The American Academy of Microbiology (AAM) has elected 109 new fellows in 2019. Among them are Joel Kostka and Joshua Weitz.

Kostka is a professor in the Schools of Biological Sciences and of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Weitz is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences. Both are members of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.

AAM is an honorific leadership group within the American Society for Microbiology (ASM). Fellows of the AAM are elected annually through a selective, peer-review process, based on records of scientific achievement and original contributions that have advanced microbiology.

The election of Kostka as AAM fellow comes shortly after another high recognition of his contributions to microbiology. In 2018, he was named Distinguished Lecturer by ASM. In this capacity, Kostka speaks at ASM branch meetings throughout the U.S. His visits provide opportunities for students and early-career research microbiologists to interact with prominent scientists.

Kostka is well-known for his research in environmental microbiology. His lab characterizes the role of microorganisms in the functioning of ecosystems, especially in the context of bioremediation and climate change. He is co-principal investigator of C-IMAGE-III. This consortium is funded by the Gulf of Mexico Research Initiative to study the environmental consequences of the release of petroleum hydrocarbons on living marine resources and ecosystem health.

Weitz holds courtesy appointments in the Schools of Physics and of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is also the founding director of Georgia Tech’s Interdisciplinary Graduate Program in Quantitative Biosciences, a Simons Foundation Investigator in Ocean Processes and Ecology, and author of an award-winning book on quantitative viral ecology.

"I'm grateful for the recognition and excited to continue our ongoing, collaborative efforts to understand the role of ecology and evolution in shaping microbial and viral life," Weitz says.

Weitz’s research focuses on the interactions between viruses and their microbial hosts, that is, the viral infections of microbial life. Weitz is motivated by seemingly simple questions: What happens to a microbe when it is infected by a virus? How do infections of single cells translate into population- and system-wide consequences?

AAM fellows represent all subspecialties of the microbial sciences and are involved in basic and applied research, teaching, public health, industry, or government service. They hail from all around the globe. Kostka and Weitz join fellows from France, Ireland, the Netherlands, Israel, Korea, Taiwan, and China.

By Laura Mast, Contributing Writer

A unique treat awaits fans at the Yellow Jackets’ Jan. 22 men’s basketball home game. The Georgia Tech team will battle Notre Dame’s Fighting Irish for the hoops amid element cards, games, and prizes to celebrate 2019, the International Year of the Periodic Table of the Chemical Elements.  

Born 150 years ago, the periodic table is one of the most important and recognizable tools of science. To celebrate the table’s staying power, the United Nations proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements.

At Georgia Tech, the College of Sciences is leading an all-year-round celebration, #IYPT2019GT. It has partnered with other units to engage students, faculty, and staff in reconnecting with the periodic table, through athletics, art, and academics.

Kicking off the celebration is “The Periodic Table at Georgia Tech vs Notre Dame” men’s basketball match on Jan. 22. Partnering with Georgia Tech Athletics, the College of Sciences will bring #IYPT2019GT to McCamish Pavilion. Fans will have a chance to play games with the periodic table and element cards featuring the Yellow Jackets basketball team and Georgia Tech researchers. Prizes await lucky winners.  

"This kick-off event for Georgia Tech's year-long celebration of the periodic table is a great opportunity to bring chemistry to the public's attention and to illustrate its relevance to all of us – scientists, sports fans, and athletes," says David Collard, the College of Sciences' interim dean.

“Georgia Tech Athletics is proud to partner with the College of Sciences to celebrate the 150th anniversary of the periodic table of elements,” Director Todd Stansbury says. “Such a collaboration is uniquely ‘Georgia Tech,’ as we offer our student-athletes the opportunity to compete at the highest level of collegiate athletics, while they receive an education at one of the nation’s leading research universities. We celebrate this combination, as it has proven to produce young people who change the world.”

Brief History of the Periodic Table
Using a set of notecards à la classic card game solitaire, Russian chemist Dmitri Mendeleev sorted and resorted the cards, each representing one element, trying to find a pattern using the elements’ weights and properties. He cracked the code after several sleepless days.

For decades before Mendeleev, scientists had been searching for patterns in the elements. Many other arrangements had been proposed, including one cylindrical design. Mendeleev succeeded where others failed – his table correctly placed more elements than any other.

Critically, too, Mendeleev’s table left gaps for elements yet to be discovered. His table included just over 50 elements, and it wasn’t imminently clear: Were there more elements? How many?

As we now know, many more elements came to light. Thanks to those empty spaces, Mendeleev’s powerful theoretical tool predicted newcomers with startling success. His spot-on predictions of hypothetical elements’ basic properties – atomic mass, atomic number, and reactivity – guided researchers into discovering new elements.

