How to Pre-Health at Tech is a new series of stories and experiences with our faculty, current students, and alumni working in healthcare and medical fields. Check back throughout the spring for interviews with:

• Alonzo Whyte, faculty member, academic advisor for the Health and Medical Sciences (HMED) Minor, director of academic advising for the Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience, and development leader in the School of Biological Sciences
• Ritika Chanda, fourth-year neuroscience undergraduate with dual-minors in health and medical sciences and leadership studies
• Jenna Nash (NEUR '21), physician assistant graduate student
• Charles Winter (BIO '12), anesthesiologist assistant

Jeffrey Kramer’s first semester at Georgia Tech was a running start. With the post-grad goal of attending medical school to be a physician, the biology major from Marietta, Georgia has set ambitious plans to prepare for graduate school, focusing on his studies, three unique organizations, and learning “what it means to be a Yellow Jacket.”

Here are Kramer’s recommendations for “How to Pre-Health” at Georgia Tech:

Q: What attracted you to pursue a pre-health career at Georgia Tech?

A: I decided to pursue pre-health here at Georgia Tech for a variety of reasons. First, as an in-state student eligible for the Zell Miller Scholarship, it is difficult to beat the price and quality of a Georgia Tech education. Compared to out of state or private institutions, Georgia Tech is significantly more affordable while still offering a high level of prestige.

Second, Georgia Tech is in close proximity to a huge number of hospitals and clinics including Grady, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, Atlanta Medical Center, and Emory. This makes it significantly easier to obtain clinical volunteering and experience.

Third, Georgia Tech has an incredibly active pre-health community. There are a number of pre-health campus organizations, including Student Hospital Connections and the American Medical Student Association (AMSA), dedicated to helping students navigate the pre-health process. These organizations provide access to a wealth of opportunities and connections, and were a huge factor in my decision to attend Georgia Tech.

Q: What have you been involved with on campus?

A: In the past semester, I have become an active member of three organizations: Student Hospital Connections, AMSA, and the Student Center Programs Council.

Q: How did you find your first semester of classes?

A: I found my first semester of classes to be very difficult, but very manageable as well. It's a lot of content, but I'm very satisfied with my professors and their teaching. I've found it necessary to radically change my study habits, but Georgia Tech provides a wide variety of resources, such as office hours and Peer-Led Undergraduate Study (PLUS) sessions, to make this transition easier. Looking forward to future semesters, I'm thrilled to continue my science education here.

Q: How do you plan to make the most of your time at GT to prepare for a pre-health career?

A: Outside of my coursework, I plan on participating in a number of extracurriculars during my time here at GT to prepare me for a pre-health career. First, I plan on volunteering as often as possible throughout my time here. Fortunately, there are a huge number of campus organizations dedicated to facilitating community service opportunities.

Second, I plan on getting involved in scientific research. Luckily, Georgia Tech makes it easier than perhaps any other university to begin research as an undergrad.

Third, I plan on gaining clinical experience by both volunteering at local hospitals and clinics and shadowing physicians.

Q: Do you have any future career plans, or ideas for what you would like to do upon graduation?

A: After graduation, I currently plan on attending medical school with the goal of becoming a physician. I am not yet decided whether I wish to pursue a dual M.D./Ph.D. degree.

Q: What advice would you share with others interested in coming to Georgia Tech on a pre-health path?

A: I would advise them to look into the huge variety of pre-health resources here at Georgia Tech. Taking classes is only one component of the pre-health journey. The campus organizations, academic support resources, and research opportunities provided at Georgia Tech are unrivaled. They were a huge factor in my decision to attend GT.

Shared on behalf of Arts at Georgia Tech:

Georgia Institute of Technology students, faculty, and staff are proudly taking part in the 2022 ACCelerate Festival, a celebration of creative exploration and innovative research happening at the intersection of science, engineering, arts, and design. Featuring teams from universities and colleges across the Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) and the Smithsonian Institution, the Festival promotes cutting-edge creative work from a new generation of thinkers. This year’s event, to be held April 8 – 10, 2022, will be the third time the ACC institutions have gathered in DC, and Georgia Tech is honored to have been represented at each Festival to date.

“The ACCelerate Festival is an opportunity to showcase the incredible possibilities that await us at the intersection of art and technology,” said Georgia Tech Provost Steve McLaughlin. “We are proud to once again send teams from Georgia Tech and participate alongside our ACC peers. The arts have an undeniable power to teach, heal, and transform us, and this festival gives great visibility and a new way to experience the innovative and impactful education and research that is taking place on our campuses each day.”

