Artificial intelligence has been touted as the most transformative technology of our time. With only a few years of mainstream use, it’s changed how we work and communicate, generated billions of dollars in investments, and sparked global debate. But according to leading neuroethics expert Karen Rommelfanger, the race isn’t over yet. 

“Can you think of a more transformative technology than one that intervenes with the fundamental organ that drives your experience in the world?” 

That fundamental organ is the brain.  

Technologies interfacing directly with the brain have been reserved for treating severe injury or disease for decades. Now, neurotechnology is expanding into brain-responsive wearables meant to enhance, augment, and monitor everyday life. As these technologies accelerate and AI is incorporated, the question is no longer if neurotechnology will transform society, but how — and who will shape the boundaries. 

These are some of the questions on which Karen Rommelfanger has built her career. Trained as a biomedical researcher and neuroscientist, Rommelfanger went on to found the Institute for Neuroethics, the world’s first think and do tank devoted entirely to neuroethics, public engagement, and policy implementation.  

“The brain is special; it’s central to who we are,” says Rommelfanger, who was also an inaugural recipient of the Dana Foundation Neuroscience and Society Award. “And that means when you intervene with the brain, there are unique responsibilities. The field of neuroethics addresses things like: How do you ensure mental privacy? How do you protect free will? How do you ensure that people have the power to be narrators of their own lives and their cognitive experience?” 

Now, Rommelfanger is joining Georgia Tech’s Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS) as a professor of the practice, where she will work to further embed neuroethics into Georgia Tech’s research and technology development ecosystem. 

“Georgia Tech is producing the next generation of neurotechnologists, and Karen’s expertise will help ensure we’re preparing them to think about societal impact as deeply as they think about the technical and scientific aspects of their work,” says Christopher Rozell, executive director of INNS. “Her leadership strengthens the Institute in exactly the way this moment in neurotechnology demands.”  

“Georgia Tech has many, many ways that it leads in the technology ecosystem. But one of the powerful, unique ways it can lead is through neurotechnology,” says Rommelfanger. “I hope that the INNS, given its unique mandate for neuroscience, neurotechnology, and society, can be a lighthouse for these types of conversations.” 

Neuroethics by Design 

On April 2, Georgia Tech launched its new Institute for Technology and Civic Leadership with a symposium built around a simple idea. Society benefits when people are willing to listen, especially to those who disagree with them. 

Across more than 1,100 combined respondents, the study uncovers selective temporal stability in energy preferences. Some attributes—such as support for higher RPS targets, reductions in water use, and preferences for online smart‑meter information—remain relatively stable over time. In contrast, others shift considerably: WTP for increasing the rooftop solar share declines by more than 40%, while WTP to protect monthly credit banking rises more than 200%, reflecting heightened awareness of net‑metering debates and rapid growth in rooftop solar adoption.

Importantly, the study reveals that environmental attitudes, measured through New Ecological Paradigm (NEP) scores, once strongly predicted preferences for rooftop solar and smart‑meter technologies in 2017, but these relationships fade or even reverse by 2023—signaling a shift as these technologies transition from niche, identity‑driven goods to mainstream infrastructure. Meanwhile, environmental attitudes continue to robustly shape preferences for RPS increases and water‑use reductions in both survey waves.

Read Full Story on the EPIcenter Webpage

The paper examines various strategies for enhancing the flexibility of data center energy use. One approach is to use backup power systems, such as uninterruptible power supplies, to support the grid during emergencies. Another method involves rerouting computing jobs to different data centers in other locations to balance energy demand. The authors also discuss implementing smart scheduling techniques that shift workloads to off-peak hours, reducing strain on the grid. Additionally, they highlight adjusting processor speeds by lowering CPU (central processing unit) and GPU (graphics processing unit) clock rates to limit power consumption when needed. Finally, the paper suggests pre-cooling data center equipment to limit the energy required for cooling during peak demand periods. Notably, experimental evidence shows that underclocking GPUs can cut power consumption by 40% with only a 22% performance loss, suggesting technical feasibility for demand-response interventions.

Despite these technical options, the authors find that real-world cost considerations and reliability concerns limit widespread adoption. Data center operators generally do not change their behavior in response to electricity prices, as job revenue far outweighs energy costs under normal conditions. For example, a GPU rented at $2 per hour consumes only $0.04 worth of electricity at average prices, making curtailment unattractive except during extreme price spikes. Surveys indicate that operators are reluctant to compromise reliability or deploy backup systems for ancillary services. Consequently, price-based incentives alone are unlikely to drive meaningful flexibility.

Read more on the EPIcenter Webpage
Listen to a podcast on the research here

As new data centers continue to be built and proposed in Georgia, counties and municipalities across the state are considering how to guide this growth. EPIcenter’s data center dashboard provides policymakers, planners, researchers, and community stakeholders with a centralized resource to better understand how data center regulations are being developed and applied across Georgia and the U.S.

“Our Data Center Hub provides Georgia communities with a one-stop shop to understand how their neighbors are managing land-use regulations for data centers,” said Laura Taylor, director of EPIcenter. “It brings together clear, accessible information to help jurisdictions plan when data center growth occurs in their area.”

The dashboard is organized around five thematic areas commonly addressed in data center land-use regulations: Site Planning and Building Design, Infrastructure and Utilities, Environmental and Community Protections, Public Safety and Security, and Lifecycle Governance. Within each theme, users can explore specific regulatory topics and access the relevant ordinances enacted by Georgia communities.

To build the dashboard, EPIcenter researchers conducted a comprehensive review of municipal codes across the state.

“We reviewed municipal codes for about 180 cities and counties across Georgia and identified ordinances that specifically address data center development,” said Yang You, EPIcenter’s research associate who developed the project. “In total, we found 19 data center-specific topics that ordinances tend to cover. We analyzed ordinances across jurisdictions and organized their ordinance provisions into topics such as building placement, setbacks, infrastructure, and environmental considerations to make it easier to compare how different jurisdictions regulate data centers.”

You added that the dashboard also incorporates examples from outside of Georgia. By gathering ordinances from other states and pairing them with Georgia-specific examples, EPIcenter aims to provide a clear framework to help communities efficiently address data center land-use regulation.

The Georgia Data Center Ordinance Hub is available through the Energy Policy and Innovation Center website.

The study finds that higher electricity rates and greater shares of college-educated residents are associated with lower household consumption, while larger homes, electric heating, and higher incomes drive usage upward. Notably, electric vehicle (EV) incentive programs correlate with increased household electricity demand—even after controlling for public charging infrastructure—suggesting these programs effectively promote EV adoption and at-home charging. In contrast, energy efficiency (EE) and renewable energy (RE) programs show no clear relationship with consumption in multivariate models. 

