has been transformational to my experience as an entrepreneur,” Washington said. “When I started my company, I wish I had something like this. Through this fellowship, I was able to dig deeper into my idea, validate assumptions, and shape it into a solution that addresses the pain points of labor shortages and compliance bottlenecks in the underutilization or over-utilization of resources.” 

As a fellow, Washington was also awarded $15,000 in discretionary funds to support her teaching and entrepreneurial efforts. With the resources from Jim Pope, Washington has been able to make meaningful impacts for students and her company. 

Over the last year, she has worked on the next evolution of her business by building Extend the Ladder®,  a workforce resource and compliance platform built around an industrywide shared resource model for construction professionals. One application of her platform would allow general contractors to share resources by enabling them to find and coordinate talent from a single database.

In addition to helping her pursue a construction job-matching platform, the fellowship has reinforced her love of teaching and mentoring entrepreneurial-minded students. As a part of the fellowship, Washington taught CREATE-X’s Startup Lab, which teaches the fundamentals of evidence-based entrepreneurship.

One student, Vivianne Akerman, a rising junior in industrial engineering, became Washington’s mentee after her spring Startup Lab class. Bitten by the entrepreneurial bug, Akerman decided to continue her entrepreneurial journey in CREATE-X’s Idea-to-Prototype (I2P) course. She turned an idea into action with guidance from Washington, building a solution for a problem she identified during Startup Lab.

“Candace is an amazing mentor who pushes students to be their best selves,” said Akerman, who is developing a makeup platform designed “to make makeup practical and less overwhelming.” The platform will enable consumers to compare and review products and ultimately find what brands work best for them, given their skin type and desired look.

“I love how positive she is,” adds Akerman. “This is new for me — it’s very exciting but also very overwhelming. She helps me stay focused on my priorities and what’s most important.”

Washington emphasizes that there is no guidebook to becoming an entrepreneur; rather, the path must be discovered through conversations, relationship-building, and learning from the experiences of others.

“This experience deepened my appreciation for the spirit of entrepreneurship — it’s been invaluable for me,” she says. “I would tell anybody who's trying to start a business, you need to go through this process.”

Now, as a mentor herself, Washington credits her fellowship in CREATE-X for giving her the confidence and framework to help others. And she credits her path as a mentor and teacher of entrepreneurship to the home she’s found at Georgia Tech. 

Drawing from her own experiences, both the challenges and the triumphs, she offers a piece of advice that she believes aspiring entrepreneurs should carry with them. 

“Start now — you don’t need all the answers. Focus on the process, stay committed, and be open to real-world feedback.”

Applications are now open for the 2025 Jim Pope Fellowship until Sept. 2. Interested faculty can learn more at https://create-x.gatech.edu/faculty/jim-pope-fellowship.

The Laser Interferometer Gravitational-Wave Observatory (LIGO)’s LIGO-Virgo-KAGRA (LVK) collaboration has detected an extremely unusual binary black hole merger — a phenomenon that occurs when two black holes are pulled into each other's orbit and combine. Announced yesterday in a California Institute of Technology press release, the binary black hole merger, GW231123, is the largest ever detected with gravitational waves.

Before merging, both black holes were spinning exceptionally fast, and their masses fell into a range that should be very rare — or impossible. 

“Most models don't predict black holes this big can be made by supernovas, and our data indicates that they were spinning at a rate close to the limit of what’s theoretically possible,” says Margaret Millhouse, a research scientist in the School of Physics who played a key role in the research. “Where could they have come from? It raises interesting questions.”

A binary black hole merger absorbs characteristics from both of the contributors, she adds. “As a result, this is not only the most massive binary black hole ever seen but also the fastest-spinning binary black hole confidently detected with gravitational waves.”

“GW231123 is a record-breaking event,” says School of Physics Professor Laura Cadonati, who has been a member of the LIGO Scientific Collaboration since 2002. “LIGO has been observing the cosmos for 10 years now. This discovery underscores that there is still so much that this instrument can help us learn.”