The two Georgia Tech teams participating in the 2022 ACCelerate Festival come from the School of Architecture at the College of Design, and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication at the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Georgia Tech’s participation in ACCelerate is managed by Georgia Tech Arts, a department in the Division of Student Engagement and Well-Being.

Walking in the Footsteps of History

On March 7, 1965, at the south side of Edmund Pettus Bridge, armed State Troopers attacked peaceful civil rights activists attempting to march to the state capital of Montgomery in an incident that became known as Bloody Sunday. Despite access to vivid archival material, little interpretation addresses the physical context and experiential timeline. To digitally record this significant civil rights site and to make the specific context of the event more experientially engaging to the public, this project’s multidisciplinary team of designers, architectural historians, civil rights historians, cultural resource managers, and construction technology specialists are pairing collected 3D digital data of Selma’s extant structures with digital reconstructions to recreate the site.

By melding the physical and virtual, Walking in the Footsteps of History presents a broader understanding of the events of 1965 in and around Selma through enhanced historic interpretation by animating famous photographs through immersive visualization, creating interactive digital platforms for exploring fragile archival content such as the Good Samaritan Hospital logbook, and affording virtual tours where visitors can safely explore the Bloody Sunday conflict site that is bordered by a busy highway.

The team is led by Danielle Willkens, assistant professor, School of Architecture, who commented “This project has encompassed more than 6 years’ work with civil rights foot soldiers and their descendants with the intention of enabling visitors to translate the visceral experience to an understanding of the tenets of what was being advocated for - voting rights and civil rights – in the 1960’s through present time.”

Participating staff include Aaron Shackleford, director of Georgia Tech Arts. Georgia Tech student researchers include Simran Bajaj, Thomas Bray, Sydnee Henry, Carly Langsdorf, Sean Li, Sakshi Nanda, So Min Park, Patricia J. Rangel, Aishwarya Somasundaram, Christian Waweru, and Eden Wright. This project is the result of an ongoing collaboration with Junshan Liu, associate professor at Auburn University's McWhorter School of Building Science and Georgia Tech Visiting Scholar and the Auburn University team including faculty (R. Burt, K. Hébert, and E. Gaddis) and students (C. Brown, A. Davis, M. Gibbs, and S. Page). The team is currently completing a Historic Structures Report on the Edmund Pettus Bridge, sponsored by a National Park Service African American Civil Rights Grant.

Visit the ACCelerate website for more information about the team’s work and exhibition.

Heart Sense

“How can the very creation, rendering, and experiencing of biological data contribute to a more nuanced understanding of our bodies?” This is the question at the heart of this project. Heart Sense is a series of installations that visualize biometric data such as heart rate and breath as participants engage in a variety of listening and viewing activities. Our bodies are often conceived as separate autonomous entities, disjoint from the physical and social environments that they inhabit while in fact we are deeply connected with the material and social world around us.

The first installation tracks a participant’s heart rate, galvanic skin response, and breathing as they watch a short, emotionally engaging video. This data input produces flower-like visualizations that illustrate the physiological responses. The second installation engages the social dimension of embodiment through the mediation of the physical environment. Participants are invited to sit around a table and are given headphones to listen to music.

A floral visualization representing the collective heart rates of the participants will be projected onto the table, the size and the colors of each petal shifting with changes in each participant’s body. The visualization showcases how our bodies come into relation with each other and are in and of the environment, as they respond to our surrounding conditions even when we are not aware of it.

The team is led by Nassim Parvin, associate professor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, who states “This project has catalyzed interdisciplinary collaboration across natural sciences, social sciences, and humanities, and it has been a privilege to work with talented students in imaginative world-building.”

Participating faculty include Lewis Wheaton, associate professor, Biological Sciences, Georgia Tech, and Anne Pollock, previously associate professor of Literature, Media, and Communication at Georgia Tech and now professor of Global Health and Social Medicine at King's College London. The interdisciplinary team includes post-doctoral researcher Aditya Anupam alongside Georgia Tech student researchers Pooja Casula, Shubhangi Gupta, Sylvia Janicki, Michelle Ramirez, and Mohsin Yousufi.

Visit the ACCelerate website for more information about the team’s work and exhibition.

Visit the LMC website for detailed Heart Sense documentation and Heart Sense demonstration.

Working at the Intersection of Art, Learning, and Research

“The faculty and students at Georgia Tech have embraced the role of art and creativity as a way to engage with people and share their research with a wide audience,” said Georgia Tech Arts Director Aaron Shackelford. He explains that Georgia Tech Arts selected each project because of the way they bring together art, learning and research. “Both projects show what happens when you bring art and creativity into every step of the process,” he notes, “and the results are these innovative approaches to conducting important work that can be experienced by anyone visiting the Smithsonian.” Each project also supports the well-being of the community. “Heart Sense invites us to have a better understanding of our own bodies, while Walking in the Footsteps of History pushes us to have a better understanding of our nation’s history. Both are important for cultivating the well-being of our community, which is a central goal for Georgia Tech as a whole and one of the most important benefits of the arts.”

