Experts in the News

Urban beekeeping as a hobby has grown across America. There has been a push everywhere to understand the role our pollinators play in agriculture and gardening. If you look closely around metro Atlanta, there are hives in neighborhoods, hotel rooftops, near parking decks. We begin our spotlight with the buzz of a Georgia Tech science building, home of the Georgia Tech Urban Honeybee Project's hives.

The first named storm of the hurricane season weakened Wednesday night, but forecasters warned that it still posed a threat of massive amounts of rain and continued flash flooding.

Zachary Handlos, an atmospheric scientist at the Georgia Institute of Technology, said the potential for flash flooding will be determined by how quickly Tropical Storm Arthur moves through the region.

“What it comes down to is, is the rainfall going to park itself or become stationary over any of these locations?” Handlos said. “That is a little harder to predict.”

Bacteria have no neurons or memories in the human sense. Yet in a new study, researchers at Georgia Tech and Carnegie Mellon University — including School of Physics Associate Professor Shiladitya Banerjee and Postdoctoral Fellow Josiah Kratz — found that individual E. coli cells carried traces of past hardship into the future. When nutrients repeatedly rose and fell, the cells changed how quickly they grew, suggesting that even simple microbes can use experience to prepare for what may come next. 

Georgia Tech researchers have recreated the effects of solar wind on lunar minerals in a laboratory experiment, providing new evidence that the constant stream of charged particles from the sun plays a major role in shaping the moon’s surface.

The team exposed ilmenite, a mineral commonly found on both Earth and the moon, to a synthetic version of solar wind. The experiment produced nanophase iron, tiny metallic particles that are widely observed in lunar soil and are considered a key signature of space weathering.

A new Georgia Tech study found the chemical plume from the 2024 BioLab fire in Conyers, Ga., released bromine, not chlorine, as its dominant compound in the immediate aftermath. This finding stands in stark contrast to early public warnings about the fire, which prompted 17,000 evacuations, closed portions of I-20, and led to overnight shelter-in-place orders for weeks. Nearly two years later, the U.S. Chemical Safety Board is still investigating the fire and chemical release. 

The Georgia Tech paper containing the study was published in the March 2026 issue of Environmental Science & Technology Letters and identified 26 different chemical species in the air following the Sept. 29, 2024, fire at the BioLab facility in Conyers. The authors wrote that the chemically complex plume "exposed millions in metropolitan Atlanta to numerous toxic compounds" and represented the first detailed study of a pool chemical facility fire.

M.G. Finn, a Regents’ professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology in the U.S., was among the team that coined the term click chemistry. It ‘was meant to call back that feeling that one gets when you snap together the two halves of a luggage strap – that satisfying click’, Finn recalls. He now shares his thoughts on how the field has changed over the past 25 years and what he thinks the next half a decade may bring.

Mountains are home to some of the most spectacular biodiversity on Earth, but mountain species are thought to be especially vulnerable to climate change-driven extinctions. However, mountains can also be refugia, providing a plethora of habitats and climates that allow species to persist despite climate change. In this piece published in Nature Reviews Biodiversity, researchers, including Benjamin Freeman and Jenny McGuire of the School of Biological Sciences, examine how mountain species have responded to past and ongoing warming to assess their vulnerability and resilience to climate change.

During an 11Alive interview, Regents’ Professor M.G. Finn explains global health preparedness and what people should know about Ebola and hantavirus risks.

A new study led by researchers, including School of Physics graduate student Julia Esposito and Associate Professor Gongjie Li, used 1,500 virtual planetary systems to examine how planet-planet scattering may have influenced the formation of Jupiter-sized planets.

Karl Lang, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Claudia Avalos, assistant professor at New York University, are among the eight research teams to receive an award through the 2025 Scialog: Sustainable Metals, Minerals, and Materials initiative. 

Supported by The Kavli Foundation, the collaboration will focus on monazite, a group of rare earth-bearing minerals essential for modern technology, including clean energy technologies. Using solid-state nuclear magnetic resonance, Lang and Avalos will examine how the mineral’s atomic structure responds to radiation damage and annealing. By observing the material at the atomic scale, they aim to uncover the fundamental mechanisms at work, uncovering insights that could lead to processing innovations and improved applications.

As the weather heats up, you may find the same jog that was comfortable outdoors a few months ago now leaves you drenched in sweat.

Sweating a lot can mean you’re working hard, but sweat alone isn’t necessarily a great indicator of workout intensity, said Mindy Millard-Stafford, an exercise physiologist at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “You can’t really compare one person’s sweat rate to another and say, ‘This person worked harder,’” she said.

But understanding how much you sweat can help you stay hydrated and safe while working out in warmer conditions. We asked experts, including Millard-Stafford, what to watch out for.

There are hives of activity on the roof of the ever-cool Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design. It’s a facility of technological marvel, creativity, and reclamation. The perfect place for urban honeybees to weave their environmental magic.

In this GPB interview, Jennifer Leavey of the School of Biological Sciences discusses her work leading the Georgia Tech Urban Honeybee Project, which studies how urban habitats affect honeybee health and how technology can be used to study bees.