Major changes to Mendeleev’s design occurred as more elements were discovered. For example, the discovery of the noble gases in the 1890s led to the addition of an entirely new column (also called a group). The lanthanides and actinides, those two rows (or periods) at the bottom, were placed below the existing table to retain its basic shape. The periodic table is still being updated to this day: elements 113, 115, 117, and 118 were added in November 2016.

#IYPT2019GT Activities and Events
Every week, the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry will highlight two elements in social media through videos and haikus. And every month, a student, faculty, or staff will expound on a favorite element in a short video.

The periodic table and chemical elements will be a topic in Georgia Tech’s GT 1000 and various Writing & Communication courses. Classes in the School of Music and the School of Industrial Design will use the periodic table as inspiration for projects. The 2019 Clough Art Crawl will have a special section and prizes for submissions inspired by the periodic table or chemical elements.

In February, the Frontiers in Science Lecture Series on the periodic table will commence. Lectures will explore topics from the origin of the chemical elements to the economic, societal, and geopolitical consequences of elements yet undiscovered or in scarce supply. Among the lecturers is bestselling author Sam Kean. His book “The Disappearing Spoon” reveals the periodic table as a treasure trove of passion, adventure, betrayal, and obsession.

Here is a partial list of events. Full information is available at periodictable.gatech.edu.

• January 22 The Periodic Table at Georgia Tech vs Notre Dame. Go Yellow Jackets!
• February
  • Frontiers in Science: How the Universe Made the Elements
  • Water, in Three Movements, Georgia Tech Laptop Orchestra, School of Music
• March
  • Frontiers in Science: Celebrating Silicon: Its Success, Hidden History, and Next Act
  • Periodic Table and the Chemical Elements in Clough Art Crawl
  • Periodic Table and the Chemical Elements in Atlanta Science Festival Expo
• April
  • Frontiers in Science: Mathematical Mysteries of the Periodic Table
  • Frontiers in Science: The Periodic Table: A Treasure Trove of Passion, Adventure, Betrayal, and Obsession
• June
  • Halloween in June: Periodic Table Costume Party and Variety Show
• August
  • Chemical Element Scavenger Hunt
• September
  • Frontiers in Science: The Elusive End of the Periodic Table: Why Chase It?
• October
  • Frontiers in Science: Turning Sour, Bloated, and Out of Breath: Ocean Chemistry under Global Warming
• November
  • Frontiers in Science, The Geopolitics of the Rare and Not-So-Rare Elements
  • Periodic Table Celebration Exhibit
• December 
  • Periodic Table Celebration Exhibit

Keep up with #IYPT2019GT by checking periodictable.gatech.edu periodically. Follow the College of Sciences on Facebook and Twitter. We look forward to celebrating #IYPT2019GT with you!

Born 150 years ago, the periodic table is one of the most important and recognizable tools of science. To celebrate the table’s staying power, the United Nations proclaimed 2019 as the International Year of the Periodic Table of Chemical Elements — and Georgia Tech is joining the celebration.

Events will take place every month, beginning Tuesday, Jan. 22, at McCamish Pavilion during the men's basketball game against Notre Dame. Fans will have a chance to play games with the periodic table and element cards, win prizes, and enjoy nitrogen-frozen ice cream.

A few upcoming events are listed below — follow along for more at periodictable.gatech.edu.

• Jan. 22: The Periodic Table at Georgia Tech vs. Notre Dame
• Feb. 6: Frontiers in Science: How the Universe Made the Elements in the Periodic Table
• Feb. 21: Music Meets Science Meets Laptops with the Georgia Tech Laptop Orchestra

More information is available from the College of Sciences.

Led by the College of Sciences, Georgia Tech launched its year-long celebration of 2019, the International Year of the Periodic Table (#IYPT2019), at the Jan. 22 men's basketball game against Notre Dame. The Yellow Jackets prevailed over the Fighting Irish, 63-61.

College of Sciences students, faculty, and staff distributed element cards and guided fans through the periodic table dart game. Scores of fans won periodic table mug beakers and T-shirts, as well as ScienceMatters card holders and sticky note pads. ScienceMatters is the College of Sciences' podcast. It's second season returns in the spring 2019 semester.

Also featured in the Jan. 22 game was biochemistry major and track star Jeanine Williams. At half-time, a video of Williams talking about her favorite element was broadcast on the McCamish jumbotron.

Get visual highlights from the #IYPT2019 kick-off from the video on the right.

By Mallory Rosten, Communications Assistant

If you wander behind West Village, the dining hall that doubles as a community center on West campus, you’ll find twin residence halls Folk and Caldwell. They look the same as other dorms on quiet West campus, but looks can be deceiving.

