Aditi Das did her BSc. (Hons.) Chemistry from St. Stephen's College Delhi, followed by M.S. (Chemistry) from I.I.T (Kanpur). She received her Ph.D. in Chemistry from Princeton University. She did post-doctoral work with Prof. Steve Sligar. She joined University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) as a tenure track assistant professor in 2012. In 2019, she was promoted to associate professor with tenure. In 2022, she joined School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Institute of Technology as an associate professor with tenure. Her research is in the area of enzymology of oxygenases that are involved lipid metabolism and cannabinoid metabolism.

Das is recipient of an American Heart Associate (AHA) career award and has been funded by National Institute of Health (NIH - NIGMS, NIDA and NCCIH), USDA, and National Multiple Sclerosis Society (NMSS). Her research was recognized by several National awards: Young Investigator award From Eicosanoid Research Foundation, Mary Swartz Rose Young Investigator Award and E.L.R. Stokstad award from American Society for Nutrition (ASN) for outstanding research on bioactive compounds for human health. She is also the recipient of Zoetis Research Excellence Award from her college. She was a co-organizer of the International Conference on Cytochrome P450. Recently her laboratory contributed several papers on cannabinoid metabolism by p450s. In recognition of this work, she was awarded El Sohly award from the ACS-Cannabis division for excellence in Cannabis research and is invited to give plenary lecture at ISSX meeting.  Das is also a standing study section member of BBM NIH study section. 

Thomas DiChristina, Ph.D., received a BS in Chemical Engineering from the University of Rochester (NY) in 1982, a MS in Chemistry from the University of Bordeaux (France) in 1984, a Ph.D. in Environmental Engineering Science from the California Institute of Technology (CA) in 1989, and a Postdoctoral Fellowship from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (MA) in 1993. DiChristina has been at Professor of Microbiology in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech for 29 years. 

Melissa Lambeth Kemp received her B.S. in Nuclear Engineering from MIT and her Ph.D. in Bioengineering from University of Washington. Dr. Kemp joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2006 after completing postdoctoral training at MIT. Her expertise is in computational modeling of metabolism and signal transduction, as well as developing statistical modeling tools to examine network relationships in high-dimension datasets. One major aspect of her research program linking ROS – the byproducts of aerobic metabolism – to the fundamental way that cells interpret instructions from their environment, their neighbors, and their own genetic blueprint. Specific applications of her diverse work include systems modeling of transient phosphatase oxidation of kinase cascades, patient-specific differences in cytotoxicity to redox-cycled chemotherapeutics and radiation, and the coordination of oxidative metabolism with epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition. Her research program also includes a component of developing high-throughput screening methods for assaying cue-signal-response relationships in cells and analytical tools for single cell gene expression. 

Dr. Kemp currently serves as the Research Director of the multi-site NSF Engineering Research Center “Cell Manufacturing Technologies”. In her former role as Associate Director of the NSF Science and Technology Center “Emergent Behavior of Integrated Cellular Systems”, she spearheaded the multi-site center’s computational activities by developing agent-based models of context-dependent cellular decisions to generate new hypotheses of intercellular communication in pluripotent stem cell differentiation and emergent patterning; this work continues currently in quantifying organizational principles and spatial relationships in iPSC-derived tissues from multi-omics data. Dr. Kemp’s career honors include a Whitaker Graduate Fellowship, Merck/CSBi postdoctoral fellowship, Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar, NIH New Innovator Award, and the CSB2 Prize for Innovative Measurement Methods from the Council for Systems Biology in Boston.

Arijit Raychowdhury is currently an Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he joined in January, 2013. He received his Ph.D. degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Purdue University (2007) and his B.E. in Electrical and Telecommunication Engineering from Jadavpur University, India (2001). His industry experience includes five years as a Staff Scientist in the Circuits Research Lab, Intel Corporation, and a year as an Analog Circuit Designer with Texas Instruments Inc. His research interests include low power digital and mixed-signal circuit design, design of power converters, sensors and exploring interactions of circuits with device technologies. Raychowdhury holds more than 25 U.S. and international patents and has published over 80 articles in journals and refereed conferences. He serves on the Technical Program Committees of DAC, ICCAD, VLSI Conference, and ISQED and has been a guest associate-editor for JETC. He has also taught many short courses and invited tutorials at multiple conferences, workshops and universities. He is the winner of the Intel Labs Technical Contribution Award, 2011; Dimitris N. Chorafas Award for outstanding doctoral research, 2007; the Best Thesis Award, College of Engineering, Purdue University, 2007; Best Paper Awards at the International Symposium on Low Power Electronic Design (ISLPED) 2012, 2006; IEEE Nanotechnology Conference, 2003; SRC Technical Excellence Award, 2005; Intel Foundation Fellowship, 2006; NASA INAC Fellowship, 2004; M.P. Birla Smarak Kosh (SOUTH POINT) Award for Higher Studies, 2002; and the Meissner Fellowship 2002. Raychowdhury is a Senior Member of the IEEE

Research in the Peroni laboratory focuses on the use of regenerative therapies ranging from cellular to blood derived products to treat musculoskeletal injuries, with a concentration on minimally invasive surgery such as laparoscopy, thoracoscopy and arthroscopy.

