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
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
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
Prof. Shashank Shekhar, an Assistant Professor of Physics, has been named a “Cell Scientist to Watch” by the Journal of Cell Science. As a community-focused journal, Journal of Cell Science is particularly keen to support the next generation of cell biologists. The interview series Cell Scientists to Watch features talented researchers who have recently set … More Prof. Shashank Shekhar named “Cell Scientist to Watch”
Recent work from the Shekhar lab (led by graduate student Ekram Towsif) was featured in The Scientist magazine! Their pre-print on how actin filaments assemble and disassemble is changing the field. Read more about it here! https://www.the-scientist.com/complicated-cap-does-it-all-71765
RNA polymerases must transit through protein roadblocks to produce full-length transcripts. Building on preliminary work by Finzi lab alumni Yan Yan and Wenxuan Xu, graduate student Jin Qian recently used magnetic tweezers to discover that RNA polymerases can backtrack and ram into longer lived protein roadblocks to transit through them during transcription. He was helped in … More Battering the roadblocks of RNA transcription
The NSF has awarded a CAREER grant to Prof. Rieser to use experimental and computational techniques to establish links between architecture and functionality of the complex nest structures created by red imported fire ant colonies. Specifically, this research seeks to understand how above- and below-ground nests are organized to achieve mechanical robustness and to facilitate … More Prof. Jennifer Rieser receives NSF CAREER Award
The American Physical Society has named Emory biophysicist Laura Finzi as one of its 2023 Fellows, a distinction given to researchers who have made significant contributions to the application of physics to science and technology and advanced physics through original research. The APS honors only about half of a percent of its members with the Fellows distinction. … More Professor Laura Finzi named American Physical Society Fellow