Georgia Tech and the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University are partnering to develop a pipeline that prepares more local nurses to meet workforce demands.
With this collaboration, eligible students who graduate with a bachelor’s degree from Georgia Tech will be able to enroll in the School of Nursing’s Master of Nursing (MN) program.
Emory’s MN program is an entry-to-practice, pre-licensure degree program designed for students with bachelor’s degrees in other disciplines. Students who complete the 15-month program are eligible to sit for the National Council Licensure Examination and begin practice as a registered nurse.
“We are excited to participate in a program that will develop future leaders in nursing,” said Steven Girardot, vice provost for Undergraduate Education and Student Success at Georgia Tech. “This direct pathway opens doors for our graduates to launch careers in nursing, living out our motto of Progress and Service in the most meaningful way.”
The five-year partnership exemplifies the School of Nursing’s ongoing collaboration with metro Atlanta colleges and universities to prepare and empower high-caliber nurses. It represents another milestone in the school’s efforts to address workforce needs and advance nursing education.
“Partnering with Georgia Tech represents another exciting step forward for nursing education,” said Linda McCauley, dean of the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing. “Together, we’re expanding opportunities for future nurses and ensuring that our communities and health systems have the skilled professionals they need to thrive.”
Georgia Tech is the fourth local institution to partner with the School of Nursing, joining Spelman College, Agnes Scott College, and Oglethorpe University.
About the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing
As one of the nation’s top nursing schools, the Nell Hodgson Woodruff School of Nursing at Emory University is committed to educating visionary nurse leaders and scholars. Ranked the No. 1 master’s, No. 1 BSN, and No. 8 DNP programs in the nation by U.S. News & World Report, the school offers undergraduate, master’s, doctoral, and non-degree programs. It brings together cutting-edge resources, distinguished faculty, top clinical experiences, and access to leading healthcare partners to shape the future of nursing and improve health and well-being. Learn more at nursing.emory.edu.
About Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.
The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees, as well as professional development and K-12 programs for fostering success at every stage of life. Its more than 53,000 undergraduate and graduate students represent 54 U.S. states and territories and more than 146 countries. They study at the main campus in Atlanta, at instructional sites around the world, and through distance and online learning.
As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.
Growing up in rural southwest Georgia, Kinsey Herrin loved “making stuff.” She loved it so much that she regularly dug up muddy clay from her family’s property and the surrounding area to make ceramics. As a prosthetist/orthotist, she creates and tests devices that help patients improve or regain mobility — from prosthetic limbs to braces of all kinds. But Herrin’s role at the Institute is even more expansive. She’s at the epicenter of a research community where medical devices, studies, data, patients, clinicians, and students collide.
Dive into the depths of discovery! Explore how methane seeps thousands of meters below the ocean’s surface power entire ecosystems and drive the mysterious “redox rainbow”, a cascade of chemical reactions that fuel life in the deep sea. This research talk uncovers the surprising chemistry and biology that make life thrive where sunlight never reaches.
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Neuroscience experts from across Georgia Tech will soon come together for a new interdisciplinary research institute, the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS), launched in July. Faculty in INNS are helping to solve some of neuroscience’s most pressing problems, and many have promising medical applications. One important aspect of studying the brain is understanding how the brain and the body work together. Meet the researchers who study brain-body interactions, from monitoring the neuron degradation that causes Alzheimer’s to enhancing mobility for stroke survivors, in an effort to improve the health and quality of life for millions of Americans.
James Stroud has been named a 2025 Packard Fellow for his pioneering research in evolutionary biology. Stroud, Elizabeth Smithgall-Watts Early Career Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences, will receive $875,000 over five years to fund his work on “Lizard Island” in South Florida. His goal? To create evolution’s first high-definition map — with the help of 1,000 backpack-wearing lizards.
Awarded annually to just 20 individuals by the David and Lucile Packard Foundation, Packard Fellowships for Science and Engineering support researchers pursuing cutting-edge research and ambitious goals. “These visionary Packard Fellows are pushing the boundaries of knowledge, and their bold ideas will become tomorrow’s real-world solutions,” says Nancy Lindborg, president and CEO of the Packard Foundation in a recent press release.
The flexible funding allows researchers to maximize their creativity and ingenuity. Stroud will spend the next five years transforming Lizard Island into the world’s premier evolutionary observatory, merging groundbreaking technology with long-term field research.
On Lizard Island, that means equipping every lizard with an ultra-lightweight sensor “backpack.” Although the sensors weigh just six-hundredths of a gram each — the same as two grains of rice — when combined with innovations in mapping technology, they will help Stroud investigate the role that behavior plays in driving evolution in the wild.
“I’m incredibly honored to be named a 2025 Packard Fellow,” says Stroud. “This support allows me to pursue a question that has fascinated evolutionary biologists for centuries: how does behavior shape evolution? It’s a transformative opportunity, and I’m deeply grateful to the Packard Foundation for believing in the potential of this work.”
