University of Georgia Research Foundation Inc

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-10

This project aims to serve the national interest by preparing undergraduate students for careers in advanced manufacturing through the integration of data science and digital twin practices. As the manufacturing industry becomes increasingly data-driven and intelligent, there is a growing need to ensure students not only gain technical expertise but also develop the awareness required to navigate complex real-world challenges involving privacy, security, and responsible innovation. This Level 1 Engaged Student Learning project addresses the importance of decision-making in smart manufacturing systems by creating hands-on, interdisciplinary learning experiences. The project seeks to enhance student competencies, increase workforce readiness, and foster a culture of responsibility among future engineers. The project goals include the development, implementation, and iterative improvement of a comprehensive eight-week summer research and training program hosted at the University of Georgia and the University at Buffalo. The program will engage students in applied learning through four key components: theoretical instruction, hands-on modules, professional development, and guided reflection. Students will explore issues across the digital manufacturing lifecycle, while participating in collaborative learning and research activities across both institutions. The project will use a mixed-methods assessment strategy, including pre-, mid-, and post-program evaluations, to measure student growth in reasoning and data science skills. Long-term impacts will be tracked through student career outcomes, with ongoing input from an industry advisory board. The NSF IUSE: EDU Program supports research and development projects to improve the effectiveness of STEM education for all students. Through the Engaged Student Learning track, the program supports the creation, exploration, and implementation of promising practices and tools. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Collective behavior can be observed in a variety of contexts, the blinking of fireflies, the schooling of fish, the marching of locusts, and the flocking of birds. Collective behavior can also be observed at other levels of biological organization, such as the synchronized behavior of cells in tissues. Single cells, for example, have a biological clock, but their synchronized timekeeping is usually only observed at the level of tens of millions of cells. A grand challenge is understanding how do cellular clocks in cells and tissues become synchronized in the whole organism to keep time. The focus here will be on understanding the synchronization of cellular clocks in a model fungal system, Neurospora crassa. There are two principal theories for how clock synchronization arises; (1) through a shared biochemical signal between cellular clocks; (2) through a physical theory in which the random switching on and off of clock genes within a cell plays an essential role in synchronizing cellular clocks. In testing these two scientific theories we will come to understand the origin of the biological clock. Understanding the molecular origin of biological clocks could have broad implications, including engineering the timed delivery of therapeutics for improving human health, developing strategies to control agricultural pests like marching locusts, and timing bacterial assemblages in the world's oceans to impact carbon cycling in marine ecosystems. In order to understand the synchronization of clocks between cells, we face several challenges, including (1) lack of understanding on how the clock functions in the predominant life stage of the organism, the filament in its network; (2) lack of understanding how filaments in a network synchronize their clocks; (3) lack of models describing how the clock tells time in filaments. To answer these questions we will first develop microfluidics platforms (similar to integrated circuits for fluids) to make high-throughput and high-precision measurements on oscillators in living N. crassa filaments. Single filament measurements on single clock RNAs in this platform will enable us to confirm whether or not individual filaments have clocks and synchronize by a shared signal in the media called a quorum sensing signal or by direct contact. We will better understand the microfluidic experiments with a physical model of the clock in growing filaments by measurements derived from the microfluidic devices. We have developed a novel NMR methodology called Continuous in vivo Metabolism-NMR or CIVM-NMR allowing real time measurement of metabolites in living cells to link metabolites in the cell with their binding proteins involved in cellular clock synchronization in the same spirit that the Nobel Laureates, Beadle and Tatum, were able to link genes with proteins in metabolism. An interdisciplinary team from genetics, engineering, physics and chemistry will tackle this challenge. We will develop novel microfluidics platforms to measure phase synchronization of biological clocks in living N. crassa filaments. We will develop and test novel clock models in filaments using novel ensemble methods from Statistical Physics. We will also identify and test signaling molecules and their associated proteins that may be responsible for filament synchronization by a newly developed method of CIVM-NMR and fractionating metabolites into libraries containing different synchronization signals for testing from Chemistry. We expect to achieve our objective by pursuing three tasks: (1) confirming whether or not individual filaments have clocks and synchronize by quorum sensing or by contact; (2) understanding the microfluidic experiments via a physical model of the clock in filaments specified by the measurements in task 1; (3) linking metabolites and associated proteins in the cell with clock signaling for cellular clock synchronization. Education and outreach activities open to everyone are designed around the research focus of this project, biological clocks and their synchronization. (1) An interdisciplinary research-centered course, Clock Collaboratorium, will be developed. (2) Undergraduate research projects will be developed with the central theme of the biological clock, and used in two NSF REU site programs. (3) We will help build a collective behavior community through a new Research Conference as done previously in a Gordon Research Conference. This project is supported by the Systems and Synthetic Biology cluster within the Division of Molecular and Cellular Biosciences. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