Read Full Story and listen to a related podcast on the EPIcenter Newspage

The study finds that EV ownership remains relatively low among households with “median” characteristics — approximately 1% of household vehicles are electric — but increases substantially when households report access to community charging infrastructure. In contrast, single‑vehicle households and households located in states without Tesla dealerships exhibit significantly lower EV ownership rates. When examining adoption intent, the authors find that access to community and workplace charging, trust in the federal government, more liberal political ideology, younger age, and urban residence are consistently associated with higher stated interest in EV adoption. Notably, single‑vehicle households express significantly greater intent to adopt one in the future, despite being less likely to own an EV today. The analysis also reveals that public transit users show elevated EV adoption intent at earlier stages of consideration, suggesting potential complementarities between transit use and personal vehicle electrification.

Read Full Story and listen to a related podcast on the EPIcenter Newspage

An illustrious career focused on understanding the nuances of energy policy through analytics has shaped the career of Marilyn Brown, the Regents & Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.

The oil shortages of the 1970s galvanized Marilyn Brown to focus her graduate research on ways to improve energy security and affordability. This focus launched an impactful career for Brown, currently a Regents & Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech.

Along the way she was an Associate Professor of Geography at the University of Illinois, a two-term Presidentially appointed regulator of the Tennessee Valley Authority, and the Energy Engineering Division Director and Program Manager of Oak Ridge National Laboratory’s research on energy efficiency, renewable energy, and the electric grid.

Over the years, Brown has authored seven books, 350 publications, and contributed to the 2007 Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) assessment reports for which the IPCC shared the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize.

Leading local climate impact efforts

Interested in the physical sciences and mathematics early on, Brown worked on understanding the “diffusion” of innovation: how advances propagate in the energy field.

Her current projects focus on both local and national climate-related challenges. This research has been enriched by surveys of energy service providers, utility regulators, manufacturers, consumers, and low-income households.

Understanding the role of influencers and perceived risks and paybacks, helps optimize energy policies and programs. With this premise in mind, Brown has explored the consequences of high energy bills on households living on the edge. She led the first nationwide evaluation of the world’s largest low-income energy efficiency initiative, the Weatherization Assistance Program. The results documented the magnitude of the problem of inefficient housing nationwide, and the particularly high energy burden of low-income households in the South.

Full Story on the EPIcenter Newspage.

Perhaps most notably, governance‑related concepts such as community engagement, siting justice, and public trust are largely absent from the dominant keyword clusters revealed through TF‑IDF and LDA analysis. This pattern contrasts with long‑standing evidence that nuclear deployment outcomes hinge on procedural fairness, transparency, and risk communication. As cities face rising electricity demand, climate‑driven outages, growing data center loads, and new siting pressures, the lack of urban‑relevant framing in national SMR strategies may limit the technology’s ability to support equitable and resilient energy systems.

The authors conclude that viewing SMRs chiefly as engineering solutions risks missing their potential contributions to multi‑service energy portfolios and resilience planning. They argue that meaningful integration of SMRs into smart energy cities will require a broader policy architecture—one that explicitly addresses governance, cross‑sectoral applications, spatial justice, and local participation. Expanding future analyses to include state, provincial, and municipal policies will also be essential, given that these levels of government oversee land use, community engagement, and emergency management—factors central to nuclear siting and energy justice.

To learn more and listen to a podcast on the paper, please visit the EPIcenter Newspage.

The prize recognizes outstanding student research produced within the School and highlights the value of EPIcenter’s sustained research support and professional development for graduate students.

Ramadhani’s award-winning paper, titled “Battery Storage and Natural Gas Generator Market Power,” was developed during his participation in EPIcenter’s Summer Research Program for graduate and doctoral students pursuing energy policy research at Georgia Tech. Through the program, he received research mentoring and communications coaching that strengthened his work.

“This award reflects what can happen when students have the time, mentorship, and support to fully develop their ideas,” said Laura Taylor, director of EPIcenter. “Our Summer Research Program is designed to help graduate students advance rigorous energy policy research while also building the skills needed to communicate that work effectively.”

Supporting Graduate Research in Energy Policy

The program supports graduate students whose work contributes to energy policy and innovation. Student affiliates receive funding, mentorship, and access to EPIcenter’s research and communications resources, helping them build their academic profiles and translate complex research for broader audiences. 

In addition, they gain valuable opportunities to present their work, participate in EPIcenter programs and events, share their research through EPIcenter’s communications platforms, and build their skills through tailored collaboration and training with EPIcenter staff.

During the summer, Ramadhani worked closely with EPIcenter staff and mentors. The program’s stipend allowed him to spend those months fully focused on his research, rather than taking on teaching or other responsibilities.

"Participating in the program really made my summer productive. I got a lot of good feedback on how to shape the idea into a paper," he said.

Advancing Emerging Scholars

Ramadhani’s recognition reflects EPIcenter’s broader commitment to supporting graduate students whose research addresses critical energy and policy challenges. By pairing research support with mentorship and communications training, the center helps students develop work that earns recognition well beyond the program itself.

Today, Matisoff continues research activities in this space and also directs a professional master’s program whose graduates help implement environmental policies in the public and private sector. Soon after joining the Georgia Tech faculty in 2009, he began to focus on market transformation through regulation, government subsidies and other financial incentives. 

This led to an award-winning 2023 book about the Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) certification program. It sparked the construction industry’s green building movement and incentivized early adopters of sustainable technology to create new supply chains. For Matisoff, LEED is a perfect example of using governance as a lever for environmental change. 

Read Full Story on the EPIcenter Webpage

The interactive dashboard compiles and visualizes data gathered by Matisoff, along with Program and Operations Manager Michael Morley, offering a comprehensive view of SAF production, feedstock availability, and policy trends.

EPIcenter Research Associate Yang You has designed the dashboard to translate complex datasets into policy-relevant insights for decision-makers. By organizing key metrics into interactive visuals, the dashboard helps stakeholders assess market readiness and identify regulatory actions that could accelerate SAF adoption.

Emphasizing the importance of data-driven insights, Matisoff said, “The Department of Energy has a Grand Challenge to produce 3 billion gallons a year of Sustainable Aviation Fuel by 2030, and 35 billion gallons a year by 2050. By compiling and visualizing SAF data, we can help policymakers and researchers understand progress towards these goals, where the key opportunities and bottlenecks are – and how to move forward effectively”. 

Why SAF Matters
While aviation only accounts for about 3% of global greenhouse gas emissions, it is a rapidly growing share, and decarbonizing this sector is considered one of the most challenging aspects of the energy transition. Produced from renewable feedstocks, sustainable aviation fuel offers a pathway to reduce lifecycle emissions from air travel without requiring major changes to aircraft or infrastructure. However, SAF production and deployment face hurdles related to cost, supply chain development, and policy support.