ACCelerate is programmed by Virginia Tech’s Institute for Creativity, Arts, and Technology and the Smithsonian Institution’s Lemelson Center for the Study of Invention and Innovation. Hosted at the National Museum of American History, the multi-day festival is free and open to the public. The 2022 Festival features 24 projects from 12 ACC schools; the most recent Festival drew public attendance of more than 30,000.

For more information about the 2022 ACCelerate Festival, visit their website.

Six College of Sciences researchers are among 19 Georgia Tech faculty and students receiving 2022 Research Awards from the Georgia Tech chapter of Sigma Xi, the Scientific Research Society. 

Sigma Xi’s mission is “to enhance the health of the research enterprise, foster integrity in science and engineering, and promote the public’s understanding of science for the purpose of improving the human condition.” 

Two College of Sciences researchers won the Best Faculty Paper Award:

• Roman Grigoriev, professor in the School of Physics 

• Nga Lee (Sally) Ng, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences with a joint appointment in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

Grigoriev won for the paper, “Robust learning from noisy, incomplete, high-dimensional experimental data via physically constrained symbolic regression.” The study appeared in Nature Communications.

Ng won for four papers:

• “Evaluation of particle filtration efficiency of commercially available materials for homemade face mask usage,” Aerosol Science and Technology.

• “In-flight particulate matter concentrations in commercial flights are likely lower than other indoor environments,” Indoor Air.

• “Formation of Oxidized Gases and Secondary Organic Aerosol from a Commercial Oxidant-Generating Electronic Air Cleaner,” Environmental Science and Technology Letters.

• “Room-level ventilation in schools and universities,” ChemRxiv.

Four College of Sciences graduate students are also recognized.

Best Ph.D. Thesis Awards:

• Yuchen He, School of Mathematics
  Advisor: Sung Ha Kang
  Title: "Mathematical and data-driven pattern representation with applications in image processing, computer graphics, and infinite dimensional dynamical data mining"  

• Pan Liu, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
  Advisor: Yuanzhi Tang 
  Title: "Speciation and recovery of rare earth elements (REES) from coal fly ash"   

• Suttipong “Jay” Suttapitugsakul, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry
  Advisor: Ronghu Wu 
  Title: "MS-based chemical proteomics studies of extracellular glycoproteins: identification, quantification, and dynamics" 

Best M.S. Thesis Award:

• Charles Ross Lindsey, School of Biological Sciences
  Advisor: Frank Rosenzweig
  Title: "Phylotranscriptomics points to multiple independent origins of multicellularity and cellular differentiation in the Volvocine algae"

The Sigma Xi Georgia Tech Chapter awards ceremony is scheduled for April, preceding the Georgia Tech faculty awards ceremony. Learn more.

How to Pre-Health at Tech is a new series of stories and experiences with our faculty, current students, and alumni working in healthcare and medical fields. Check back throughout the spring for interviews with:

• Alonzo Whyte, faculty member, academic advisor for the Health and Medical Sciences (HMED) Minor, director of academic advising for the Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience, and development leader in the School of Biological Sciences
• Jeffrey Kramer, first-year biology undergraduate
• Jenna Nash (NEUR '21), physician assistant graduate student
• Charles Winter (BIO '12), anesthesiologist assistant

Ritika Chanda has made the most of her time at Georgia Tech. Through challenging classes, undergraduate research, leadership roles in student organizations, and an internship, Chanda shares she's ready to enter the healthcare field after graduation.

She encourages all students to take advantage of their time at Tech to get involved in various activities to learn more about their future career path. She shares that “I am someone who strives to challenge myself and try new things,” and her time at Georgia Tech certainly has been full of excitement and discovery.

While serving as president of Student Hospital Connections (SHC), the organization was awarded “Burdell’s Best for Community Champion” award at Tech’s Up with the White and Gold Ceremony. From volunteering at pop-up vaccine clinics, to helping on a Covid-19 helpline, to making masks for local charitable clinics and homeless shelters, service has been a vital part of Chanda’s Georgia Tech experience.

Here are Chanda’s recommendations for “How to Pre-Health” at Georgia Tech:

Q: What is your degree, year, and hometown?

A: I am a fourth-year Neuroscience major with minors in health and medical sciences and leadership studies. I am from Columbus, Georgia, which is located about two hours south from Atlanta!

Q: What activities are you involved with on campus?