This I-Corps project examines on the commercial potential of a novel regenerative medicine platform designed to address peripheral neuropathy, a debilitating condition affecting millions of individuals in the United States and world-wide. The project centers on two core innovations: lab-grown human nerve cells and a new therapeutic compound. The human nerve cells serve as a critical research tool for scientists and pharmaceutical developers to study nerve function and test potential treatments. The therapeutic compound under development is designed to protect and repair damaged nerves, offering hope for peripheral neuropathy patients who have few disease-modifying treatment options. By enabling more precise research and offering a new clinical pathway, this project supports public health, scientific progress, and future economic benefits through potential drug development and reduced healthcare burden. This I-Corps project utilizes experiential learning coupled with a first-hand investigation of the industry ecosystem to assess the translation potential of the technology. This solution is based on the development of human pluripotent stem cell-derived peripheral neurons, including sensory, sympathetic, and parasympathetic subtypes, and a first-in-class small molecule designed to protect peripheral neurons, prevent neuronal degeneration and promote axon regeneration. The neurons offer biological fidelity for preclinical research, enabling disease modeling and high-throughput drug screening with human-relevant cells. The novel compound, validated in preclinical models, demonstrates neuroprotective and pro-regenerative effects that are not currently achievable with existing therapies. Together, these innovations form an integrated research and therapeutic platform that can accelerate both fundamental understanding and clinical intervention for peripheral neuropathy. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Adaptive learning systems provide personalized education experience to students based on their individual strengths and needs. However, traditional adaptive learning systems suffer from several challenges: (1) it is time-consuming to create custom assessment materials for different students, and (2) there is often not enough data to effectively train recommendation systems that guide learning. This project will address these challenges by leveraging recent advances in Generative AI to automatically generate high-quality learning content and recommendations, while ensuring educators remain central to the instructional process. Importantly, the system will include transparent and explainable AI tools that allow teachers to guide and tailor AI outputs to meet different learner needs. Designed for use in introductory physics courses, the system will be tested with approximately 5 instructors and 950 undergraduate students. By making the software open-source and accessible to instructors nationwide, the project will promote the progress of science and support broader educational access. The project will further advance AI literacy among educators and lay the foundation for human-centered AI systems in education. This project will develop and evaluate a scalable, explainable, teacher-in-the-loop adaptive learning system built on large language models (LLMs). It consists of three key modules: (1) Assessment Module – uses LLMs to assist instructors in generating aligned and explainable assessment tasks; (2) Recommendation Module – creates a cold-start recommendation system for personalizing learning pathways using a novel Sparse Autoencoder-based explanation technique to support instructor understanding and control; and (3) Conversation Module – facilitates real-time interaction with both students and teachers to support engagement and clarification. The system will be piloted in undergraduate introductory physics courses, where it will be co-designed with educators. Usability and feasibility will be evaluated using mixed methods, including user surveys and semi-structured interviews with both teachers and students. To assess impact, a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest control group design will be employed to compare instructional outcomes between treatment and control classes. Quantitative data on learning gains will be complemented by qualitative insights into system usability and instructor engagement. The findings will contribute to the fields of AI in education, human-centered computing, and scalable learning design, with long-term goals of cross-disciplinary adaptation and broader societal impact. This project is funded by the Research on Innovative Technologies for Enhanced Learning (RITEL) program that supports early-stage exploratory research in emerging technologies for teaching and learning. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

High-dimensional time series data arise in many fields such as economics, epidemiology, neuroscience, and social science, where large numbers of measurements are collected over time. These data often exhibit complex patterns, including shifts in behavior and extreme values that violate classical statistical assumptions. This project addresses fundamental challenges in analyzing such time series, especially when they are not stationary and prone to abrupt structural changes. The research in this project aims to develop new methods that are robust to extreme events and better suited to the realities of modern data. By improving the ability to detect and interpret changes in large, evolving systems, this project may be used to support scientific discovery across disciplines. It also provides training opportunities for graduate students, helping build a more data-literate workforce. The project advances the frontiers of science and supports the development of innovative statistical tools that can enhance decision-making in dynamic environments. The research conducted within the scope of this project develops a new tail-robust statistical framework for the analysis of high-dimensional nonstationary time series. The project focuses on two interrelated goals: (1) to construct robust estimators of autocovariance structures that remain accurate in the presence of outliers and large deviations, and (2) to develop efficient procedures to detect and quantify structural changes over time. The investigators plan to address methodological challenges associated with high dimensionality, nonstationarity, and heavy-tailed distributions by integrating techniques from robust statistics, random matrix theory, and change-point analysis. The methods are expected to accommodate piecewise stationary processes with unknown structure changes and offer valid inference in settings where the traditional approaches fail. This work aims to yield powerful data analytic tools for complex time-dependent data and to open new directions in time series modeling, particularly in settings where classical assumptions break down. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

This Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) award will support research that looks to develop a sustainable wood protection system using a naturally derived, environmentally friendly antimicrobial compound—epsilon-polylysine (EPL). The project seeks to address the urgent need for safer, more sustainable alternatives to conventional wood preservatives, such as copper-based treatments, which pose environmental and health risks due to their toxicity and leaching behavior. The proposed research contributes to national interests by working to advance green building materials that promote long-term carbon storage and reduce infrastructure maintenance costs. This work also aligns with the NSF mission by increasing the understanding of how EPL interacts with the wood system and enhancing national well-being through innovation in sustainable infrastructure. Additionally, the project integrates impactful educational initiatives that engage K–12, undergraduate, and graduate students, aiming to inspire the next generation of Wood Science and Engineering (WSE) professionals. By combining cutting-edge research with broad educational outreach, this CAREER project fosters scientific advancement and workforce development to support a more resilient and sustainable future. This project aims to develop a new wood preservative system, where a bio-based preservative (EPL biosynthesized by bacteria Streptomyces albulus) with broad biological activities but low environmental hazards will be valorized and used for wood treatment induced by Maillard reaction. The specific aims are to 1) determine key factors that affect the durability of EPL-treated wood induced by the Maillard reaction for exterior applications; 2) understand the long-term durability, mechanical and fire performance of EPL-treated wood through summer Build & Learn experience for real applications; 3) elucidate antimicrobial mechanisms of EPL-treated wood; 4) examine sustainability of EPL-treated wood via ecotoxicity tests, economic and environmental viability analysis; 5) integrate sustainable wooden infrastructure material protection research with experiential learning and near-peer mentoring to engage students, from local middle school and high school students to graduate students, and cultivate interest in the field of Wood Science and Engineering and beyond. This work will lay the foundation for a new class of green, bio-based wood protection technologies and contribute significantly to sustainable and resilient wooden infrastructure materials. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Viruses are the most abundant biological organisms on our planet. While all microbial populations are impacted by viral infections, little is known about the impact of viral infections on specific microbial populations. The consequences of virus–microbe interactions on biogeochemical cycles are also poorly understood. This project focuses on sulfate reduction, a key process that links the global elemental cycles of carbon and sulfur. The research aims to understand the relationships between viruses and sulfate reducing bacteria and how these interactions contribute to carbon cycling. This project also supports STEM workforce development through experiential learning activities at K-12, undergraduate, and graduate levels. The training activities highlight research on the Gulf coast and how the Gulf is a unique environment. In addition, the education activities emphasize the importance of sulfate reduction and other geochemical processes and showcase the importance of microorganisms in coastal ecosystems. The project aims to change the negative view of viruses as agents of diseases by highlighting the essential roles of viruses in ecosystem processes. The project uses a multidisciplinary approach to investigate the relationship between viral activity and sediment microbial metabolism, specifically sulfate reduction, through environmental observations, process-oriented biogeochemical incubations and modeling. This research provides novel insight into the interactions between viruses and microorganisms, and how they control early diagenetic processes by (i) determining the impact of viruses on sediment metabolism in general, (ii) quantifying the influence of viruses on microbial sulfate reduction rates, (ii) elucidating the interactions of sulfate reducing microorganisms and viruses. These results are being incorporated into a reactive transport model to describe viral dynamics and their interactions with the C, S, and Fe cycles. The model forms a framework to integrate the observational data and provides a tool for estimating the broader implications of the targeted virus-microorganism interactions quantified in the sulfate reduction zone. This project is jointly funded by the Biological Oceanography and Chemical Oceanography Programs. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

