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IPaT Hosts Annual Faculty Retreat

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For a fifth year, IPaT hosted its Annual Faculty Retreat. IPaT executive director Beth Mynatt opened the retreat with an overview of our recent initiatives.

This past year, IPaT has seen an increase in faculty leadership and faculty-led initiatives such as the new Wearable Computing Center and the leadership gathering of IPaT Research Directors each month. IPaT also continues to make a greater impact nationally, including Mynatt’s work with the Computing Community Consortium and the President's Council of Advisors on Science and Technology working group on aging.

For this year’s retreat, “We wanted to focus on listening to faculty in terms of the grand challenges driving their research and to pull together faculty with synergistic research interests from across campus,” said Mynatt.

The retreat included breakout groups on: Real-Time Disaster Response, Smart Cities and Wise Communities, Wearable / Instinctual Computing, Pediatric Healthcare Delivery, and Learning Healthcare Systems. Mynatt urged everyone to, “go for audacious breadth” when discussing research perspectives and goals.

After lunch, breakout group leaders presented a headline or two about Georgia Tech research that could appear 5 to 10 years from now, what expertise we currently have to make it happen, expertise that’s needed, and milestones along the way. Each presentation spurred terrific back and forth discussions with the multidisciplinary audience including Georgia Tech Executive Vice President for Research Steve Cross.

At the retreat, Mynatt also asked, “How do we effectively engage faculty across campus?”

IPaT regularly hosts town hall meetings, research directors meetings, and new in 2014, our weekly Thursday Think Tank, where we discuss and brainstorm about Georgia Tech research. IPaT will also work with each breakout group to sustain their discussions and to identify priority activities for the upcoming academic year.

This summer, the IPaT staff will focus its time on distilling the faculty input from the retreat and this year's “IPaT office hours” meetings with faculty to align priorities and resources with faculty interests.

The retreat wrapped up with the announcement of the IPaT Star Awards, which are presented each year to members of the IPaT community who have made significant achievements contributing to the fulfillment of the missions of IPaT and Georgia Tech. This year’s winners were Diane Owen, IPaT Financial Manager, and Richard Starr, who is a Research Scientist with IPaT. Ron Hutchins, Georgia Tech associate vice provost for research and technology and chief technology officer, also received a special award for his 34 years of service to Georgia Tech.

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  • Created By:Alyson Key
  • Created:07/15/2019
  • Modified By:Alyson Key
  • Modified:07/15/2019

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