A: On campus, I am involved in several student organizations, research and mentoring. I currently serve as the president of SHC, executive vice president of American Medical Student Association (AMSA) and vice president of Support, Health, and Education (S.H.E) for Women.

SHC is an organization focused on promoting volunteerism and healthcare awareness among Georgia Tech students. Our goal is to provide students interested in leadership and volunteerism with the opportunities and resources to make an impact in our community! 

AMSA is an organization with the mission of supporting, informing, and inspiring future physicians to make healthcare a better place. Our goal is to provide support for the academic aspects of being a pre-health student through our workshops and initiatives. 

Last, but not least, S.H.E for Women is a newly chartered organization with the mission of spreading awareness to women’s health issues, especially in the realm of homelessness. Our goal is to provide support to larger Atlanta-based organizations with similar missions by advocating for them, informing our Georgia Tech students of these issues, and hosting service projects to help alleviate said issues. 

My role in each of organizations involves coordinating the operations of the organizations and most importantly supporting all members in their future endeavors. My goal is to be a resource for others and to share my experiences. As a teaching leader for a Neuroscience GT 1000 course, I have the opportunity to continue this goal as a mentor for first-year students! I also serve as an undergraduate research assistant in professor Eric Schumacher’s Cognitive Neuroscience at Tech Research Lab (CoNTRoL). I am currently completing the research option on my own project investigating whether attentional brain networks, which are neural pathways in the brain modulating attention, can predict learning in an online environment using fMRI techniques!

Off campus, I am involved in several different activities as well. I serve as a medical intern at the Good Samaritan Health Center, or Good Sam, which is a charitable clinic just five minutes away from Georgia Tech. Through this position, I support the hard-working medical staff, while also practicing skills essential for future healthcare providers, such as making patients feel safe and comfortable, managing the demands of healthcare, and being adaptable and flexible. Throughout my four years at Tech, this experience has been the most eye-opening and impactful to me. Before Good Sam, I was blind to many of the issues related to healthcare, such as the effects of healthcare disparities, the lack of healthcare accessibility and more. 

This experience inspired me to also be an advocate for more accessible and equitable healthcare and motivated me to use my resources to help spread awareness and educate other Georgia Tech students through AMSA’s Urban Clinic of Atlanta (UCA) team and Student Hospital Connection’s Outreach team. With Good Sam, I also serve as a clinical caller and shift coordinator on their Covid-19 helpline and a volunteer for their Covid-19 and flu pop-up vaccine sites! I also work as a medical scribe for Comprehensive Women’s Care of Columbus (CWCC), a private OBGYN practice in my hometown dedicated to providing accessible and women-focused healthcare. During my free time, I do some dancing here and there!

Q: When did you know you wanted a career in pre-health?

A: When I was about eight years old, my uncle came to live with us while studying for the United States Medical License Exam, which is a three-step examination program to receive your medical license. During this time, my uncle was also responsible for watching me while my parents worked. He would encourage me to study with him by giving me case studies to memorize. I was responsible for learning the patient’s symptoms and history, and then presenting the case to him so he could “diagnose” me. That was the summer I realized I wanted to pursue medicine because connecting with and being able to help others has always been something I have been passionate about! As I grew older, I began seeing the positive and life-changing impact physicians had on individuals, families and groups of people, and my Georgia Tech experience inspired me to use my education to help underserved and uninsured populations receive quality healthcare.

Q: Why did you choose to pursue pre-health at Georgia Tech?

A: When I was a prospective student, I came to tour Georgia Tech. Prior to the tour, I was quite hesitant in coming to Tech for pre-health, but very quickly I realized that Georgia Tech was located in a vibrant community full of opportunities just steps away from campus! Additionally, I am someone who strives to challenge myself and try new things. I value personal growth and I knew Georgia Tech would help facilitate that for me. I am really thankful for choosing to come here for my undergraduate experience.

Q: What resources at Georgia Tech have prepared you for a pre-health career?

A: Student organizations and the Pre-Health Advising Office have been really impactful in preparing me for my pre-health career. Through student organizations, I found an open and welcoming community, as well as support from my upperclassmen peers. As a current upperclassman participating in student organizations, I am grateful to be able to provide support those still learning about the path! The Pre-Health Advising Office has been crucial in supporting me academically as I pursue this path. They have many programs to help assist through the process and are always available during their drop-in hours to talk. Talking about your career can be really stressful and make you feel vulnerable, but the Office does a great job with building relationships with students, so you have a safe place to go to for career-related discussions.

Q: What have some of your favorite classes at Georgia Tech been and why?