Accurate and timely channel state information (CSI) is essential for the performance of next-generation wireless systems, particularly those operating in high-frequency bands with large-scale antenna arrays. These systems, including future 6G networks, rely on spatially resolved CSI to support tasks such as beamforming, mobility management, and interference mitigation. However, acquiring reliable CSI in practical environments remains challenging due to high measurement cost, environmental complexity, and real-time constraints. This project develops a modeling framework that integrates limited radio measurements with spatial priors derived from environmental sensing. Specifically, the project investigates how geometric and visual information can be used to infer signal behavior in environments with constrained sensing capability. Rather than introducing a new channel abstraction, the project focuses on applying radiance-inspired modeling to characterize local electromagnetic behavior as a function of position and direction. The resulting models aim to support compact, data-efficient CSI reconstruction for structured scenarios such as indoor or urban deployments. Broader impacts include the integration of project outcomes into advanced wireless curriculum and engagement of students through interdisciplinary research. Project data, code, and validation tools will be open-sourced to support reproducibility and research dissemination. The proposed research explores a data fusion framework for reconstructing spatially varying signal behavior using sparse CSI measurements and environmental priors. The approach involves applying array signal processing techniques to derive location-specific channel measurements and aligning them with 3D environmental layouts obtained through vision-based reconstruction. The resulting signal model is localized and designed to approximate the directional energy distribution of wireless signals in space. The framework supports efficient channel prediction under constrained deployment settings and is applicable to emerging mmWave and sub-THz systems. The project also includes experimental validations across different frequency bands. Emphasis is placed on practical challenges such as limited sensor coverage, partial line-of-sight, and real-time inference under sparse signal measurements. The research outcomes are expected to inform the development of practical CSI estimation tools for deployment in complex high-frequency wireless environments. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

With limited resources available to tackle various challenging problems, policy makers and stakeholders often have to prioritize which problems to address in what locations or domains. In statistical terms, this involves the ranking of sub-populations and regions when limited (or no) directly observed data is available, and the available data can be on multiple aspects and of diverse types and modalities. The investigators will address the core theoretical, methodological and algorithmic challenges in such problems of ranking entities in multiple contexts of interest to the nation and to public life. The investigators will also develop techniques for measuring and quantifying the variability and uncertainty of such advanced, data-driven, principled ranking techniques to aid policymakers and stakeholders. For data to be analyzed using hierarchical models, subject to multiple sources of variability and dependencies, the investigators will develop reliable estimates of the ranks of entities with an appropriate quantification of associated uncertainty. The proposed methodologies will follow a Bayesian framework or a resampling-based frequentist one. While these techniques are primarily computation-driven, the investigators will address theoretical foundations of the proposed approaches both in the Bayesian and in the resampling-based frequentist paradigms. Using scalable computational techniques and leveraging geometric and topological properties of data, the investigators will also develop novel methods for ranking and identification of extremes when multivariate responses are of interest, and address benchmarking for compatibility over hierarchy of domains in a principled way. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

In this project, funded by the Chemical Mechanism, Function, and Properties Program of the Chemistry Division, Professor Vladimir Popik of the Department of Chemistry at the University of Georgia is developing a novel strategy for selective activation of bioactive compounds using Near Infrared (NIR) light or low level X-ray radiation. While a significant fraction of diseases is localized in some organ or tissue, the treatment is often systemic, causing undesirable off-target effects. Most obvious example of such complications is the toxic effects of anti-cancer drugs, but even treatment of arthritic inflammation with nonsteroidal anti-inflammatory drugs (NSAIDs) increases the chances of a heart attack or stomach ulcer. The use of tissue-penetrating X-ray or NIR for drug activation may allow for the selective treatment of localized malignancies, while sparing the rest of the organism from harmful side effects. This project studies the fundamental feasibility of such an approach and its potential impact in photochemistry. The project provides students with an interdisciplinary training at the interface of synthetic and physical organic chemistry, as well as photochemistry, biochemistry, and nano-technology. High school students conducting summer internships in the Professor Popik's laboratory via the University of Georgia Young Dawgs Program will be exposed to modern scientific research. While photomedicine offers high spatiotemporal selectivity in the treatment of various malignancies, the majority of the photo-activation strategies require UV-Vis irradiation. The high absorbance and the strong scattering of light below 650 nm in mammalian tissues limit the utility of current photomedicine mostly to subcutaneous and ophthalmic applications. The main goal of this project is the exploration of the feasibility of the induction of photochemical reactions in UV-Vis opaque mediums employing X-ray and NIR radiation. Since the X-ray absorption cross-section of organic molecules is very small, Professor Popik plans to explore the use of X-ray scintillating nanoparticles as localized light sources and gold nanoparticles as emitters of high energy electrons. The NIR light within the so-called photo-therapeutic window (650 - 950 nm) penetrates deep into the tissues, but carries insufficient energy to achieve photo-activation. Upconverting nanoparticles that emit UV-Vis light upon NIR excitation may circumvent this problem. Alternatively, the enhancement of two-photon cross-section in nanocrystalline states due to quantum chain reactions will be explored. Nanocrystals of photoactivated drugs have additional advantages as drug delivery vehicles: they contain more active material per weight than other nano-carriers, as no inert core or membrane is required. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-09

