To request a media interview, please reach out to experts using the faculty directories for each of our six schools, or contact Jess Hunt-Ralston, College of Sciences communications director. A list of faculty experts is also available to journalists upon request.
Finding friends at Fossil Fridays
Last Friday, the Spatial Ecology and Paleontology Lab (SEPL), led by School of Biological Sciences Associate Professor Jenny McGuire, hosted its weekly Fossil Friday event. This hands-on outreach program invites participants to uncover ancient history, explore real fossils, and learn about the discoveries made by scientists beneath the approximately 80-foot drop of Natural Trap Cave in Wyoming.
The goal of Fossil Friday is straightforward: to build a community centered on science outreach and enable people to interact directly with fossils. The event is open to students, faculty, and Atlanta locals alike, offering a relaxed space to learn, discover, and have fun.
Technique
NASA goes on an ESCAPADE – twin small, low-cost orbiters will examine Mars’ atmosphere
Assistant Professor Christopher Carr co-authored an article published in The Conversation that discusses NASA's ESCAPADE mission to Mars. Carr characterizes the mission as a “testament to a new era in spaceflight”.
The Conversation
Kaolin tailings are Georgia’s hidden gateway to critical minerals in AI era
In the mid-1990s, a Department of Energy-funded project helped catalyze one of the most transformative breakthroughs in American energy history: the development of a horizontal drilling bit capable of withstanding the extreme conditions of shale formations.
Before this innovation, natural gas trapped in tight shale rock was considered too expensive and technically challenging to extract.
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
At 25, Wikipedia Now Faces Its Most Existential Threat—Generative A.I.
Jennifer Glass, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, was recently quoted in an article published in Scientific American that discusses the evolution of Wikipedia:
As Wikipedia’s use grew, some educators softened their stance, encouraging its use to find leads to sources that students could dig into directly. Others took a different approach, assigning students to edit Wikipedia entries—many through Wiki Education.
Jennifer Glass, a biogeochemist at Georgia Institute of Technology, is one of those professors; she has incorporated Wikipedia editing into her teaching since 2018. She wanted a student project that emphasized the concise and technical but understandable writing style that the site uses. And although she hadn’t done much editing for Wikipedia herself, she was impressed by the website’s breadth of content.
Each semester, her students write one article from scratch about a topic they research, from dolomitization to the tropopause. Glass says the project teaches them the value of institutional access to published literature and the skill of fact-checking their writing line by line.
Scientific American