@ 8:30 A.M.

Levi Wood, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Georgia Tech

"Novel Neuroinflammatory Signatures Responsible for Repetitive Mild Traumatic Brain Injury"

RESEARCH
Our research focuses on applying systems analysis approaches and engineering tools to identify novel clinical therapeutic targets for complex diseases. It is challenging to develop new treatments for these diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Traumatic Brain Injury (TBI), because they do not have a single genetic cause and they simultaneously present broad physiologic changes. By combining novel engineered in vitro platforms, mouse models, and multivariate computational systems analysis, we will be able to 1) capture a holistic systems-level understanding of complex diseases, and 2) isolate specific mechanisms driving disease. The ultimate goal of our laboratory is to use these tools to identify new mechanisms driving disease onset and progression that will translate to effective therapeutic strategies.

BACKGROUND
Levi Wood, Ph.D., joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in August, 2015. Prior to his current appointment, he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, Massachusetts General Hospital, and Harvard Medical School. There he used systems biology to elucidate novel signaling mechanisms in Alzheimer’s disease and intestinal inflammation. Dr. Wood received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where he developed and used a microfluidic platform to identify dominant mechanisms governing vascular geometry during early vascular growth.

@ 9:00 A.M.

Peter Yunker, Ph.D.
Assistant Professor
School of Physics
Georgia Tech

"A New Approach to Antibiotic Susceptibility Testing using Old Optical Techniques"

RESEARCH
We research the soft matter physics that underlies squishy materials and living creatures. These disparate systems are united by a focus on nonequilibrium systems. After all, We live in a nonequilibrium world. Everyday, the sun rises, increasing the local temperature, and then sets, decreasing the temperature. Vapor condenses overnight, only to evaporate during the day. Snow melts in the afternoon sun, only to freeze again under the moon. We too are nonequilibrium systems. We consume food, which is broken down to energy and subsequently used or stored. Despite their ubiquity, however, generation of an understanding of nonequilibrium systems represents a major challenge for physicists.

We are investigating the unique and potentially “universal” physics of densely-packed living matter such as bacterial biofilms and multicellular yeast clusters.