Tom Barker to serve as new faculty advisor.

The Parker H. Petit Institute announced that Thomas Barker, a Petit Faculty Fellow and associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), will serve as the new faculty advisor to the Petit Undergraduate Research Scholars program beginning in 2014.

Barker’s lab has served as a mentoring and training ground for a number of undergraduate students during his years at Georgia Tech and he has regularly served on the annual review committees to select incoming scholars. Barker has personally advised over 50 undergraduate researchers including over 25 that have received Georgia Tech’s Presidential Undergraduate Scholar Award, 3 NSF-ERC Research Experiences for Undergraduate (REU) awardees, and 6 Petit Scholars. Barker is also the primary faculty mentor for Georgia Tech’s Undergraduate iGEM (International Genetically Engineered Machines competition) team. Seventeen (17) of Barker’s undergraduate researchers have published in peer-reviewed journals and 2 have received the College of Engineering’s high award for undergraduate research. 

"I'm excited and honored to become the Faculty Advisor for the Petit Scholars Program. Research is at the core of Georgia Tech's mission and I relish the opportunity to help nurture the next generation of great scientists and engineers. The Petit Scholars program is the flagship undergraduate research program in biosciences at Georgia Tech and I look forward to continuing its growth and impact." 

“With Tom's long history of mentoring and training undergraduate students and his ongoing support of the program over the years, we are looking forward to this next generation of leadership in the Petit Scholars program,” said Bob Guldberg, PhD, Executive Director of the Petit Institute.

Since 2007, the program has been lead by Todd McDevitt, Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan Professor in BME and the director of the Stem Cell Engineering Center at Georgia Tech. Under his leadership, the Petit Scholars program flourished after McDevitt overhauled the application and review process, drawing a richer, more diverse pool of top undergrads to more than double the number of annual scholars.

Originally established as a summer Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program from a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant awarded to the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for Tissue Engineering, the program was expanded to a full year research opportunity that has funded more than 200 elite undergraduate bioengineering and bioscience scholars from Atlanta area universities to date.