'Jeopardy!' contestant and Emory psychologist Monica Thieu, shown with host Ken Jennings, during the 2024 "Jeopardy!" Invitational Tournament.

A farmer is part of Emory psychologist Gregory Berns' new identity. Above he combs "Ricky Bobby," a miniature Zebu bull.

Like many people during the COVID-19 pandemic, Gregory Berns, Emory professor of psychology, took a long hard look at his life and his work and decided to make some major changes. He moved with his family to a farm about an hour south of Atlanta, where he tends to three dogs, four chickens and a small herd of seven cattle.

He also wrote a book, "The Self Delusion: The New Neuroscience of How We Invent — and Reinvent — Our Identities," published by Basic Books. 

"I've always wanted to write about some of the research I did many years ago about how reading fiction changes the brain," Berns says. "The book became more about how narratives make us into who we are."

Read more here about the book and how it reflects the changing trajectory of Berns' own life. 

Related:

How family stories help children weather hard times

A novel look at how stories may change the brain

"I never imagined that I'd be co-teaching with a comedian," says Emory biologist Micaela Martinez, "but it's awesome working with David." Photo by Kay Hinton.

A scientist and a comedian walk into a classroom. They start a discussion about how art can influence social justice. 

You’ll have to wait for the punchlines. Emory first-year students will create them as part of a new fall seminar “Human Flourishing: Imagine a Just City.” 

“Humans cannot flourish without true justice,” says Micaela Martinez, Emory assistant professor of biology, who developed the class. “We have so many huge societal problems that need creativity, imagination, hope and optimism to solve.” 

The class is among the new First-Year Flourishing Seminars, aimed at deepening what students know but also who they aspire to be. It is also part of the Emory Arts and Social Justice Fellows program, which pairs Emory faculty with Atlanta artists to explore how creative thinking and artistic expression can inspire change. 

Martinez is co-teaching with Arts and Social Justice Fellow David Perdue, a comedian. 

“You can’t save the world with jokes,” Perdue says. “But humor can be a good way to raise awareness of what’s going on. It’s a first step.” 

Read the whole story.

A celebration of science once again takes metro Atlanta by storm with the return of the Atlanta Science Festival, ongoing through March 26. More than 100 activities, planned throughout the city, invite families to experience the thrills of discovery, from nature walks to expert talks and hands-on STEM learning opportunities. 

The festival opens with an immersive, theatrical event on Friday, March 6, called "2100: A Climate Odyssey," which will propel audience members 80 years into the future.

By Carol Clark

The Atlanta Science Festival will take the city by storm March 6-21 as science-themed activities pop up throughout the metro area, starting with the launch extravaganza — “2100: A Climate Odyssey.” 

Atlanta’s Out of Hand Theater and the Weather Channel collaborated to produce “2100: A Climate Odyssey,” set at Ferst Center for the Arts at 8 pm on Friday, March 6. Tickets are $20 online, or $10 if you use the coupon code “HALF.” This immersive, theatrical event will propel audience members 80 years into the future, to explore the possible effects of a changing climate.

“The premise of the event is that, in the year 2100, we have gathered for the largest mass teleportation in North American history, to visit places impacted by climate change,” says Ariel Fristoe, founder and artistic director of Out of Hand Theater.

A torrential rainstorm hits Midtown Atlanta, right outside the auditorium. Broadcasts from actual Weather Channel personalities will make the storm seem like a real event. More broadcasts will take the audience around the world and from the future, covering ways that life may be different. The broadcasts will include commercials for products spurred by a changing environment. (Bug chips, anyone?)

“The production is based on science, but it’s also entertainment, aimed at ages 10 and up,” Fristoe says. “It will include a lot of humor and at the end, we’ll have a question and answer session with real scientists. It’s going to leave people feeling empowered. We’re going to talk about things everyone can do now to prepare for the possible effects of climate change and actions you can take to mitigate those effects.”

Fristoe is an Emory graduate who teaches arts administration at Emory. She is also the daughter of Vincent Murphy, the former long-time artistic director of Theater Emory. “My great joy is I get to use my skill as a theater artist to work on causes that I care about, and to get other people to care about them as well,” she says.

Science enthusiasts of all ages are mesmerized by the interactive exhibits of the annual Physics Live! The Emory event will take place on Friday, March 20 this year.

Founded by Emory, Georgia Tech and the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the first Atlanta Science Festival was held in 2014.

“This year we have nearly 140 events — up from 100 events our first year — at venues throughout the metro area,” says Meisa Salaita, executive co-director of the festival. “As more people experience the festival, more people want to contribute and to become part of it, so we just keep growing.”

Two perennial festival favorites — Chemistry Carnival and Physics Live! — return this year to the Emory campus on Friday, March 20, from 3:30 to 7 pm. Emory science faculty and students will explain their research, give lab tours, and entertain with games like Peptide Jenga, a change to play with giant soap bubbles and tastings of liquid nitrogen ice cream. Hundreds of visitors are expected to turn out for the events, held in the Mathematics and Science Center and Atwood Chemistry Center. 

“Garden Detox,” on Saturday, March 14, from 3 to 5 pm at Historic Westside Gardens, features a team from Emory’s Department of Environmental Sciences. You can bring a soil sample from your yard in a Ziploc bag and the scientists will test it for contamination from heavy metals. Learn about potential risks and simple ways to clean your soil if you’re planning to start a garden.

“Queer Scientists Panel” is a new event this year, on Wednesday, March 18 at 7 pm at Waller’s Coffee Shop. Emory’s Center for Selective C-H Functionalization is sponsoring this event, which will celebrate the contributions of LGBTQ scientists.

Oxford College and Emory’s Center for the Study of Human Health are sponsoring “Comic Strip Science” on March 18 at 7 pm at the Carter Presidential Library. Scientist and artist Garfield T. Kwan will talk about how his Squidtoons comics walk the line between scientific accuracy and visual appeal. Kwan will also be featured at the Oxford campus on Friday, March 20 at 2 pm in an event called “Discovering Science through Art.”

Emory chemists draw crowds every year for the "Ping Pong Big Bang" at the "Exploration Expo," the festival's culminating event, set for March 21.

“Become an Archaeologist” returns this year, allowing kids to join Emory experts to learn how to extract DNA and put ancient objects and skeletons back together like a puzzle. The event will be held Thursday, March 19 from 6 to 8 pm at Brownwood park Pavilion in East Atlanta Village.

“Health Hacks Coding Workshop” will feature Emory mentors to spark inspiration for participants who want to immerse themselves into the foundations of coding in ways that can improve health. No coding experience is required for this event, on Friday, March 20 from 4 to 7 pm in Emory’s Psychology Building, room 230. Click here to see more events with an Emory connection.

The festival culminates on Saturday, March 21, with the Exploration Expo at Piedmont Park — a day-long, free carnival of science with hundreds of hands-on activities. More than a dozen booths will feature Emory faculty and students who will engage crowds in activities like testing the air quality in the park that day, learning how vaccines protect against pathogens and the Ping Pong Big Bang.

Special funding from Delta Airlines, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation, Emory and others has helped the Atlanta Science Festival extend its programming and events year-round under an umbrella non-profit organization Science ATL. In addition to the annual festival, the organization produces a Chief Science Officers leadership program for middle and high school students, a science communication fellowship for college students, a 5K Race Through Space and many other educational science opportunities. Learn more at ScienceATL.org.

