Georgia Institute of Technology

February 1, 2013 — Tim Lieuwen, executive director of the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute, has been appointed to the National Petroleum Council (NPC) by the secretary of the U.S. Department of Energy. Lieuwen, who is also a professor of aerospace engineering at Georgia Tech, will serve on the council of about 20 people that advises the secretary on matters relating to oil and natural gas.

January 28, 2013 — In what is believed to be the first study of its kind, researchers used genomic techniques to document the presence of significant numbers of living microorganisms – principally bacteria – in the middle and upper troposphere, that section of the atmosphere approximately four to six miles above the Earth’s surface.

January 16, 2013 — Farrokh Ayazi, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is among the 298 individuals worldwide named as a 2013 IEEE Fellow.

January 9, 2013 — Researchers recently created a biophysical model of the response of a Gram-positive bacterium to the formation of a hole in its cell wall, then used experimental measurements to validate the theory, which predicted that a hole in the bacteria cell wall larger than 15 to 24 nanometers in diameter would cause the cell to lyse, or burst.