Inside lives a buzzing community of young scientists and mathematicians, bonded together by curiosity and chemistry labs. In the basement, students would excitedly work together to solve a problem on the white board walls, late at night before a test. In the lounges, students might vigorously debate whether a hot dog is a sandwich, citing scientific sources and data.

These students are part of the College of Sciences’ Living Learning Community, or LLC. Formerly two separate LLCs, SHaRP (Science Health and Related Professions) and SMaRT (Science and Math Research Training), the program is now known as Explore. The staff found that the two LLCS often overlapped: pre-health students were interested in research, research students were interested in pre-health, and the students spent so much time together that there was no need for division.

By housing science and math majors together in their first year of college, Explore hopes to foster a community and create an identity around science and mathematics.

Jennifer Leavey, Explore’s faculty director, was a Tech undergrad herself. “I had no idea there even was a College of Sciences,” she says. “For such a long time the campus was so dominated by engineers, there wasn’t much of an identity for science and math majors.” Explore, she says, is for “the kids who are curious, the kids who like to wear NASA T-shirts.”

Explore hosts 280 students who want more from dorm life than the usual first-year experience. By joining Explore, science- and math-oriented students can live together, take classes together, and distract themselves from their studies together. It’s also a place of discovery where students can find the field that fits them best, which is why the new name is particularly apt.

 “To think that a 16- or 17-year-old is going to stick with the major they chose when they applied is unrealistic and a little stifling,” says Emma Blandford, Explore’s assistant director. “To see them step back a little bit and see the other things out there and explore other opportunities is a breath of fresh air.”

A Place of Discovery
When Hudson Moss began his freshman year, he was sure that he wanted to major in biochemistry. But when Moss watched Kim Cobb give a talk on her 2016 expedition to Holiday Island, he knew immediately that he wanted to work with her.

Cobb is a professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “It was really cool, the way that she talked about paleoclimate and how we can approach climate changes as a community and as a country,” Moss says. His chance came when he had to interview a professor for his SMaRT GT 1000 class. He knew exactly whom to choose.

“I managed to slip in that I wanted to work for her at some point,” Moss says, and that first meeting ignited a research path that continues today. He started attending Cobb’s lab meetings.  By the end of his second semester, Moss had started working in Cobb’s lab and officially switched his major to Earth and atmospheric sciences. He still works there today and is on his way to becoming the first author of a study mapping the 19th-century climate of the equatorial Pacific.

“That initial bump that SMaRT gave me to go interview a professor, to get out there and talk to faculty – that was huge,” Moss says. It forced him to be comfortable talking to an expert like Cobb. Now, he says, he can strike a conversation with any faculty member.

Living, Learning, and Thriving
In addition to offering LLC-specific first-year seminar classes for their students, the LLC reserves chemistry labs and even English sections so that their students are connected with the community throughout the day.

When they come home from class, the students organize stress relief activities, like cookie and milk breaks and Halloween parties. Recently, 30 students went to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to learn about the refugee crisis through the lens of public health.

At the start of every school year, the students go on a retreat where they climb ropes, solve escape rooms, and attend panels for advice about undergraduate research.

“They can go out and go to class and do work and they can come home – it’s their own little oasis,” Blandford says, “My hope is that the community they’re developing here is not isolating them from the rest of Tech, but helping them to feel supported to go out and try new things.”

Because Moss is now a second-year student, he is no longer officially part of the LLC, but he still goes back to give talks to the students, helping them figure out their own paths. 

Alumni can also work as student assistants in the program, helping to coordinate activities, and as team leaders.

The biggest indicator of the program’s success, Blandford says, is the fact that 50% of students signed up to continue living with “smarties and sharpies” in the Eighth Street apartments across the street from Folk and Caldwell.

“They liked each other enough that they wanted to stay in this community again for another year,” Blandford says. She sees this preference as a sign that these students truly feel supported by one another.

All Together Now
“I didn’t expect everyone to come together as quickly as they did,” Bryan Gomez, a biochemistry and neuroscience major in what was formerly SHaRP, admits. “The first couple weeks, everyone was still getting to know each other, but once classes hit the ground and midterm week hit, it was like we’re all in this together.”

Gomez is still in his first year, but he started as a summer freshman. Now he works as a marketing student assistant for Explore.

He credits the LLC for the ease of his transition to college life. “They provide resources to get help when I’ve needed it and when everyone else has needed it,” he says.

Leavey wishes Explore were around when she was a Tech undergrad. “My son wants to be in the program when he goes to college,” Leavey says, laughing.