An extraordinary group of young alumni were recently recognized by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association with their release of the 2023 class of 40 under 40. Four College of Sciences alumni from three schools are members of this class of Jackets.

Launched in 2020, this annual program recognizes 40 alumni under the age of 40 who innovate their fields and positively impact the world. 

The Alumni Association notes that they are “proud to celebrate this exceptional class of Jackets who have done the impossible; from furthering space exploration to revolutionizing healthcare, these individuals have made the Tech community exceptionally proud.”

Nominees, who must have completed at least one semester at Georgia Tech and be under the age of 40 as of June 30, 2023, were scored using a 25-point rubric by a committee of 24 faculty, staff, and volunteers who collectively represented all Georgia Tech colleges. 

Learn more about the 2023 class on the Alumni Association’s website, or explore quick stats about the class here.

From making groundbreaking discoveries on Mars to revolutionizing healthcare, meet the four trailblazing Sciences alumni in the 2023 class:

Stephen Crooke, Ph.D. Chem ‘18 

Lead Microbiologist, Vaccine Immunology | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Stephen Crooke leads the Vaccine Immunology Team in the Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where his team supports global and international disease surveillance and researches the development of new vaccines and diagnostics. He is a recipient of the Maurice R. Hilleman Early-Stage Career Investigator Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, and he is also an investigator in the Center for Childhood Immunizations and Vaccines at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. In his free time, Crooke enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with his wife and young daughter.

Favorite Tech Memory: Watching the Jackets defeat UGA in Athens (in overtime, no less!) circa 2014 has to claim the top spot!

Jasreet Hundal, M.S. BI ‘09 

Principal Project Lead / Senior Scientist | McDonnell Genome Institute 

Jasreet Hundal has revolutionized personalized medicine through her innovative work in computational genomics. After completing her master’s in bioinformatics at Georgia Tech, she joined the Genome Institute at Washington University, focusing on cancer genomics and researching neoantigens. Realizing her computational skills and passion for innovation, she pursued her doctoral degree and developed pVACtools, a computational suite that revolutionizes cancer treatment by predicting individualized neoantigens. Clinical trials across various tumor types now utilize pVACtools to design personalized cancer vaccines. Hundal’s expertise in computational analysis and her pioneering contributions to precision medicine have been widely recognized and published in top-tier scientific journals. 

Favorite Tech Memory: Doing late night collaborative assignments in one of the oldest buildings—Cherry Emerson, where the biological sciences program was housed!

Lujendra Ojha, Ph.D. EAS ‘16 

Assistant Professor | Rutgers University 

Lujendra Ojha is a planetary scientist and assistant professor of planetary sciences at Rutgers University. He gained widespread recognition for his discovery of Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL) on Mars, which are seasonal features that may indicate the presence of liquid water on the planet. Ojha’s groundbreaking discovery led to numerous media appearances, including interviews with major news networks and an article in Rolling Stone magazine. He has since published numerous papers in prestigious scientific journals, including Science and Nature Communications. Ojha is committed to advancing our understanding of planetary evolution and the potential for habitability beyond Earth. 

Favorite Tech Memory: Midtown Tavern, seminars in the Ford ES&T Building, followed by midnight dinner at Waffle House on 5th street.

Lavanya Rishishwar, M.S. BI ‘12, Ph.D. BI ‘16 

Senior Technical Manager | Pillar Biosciences 

Lavanya Rishishwar extracts meaningful and actionable insights from vast genomic datasets. Collaborating with federal and state government partners, he has contributed to outbreak investigations, developed infrastructure for laboratory preparedness, and pioneered scalable computational tools for the future. Through mentoring and training, he nurtures the next generation of scientists. Rishishwar’s dedication to translating genomics into real-world impact has earned him recognition and appreciation. His work exemplifies the tremendous potential bioinformatics holds in advancing our understanding of the biological world. Rishishwar received a bachelor’s of science in Bioinformatics from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology.  

Favorite Tech Memory: Walking onto the set of The Internship and being playfully scolded by Vince Vaughn for working late on a Friday night.

An extraordinary group of young alumni were recently recognized by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association with their release of the 2023 class of 40 under 40. Four College of Sciences alumni from three schools are members of this class of Jackets.