EPIcenter’s Director Laura Taylor highlighted the dashboard’s role in addressing these challenges:
“Sustainable aviation fuel is a cornerstone of decarbonizing air travel, but the market is complex and rapidly evolving. The dashboard provides clarity by organizing the relevant data in a way that’s accessible and actionable for decision-makers.”

“This tool is meant to bridge analysis and action,” said You. “By visualizing SAF production, capacity, and offtake dynamics, the dashboard allows policymakers and stakeholders to see where the market is moving, where gaps remain, and how targeted infrastructure investments or supportive policies could unlock scale.”

The EPIcenter SAF Dashboard is intended as a resource for industry leaders, policymakers, and researchers working to accelerate SAF adoption. By providing transparent, data-driven insights, Georgia Tech aims to support informed decisions that advance innovation and sustainability in aviation.

To explore the dashboard and learn more about Georgia Tech’s work on sustainable aviation fuel, visit EPIcenter’s SAF page. 

Author: Alain Louchez, CDAIT Co-founder and Director Emeritus.

“We can assist at every stage of statistical analysis and for every School and major on campus,” says Kim.

She emphasizes that students and faculty don’t need a fully formed research design to seek help. In fact, Kim encourages early consultations — preferably before data collection.

“If you want a solid hypothesis and data plan, the best time to come is actually before you start collecting data,” she explains. “The goal is to make statistical support an integral part of the research process rather than a last-minute hurdle.”

Kim earned a Ph.D. in Quantitative Psychology from Georgia Tech in 2024. She proposed the idea for a Stats HelpDesk during the interview for her current position after witnessing people with great research ideas struggle to find accessible, customized statistical guidance.

“Many researchers — not just students but faculty as well — spend hours troubleshooting their data or interpreting output without knowing whether their approach is appropriate,” she says. “I want to bridge that gap.”

The service, which officially began in late September, is staffed solely by Kim. Despite its early phase, she has already supported faculty, graduate students, and undergraduates on projects ranging from senior theses to academic papers.

Liam Hart is a second-year Ph.D. student studying psychology. “I am still learning multilevel modeling but plan to use it for my thesis,” says Hart. “The Stats HelpDesk has been incredibly useful — helping me apply what I’m learning in class to my research — so that I can move forward with my research proposal.”

Consultations are by appointment only and should be set up through the Stats HelpDesk website. Remote and in-person meetings are available on Mondays from noon to 2 p.m. and on Tuesdays (remote only) from 1 – 2 p.m. Currently, the service is free, but a small charge may be added at a later date.

Looking ahead, Kim plans to expand the team to include specialists in areas such as Bayesian modeling, multilevel modeling, and item response theory.

“With more team members, we could allocate questions based on expertise,” she adds. “In the long term, we hope to grow into a collaborative resource that serves institutions beyond Georgia Tech.”

According to The Planetary Society, more than 30 missions are slated to launch to the moon between 2024 and 2030, backed by the U.S., China, Japan, India, and various private corporations. That compares to over 40 missions to the moon between 1959 and 1979 and a scant three missions between 1980 and 2000.

A multidisciplinary team at Georgia Tech has found that while collision probabilities in orbits around the moon are very low compared to Earth orbit, spacecraft in lunar orbit will likely need to conduct multiple costly collision avoidance maneuvers each year. The Journal of Spacecraft and Rockets published the Georgia Tech collision-avoidance study in March.

“The number of close approaches in lunar orbit is higher than some might expect, given that there are only tens of satellites, rather than the thousands in low Earth orbit,” says paper co-author Mariel Borowitz, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Borowitz and other researchers attribute these risky approaches in part to spacecraft often choosing a limited number of favorable orbits and the difficulty of monitoring the exact location of spacecraft that are more than 200,000 miles away.

“There is significant uncertainty about the exact location of objects around the moon. This, combined with the high cost associated with lunar missions, means that operators often undertake maneuvers even when the probability is very low — up to one in 10 million,” Borowitz explains. 

The Georgia Tech research is the first published study showing short- and long-term collision risks in cislunar orbits. Using a series of Monte Carlo simulations, the researchers modeled the probability of various outcomes in a process that cannot be easily predicted because of random variables. 

“Our analysis suggests that satellite operators must perform up to four maneuvers annually for each satellite for a fleet of 50 satellites in low lunar orbit (LLO),” said one of the study’s authors, Brian Gunter, associate professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. 

He noted that with only 10 satellites in LLO, a satellite might still need a yearly maneuver. This is supported by what current cislunar operators have reported. 

Favored Orbits

Most close encounters are expected to occur near the moon’s equator, an intersection point between the orbit planes of commonly used “frozen” and low lunar orbits, which are preferred by many operators. Other possible regions of congestion can occur at the Lagrangian points, or regions where the gravitational forces of Earth and the moon balance out. Stable orbits in these regions have names such as Halo and Lyapunov orbits. 

“Lagrangian points are an interesting place to put a satellite because it can maintain its orbit for long periods with very little maneuvering and thrusting. Frozen orbits, too. Anywhere outside these special areas, you have to spend a lot of fuel to maintain an orbit,” he said.

Gunter and other researchers worry that if operators aren’t coordinated about how they plan lunar missions, opportunities for collision will increase in these popular orbits.

“The close approaches were much more common than I would have intuitively anticipated,” says lead study author Stef Crum.

The 2024 graduate of Georgia Tech’s aerospace engineering doctoral program notes that, considering the small number of satellites in lunar orbit, the need for multiple maneuvers was “really surprising.”

Crum, who is also co-founder of Reditus Space, a startup he founded in 2024 to provide reusable orbital re-entry services, adds that the cislunar environment is so challenging because “it’s incredibly vast.”

His research also examines ways to improve object monitoring in cislunar space. Maintaining continuous custody of these objects is difficult because a target’s position must be monitored over the entire duration of its trajectory. 

“That wasn’t feasible for translunar orbits, given the vast volume of cislunar orbit, which stretches multiple millions of kilometers in three dimensions,” he says.

By estimating a satellite’s orbit using observed data and constraining the presumed location and direction of the satellite, rather than continuous tracking (a process known as continuous custody), Crum greatly simplified the process. 

“You no longer need thousands of satellites or a set of enormous satellites to cover all potential trajectories,” he explains. “Instead, one or a few satellites are required, and operators can lose custody for a time as long as the connection is reacquired later.”

Since the team started their study, there has been a lot of interest in the moon and cislunar activity — both NASA and China’s National Space Administration are planning to send humans to the moon. In the last two years, India, Japan, the U.S., China, Russia, and four private companies have attempted missions to the moon. 