This project investigates how ‘simple’ single-cell protozoa express organizational complexity rivaling that seen in higher organisms. Protozoa are rarely in the public mind, except as potential pathogens. What’s overlooked is that protozoa have all the functions of larger organisms, but confined to a single cell. The ciliate Tetrahymena exhibits particular virtuosity by organizing surface structures into exquisitely complex geometries. Animals have mastered the art of organizing their tissues along two major axes, one defining anterior/posterior (heads vs tails), the other defining dorsal/ventral (back vs front). In contrast, ciliates have expanded their organizational geometry beyond this to develop circumferential patterning as well, so that their tiny cilia (used for swimming) are symmetrically arranged in a circular pattern around the cell, while more complex organelles are distributed at precise, and unique cellular longitudes. This project investigates how genes shared with humans are deployed by ciliates to achieve this 360-degree circumferential pattern. As such, it opens an entirely new cellular landscape for scientific exploration. This easily-grown organism also provides an attractive model for training undergraduates, as both labs continue to produce next-generation scientists via both summer research, and undergraduate laboratory courses involving advanced microscopy. Ciliates provide a novel paradigm for studying intracellular pattern in living cells. Animals organize cell and tissue types primarily along two dimensions, the anterior-posterior and dorsal-ventral axes, with modest differentiation between left and right. Individual animal cells are typically polarized in one dimension, along the apical-basal axis. One must look to some of the ‘simplest’ life forms (the ciliated protozoa) to discover mechanisms that go beyond two-dimensional cell planning, and manifest patterning in a 3rd dimension, that of circumferential patterning. Recent work by the two PIs has identified a suite of genes encoding Polo kinases and PKA homologs, that localize to hundreds of basal bodies populating the ciliate cell cortex. These kinases decorate basal bodies in discrete cortical domains, and may play a role in licensing specific meridians along which organelles assemble (e.g. the oral apparatus and contractile vacuole pores). The PIs hypothesize that ciliate pattern is driven by phosphorylation cascades radiating from basal bodies that serve as cortical signalosomes. In this model, cortical phosphorylation domains interact, to repress or reinforce one another across the cell surface licensing regions of the cortex to initiate construction of organelle assembly platforms. This study offers access to a genuinely novel intracellular patterning landscape. This investigation will utilize targeted gene knockouts, GFP-tagging, and morphological manipulation to interrogate cortical pattern mechanisms in the ciliate Tetrahymena thermophila. Localization and co-localization of gene products in wild-type and mutant cells as well as within cells undergoing pattern reorganization following cortical disruption will be explored with the aim of understanding how various kinases control organelle assembly along specific cortical meridians. This project is funded by the Cellular Dynamics and Function program of the Molecular and Cellular Biosciences Division in the Biological Sciences Directorate. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-08

Recent molecular line observations of the young AB Aurigae star system have revealed intriguing velocity structures that may offer direct evidence for a long-hypothesized mode of planet formation known as gravitational instability, where planets form rapidly through direct gravitational collapse. In addition, optical, infrared, and millimeter images show a planet-sized clump at roughly twice the scale of the Solar System, roughly 90 astronomical units (AU, the average distance between the Earth and the Sun), surrounded by a ring of pebbles at ~150 AU and marked by striking spiral arms in the surrounding disk. This team of researchers will generate computer simulations that integrate multiple physical processes, including gas and dust dynamics, heating and cooling from starlight, and the system’s own gravity. They will train a graduate student and will also communicate with the public through regular astronomy columns and podcasts. The column reaches a readership of 30,000, and is contributed to by faculty and students, aiming to become a sustained effort by the New Mexico State University Department of Astronomy to promote public science literacy. A science outreach program and observatory tour for the public will be regularly scheduled at the University of Georgia. The team will determine whether the AB Aurigae system can be modeled self-consistently via gravitational instability in a protoplanetary disk. The team will employ dusty smoothed-particle hydrodynamics (SPH) using the Phantom code, with 25 million particles incorporating pebbles, self-gravity, and on-the-fly radiative transfer. The simulations aim to reproduce three major features seen in the observations: the spiral arms, the extended clump-like protoplanet, and the outer pebble ring. While spiral arms and clumps are relatively common outcomes of gravitational instability, the origin of the ring is more challenging. The working hypothesis is that the pebble ring forms near the boundary where the disk transitions between gravitationally unstable and stable states—specifically at ~150 AU. This transition is expected to result in a change in turbulent viscosity and create conditions ripe for the Rossby wave instability, a shear-driven instability analogous to the Kelvin-Helmholtz instability, which can trap dust and create ring-like structures. Post-processing will be carried out using the radiative transfer code RADMC-3D to produce synthetic images comparable to those observed by CHARIS in scattered light and ALMA in the midplane. The results will provide a stringent test of whether gravitational instability can account for the complex morphology of AB Aurigae, potentially validating or refuting a major planet formation mechanism. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-08