Launched in 2020, this annual program recognizes 40 alumni under the age of 40 who innovate their fields and positively impact the world. 

The Alumni Association notes that they are “proud to celebrate this exceptional class of Jackets who have done the impossible; from furthering space exploration to revolutionizing healthcare, these individuals have made the Tech community exceptionally proud.”

Nominees, who must have completed at least one semester at Georgia Tech and be under the age of 40 as of June 30, 2023, were scored using a 25-point rubric by a committee of 24 faculty, staff, and volunteers who collectively represented all Georgia Tech colleges. 

Learn more about the 2023 class on the Alumni Association’s website, or explore quick stats about the class here.

From making groundbreaking discoveries on Mars to revolutionizing healthcare, meet the four trailblazing Sciences alumni in the 2023 class:

Stephen Crooke, Ph.D. Chem ‘18 

Lead Microbiologist, Vaccine Immunology | Centers for Disease Control and Prevention 

Stephen Crooke leads the Vaccine Immunology Team in the Vaccine Preventable Diseases Branch at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, where his team supports global and international disease surveillance and researches the development of new vaccines and diagnostics. He is a recipient of the Maurice R. Hilleman Early-Stage Career Investigator Award from the National Foundation for Infectious Diseases, and he is also an investigator in the Center for Childhood Immunizations and Vaccines at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta. In his free time, Crooke enjoys reading, traveling, and spending time with his wife and young daughter.

Favorite Tech Memory: Watching the Jackets defeat UGA in Athens (in overtime, no less!) circa 2014 has to claim the top spot!

Jasreet Hundal, M.S. BI ‘09 

Principal Project Lead / Senior Scientist | McDonnell Genome Institute 

Jasreet Hundal has revolutionized personalized medicine through her innovative work in computational genomics. After completing her master’s in bioinformatics at Georgia Tech, she joined the Genome Institute at Washington University, focusing on cancer genomics and researching neoantigens. Realizing her computational skills and passion for innovation, she pursued her doctoral degree and developed pVACtools, a computational suite that revolutionizes cancer treatment by predicting individualized neoantigens. Clinical trials across various tumor types now utilize pVACtools to design personalized cancer vaccines. Hundal’s expertise in computational analysis and her pioneering contributions to precision medicine have been widely recognized and published in top-tier scientific journals. 

Favorite Tech Memory: Doing late night collaborative assignments in one of the oldest buildings—Cherry Emerson, where the biological sciences program was housed!

Lujendra Ojha, Ph.D. EAS ‘16 

Assistant Professor | Rutgers University 

Lujendra Ojha is a planetary scientist and assistant professor of planetary sciences at Rutgers University. He gained widespread recognition for his discovery of Recurring Slope Lineae (RSL) on Mars, which are seasonal features that may indicate the presence of liquid water on the planet. Ojha’s groundbreaking discovery led to numerous media appearances, including interviews with major news networks and an article in Rolling Stone magazine. He has since published numerous papers in prestigious scientific journals, including Science and Nature Communications. Ojha is committed to advancing our understanding of planetary evolution and the potential for habitability beyond Earth. 

Favorite Tech Memory: Midtown Tavern, seminars in the Ford ES&T Building, followed by midnight dinner at Waffle House on 5th street.

Lavanya Rishishwar, M.S. BI ‘12, Ph.D. BI ‘16 

Senior Technical Manager | Pillar Biosciences 

Lavanya Rishishwar extracts meaningful and actionable insights from vast genomic datasets. Collaborating with federal and state government partners, he has contributed to outbreak investigations, developed infrastructure for laboratory preparedness, and pioneered scalable computational tools for the future. Through mentoring and training, he nurtures the next generation of scientists. Rishishwar’s dedication to translating genomics into real-world impact has earned him recognition and appreciation. His work exemplifies the tremendous potential bioinformatics holds in advancing our understanding of the biological world. Rishishwar received a bachelor’s of science in Bioinformatics from Maulana Azad National Institute of Technology.  

Favorite Tech Memory: Walking onto the set of The Internship and being playfully scolded by Vince Vaughn for working late on a Friday night.

