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The National Fish and Wildlife Foundation (NFWF) has awarded an interdisciplinary team nearly $1 million in funding through the National Coastal Resilience Fund to restore coastal wetlands in Georgia. It was the only project in Georgia to be selected for funding from the program's 2025 call for proposals.

The award will support the design of nature-based solutions including living shorelines and marsh restoration in flood-prone areas of Camden County, Georgia, adjacent to Naval Submarine Base Kings Bay, Cumberland Island National Seashore, and the city of St. Marys.

“Restoring wetlands in Camden County is not just an environmental priority — it’s a resilience strategy for the entire region,” says principal investigator (PI) Joel Kostka, Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professor, associate chair for Research in the School of Biological Sciences, and faculty director of Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow. “Each acre of restored marshland protects coastal communities from natural hazards like storms and flooding, provides essential marine habitat, and has the potential to aid the Navy and the Army Corps of Engineers in developing management alternatives for dredged materials. When our wetlands flourish, our whole coastline does.”

In addition to Kostka, co-PI’s include University of Georgia (UGA) Skidaway Institute of Oceanography Director Clark Alexander, UGA Associate Professor Matt Bilskie and Professor Brian Bledsoe, The Nature Conservancy Coastal Climate Adaptation Director Ashby Worley, and Georgia Tech alumnus Nolan Williams of Robinson Design Engineers, a firm dedicated to the engineering of natural infrastructure in the Southeast that is owned and operated by Georgia Tech alumnus Joshua Robinson.

A coastal collaboration

The new project, known as a “pipeline project” by NFWF, builds on multiple resilience plans and years of previous research conducted by the established team. “This is a testament to the value of the long-term collaborations and partnerships that enable coastal resilience work,” Kostka says. “We’re working closely with local communities and a range of city, state, and federal stakeholders to ensure these solutions align with local priorities and protect what matters most.”

It’s not the first time that the team has brought this type of collaboration to the coastline. Since 2019, Kostka has worked alongside the South Carolina Department of Natural Resources, the South Carolina Aquarium, and Robinson Design Engineers in a $2.6 million effort to restore degraded salt marshes in historic Charleston, also funded by NFWF. Now in the implementation phase, much of the marsh restoration in Charleston involves planting salt-tolerant grasses, restoring oyster reefs, and excavating new tidal creeks — work that is being spearheaded by local volunteers.

“Coastal resilience isn’t something one group can tackle alone,” Kostka adds. “That shared, community-driven vision is what makes these projects possible.”

Join us for the first seminar in a semester-long series on science communication and public engagement.

"Communicating about Culturally Controversial Science Topics"

Speaker: Elizabeth Barnes
Assistant Professor, Biology Education
Middle Tennessee State University

Bio: M. Elizabeth Barnes is an associate professor in the biology department at Middle Tennessee State University. Her research lab studies how to improve undergraduate biology education with a focus on instructor and student science communication across cultural, political, and religious divides. She is also a co-founder of the NSF-funded Science Communication Education Research Network.

Future Seminars in this Series

Friday, February 13, 1pm, Exhibition Hall (joint seminar with ComSciConATL 2026)
Speakers: John Besley (Michigan State) and Anthony Dudo (University of Texas, Austin)

Tuesday, March 10, 1pm, Suddath Seminar Room, 1128 IBB
Speaker: Bethann Garramon Merkle, University of Wyoming

Wednesday, April 8, 1pm, Suddath Seminar Room, 1128 IBB
Speaker: Todd Newman, University of Wisconsin - Madison

Event Details

Armita Manafzadeh has been awarded the prestigious Carl Gans Young Investigator Award in recognition of her innovative research into joints and skeletons. She will join Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences in August 2026.

The award — named in recognition of Carl Gans’ contributions to animal morphology, biomechanics, and functional biology — is one of the highest honors from the Society for Integrative and Comparative Biology (SICB), and recognizes Manafzadeh’s “exceptional creativity and originality in comparative biomechanics research as well as her strong mentoring contributions.”

“I’m very fortunate to have done science with incredible mentors, collaborators, and students who’ve helped me develop this body of research,” she says. “I’m grateful to be recognized with the Carl Gans Award, and look forward to continuing to explore new ways to study biomechanics when I start my lab at Georgia Tech.”

The new Manafzadeh Lab at Georgia Tech will investigate how joints work and where they come from — both evolutionarily and developmentally. With powerful new technology, called X-Ray Reconstruction of Moving Morphology (XROMM), Manafzadeh can look inside bodies with 4D “X-ray vision” — and can create animations of moving skeletons with sub-millimeter precision.

“This research has the potential to transform our understanding of animal motion,” she says, “and that can ultimately open doors to everything from personalized surgical treatments for people to new designs for bio-inspired robots.”

As part of the award, Manafzadeh will deliver a plenary speech on “Joints: Form, Function, and the Future of Comparative Biomechanics” this January at the annual SICB meeting in Portland, Oregon.

"Control of Cortical Wiring and Function by Gradients of Cell Identities"

Saumya Jain
Assistant Professor
School of Biological Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology

Faculty Host: Hannah Choi and Ming-fai Fong

Lunch will be served to in-person attendees on a first come, first serve basis.

Please register here to attend virtually.

Event Details

Come join the Spatial Ecology and Paleontology Lab each week for Fossil Fridays!

Become a fossil hunter and help discover how vertebrate communities have changed through time. Experience firsthand what it is like to be a paleontologist, finding and identifying new specimens!

You will be picking and sorting 3,000 to 30,000-year-old fossil specimens from rock matrix that has been brought back from Natural Trap Cave, WY. These specimens are part of many research projects examining how the community of species living around Natural Trap Cave has changed since the extinction of the cheetahs, lions, dire wolves, mammoths, camels, horses, and other megafauna that used to live in North America.

You are welcome to participate anytime that is convenient, with no commitment necessary. In fact, you can drop in or leave anytime within the two-hour timeframe. All are welcome, so bring your friends!

If you are accompanying a minor (under 18), please be sure that a guardian/chaperone is with them at all times and that there is no less than one adult for every two minors.