There is an urgent agricultural need for novel approaches to combat the billions of dollars lost annually to the devastating root-knot nematode, a soilborne roundworm and global threat to food and fiber crop production. Sedentary adult nematode females, which require intensive nourishment for several weeks during the production of hundreds of eggs, feed from plant root cells transformed into giant-cells. Nematode feeding and survival rely on a unique nematode-derived structure called the feeding tube. While the feeding tube has been described at the ultrastructural level, its composition and mechanism of assembly remains an enigma. This project will resolve the mystery of how the root-knot nematode feeding tube is assembled and determine its composition using a combination of immunohistochemistry, structural biology, protein interaction, and gene silencing. The overall goal is to identify the nematode proteins involved in feeding tube formation and translate this knowledge to develop novel root-knot nematode resistance in crop plants. The project will partner with the State Botanical Garden of Georgia for public service and outreach, targeting K-5 students. Through a series of field trips and summer camp activities promoting hands-on activities and interactions with graduate and undergraduate students, the project will bring awareness to the hidden enemies lurking below ground that impact our food supply. This project will support undergraduate and graduate student training. The composition of nematode feeding tubes and the underlying mechanism of their assembly is currently unknown and presents a truly transformative opportunity for a deeper understanding of root-knot nematode parasitism. The basis of this proposal is several novel root-knot nematode proteins that are linked to feeding tube formation. These proteins are produced in the secretory gland cell and actively secreted by feeding adult females. The underlying hypothesis is that once adult root-knot nematode females have established giant-cells, they secrete one or more proteins through their stylet, which self-assemble into a feeding tube essential for efficient nutrient uptake. The project will test this hypothesis by localizing the secreted proteins to the feeding tube, elucidate the 3D structure/s of feeding tube protein(s), test for potential protein interactions to understand the molecular mechanism of feeding tube assembly, and silence encoding genes to disrupt their formation and assess impacts on parasitism. A molecular and biochemical understanding of the mechanism of feeding tube formation will enable the development of innovative, broad-spectrum biotechnology for combating this destructive agricultural pathogen. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-08

This project will relocate and install a high-resolution Agilent 6560 Ion Mobility Quadrupole Time-of-Flight Mass Spectrometer (IM-QTOF) at the University of Georgia (UGA). As a powerful platform for characterizing complex chemical mixtures, the IM-QTOF will significantly expand UGA’s capacity to investigate environmental systems and contaminants in water, soil, and air. Studies using this analytically precise instrument will contribute to improved public health, environmental protection, and regional scientific infrastructure. The project also fosters educational and societal impact by providing hands-on research training to undergraduate and graduate students and supporting the environmental monitoring efforts of local communities. The Agilent 6560 IM-QTOF combines ion mobility separation with high-resolution time-of-flight mass spectrometry, enabling the detection and structural characterization of isomeric and trace-level compounds in complex environmental matrices. It will operate in the UGA Department of Geology to analyze samples from a range of geochemical and biological systems, including freshwater, ocean water, sediments, deep subsurface samples, and hydrothermal fluids. These analyses will improve understanding of contaminant fate, transformation pathways, and biogeochemical cycling. The IM-QTOF will also support interdisciplinary applications across environmental science, geomicrobiology, and environmental forensics, establishing UGA as a regional center for advanced, multidimensional chemical analysis. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-08

This project will develop tools and solution alternatives for coastal communities impacted by compounding flood hazards from multiple simultaneous sources (e.g., abundant rainfall, high tides, storm surges). Historically, scientists and engineers have focused on flood mitigation solutions for individual flood causes rather than combined scenarios from multiple simultaneous flood sources. This team will partner with local organizations to use advanced computer models and affordable flood sensors to improve flood modeling for coastal communities. This project will produce guidelines for incorporating local perspectives into designing flood-mitigating infrastructure, identifying flood zones, and developing evacuation maps and better early warning systems for vulnerable residents for a test case in San Juan, Puerto Rico. The project will assess hydrologic and coastal flood drivers individually and combined from events in coastal communities. The research team will develop efficient, inclusive methodologies capable of holistically integrating flood assessment techniques. This approach will accurately assess coastal floods utilizing local knowledge to develop better, more resilient flood mitigation solutions for compound flood events. Physics-based numerical modeling techniques will be used to develop a single modeling framework capable of assessing compound floods to better understand compound flood dynamics. Multiple techniques, such as flood sensor courses, participatory mapping exercises, and semi-structured interviews, will engage the community and allow the integration of local knowledge into flood modeling frameworks and aid in the design process of flood-mitigating infrastructure. The project will provide several direct, immediate solutions to the community, such as resilient infrastructure plans, a pilot impact-based forecast, and a web dashboard for flood sensor monitoring. Long-term goals include stationary flood risk maps and an improvement in the local rainfall forecasts. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-08

The award supports research in algebraic geometry, a central branch of mathematics which aims to understand, both practically and conceptually, solutions of systems of polynomial equations in many variables. The particular focus of this project is on the study of families of algebraic varieties and the way these varieties deform and break up. Such studies found important applications in other fields of mathematics, such as number theory and topology, as well as in string theory in physics. Graduate students will be involved in and supported by this project. The PI will work on several projects concerning geometry and enumerative geometry of KSBA spaces, a generalization of Deligne-Mumford's moduli spaces of curves to higher dimensions. This includes a detailed study of the KSBA moduli spaces of anticanonical surfaces; KSBA compactifications of moduli of Calabi-Yau hyperplane arrangements; KSBA compactifications of moduli of certain 3-dimensional Calabi-Yau varieties; KSBA compactifications of moduli spaces of K3 surfaces with an automorphism; and the study of the kappa classes (generalized MMM classes) on various KSBA moduli spaces. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-08