Jessica Brunner, a rising senior at Spelman College, takes the chance to conduct undergraduate research seriously. This year, she also wanted to make new friends — and got the opportunity to do both at Georgia Tech this summer thanks to the NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program.

“It was just a completely different experience,” Brunner said. “I was able to find a balance between research and socializing, because a lot of research is socializing. You're working with different people, you're working in different labs, or working with different areas of science. So this idea of socializing and networking, the relaying of information that different people have, it's just amazing.”

Every school in the Georgia Tech College of Sciences now offers a summer NSF REU. The Human Neuroscience Research and Techniques program that Brunner attended is led by the School of Psychology. The REU program is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). 

“The NSF’s goal is to involve visiting students in high-quality mentored research programs with access to appropriate facilities, along with professional development and cohort building opportunities,” says David Collard, senior associate dean in the College of Sciences and a former director of REU programs in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry for more than a decade. “They help to better inform each participant’s decision about whether to pursue graduate studies. It is a credit to our programs that a majority of their recent participants have gone on to top graduate schools, some at Georgia Tech and others elsewhere."

The NSF leverages the REU program to boost participation in science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. The organization estimates that several million additional people, specifically more individuals from groups historically underrepresented in STEM fields, are needed for the country’s science and engineering workforce, to better reflect the demographics and representation of the U.S. population.

"I am delighted that each of our schools is able to contribute to NSF's vision for the development of the future STEM workforce in the U.S.," added Collard. 

The College of Sciences spoke to several undergraduates who gave presentations at the REU poster sessions in July:

Emily Almgren, Mathematics REU, rising senior, Haverford College

Not many undergraduates get a chance to conduct research before they get their B.S. degree. How important is that to you?

“It's really important for figuring out whether I want to do research, whether I want to go to graduate school, and also what area of research I want to go into. it's really hard to know what kind of research you want to do without having done that research. So our views are really important for forming that decision of where to apply to grad school.”

Jessica Brunner, Psychology/Neuroscience REU, rising senior, Spelman College

What was your experience in this year’s REU?

“At first glance, it may seem daunting, but Spelman’s motto is to ‘forever remain undaunted’. So I came in with this ideology that I was going to be ready, and I was going to tackle anything that came my way, ready to do some hardcore research, and just experience what it's like to be a graduate student for a summer. This just solidified it more for me that this is definitely something that I see myself doing in the future, and I will be pursuing a Ph.D. after I graduate Spelman College.”

Marygrace Fagan, Physics REU, rising junior, Purdue University

What was your experience with the mentors you worked with in the Physics REU?

“Everyone in my lab has been super helpful. The grad students who are mentors are totally willing to help me whenever I have a question. I've learned a ton. Claire Berger (professor of the practice in the School of Physics) is my mentor, and she’s very good at explaining things. And you can tell she knows what she’s talking about. She co-wrote one of the first research papers on graphene. That’s so cool.”

Hector G. Torres De Jesus, Biological Sciences REU, rising junior, University of Puerto Rico

Why did you decide to attend this REU at Georgia Tech?

“I’m very interested in microbiology and marine biology, and the University of Puerto Rico is the only campus on the island that has marine biology as a major. We don’t have a lot of research opportunities there, so my mentor suggested an internship or undergraduate program in the U.S. because that way, you can find more marine biology courses. I read that Jennifer Glass (associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences) had worked with microbiology and water microorganisms. That’s my type of research area.”

Aaron Lee, Math REU, rising senior, University of California, Davis

What brought you to Georgia Tech for an REU?

“Frankly, I was looking for things to do over the summer. And my mentor was like, 'Aaron, you should do an REU.' I applied a week before the deadline. And I thought, wow, it'd be really cool to work on this. I'm really interested in applied math. This is sort of a trial run for me — do I want to go to grad school? But personally, it's really important to me, just because I think I've always really wanted to do research, and contribute to the space of human knowledge.”

What do you hope to do for a career?

“I'm actually planning to become a teacher. And I really hope to share the enjoyment of math that I've had over the years with students. I think there are a lot of different ways to teach math. I really want to help people understand exactly why math is the way it is — and it's not just something that a bunch of old guys came up with to torture you.”