Wow in the World host Mindy Thomas, center, will kick off the Atlanta Science Festival with the help of musical duo The Pop Ups (Jacob Stein, left, and Jason Rabinowitz).

By Carol Clark

Watch for serious fun to spring up all around town as part of the 2019 Atlanta Science Festival, March 9 to March 23. The festival begins with a Wow in the World Pop Up Party on Saturday, March 9 from 11 am to noon on the Emory University campus. Mindy Thomas, a host of the popular NPR science-themed podcast Wow in the World, will engage curious kids and their grown-ups in games and skits with mad musical accompaniment by the Pop Ups — creators of the children’s music album Giants of Science.

A "Wow in the World" launch

“Wow in the World is an excellent program for kids and we really wanted to bring the energy of its team to Atlanta,” says Meisa Salaita, co-director of the Atlanta Science Festival. “They tie new and relevant research into interesting topics for kids, everything from ants that explode to seaweed that might boost your brain power. Kids are our future and getting them excited about science is so important.”

Kids will enjoy skits and games inspired by topics from the podcast like “Contagion Alert: The Science of Trying Not to Laugh” and “It SNOT What You Think.” Tickets are required for the launch event, set at Emory’s Glenn Memorial United Methodist Church, and it is expected to sell out.

The Atlanta Science Festival, or ASF, will feature more than 100 events throughout the metro area hosted by school districts, universities, museums, businesses and civic and community groups. Delta Air Lines is the presenting sponsor for 2019.

This year, Emory scientists will lead a walk with Mesozoic dinosaurs, discuss how neuro-engineering is blurring the lines between mind and machine and describe the physics of how babies learn to talk. Click here to see a full list of events connected to Emory.

Hundreds of visitors are expected on the Emory campus on Friday, March 22 for the perennial festival favorites, "Chemistry Carnival" and "Physics Live!"

“Science on Stage: The Forgotten Organ,” stars the bacteria, fungi and viruses within the human microbiome that shapes every one of us from birth. The Emory Center for the Study of Human Health teamed up with Theater at Emory to have playwrights quickly produce short plays about the microbiome. The playwrights drew their inspiration from a New York Times bestselling book by science writer Ed Yong, “I Contain Multitudes: The Microbes Within Us and a Grander View of Life.”

Yong will join the playwrights for readings of their works and a panel discussion of this unique collaboration between art and science. This event is set for Wednesday, March 20, at 6:30 pm at the Carter Presidential Library and Museum.

The Emory event “Become an Archaeologist” returns on Thursday, March 21 from 6 to 8 pm. This year the faculty and students involved are taking their bones off campus, to Brownwood Park in East Atlanta Village. The Emory experts will teach community members how to extract DNA and put pieces of ancient objects back together like a puzzle. “It’s a great example of the festival taking events that we know are popular and setting them in other parts of the city so that we can continue to reach new audiences and connect in different ways,” Salaita says. “Our goal is to keep broadening access to our programming.”

Two perennial festival favorites — Chemistry Carnival and Physics Live! — return this year to the Emory campus on Friday, March 22 from 3:30 to 7 pm. Emory science faculty and students will explain their research, give lab tours, and entertain with games like Peptide Jenga, a chance to play with giant soap bubbles and tastings of liquid nitrogen ice cream. Hundreds of visitors are expected to turn out for the events, held in the Mathematics and Science Center and Atwood Chemistry Center.

Oxford hosts "Ada and the Engine"

A highlight on Emory’s Oxford campus will be performances of the play “Ada and the Engine,” portraying the groundbreaking career of Ada Lovelace — a mathematician, poet and the first computer programmer. The play was written by Lauren Gunderson, an acclaimed playwright who graduated from Emory in 2004. During the festival, the play will be performed Friday and Saturday, March 21 and 22, at 7:30 pm. Performances will be followed by talks on the themes of women working in a field dominated by men, and a chance to walk through a special interactive exhibition, "Reviving Ada," curated by Oxford students to celebrate women's contributions to STEM fields from throughout history.

The festival culminates on Saturday, March 23 with the Exploration Expo at Piedmont Park — a day-long, free carnival of science with hundreds of hands-on activities. More than a dozen booths will feature Emory faculty and students, who will engage crowds in activities with names like “Air Pollution Particle Toss,” “Opening a Can of Worms: Exploring Biomaterials and Nanotechnology with Alginate Gummy Worms,” “Smell the World,” and “Can You Guess What Your Brain is Thinking?”

Founded in 2014 by Emory University, Georgia Tech and the Metro Atlanta Chamber, the ASF celebration of local science, technology, engineering and math has brought programming to more than 200,000 people in the metro region, reaching a diverse audience of a wide variety of ages. 

Special funding from sponsors such as Delta, the Arthur M. Blank Family Foundation and others is helping ASF soar to new heights and extend some of its programming and events year-round. A chief science officer program charges student representatives from middle schools and high school to foster science communities at their schools.

“These chief science officers, who are elected by their student bodies, receive leadership training, meet with state legislators and learn about the role of science and policy,” Salaita says. “We launched the program this year with 22 students and we plan to grow exponentially over the next three years to 200 students.”

Another program piloted this past year by the ASF is a science communication training fellowship for graduate students and post-doctoral fellows. “We’ve started with eight students who met monthly to learn about narrative in science communication, data visualization and other communication techniques,” Salaita says. “They will use their new skills to create events for the science festival and give informal talks to the general public.”

Another new component of the ASF is a year-round calendar of STEM-themed activities. “We want people to stay connected to science,” Salaita explains. “Our new events calendar is a guide for family friendly activities in the metro Atlanta area when the festival’s not happening.”

Learning about the microbiome "is shifting my perspective of what it means to be human and an individual," says playwright Margaret Baldwin. "What bacteria are driving our dreams?"

Four Atlanta playwrights + 48 hours = four new plays at the forefront of art and science.

That’s the premise of Theater Emory’s “ 4:48,” a frenetic yet focused showcase of new works inspired by the human microbiome that will be performed July 14 at the Schwartz Center for Performing Arts.

The annual speed-writing challenge always yields compelling results, as talented local playwrights come together at Emory to quickly produce plays based on common source material. But this year, for the first time, the Playwriting Center of Theater Emory is teaming up with the Emory Center for the Study of Human Health for “4:48” — an innovative, interdisciplinary collaboration that promises to push the boundaries of both fields.

“Theater offers an exciting communication mechanism to convey cutting edge-research findings to a wide audience, while simultaneously encouraging curiosity and imagination,” says Amanda Freeman, instructor in the Center for the Study of Human Health.

The collaborators hope that this project will introduce the human microbiome — the trillions of microorganisms that live in us and on us — to a whole new audience, providing a spotlight for research that is being done right here on campus.

“I have found very few venues where new science and new art can emerge from a single exercise, so ‘4:48’ is special,” says David Lynn, Asa Griggs Candler Professor of Chemistry and Biology, one of several Emory science faculty offering support as resources for the writers.

Readings of the work developed during "4:48" begin at 4 pm on Saturday, July 14, in the Theater Lab of Schwartz Center. All readings are free and open to the public. For the schedule of readings and play titles, visit the Theater Emory website.

Click here to learn more.

