Dr. Chang is the director of the Comparative Neuromechanics Laboratory. His research program focuses on trying to understand how animals move through and interact with their environment.

Greg Gibson is Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Integrative Genomics at Georgia Tech. He received his BSc majoring in Genetics from the University of Sydney (Australia) and PhD in Developmental Genetics from the University of Basel. After transitioning to quantitative genetic research as a Helen Hay Whitney post-doctoral fellow at Stanford University, he initiated a program of genomic research as a David and Lucille Packard Foundation Fellow at the University of Michigan. He joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in Fall of 2009, after ten years at North Carolina State University where he developed tools for quantitative gene expression profiling and genetic dissection of development in the fruitfly Drosophila. He is now collaborating with the Center for Health Discovery and Well Being on integrative genomic analyses of the cohort. Dr Gibson is an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and serves as Section Editor for Natural Variation for PLoS Genetics. He has authored a prominent text-book, a "Primer of Genome Science" as well as a popular book about genetics and human health, "It Takes a Genome".

Julia Kubanek serves as Georgia Tech’s Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research and is a professor in the School of Biological Sciences and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. In this role, she oversees and supports interdisciplinary activities at Georgia Tech including the Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs); the Pediatric Technology Center (PTC), the Novelis Innovation Hub; the Center for Advanced Brain Imaging (CABI); and the Global Center for Medical Innovation (GCMI). She also partners across the institute on developing and advancing new research initiatives based on student and faculty interests, expertise, and societal need.

Kubanek has held several previous leadership roles at Georgia Tech, including Associate Dean for Research in the College of Sciences and Associate Chair in the School of Biological Sciences. She joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2001. Her areas of research interest include chemical signaling among organisms (especially in aquatic systems), natural products chemistry, metabolomics, chemical biology, and drug discovery. She has authored approximately 100 research articles on marine plankton and coral reef chemical ecology, and on the discovery, mechanism of action, and biosynthesis of marine natural products. She was awarded the NSF CAREER Award in 2002, the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2004, and was elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in 2012. In 2016, she served as chair of the Gordon Research Conference in Marine Natural Products; since 2016, she has chaired the Scientific Advisory Board of the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology. Kubanek received her B.Sc. in Chemistry from Queen’s University, Canada, in 1991 and her Ph.D. in at the University of British Columbia in 1998, and performed postdoctoral research at the University of California – San Diego and the University of North Carolina at Wilmington.

Dr. Nie received her B.S. degree in Biology from Peking University in China in 2002. In 2007, she received her Ph.D. in Cell Biology from the University of Alabama at Birmingham, where she worked on elucidating signaling pathways in vertebrate gastrulation movements. Thereafter, she conducted postdoctoral research in the laboratory of Marianne Bronner at California Institute of Technology. She joined Georgia Tech in Fall 2014.

Francesca Storici was born in Trieste, Italy. She graduated in Biology from the University of Trieste. Her Ph.D. in Molecular Genetics was conferred by the International School for Advanced Studies (SISSA), in Trieste in 1998, and she conducted research at the International Centre for Genetic Engineering and Biotechnology (ICGEB) in Trieste. From 1999 to 2007 she was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the Laboratory of Molecular Genetics under the guidance of Dr. Michael A. Resnick at the National Institute of Environmental and Health Sciences (NIEHS, NIH) in the Research Triangle Park of North Carolina, USA. In 2007 she was a Research Assistant Professor at the Gene Therapy Center of the University on North Carolina at Chapel Hill with Dr. R. Jude Samulski. Francesca joined the faculty of the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech in 2007 and received the title of Distinguished Cancer Scientist of the Georgia Research Alliance. She is currently a professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. Her research is on genome stability, DNA repair and gene targeting.

I am an environmental microbiologist interested in the dynamics of microbial systems.  My research is motivated by the beliefs that microbes are a frontier for natural history and scientific discovery, and that exploring this frontier is necessary and important for understanding biological diversity and its changing role in ecosystem processes. The first major research theme in my lab explores how aquatic microbes respond to environmental change, notably declines in ocean oxygen content.  The second major theme explores how life in symbiosis drives microbial evolution and ecology.  My research targets diverse systems, from the marine water column to the intestinal microbiomes of fishes.  This research aims to identify metabolic properties that underlie the ecology of microbes and microbe-host systems, the evolutionary context under which these functions arose, and the role of these functions in ecosystem-scale processes in a changing environment.  

I am an Associate Professor in the Department of Microbiology and Immunology at Montana State University and an Adjunct Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech.  I received a B.A. in Biology from Middlebury College and a Ph.D. in Organismic and Evolutionary Biology from Harvard University.  I worked as a Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT for two years before moving to Georgia Tech in January 2011.  In February 2020, I moved my lab to the mountains of Montana.  My work has been recognized through an NSF CAREER award, a Sloan Research Fellowship, and a Simons Foundation Early Career investigator award.  

Ryanodine receptors (RyRs) are intracellular ion channels that mediate the release of calcium from intracellular stores. RyR1 and RyR2 are the predominate isoforms in skeletal and cardiac muscle, respectively where they play a central role in excitation-contraction coupling. RyRs are the largest known ion channels and are regulated by a multitude of endogenous effectors including ions, small molecules, and accessory proteins. An area of interest is the regulation of these channels by endogenous effectors, especially as it relates to altered contractile function associated with cardiac ischemia, skeletal muscle fatigue and aging. 

Because of their central role in cellular calcium regulation, defects in RyR channels can lead to potentially fatal disorders. Mutations in RyR1 give rise to the pharmacogenetic skeletal muscle disorder, malignant hyperthermia (MH). RyR2 mutations have been identified in catecholaminergic polymorphic ventricular tachycardia. We are interested in determining the molecular mechanisms by which these mutations alter RyR channel function. 

We analyze channel function on multiples levels of organization. Sarcoplasmic reticulum vesicle [3H]ryanodine binding is used to examine large populations of channels. We incorporate channels into artificial lipid bilayers in order to record single channel currents and assess channel kinetics. Calcium release from permeabilized muscle fibers provides a method of examining RyR function in situ. My research has two long-range goals. The first is to understand how intracellular calcium is regulated and how alterations in the regulation effects cell function. The second goal is to understand the RyR regulatory sites that might be exploited for the development of pharmacological compounds to treat disorders of cellular calcium regulation.

Dr. Whiteley received his B.S. degree in Zoology in 1995 from the University of Texas at Austin and his Ph.D. in Microbiology from the University of Iowa in 2001. His doctoral research involved quorum sensing and biofilm formation in the bacterium Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Following a Postdoctoral Fellowship at Stanford University in 2002, Dr. Whiteley accepted a position as an assistant professor at the University of Oklahoma/Oklahoma Health Sciences Center. In 2006, Dr. Whiteley moved to the University of Texas at Austin where he was promoted to Professor of Molecular Biosciences and Director of the LaMontagne Center for Infectious Disease. In 2017, he accepted the Bennie H. & Nelson D. Abell Chair and Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Molecular and Cellular Biology at Georgia Institute of Technology. He also serves as Associate Director of the CF-Air Center at Emory Medical School. Dr. Whiteley has garnered numerous awards for his work including the Merck Irving S. Sigal Memorial Award for national research excellence, the Burroughs Wellcome Investigators in Pathogenesis of Infectious Disease award, recognition as a Kavli fellow of the National Academy of Sciences, the Dean’s teaching excellence award from UT-Austin, and election to the American Academy of Microbiology.