This doctoral dissertation research project investigates the impacts of cross-border trade and exchange on diplomatic relations and on land and wildlife management. Investigators specifically examine the role that management of vertebrate wildlife has on cross-border trade and border management. Research findings have translational impact on border security and workforce development in diplomacy and land administration. Research findings will contribute to the understanding of diplomatic and trade relations. In addition to training a graduate student, research findings will be disseminated to inform the development of land management and/or cross-border trade and diplomatic strength. Expansion of our understanding of the role that land and wildlife administration play in the governance of trade and diplomacy will contribute to NSF’s priorities of fueling economic prosperity, national security, and global competitiveness. It will also contribute to the science of national security, and secure borders. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-07

This grant will support workshops, a research school and a conference on Trisections and their Generalizations, to be held at the Centre International de Recontres Mathematiques (CIRM) in Marseille, France, during the weeks July 7-11, October 6-10, Oct 13-17 and November 17-21, 2025. CIRM is a well-known international mathematics conference center, and the Principal Investigator of this grant, Professor David T. Gay of the University of Georgia, has been selected as CIRM's "Jean Morlet Chair" for the period July-December 2025 for the purpose of organizing a semester's worth of international activities at CIRM related to his research program in topology. This grant will support the travel and accommodation expenses of US-based mathematicians to participate in some of these events. The research topic, in topology, concerns new methods to study the intrinsic large-scale shapes of a wide range of spaces called manifolds: Manifolds are spaces which at the small scale, look just like the ordinary space around us, perhaps with more dimensions, but which can be tangled up with themselves in strange ways on the large scale. Interesting manifolds arise, for example, when thinking about all the possible configurations of a mechanical system, such as a robot or a human limb, when thinking about all the possible states of a large language model under training in an artificial intelligence system, or when understanding how a protein folds. Trisections, and generalizations of these, give universal ways to decompose manifolds into a small number of simple pieces (often that number is 3) that are easy to understand, so that understanding the large-scale topology reduces to understanding the rules for how these small number of simple pieces can fit together to make a single closed manifold. Besides increasing our understanding of fundamental mathematical objects underlying many scientific applications, a key broader impact of this grant will be to provide opportunities for early career US-based mathematicians from a broad range of institutions to interact with the international scientific community, establish new collaborations and engage in a rapidly developing research field. Compared to many fields within mathematics, the subject matter of this semester of activities presents a relatively low bar for entry and a fairly quick access for the beginner to rich, deep and challenging mathematics, and also presents many opportunities for engagement with the broader public through interesting visualization and illustration activities. Since Gay’s initial work on trisections of smooth 4–manifolds in 2013, there has been an explosion of activity in the field leading to at least 92 published papers on trisections and related topics listed on MathSciNet. Fundamental questions have been answered and extensive generalizations have been developed, connecting the field to many other important areas in topology. Two distinct relative versions of trisections have been developed, trisections of 4–manifolds with boundary, relative to open book decompositions, and trisections of 4–manifolds with embedded surfaces. Connections with algebraic geometry and symplectic geometry have been developed as well as connections with piecewise linear topology and higher-dimensional topology. In work with Abrams and Kirby, Gay used trisections of 4–manifolds to define group trisections and thus show that the study of smooth 4–manifolds could in principal be completely reduced to group theoretic questions. This is just the tip of the iceberg, and the time is right for an international meeting to survey progress in the field, hear about the latest results, and develop a collective plan for future steps. This is the purpose of the main conference in October, which will be preceded by a week-long Research School to help early career researchers get up to speed. The two workshops, one in July and one in November, will bring together smaller groups of researchers for more focused exploration and collaborative research work on some specific topics related to higher-dimensional generalizations and symplectic geometry. The webpage for the semester of events is https://www.chairejeanmorlet.com/2025-gay-moussard-2nd-semester.html This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-07

This project will advance our understanding of soil processes that control the amount of carbon stored in soil. Understanding the controls on soil carbon storage and loss are critical for managing our natural environment for plant productivity, for improving our water quality, and for mitigating the effects of anthropogenic climate change. This project involves a series of experiments that will describe how fire and erosion impact the storage of carbon in soil, how it is chemically transformed over time, and how it may impact water quality. The results of this work will inform land managers in both urban and forested areas make management decisions to improve productivity, increase carbon storage, and improve water quality. The educational component of this project will make collected data publicly available for educators in teaching modules that can be freely used to teach about soil, water quality, and the natural environment. The aim of this research project is to determine the relative importance of burn severity, soil type, erosion, and time since fire as drivers of dissolved organic matter (DOM) and pyrogenic carbon (PyC) quality and quantity in soils and outflow water. This work will be achieved by (1) collecting intact soil cores from plots with differing burn severities and conducting simulated leaching experiments to quantify throughflow of PyC and DOM, (2) establishing sediment fences to describe the role of burn severity on sediment and the related DOM quality from water extracted sediments to demonstrate the importance of sediment as a source of PyC into DOM, and (3) establish a tree vault study with applied PyC (as biochar) with two soil types (sandy and clay; typical of Georgia, USA) to describe the rate and quality of throughflow of applied PyC over longer time scales. Coupling these field and laboratory studies on different temporal and experimental scales will reveal the relative importance of different controls on the formation and transport of DOM and dissolved PyC, a significant and not well understood component of the global soil carbon cycle. This project is supported by the Life and Environments through Time (LET) program, and the Water, Landscape, and Critical Zone Processes (WaLCZ) program. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-07