Related:
Learning to love our bugs: Meet the microorganisms that help keep us healthy
Environment, the microbiome and preterm birth

Dozens of ceramic vessels from West Mexico, part of the collection of Emory's Michael C. Carlos Museum, were believed to be "grave goods," traditionally placed near bodies in underground burial chambers almost 1,500 years before the Aztecs. The compact figures depict humans and animals engaged in everyday activities, vividly capturing a place and time. Residue and wear patterns suggested that the vessels had once been filled with food and drink, perhaps to accompany the departed along their journey.

But were the figures authentic?

Seeking answers, the museum invited forensic anthropologist Robert Pickering — who uses entomology, among other techniques – to examine the vessels with the help of Emory scholars.

His quest? Locate telltale insect casings likely left by coffin flies, corpse-eating insects that fed on decomposing bodies interred in the ancient underground shaft tombs of Western Mexico.

"Not to be impolite, but where you have dead people, you have bugs," Pickering explains.

Read more about the project here.

By Carol Clark

On the last day of the spring semester, during Bill Wuest’s “Principles of Reactivity” course, loud noises rattle the Atwood Chemistry Center’s Atomic Classroom. It isn’t explosions — it’s pop music mixed with bursts of laughter.

“This bond’s alright!” a group of Emory first-year students belts out on a YouTube video playing on screens before the class. Backed by the music of “Oh, What a Night,” they dance before a periodic table, write on a white board and mix chemicals in a lab while singing lyrics they wrote themselves: “Now I use a base to synthesize. It can readily be hydrolyzed. Mechanisms, what a sight!”

In just under four minutes, the students sing key lessons they learned over the semester about carbonyl mechanisms.

“It’s basically describing how reactions go,” explains Rebecca Henderson, one of the performers. “A reaction is not normally just putting two chemicals together and — BOOM — a product comes out. There’s a lot of different steps involved and we wanted to describe some of them, and why a reaction goes down one pathway and not another.”

Henderson created the video with classmates Carson Brooks, Lauren Cohen, Justine Griego and Alex Kim. They all played themselves in the video — except for Kim, who used powder to create a white patch in his hair and portray the professor.

“I love it when they mock me, they get extra points for that,” says Wuest, who has a natural, white streak of hair running through the center of his close-cropped dark hair.

Wuest, who joined Emory in the fall of 2017 as a Georgia Research Alliance Distinguished Investigator, directs an organic chemistry lab along with teaching undergraduates. He started having students make music parody videos while he was at Temple University.

“A lot of people think that chemistry is dry and boring but there’s a lot of creativity involved in it and that’s often overlooked in classrooms,” Wuest says.

The videos fit in well with Emory’s curriculum. Last fall, Emory became one of the first major research universities to completely overhaul how chemistry is taught, from introductory courses to capstone seminars. The new program, called Chemistry Unbound, moves away from teaching a narrow slice of chemistry every year to jumping into a big-picture understanding of chemistry’s central role across the sciences.



The video assignment helps with those big-picture concepts, Wuest says. Students form groups of up to six to make a two-to-four-minute educational video about some aspect of what they’ve learned in class. The video can either take the form of a musical parody of a well-known song or — for the less adventurous — a more straightforward lesson in the style of the Khan Academy website.

While Wuest is not the first to have chemistry students make videos, he is one of the few to actually measure their effect. With the help of his wife, Liesl Wuest, an educational analyst who also works at Emory, he has compared learning outcomes — in the form of exam performance before and after the videos — and found a strong correlation to improved scores.

His Temple students received extra credit, but not a grade, for making videos. Out of 130 students, 25 percent of them opted to do the videos. The average score for the class on an exam before the video project and an exam following the video project found that those who made videos had an average of 50 percent more improvement in their scores compared to those who opted out.

“Making the videos forces students to think about the material in new ways,” Wuest says. “It also makes the material more memorable to help it stick with them long term.”

Wuest refined the criteria for the video project and turned it into a graded requirement for his Emory classes. The top videos, based on accuracy and execution, will be housed on the Canvas learning management system so that future students can use them for inspiration and study aids.



“I was really impressed with the level of the videos this semester,” Wuest says. “They showcase the quality and the diversity of the students at Emory.”

Wuest plans to continue measuring the effect of the videos on learning. Many of the students, meanwhile, have given the video assignment a big thumb’s up.

“Not only do you learn the material, but it’s a fun experience,” says Dennis Jang, a first-year student.

Jang helped make a video called “I’ll Make a Chemist Out of You,” set to the song “I’ll Make a Man Out of You” from the Disney movie “Mulan.” The other first year students in his group included Muhammad Dhanani, Alex Fukunaga, Gaby Garcia and Jessie Kwong.

“The hardest part of this project was balancing the content and the comedy,” Jang says. “We presented some broad aspects of what we learned in class and some more specific aspects. And then we added humor to keep the audience watching.”

The formula worked. An informal vote following the screening of the videos in class, based on laughter and applause, showed “I’ll Make a Chemist Out of You” was the clear audience favorite.

“As we were watching all of the videos together we were laughing and just really enjoying being together,” Henderson says. “It was the final wrap-up of a great semester. Bill really knows how to make a true community out of a classroom.”

You can watch more of the videos by clicking here. 


Related:
Chemistry synthesizes radical overhaul of undergraduate curriculum

Art by Emory senior Pamela Romero, Science.Art.Wonder. founder and president, portrays how aphids can develop wings in response to environmental changes. The DNA painted along the edges of the canvases is the same, except that different genes are switched on. Photo by Ann Watson, Emory Photo/Video

By Carol Clark

A small crowd gathers in Emory’s White Hall before the menacing sight: Large rubber worms arrayed on triangular red spikes. The jagged spikes, from a few inches to more than a foot tall, lean crazily in all directions. Some of the worms — suspended on near-invisible fishing line — appear to rise off the spikes, escaping to a circular mirror hanging from above.

“This is how evolution works!” says Ethan Mock, a sophomore majoring in ancient history, who created the sculpture, titled "The Crucible." He looks dapper in a leather vest and tweed cap and speaks with theatrical flair to the crowd. “The spikes represent the trials and tribulations of the worms’ struggles. Most are trapped in the spikes but a few climb out, not realizing that they are simply climbing into a new trial, a new test.”

The onlookers include a mix of college students, children and their parents, brought together by campus events during the recent Atlanta Science Festival. Joining the regular attractions of Physics Live! and Chemistry Carnival is the debut of an art exhibit by a new, student-run program called Science.Art.Wonder., or S.A.W. Just over 100 artists — most of them untrained college students — teamed with scientists from Emory and Georgia Tech to translate their research into art.

Ethan Mock and his art, "The Crucible"

Mock worked with the lab of Levi Morran, an assistant professor in Emory’s Department of Biology who studies co-evolutionary dynamics by experimenting with a host (a microscopic worm called C. elegans) and a parasite (a bright red species of bacteria called Serratia marcescens that is lethal to C. elegans upon consumption).

“This is so cool!” says Pareena Sharma, a first-year biochemistry major at Emory, as she snaps a photo of the sculpture. “It’s so relatable to me. I’ve been doing this same experiment since the first of the semester in Biology 142.”

Two young boys draw near the spikes. “Look up into the mirror,” Mock encourages them. “Now tell me what you see.”

“The same thing,” one of the boys replies.

“That’s right!” Mock says. “The process of evolution keeps repeating, going in a loop.”

Morran, arriving with his eight-year-old daughter, Maggie, is impressed. “You could see the light come on in those boys’ eyes,” he says. “They understood what Ethan is trying to convey. And it’s not an easy concept to grasp — the continual evolutionary struggle.”