Why the Moon

Spacefaring nations’ intense interest in exploring the lunar surface comes as no surprise given that the moon offers a variety of resources, including solar power, water, oxygen, and metals like iron, titanium, and uranium. It also contains Helium-3, a potential fuel for nuclear fusion, and rare earth metals vital for modern technology. With the recent discovery of water ice, it could be a plentiful source for rocket fuel that can be created from liquifying oxygen and hydrogen needed to launch deep space missions to destinations like Mars. In February, Georgia Tech announced that researchers have developed new algorithms to help Intuitive Machines’ lunar lander find water ice on the moon.

Commercial space companies like Axiom Space and Redwire Space, as well as space agencies, are actively building lunar infrastructure, from satellite constellations to orbital platforms to support communication, navigation, scientific research, and eventually space tourism. 

A key project involves the Lunar Gateway, a joint venture of NASA and international space agencies like ESA, JAXA, and CSA, as well as commercial partners. Humanity’s first space station around the moon will serve as a central hub for human exploration of the moon and is considered a stepping stone for future deep space missions.

Getting Ahead of a Gold Rush to the Moon

All this activity underscores the urgency to get out in front of potential crowding issues — something that hasn’t occurred in LEO, where near-miss collisions, or conjunctions, are frequent. LEO, which is 100 to 1,200 miles above the Earth’s surface, is host to more than 14,000  satellites and 120 million pieces of debris from launches, collisions, and wear and tear, reports Reuters.

“Using the near-Earth environment as an example, the space object population has gone from approximately 6,000 active satellites in the early 2020s to an anticipated 60,000 satellites in the coming decade if the projected number of large satellite constellations currently in the works gets deployed. That poses many challenges in terms of how we can manage that sustainably,” observed Gunter. “If something similar happens in the lunar environment, say if Artemis (NASA’s program to establish the first long-term presence on the moon) is successful and a lunar base is established, and there is discovery of volatiles or water deposits, it could initiate a kind of gold rush effect that might accelerate the number of actors in cislunar space.”

For this reason, Borowitz argues for the need to begin working on coordination, either in the planning of the orbits for future missions or by sharing information about the location of objects operating in lunar orbit. She pointed out that spacecraft outfitted for moon missions are expensive, making a collision highly costly. Also, debris from such a scenario would spread in an unpredictable way, which could be problematic for other objects.

Gunter agreed, noting, “If we’re not careful, we could be putting a lot of things in this same path. We must ensure we build out the cislunar orbital environment in a smart way, where we’re not intentionally putting spacecraft in the same orbital spaces. If we do that, everyone should be able to get what they want and not be in each other’s way.”

Borowitz says some coordination efforts are underway with the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space and the creation of an action team on lunar activities; however, international diplomacy is a time-consuming process, and it can be a challenge to keep pace with advancements in technology.

She contends that the Georgia Tech study could provide baseline data that “could be helpful for international coordination efforts, helping to ensure that countries better understand potential future risks.”

Gunter and Borowitz say that follow-on research for the team could involve looking into the Lunar Gateway orbit and other special orbits to see how crowded that space will likely get, and then do an end-to-end simulation of these orbits to determine the most effective way to build them out to avoid collision risks. Ultimately, they intend to develop guidelines to help ensure that future space actors headed to the moon can operate safely.

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

The authors find that a doubling of hourly wind generation variance increases average hourly ACE by 2% in BPA, 3.7% in NYISO, and 11.4% in SPP—equivalent to 1.2 MW, 1.8 MW, and 9.35 MW increases in system imbalance, respectively. PJM shows no significant effect, likely due to less granular data. They also show that sudden increases in wind generation are more likely to cause oversupply (positive ACE), while sudden drops lead to undersupply (negative ACE), confirming asymmetric operational impacts.

Read Full Story on the EPIcenter Website

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

This summer, students in Eric Schumacher’s Psychology 3000 – Stress, Anxiety, and Happiness class researched that question during a new study abroad experience in southern Italy.

Schumacher, a professor in the School of Psychology and recently named director of the B.S. in Neuroscience program, has taught the popular class for many years.

“The course typically covers how culture affects and interacts with chronic stress,” says Schumacher. “I added the two-week study abroad to provide an immersive cultural comparison of stress and well-being between the U.S. and Italy.”

Seventeen students from across Georgia Tech participated in the inaugural program. The group spent four days in Naples and 10 days on the island of Ischia, exploring locations around the Bay of Naples and the Amalfi Coast.

“This program empowers students to explore the science and culture of stress and well-being provided by the traditional lifestyle of southern Italy,” says Schumacher. “Through the integration of psychological theory with local practices — both modern and in the ancient past — students gain critical insights into health, resilience, and human flourishing in a global context.”

The curriculum blends daily discussions with cultural experiences, studying the importance of family, food, nature, and free time. Students study both ancient and modern Italian relaxation methods, including visits to Roman bathhouses and hot springs, Pompeii, Greek amphitheaters, pasta factories, and cooking classes.

“Studying abroad was such a special experience,” says Haley Armor, a fourth-year literature, media, and communication major. “Ischia offered a unique backdrop for learning about the psychology of stress and happiness. Everything from our day trips to our daily routines felt like it contributed to our understanding of the coursework.”

Students enjoyed the opportunity to learn from southern Italy’s famous laid-back culture:

“The trip showed me just how much unnecessary stress we as Americans often impose on ourselves by never slowing down,” says Kylie McCook, a third-year psychology major. “My favorite experience was visiting Capri and doing a Blue Grotto boat tour. It gave me a chance to have a relaxing and beautiful experience and become closer friends with other students on the trip.”

“I am so thankful for my study abroad experience,” adds Abby Davis, a second-year neuroscience major.  "I especially enjoyed the thermal parks and the gorgeous beaches. We were able to learn about the history of some of these places, which was so interesting, especially Pompeii!"

Schumacher considers the program a resounding success and hopes to offer it again in the summer of 2026, citing the two-week length of the program as optimal to allow students time to participate in other summer classes or internship opportunities.

“Encouraging students to engage with unfamiliar environments, both culturally and geographically, significantly deepened their learning experience,” says Schumacher. “Discussing stress management and wellness is valuable in a classroom setting, but experiencing it firsthand — by taking a relaxing swim in the Mediterranean — really brings the concept to life.”

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

More than half a century after the United States won the race to the moon, the White House is setting its sights on a new frontier: Mars. In a move reminiscent of the Apollo era, the administration has proposed landing Americans on the red planet by the end of 2026 — a bold initiative that has reignited national ambition and drawn comparisons to the space race of the 20th century. 

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

The 2022 class of Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems Graduate Fellows are:

• Oliver Chapman - Ph.D. student, School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Megan Conville - Ph.D. student, School of City and Regional Planning, College of Design
• Carlos Fernandez - Ph.D. student, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Sarah Roney - Ph.D. student, School of Biological Sciences
• Olianike Olaomo - Ph.D. student, School of History and Sociology, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Vishal Sharma - Ph.D. student, School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing

The Faculty Advisory Board for the BBISS Graduate Fellows is composed of the faculty who submitted the students' nominations. Nominations for Class III of the BBISS Graduate Fellows program will open in the Spring 2023. It is expected that 6 to 8 scholars will be selected for next year’s group.