A Cosmic View

The findings challenge current theories on how smaller black holes form, says School of Physics Assistant Professor and LIGO collaborator Surabhi Sachdev. Smaller black holes are the result of supernovae: dying and collapsing stars. During that collapse, explosions can tear apart or eject part of the star’s mass — limiting the size of the black hole that forms.

“Black holes from supernovae can weigh up to about 60 times the mass of our Sun,” she says. “The black holes in this merger were likely the mass of hundreds of suns.”

Because of its size, GW231123 also allowed the team to study the merger in unprecedented detail. “LIGO has observed scores of black hole mergers,” says Cadonati. “Of these, GW231123 has provided us with the clearest view of the ‘grand finale’ of a merger thus far. This adds a new clue to solve the puzzle that are black holes, including their origins and properties.”

“While we saw that our expectations matched the data, the extreme nature of this event pushed our models to their limits,” Millhouse adds. “A massive, highly spinning system like this will be of interest to researchers who study how binary black holes form.”

Decoding a Split-Second Signal

Millhouse and School of Physics Postdoctoral Fellow Prathamesh Joshi used Einstein’s equations for general relativity to confirm LIGO’s detections.

To find black holes, LIGO measures distortions in spacetime — ripples that are created when two black holes collide. These patterns in gravitational waves can be used to find the signature signal of black hole collisions. 

“In this case, the signal lasted for just one-tenth of a second, but it was very clear,” says Joshi. "Previously, we designed a special study to detect these interesting signals, which accounted for all the unusual properties of such massive systems — and it paid off!”

“To ensure it wasn’t noise, the Georgia Tech team first reconstructed the signal in a model-agnostic way,” Millhouse adds. “We then compared those reconstructions to a model that uses Einstein's equations of general relativity, and both reconstructions looked very similar, which helped confirm that this highly unusual phenomenon was a genuine detection.”

Sachdev says that seeing the signal at both LIGO Observatories — placed in Hanford, Washington and Livingston, Louisiana — was also critical. “These short signals are very hard to detect, and this signal is so unlike any of the other binary black holes that we've seen before,” she says. “Without both detectors, we would have missed it.”

A Decade of Discovery

While the team has yet to determine how the original black holes formed, one theory is that they may have resulted from mergers themselves. “This could have been a chain of mergers,” Sachdev explains. “This tells us that they could have existed in a very dense environment like a nuclear star cluster or an active galactic nucleus.” Their spins provide another clue as spinning is a characteristic usually seen in black holes resulting from a merge.

The team adds that GW231123 could provide clues on how larger black holes are formed — including the mysterious supermassive black holes at the center of galaxies.

“Gravitational wave science is almost a decade old, and we're still making fundamental discoveries,” says Millhouse. “It’s exciting that LIGO is continuing to detect new phenomena,  and this is at the edge of what we've seen thus far. There's still so much we can learn.”

The team expects to update their catalogue of black holes in August 2025, which will provide another window into how this exceptionally heavy black hole might fit into the universe, and what we can continue to learn from it.

 

Funding: The LIGO Laboratory is supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and operated jointly by Caltech and MIT.

Fan Zhang, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has received the 2025 Landis Young Member Engineering Achievement Award from the American Nuclear Society (ANS).

The award recognizes young members for outstanding achievements in which engineering knowledge is effectively applied to yield an engineering concept, design, safety improvement, method of analysis, or product utilized in nuclear power research and development or commercial application.

Zhang was selected by the ANS Honors and Awards Committee for her pioneering contributions to nuclear cybersecurity through innovative machine learning (ML) approaches, development of patent-pending technology, and efforts to establish Georgia Tech as a leader in the field. The award also recognizes her collaboration with the International Atomic Energy Agency and her groundbreaking research on robot-assisted nuclear power plant monitoring, which improves safety and efficiency and demonstrates exceptional impact on global nuclear security.