Zachary Farmer, Chemistry REU, rising junior, University of Wisconsin-Stevens Point

“It's been amazing. So far we’ve seen how work is done at the graduate level, and how graduate students organize themselves. My lab at my institution is pretty much like a teaching research lab. It’s nice to see everything sprawled out and all the researchers going hard at it. As far as networking, I think it's a fantastic idea to incorporate other students from other disciplines so you can kind of work off of what they're doing. I just think it's good exposure to other disciplines.”

College of Sciences REUs:

Aquatic Chemical Ecology Summer Research Program

(Co-hosted by the Schools of Biological Sciences, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Chemistry and Biochemistry, and from the College of Engineering: Civil and Environmental Engineering, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.)

Broadening Participation Summer Undergraduate Research Program in Physics 

(Hosted by the School of Physics)

Mathematics Research Experiences for Undergraduates

(Hosted by the School of Mathematics) 

Broadening Participation in Atmospheric Science, Oceanography and Geosciences Research 

(Hosted by the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences)

Chemistry Function, Application, Structure, and Theory (FAST)

(Hosted by the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry)

Human Neuroscience Research and Techniques

(Hosted by the School of Psychology) 

More information on applying for Georgia Tech summer REUs, including requirements and deadlines, can be found at the individual REU links here. 

For the second consecutive year, a Georgia Tech student and their advisor have been awarded a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Fellowship for Advanced Study. Autumn Peterson, a Ph.D. student in biology, will receive $53,000 per year for up to three years for dissertation research. Peterson’s advisor, William Ratcliff, will participate in activities that address challenges to diversity and inclusion at the graduate level.

“Receiving the HHMI Gilliam award will allow me to conduct innovative research while building leadership and mentorship skills–all attributes that are necessary to become a better scientist,” said Peterson. “Ultimately, this will help me prepare for a career in academia as a professor.”  

HHMI awards student-advisor pairs based on the student’s potential for scientific leadership and the advisor’s commitment to a culture of inclusion in academia.  

“Through my academic journey at Virginia Tech, University of Kansas, and Georgia Tech, I have had wonderful mentors and colleagues, but I have had few Black faculty role models,” said Peterson. “It wasn’t until I worked with Brian Atkinson, an African American professor at the University of Kansas, that I even considered becoming a professor. That research experience put me on a path that led directly to Tech and underscored my commitment to outreach broadening participation in science. I am looking forward to being a part of the HHMI community and fostering leadership and mentorship skills that will help me succeed in my career in academia so I can be a role model for future generations of students.”  

The program awards grants to dissertation advisors and encourages the grantee institution and the advisor to facilitate institutional changes to create environments that advance diversity and inclusion.  

“As an advisor, I’m delighted to see Autumn’s work and leadership recognized this way,” said Ratcliff, an associate professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences at Georgia Tech. “This fellowship is also a huge opportunity for us to do cool science, become better scientists and mentors, and work to improve diversity and inclusion at Georgia Tech. I cannot wait to get to know the broader community of Gilliam Fellows and mentors.”  

As part of the Gilliam Award, the advisor will also complete a year-long culturally responsive mentorship skills development course.  

“This fellowship provides key resources and professional opportunities that I think can make me a better advisor and can support our work on behalf of trainees from underrepresented groups at Georgia Tech more broadly,” said Ratcliff.  

Fellows are required to participate in the Gilliam Annual Meeting, Gilliam Leadership Training course, and one HHMI Science Meeting per year in the second and third years of the fellowship award where there will be Gilliam-specific discussion sessions.  

Learn more about the HHMI Gilliam Fellows program here. 

With the sequencing of the human genome, scientists say personalized medicine is a more realistic goal. A future of customized medications, better understanding about disease factors and individualized risks, and a deeper knowledge of how cell mutations result in diseases like cancer could help pave the way for healthier populations around the globe.

But to realize this future, scientists need to build better risk assessments containing as much genetic information as possible regarding human populations — without compromising security and privacy, and without marginalizing or overrepresenting any groups. To date, existing datasets of this type of information have largely focused on individuals of European ancestry — which has meant that most people in the world have either been critically underrepresented, or at times not represented at all, among these important genomic studies and resources. 