The Faculty Advisory Board for the inaugural class are:

• Marta Hatzell
• Marilyn Brown
• Elora Raymond
• Kate Pride Brown
• Marc Weissburg
• Neha Kumar

Updates and outcomes will be posted to the BBISS website as the project progresses. Additional information is available at https://research.gatech.edu/sustainability/grad-fellows-program.

The highly technical, science-based, and interdisciplinary program — approved by the Board of Regents on Feb. 12, 2019 — will prepare students to deliver fact-based policy expertise through robust analytical techniques and a deep understanding of energy and environmental issues and sustainability practices.

“This professionally focused degree will allow Georgia Tech to educate the next generation of sustainability leaders in corporate, government, and non-governmental organizations,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “Georgia Tech is proud to deliver innovative, affordable, and top-quality education in high-demand areas such as sustainability to meet the needs of our evolving workforce."

When the program begins in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts' School of Public Policy in August 2019, MSEEM students will study topics such as sustainable energy and voluntary environmental commitments, cost-benefit analysis, utility regulation and policy, Earth systems, economics of environmental policy, big data and policy analytics, climate policy, and environmental management.

They also will learn analytical techniques used to estimate and evaluate sustainability metrics, be able to expertly assess the context of energy and environmental problems, and understand environmental ethics and its implications for sustainability practice.

The program will combine professional instruction from the nationally-ranked School of Public Policy with Georgia Tech’s top-notch engineering, business, and planning faculties to educate professionals who can lead organizations toward policies consistent with a sustainable future.

“This unique interdisciplinary program takes an innovative and integrative approach to sustainability that epitomizes the commitment of the School of Public Policy to collaborate across disciplines to educate future policy analysts and leaders and turn ideas into solutions to public problems,” said Kaye Husbands Fealing, professor and chair of the school.

Faculty will be drawn from across the Georgia Tech campus, including from the School of Public Policy, the Scheller College of Business, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the School of City and Regional Planning.

Guest lecturers from Atlanta’s corporate community, government agencies, NGOs and research organizations also will participate — helping connect MSEEM students to the state of the practice and to job opportunities.

MSEEM students also will have access to Georgia Tech’s summer Program on Sustainable Development and Climate Change in Venice, Italy. The 5-week, 6-credit program features courses in climate policy and sustainable development and provides a multi-disciplinary learning experience that combines classroom lectures, guest speakers and instructional field trips.

 “The world’s energy economy is undergoing transformational change, and as the public and private sectors strengthen their commitment to green practices, the need will increase for well-trained policy experts able to design, implement, and manage responses to sustainability issues. This program will provide such leaders,” said Marilyn A. Brown, Regents’ Professor and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy.

The MSEEM program is designed to serve a broad range of students interested in sustainability issues. Students can complete the degree on campus or online as a full-time student. Students also have the option to enroll part-time and complete their degree online. The program is designed to serve working professionals and others who want to participate part-time and earn their degree over several years.

In addition to the master’s degree, Georgia Tech is also offering a Certificate in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management. This 12-credit hour SEEM Certificate can be completed in one or two semesters and can be earned on its own or in combination with the master’s degree.

Applications are being accepted through June 15 for the inaugural class of MSEEM students, who will begin study in August 2019.

A generous philanthropic gift has enabled Georgia Tech to offer five fully funded MSEEM fellowships to the program each year for the first three years of the program.

For more information on these programs, visit https://cepl.gatech.edu/mseem, or https://cepl.gatech.edu/cseem.

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

It’s a chicken and egg situation: Should renewable energy projects launch first hoping that transmission lines to pipe generated power to distant places will follow on their heels? Or should the transmission lines be stood up first as a way to attract investments in renewable energy projects? Which comes before the other? It’s a question that has intrigued Gaurav Doshi, assistant professor at the School of Economics at Georgia Tech, for a while now. His award-winning paper about this research explores the downstream effects of building power lines.

After a bachelor’s and master’s degree in applied economics from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, Doshi earned his doctorate in the same field from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2023. He explored questions about environmental economics as part of his doctoral work.

“Once I started researching energy markets in the U.S., I kept getting deeper and coming up with new questions,” Doshi says. Among the many his work explores: What are the effects of infrastructure policies and how can they help decarbonization efforts? What are some of the unintended consequences policy makers need to think about?

One of his current research projects has roots in his doctoral work. It explores how to quantify the benefits of difficult-to-quantify environmental infrastructure projects. Case in point: Decarbonization will likely lead to more electrification from renewable energy resources and will need power lines to transport this energy to places of demand. The costs for such infrastructure are pretty transparent as part of government project funding. But the benefits are less so, Doshi points out. To develop effective policy, both the costs and benefits need clear visibility. “Otherwise the question arises ‘why should we spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money if we don’t know the benefits?’”

Read Full Story on the EPIcenter Webpage

EPIcenter will provide a full stipend and tuition for the 2025 summer semester to support the students.

“I look forward to hosting a fantastic cohort of early-career energy scholars this summer,” said Laura Taylor, EPIcenter’s director. “The summer research program will not only help the students advance their research while engaging in interdisciplinary dialogue but also offers professional development opportunities to position them for a strong start to their careers.”

The students will work with EPIcenter staff and be provided with on-campus workshops on written and oral communications. Biweekly meetings over the summer will offer the students an opportunity to share their work, progress, and ideas with each other and the EPIcenter faculty affiliates. In addition, the students will have the opportunity to engage with programs and distinguished guests of the center. 

For students interested in presenting their research at a conference, EPIcenter also will provide travel grants of up to $600 pursuant to having their paper/presentation posted on the EPIcenter website.

"I applied to the Summer Research Program because its structure and community aligned perfectly with my summer plan on dissertation work in energy policy,” said Yifan Liu. “I aim to finalize key dissertation chapters and engage closely with peers and mentors to prepare me for the job market." 

The program offers students an opportunity to promote their work through the EPIcenter communication channels including the website, news feeds, blogs, and the SEI newsletter.

“I am very excited to spend my summer at EPIcenter exploring how battery storage entry affects competition in the electricity market,” said Maghfira “Afi” Ramadhani, one of the student affiliates selected for the summer research program. “Specifically, I look at how the rollout of battery storage in the Texas electricity market impacts renewable curtailment, fossil-fuel generator markup, and generator entry and exit.”

With a variety of backgrounds and perspectives on energy, each of the students in the summer program brings something unique to EPIcenter.

La’Darius Thomas: “My project explores the potential of peer-to-peer energy trading systems in promoting decentralized, sustainable energy solutions. I aim to contribute to the development of energy models that empower individuals and communities to directly participate in electricity markets.”