Zhang serves as the director of the Intelligence for Advanced Nuclear (iFAN) Lab at Georgia Tech. Her research primarily focuses on nuclear cybersecurity, online monitoring, fault detection, digital twins, AI/ML, and robotics. Her work on robot-assisted nuclear power plant monitoring, which combines these cross-cutting areas, could significantly reduce human worker presence in harsh and potentially hazardous environments and improve the efficiency of plant operation. The work was supported by the inaugural Department of Energy Office of Nuclear Energy Distinguished Early Career Award.

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This week, Professor Joel Kostka was awar­ded the pres­ti­gi­ous Humboldt Research Award by the Al­ex­an­der von Hum­boldt Found­a­tion during its annual meeting and reception with Germany’s Federal President Steinmeier in Berlin. Every year, the Foundation grants up to 100 Humboldt Research Awards worldwide, which recognize internationally leading researchers of all disciplines.

The award’s €80,000 endowment will support a research trip to Germany for up to a year — during which Kostka will collaborate with Professor Mar­cel Kuypers, director of the Max Planck In­sti­tute for Mar­ine Mi­cro­bi­o­logy in Bre­men, Germany — to as­sess the role of mar­ine plant mi­cro­bi­o­mes in coastal mar­ine eco­sys­tem health and climate re­si­li­ence.

Kostka, who holds joint appointments in the School of Bio­lo­gical Sci­ences and School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, is also the as­so­ci­ate chair for re­search in Bio­lo­gical Sci­ences. He was ​​recently named the inaugural faculty director of Georgia Tech for Georgia's Tomorrow. The new Center, announced by the College of Sciences in December 2024, will drive research aimed at improving life across the state of Georgia. 

Wetlands in a changing climate

“Human population is centered on coastlines, and coastal ecosystems provide many services for people,” Kostka says. “Although they cover less than 1 percent of the ocean, coastal wetlands store over 50 percent of the seafloor’s rich carbon reserves.” But researchers aren’t sure how these ecosystems will respond to a changing climate.

Microbes may be the key. Microbes play a critical role in maintaining plant health and helping them adapt to stressors, Kostka says. Similar to human bodies, plants have microbiomes: a community of microbes intimately associated with the plant that help it take up nutrients, stimulate the plant’s immune system, and regulate plant hormones. 

“Our research indicates that plant microbiomes are fundamental to wetland ecosystem health, yet almost everything we know about them is from agricultural systems,” he adds. “We know very little about the microbes associated with these important marine plants that dominate coastal ecosystems.”

Kostka’s work in Germany will investigate how microbiomes help coastal marine plants adapt to stress and keep them healthy. From there, he will investigate how plant microbiomes contribute to the carbon and nutrient cycles of coastal ecosystems — and how they contribute to ecosystem resilience.

Expanding collaboration — and insights 

One goal of the collaboration is to exchange information on two types of marine plants that dominate coastal ecosystems worldwide: those associated with seagrass meadows and salt marshes.

“I’ve investigated salt marsh plants in the intertidal zone between tides, and my colleagues at the Max Planck Institute have focused on seagrass beds and seagrass meadows, which are subtidal, below the tides,” Kostka says. “While these two ecosystems have some different characteristics, they both cover large areas of the global coastline and are dominated by salt-tolerant plants.” 

In salt marshes, Kostka has shown that marine plants have symbiotic microbes in their roots that help them to take up nitrogen and deal with stress by removing toxic sulfides. He suspects that these plant-microbe interactions are critical to the resilience of coastal ecosystems. “The Max Planck Institute made similar observations in seagrass meadows as we did in salt marshes,” Kostka explains. “But they found different bacteria.”

From Georgia to Germany

Beyond supporting excellence in research, another key goal of the Humboldt Research Award is to support international collaboration — something very familiar to Kostka. “I've been working with Professor Kuypers and the Max Planck Institute in Bremen for many years,” he says, adding that he completed his postdoctoral research at the Institute. “Max Planck's labs are some of the best in the world for what they do, and their imaging technology can give us an unprecedented look at plant-microbe interactions at the cellular level.”