Both artists and researchers engage with visitors as they peruse more than 140 works of art, set up on the Quad, in White Hall, the Math and Science Center and the Atwood Chemistry Center during the festival.

“This artwork gives you a snapshot of how much research is being done in Atlanta. I’m taken aback by how cutting edge and varied it is,” says Pamela Romero, president of S.A.W. The program is the brainchild of Romero, a senior majoring in neuroscience and behavioral biology and minoring in computer science.

Young visitors to the Emory campus peruse science-inspired art on the Quad. Photo by Ann Watson, Emory Photo/Video

The Emory S.A.W. contributions span labs across the University and beyond. The artists picked their mediums, from acrylic to watercolor and everything in between.

Emily Isaac, a first-year Emory student majoring in environmental sciences and theater, stands on the Quad next to a large watercolor she painted. “Art can help scientists make a point without using any scientific jargon,” she says.

She teamed with Robert Wallace from Georgia Tech’s Agricultural Technology Research Program. One of Wallace’s projects gave plots of farmland to women in India who had been victims of an acid attack. Isaac did a portrait of a woman with a scarred face. The woman’s head is partially wrapped in strips of bandages that Isaac painted to look like rows of newly sprouting plants. “I wanted to show hope, and how connecting with the environment can help people,” Isaac says.

This year’s 36 Emory S.A.W. artists are mainly undergraduates — many of them science majors — but they also include a few graduate students, faculty and staff members. Georgia Tech makes up the bulk of other contributing artists and researchers in this year’s S.A.W., although 10 independent artists also got involved, along with Georgia State University undergraduates and the Atlanta campus of SCAD.

“S.A.W. is collaborative, not only across disciplines and institutions, but also across students, faculty, staff and members of the Atlanta community,” Romero says. “We even have one international artist, from Puerto Rico.”

A painting by Georgia Tech student Bianca Guerrero portrays a virtual reality game used to measure players' perception of time as well as eye movement. The art is based on research by Georgia Tech psychologist Malia Crane. Photo by Ann Watson, Emory Photo/Video.

As long as she can remember, everyone thought Romero would become an artist, or maybe an architect. She began taking art classes at the age of three in her home town of Tegucigalpa, Honduras. She continued making and studying art, developing a surrealist style.

In ninth grade, however, a psychology course sparked a fascination for neurobiology. Romero took online classes and started reading up on subjects like optogenetics and deep-brain stimulation.

By the time she was accepted to Emory, she had decided to forge a career as a scientist. “A lot of people told me that if I chose neuroscience I would have to forsake art, because I would be a bad scientist if I tried to do both,” she recalls. “I was determined to prove them wrong.”

Romero sought out kindred spirits like Nicole Gerardo, associate professor of biology, who also grew up with twin passions for science and art. Gerardo once had students create artwork using microbes in her lab under the direction of Nancy Lowe — a former lab technician at Emory who went on to create a retreat center in North Carolina called AS.IF: Art and Science in the Field.

Gerardo later paired students with labs to create ceramic representations of research under the direction of Diane Kempler, who formerly taught visual arts at Emory.

“Art provides a way to reach people who may be intimidated by science,” Gerardo says. “And working with an artist lets scientists see their own work in a different way. That could lead to new scientific approaches.”

When Romero first joined forces with Gerardo it was simply to produce art for her lab, which focuses on evolutionary ecology. “We were test subjects for S.A.W.,” Romero says.

Emory senior Maureen Ascona, a neuroscience and behavioral biology major, discusses her art with visitors to the Quad. Ascona teamed with Helen Mayberg, from the Emory School of Medicine, who uses deep-brain stimulation to help patients with treatment-resistant depression. Photo by Ann Watson, Emory Photo/Video.

One of the pieces Romero created consists of triangular canvases that can be shifted into different positions. The acrylic painting depicts how aphids develop wings in the presence of predators, like ladybugs, or if food becomes scarce. “When Dr. Gerardo explains her work to people, she can move the canvases to show how the aphids change in response to their environment,” Romero says.

Romero wanted to give other students the chance to enter research labs and experiment with art.

“Pamela is an amazing woman, a force of nature,” says Gerardo, who is the faculty mentor for S.A.W. “What she has done with the support of her fellow students is incredible. I had envisioned maybe 20 pairings of scientists and artists. I’m still surprised by how big it became.”

Connections from across the University helped S.A.W. grow. Wei Wei Chen and John Wang, student leaders of Emory Arts Underground, provided the platform for Romero to launch S.A.W. and encouraged her to form a charter, bylaws and an executive team. That team includes Emory undergraduates Alex Nazzari (vice-president), Aila Jiang, Veronica Paltaraskaya, Anne Pizzini, Deborah Seong and John Wang, along with Georgia Tech students Olivia Cox, Siyan Li and Iris Liu.

The students’ efforts paid off with S.A.W.’s smash debut at the Atlanta Science Festival.

“One of my favorite parts was guiding artists through the process of disentangling the science, reassuring them that they could do it,” Romero says. “Many of them felt overwhelmed after first talking to a scientist. Some of them were first-year students who hadn’t even had introductory biology or chemistry.”

A piece by Alice Yang, a first-year Emory student majoring in neuroscience and behavioral biology who teamed with researchers of human genetics in the Emory 3q29 Project. Photo courtesy of S.A.W.

Exploring a lab through an art project allows students to develop a relationship with a researcher and often find a mentor, Romero says.

Alice Yang, a first-year Emory student majoring in neuroscience and behavioral biology, teamed with Jennifer Mulle, assistant professor at Rollins School of Public Health. Mulle is co-principal investigator of the Emory 3q29 Project, which seeks to understand a genetic deletion associated with an increased risk for schizophrenia.

“I’m so grateful for the experience,” Yang says of spending time with the 3q29 Project team. “I learned what it’s like to actually do science. And I caught their passion. People are just now realizing how genetics can be involved in mental illness. It’s a very new field.”

To create her art pieces, Yang ordered special scratch-off paper from her native China. “This paper’s easy to work with and it’s great for showing patterns and textures,” she says. She explains how she carefully cut slices from the black top layer of the paper to reveal the glowing, rainbow colors beneath. Her pictures portray the nanomapping of fluorescent-labeled alleles from the 3q29 lab while also paying tribute to Salvador Dali’s surrealism.

Even those who are not aspiring scientists can catch the science-art bug. Independent artist Aaron Artrip teamed with scientists Matthew Jackson and Dan Cook at Georgia Tech to demonstrate interaction with sound. A group of children buzzes around Artrip’s exhibit in White Hall. A piece of paper sprinkled with powdered black ink is taped to a wooden speaker, which is plugged into an electronic synthesizer. As Artrip taps a keyboard, the powder moves across the page, creating patterns.

“I’m making drawings with vibrations. Forcing sound through the ink causes it to move,” he explains.

“Would you like to try?” he asks a young girl watching him.

She doesn’t have to be asked twice.

A painting by Georgia Tech student Kate Bernart, "Connecting the Cycle," portrays Austin Ladshaw's research at Georgia Tech's School of Environmental Engineering on the nuclear fuel cycle and ways to prevent excessive accumulations of radioactive waste. Photo by Ann Watson, Emory Photo/Video

Ultimately, S.A.W. hopes to find ways to integrate its art-science model into grades K-12. “We would like to have artists and researchers go into K-12 classrooms to talk about the art and the research together,” Romero says.