Many groups are working together to improve those datasets, including School of Biological Sciences Patton Professor Greg Gibson, who recently teamed up with Emory University School of Medicine’s Subra Kugathasan, M.D. and other colleagues to publish a new study based on what Gibson shares as the largest whole genome-sequencing study of inflammatory bowel disease for African-Americans to date. 

“Whole-Genome Sequencing of African-Americans Implicates Differential Genetic Architecture in Inflammatory Bowel Disease,” published February 17 in the American Journal for Human Genetics, researches inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) and Crohn’s disease in more than 3,000 Americans of African descent. IBD patients made up 1,774 members of the group, while the control group numbered 1,644 individuals without IBD. 

“The huge concern in the field is that all minorities are dramatically underrepresented” in genetic studies, Gibson notes, underscoring the need for more diverse studies and highlighting his interest in pursuing the current study. “It’s comprehensive, it’s incredibly powerful and it way overperforms what came before, in terms of magnitude of accomplishment. We started three years ago, which I think is pretty amazing. There are still not many studies out there as large in terms of true genomic sequencing of population.”

The group’s work hopes to build a better understanding of potential population divergence and genetic risk of specific complex diseases like IBD — as well as identify any possible corresponding evolution of susceptibility and origins of health disparities.

To achieve this, the research group set out to further resolve the genetic architecture of inflammatory bowel disease — and also to better define the differential genetic structure of the disease across divergent ancestries. The team notes that their resulting analyses “include many alleles that were not previously examined, in a population that remains very significantly understudied.”

So, what exactly is an allele?

A brief tutorial on alleles and genomics

Alleles are alternative forms of a gene, and they’re born from mutations. “Every person’s genome has about a million out of a billion pairs that are different,” Gibson explains. These are polymorphisms, or alleles, which are “the flavor of a gene.” When a new mutation happens, its frequency is extremely rare, but some mutations do become more common over time, and contribute ever so subtly to disease.

Most of these alleles are shared by European and African-Americans, but small differences in frequency and effect can add up — especially over several thousand of them — to real differences in risk of disease progression.

Gibson also highlights the importance of understanding and taking into account the many environmental factors that can be related to IBD and Crohn’s, such as stress, diet, access to quality nutrition, access to healthcare and preventative medicine, and even differences in socioeconomic status and opportunities that also tally up to significant health and risk disparities across divergent populations.   

More diverse genomics assessments coming soon?

Gibson and Kugathasan’s research was a collaborative study involving self-identified African-American subjects recruited from five primary sites across the country: Emory University (recruited as part of the Emory African-American Inflammatory Bowel Disease Consortium), Johns Hopkins/Rutgers (recruited as part of the Multicenter African-American Inflammatory Bowel Disease Study), Cedars Sinai Medical Center, Mount Sinai Medical Center, and Washington University (recruited as part of the Centers for Common Disease Genomics network). 

The study was approved by the institutional review boards at each of the participating sites and informed consent was obtained from all the participants. To protect privacy, de-identified datasets including genetic data were housed at Emory University with the approval of the local ethical board.

All DNA samples investigated in the study (a total of 3,610 before quality control) were processed and sequenced at the Broad Institute of Harvard and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology following the same protocol.

More of this needs to happen, Gibson notes, so that the real work on narrowing the gaps and differences in healthcare among a diverse spectrum of populations can begin. He adds that the African genetic structure requires complete gene sequencing for all sorts of technical reasons, making it harder than more studies of Europeans — as well as essential and well worth the effort. 

“If you try to predict the onset of disease and you don’t account for ancestry differences, your assessments are just way off. In any sort of medicine, you want to be as accurate as you can. That’s why it’s so critical to include diversity in genetic studies as we progress to equitable access of all health care in all populations.”

Gibson says his next research study will deal with how genetics interacts with the other factors involved in health in underrepresented communities, such as nutrition and the impact of so-called “food deserts,” environmental issues, access to important health care, and other socio-economic indicators. 

“It’s probably the most important paper I’ll ever work on,” he says.