Current research project: The surgery, performed in May, is the second successful feline kidney transplant using feline adult stem cells performed at the hospital. “To the best of our knowledge, UGA is the only veterinary facility in the world to use adult stem cells in feline kidney transplantation,” said Dr. Chad Schmiedt, a board-certified small animal surgeon who heads UGA’s feline kidney transplant program.

The service laboratory is managed by research professionals Merrilee Thoresen and Jenny Mumaw, who is enrolled in the college’s doctor of veterinary medicine program and will graduate in 2016. The service is headed by Dr. John Peroni, a board-certified large animal surgeon and associate professor whose research focus includes stem cell therapeutics. Read More

My research interests center on control of movement by sensorimotor integration in the mammalian spinal cord. Using predominantly electrophysiological methods applied in vivo, we study neural signaling by spinal motoneurons, somatosensory neurons, and their central synapses. Our primary analyses include electrical properties, synaptic function, and firing behavior of single neurons. We are actively examining how these neurons and synapses respond soon and long after peripheral nerve injury and regeneration. Our recent findings demonstrate that successful regeneration of damaged sensory axons does not prevent complex reorganization of their synaptic connections made within the spinal cord. In separate studies, we are examining novel mechanisms of sensory encoding and their impairment which recently discovered in rodents treated with anti-cancer drugs. Both nerve regeneration and chemotherapy projects are driven by the long-term goal of accurately identifying the neural mechanisms behind movement disorders. We also continue to explore fundamental operations of the normal adult nervous system. Our most recent studies focus on synaptic modulation of motoneuron firing and on interspecies comparisons of spinal circuits.

Yury O. Chernoff is a professor in the School of Biology and Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and Editor-in-Chief of the scientific journal Prion. He received his undergraduate and graduate training and Ph.D. degree in biology from St. Petersburg (then Leningrad) State University (Russia) and performed postdoctoral research at Okayama University (Japan) and University of Illinois at Chicago. 

Major topics of Dr. Chernoff’s research include yeast models for the protein aggregation disorders with an emphasis on the cellular control of protein aggregation and prion propagation, sequence-specificity of amyloid formation, and evolution of prion properties. 

Dr. Chernoff’s work provided the first experimental evidence for the chaperone role in prion phenomena.

Throughout my career, my laboratory has studied sphingolipids, a category of lipids that are important in cell structure, signal transduction and cell-cell communication. For more information about what we found, please refer to the Google Scholar or PubMed links below. 

As an Emeritus Professor, I am working on a project that has interested me for a long time--the fact that the active agent in the venom of the brown recluse spider is a sphingomyelinase D that produces a novel product, ceramide 1,3-cyclic phosphate. This activity has also been found in other spiders, bacteria and fungi. With the help of collaborators, I hope to learn more about the organisms that produce and degrade this novel sphingolipid, and possibly find ways to reduce the injury caused by the enzyme when humans encounter it in the environment.

Dr. Lewis A. Wheaton received his Ph.D. in Neuroscience and Cognitive Sciences from the University of Maryland, College Park in 2005. He was a fellow at the National Institutes of Health (Medical Neurology Branch, 2001-2005) studying neural function and recovery of motor control after stroke. In mid-2005 he was awarded a post-doctoral fellowship at the Baltimore Veterans Affairs Medical Center (Maryland) where he performed neuroscience research in aging and stroke motor control in Veterans.

In 2008, Dr. Wheaton joined the School of Applied Physiology at Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor. He became tenured in 2014 and is currently an Associate Professor in Biological Sciences. Dr. Wheaton is the Director of the Cognitive Motor Control Laboratory at Georgia Tech, engaged in over $1 million in state and federal research funding focused on understanding aspects of human motor control rehabilitation in aging, stroke and amputation. His lab has employed numerous high school, undergraduate, graduate, and post-doctoral fellows. He is the course director for 4 courses in the School of Biological Sciences (Human Neuroimaging, Movement Disorders, Human Neuroanatomy, and the History of Neuroscience). He has Chaired/Co-Chaired 3 international conferences focused on motor control research and clinical outcomes, obtaining funding by federal and private sources. His research has yielded several manuscript publications in the field of motor control neuroscience, several focused expert reviews, and numerous conference presentations both in the US and abroad.

Dr. Wheaton is also an adjunct Associate Professor in the Department of Rehabilitation at Emory School of Medicine and a Member of the Children’s Center for Neurosciences Research at the Emory Children’s Pediatric Research Center.

Dr. Wheaton earned a BS (Biology) degree at Radford University (VA). He is an active parent volunteer at his children's schools and in the local community.

During his graduate work at UC, Berkeley, Simon sought to uncover general principles of animal locomotion that reveal control strategies underlying the remarkable stability and maneuverability of movement in nature. His work has demonstrated the importance animals’ natural dynamics for maintaining stability in the absence of neural feedback. His research emphasizes the importance of placing neural control in the appropriate dynamical context using mathematical and physical models. He has collaborated with researchers at four other institutions to transfer these principles to the design of the next generation of bio-inspired legged robots. 

Simon received his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at UC, Berkeley and has been a Hertz Fellow since 2002. His work has led to fellowships and awards from the National Science Foundation, the University of California, the Woods Hole Marine Biological Institute, the American Physical Society, the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology, and the International Association of Physics Students. He is also currently affiliated the new Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-Inspiration in Education and Research (CIBER) at Berkeley.