She presented S.A.W. at the recent Georgia Tech STEAM Leadership Conference, which brought together educators and policymakers to explore new ways to teach science, technology, engineering, art and math, or STEAM. S.A.W. is now working to put together an anthology of its art into a booklet, to include descriptions of the science. The booklet will be aimed at high school students “to give them a glimpse of some of the possible fields available to them in college,” Romero says.

S.A.W. is also creating a web site where the art will be accessible in digital form, including videos of some of the interactive art pieces, along with other resources for K-12 teachers.

After graduating this spring, Romero plans to take a gap year, then go on to graduate school with the aim of becoming a professor with a research lab. “S.A.W. has an incredible executive team and I’m making sure that the program continues after I leave Emory,” she says. “I would also like to stay involved with it in some way.”

As she prepares for graduation, Romero is working on an art narrative piece funded by the Emory Center for Creativity and Arts. The work will combine acrylic painting and sculpture to represent the element Vanadium, discovered by Mexican mineralogist Andrews Manuel del Rio in 1801. A series of circular canvases will each represent an atom in Vanadium. Each canvas will also represent a country or group of countries in Latin America, on which Romero will depict the research of a scientist from that area.

“My main goal with this piece is to celebrate and encourage more Latin American science,” Romero says. She is calling the piece “Elementally Latino,” to describe how Latinos are an elemental, or basic, part of science and how they also embody an elemental force. “Latinos are such a passionate people that I can only adequately describe them as a force of nature,” she says.

Related:

The art and science of symbiosis
Frankenstein and robots rise up for Atlanta Science Festival

Emory's Stuart A. Rose Manuscript, Archives and Rare Book Library holds an 1881 original edition of "Frankenstein" and an 1831 edition, above, with a depiction of the "creature" and a prologue by Mary Shelley.

It’s the 200th anniversary year of “Frankenstein, Or the Modern Prometheus,” an enduring novel at the nexus of major questions of our time. Emory faculty explore many of them in a newly published anthology, “Frankenstein: How a Monster Became an Icon, the Science and Enduring Allure of Mary Shelley’s Creation.”

“When you see a contemporary film about androids, like ‘Blade Runner 2049,’ you’re seeing the ‘Frankenstein’ story in a 21st-century guise,” says Sidney Perkowitz, Emory emeritus physicist and co-editor of the new anthology. “The androids are sleek and modern instead of the shambling, stitched-together creature in ‘Frankenstein,’ but they have the same questions swirling around them. Even as we’re on the verge of artificially generating life, we’re no closer to knowing whether we should.”

You can read more here.

Related:
Chemists boldly go in search of 'little green molecules'
Prometheus: Seeding wonder and science

Hair-raising, spine-tingling fun: A young visitor to the Emory campus during last year's Atlanta Science Festival experiences the thrill of static electricity.

By Carol Clark

From the lumbering, 200-year-old Frankenstein to sleek, modern-day robots, this year’s Atlanta Science Festival — set for March 9 to 24 — highlights creations that spark wonder and fun, giving glimpses of the past and the future.

The five-year-old festival expanded to more than two weeks, encompassing 120 events sponsored by 90 different partners at 70 venues across metro Atlanta, including many on the Emory campus. The festival culminates with a day-long “Exploration Expo” on Saturday, March 24, set in Piedmont Park.

“Rise Up, Robots!” kicks off the festival on the evening of Friday, March 9 at the Ferst Center, when three robots and their inventors will take the stage.

“We thought about how we could possibly top last year’s featured speaker, astronaut Mark Kelly — someone so inspirational to children and adults all over the planet,” says Meisa Salaita, co-director of the Atlanta Science Festival. “We finally realized that no human could match him, and we would have to resort to artificial intelligence.”

Heather Knight, professor of robotics at Oregon State University, will demonstrate the interactive quips of “Data,” the world’s first robotic comedian. Georgia Tech’s Gil Weinberg will jam with “Shimon,” a marimba playing robotic musician. And Stewart Coulter, from DEKA Research and Development, will show how a bionic arm named LUKE (Life Under Kinetic Evolution) changed an amputee’s life.

Tickets are required for the event, which starts at 7 pm. Door open early with an Interactive Robotic Petting Zoo, starting at 6 pm.

Frankenstein rises up on the Emory campus on Thursday, March 22. Three Atlanta playwrights will reanimate Mary Shelley’s creation, which turns 200 this year, in the context of scientific research ongoing at Emory. Following the short plays join ethicists, scientists and the playwrights to discuss the work over refreshments. The event, titled “Frankenstein Goes Back to the Lab,” begins at 5:30 pm in Emory’s Science Commons.

On Friday, March 23, from 3:30 to 7 pm, Emory will host “Chemistry Carnival,” where visitors can join scientists in carnival games like Peptide Jenga and Bacterial Telepathy, in the Atwood Chemistry Center. On the same day and time, the ever-popular “Physics Live!” will again feature giant soap bubbles and liquid nitrogen ice cream, among other treats in the Math and Science Center.

A new Emory event this year, “Science.Art.Wonder,” will run concurrently with the chemistry and physics events, on the Emory Quadrangle and in nearby buildings, including White Hall and the Atwood Chemistry Center. For the past year, the program has paired local artists and scientists to explore ideas of research through the visual arts. You can stroll through an exhibit of the resulting artwork and meet some of the artists and scientists involved in the project.

Adult fare is featured on Monday, March 19, including “The Science of ‘Motherese,’” an overview of early vocal development in infants at the Marcus Autism Center, and “CDC in the Scene,” which features CDC scientists sorting fact from fiction surrounding movies like “Outbreak,” in the Mathematics and Science Center.

On Tuesday, March 20, “Become an Archeologist” lets you in on secrets revealed by ancient skeletons and artifacts, while “Mock Climate Change Negotiation” turns you into an international policymaker for a day.

During “Unveiling the Internet,” on Wednesday, March 21, Emory computer scientists will give interactive lessons on everything from the workings of YouTube to Snapchat.

“STEM Gems: Giving Girls Role Models in STEM Careers,” on Saturday, March 10, is an interactive discussion where panelists offer advice and guidance specific to girls and young women intrigued by science, technology, engineering and math. “Women and Minorities in STEM: Surprises, Setbacks and Successes,” set for the evening of Thursday, March 22 at the Oxford campus, is a panel discussion with voices from a diverse set of scientific fields who will share their stories and take questions.

Click here for more details of Emory campus events, and events throughout the city featuring members of the Emory community.

Among the dozen Emory booths at “Exploration Expo” will be chemistry students running their non-Newtonian fluid dance pit. The Center for the Study of Human Health will explore the human gut microbiome in a booth called “Your Hundred Trillion Best Friends.” And the “Science.Art.Wonder” team will display art from the program and invite you to help create a mural.

The Atlanta Science Festival was founded by Emory, Georgia Tech and the Metro Atlanta Chamber and is a collaboration among diverse community partners and sponsors.

Tibetan monk Geshe Yungdrung Konchok (left) and Emory biologist Arri Eisen (right) pose with the Dalai Lama, who wrote an introduction for their new book, "The Enlightened Gene." The book explores how dialogue between scientists and monastics enriches understandings of biology, physics and other sciences. 

By April Hunt, Emory Report

For nearly a decade, the Emory-Tibet Science Initiative has done more than challenge the idea that religion and science don’t mix by developing and successfully launching a comprehensive science curriculum for thousands of Tibetan monks and nuns.

