2024-2025 Progress Report
Presented By: Lewis Wheaton, Ph.D., Director, C-PIES Professor, School of Biological Sciences
Thank you, Google!
With the support of Google, the Center for Programs to Increase Engagement in the Sciences (C-PIES) at Georgia Tech has been able to support undergraduate and graduate research.
UNDERGRADUATE STUDENTS
This past summer, Google’s support fully funded a summer research experience in neuroscience for 4 undergraduate scholars. These students engaged in a 10-week residential research experience program at Georgia Tech. The National Science Foundation has funded this program over the past 3 years, but funding was cut for this year due to shifting federal priorities. Without Google’s investment in C-PIES, we would have been unable to support these students.
Summer 2025 GT Research Experience in Neuroscience Undergraduate Scholars
Makayla Moore Spelman College
Modeling the Breakdown of Brain Criticality During Visual
Entrainment Using Kuramoto Oscillators and EEG Spectral
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The brain operates near a critical state, enabling flexible and efficient information processing. However, rhythmic external stimuli such as flickering lights can entrain neural activity, potentially driving the system away from criticality into pathological synchrony, as observed in photosensitive epilepsy. This project examines how steady-state visually evoked potentials alter the balance between scale-free aperiodic dynamics and periodic entrainment in neural signals.
Jasmine Grovner
California State University San Marcos
Visual Illusions Explain Surprising Effects in Perceptual
Confidence
Previous research done proposed that during perceptual decision making, confidence will increase in the presence of an irrelevant alternative option as accuracy remains the same, described as the “dud-alternative effect”.
This finding challenges the field’s dominant view that confidence reflects the posterior probability that a decision is correct, known as the Bayesian
Confidence Hypothesis. This study evaluates whether findings may be predicated on an unintended perceptual bias, specifically, the Ebbinghaus illusion, causing a pseudo inflation of confidence.
Chanice Wright Louisiana Tech University
The Interaction of Discrimination and Depression on Episodic Memory in Adults
Major depression impacts multiple aspects of an individual’s life, including cognition. Effects on cognition caused by major depression can impair episodic memory, which interacts with age and heightens the risk for further cognitive decline and Alzheimer’s disease. The present study examines the relationship between experiences with discrimination, depression, and memory impairment.
Andrea Cruz
New Mexico State University
Correlating Cognitive and Motor Understanding of Action
Words
Daily life involves making movements, ranging from small motions, like moving a finger joint, to larger movements such as walking and running. Studies have shown that movement can even facilitate language comprehension, particularly language related to behaviors. The goal of this work is to understand whether the linguistic understanding of actions impacts the performance of actions.
GRADUATE STUDENTS
This coming academic year, we will launch the Google Community Engagement Graduate Fellowship. This fellowship will provide 1 year of funding for 3 graduate students to engage in activities within the sciences focused in one of 3 areas:
Civic and Policy Engagement
Community Engaged Research
K-12 Research Outreach
I appreciate your support of C-PIES's work. Our goal is to continue to develop these programs and solidify funding to ensure they can continue to support the inclusive engagement of all in the College of Sciences. Google’s support has been critical in continuing existing programs and developing new opportunities with lasting impact. We hope to continue to advance these programs and discuss possibilities for the future.
With gratitude,
Lewis Wheaton, Ph.D.