When a chemical fire broke out at the BioLab facility in Conyers, Georgia in 2024, a plume of smoke blanketed the area, triggering evacuations and urgent warnings to stay indoors. But for many residents, this wasn’t just an isolated emergency—it was part of a larger pattern of industrial incidents at the plant that raised serious concerns about safety and oversight. 

The series “Manufacturing Danger: The BioLab Story” uncovers what led to the fire, how officials and the company responded, and the lingering questions about its impact on the community. The series includes expert analyses from Greg Huey, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and Pamela Pollet, principal academic professional in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

This story also appeared at NPR.

In an article published in The Washington Post, Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences James Stroud provides an overview of his research: 

Every morning in Miami, our fieldwork begins the same way. Fresh Cuban coffee and pastelitos — delicious Latin American pastries — fuel our team for another day of evolutionary detective work. In this case, we are tracking evolution in real time, measuring natural selection as it happens in a community of Caribbean lizards.

Our research takes place on a South Florida island roughly the size of an American football field — assuming we are successful in sidestepping the American crocodiles that bask in the surrounding lake. We call it Lizard Island, and it's a special place.

Since 2015, we have been conducting evolutionary research here on five species of remarkable lizards called anoles. Our team is working to understand one of biology's most fundamental questions: How does natural selection drive evolution in real time?

This also appeared in The Conversation. 

Peter Yunker, associate professor in the School of Physics, reflects on the results of new experiments which show that cells pack in increasingly well-ordered patterns as the relative sizes of their nuclei grow.

“This research is a beautiful example of how the physics of packing is so important in biological systems,” states Yunker. He says the researchers introduce the idea that cell packing can be controlled by the relative size of the nucleus, which “is an accessible control parameter that may play important roles during development and could be used in bioengineering.”