The first major change to Tibetan Buddhist monastic education in six centuries also demonstrated how insights and information from both the monastics and professors could enrich each other’s understanding of biology, physics and other sciences.

Arri Eisen, an Emory College professor of pedagogy in biology and the Institute for Liberal Arts, explores those connections in “The Enlightened Gene,” a book he co-wrote with one of the monks, Geshe Yungdrung Konchok.

“He grew up on the Tibetan plateau herding yaks. I grew up one of about five Jewish guys in North Carolina in the 1970s,” Eisen says. “We had different experiences, but we could use them to develop a common approach, to try to better understand our world.”

Emory has woven Western and Tibetan Buddhist intellectual traditions together since founding the Emory-Tibet Partnership in 1998. His Holiness the Dalai Lama has been a Presidential Distinguished Professor at Emory since 2007.

Read more in Emory Report.

Related:
Emory Tibet Science Initiative rolls out bridges to inner and outer worlds

From ancient Egypt to modern times, cats rule many peoples' lives. Photo by Stephen Nowland, Emory Photo/Video.

By Leslie King
Emory Report

“In ancient Egypt, cats and dogs were gods, and they have not forgotten this!” says Melinda Hartwig, curator of Ancient Egyptian, Nubian and Near Eastern Art at the Michael C. Carlos Museum.

That exalted stature is illuminated in the exhibition “Divine Felines: Cats of Ancient Egypt,” which opened Feb. 10 at the museum and will be on view through Nov. 11.

The exhibit showcases cats and lions, plus dogs and jackals, as domesticated pets, creatures of the wild or mythic symbols of divinities, in ancient Egyptian mythology, kingship and everyday life. Animal burial practices and luxury items decorated with feline and canine features are also on display.

“Cats and dogs reveal so much about ancient Egyptian culture,” says Hartwig. “These animals were just as important to the ancient Egyptians as they are to us today.”

The kings of Egypt were associated with the lion, thus, the human head on the lion’s body or the sphinx.

“Cats were first domesticated in Egypt around 4000 BC. They were lovable pets, hunters of vermin and divine embodiments of fertility and protection. Lions and jungle cats were admired for their power, and were linked with royalty and divinity,” Hartwig continues. “Dogs were also kept as pets. Their loyalty and hunting abilities were keenly valued. Often found roaming the ancient necropolises, dogs and jackals became embodiments of the gods who protected the dead.”

Read more in Emory Report.

The Goldwater Rule takes its name from a 1964 incident during the failed presidential bid of Barry Goldwater. An article in a now defunct magazine declared, "1,189 Psychiatrists Say Goldwater is Psychologically Unfit to be President."

By Carol Clark

The rationale for the Goldwater Rule — which prohibits psychiatrists from publicly commenting on the mental health of public figures they have not examined in person — does not hold up to current scientific scrutiny, a new analysis finds.

Perspectives on Psychological Science is publishing the analysis, which concludes that the Goldwater Rule is not well-supported scientifically and is outdated in today’s media-saturated environment. A preprint of the article is available online.

“We reviewed a large body of published scientific literature and it clearly showed that examining someone directly is often not necessary if you compile other valid sources of information,” says Scott Lilienfeld, lead author of the analysis and a professor of psychology at Emory University.

As examples of those sources, the authors cite interviews with family members, friends and others who know a person well, and extensive public records such as media interviews, biographies, YouTube videos, social media accounts and other material that may reveal a person’s longstanding behavioral patterns. The authors also report that direct interviews are subject to a host of biasing factors that are difficult to eliminate, including efforts on the part of interviewees to create positive impressions.

“Even though it is often possible to make a reasonably valid psychiatric diagnosis at a distance, that doesn’t necessarily mean that a mental health professional should,” Lilienfeld cautions. “Such a diagnosis should only be made with great discretion and after a thorough investigation.”

The Goldwater Rule, implemented in 1973 by the American Psychiatric Association (APA), gained new attention after Donald Trump entered the political arena. Some mental health professionals have expressed serious concerns about Trump’s mental health, most notably in the new book “The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump: 27 Psychiatrists and Mental Health Experts Assess a President.” 

The Goldwater Rule takes its name from an incident during the failed presidential bid of Barry Goldwater. A 1964 article in a now defunct magazine declared, “1,189 Psychiatrists say Goldwater is Psychologically Unfit to be President.” Many of the psychiatrists described the candidate in terms such as “emotionally unstable,” “cowardly,” “grossly psychotic,” “paranoid,” “delusional” and a “dangerous lunatic.” Some of the psychiatrists went so far as to offer diagnoses of Goldwater, including schizophrenia and obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Goldwater lost the election to Lyndon B. Johnson, but went on to successfully sue the magazine for libel.

“Many psychiatrists who commented on Goldwater in that article crossed an ethical line,” Lilienfeld says. “A lot of unfair statements were made about him that were poorly supported or unwarranted.” 

The APA later responded by passing what came to be known as the Goldwater Rule, in part to protect public figures from humiliation and in part to safeguard the integrity of the psychiatric profession.

The Goldwater Rule may have been more defensible at the time it was implemented, Lilienfeld says, because much less information was available on public figures.

Times have changed, however, particularly with the advent of the Internet and social media.

“If someone is running for the most powerful position in the world, behavioral professionals should be able to speak out if they take the time to properly investigate a candidate,” Lilienfeld says. “There should be a high threshold for doing so, but psychologists and psychiatrists should not feel gagged if they want to contribute to a national conversation about a presidential candidate or current president.”

While the authors of the analysis recommend abandoning the Goldwater Rule, they add that mental health professionals should avoid making diagnoses of celebrities in general, simply for the sake of prurient interest.

Lilienfeld’s co-authors are Joshua Miller from the University of Georgia and Donald Lynam from Purdue University.

The Lying Conference will unmask the many factors involved in deception, including evolution, culture and the human affinity for storytelling and make believe.

By Carol Clark

We grow up with this notion that we should always tell the truth. But can we live without lying? 

That’s one of the questions to be explored in a day-long event, “The Lying Conference,” on Friday, November 17, from 8:30 am to 6:30 pm at Emory Conference Center. Emory’s Department of Psychology is bringing together scientists from psychology, neuroscience and anthropology — along with a leading journalist, a theater director and a professional magician — to discuss their insights into lying and deception. The conference is free and open to the public, but registration is requested. 

Topics to be covered include: The deep, evolutionary roots of lying. How children learn to tell lies. Cultural differences in lying. How we decide whether someone is trustworthy. How technology and the changing media and political landscapes are affecting our collective beliefs. The role of deception in the arts and entertainment.

“Lying is kind of a hot topic right now, with all the buzz about fake news and accusations of cover-ups and deception,” says Emory developmental psychologist Philippe Rochat, lead organizer of the event. “When we talk about lying, what we are indirectly trying to understand is, what is the truth? It can be a profound question.”

Science uses probabilities to approximate the truth, Rochat notes. “It’s a never-ending journey and you keep trying to get closer.”

In day-to-day interactions, we regularly negotiate the truth with one another, trying to convince others of a point of view. “People put on makeup to exaggerate their features,” Rochat says. “We amplify some things about ourselves and hide others. We make believe. We seduce.”

People can lie maliciously, in an anti-social way. Or they can tell white lies, to be polite and avoid hurting another person’s feelings.

