People

Gabi Steinbach is the coordinator of the Fellowship Program. She received her PhD in Soft Matter Physics from Chemnitz University of Technology, Germany, in 2016 and completed a postdoctoral research program in biophysics at Georgia Tech, School of Physics, as a fellow of Leopoldina German National Academy of Sciences. She is currently the project coordinator in Prof. Weitz’s group at GT where she coordinates interdisciplinary collaborations, mentors trainees, and creates training opportunities. In 2022, she became a Provost Fellow for Faculty Development at Georgia Tech.

Email: gabi.steinbach @ biosci.gatech DOT edu

Joshua S. Weitz serves as faculty lead in the Fellowship Program. He is the Tom and Marie Patton Chair and Professor of Biological Sciences and the Founding Director of the Quantitative Biosciences Graduate Program at the GT. He received his PhD in Physics from MIT in 2003, was an NSF Postdoctoral Fellow in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology at Princeton University from 2003-6, and has been leading a quantitative biosciences team at GT since 2007. Weitz is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, a Fellow of the American Academy of Microbiology, a Simons Foundation Investigator in Ocean Processes and Ecology, and currently holds the Blaise Pascal Chair at the Institut de Biologie at the École Normale Supérieure.

Email:  jsweitz @ gatech DOT edu

Clio Andris is an associate professor holding a joint appointment at the College of Design and College of Computing (School of City and Regional Planning and the School of Interactive Computing) at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on mathematical models of social networks, social flows, and interpersonal relationships in geographic space, applied to issues of urban planning, visualization, transportation and geography. She is a member of the Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization (CSPAV) and the School of Interactive Computing’s Information Visualization Lab. She received her PhD from MIT in 2011 in Urban Information Systems where she was an NDSEG fellow and member of the Senseable City Lab. She held postdoctoral positions at the Singapore-MIT Alliance for Research and Technology (SMART) at the Santa Fe Institute.

Email: clio @ gatech DOT edu

Annalisa Bracco is a Professor in Ocean and Climate Dynamics in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences, at Georgia Tech. Her group’s research revolves around climate modes of variability, multiscale dynamics of geophysical flows and their interactions with biological and chemical tracers. Prof. Bracco received her PhD in Geophysics and Oceanography from the University of Genoa, Italy, in 2000, and was a postdoctoral scholar at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, Woods Hole, MA, followed by a position as Junior UNESCO Tenure Track Scientist at the same institute. She is a member of the PACE Advisory Committee at GT and a member of the CESM and NEMO models advisory boards, and co-chaired CLIVAR, the Climate Variability core project of the World Climate Research Programme, from 2015 to 2020. She co-founded the OSE Program at GT.

Email: abracco @ gatech DOT edu

Greg Gibson is the Tom and Marie Patton Chair and Professors of Biological Sciences, College of Sciences, at the Georgia Institute of Technology, as well as an elected Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. His major research interests are in genetic and environmental interactions, genomic approaches in ecology and evolution, and genetics in public policy. He received his PhD in 1989 from the University of Basel, was a Helen Hay Whitney Fellow at Stanford University, then a David and Lucille Packard Fellow from 1997-2002. He has led the integrative genomics initiatives at GT since 2009.

Email: greg.gibson @ biology.gatech DOT edu

Katherine (Katy) Graham is a President’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on the fate, transport, and control of waterborne pathogens in natural and engineered environments. Current projects include the utilization of sewage for infectious disease surveillance and use of metagenomic tools for microbial source tracking in the environment. She received her PhD in Environmental Science and Engineering from Stanford University in 2021 and will start as an assistant professor in CEE at Georgia Tech in 2023.

Email: kgraham61 @ gatech DOT edu

Aaron Levine is Associate Professor of Public Policy and Associate Dean for Research and Outreach in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on the intersection of public policy, bioethics and biology. He earned a Mphil in Biological Sciences at the University of Cambridge in 2002 and a PhD in Public Affairs in the Program in Science, Technology and Environmental Policy at Princeton University in 2007. He is an elected member of the Board of Directors of the American Society for Bioethics and Humanities and the Vice-Chair for Bioethics on the International Society for Cell Therapy’s Presidential Task Force on Unproven Cell Therapies. He is also a long-time member of the International Society for Stem Cell Research, the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management, and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Email: aaron.levine @ pubpolicy.gatech DOT edu

Michael Biehler received his B.S. and M.S in Industrial and Mechanical Engineering from Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT)  in 2017 and 2020, respectively. Currently, he is a Ph.D. candidate in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology. His research rests at the interface between machine learning and cyber-physical (manufacturing) systems, where he aims to develop methods for system monitoring, control, 3D machine learning and cyber security.

Stephanie Bilodeau is a Biology Ph.D. candidate working with Dr. Mark Hay on aquatic chemical ecology and behavior. Her current research focuses on freshwater plants in the southeastern U.S. and the ways they detect and respond to herbivory. Stephanie is also part of the Mo’orea Coral Reef LTER program and has worked on coral reefs and adjacent marine habitats in French Polynesia and in Belize. She completed her M.S. in Biology from Wake Forest University in 2019.

