Emory Physics graduate student Zachariah Germain participated in this year’s “Squishy Science Sunday” before the annual American Physical Society Global Physics Summit in Denver, CO. In Prof. Jennifer Rieser’s lab, Zach’s research focuses on 3D imaging and printing models of fire ant nests. And now, he helped to build one of these nests as an … More A Bug’s Life…in Minecraft
Emory Physics Professor Shashank Shekhar has won the 2026 Early Career Award from the Biophysical Society in the area of Mechanobiology. These awards recognize the research of members in specialized research Subgroups. The winners were honored at the Society’s 70th Annual Meeting, held in San Francisco, California from February 21-25, 2026. As part of the … More Prof. Shashank Shekhar recognized by the Biophysical Society
Frying an egg in a high-quality, slip-slidey nonstick pan or a well-seasoned cast iron skillet is pretty straightforward. But when a stainless steel pan is involved, it can quickly turn into a sticky situation. Maki Yazawa from NYT Wirecutter recently investigated this problem with a hack using salt to prepare the pan and make it less sticky: https://www.nytimes.com/wirecutter/reviews/stainless-steel-egg-slide Handling delicate … More The Secret to Sliding Eggs Off Stainless Steel
Emory University will send four outstanding graduating seniors to Scotland for additional study next fall through the elite Robert T. Jones Jr. Scholarship program. Emory College of Arts and Sciences seniors Claire Burkhardt, Josh Grand, Asmita Lehther and Yurok Song will complete a year of study at the University of St Andrews in honor of the … More Physics major Yurok Song is a 2026 Bobby Jones Scholar
Artificial intelligence is increasingly used to integrate and analyze multiple types of data formats, such as text, images, audio and video. One challenge slowing advances in multimodal AI, however, is the process of choosing the algorithmic method best aligned to the specific task an AI system needs to perform. Scientists have developed a unified view … More ‘Periodic table’ for AI methods aims to drive innovation
A tiny worm that leaps high into the air — up to 25 times its body length — to attach to flying insects uses static electricity to perform this astounding feat, scientists have found. The journal PNAS published the work on the nematode Steinernema carpocapsae, a parasitic roundworm, led by researchers at Emory University (Justin Burton and Ranjiangshang Ran, … More The Electric Worm Gets the Fly
Researchers from Harutyunyan Lab and their collaborators have built an ultrathin electronic device that can both make and sense light at the scale of a few atoms. The heart of the device is a remarkably stable tunnel junction, two metal films separated by a crystal-clear layer of lutetium oxide (Lu₂O₃). In this tiny gap, electrons … More Sensing and generating light with a few atoms
Associate Professor Luiz Santos has just recevied 2 grants recognizing his work at the forefront of quantum materials research. The first is a prestigious National Science Foundation CAREER award, titled “Developing New Paradigms for Hybrid Light-Matter Quantum Materials,” which recognizes early-career researchers with ambitious scientific ideas in their field. The second award is a Department … More Prof. Luiz Santos receives prestigious NSF CAREER and DOE awards
The brain must store and process continuous data to survive, from navigating a forest to keeping your eyes still. However, theoretical models of such continuous memories in neural networks have to date typically required fine-tuning. In a recent paper published in PRX Life, and featured on the journal cover, Prof. Tankut Can and his co-authors … More Freezing a Memory in a Neural Network
A new model suggests we remember stories, like that of Romeo and Juliet, by using a tree-shaped mental framework. Oh, those star-crossed lovers, Romeo and Juliet. Most of us can recount their story, even if we can’t recite any specific lines from the play. A new theory by Emory Physics Professor Tankut Can and his … More How We Remember Stories