Rochat is particularly interested in the developmental trajectory of lying. Between the ages of two and three, children begin to engage in pretend play. By around age four, when children start to have ideas about what other people are thinking, lying emerges. “They can be explicit at this stage, because they can understand that someone can be deceived,” Rochat says. “But they still cannot lie very well. They tend to leak the truth.” By the age of six or seven, he adds, “we become much better at concealing the truth and keeping a secret tight.”

Whatever the reasons for lying, one thing is clear: “We’ve evolved to lie,” Rochat says. “It’s deeply rooted in our nature and somehow important to our survival.”

Following are the seven speakers of the conference and brief summaries of their topics.

“Perspective-taking and Dishonest Communication in Primates and Other Animals,” by Emory primatologist Frans de Waal: While there is plenty of evidence for functional deception in animals — such as the way a butterfly might use mimicry as camouflage — but tactical deception requires anticipating the reaction of others. Tactical deception is clearly more developed in apes than most other species, although there is also evidence for corvids.

“Lying, American Style,” by Emory anthropologist Bradd Shore: He will discuss the role of culture in lying and how it differs across cultures. Shore will also touch on the some of the ways the American cultural model has been politically deployed and manipulated in recent decades.

“Little Liars — How Children Learn to Tell Lies,” by Kang Lee a developmental psychologist from the University of Toronto: Lee will use scientific evidence from his lab to show how lying begins early in life, what factors contribute to the development of lying, why children lie and whether adults can easily detect children’s lies. He will also discuss recent developments in technology that may help in detecting lies.

“Face Value — The Irresistible (and Misleading) Influence of First Impressions,” by neuroscientist Alexander Todorov from Princeton University: People form instantaneous impressions from faces and act on these impressions. In the last 10 years, data-driven computational methods allow scientists to visualize the configurations of face features leading to specific impressions such as trustworthiness. But these appearance stereotypes are not often accurate. So why do we form first impressions?

“What Happened to the News? Technology, Politics and the Vanishing Truth,” by Johnathan Mann, former CNN International anchor: Many American believe that the news media intentionally lie to them. President Donald Trump is the best-known detractor of “fake news,” though he himself has been accused of lying more than any other public figure in recent memory. Mann will address the overlapping changes to technology, politics and business that have crippled our national conversation with deception and distrust.

“Onions and Identities — Theater and the True Self,” by Emory dramatist Tim McDonough: Drama is densely populated by duplicitous schemers, by power figures whose lies maintain the sociopolitical status quo, and by characters in search of themselves, who mirror to us our confusions and self-deceptions. Theater provides a template for understanding identity and insight into existentially and socially necessary forms of deceit.

“The Science of Magic and the Art of Deception,” by professional magician Alex Stone: Magicians trick our brains into seeing what isn’t real, and for whatever reason our brains let them get away with it. Through a mix of psychology, storytelling and sleight-of-hand, Stone will explore the cognitive underpinnings of misdirection, illusion, scams and secrecy, pulling back the curtain on the many curious and powerful ways our brains deceive us not just when we’re watching a magician but throughout our everyday lives.

A public unveiling and discussion of a large-scale portrait of Dr. Frankenstein’s creation, described in Mary Shelley’s 1818 novel “Frankenstein," will take place at 7 pm at Emory on Tuesday, September 19. The event will be held at the Schwartz Center for the Performing Arts and is open to all free of charge, but guests must register in advance at http://engage.emory.edu/Frankenstein or call Erin Mosley at 404-727-5048.

The portrait is by renowned artist Ross Rossin, who is on the Emory campus as the 2017-2018 Donna and Marvin Schwartz Artist-in-Residence. Rossin, whose art hangs in the Smithsonian National Portrait Gallery and was exhibited at the United Nations Palace of Nations in Geneva and the Russian Duma in Moscow, is also known to Atlantans as the sculptor/creator of the nine-foot-tall bronze statue of Hank Aaron unveiled earlier this year at SunTrust Park.

Rossin's residency is part of the Ethics and the Arts Program at Emory's Center for Ethics. The program, the only one of its kind in the nation, encourages ethical discourse and debate through and about the arts, and partners with arts organizations to demonstrate the way art challenges ethical perspectives.

This year, the residency coincides with FACE (Frankenstein Anniversary Celebration and Emory), a year-long university-wide celebration of the 200th anniversary of the novel.

The exclusive corporate sponsor of FACE is Turner Classic Movies (TCM), and Emory is providing support through its Science and Society fund.

“One of the most acclaimed and influential works of science fiction ever written, ‘Frankenstein’ continues to shape debates surrounding science and its complications,” says Paul Root Wolpe, director of Emory’s Center for Ethics, which is spearheading FACE. “It’s a permanent part of the dialogue about the dilemmas we face in technological advancement, scientific experimentation and research, bioethics, artificial intelligence, stem cell research and innovation.”

Rossin’s new depiction of Frankenstein’s creation is expected to highlight the broad influence and implications of the landmark novel. Rossin envisioned not the standard movie portrayal, but a portrait based on his vision of Shelley’s intent.

“It’s precisely Mary Shelley’s youth [age 18 when she began the novel] that inspired me to approach my subject differently,” says Rossin. “Unlike all other portrayals before, I prefer to see the Creature as a young man.”

As Rossin points out, Dr. Frankenstein intended “to create something beautiful, young, powerful and promising, like Prometheus. The Creature was supposed to have a future, open a new chapter in human history.”

Those familiar with the story know that Dr. Frankenstein’s good intentions turned ugly and murderous. Rossin says that his portrait of “Adam Frankenstein reflects exactly this kind of tragic duality. In my work the viewer should be able to see both.”

“It’s a strange coincidence that the moon at its distance and size almost perfectly covers the sun at its distance and size,” says Emory physicist Sidney Perkowitz. “It makes you stop and wonder — is it just a coincidence? Some people call an eclipse a religious experience. I call it cosmic.” (NASA photo)

By Carol Clark

The Emory University class of 2021 already has a unique distinction: The campus orientation day for the first-year students will occur beneath a nearly total solar eclipse. From about 2:38 to 2:41 pm on Monday, August 21, the moon will cover 97.7 percent of the sun over Atlanta.

A couple of solar telescopes will be set up on the roof of the Mathematics and Science Building between 1 and 4 pm for staff, faculty, students and their family members who want to observe the sun through them — weather permitting. But a pair of certified solar eclipse glasses, a simple pinhole camera — or even the leaves of a tree — will also make it possible to safely view the eclipse anywhere on campus where the sun is visible.

Emory first-year students plan to gather on the Quad between 2:15 and 3 pm for eclipse watching. At the Oxford campus, first-year students will gather in front of the Oxford Science Building starting at 2 pm where there will be music, a solar telescope and sun-themed snacks and drinks. The Emory Police Department will also host group eclipse viewing on the field of the Student Activity and Academic Center at the Clairmont Campus. All students, faculty and staff are welcome to attend these events.

Atlanta Science Tavern has also compiled this list of solar eclipse events in and around Atlanta. 

A total solar eclipse will sweep across a 70-mile-wide area of the United States, starting on the Pacific coast of Oregon and continuing all the way to South Carolina and the Atlantic Ocean. Even though Atlanta lies just beyond the path of totality, if the weather is clear the near-total eclipse will be worth pausing from work or school to go outside and experience.