“This project is also special because I am collaborating with other scientists in northern Germany,” Kostka adds. “The University of Bremen is home to the Cen­ter for Mar­ine En­vir­on­mental Sci­ences (MARUM), which is designated as a Cluster of Excellence by the German National Science Foundation, so there are a number of fantastic research centers in Bremen to work with.”

His hope is that this project will deepen collaboration between the research at Georgia Tech and research in Germany. “I look forward to seeing what we can uncover about these critical systems while working together.”

 

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.”

Georgia Tech scientists have uncovered evidence that a mountain on the rim of Jezero Crater — where NASA’s Perseverance Rover is currently collecting samples for possible return to Earth — is likely a volcano. Called Jezero Mons, it is nearly half the size of the crater itself and could add critical clues to the habitability and volcanism of Mars, transforming how we understand Mars’ geologic history.

The study, “Evidence for a composite volcano on the rim of Jezero crater on Mars,” was published this May in the Nature-family journal Communications Earth & Environment, and underscores how much we have left to learn about one of the most well-studied regions of Mars.

Lead author Sara C. Cuevas-Quiñones completed the research as an undergraduate during a summer program at Georgia Tech; she is now a graduate student at Brown University. The team also included corresponding author Professor James J. Wray (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences), Assistant Professor Frances Rivera-Hernández (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences), and Jacob Adler, then a postdoctoral fellow at Georgia Tech and now an assistant research professor at Arizona State University. 

“Volcanism on Mars is intriguing for a number of reasons — from the implications it has on habitability, to better constraining the geologic history,” Wray says. “Jezero Crater is one of the best studied sites on Mars. If we are just now identifying a volcano here, imagine how many more could be on Mars. Volcanoes may be even more widespread across Mars than we thought.”

A mountain in the margins

Wray first noticed the mountain in 2007, while considering Jezero Crater as a graduate student. 

“I was looking at low-resolution photos of the area and noticed a mountain on the crater’s rim,” he recalls. “To me, it looked like a volcano, but it was difficult to get additional images.” At the time, Jezero Crater was newly discovered, and imaging focused almost entirely on its intriguing water history, which is on the opposite side of the 28-mile-wide crater.

Then, Jezero Crater, due to these lake-like sedimentary deposits, was selected as the landing spot for the 2020 Perseverance Rover — an ongoing NASA mission seeking signs of ancient Martian life and collecting rock samples for possible return to Earth.

However, after landing, some of the first rocks Perseverance encountered were not the sedimentary deposits one might expect from a previously-flooded area — they were volcanic. Wray suspected he might know the origin of these rocks, but to make a case for it, he would need to show that the mountain on the edge of Jezero Crater could indeed be a volcano.

A new researcher — and old data

The opportunity presented itself several months after Perseverance landed when Cuevas-Quiñones applied to a Summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program hosted by the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences to work with Wray. 

“A previous study led by Briony Horgan (professor of planetary science at Purdue University) had also suggested that Jezero Mons could be volcanic,” Cuevas-Quiñones says. “I began wondering if there was a way to home in on these suspicions.”

The team partnered with study coauthor Rivera-Hernández, who specializes in characterizing the surface of planets and their habitability. They decided to use datasets gathered from spacecraft orbiting Mars to compare the properties of Jezero Mons to other, known, volcanoes. “We can’t visit Mars and definitively prove that Jezero Mons is a volcano, but we can show that it shares the same properties with existing volcanoes — both here on Earth and Mars,” Wray explains.

“We used data from the Mars Odyssey Orbiter, Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter, and Perseverance Rover, all in combination to puzzle this out,” he adds. “I think this shows that these older spacecraft can be extremely valuable long after their initial missions end — these old spacecraft can still make important discoveries and help us answer tricky questions.”

For Cuevas-Quiñones, it also underscores the importance of REU programs and opportunities for undergraduates. “I was an undergraduate student at the time, and this was my first time conducting research,” she says. “It was fascinating to learn how different data sets could be used to decode the origin of a landscape. After Jezero Mons, it became clear to me that I would continue to study Mars and other planetary bodies.”