A: One of my favorite classes to participate in was Vertical Integrated Projects (VIP). During my first and second year at Tech, I joined a VIP regarding Health Informatics on FHIR, or Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources. This project was heavily industrial engineering-based, but very interesting! I appreciated learning about how other fields, especially engineering, could improve healthcare. 

As a leadership studies minor, I am required to delve a little bit into management and business, which led me to taking MGT 3662, Management in the Healthcare Sector. This course was extremely eye-opening as it exposed me to many conflicts in healthcare and delved into how business and technology make an impact on the patient experience. I would highly recommend this course to pre-health students! I am currently taking the practicum portion of this course and working closely with the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta to help resolve an issue they are currently facing using the skills I have learned in MGT 3662 and my experience working in and learning more the healthcare field. 

I also really enjoyed taking physics for life sciences and organic chemistry, as these courses challenged me the most! In the end, despite the challenge, I realized how much they helped me improve my critical thinking skills. Additionally, it was great seeing how they could be applied in medicine and pharmaceuticals to improve healthcare.

Q: What professors, advisors, or older students have helped you prepare for your career?

A: During my first semester at Georgia Tech, my GT 1000 and PSYC 1101 professor Mary Holder played a huge role in helping me adapt to college life. With her support, I learned the necessary time management and study skills needed to succeed at Georgia Tech. This also gave me the opportunity to try out other interests of mine inspired by Tech, such as industrial engineering through a VIP program and my leadership studies minor! I am really thankful for the support of my family, friends, and academic and career advisors!

Alfred Merrill, professor emeritus in the School of Biological Sciences and Smithgall Chair in Molecular Cell Biology in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) — who brought research attention to an important class of organic compounds found in all tissues, including the brain — has been elected as a fellow of the American Society of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology (ASBMB). 

“This honor is only bestowed to our most distinguished and established members,” says ASBMB president Toni Antalis. ASBMB Fellowships were established in 2020 “to recognize our members for their meritorious efforts to advance the molecular life sciences through sustained outstanding accomplishments in scientific research, education, mentorship, commitment to diversity, and service to the society and the scientific community.”

“It is an honor to be selected as a fellow of the ASBMB, an organization that was established over a hundred years ago and promotes research and training in biochemistry through newsletters, conferences and publication of several of the most highly regarded journals in the field, such as The Journal of Biological Chemistry and The Journal of Lipid Research,” Merrill says.

“We are thrilled to see Al Merrill named a ASBMB Fellow,” says Todd Streelman, professor and chair of the School of Biological Sciences. “This award acknowledges Al’s lifetime of achievement in the lab and as a mentor to his colleagues. On behalf of the School of Biological Sciences, I congratulate Al on this honor."

Merrill was nominated by George Carman, Board of Governors Professor of Food Science, and Founding Director of the Rutgers Center for Lipid Research in the New Jersey Institute for Food, Nutrition, & Health at Rutgers University. “Al has made impressive contributions to science through both the discoveries by his laboratory and his assistance to others through service activities,” says Carman, who was named an ASBMB Fellow in 2021.

Merrill has been an IBB member since he came to Georgia Tech in fall 2001. He was an adjunct professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry from 2003-2016. Merrill’s Georgia Tech research affiliations include the Center for Bio-Imaging Mass Spectrometry, the Integrated Cancer Research Center, the Center for ImmunoEngineering, and the Center for Drug Design Development and Delivery.

Merrill is also a member of the Discovery and Developmental Therapeutics Research Program at Emory Winship Cancer Institute. 

Improving our understanding of important organic compounds

Lipids are hormones, fats, oils and waxes that store energy and act as messengers within the body. A class of lipids, sphingolipids — named after the mysterious sphinx of mythology because of their enigmatic nature to early researchers — are important in tissue development, cell structure, cell-cell communication and signal transduction (how a cell responds to substances outside the cell). 

Merrill began researching sphingolipids while an assistant professor in the Department of Biochemistry at Emory University School of Medicine in 1981. “I wanted to branch out from my areas of previous training, which had been on the mechanisms of action of coenzymes and glycerolipids,” he says. “The sphingoid base biosynthesis pathway looked promising because few other scientists were studying it and my background in these two areas somewhat uniquely prepared me to tackle that challenging field. It was also helpful that I like to develop new methods for analyzing biochemical processes, and one of the first things that I did was develop easier ways to study sphingoid bases and their metabolism.”

The ASBMB notes that Merrill developed quantitative methods to measure sphingolipids and was a major contributor to mass spectrometry–based lipidomics research guidance. Merrill helped determine how the lipid backbones of sphingolipids are made and how they function in cell signaling and disease. 

Three research studies that Merrill conducted in 1986 detailing sphingolipids and cell signaling were designated “Classics” in 2016 by the Journal of Biological Chemistry because of their scientific influence. 

