The College of Sciences has exceeded its $75 million campaign target, raising $78 million and counting as part of the Institute’s historic philanthropic effort, Transforming Tomorrow: The Campaign for Georgia Tech.

“Achieving this milestone reflects the generosity and deep commitment of our alumni, donors, and friends to advancing science education and research,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. “We are energized by this momentum and grateful to everyone who has supported us through investment in our success as we continue to fundraise for key priorities such as endowed faculty positions, graduate fellowships, undergraduate scholarships, and innovative teaching and experiential learning.”

Sciences is the first Georgia Tech College to reach its goal. 

“This early success highlights the foundational and essential role of the sciences,” adds College of Sciences Director of Development Dan Warren. “The enthusiastic support from alumni, foundations, and corporate partners speaks volumes — reaching this milestone is a tribute to the transformative power of philanthropy and community.”

Philanthropy in action

The funds raised are already making a meaningful impact across the College, supporting students, faculty, and research. Campaign contributions are being invested in important initiatives such as:

• faculty endowments with an emphasis to support those in early and mid-career and in interdisciplinary areas;
• graduate student top-up fellowships to support recruitment of the best and brightest to our programs;
• need-based undergraduate scholarships to ensure an affordable education;
• research-based undergraduate scholarships to provide co-curricular opportunities; and
• direct support for faculty research to accelerate discovery and solutions.

New programs made possible in the College by Transforming Tomorrow include the Student Transfer Enrichment Program (STEP), which helps transfer students thrive through academic support, social engagement, and leadership development, as well as the Rising Tide program, which helps recruit and mentor early-career scientists. Also noteworthy is the enhanced Career Education Program, which connects students with alumni and career opportunities. 

A vision for the future

The College’s success contributes to the broader campaign, which has raised more than $1.6 billion toward its $2 billion goal. Fiscal year 2025 was the most successful fundraising year in Georgia Tech’s history, with nearly $300 million raised in new philanthropic support. Earlier this month, the Institute announced a historic $100 million bequest — the largest single gift in Tech’s history.

What’s next

As the campaign continues, the College of Sciences will remain focused on expanding student opportunities, accelerating scientific discovery, and supporting faculty excellence. The top priority for the Dean is creating opportunities for students to have access to a Georgia Tech education through need-based scholarships and graduate fellowships which provide a competitive advantage in recruiting the best and brightest students to our programs. 

“We are extremely grateful for the alumni, friends, students, faculty, staff, and corporations who have supported us so far,” says Warren. “Thanks to you, we’re heading into the final stretch of the campaign with wind in our sails. Now is the perfect moment to invest in the students, educators, and researchers driving tomorrow’s breakthroughs.” 

To learn more or make a gift to the College of Sciences, contact Dan Warren, director of Development for the College of Sciences, at dan.warren@cos.gatech.edu.

Georgia Tech continues its upward trajectory in the latest U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges 2026 rankings, released Sept. 23. The Institute moved up to No. 32 among national universities, improving one spot from last year and tying with institutions such as New York University and University of California, Davis. Among top public national universities, Georgia Tech held steady at No. 9, and it achieved No. 1 rankings across several categories.

“Georgia Tech has emerged as a unique case in American higher education — an institution that delivers some of the best student outcomes in the nation while growing at a record pace in terms of enrollment, degrees granted, and research,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “I am delighted to see rankings like these recognize Georgia Tech among the best public universities in the nation, and I invite families, students, employers, and corporate partners to reach out and learn more about what we’re doing here.”

Academic Distinctions

Georgia Tech also distinguished itself in areas that reflect the quality of the student experience and support for undergraduates. The Institute ranked No. 16 for Best Colleges for Veterans, maintaining its position from last year, and placed No. 3 nationally for internships and co-ops, underscoring Tech’s emphasis on hands-on learning opportunities. The senior capstone experience held steady at No. 12, highlighting the Institute’s commitment to preparing students for real-world problem-solving.

In addition, Georgia Tech ranked No. 21 in Best Undergraduate Teaching, rising 10 places from last year, and No. 3 in Most Innovative Universities, continuing a streak of top-five placements. 

Science and Math Excellence

Among  universities offering undergraduate, master’s, and doctoral programs, Georgia Tech ranks No. 32 nationally. U.S. News & World Report formally ranks only a handful of undergraduate programs in math and science. This year, the College of Sciences' undergraduate program in psychology entered the top 40 for the first time, moving up 30 places to No. 33. 

College of Sciences graduate programs are consistently ranked in the top 10% of accredited programs. The latest U.S. News & World Report Best Graduate School Rankings, published in April 2023, features all six College of Sciences schools among its best science schools for graduate studies. Several specialties also received high marks.

See ranking updates for other Georgia Tech programs here.

*Please note that this summary includes the latest rankings issued by U.S. News & World Report. Not all Georgia Tech Colleges, Schools, and subjects are ranked every year by this organization.