Niraj Palsule: “I intend to gain interdisciplinary insights interfacing energy transition technology and policy developments by participating in the EPIcenter Summer Research Program.”

John Kim: “I believe the EPIcenter Summer Research Program will deepen my investigation of how environmental hazards disproportionately affect vulnerable communities through research on power outage impacts and lead contamination. This summer, I hope to refine my analysis and complete research on the socioeconomic dimensions of power reliability and environmental resilience.”

Mehmet “Akif” Aglar: "I applied to the EPIcenter Summer Research Program because it offers the chance to work alongside and learn from a community of highly qualified researchers across various fields. I believe the opportunity to present my work, receive feedback, and benefit from the structure the program provides will be invaluable for advancing my research."

About EPICenter

The mission of the Energy Policy and Innovation Center is to conduct rigorous studies and deliver high impact insights that address critical regional, national, and global energy issues from a Southeastern U.S. perspective. EPICenter is pioneering a holistic approach that calls upon multidisciplinary expertise to engage the public on the issues that emerge as the energy transformation unfolds. The center operates within Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute.

Born and brought up in Wisconsin, the associate professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for undergraduate and graduate studies. It was also at Madison that he decided to go into the family business: power engineering. 

Molzahn’s grandfather was a Navy electrician in World War II and later completed a bachelor’s in electrical engineering. He eventually was plant director at a big coal plant in Green Bay. Molzahn’s dad was also a power engineer and worked at a utility company, focusing on nuclear power.  

It was not uncommon for family vacations to include a visit to a coal mine or a nuclear power plant. Being steeped in everything power engineering eventually seeped into Molzahn’s bones. “I remember seeing all the infrastructure that goes into producing energy and it was endlessly fascinating for me,” he says.  

That endless fascination has worked its way into Molzahn’s research today—at the intersection of computation and power systems. 

Read Full Story on the EPIcenter Webpage

That future is being shaped today at Georgia Tech’s Center for Human-AI-Robot Teaming (CHART). Led by Bruce Walker, a professor in the School of Psychology and the School of Interactive Computing, the newly launched Center aims to transform how humans, artificial intelligence, and robots work together. By focusing on the dynamic partnership between humans and intelligent systems, CHART will explore how humans can collaborate more effectively with artificial intelligence systems and robots to solve critical scientific and societal challenges.

“There are wonderful Georgia Tech units like the Institute for People and Technology and the Institute for Robotics and Machines  that do an incredible job focusing on using and creating intelligent systems and technology,” says Walker. “CHART adds value to this ecosystem with our emphasis on the interactive partnership between humans, AI technology, and robots and machines with agency.”

Based in the School of Psychology, CHART has built an international and interdisciplinary consortium of researchers and innovators from academia and industry. Its impressive membership includes researchers from five Georgia Tech colleges, 18 universities worldwide, industry, public policy organizations, cities, and NASA.

“With expertise encompassing psychology, design, interactive computing, robotics, aerospace engineering, mechanical engineering, public policy, and business, CHART leverages a wealth of knowledge to help us tackle multifaceted challenges — and we’re adding new members every week,” says Walker.

To help shepherd this growth, CHART’s Steering Committee includes School of Psychology Professor Christopher Wiese and Assistant Professor Mengyao Li and School of Mechanical Engineering Assistant Professor Ye Zhao.

Tomorrow’s technology

Several research programs already underway at CHART showcase its vision of deeply transformative, human-centered research:

Robotic guide dogs

Walker co-leads this research with Sehoon Ha, an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing. The project explores the partnership between a robotic guide dog robot and a human as they navigate the physical and social environment. Key concerns include trust, communication, sharing of responsibilities, and how the human-robot team integrates into social settings. The project also addresses practical design issues like ensuring the robot operates quietly to avoid interfering with auditory cues critical for blind users.

Flying cars

This project investigates how humans will interact with emerging flying vehicle technologies. It explores user interfaces, control systems, and human-machine interaction design, including whether traditional steering controls might evolve into joystick-like mechanisms. Broader issues include how flying cars will fit into current infrastructure, impacts on pilot licensing policy and regulation, and the psychology of adopting futuristic technologies.

Pedestrians and self-driving cars

Researchers are exploring how driverless electric vehicles and pedestrians can communicate to keep our future streets safe, including how vehicles signal their intentions to pedestrians. Teams are also implications for safety and public policy, including accident liability and the quiet nature of electric vehicles.

Generative AI in Education

This project examines how students use generative AI like ChatGPT as collaborators in learning. The research explores its effects on outcomes, education policy, and curriculum development.

Meet CHART Founding Director Bruce Walker

Walker is excited about CHART’s future and its role in improving the world.

“We’ve got an ambitious plan and with the caliber of researchers we have assembled from around the world, the possibilities are limitless,” says Walker. “I see Georgia Tech leading the way as a center of gravity in this space.”

His background renders him well-suited to the interdisciplinary nature of the Center. Walker brings a wealth of experience in psychology, human-computer interaction, and related fields, with research interests spanning sonification and auditory displays, trust in automation, technology adoption, human-AI-robot teaming, and assistive technologies. In addition to CHART, he's the director of the Georgia Tech Sonification Lab.

Walker’s academic research has resulted in more than 250 journal articles and proceedings, and he has consulted for NASA, state and federal governments, private companies, and the military. He is also an active entrepreneur, founding startups and working on projects related to COVID diagnosis, skin cancer detection, mental health monitoring, gun safety, and digital scent technology. 

Reflecting on the journey ahead, Walker says, “We’ve come out of the gate strong. I look forward to the innovations ahead and continuing to cultivate a community of future leaders in this field.”

“Chris is deeply committed to student success and consistently excels in teaching, service, and leadership,” says Cameron Tyson, principal academic professional and assistant dean for Academic Programs in the College of Sciences. “We look forward to his impact in this role.”

As faculty director, Stanzione will oversee co-curricular programming, teach Explore courses, and recruit new students. He will also manage the program’s budget, conduct annual assessments, and engage with key stakeholders to support student success, working closely with Program and Operations Manager Kimberly Blaise and Coordinator Zoe Meireles. Stanzione will continue to hold a 50 percent faculty appointment in the School of Psychology.

“I am excited to continue enhancing the unique and personalized curriculum designed to help Explore students understand and engage in research early in their careers, meet research-active faculty and healthcare professionals, and enjoy an active social community,” says Stanzione.

He adds that he’s honored to help acclimate freshmen and transfer students to Georgia Tech. “Finding your place at Tech can be overwhelming. From their first day on campus, I want to help Explore students understand and get engaged with the many opportunities available — and set them up with a great first impression to strengthen their connection with Georgia Tech.”

Stanzione has already begun planning new opportunities for Explore students. One of his goals is to design science-centered international experiences.