Merrill is a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an associate editor of the Journal of Lipid Research. He was a member of the editorial board of the Journal of Biological Chemistry for 20 years.

Merrill is one of five Georgia-based scientists who received 2022 ASBMB Fellowships. The others are:

• Anita Corbett, Samuel C. Dobbs Professor in the Department of Biology at Emory University
• Christine Dunham, professor, Department of Biochemistry at Emory University School of Medicine
• Gerald Hart, professor and GRA Eminent Scholar and member of the Complex Carbohydrate Research Center, Department of Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at the University of Georgia’s Franklin College of Arts and Sciences
• Susanna Fletcher Greer, senior scientific director, Biochemistry and Immunology of Cancer at the American Cancer Society in Georgia

Sustainable Development Goals Action and Awareness Week 2022 is Feb. 28 – March 4. The campus community is invited to participate in a variety of events that increase awareness of and encourage actions that advance the 17 United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).

The SDGs were adopted by the UN General Assembly in 2015 as part of the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. They address the world’s most monumental challenges, including poverty, inequality, climate change, environmental degradation, and peace and justice. Some of the objectives are improved industry, innovation, and infrastructure; affordable and clean energy; and sustainable cities and communities. The SDGs appear by name in the Institute’s strategic plan as long-term goals that should guide teaching, research, and operations.

SDG Action and Awareness Week 2022 will begin with an interactive campus discussion, titled Engaging With the SDGs Across Campus, focusing on how the goals are being realized across the Institute and ways to better work together across disciplines and departments to amplify our impact. President Ángel Cabrera will moderate the discussion with participants from the College of Sciences, Serve-Learn-Sustain, Interdisciplinary Research, and Engineers Without Borders.

Other events during the week include a Tech Dining Sustainability Showcase, a panel on Infrastructure and Sustainability, Changing Relationships: You and Your Aging Parents, Toilet Talk With Shan and Shannon, A Healthy Georgia: Exploring the Impact of the Energy Transition on Public Health, the Association for Sustainable Investment Podcast Club Kickoff, and Engaging With the SDGs to Advance Sustainability in Atlanta. View a full listing of the week’s events.

In Fall 2020, a panel discussion and keynote address by Cabrera introduced the Tech community to the 17 goals. The event covered their relevance to the Institute and emphasized how Georgia Tech can lead the region in implementing and advancing these goals.

“If we are committed to improving the human condition, then we should embrace the SDGs to guide our actions as a university,” Cabrera said when introducing the SDGs.

SDG Action and Awareness Week is part of a larger global effort through the University Global Coalition, whose partners are hosting a variety of online events that are open to all. 

Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering will host a question-and-answer session with NASA astronaut and alumnus Shane Kimbrough on Friday, March 4. The free event, open to students, faculty, and staff, will be held in the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons (room 152) from 12:30 – 1:30 p.m.

Kimbrough is returning to his alma mater for the first time since living on the International Space Station (ISS) for six months in 2021. In three trips to space, he has spent 388 days away from Earth, the fourth highest total among U.S. astronauts.

The event will be moderated by Naia Butler-Craig, a Ph.D. student in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. Butler-Craig is a NASA Space Technology Graduate Research Fellow and a NASA Pathways intern in the Science and Space Technology Systems branch at Glenn Research Center. The Q&A will be streamed live on the Georgia Tech YouTube channel, where viewers can submit questions. K-12 schools around Atlanta will also participate remotely.

The Q&A session is one of several Georgia Tech events for Kimbrough on Friday. He will spend the morning touring labs dedicated to spacecraft design and space-related research. That evening, he will throw out the first pitch at Georgia Tech’s baseball game against the University of Georgia. The action starts at 6pm at Russ Chandler Stadium.

Kimbrough grew up in Atlanta, attending Georgia Tech sporting events as a kid. He was an NCAA pitcher while earning his undergraduate degree at the United States Military Academy. After nearly a decade serving in the U.S. Army, Kimbrough graduated with a master’s degree in operations research from the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE).

Kimbrough was selected to be an astronaut in 2004. His first mission was aboard space shuttle Endeavour in 2008. He returned to orbit in 2016 aboard a Russian Soyuz rocket, serving as commander of the ISS for six months.

Last April, Kimbrough was commander of NASA/SpaceX Crew-2, launching from Cape Canaveral, Florida. By flying on Crew Dragon, Kimbrough became the fourth person to travel on three different spacecrafts.

During his three missions, Kimbrough has taken Georgia Tech jerseys and a flag from the Ramblin’ Wreck into orbit. He also threw out the first pitch in a taped ceremony from the ISS before a 2021 Georgia Tech baseball game and recorded a message that was played during last fall’s space-themed football game.