The search for life — and determining Mars’ age

The discovery makes the crater even more intriguing in the search for past life on Mars. A volcano so close to watery Jezero Crater could add a critical source of heat on an otherwise cold planet, including the potential for hydrothermal activity — energy that life could use to thrive. 

This type of system also holds interest for Mars as a whole. “The coalescence of these two types of systems makes Jezero more interesting than ever,” shares Wray. “We have samples of incredible sedimentary rocks that could be from a habitable region alongside igneous rocks with important scientific value.” If returned to Earth, igneous rocks can be radioisotope dated to know their age very precisely. Dating the Jezero Crater samples could be used to calibrate age estimates, providing an unprecedented window into the geologic history of the planet.

The take home message? “Mars is the best place we have to look in our solar system for signs of life, and thanks to the Perseverance Rover collecting samples in Jezero, the United States has samples from the best rocks in the best place on Mars,” Wray says. “If these samples are returned to Earth, we can do incredible, groundbreaking science with them.”

 

 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s43247-025-02329-7

Funding: Cuevas-Quiñones was supported by Georgia Tech’s 2021 Research Experience for Undergraduates program sponsored by NSF and 3M corporation. Wray was supported by NASA funding for Co-Investigators on HiRISE and CaSSIS. CaSSIS is a project of the University of Bern and funded through the Swiss Space Office via ESA’s PRODEX program. The instrument hardware development was also supported by the Italian Space Agency (ASI) (ASI-INAF agreement 2020-17-HH.0), INAF/Astronomical Observatory of Padova, and the Space Research Center (CBK) in Warsaw. Support from SGF (Budapest), the University of Arizona Lunar and Planetary Lab, and NASA are also gratefully acknowledged. Operation support from the UK Space Agency is also acknowledged.

CREATE-X, Georgia Tech’s premier entrepreneurship program, kicked off its 12th Startup Launch cohort this month with a record-breaking 137 student teams and 25 faculty and research teams — totaling 318 founders. The summer-long accelerator, known for turning ideas into real-world ventures, is once again positioning Georgia Tech as a national leader in invention and startup creation.

This year’s cohort spans a wide range of industries, including artificial intelligence, defense, healthcare, gaming, sustainability, media management, agriculture tech, fashion tech, education, and more. 

“These founders are in the messy middle and that's a beautiful place to be. There’s a lot of freedom in that,” said Margaret Weniger, director of Startup Launch. “We’re all going to be in this together. It's a safe space to try new things. It’s OK if it doesn't work out because what we want founders to learn is an entrepreneurial mindset and entrepreneurial spirit — something you take with you no matter what you do after this.”

Over the next 12 weeks, teams will validate ideas, build products, and acquire customers with the help of dedicated coaches, a robust founder community, and a network of mentors and alumni. 

Raghupathy "Siva" Sivakumar, Georgia Tech’s inaugural vice president of Commercialization and the faculty founder of CREATE-X, spoke about the core of CREATE-X and what it would take for founders to succeed.

“Startup Launch is not about Georgia Tech gaining from your success. We are here just for one reason, which is to make you successful,” he said. “You need to hold yourself accountable. You need to be ambitious in terms of how big a problem you solve. You need to be emphatic that the customer matters. The successful teams are 100% behind what's going to make the lives of customers easier and better.”

In 2014, CREATE-X was co-founded by Sivakumar, Steve McLaughlin(who is now the president of The Cooper Union for the Advancement of Science and Art), and other Georgia Tech faculty, including Ray Vito, Craig Forest, and Ravi Bellamkonda (who is now the executive vice president and provost of The Ohio State University). The program received its initial major philanthropic support from Chris Klaus, a Georgia Tech alumnus and tech entrepreneur, whose gift helped launch the initiative, and , played a key role in building out the program's maker courses. Over the years, CREATE-X has continued to grow, thanks largely to the philanthropic support of alumni and foundations who believe in its mission.

