Streelman grew up in Chestertown Md, where he developed a keen interest in the outdoors. He graduated with a BS in Biology from Bucknell University. While there, he attended a semester (plus one cold winter-mester) at the Marine Biological Laboratory in Woods Hole Massachusetts — where a chance encounter with Les Kaufman, Karel Liem, a few jars of pickled fish and a dental X-ray technician led to his lifelong love of cichlids. Streelman won the Pangburn Scholar-Athlete award (lacrosse) at BU. As a PhD student with Stephen Karl, Streelman developed approaches to identify, clone and sequence multiple, independent single-copy nuclear loci to reconstruct accurate phylogenies for cichlid fishes and their relatives. These phylogenies changed perspective about how these species groups evolved, and allowed new and improved inference about the evolutionary history of key ecological traits. Multi-locus phylogenies are now the standard in the field. 

As a postdoc in Tom Kocher’s lab and then a young investigator at Georgia Tech, Streelman worked on the first unbiased quantitative genetic (QTL) studies in Malawi cichlids, some of the first such studies in evolutionary systems. In particular, work showed that adaptive features of the cichlid jaw and the striking orange-blotch color polymorphism had a simple genetic basis.  

Streelman was an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow, an Alfred P. Sloan Foundation Faculty Research Fellow and a NSF CAREER Awardee.  

Over the past two decades as an independent investigator, with support from the NSF, NIH and the Human Frontier Science Program, Streelman’s group has pioneered genomic and molecular biology approaches in the Malawi cichlid system to solve problems difficult to address in traditional model organisms. Major projects include (i) tooth and taste bud patterning and regeneration; (ii) the underpinnings of complex behavior; and (iii) developmental diversification of the face and brain.  

Generally, we are captivated by context-dependent traits like development and behavior because they must be executed in space and time with exquisite control. We analyze and manipulate genomes and development in multiple species of Malawi cichlids, spanning divergence in embryonic/adult traits and behavior – and collaborate with folks studying these same traits in zebrafish, mouse and human. In 2014, Streelman helped to coordinate a large effort to sequence the genomes of five East African cichlids, including one from Lake Malawi. This was a landmark for our research community and has recast attention to genome-wide approaches. We are motivated by the prospect to dissect evolutionary change with genetic and cellular precision.  

In his free time, Streelman likes mountaineering, skipping rocks and pickling.

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".

Facundo was born in Buenos Aires, Argentina. He received his MSc in Chemistry from the College of Exact and Natural Sciences, Buenos Aires University in 1995 and his PhD in Analytical Chemistry from the same University, in 1999.  In August 2000, he joined the research group of Prof. Richard N. Zare in the Department of Chemistry at Stanford University.  His work focused on several aspects of Hadamard transform time-of-flight mass spectrometry with an emphasis on coupling this technique to capillary-format separation methods.  In 2002, he joined the group of Prof. Vicki Wysocki in the Department of Chemistry at the University of Arizona, to develop novel tandem mass spectrometers for gas-phase peptide ion studies. In 2004 he joined the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he currently holds the position of Vasser-Woolley Endowed Professor in Bioanalytical Chemistry and Associate Chair for Research and Graduate Training. He is the author of over 185 peer-reviewed publications and numerous invited presentations at national and international conferences. He has received several awards, including the NSF CAREER award, the CETL/BP Teaching award, the Ron A. Hites best paper award from the American Society for Mass Spectrometry, and the Beynon award from Rapid Communications in Mass Spectrometry, among others. He serves on the editorial board of The Analyst and as an Associate editor for the Journal of the American Society for Mass Spectrometry. His current research interests include the field of metabolomics and the development of new ionization, imaging, machine learning and ion mobility spectrometry tools for probing composition and structure in complex molecular mixtures. In his (limited) free time, Facundo enjoys a number of activities that include camping with his family, rock climbing, paddling, archery, photography and ham radio. 