To begin with, it’s rare. The last time the sun over Atlanta was nearly obscured by the moon was on May 31, 1984, when it was 99.7 percent covered. The New York Times described what happened as the skies began to darken about 20 minutes after noon: “The temperature dropped six degrees, flowers closed their petals, dogs howled, pigeons tucked their heads under their wings as if to sleep and the whole city was bathed in a kind of diffused light, not unlike that accompanying the approach of a severe storm.”

Emory senior  Raveena Chhibber tests out a pair of solar eclipse glasses. The neuroscience and behavioral biology major is on campus this summer working in a psychology lab and plans to take a break to witness the celestial event.

Sidney Perkowitz, Emory emeritus professor of physics, was on campus that day in 1984. He stood outside near the old physics building, now Callaway Hall, beneath a large white oak on the Quad.

“I remember a lot of people came out on the Quad, particularly around this tree,” he says. “It was a joint social experience.”

The darkening effect as the moon began to cover the sun was “eerie,” he says. “It didn’t feel exactly like twilight, it felt like something weirder was going on. It just seemed abnormal.”

Perkowitz watched the light as it passed through the leaves of the tree. “As the ambient light gets reduced, you begin to see multiple images of the crescent sun on the ground below,” Perkowitz says, explaining that each tiny space between the leaves acted as a pinhole-like opening, similar to a camera. “It’s spectacular because you see dozens and dozens of the images, filtered through the leaves.”

Aristotle observed this same phenomenon beneath a tree during a solar eclipse in the fourth century BC. The Greeks were debating at the time whether light moves in straight lines. The projection of the image of the sun through the leaves was evidence that it does, although the principles behind it would remained unresolved for nearly 2,000 years.

The white oak that Perkowitz stood beneath 33 years ago was struck by lightning in 2016 and is no longer there. There are plenty of other trees on campus, however, where eclipse watchers can stand to experience the event.

"An eclipse is a chance to stop and perceive and reflect," says Emory astronomer Erin Bonning. "It proceeds slowly and deliberately, which is not exactly the pace of modern society." (NASA graphic)

Or you can make your own pinhole projector by poking a hole in a piece of cardboard. NASA provides directions and some templates. During the eclipse, you stand with your back to the sun and hold up the cardboard so that light passes through it and hits a wall, the ground or a piece of paper that you hold up to capture a projection of the image of the sun.

Sunglasses do not provide enough protection to look directly at the sun at any time during a partial eclipse. You need special solar viewing glasses, which are available free at Fulton County libraries or can be purchased online. Beware of fakes — the American Astronomical Society provides guidance to help ensure that solar glasses are certified and safe to wear.

Horace Dale, director of the Emory Observatory, will have a limited number of solar-viewing glasses available and will set up two solar telescopes between 1 and 4 pm on the roof of the Mathematics and Science Center — if the weather holds. Take the elevator to the fifth floor of the building and follow the signs to get to the rooftop.

“If it’s just partly cloudy, we should be able to see through the breaks in the clouds,” Dale says. But even the threat of a storm, he adds, will mean having to pack up the expensive equipment to avoid it getting damaged by rain.

The special filters on the solar telescopes will make it possible to directly view the sun safely. “You’ll be able to see the filamentary structure of the sun and any flare activity on the edge of the sun,” Dale says. “There might even be a few planets that pop out.”

An Atlanta native, Dale experienced a partial eclipse here in 1970 when he was six. “I remember my dad telling me not to look at the sun,” he says. “It was a really interesting experience for me.”

Which is why Dale has already explained to the teachers of his son Joey, six, and his daughter Emma, five, that his children will not attend school on August 21. Instead they will be getting an eclipse lesson from their father. Their mother, Jessica, will also be present. A dental hygienist, she has the day off since the dentist is heading for the path of totality and will close the office.

Psychology graduate student Katy Renfroe will pause from working on her thesis to observe the partial eclipse on campus.

Astronomer Erin Bonning, director of the Emory Planetarium, will be in Clayton, Georgia — in the path of totality — during the eclipse. She will be giving a presentation for Goizueta Business School’s orientation of incoming Emory juniors at a retreat center in north Georgia. The BBA class of 2019 not only holds the distinction of being Goizueta Business School’s 100th-anniversary class — it enjoys the bonus of entering orientation with great timing in a great location.

“This will be my first total solar eclipse and I’m excited,” Bonning says. She quickly adds: “I’m cautiously excited because all astronomers know that when something really big is about to happen you don’t want the clouds to hear you talking about it. Clouds are the great enemies of astronomers.”

When Bonning was in fifth grade, in Maryland, she had fervently anticipated a near total-eclipse event. When the big moment finally arrived, it was cloudy and rainy.

She did get to witness a lunar eclipse in Atlanta around 5 am on October 8, 2014. “I got up early and walked around downtown to find a good view,” she says. “It’s breathtaking to see the Earth cast a shadow in space and the moon pass through it. It’s one thing to write down an equation for curving space time, but when you see a visual illustration of these facts it’s so much more moving. It made me feel connected to the universe.”

A woman standing near her during the lunar eclipse had a different reaction. “She said, ‘Huh. I thought it would be more impressive than that,’” Bonning recalls. “I took a deep breath and held my tongue.”

The August 21 solar eclipse is particularly special since the path of totality will stretch from sea to shining sea, across the United States. “It’s unusual because it’s taking place over such a large inhabited stretch of land,” Bonning says. “The last time we had such a grand solar eclipse across America was a century ago.”

Following are Bonning’s tips for observing the solar eclipse, whether you stay in Atlanta or travel to totality.

Plan your activity. “Don’t just hop in the car on August 21 and spontaneously head for the path of totality, or you’re going to see a partial eclipse in a traffic jam,” Bonning says. You can read more about traffic predictions here.

Don’t worry about height. “You don’t need to go to the top of a mountain or the top of a building,” Bonning says. “If you can see the sun, you can see the eclipse. It’s not like getting closer to it will give you a better view.”

Manage your expectations. “While it will be extremely cool to see the eclipse, it’s not going to look like a dragon came out of the sky and devoured the sun. That’s a myth,” Bonning says. “An eclipse is a chance to stop and perceive and reflect. It proceeds slowly and deliberately, which is not exactly the pace of modern society.”

Be in the moment. If you’re not an expert at photographing eclipses, forget trying to get the perfect selfie for social media. “You’ll be better off being open to the experience,” Bonning says. “Observe shifts in the light. Feel the temperature drop. You may notice animals behaving differently.”

Make it a fun, educational experience for kids. While you need to emphasize to young children the importance of not staring directly at the sun with the naked eye during the eclipse, you can do so in a fun way that helps them understand why. Bonning recommends parents visit this Planetary Society site, which includes directions for how to make pinhole projectors, including ones in fancy, pinhole-punched shapes.

“We’re very lucky on Earth,” Perkowitz says. “We have the largest moon of all the planets and it has all kinds of connections to love and romance and poetry. And on top of that, it has this amazing alignment with the sun that provides this incredible sight every so often.”

The moon is only a quarter of a million miles away and much smaller than Earth, he notes, while the sun is 93 million miles distant and is huge — far bigger than all of the planets in the solar system put together.

“It’s a strange coincidence that the moon at its distance and size almost perfectly covers the sun at its distance and size,” Perkowitz says. “It makes you stop and wonder — is it just a coincidence? Some people call an eclipse a religious experience. I call it cosmic.”