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. 

ZME Science

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.

GPB

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

11Alive News

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.

Chemistry World

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.

The Kavli Foundation Newsroom