How to Pre-Health at Tech is a new series of stories and experiences with our faculty, current students, and alumni working in healthcare and medical fields. Check back throughout the spring for interviews with:

• Ritika Chanda, fourth-year neuroscience undergraduate with dual-minors in health and medical sciences and leadership studies
• Jeffrey Kramer, first-year biology undergraduate
• Jenna Nash (NEUR '21), physician assistant graduate student
• Charles Winter (BIO '12), anesthesiologist assistant

Meet Alonzo Whyte

As a faculty member, advisor for the Health and Medical Sciences (HMED) Minor, and director of academic advising for the Bachelor of Science in Neuroscience at Georgia Tech, Alonzo Whyte supports pre-health students throughout their time at Tech. He also teaches neuroscience and serves as a development leader in the School of Biological Sciences, working to incorporate feedback on the program and support future growth through curriculum development, course instruction, and academic advising. Whyte is also a member of the College of Sciences Task Force on Racial Equity and in spring 2021 received the Institute’s Class of 1934 Course Instructor Opinion Survey Award.

In his tenure at Tech, Whyte says he has seen a diversity of routes that students take on the path to a pre-health career. Today he shares some advice on success stories, mistakes to avoid, and resources to explore.

Here’s his take on “How to Pre-Health” at Georgia Tech:

Q: What is your role advising students on the Pre-Health Track?

A: As a neuroscience advisor and an advisor for the Health and Medical Sciences Minor, I see a lot of students on the Track for anything from medical school, to physician assistant school, to dental school, to physical therapy school, and everything in between. We try our best as advisors to have some knowledge in terms of what steps the students need to take in order to meet the pre-requisite requirements for different programs, because it’s not simple. 

There is no pre-medical major at Georgia Tech. Students need to do research to find out what specific programs they’re interested in and what classes they need to meet their goals. In that capacity, as an advisor for the major and the minor, I have developed some knowledge in terms of what classes students should be taking for the different paths. 

But really, my job is to ensure that their completed courses help students towards progress for their major or minor, and wrapped into that are the pre-health requirements. And even though I have some experience and knowledge about what things students are doing to prepare for their post-graduate experience, I strongly, strongly recommend that every student talk to the Pre-Health Advising Office. They have a set of advisors there that are dedicated to helping the writing medical school letters, interviewing, and anything else needed.

For example, last week I was part of a mock medical school interview process. The Pre-Health Office creates those types of events. As major and minor advisors, we ensure the students' academic course work will earn their desired degree and that students’ courses are getting applied appropriately, while edging them along the pre-health path. 

Q: What other key resources are there for students on the pre-health path?

A: Again, the Pre-Health Office is fantastic. They’re very busy, so to get a meeting with their advisors such as Mr. Castelan or Ms. Liggins, it’s important to book in advance. 

Additionally, advisors are still not the only experts in what the students need. I find that the best solution is to utilize peer advisors as well as a student groups. The Pre-Health Office has many resources; they have their own set of peer advisors; they have a very active Piazza page, that allows you to connect with the pre-health community to get quick answers to your pre-health questions; and they have a list of pre-health student organizations.

I’m also a faculty advisor for a new club, the American Physician Scientist Association. They are students who are looking to be physicians, scientists, or something similar. They’ll have speakers come who are focused on that subject.

Additionally, I am faculty advisor for Minority Association of Pre-Medical Students. It’s not just limited to minority identity students, it’s a very diverse group of students and open to all. This semester they hosted a medical school showcase where they had representatives from different medical schools come and talk the attendees through the application process.

There’s also an American Medical Student Association, a Pre-Dental Society, and many more places where you can connect with senior students who are going through the application cycle, as well as participate in their events where they bring in guest or representatives of medical schools to provide great insight. The pre-health path is really a collaborative process. 

There’s not one single resource. You have to pick and choose what resources you need. If you have questions about classes, I’ll be a person to talk to. If you have questions about the application cycle, you can talk to me, but I’ll refer you to the Pre-Health Office as they have all these peer advisors, all these student associations. The community is great, and there are plenty of supportive resources.

Q: In your experience, what kind of activities do students on the Pre-Health Track do to ensure they take the right steps to pursue the rigorous process of applying to these difficult schools?

A: I think one of the biggest things is thinking beyond GPA and Medical College Admission Test (MCAT) score. While those are important factors for the application, currently the holistic view of the student is huge. There are some shifts and trends in the application experience. 