Georgia Tech’s James Stroud has been awarded a 2025 Maxwell/Hanrahan Award in Field Biology. Presented by the Maxwell/Hanrahan Foundation, the award recognizes outstanding scientists conducting field research that both explores the natural world and leverages collaboration. 

An assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, Stroud is one of just five scientists selected to receive this year’s honor, which includes $100,000 of funding to support his work.

“I’m honored to receive this award,” he says. “This support affirms the value of field-based research, and underscores the importance of collaborative, long-term field studies.”

From ecology to empowerment

An evolutionary biologist, Stroud uses lizards to explore how ecological and evolutionary processes at the micro scale may underlie broader patterns of biological diversity at a larger scale — research that involves both computational analysis and long-term field studies.

“My lab’s research focuses on studying lizards in their natural habitats, allowing us to directly investigate how species adapt and evolve in real time,” he shares. “This helps us understand how these ecological and evolutionary processes shape life on Earth."

In South Florida, Stroud’s fieldwork focuses on ‘Lizard Island’ — a football field-sized island with a 1,000-lizard population. Operating for a decade, it is one of the world’s longest-running active evolutionary studies of its kind. This year, Stroud published research documenting evolution in action on the island when two species met for the first time, providing some of the clearest evidence to date of evolution in real-time. 

Outside of field research, Stroud recently led a Nature review paper providing the first-ever comprehensive analysis of long-term evolutionary studies, underscoring the critical need for these types of studies. 

Stroud has also developed a community science project called “Lizards on the Loose.” A collaboration with Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden, the program engages middle school students from more than 100 schools across South Florida through the iNaturalist online platform and mobile app. Together, they have recorded thousands of lizard observations in their school grounds, local parks, and back yards.

As people age, walking often becomes slower and less efficient, limiting mobility and independence. 

To address these challenges, three Georgia Tech researchers have received a $3.2 million Research Project Grant (R01) from the National Institutes of Health's (NIH) National Institute on Aging (NIA).

Leading the study is Gregory Sawicki, Joseph Anderer Faculty Fellow and professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Biological Sciences. He is joined by Woodruff School colleagues Aaron Young, associate professor, and Kinsey Herrin, principal research scientist, along with partners at the Institute for Human & Machine Cognition (IHMC) and Northeastern University. Together, they will study how aging impacts lower-limb joint mechanics, muscle function, and the energy cost of walking.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

Between a third and half of all soil carbon on Earth is stored in peatlands, says Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professor Joel Kostka. These wetlands — formed from layers and layers of decaying plant matter — span from the Arctic to the tropics, supporting biodiversity and regulating global climate.

“Peatlands are essential carbon stores, but as temperatures warm, this carbon is in danger of being released as carbon dioxide and methane,” says Kostka, who is also the associate chair for Research in the School of Biological Sciences and the director of Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow. Understanding the ratio of carbon dioxide to methane is critical, he adds, because while both are greenhouse gasses, methane is significantly more potent.

Kostka is the corresponding author of a new study unearthing how and why peatlands are producing carbon dioxide and methane. 

The research, “Northern peatland microbial communities exhibit resistance to warming and acquire electron acceptors from soil organic matter,” was published this summer in Nature Communications, and was led by co-first authors Borja Aldeguer-Riquelme, a postdoctoral research associate in the Environmental Microbial Genomics Laboratory, and Katherine Duchesneau, a Ph.D. student in the School of Biological Sciences.

The study builds on a decade of research at the Oak Ridge National Lab’s Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE) experiment, a long-term research project in Minnesota that allows researchers to warm whole sections of wetland from tree top to bog bottom.

“Over the past 10 years, we’ve shown that warming in this large-scale climate experiment increases greenhouse gas production,” Kostka says. “But while warming makes the bog produce more methane, we still observe a lot more CO2 production than methane. In this paper, we take a critical step towards discovering why — and describing the mechanisms that determine which gases are released and in what amounts.”

Methane mystery

The subdued methane production in peatlands has been a long-standing mystery. In water-saturated wetlands, oxygen is scarce, but microbes still need to respire — a type of ‘breathing’ that allows them to produce energy for metabolic function. Without oxygen, microbes use nitrate, sulfate, or metals to respire — still releasing carbon dioxide in the process. However, if these ingredients aren’t present, microbes ‘breathe’ in a way that releases methane.

Since nitrate, sulfate, and metals are relatively rare in peatlands, methane production should be the most likely pathway, but surprisingly, observations show the opposite. “In both fieldwork and lab experiments, peatlands produce much more carbon dioxide than methane,” Kostka explains. “It’s puzzling because the soil conditions should help methane production dominate.”

To solve this mystery, the team leveraged a suite of cutting-edge genetic tools called “omics” —  metagenomics (studying DNA), metatranscriptomics (studying RNA), and metabolomics (a technique used to study the “leftovers” of metabolism), providing a detailed look under the hood of the microbial “engine” that cycles organic matter in wetlands. It also gave a new window into the diversity of soil microbes in wetlands: 80 percent of the organisms identified in the study were new at the genus level.

