ARCS Foundation Atlanta Chapter

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ARCS Foundation Atlanta Chapter ARCS Foundation Atlanta funds the next generation of American scientists, right here in Georgia.

Since 1992, we have awarded $8 million+ through 1,230+ scholar awards to students at Georgia Tech, UGA, Emory University and Morehouse College.

28/09/2026

Georgia Tech started as a trade school with one degree.

On October 13, 1885, the Georgia legislature put up $65,000 to found a technical school. It opened in 1888 with 129 students, all studying mechanical engineering.

Georgia Tech is now the largest university in the state, with more than 56,000 students. Its research awards topped $1.53 billion in fiscal year 2026, and it generated $6.3 billion for Georgia’s economy in fiscal year 2025.

ARCS Foundation Atlanta is proud to support the next generation of scientists at Georgia Tech, Emory, UGA, and Morehouse.

Happy 141st birthday, Georgia Tech

Researh

25/09/2026

Before it was Google, it was BackRub: a research project by two Stanford PhD students, built in their student offices on equipment paid for by a research grant.

Larry Page and Sergey Brin were graduate students on a federally funded digital library project. Their question was how to rank web pages. The answer became the search engine most of us used today.

Breakthroughs often start with a student and a question. ARCS Foundation Atlanta funds student scientists at Georgia Tech Emory University University of Georgia Morehouse College.

24/09/2026

Before the sawmills, Georgia’s coastal plain was an open, fire-shaped longleaf pine forest. It survived the last Ice Age on the coast, spread across the South as the ice retreated, and needed regular fire to thrive. In 1901, UGA chemist Charles Herty invented a cup that let turpentine be collected without killing the tree. In 1906, UGA founded the oldest forest school in the South. Today, UGA works with south Georgia landowners to bring longleaf back. 🌲

Longleaf moved once before, and forests are moving again. As the climate shifts, tree species ranges are changing in ways that don’t match what scientists expected. UGA ecologist Christian Brown uses large-scale field experiments and mathematical modeling to understand why. Getting that right is what makes prediction possible, and prediction is what conservation depends on: which forests to protect, where to plant, and what a Georgia woodland might look like in fifty years.

Christian is one of 53 scholars ARCS Foundation Atlanta funds across UGA, Georgia Tech, Emory, and Morehouse.

University of Georgia Odum School of Ecology Ecology Club at UGA

21/09/2026

Even one particle from your skin could destroy a microchip.

That’s why ARCS Scholar Grace suits up head to toe before entering the Marcus Nanotechnology clean room at Georgia Tech. The garment isn’t there to protect her. It protects the chips and the fabrication machinery from her.

Grace is a Ph.D. student in Electrical and Computer Engineering, an NSF Graduate Research Fellow, and a Georgia Tech President’s Fellow. Her research brings together synthetic biology and microelectrode design to build living biosensors aimed at precise biochemical detection. She holds degrees in electrical engineering and chemistry from Purdue.

ARCS Foundation Atlanta is proud to support scholars like Grace who are building the future of science and technology in Georgia.

18/09/2026

Prostate cancer affects countless people. Justin Bromell studied the link between obesity and how it develops.

He describes the research as personal, driven by the impact the disease has had on his community.

Justin received an ARCS Foundation Atlanta scholar award for his work in Biology at Morehouse College.

17/09/2026

1999: scientists in Atlanta used living leech neurons to do math. Yes, really. 👇

They called it the leech-ulator. A team from Emory and Georgia Tech placed two living leech neurons in a dish, gave each one a number, and linked them with electronics. The firing of the receiving neuron gave the sum.

But the goal was never a leech calculator. The real question was how brains compute. Your brain runs on billions of neurons, and nobody fully understood how they work together to think.

Emory neuroscientist Ron Calabrese had studied leeches for about 25 years. He said he knew the cells “like I know my own children.” 🪱

And the person running the experiments? Paul García, an Emory MD/PhD student working across three labs.

Grad students are behind more breakthroughs than most people realize. ARCS Foundation Atlanta funds scholars at Morehouse, Georgia Tech, Emory, and UGA.

Would you trust a leech with your math homework?

Emory University Georgia Tech Georgia Tech College of Sciences Emory Laney Graduate School

16/09/2026

We asked our scholars to explain their research. We’re still Googling. 🧬
Immunology, biomolecules, microscopy, antigen arrays, stem cells, and melanoma, all in 22 seconds. Every one of these scientists is working on problems that matter, even if we need a dictionary to keep up.
Which term lost you first? 👇
ARCS Foundation Atlanta funds scholars at Morehouse College Georgia Tech Emory University University of Georgia

15/09/2026

In 2002, Emory University Hospital built a unit for the world’s most dangerous infections. For 12 years, the team trained and waited for its first patient.

On August 2, 2014, Emory became the first hospital in the United States to treat a patient with Ebola. All four Ebola patients it treated that year survived. In May 2026, the unit took in two passengers from a hantavirus outbreak aboard a cruise ship.

The next line of defense is being built in the lab. ARCS Scholar Elise Bezold is developing new disinfectants to fight drug-resistant pathogens at Emory University.

ARCS Foundation Atlanta funds the scientists working on what’s next.
Emory Dept of Chem

14/09/2026

The first Morehouse graduate to earn a PhD studied how fish regrow their fins.

Samuel Nabrit, class of 1925, was one of eight children in a Georgia family who all went to college. He earned his doctorate at Brown in 1932 and spent his career studying regeneration, work that helped lay groundwork for later research on regrowing nerve and muscle.

Three presidents appointed him to senior posts. Eisenhower named him to the National Science Board and Johnson appointed him to the Atomic Energy Commission. In 1967 he founded a fellowship fund for students pursuing doctorates and directed it for decades.

Morehouse undergraduates at Morehouse College are still doing that work. Printing prosthetics. Growing heart tissue. Building semiconductors.

ARCS Atlanta funds student scientists at Morehouse, Georgia Tech, UGA and Emory.
Morehouse College

12/09/2026

National Doctors’ Day is March 30 because of a UGA graduate.

On March 30, 1842, in Jefferson, Georgia, 26-year-old Dr. Crawford Long had his patient breathe ether from a towel, then operated. He is credited with the first surgery using ether. Long graduated in 1835 from Franklin College, the original college of the University of Georgia.

184 years later, University of Georgia opened its own School of Medicine and welcomed its first class: 64 future doctors, nearly all of them from Georgia.

The breakthroughs they will use come from research labs. ARCS Atlanta funds the student scientists in those labs at UGA, Georgia Tech, Emory and Morehouse.
The University of Georgia UGA School of Medicine

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