Project Category: Sciences

Rick Trebino

Rick Trebino was born in 1954. His father completed high school and his mother the 8th grade. With his father’s death, his family was supported by welfare and later social security. At age 13, his life changed dramatically when, with the assistance of an inspired 8th-grade teacher, he received a full scholarship from Phillips Academy in Andover, Massachusetts. With similar scholarship support, he received his B.A. from Harvard in 1977 and went on to receive his M.S. and Ph.D. from Stanford. Later, at Sandia National Laboratories, he solved one of the most important previously unsolved problems in optical physics, the development of a technique for the complete measurement of ultrashort laser pulses, the shortest events ever created. In 1998, he accepted an Eminent-Scholar Chair at Georgia Tech, where he currently develops new techniques for ultrafast optics and, more recently, for education. He has received numerous prizes for his technical work, including the Society of Photo-Instrumentation Engineers’ (SPIE’s) Edgerton Prize and an R&D 100 award, and he has been an IEEE and Optical Society of America (OSA) Distinguished Lecturer. He also recently won the SPIE’s Yzuel Award and the OSA’s Beller Award (among others) for his pioneering contributions to education, specifically, the development of a potentially world-changing new crowd-sourced approach to education in all subjects and levels. He is a Fellow of four international scientific societies. He remains very happily married to his high-school sweetheart and the love of his life, Linda.

Christy O’Mahony

Dr. Christy O’Mahony received her Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering from the University of Michigan and her Ph.D. from Georgia Tech in Chemistry.  She is a Senior Academic Professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and coordinates the undergraduate Analytical Chemistry Labs.

Scott Moffat

My parents were immigrants from Scotland to Canada. My father was a carpenter and my mother was a secretary. They divorced when I was ~3 and we (4 kids in all) were raised by my mother. Needless to say, we did not have much money.  I grew up in Toronto and knew nothing about going to college and was not even considering it.  I was a very mediocre student in school. I fell into a good group of friends in high school, most of whom were college bound.  I ended applied to college, almost by default.  When admitted, I selected the closest school to my house to minimize costs, which for me happened to be one of the best colleges in the country. I started studying psychology and biology and combined them together to satisfy my new interest in brain and behavior. About my 3rd year, I decided to go graduate school to become a professor in psychology/neuroscience. As an undergrad, it all came together for me. Previously, a mediocre student, I started to excel in all my courses once I found my niche. I never looked back, applying to and entering graduate school, earning my doctorate, a post-doc at NIH and then on to a faculty career. Looking back to when I was younger, it’s hard to believe it even happened–it was so unlikely, but here I am.

Ed Greco

From a trailer park in Central Florida, to a lecture hall at Georgia Tech, Ed has always been guided by curiosity and a love of nature.

Keaton Fletcher

Keaton Fletcher is an Assistant Professor of Industrial-Organizational Psychology. He is from Littleton, Colorado, and received his B.S. in Neuroscience and B.A. in Psychology from Washington and Lee University in 2013, and his Ph.D. in I-O Psychology from the University of South Florida in 2018. He studies workplace leadership and its effects on employee health outcomes and processes, as well as physiological and psychological predictors of leadership and team behaviors.

David Collard

David Collard is a Professor in the School of Chemistry & Biochemistry and serves as Senior Associate Dean in the College of Sciences. As a first-generation student he received his B.Sc. from the University of East Anglia (U.K.) before emigrating to the U.S. and receiving his Ph.D. from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. He has been at Georgia Tech since 1991. In addition to research interests in semiconducting polymers and the preparation of new materials from biorenewable resources he has extensive interests in STEM education, with a particular focus on broadening participation in research careers. In 2017 he received the University System of Georgia’s Felton Jenkins, Jr. Hall of Fame Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching. Collard is married to Dr. Joanne Mei, who was also a first-generation college student. They have one child and live in Atlanta.