This project will upgrade an aging X-ray diffractometer at the University of Georgia (UGA). X-ray diffraction (XRD) is a key method used to identify minerals, especially in materials that are too small to see with the naked eye. The UGA Department of Geology has operated an XRD facility for many years. The departments of Chemistry, Pharmacy, Food Sciences, Marine Sciences, Engineering, and others also use this resource. The facility assists the local community by identifying minerals and solving industrial problems. These uses align with the goal of the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support science, health, and well-being. The upgrade will enhance the Bruker D8 diffractometer, which was first purchased in 2010 with funds from NSF. This instrument has contributed to over 100 research papers, two books, and has helped in the training and education of more than 500 students. The upgrade will allow the XRD facility to continue supporting research and student training. Several projects will use the upgraded diffractometer, covering Critical Minerals, Energy Generation, Environmental Stewardship, Resource Storage, and Geohealth. Some examples of these projects include: 1) Curation of the Allard Economic Geology Collection – a collection of minerals that’s part of one of the largest natural history collections in the U.S. 2) Critical Zone Science studies – which look at erosion caused by human activities and how microbes affect soil, from the treetops to the bedrock. 3) Research on PFAS (Forever Chemicals) – studying how these chemicals behave underground and interact with soil minerals. 4) Critical Minerals studies – focusing on materials essential for energy technologies that might be in danger of supply shortages. XRD is crucial for identifying these minerals, especially in the Southeastern U.S., where some clay mine wastes contain rare earth elements. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-07

Because software is increasingly prevalent in day-to-day life, it is extremely important to ensure its quality. Among the various techniques used to assess and improve the quality of software, testing is by far the most used. Unfortunately, writing tests is a tedious and time-consuming task that is often performed manually and mostly from scratch for every new application developed. In fact, whereas it is common practice to reuse code in modern software engineering, test reuse has been mostly neglected. Testing could greatly benefit from the fact that many software applications share functionality, and test cases for many of these applications are readily available, although in need of adaptation to be transferred to different test scenarios. To tap into this potential, this project is advancing software testing by enabling test transfer: automated reuse of User Interface (UI) tests across systems that share at least part of their functionality. While the initial focus of the project is on mobile and web applications, its ultimate goal is to develop a modular framework that can be extended to support additional types of software. This project promises to advance automated testing on multiple fronts. First, by employing various analysis techniques to identify conceptually similar UI elements across apps, test transfer is intended to enable the reuse of test inputs that are otherwise difficult to produce automatically. Second, by migrating tests written for similar features, test transfer is intended to produce tests that target meaningful use cases. Third, test transfer is intended to produce tests with sophisticated oracles, that is, checks of test outcomes, distinguishing it from most prior automated testing techniques that only focus on crashes. The techniques, tools, and datasets developed within the project are being made openly available to the public to benefit the community. The project findings are also being integrated into the on-campus and online curricula of the participating institutions. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-07

This project investigates how the rapid evolution of an agricultural pest makes it more difficult to control using natural means. People think of evolution occurring in geological time, with eras like the Dinosaur Age populated with different organisms from what we have on Earth today. Most studies of evolution, however, look at changes that occur in days or years in organisms that are all around us today. Scientists are realizing that rapid evolution is common and affects all organisms. For example, many agricultural pests in the USA are controlled by predators that attack and kill them, making insecticides unnecessary. Pea aphids represent a great example of this, because they are kept in check by predators. However, pea aphids can evolve resistance to predators. This rapid evolution raises the risk of greater crop damage. Despite their ability to evolve resistance, all the pea aphids do not become resistance to predators. There are also some that remain susceptible, creating a balance between resistance and susceptibility. This project aims to uncover how this balance is maintained, and how agricultural management practices can reduce the risks of agricultural pests becoming resistant. Understanding this balance will help to develop strategies to make US agriculture more resilient and increase the security and sustainability of our bioeconomy. The project will also provide hands-on research experiences to students with no prior experience. Public outreach events will engage farmers to share the results of the research broadly. The research investigates the ecological-evolutionary dynamics of pea aphids and their parasitoid wasp, Aphidius ervi. Aphidius ervi was deliberately introduced to North America as a biocontrol agent of pea aphids, particularly to control pea aphids as pests of alfalfa crops. Pea aphids are a leading model for investigating the evolutionary and ecological consequences of symbiosis because all populations harbor heritable symbionts that provide well-documented benefits. The most common and best studied facultative symbiont, Hamiltonella defensa, confers resistance against A. ervi. Although evolutionary theory predicts that resistance traits will often be bimodal (either susceptible or highly resistant), pea aphids exhibit a full spectrum of resistance through different symbiont variants. Although the prevalences of different symbiont variants fluctuate (reflecting the intensity of parasitism and selection), the collective of symbionts across the spectrum of resistance appears to be stable. Furthermore, the ecological interactions between pea aphids and A. ervi are stable, in the sense that A. ervi is always present but abundances never get high enough to extirpate pea aphids. This ecological stability of A. ervi-pea aphid interactions may itself be the product of the evolutionary stability of the symbionts that confer pea aphid resistance to A. ervi. The research will use field experiments, lab experiments and mathematical modeling to examine both the evolutionary and ecological stability of A. ervi-pea aphid interactions, and whether this stability is generated by the interconnections between evolutionary and ecological dynamics. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-07

