• A Mind Over Matter: The Life and Science of Philip W. Anderson 

  Zangwill, Andrew (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-10-12)

  Dr. Zangwill presents a biographical survey of the life and science of Nobel Laureate Philip W. Anderson, arguably the most productive and influential theoretical physicist of the second half of the twentieth century. He ...

• Recipe for a Habitable Planet 

  Shields, Aomawa L. (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-09-21)

  The discovery of numerous small exoplanets has brought the search for life beyond the Solar System into sharp focus on many potentially habitable worlds where life may exist. However, many factors and processes can affect ...

• Sloppy models, differential geometry, and why science works 

  Sethna, James P. (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-09-28)

  Models of systems biology, climate change, ecology, complex instruments, and macroeconomics have parameters that are hard or impossible to measure directly. If we fit these unknown parameters, fiddling with them until they ...

• Comparative study of snake lateral undulation kinematics in model heterogeneous terrain dataset 

  Schiebel, Perrin E.; Hubbard, Alex M.; Goldman, Daniel I. (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-09-24)

  Terrestrial organisms that use traveling waves to locomote must leverage heterogeneities to overcome drag on the elongate body. While previous studies illuminated how habitat generalist snakes self-deform to use rigid ...

• Stacking atomic layers: quest for new materials and physics 

  Kim, Philip (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-09-14)

  Modern electronics heavily rely on the technology to confine electrons in the interface layers of semiconductors. In recent years, scientists discovered that various atomically thin van der Waals (vdW) layered materials ...

• Universal bound states of two- and three-body quantum systems 

  Driscoll, Kevin Joseph (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-07-27)

  When there is a low-energy resonance between two particles, the typical separation of physical length scales no longer holds, and quantum systems can form states that are much larger on average than the characteristic size ...

• Two-dimensional phases of silicon on silicon carbide 

  Wu, Hsin-Ju (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-07-14)

  2D materials have been widely studied since single layer graphene, a 2D atomic honeycomb structure with unusual electronic properties, was obtained. Graphene grown on SiC by thermal decomposition is of interest because of ...

• Mechanics of Fire Ant Aggregations: An Experimental Study of Active Matter 

  Tennenbaum, Michael Jacob (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-07-17)

  Mechanics of Fire Ant Aggregations: An Experimental Study of Active Matter Michael J. Tennenbaum 148 Pages Directed by Dr. Alberto Fernandez-Nieves Fire ant aggregations are inherently active materials. Each ant converts ...

• Spatial Interactions and Eco-Evolutionary Games 

  Lin, Yu-Hui

  Organisms compete for limited resources to reproduce. Reproduction depends on behaviors that are modified by abiotic and biotic factors, including the behavior of other organisms. This thesis adopts and extends evolutionary ...

• Revisiting and Repurposing the Double Helix 

  Ha, Taekjip (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-08-31)

  DNA is an iconic molecule that forms a double helical structure, providing the basis for genetic inheritance, and its physical properties have been studied for decades. In this talk, I will present evidence that sequence ...

• Emergent behavior in complicated systems: Tinnitus, smarticles, and metronomes 

  Jackson, Zachary Lawrence (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-04-22)

  Patterns of behavior can arise in many body systems that are qualitatively different than that of the individual elements. In this dissertation, we explore emergent behaviors through three different projects. The first is ...

• Leakage mitigation and correction techniques for topological surface codes 

  Brown, Natalie C. (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-03-16)

  A large scale quantum computer would be able to solve many problems that remain intractable for modern classical computers. In order to build such a machine, the quantum system must be protected from environmental influences ...

• Edge state characterization of epitaxial graphene nanoribbons and modifications of the electrical structure of buffer graphene after aluminum oxide deposition 

  Miettinen, Anna L. (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020-02-11)

  Graphene attracted a great deal of public interest because of its novel electrical characteristics, structural integrity, high electron mobility, and most important for my work, it was shown to be a room temperature ballistic ...

• Transforming the preparation of physics graduate teaching assistants 

  Alicea-Munoz, Emily (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-12-02)

  Graduate Teaching Assistants (GTAs) are key partners in the education of undergraduate students. In large-enrollment intro physics classes, students spend roughly half of their in-class hours in labs and recitations under ...

• Molecular transport into the outer membrane of gram-negative bacteria 

  Lundquist, Karl Philip (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-01-15)

  This thesis details novel insights gleaned from the application of molecular dynamics (MD) simulations to two protein systems, the $\beta$-barrel assembly machinery (BAM), and the lipopolysaccharide transport machinery ...

• Pushing the cell envelope: Simulations at the gram-negative cellular interface 

  Balusek, Curtis A. (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-01-15)

  Computational simulations of bacterial membrane systems were performed in silico using molecular dynamics to describe the function and interaction of integral, membrane-spanning proteins with their native environment. This ...

• Limbless locomotion in complex terrestrial terrain 

  Schiebel, Perrin Elizabeth (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-01-15)

  Limbless locomotion is used by animals ranging from micro to macroscopic to move in a wide variety of terrains. Snakes in particular use their elongate bodies to swim in water, climb trees, burrow into sand and soil, crawl ...

• Understanding protein folding and assembly at the outer membrane of pathogenic gram-negative bacteria 

  Hazel, Anthony (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-05-21)

  Antimicrobial resistance in pathogenic Gram-negative bacteria is quickly becoming a global pandemic, responsible for approximately two million illnesses and almost 23,000 deaths annually in the United States alone according ...

• Properties of two-dimensional materials grown on metal substrates 

  Pan, Chi-Ruei (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-03-29)

  Supercell models are proposed to investigate the properties of three types of heterostructures formed by two-dimensional (2D) materials grown on metal substrates, including (1) silicon (Si) thin films on a silver (Ag) ...

• Coherent structures in incompressible fluid flows 

  Short, Kimberly Yovel (Georgia Institute of Technology, 2019-11-08)

  The work is broadly related to the transition to turbulence in pipe at intermediate Reynolds numbers and includes a discussion of two classes of structures observed during the transition to turbulence: numerically-extracted ...

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