“With so many Explore students interested in healthcare careers, I’d love to create an alternative spring break trip combining healthcare shadowing, community service, and research abroad.”

He sees existing campus programs as another great way to expand the program:

“I’d like to work closely with other stakeholders to create programming that integrates academic, research, and well-being support,” he adds. “Georgia Tech’s new  Quality Enhancement Plan (QEP), Leaders in Progress and Service, is a great fit for our students. They would really benefit from being immersed in the QEP programming supporting Georgia Tech’s mission of developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.” 

Meet Christopher Stanzione

A well-respected educator and administrator, Stanzione has received several awards for teaching excellence, including the Undergraduate Educator Award and the Geoffrey G. Eichholz Faculty Teaching Award from Georgia Tech's Center for Teaching and Learning, and the Eric R. Immel Memorial Award for Excellence in Teaching from the College of Sciences. To reduce the financial burden of textbooks, Stanzione and his colleague, Academic Professional Meghan Babcock, led efforts to implement a grant-funded pilot program using Open Educational Resources in General Psychology. His research focus includes studying language and cognitive development in both at-risk and deaf and hard-of-hearing children. Notable administrative accomplishments include launching a new School of Psychology internship program, creating a five-year B.S./M.S. psychology career pathway, and adding minor programs in mental health and well-being and computation and cognition.

In his spare time, Stanzione loves to travel with his husband and walk on the Atlanta BeltLine with their new puppy, Chorizo.

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

Wang is a recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI). The award recognizes Wang for his lifelong work on democratizing human-centered AI.

“Throughout my Ph.D. and industry internships, I observed a gap in existing research: there is a strong need for practical tools for applying human-centered approaches when designing AI systems,” said Wang, now a safety researcher at OpenAI.

“My work not only helps people understand AI and guide its behavior but also provides user-friendly tools that fit into existing workflows.”

[Related: Georgia Tech College of Computing Swarms to Yokohama, Japan, for CHI 2025]

Wang’s dissertation presented techniques in visual explanation and interactive guidance to align AI models with user knowledge and values. The work culminated from years of research, fellowship support, and internships.

Wang’s most influential projects formed the core of his dissertation. These included:

• CNN Explainer: an open-source tool developed for deep-learning beginners. Since its release in July 2020, more than 436,000 global visitors have used the tool.
• DiffusionDB: a first-of-its-kind large-scale dataset that lays a foundation to help people better understand generative AI. This work could lead to new research in detecting deepfakes and designing human-AI interaction tools to help people more easily use these models.
• GAM Changer: an interface that empowers users in healthcare, finance, or other domains to edit ML models to include knowledge and values specific to their domain, which improves reliability.
• GAM Coach: an interactive ML tool that could help people who have been rejected for a loan by automatically letting an applicant know what is needed for them to receive loan approval.
• Farsight: a tool that alerts developers when they write prompts in large language models that could be harmful and misused.  

“I feel extremely honored and lucky to receive this award, and I am deeply grateful to many who have supported me along the way, including Polo, mentors, collaborators, and friends,” said Wang, who was advised by School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) Professor Polo Chau.

“This recognition also inspired me to continue striving to design and develop easy-to-use tools that help everyone to easily interact with AI systems.”

Like Wang, Chau advised Georgia Tech alumnus Fred Hohman (Ph.D. CSE 2020). Hohman won the ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2022.

Chau’s group synthesizes machine learning (ML) and visualization techniques into scalable, interactive, and trustworthy tools. These tools increase understanding and interaction with large-scale data and ML models. 

Chau is the associate director of corporate relations for the Machine Learning Center at Georgia Tech. Wang called the School of CSE his home unit while a student in the ML program under Chau.

Wang is one of five recipients of this year’s award to be presented at the 2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025). The conference occurs April 25-May 1 in Yokohama, Japan. 

SIGCHI is the world’s largest association of human-computer interaction professionals and practitioners. The group sponsors or co-sponsors 26 conferences, including CHI.

Wang’s outstanding dissertation award is the latest recognition of a career decorated with achievement.

Months after graduating from Georgia Tech, Forbes named Wang to its 30 Under 30 in Science for 2025 for his dissertation. Wang was one of 15 Yellow Jackets included in nine different 30 Under 30 lists and the only Georgia Tech-affiliated individual on the 30 Under 30 in Science list.

While a Georgia Tech student, Wang earned recognition from big names in business and technology. He received the Apple Scholars in AI/ML Ph.D. Fellowship in 2023 and was in the 2022 cohort of the J.P. Morgan AI Ph.D. Fellowships Program.

Along with the CHI award, Wang’s dissertation earned him awards this year at banquets across campus. The Georgia Tech chapter of Sigma Xi presented Wang with the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award. He also received the College of Computing’s Outstanding Dissertation Award.

“Georgia Tech attracts many great minds, and I’m glad that some, like Jay, chose to join our group,” Chau said. “It has been a joy to work alongside them and witness the many wonderful things they have accomplished, and with many more to come in their careers.”

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

At a crossroads, Oliver decided to end his musical career — a choice he credits with launching him into academia. “I was 28 and wondering what to do with my life, so I reenrolled in college and discovered economics.”  With a longtime love of the environment and growing concern for the climate, says Oliver, “I grew fascinated with solar power and other renewables and the new markets emerging around them.”  

Today, his work in energy and environmental economics has implications for policies shaping the energy transition, from subsidies for rooftop solar to the expansion of battery storage. 

“The current frontier of energy economics is electricity and renewables, and these are areas I am passionate about,” he says. 

PVs and amped up electric use 

One of Oliver’s core research thrusts is the solar rebound effect (SRE). This phenomenon involves a quirk of human behavior: When people install solar photovoltaic (PV) panels on the roofs of their homes, they often consume more electricity. “The introduction of solar energy does not perfectly displace grid-supplied energy, but instead reduces demand for grid-supplied energy on a less than one-for-one basis, because the household increases its total electricity consumption,” says Oliver. The bottom line: Solar PV systems may not lead to as much carbon emission reduction as anticipated.  

Read more on the EPIcenter Webpage

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

The study, titled "Microeconomics of the Solar Rebound under Net Metering," explores how different net metering policies influence the solar rebound effect. Net metering allows households to sell excess electricity generated by their solar panels back to the grid, often at the retail rate. This policy makes solar PV systems more financially attractive but also impacts household behavior.

The authors developed a theoretical framework to understand the solar rebound. They found that under classic net metering, the rebound is primarily an income effect. Households feel wealthier due to the savings on their electricity bills and thus consume more electricity. However, under net billing, where excess electricity is compensated at a lower rate, a substitution effect also comes into play. This means households might change their consumption patterns based on the relative costs of electricity from the grid versus their solar panels.