In the last decade, the program has produced over 650 startups, $2.4 billion in portfolio valuation, and had eight founders named to Forbes’ 30 Under 30. Wagner shared stories of past teams who pivoted dramatically — from a glucose-monitoring pillow to a sobriety app now valued at over $350 million, and from a camping gear delivery service to a billion-dollar logistics platform. 

“We don’t know which ideas will become the next unicorns,” Weniger said. “But we’re betting on you.”

At the kickoff event, McLaughlin and Klaus were honored for their contributions to Georgia Tech’s entrepreneurial ecosystem. McLaughlin encouraged the founders through the story of CREATE-X.

“From the very beginning, we challenged CREATE-X to be a startup as well. To this day, CREATE-X has raised its own money to do this. It's a reminder of what it takes to make this happen,” he said. “This is the most difficult challenge you have ever taken. I think at the time, we were probably skeptical about whether students could do it. Now we know that you can.”

Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera reflected on the impact of McLaughlin, Klaus, and others who saw the vision of Georgia Tech being an entrepreneurial campus. 

“Ten years ago, this was a crazy, absurd idea,” he said. “Now, 150 teams are working on their own crazy ideas. Even though sometimes there's this idea of the entrepreneur as a loner, what you learn very quickly is entrepreneurship is a team sport.”

Klaus spoke about people collaborating and helping solve problems together. 

“I'm especially inspired by Georgia with its complex history,” he said. “It continues to be a place where peace can be envisioned and pursued. I think this recognition strengthens my commitment to building bridges, resolving conflict, and lifting up voices that seek unity. As you build your businesses, you'll be building collaborations and partnerships, and hopefully make the world a better place.”

As the summer progresses, founders will be guided by CREATE-X’s core values: experiential education, entrepreneurial confidence, and real-world impact. Weniger encouraged teams to “show up uncomfortable” and “leverage every single resource” available.

The journey will culminate at Demo Day, where teams will showcase their startups to investors, industry leaders, and the broader community. The event is free, open to the public, and promises a front-row seat to the next wave of Georgia Tech-born innovation.

Demo Day 2025 will take place on Thursday, Aug. 28, at 5 p.m., in the Exhibition Hall. For more information and to RSVP, visit the CREATE-X Demo Day Eventbrite.

The College of Sciences is pleased to announce the launch of the AI4Science Center. The center will promote research and collaboration focused on using state-of-the-art artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) techniques to address complex scientific challenges.

“AI and ML have the potential to revolutionize scientific discovery, but there is a clear need for foundational research centered on AI/ML methodologies and application to scientific problems,” says Dimitrios Psaltis, professor in the School of Physics.

Psaltis will co-lead the center with Molei Tao, professor in the School of Mathematics, and Audrey Sederberg, assistant professor in the School of Psychology.

The new center will combine expertise and resources from various disciplines to foster the creation of robust, reusable tools and methods that can be used across scientific domains. Specifically, the center will organize seminars and an annual conference in addition to providing seed funding for collaborative projects across units. 

Nearly 40 faculty members from the College’s six schools have already agreed to participate in activities proposed by the center; additional faculty involvement is expected from across the Institute.

The center builds upon initiatives such as Tech AI, the Machine Learning Center, and the Institute for Data Engineering and Science, which seek to boost Georgia Tech’s leadership in cutting-edge, AI/ML-powered interdisciplinary research and education.

The College’s seed grant program will sponsor the center for three years, starting in fiscal year 2026. Created in 2024, this program funds new centers that seek to increase the College’s research impact and advance its strategic goal of excellence in research through a focus on novel interdisciplinary areas or discipline-specific topics of high impact. The AI4Science Center is the third initiative to be seeded by this program, following the funding of the Center for Sustainable and Decarbonized Critical Energy Mineral Solutions and the Center for Research and Education in Navigation in 2024.

