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Welcome to the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. Learn about graduate and undergraduate programs, our research, upcoming events and news — and dive into a new magazine by the College of Sciences.

Recent News


Set to open this fall, a permanent tribute will celebrate an inaugural group of 70 graduates, as well as 98 women and events with historical significance to the Institute.



More than 4,000 guests visited Georgia Tech's kickoff event for the city's annual science extravaganza.



More than 30 College of Sciences faculty across all six schools and the Undergraduate Program in Neuroscience are recognized by the Institute for their excellence in research and teaching.



The School of Biological Sciences associate professor will be digging deep into itch-sensing neural circuits to gain insights into how the sensory system is wired — and where best to treat it when things go wrong.


Upcoming Events

Apr
12
2024
This event is hosted by the Space Research Initiative at Georgia Tech.
Apr
12
2024
This event is hosted by the Space Research Initiative at Georgia Tech.

Experts in the News

In new research published in Nature Communications, School of Biological Sciences researchers Mark Hay and Cody Clements and their colleagues demonstrated that when sea cucumbers were removed from coral reef, tissue death of Acropora pulchra, a species of staghorn coral, more than tripled, and mortality of the whole colony surged 15 times. The reasoning is that sea cucumbers are like "little vacuum cleaners on the reef" digesting and eliminating microbes that can lead to coral disease and demise — threats that are exacerbated by a warming and increasingly polluted ocean.

NPR | 2024-03-13T00:00:00-04:00

Evolution can perform spectacular makeovers: today's airborne songbirds descended from the wingless, earthbound dinosaurs that roamed millions of years ago, for example. But some organisms seem to change very little, even over eons. Scientists have long wondered how these species withstand the pressures of natural selection. The prevailing hypothesis for this “stasis paradox” has been that natural selection keeps some species unchanged by selecting for moderate or average traits (so-called stabilizing selection) rather than selecting for more extreme traits that would cause a species to change (directional selection). But a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences USA contradicts this idea, showing that evolution constantly favors different traits in seemingly unchanging animals that improve short-term survival. In the long term, though, “all that evolution cancels out and leads to no change,” says the study's lead author, James Stroud, assistant professor and Elizabeth Smithgall-Watts Endowed Faculty in the School of Biological Sciences. 

Scientific American | 2024-02-05T00:00:00-05:00

Spark: College of Sciences at Georgia Tech

 

Spotlight on Research Centers

  • CMDI Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection The Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI) is an interdisciplinary collaboration at Georgia Tech seeking to understand the ecology, interactions and evolution of microbes. We are focused on the understanding microbe-microbe and microbe-host interactions that are relevant to human health, ecosystem dynamics and sustainability.
  • CSSB Center for the Study of Systems Biology Recognized by most experts in the field as the future of biology, Systems Biology seeks to understand how complex living systems interact with each other so that we can diagnose and treat disorders such as cancer.
  • ACE Aquatic Chemical Ecology Center At Georgia Tech we have organized a diverse group of ecologists, chemists, sensory biologists, engineers, and quantitative modelers, to focus on chemical cues that many organisms use for to make basic survival decisions.
  • CBID Center for Biologically Inspired Design CBID is an interdisciplinary center for research and development of design solutions that occur in biological processes.
  • CIG Center for Integrative Genomics The Center for Integrative Genomics at Georgia Tech is a virtual affiliation of researchers interested in the application of genome-wide research strategies to diverse biological themes.
  • ICRC Integrated Cancer Research Center The mission of the ICRC is to facilitate integration of the diversity of technological, computational, scientific and medical expertise at Georgia Tech and partner institutions in a coordinated effort to develop improved cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.
  • NanoMAD Center for NanoMAD Our mission is to develop new technologies for detecting, monitoring and controlling self-assembled macromolecular complexes at various levels, including their pathogenic consequences, biological roles and evolutionary origins.

 

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