‘Omics’ innovations

Over the course of several years, the team collected samples from a peatland enclosed in an experimental chamber that was slowly warmed, then analyzed the samples using omics to see how they changed. Initially, they hypothesized that warming the soil would cause microbial communities to change quickly. “Microbes can evolve and grow rapidly,” Kostka says. “But that didn’t happen.”

The DNA-based methods showed that while the microbial communities stayed largely stable, the bog did release more greenhouse gasses as it warmed. To assess the metabolic potential of the microbes, Duchesneau and Aldeguer-Riquelme constructed microbial genomes, investigating how they were decomposing the organic matter in peatlands and cycling carbon.

“We found that microbial activity increases with warming, but the growth response of microbial communities lags behind these changes in physiological or metabolic activity,” Kostka says. He cautions that this doesn’t necessarily mean that wetland communities won’t change as climates warm — just that these shifts might come behind metabolic ones. 

A diversity of discoveries

And the methane? The team believes that microbes may be breaking down organic matter to access the key ingredients for producing carbon dioxide — nitrate, sulfate, and metals — though more research is currently underway to investigate this.

“Doing this type of integrated omics research in soil systems is still incredibly difficult,” Kostka says. The challenge is multifaceted: the research leverages years of experiments, long-term datasets, advanced laboratory techniques, and fieldwork innovations. 

At SPRUCE, experimental chambers are about 1,000 square feet. While it’s an impressive experimental setup, researchers still must be careful: “We need to take soil samples for many years, so if we take too many, there’d be no soil left!” Kostka explains. “Part of our research involves developing better, non-destructive sampling techniques.”

The other challenge lies in what makes these peatlands so unique: it’s very hard to detect small changes because of the sheer diversity of organisms present. “Every time we conduct this type of research, we learn more about these incredible systems,” he says. “There’s always something new.”

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-61664-7

Funding: The Office of Biological and Environmental Research, Terrestrial Ecosystem Science Program and Genomic Science programs, under the US Department of Energy (DOE); the Environmental Molecular Sciences Laboratory, a DOE Office of Science User Facility sponsored by the Biological and Environmental Research program. The SPRUCE experiment is funded by the Biological and Environmental Research program in the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Science.

A recently awarded $20 million NSF Nexus Supercomputer grant to Georgia Tech and partner institutes promises to bring incredible computing power to the CODA building. But what makes this supercomputer different and how will it impact research in labs on campus, across disciplinary units, and across institutions? 

Purpose Built for AI Discovery

Nexus is Georgia Tech’s next-generation supercomputer, replacing the HIVE. Most operational high-performance computing systems utilized for research were designed before the explosion in Machine Learning and AI. This revolution has already shown successes for scientific research and data analysis in many domains, but the compute power, complex connectivity, and data storage needs for these systems have limited their access to the academic research community. The Nexus supercomputer design process retained a robust HPC system as a base while integrating artificial intelligence, machine learning and large-scale data science analysis from the ground up.

Expert Support for Faculty and Researchers 

The Institute for Data Engineering and Science (IDEaS) and the College of Computing house the Center for Artificial Intelligence in Science and Engineering (ARTISAN) group. This team has collective experience in working with national computational, cloud, commercial and institutional resources for computational activities, and decades of experience in scientific tools that aid in assisting both teaching and research faculty. Nexus is the next logical step, bringing together everything they’ve learned to build a national resource optimized for the future of AI-driven science.

Principal Research Scientist for the ARTISAN team, Suresh Marru, highlighted the need for this new resource, “AI is a core part of the Nexus vision. Today, researchers often spend more time setting up experiments, managing data, or figuring out how to run jobs on remote clusters than doing science. With Nexus, we’re flipping that script. By embedding AI into the platform, we help automate routine tasks, suggest optimal ways to run simulations, and even assist in generating input or analyzing results. This means researchers can move faster from question to insight. Instead of wrestling with infrastructure, they can focus on discovery.”

An Accessible AI Resource for GT & US Scientific Research

90% of Nexus capacity will be made available to the national research community through the NSF Advanced Computing Systems & Services (ACSS) program. Researchers from across the country, at universities, labs, and institutions of all sizes, will have access to this next-generation AI-ready supercomputer. For Georgia Tech research faculty and staff, the new system has multiple benefits:

• 10% of the time on the machine will be available for use by Georgia Tech researchers
• Nexus will allow GT researchers a chance to try out the latest hardware for AI computing
• Thanks to cyberinfrastructure tools from the ARTISAN group, Nexus will be easier to access than previous NSF supercomputers

Interim Executive Director of IDEaS and Regents' Professor David Sherrill notes, "Nexus brings Georgia Tech's leadership in research computing to a whole new level. It will be the first NSF Category I Supercomputer hosted on Georgia Tech's campus. The Nexus hardware and software will boost research in the foundations of AI, and applications of AI in science and engineering."