Emory physicists won the Cozzarelli Prize for Mathematical and Physical Sciences from the journal PNAS for their work using machine learning to discover surprising new twists on the non-reciprocal forces governing a many-body system. The prize is awarded annually to a singular PNAS article that represents an outstanding contribution to their field. The Emory team’s … More Emory Physicists Win PNAS Cozzarelli Award
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
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
Emory physicists have teamed up to use a machine-learning method to identify surprising new twists on the non-reciprocal forces governing a many-body system. The journal PNAS published the findings by experimental and theoretical physicists at Emory University, based on a neural network model and data from laboratory experiments on dusty plasma — ionized gas containing suspended dust … More AI reveals unexpected new physics in dusty plasma
In an extensive numerical study just published in Physical Review Letters, Boettcher and Emory undergrad Honor student, Ginger E. Lau, explored the properties of ground states of a spin glass with three-body interactions. The corresponding two-body problem, known as the Sherrington-Kirkpatrick model (whose solution earned Parisi the 2021 Nobel prize), is widely recognized as one … More With interacting spins, three’s company
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
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
Interfaces impact the properties of glasses over surprisingly large length scales, which has important implications for developing nanoscale devices involving polymers. Emory graduate student Yannic Gagnon, together with his PhD advisor Prof. Connie Roth and Prof. Justin C. Burton, recently discovered a new mechanism for how local dynamics in glasses may be coupled over long … More The acoustic dance of polymers near an interface