New faculty pave way for astrophysics center
The Whistle - Dec. 15  In assessing its strategic plan, the School of Physics administration determined that either increasing its biophysics or astrophysics presence would assist in raising the school's profile nationally. With the fall semester addition of four faculty members, the school established a Center for Relativistic Astrophysics.  (full story... | Center for Relativistic Astrophysics)

GA and NC teens honored for research in biochemistry and genetics
Atlanta Business Chronicle - Nov. 22  Research projects in Biochemistry and Genetics boasted top marks for James Meixiong and the team of Sajith Wickramasekara and Andrew Guo in the recent Region Six Finals of the 2008 Siemens Competition in Math, Science & Technology  held at Georgia Tech (full story... |  Meixiong presentation | Wickramasekara/Guo presentation)

CEISMC’s GIFT program receives a holiday gift of its own from the UPS Foundation
In December, the UPS Foundation presented Georgia Tech’s K-12 outreach program, the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing (CEISMC), with a check for $25,000 for the center’s Georgia Intern-Fellowships for Teachers (GIFT) program. Under CEISMC, GIFT collaborates with Georgia’s corporations and universities to place teachers into summer internships with businesses and research institutes.  ( full story...  | CEISMC  | GIFT 2008 on YouTube )

Quantum information: New record for longer storage and retrieval of quantum information created
GT Research News  - Dec 7  Physicists have taken a significant step toward creation of quantum networks by establishing a new record for the length of time that quantum information can be stored in and retrieved from an ensemble of very cold atoms. Though the information remains usable for just milliseconds, even that short lifetime should be enough to allow transmission of data from one quantum repeater to another on an optical network.  (full story...  | Kuzmich Research Group )