Victor Brandao is a second-year Ph.D. student in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. He works in the Sievers Lab researching the electrochemical conversion of atmospheric carbon dioxide to value-added products like fuels. Victor was born and raised in Rio, Brazil, where he earned his B.S. in Chemical Engineering from the Military Institute of Engineering in 2020 while also working as a chemistry teacher to high-school students. At GT he is the current vice-president of the Association of Chemical Engineering Graduate Students and one of the group leaders of GT6000.

Sonja Brankovic is a Ph.D. candidate in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Her thesis research focuses on the high-temperature performance of structural alloys and refractories for use in next-generation clear energy systems, including concentrating solar power (CSP) and molten salt reactors (MSRs). She currently works in Dr. Preet Singh’s Corrosion and Materials Chemistry Research Laboratory (CMCRL) and is a teaching assistant in the ME department. Prior to joining the doctoral program at GT, Sonja obtained her MSE at Penn and her BSME at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Sonja lives with her husband and rescue beagle Bud in Brookhaven.

Nidhi Desai is a second-year Ph.D. student in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences, at Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on gas-phase atmospheric chemistry and she uses instrumentation to collect and analyze measurements to help inform air quality models. Her upcoming field campaign includes observing in-situ formaldehyde as a tracer for VOC emissions and chemical processing in the atmosphere. Nidhi received her Bachelor’s degree in Atmospheric Science from Cornell University in May 2021.

Emtiaz Hossain Hritan is a third-year Ph.D. student at the School of Economics at Georgia Tech where his major field of studies are environmental economics and development economics. His research interests focus on natural experiments, air pollutions and its impacts on different socio-economic variables and development indicators like health, education, production, growth etc. He received his M.A. in Economics from the University of South Florida in 2019. He has been a member of American Economic Association since 2018.  

Adam Krueger is a third-year Ph.D. student in the School of Physics, College of Sciences, at Georgia Tech. His advisor is Dr. Peter Yunker and he is a member of the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection (CMDI) and the Atlanta Physics of Living Systems Student Research Network node. His research focuses on the detection and study of heteroresistance using interferometry. Adam received his B.S. in Physics with a minor in Mathematical Sciences in 2020 from Michigan Technological University in Houghton, MI.

Alessandra Luna is a second-year Ph.D. student in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Emory University and Georgia Tech. She received her B.S. in Mechanical Engineering with a concentration in medical device design from MIT in 2021. Currently, Luna is an NSF Graduate Research Fellow in the Sensors for Living Systems Laboratory. Her investigations focus on the development of implantable sensors for hydrocephalus patients to improve existing diagnostic technology. Luna is also a President’s Fellow and Goizueta Fellow.

Aaron Pfennig is a third-year PhD student in the Lachance Lab, School of Biological Sciences, at Georgia Tech. His major research interests are in theoretical and empirical population genetics of admixed populations. His current research focuses on understanding the implications of the interbreeding between modern humans and archaic hominins and inferring African population history. He received his Master’s in Bioinformatics from Georgia Tech in 2020. As an IHE-LeaD fellow he hopes to gain more insights into how translational projects are planned, carried out, and led.

Jelly Vanderwoude is a fifth-year Biological Sciences Ph.D. Candidate studying antimicrobial resistance and microbial genomic heterogeneity in Dr. Steve Diggle’s lab within the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection. She is also a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellow and is actively involved on campus as a Graduate Teaching Fellow within the Center for Teaching and Learning, as well as a Leadership Education and Development Fellow serving as a Facilitator for Teams for Tech. She also served as a Liaison Officer for the 2021 joint Symposium on Infectious Disease Dynamics, co-hosted by the Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

Elise Li Zheng is currently a Ph.D. candidate at the School of History and Sociology, Georgia Tech. Her research focuses on the social impact of personal technology on both the practices and perceptions of health and fitness. She is currently researching on her dissertation on self-tracking and wearables, exploring societal links between data, design, individual’s life-worlds, and wider socioeconomic context. Li Zheng received undergraduate degrees at Peking University in sociology and political science, and later finished her master’s at London School of Economics. Before pursuing her Ph.D., she worked in science communication, writing about technology and society for various media outlets in China. She receives AAAS EurekAlert! fellowship of International Reporters, and Kranzberg fellowship for technology studies at Georgia Tech.

Sammy Callahan has been with the Weitz group since January 2023 and has working on science communication projects including website development and research advertisement. Sammy assists the IHE-LeaD program with seminar and symposum scheduling and advertisement. She is expected to graduate in May 2023 with a BSc in Biology and a minor in Global Development and then pursue a MPH in International Health and Sustainable Development at Tulane SPHTM.

Email: scallahan30 @ gatech DOT edu