The Georgia Coastal Ecosystems (GCE) Long Term Ecological Research (LTER) program, which was established in 2000 to understand estuaries (places where salt water from the ocean mixes with fresh water from the land) and their adjacent coastal wetlands (i.e., marshes and tidal forests) and how they respond to long-term change. The GCE LTER researchers evaluate how environmental conditions (e.g., sea level, temperature, storms and hurricanes) and human activities (e.g., land use) affect the properties of estuaries (e.g., salinity, flooding patterns), and how that in turn affects wetlands and their ability to provide food and refuge for fish, shellfish and birds, to protect the shoreline from storms, to help to keep the water clean, and to store carbon, all of which have significant implications for the US economy. Many of the changes that are occurring are affecting not just average conditions, but also their fluctuations and extremes (e.g., variability). For example, not only has the average high tide level increased over the past decade, but the number of extreme flooding events has also increased, both of which have the potential to lead to wetland loss through drowning. During this award, the research team will conduct studies to systematically evaluate 1) whether we can improve our predictions of ecological responses by considering variability in environmental conditions, and 2) the use of variability as an early indicator of underlying environmental stress. The findings from this research will be important for predicting the long-term survival of coastal wetlands in a time of global change. In addition to research, the GCE program works with teachers and students, coastal managers, citizen scientists, and the general public to enhance scientific literacy and improve our understanding of coastal ecosystems. The GCE LTER is based at the University of Georgia Marine Institute on Sapelo Island, Georgia, and has a robust program of long-term field observations, experiments, remote sensing, and modeling designed to understand wetland ecosystem functioning. GCE LTER researchers will build on this foundation with an overlay of new efforts focused on variability. Objective (Obj) 1 is to characterize spatial and temporal patterns in mean and variability of drivers and responses by measuring external drivers (e.g., sea level), marsh and estuarine conditions, and the wetland biophysical template, and to integrate these dynamics via modeling. Obj 2 is to evaluate linkages between external drivers and ecological responses, and determine whether assessing the variability of abiotic drivers improves predictions of those responses. This will be done by analyzing long-term data, conducting field campaigns in areas with different variability in salinity and inundation, and conducting complementary mechanistic experiments to quantify the effects of driver variability (e.g., salinity). Obj. 3 is to assess disturbances and their effects on patterns of variability in ecological responses by tracking the effects of natural disturbances in the field along with ongoing experimental manipulations. Obj. 4 is to evaluate how ecological properties change across abiotic gradients, and determine whether variability increases near habitat transitions. This will be done using remote sensing, sampling across gradients of salinity and inundation, and establishing long-term monitoring sites in forested areas to track upland marsh migration. Obj. 5 is to determine the mechanisms by which coastal wetlands respond to changing drivers and assess whether variability informs this understanding. This will be done in three ways: by conducting statistical analyses relating key ecosystem variables (e.g., net ecosystem exchange, plant biomass) to drivers (salinity, inundation, temperature); by using remote sensing to investigate spatial and temporal patterns in the mean and variability of marsh productivity and their relationship to variability in climate drivers; and by synthesizing results to describe net daytime production and C stocks and predict how they might change in response to future conditions. The GCE education and outreach program will provide K-12 teachers with research experience that can be shared in the classroom, along with school visits. It will offer research opportunities through undergraduate internships, and run web-based courses for graduate students. The program will initiate a citizen science effort to delineate high tide flooding events, and will partner with the Georgia Coastal Research Council to exchange information with coastal managers. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-06

Students often learn better when instructors draw diagrams by hand during STEM lessons, particularly in video-based instruction. This finding has potentially far-reaching implications for STEM teaching, particularly given the ubiquity of instructional visuals in STEM and the increasing use of video tutorials and online instruction. However, it is not known why observing the instructor draw is effective in instructional contexts. Previous research suggests that watching the instructor draw helps guide students' attention. Another possibility is that watching an instructor draw engages brain systems involved in motor processing, which offers an additional opportunity for representation and processing. Yet prior research has been unable to disentangle these factors from behavior alone. This project combines approaches from educational psychology and cognitive neuroscience to determine why watching instructor drawing helps students learn and how much instructor drawing is most effective. The findings will contribute significantly to the literature and serve as a foundation to guide educators to develop and deliver more effective STEM lessons, especially in online and video-based settings. This project will use a series of experiments to systematically test two main explanations for the benefits of instructor drawing in STEM education: attentional guidance and action observation. The first study will test the effects of observing the instructor draw against a series of control conditions that allow for the isolation of the role of (a) directing attention, (b) gradually sequencing information, (c) observing drawing movements, and (d) the visibility of the instructor's hand. A second study will test different levels of instructor drawing, such as drawing only key structural connections or drawing arrows to represent key processes, to determine the basic conditions necessary for achieving the maximum learning benefits. A final study will use functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to test how observing instructor drawing differentially modulates connectivity within the dorsal attention and action observation networks in the brain and how these patterns of network connectivity correspond to learning outcomes. Together, the results of these studies will contribute to the literature by clarifying the mechanisms underlying action-based instruction and lay the groundwork for future classroom applications and neurocognitive research. This project is supported by NSF's EDU Core Research (ECR) program. The ECR program emphasizes fundamental STEM education research that generates foundational knowledge in the field. Investments are made in critical areas that are essential, broad and enduring: STEM learning and STEM learning environments, broadening participation in STEM, and STEM workforce development. This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.

NSF Awards · FY 2025 · 2025-05

This NSF award supports the octennial Georgia International Topology Conference, to be held at the University of Georgia from May 19 to May 30, 2025. This event is the ninth in a series of conferences, held every eight years since 1961 at the University of Georgia, and will focus on recent developments in geometric topology. Topological spaces are everywhere in mathematics and in fact everywhere in real life. From ordinary 3-dimensional space and the 4-dimensional space-time of relativity to spaces of configurations of complex organic molecules and sets of solutions to systems of many equations, the basic problems of topology are ubiquitous. Geometric topology, in particular, focuses on problems in which a strong visual component of reasoning and problem solving comes into play and is generally the most accessible part of topology for a broad audience. At the same time it is the realm of topology in which some of the hardest outstanding problems remain unsolved. Recent developments to be highlighted at this conference include, for example, the remarkable results of Watanabe, which show that the set of all symmetries of the simplest 4-dimensional object, the 4-dimensional ball, is drastically more complicated than had been suspected eight years ago. This conference focuses on the most significant advancements in geometric topology and related geometry since the last Georgia International Topology Conference in 2017. The topics will highlight exciting new developments including advances in knot theory, four-manifolds, topology of diffeomorphism and embedding spaces, homotopy theory, contact and symplectic topology and geometry, equivariant Floer homology, Floer homotopy theory, geometric group theory, hyperbolic manifolds and dynamical systems. The conference has historically generated tremendous interest among graduate students and recent PhD’s. The speakers at various career stages and the range of topics to be presented will offer students and new PhD’s a valuable taste of what the mathematical research community has to offer. The results of the conference will also be made available to a wider audience through a conference proceedings. The conference website is at: https://topology.franklinresearch.uga.edu/2025GITC This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.