Tiny sensors, big questions
Begun in 2015, Stroud’s work on Lizard Island is one of the longest-running evolutionary studies of its kind: for the last 10 years, he has carefully caught and released every lizard on the island, measuring evolution through documenting their body characteristics, habitat use, and survival.
Through his studies, he has captured evolution in action, but monitoring and measuring behavior in evolutionary studies has historically been an extremely difficult and elusive task. The problem? While smaller animals tend to have higher population densities and reproduce more quickly (making them ideal candidates for evolutionary field studies), it has been difficult to find durable and long-lasting sensors small enough for these animals to carry.
“This has been a missing link because behavior is a critical component of evolution,” Stroud says. “Behavior can both expose individuals to — or shield them from — natural selection. For example, an animal with a less favorable trait, like bad eyesight, could change its behavior to avoid situations where it is disadvantaged.
“These decisions can ultimately determine whether they survive and reproduce in the wild, directly influencing the outcome of natural selection. However, until now, we just haven’t had the technology to measure these types of extremely intricate behaviors across many individuals before.”
Mapping the future
Stroud won’t just know exactly where each lizard is — he’ll also create a detailed three-dimensional map of the entire island using remote sensing technology called LiDAR, updating it each year. “By shooting millions of laser beams, we can create a highly detailed three-dimensional map of Lizard Island, capturing the shape of every branch, rock, and blade of grass on the island,” he explains. “When connected to our lizard backpacks, we’ll know the exact microhabitats and resources available to each lizard as they move through this environment.”
Stroud will also deploy hundreds of microclimate sensors to understand how species are reacting to changes in temperature and climate. The result will be the world’s first comprehensive database: a record of minute lizard movements, the resources each individual uses, daily interactions, and changes in the environment spanning seasons and years.
“For evolutionary scientists, it has been seemingly impossible to track the moment-by-moment decisions of individual organisms… until now,” he says.
“Today, it’s possible to study what Darwin could only dream of — evolution occurring in real time,” Stroud adds. “Behavior is a critical component of evolution, understanding evolution is critical to understanding life on Earth, and understanding life on Earth is more important than ever.”
The annual “What’s New in Atlanta?” event hosted by the Atlanta Chapter of the Society for Neuroscience will be held at the Hatchery at Emory Point on Wednesday, November 12th from 6-8 pm. There will free parking (validation sticker provided at registration desk) and light bites for you to enjoy while you preview the best of Atlanta Neuroscience and connect with folks from our ATL peer institutions. Trainees at all levels (including undergraduates) are encouraged to sign up to present a poster, especially if they will be presenting at SfN, so they can get practice and important feedback before performing on the international stage, but we also welcome recycled posters from other events.
To register to attend, please use this link: https://www.eventbrite.com/e/acsfn-whats-new-in-atlanta-neuroscience-tickets-1797583814579?aff=oddtdtcreator. If you are interested in presenting a poster, please register no later than Wednesday, November 5th (one week beforehand). Just be sure to select “General Admission with Poster Abstract Submission” rather than “General Admission” for your registration type, and fill out the information requested, including title and abstract for your poster (please note that the same boxes will show up for General Admission, but you can just ignore these if you aren’t submitting a poster).
There is a great lineup of faculty speakers this year that will each give ~5 min. talks about their research:
- Vanessa Brown, Emory, “Using neurocomputational learning theory to understand the role of uncertainty in anxiety”
- Sulagna Das, Emory, “RNA dynamics in neuronal health and diseases”
- Matthew Flavin, Georgia Tech, “Treating sensory impairments with epidermal virtual reality and neural interfaces”
- Ming-Fai Fong, Georgia Tech and Emory, “Promoting learning and plasticity in the visually-deprived brain”
- Anna Ivanova, Georgia Tech, “Dissociating language and thought in humans and in machines”
- Brielle James, Agnes Scott, “Cognitive control and biases in judgment and decision-making”
- Zachary Johnson, Emory, “Profiling the social brain at cellular resolution”
- Nathan McDonald, Georgia Tech, “Molecular control of synapse formation by biomolecular condensates”
Please email jbolton@gsu.edu with any questions.
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Are you interested in cognitive neuroscience? Come to the trainee social event from 2:30-3:30 at the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI) to meet with students and post docs who are studying cog neuro!
Register here: https://forms.gle/SgXdeoh2hvvjSspp7
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Abstract: At the crux of human bipedalism and childbirth is the ilium, which evolved to be shorter, broader, and parasagittally curved, compared to cranio-caudally tall, coronally-oriented ilia of other apes. Here, using histological, morphological, comparative genomic and functional genomic approaches on ethically collected human samples and museum-collected prenatal primates, we reveal that underlying this human iliac shape are two key developmental shifts. First, the human iliac growth plate underwent a spatial shift in orientation, residing perpendicular to that present in all other primate and mouse ilia and using molecular methods, we discovered human accelerated sequence changes in numerous molecular pathways, permitting undifferentiated iliac skeletal cells to shift the direction of their outgrowth. Second, the human ilium experienced a timing shift in bone ossification unlike that observed for human long-bones, or in non-human primate ilia and long-bones. Here, human iliac ossification initiates at the posterior border, then radiates anteriorly, but remains external with external cells contributing initially to the production of bone as compared to chimpanzees and other primates, where internal ossification of the ilium is like other long bones. Underlying this shift are regulatory changes in other molecular pathways. The consequence of these shifts is a human pelvis that can grow, permit proper muscle orientation and function, all-the-while retaining its complex unique human shape for walking and birthing functions later in life.