“The AI4Science Center was selected for its approach, timeliness, organization, and strong support from all six of the College’s schools,” says Laura Cadonati, associate dean for Research and professor in the School of Physics. “Faculty enthusiasm about this initiative reflects the growing importance of AI/ML tools in research today and the desire for more interdisciplinary collaboration in this space at the College and beyond.”

When Marielle Frooman joined the McShan Lab, she brought a strong passion for chemistry, but no lab experience. Today, the fourth-year Georgia Tech biochemistry student is the first co-author of a groundbreaking malaria study published in Scientific Reports, a Nature Portfolio journal. Through extensive experimentation coupled with computer modeling, Frooman led a team of undergraduate and graduate researchers that uncovered eight peptides that can help the immune system recognize and fight the malaria parasite. 

“Malaria kills over 500,000 annually with the mortality rate substantially higher in Africa,” says Frooman. “Our research explores how specific peptides bind to proteins that trigger immune responses.”

Frooman originally hoped the research would help her learn how to think like a scientist and gain basic lab knowledge.

She gained those skills and more, quickly becoming recognized as an exceptional researcher.

“Marielle is one of the most passionate and talented undergraduate researchers I have ever worked with,” says Andrew McShan, McShan Lab principal investigator and associate professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “She is also a caring mentor and motivated future leader who wants to change the world. Her malaria research has the potential to provide real therapeutic outcomes, including better designs for vaccines and immunotherapy.” 

From curiosity to contribution

Frooman’s journey into undergraduate research began with persistence. After a year and a half of searching for lab opportunities, she attended a School of Chemistry and Biochemistry research showcase. She approached several graduate students and professors with no success, until she met McShan.

“Our first meeting was so relaxed and friendly that I didn’t even realize Professor McShan was the principal investigator,” admits Frooman. “That’s how it all started.”

Once she officially joined the lab, Frooman contributed to every stage of the research, including designing experiments, performing computational and wet lab work, analyzing data, and writing and presenting the paper.

Lessons in resilience

The team faced several challenges.

“The research was delayed by failure after failure,” says Frooman. “But each setback taught us something valuable.”

The team’s biggest challenge involved trying to grow crystals of the peptide/HLA (protein) complexes to determine how they fit together. They spent two years attempting various methods, but nothing worked.

Guided by McShan, Frooman and the team then came up with the idea of using computational modeling to enable a deeper understanding of how the peptides and proteins interact at both biophysical and structural levels.

“Utilizing the computational modeling enabled us to see the best bindings and turned into a game-changing insight for our research, potentially leading to the design of more effective malaria treatments and vaccines,” explains Frooman.

She is quick to credit Georgia Tech and McShan for providing her with such a valuable learning experience.

“At many universities, undergraduates rarely do meaningful research, but at Tech, it’s a priority,” explains Frooman. “I’m extremely grateful for the opportunity to grow in such a supportive environment, and to learn from mentors like Professor McShan who lead by example and make time for every student.”

Her advice to other undergraduates entering research?

“Embrace your failures. They make the successes even more rewarding,” shares Frooman.

Outside the lab

On campus, Frooman is president of the Student Affiliates of the American Chemical Society and Cleanup Crew at GT, a member of Alpha Phi International Fraternity, and a campus tour guide who serves on their executive board. 

She especially loves being a tour guide as it allows her to share her love of Georgia Tech and its people:

“Everyone is unapologetically themselves and fully invested in their major or interests. As someone who loves chemistry, I enjoy being surrounded by people who are just as dedicated to their passions.”

Frooman is a recipient of the Chance Family Scholarship, presented to two School of Chemistry and Biochemistry upperclassmen, recognizing their academic excellence, research contributions, and potential for career success in the field.

Recently, she shifted her research focus to organic synthetic chemistry and now works in the Gutekunst Lab. Her career goals include earning a Ph.D. in Chemistry with an emphasis on natural product synthesis, the lab-based creation of complex chemical compounds found in nature.

“I’ve seen what university labs can do,” says Frooman. “I hope to one day lead my own lab, advancing impactful research and mentoring the next generation of scientists.”