Nicholas Hud was born and raised in Los Angeles, California. He received his B.S. degree in physics from Loyola Marymount University. His Ph.D. was conferred by the University of California, Davis for physical investigations of DNA condensation by protamine. From 1992-1995 he was a postdoctoral fellow in the biology and biotechnology research program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory with Rod Balhorn. From 1995-1998 he was an NIH postdoctoral fellow in the Molecular Biology Institute at UCLA where he worked with Juli Feigon and Frank A. L. Anet on the application of NMR spectroscopy to the study of DNA-cation interactions. Hud joined the faculty at Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 1999 and was promoted to full professor in 2008. He has been visiting professor of chemistry at the National NMR Center in Slovenia, and at Imperial College London. Hud currently serves as PI of the NSF Center for Chemical Evolution, as chair of the biochemistry division of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, as co-director of the Georgia Tech-Emory University Center for Fundamental and Applied Molecular Evolution (FAME), and as associate director of the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.

The Shoichiro's lab primary research interest is the mechanisms that regulate dynamic rearrangement of the actin cytoskeleton during various cellular events including development, cell movement, cytokinesis, and human diseases. We have been studying this problem using the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans as a model system. C. elegans has been used to study many aspects of development, because of its relative simplicity in the body patterning, and application of genetics, molecular biology, biochemistry, and cell biology. We are especially interested in the functions of the actin depolymerizing factor (ADF)/cofilin family of actin-binding proteins, which are required for enhancement of actin filament dynamics. We found that two ADF/cofilin proteins that are generated from the unc-60 gene have different actin-regulating activities. Mutation and expression analyses demonstrated that one of the two ADF/cofilin isoforms (UNC-60B) was specifically required for organized assembly of actin filaments in muscle. ADF/cofilin promotes depolymerization and severing of actin filaments, but tropomyosin inhibits this effect by stabilizing filaments. The other ADF/cofilin isoform (UNC-60A) is highly expressed in early embryos and regulates cytokinesis and embryonic patterning. In addition, we found that actin-interacting protein 1 (AIP1) is a new regulator of muscle actin filaments. AIP1 (UNC-78) specifically interacts with ADF/cofilin-bound actin filaments and enhances filament depolymerization. We also found that the gene product of sup-12 (an RBM24 homolog) regulates alternative splicing of the unc-60 gene and is required for generation of the unc-60B mRNA. We are currently studying functions of these proteins and other regulators of actin dynamics in several developmental aspects in C. elegans.

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.  

My lab is focused on understanding how proteins and other biological systems function at a molecular level. To probe these systems, we carry out molecular dynamics simulations, modeling biological behavior one atom at a time. The simulations serve as a "computational microscope" that permits glimpses into a cell's inner workings through the application of advanced software and high-powered supercomputers. We are particularly interested in how bacteria utilize unique pathways to synthesize proteins and insert them into both the inner and outer membranes, how they import nutrients across two membranes, and how their cell walls provide shape and mechanical strength.

• Loren Williams is from Seattle. He received his B.Sc. in Chemistry from the University of Washington, where he worked in the laboratory of Martin Gouterman. He received his Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry from Duke University, where he worked the laboratory of Barbara Shaw. He was an American Cancer Society Postdoctoral Fellow at Harvard, and an NIH Postdoctoral Fellow at MIT with Alexander Rich. He is currently a Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech. Loren is a Fellow of the AAAS and of the International Society for the Study of the Origins of Life. He was previously Director of the NASA Astrobiology Institute funded RiboEvo Center and is currently Director of the NASA-funded Center for the Origins of Life (COOL). Loren is currently a Co-Lead of the Prebiotic Chemistry and Early Earth Environment Consortium (PCE3 a NASA Research Coordination Network). Loren has received the following awards: 
• 1995 NSF Career Award 
• 1996 Sigma Xi Best Paper from Georgia Tech 
• 2012 Georgia Tech Student Advisement Award 
• 2012 Petit Institute Above and Beyond Award 
• 2013 Georgia Tech Faculty Award for Academic Outreach 
• 2013 Georgia Tech College of Science Faculty Mentor Award 
• 2017 Access Alley Award from Georgia Tech Disability Services for advocating for handicapped students 
• 2019 Vasser Woolley Award for Excellence in Instruction 
• 2020-21 Georgia Tech Outstanding Achievement in Research Program Development 
• 2021 Fellow of the International Society for Study of the Origin of Life 
• 2021 Petit Institute Above and Beyond Award 
• 2022 College of Sciences, Faculty Mentor Award 
• 2023 Fellow of the AAAS

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.