I would say many students are waiting a year or two after their undergraduate graduation as a way to build up their credentials. Maybe they need more clinical hours, or they’re taking positions as a medical assistant, Emergency Medical Technician (EMT), things like that, to get hands-on experience to show that they can thrive in a medical environment. Maybe they don’t have the strongest GPA, so they’ll do a one- or two-year master’s in something like genetics to show that they can achieve academically and handle the rigor of medical school. 

Three important things that students do are leadership positions, getting involved in clubs, and research. 

Showing commitment to clubs is important by staying active not just for one semester but two or three years if possible. Additionally, research is becoming popular. Working in biomedical, neuroscience, chemistry, or other research lab shows that students can commit to a project that’s high-level science. We have these opportunities at Georgia Tech where students can successfully write a thesis, get some publications or poster presentations.

That’s a lot of what I see for strong candidates – along with maintaining a good attitude throughout that all, because when recommendation letters are written, it won’t matter how much you’ve done if you’ve had a sour attitude the whole time! As advisors, we want to ensure that we’re putting students in the position to become a good clinician. When we’re thinking about who we’re sending to medical school, we think, who do we want to be treated by when we’re older? Do I want some student who is grumpy, even if they’re the smartest? That’s one of the reasons for graduate school interviews – personality does matter for who you choose as your doctor.

Q: For students who are on the Pre-Health Track, but have a major that is not explicitly science related, how does their path differentiate from students studying a healthcare related subject?

A: The College of Sciences majors, in particular neuroscience and biology, have a lot of pre-health courses already built into the major requirements … Whereas if you’re studying computer science or engineering, you don’t have the lab science requirements built into the degree the same way. You have other courses you must take, so you have to find a place in your schedule to fit the pre-health courses in. 

For students studying biomedical engineering, for example, because of the heavy credit requirements to complete that major, students are often really stretched to find every free elective that completes a pre-health requirement … So, there’s a bit more pressure.

There are plenty of non-science students who attend medical school after graduation successfully. In fact, some schools are looking for students with diverse skill sets. For example, some schools want engineering students who want to be doctors, because that’s how they design medical devices well. 

Q: What would you tell prospective students interested in pursuing a pre-health career through Georgia Tech?

A: The rigor of Georgia Tech has a national, if not international, reputation. You leave Georgia Tech prepared for the rigor of medical school. That’s what we hear from our students who have gone off to places like Emory for a medical degree – they say that Georgia Tech prepared them to excel and succeed in their medical school courses. You can go to many different institutions and earn high marks, but you’re going to get your world turned over when you go off to medical school. The struggle is helpful, because you build skills to succeed while struggling, and then when you step up to the challenge of medical school, you’re ready for it.

Q: What other advice do you have for students on the Pre-Health Track to ensure they have a successful time here?

A: Again, I think it’s important that students don’t focus solely on GPA. A “C” is not the end of your pre-health path. A “D” is not even the end of your pre-health path. Think about the whole picture. There are plenty of students who struggle their first year and that’s expected. So, you have to adjust, and have some grace there, understanding that there’s more to the process than GPA.

I also encourage students, regardless of if they’re straight “A” students or straight “B” students, to have an open mindset to other careers. You may have come to Georgia Tech thinking that you want to be pre-health, but I would suggest still exploring other paths. Consider, “What if I were to start my career with a bachelor’s degree and not go to medical school, what would I do? What would I enjoy?” And then tailor their minor towards that. For example, if they like programming, pursue a Computer Science Minor. If they like writing science communication, a Language, Media, and Communications Minor. There are many things they can do in addition to their major, along with the pre-health requirements. So, if they get to graduation and decide they don’t want to go to medical school, they have something that they’re also equally excited about.

Some of the best medical school applicants I've seen have had activities like projects where they worked in conjunction with local hospitals to design new algorithms for them to read how patients are treated upon arrival. That’s taking their interests and putting in into this pre-health context. And that you would be great for public health, if they decide they don’t want to pursue a medical doctorate. A multimodal, diverse skill set is really important to think outside the box of what it means to be a typical pre-med student, to move to being something more creative and unique.

Q: My last question is a little more personal to you. What do you like about advising for the Health and Medical Sciences minor? 

A: I love the energy that students bring. The HMED minor requirements are flexible, diverse and very interdisciplinary – similar to the Neuroscience major. We have students taking classes in science, bioethics, and any of the College of Sciences programs. I love seeing the diversity of classes that they pull together and the interesting things that they’re doing. And I think that the freedom to explore these interdisciplinary courses is important. They really choose their own adventure to complete the minor.

Just to show how varied the minor is, you could complete the HMED minor and not take a single class that is a pre-requisite for medical school. If you’re a neuroscience student also interested in physics and psychology, you could take those courses through the minor, none of which will serve as pre-health requirements. So, people can cater the minor to what their future path may be.