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This fall, 20 Georgia Tech students published a peer-reviewed scientific paper — the culmination of work done during a semester-long laboratory course. During the semester, students analyzed genomes sequenced from marine samples collected in Key West, Florida — doing hands-on original bioinformatics research on par with graduate students and working with bioinformatics tools to explore drug discovery potential.
The course, BIOS 4590, is a research project lab for senior biology majors that provides an opportunity for professors to share their expertise with students in a hands-on environment. In his class, Associate Professor Vinayak (Vinny) Agarwal, who holds joint appointments in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Biological Sciences, aimed to introduce undergraduates to advanced bioinformatics tools through applied research using new-to-science raw data.
The resulting paper, “Phylogenomic Identification of a Highly Conserved Copper-Binding RiPP Biosynthetic Gene Cluster in Marine Microbulbifer Bacteria,” which was recently published in ACS Chemical Biology, involves the historically understudied genus of Microbulbifer, a type of bacteria often associated with sponges and corals. These microbial communities are rich sources of natural products, small biological molecules often associated with medicine and drug discovery.
"This class, and the resulting research, is a testament to the transformative power of hands-on learning,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “The success of this course — and the students’ remarkable achievement — reflects Georgia Tech's commitment to fostering curiosity, collaboration, and scientific rigor and to empowering the next generation of scientists and leaders."
Funded by Agarwal’s 2023 National Science Foundation CAREER grant and Camille and Henry Dreyfus Foundation Teacher-Scholar award, the class also received support from leadership in the College of Sciences, School of Biological Sciences, and School Chemistry and Biochemistry. The study’s lead author, graduate student Yifan (Grace) Tang, served as the class teaching assistant, and was funded in part by a Biochemistry and Biophysics Graduate Assistance in Areas of National Need fellowship.
“The students in this class are working on important, novel work — this cohort worked with real genomic data that had never been sequenced before,” she says. “Typically, researchers might work with one or two genome sequences, but we provided students with 42 — this might be the first time anyone has looked at Microbulbifer at such a wide scope.”
From classroom to publication
To prepare for the class, Tang worked alongside Laboratory Manager Alison Onstine, who manages the School of Biological Sciences teaching laboratory spaces, to sequence the Key West bacterial genomes.
“Our work in the Agarwal Lab is in natural product discovery. We focus on finding new pharmaceutical drugs through marine bacteria — but with a bioinformatics spin,” Tang explains. “We wanted to bring this type of experience to undergraduates, so we gave fully sequenced genomes to students and asked them to look for potential properties.”
Throughout the class, students learned different techniques for analyzing bacterial genome sequences and extracting data with various tools — gaining both lab and computational skills through hands-on experiences, live demos, and troubleshooting sessions.
“The highlight was showing students just how much we can learn about a bacterial genus, especially one that hasn’t been studied at this scale before,” Tang shares. “This is a growing field, so there are so many opportunities for students to make meaningful contributions while learning new skills.”
Empowering future students
For many students, it was their first time using these types of tools, but Agarwal says that it’s something they'll likely encounter in both industry and research. He sees this type of research experience as especially helpful for seniors, who are often deciding between entering the workforce or continuing their education.
“Bioinformatics is increasingly important for analyzing big data. Students need the ability to manipulate and understand data using computational tools, and this class plays an important role in familiarizing them with this process,” he shares. “Our goal is to demystify research and give students the confidence and tools for both graduate school and for the workforce after graduation.”
The class will be offered for a third time in Fall 2026. While the exact course of research hasn’t yet been decided, “we always aim for something new that can produce publication-quality research — students don’t repeat past year’s work,” Agarwal says. This recent cohort of students built on the success of 18 undergraduates who took the class in 2023, who also published a paper. “This course truly underscores Georgia Tech’s commitment to pioneering meaningful undergraduate experiences — no other peer institution I know of is exposing undergraduates to bioinformatics at this level.”
Funding: NSF CAREER and the Dreyfus Foundation
Flooding dominated the headlines of summer 2025. Atypical storms and rising rivers in the Texas Hill Country washed away an entire summer camp. Glacial snow melt, combined with flash river floods, caused hundreds of deaths in Pakistan. As the Atlantic hurricane season hits its peak, Americans wait to see if another storm may be as unexpectedly devastating as 2024’s Hurricane Helene.
Flooding can be an existential threat, affecting everything from infrastructure to health. Georgia Tech researchers are developing solutions to monitor and forecast flooding, as well as restore ecosystems to prevent future flooding. These efforts support communities’ resilience in the face of climate change and keep the U.S. secure.
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