The study also incorporates behavioral economics concepts like moral licensing and warm glow effects. Moral licensing occurs when people justify increased consumption because they feel they are already doing something good, like generating green energy. Warm glow refers to the positive feelings from contributing to environmental sustainability, which can either increase or decrease consumption depending on the household's values.

One of the key takeaways from the study is the importance of the regulatory environment. Policymakers need to carefully design net metering policies to balance promoting solar adoption while accounting for the possibility that rebound effects may offset the desired outcomes of grid resilience and reduced greenhouse gas emissions. For instance, switching from net metering to net billing might reduce the rebound effect, leading to better environmental outcomes.

The welfare analysis conducted by the authors shows that the solar rebound's impact on social welfare depends on various factors, including the cleanliness of the electricity grid and the external costs of electricity production. In cleaner grids, the rebound might be less detrimental, while in grids reliant on fossil fuels, it could negate some of the environmental benefits of solar adoption.

This research underscores the complexity of energy policy and the need for nuanced approaches that consider both economic and behavioral factors. By understanding the solar rebound effect, stakeholders can make more informed decisions to promote sustainable energy use.

For more detailed insights, you can explore the full study by Matthew E. Oliver and his co-authors. Their work provides a robust foundation for future empirical research and policy development in the field of renewable energy.

This article was written with the assistance of Microsoft Copilot (Jan. 27, 2025) and edited by Georgia Tech EPIcenter's Gilbert X. Gonzalez and Matthew E. Oliver.

Ongoing research to study sea level rise led by Georgia Tech researchers, a coalition of universities, Savannah and Chatham County government leaders, and local community groups is creating what could be a national model for coastal regions across the country facing similar challenges.

Launched in 2018 with a Georgia Smart Communities Challenge Grant, the data collected from the sea level sensors is used to inform city and county planners and emergency responders on resource deployment following major weather events.

Now in its fourth year, the sea sensor project is now slated to receive $5 million from Congress. It is secured by U.S. Sens. Jon Ossoff and Raphael Warnock, and U.S. Rep. Earl L. “Buddy” Carter to expand the network of sensors — currently 50 are deployed off Chatham County’s coast — to blanket Georgia’s 11-county coastal region.

“With this new funding, we are recognizing a new phase of our project which has evolved,” said Kim Cobb, former director of Georgia Tech’s Global Change Program and a professor who studies climate, oceanography, and weather in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Cobb and Russell J. Clark, senior research scientist in the School of Computer Science at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, co-lead the project. Allen Hyde, assistant professor in the School of History and Sociology in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, leads a National Science Foundation project focused on youth disaster resilience as part of the effort.

The funding will support expansion of building out more hyperlocal flood forecasting models, resilience planning tools for underserved communities, and further development of a K-12 education curriculum, paid internships, and other workforce development programs.

Georgia Tech and its partners — which includes Savannah State University, the University of Georgia, and the University of South Carolina — is using these low-cost sensors to gain real-time data that over time will help inform the policies on infrastructure design and retrofitting, Cobb said. It will also further expand first responders and emergency planners’ ability to forecast extreme rainfall and storm surge events on a neighborhood-by-neighborhood specific basis.

“It's going to translate into a saved lives and saved infrastructure,” Cobb said.

A National Model
Hub researchers say the data being collected from the sensors and additional information gleaned from the sensor expansion has immediate applications in terms of flood disasters and hurricanes. Those findings over the long-term could also help frame the national dialogue and help inform policy as leaders in Washington shape it to tackle rising sea levels and climate change.

The award is part of a broader federal push, including a $12 billion funding package, to help Georgia and other states along the Eastern Seaboard, as well as the West and Gulf coasts, develop resiliency and flooding plans and protocols to mitigate damage from future floods.

Cobb said this new funding allows the Hub to further efforts in its research that further expands education and workforce development — particularly in underserved minority communities — as components of the broader strategy.

“Our project started out anchored on the sensors and trying to provide real-time data to emergency planners and emergency response responders, but it’s no longer just a small team of people who are interested in sensors or physical scientists, engineers and researchers on the science and technology side,” she said, explaining the research team of some 30 people also includes policy and planning experts, along with community advocates.

“We're trying to think about solutions in the context of history, geography, — the history of people, cultures, and economies down on the coast,” Cobb said. “There’s no waving a magic wand and making this all right, especially for the most vulnerable communities.”

Community Voice
In broad terms, the project touches flooding, infrastructure, property, and pollution. But this newer phase brings in aspects that go beyond scientific modeling of risk, said Dean Hardy, an assistant professor in the University of South Carolina’s Department of Geography.

It’s what he calls the “human dimension” phase.

“There are disaster plans, there's resiliency plans, and there's community level thinking. But what we need is systemic change,” said Hardy, whose research expertise is in geography and integrative conservation, which marries preservation and social and community goals with public policy.

“So, what I hope partially comes out of this is not just a bunch of scientific publications or better scientific understanding of these issues, but capacity-building with community organizations that leads to the capacity for self-determination.”

That acknowledgement is important to marginalized communities, said Dawud Shabaka, interim director of Harambee House, in Savannah. The organization, which is involved in the sensor project, promotes and advocates for civic engagement from the coastal city’s Black residents and youth.

Shabaka noted that the engagement component, particularly local high school and middle school students working on the sensors and coding, has allowed the participants to see themselves not only as budding scientists, but as future community leaders.

“When you’re dealing with or managing or mitigating an issue that’s affecting society, it’s got to involve research and dialogue with the community. This project is allowing us to recognize that the community themselves are the subject matter experts,” said Shabaka. “Having the students involved at an early age, benefits society as a whole and lets them know that the work they’re doing is having a much wider impact. This is the type of community engagement that needs to happen to make people feel like they’re worthwhile.”

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

Two years since OpenAI introduced ChatGPT, dozens of lawsuits have been filed alleging technology companies have infringed copyright by using published works to train artificial intelligence (AI) models.

Academic AI research efforts could be significantly hindered if courts rule in the plaintiffs' favor. 

Desai and Riedl are Georgia Tech researchers raising awareness about how these court rulings could force academic researchers to construct new AI models with limited training data. The two collaborated on a benchmark academic paper that examines the landscape of the ethical issues surrounding AI and copyright in industry and academic spaces.

“There are scenarios where courts may overreact to having a book corpus on your computer, and you didn’t pay for it,” Riedl said. “If you trained a model for an academic paper, as my students often do, that’s not a problem right now. The courts could deem training is not fair use. That would have huge implications for academia.

“We want academics to be free to do their research without fear of repercussions in the marketplace because they’re not competing in the marketplace,” Riedl said. 

Desai is the Sue and John Stanton Professor of Business Law and Ethics at the Scheller College of Business. He researches how business interests and new technology shape privacy, intellectual property, and competition law. Riedl is a professor at the College of Computing’s School of Interactive Computing, researching human-centered AI, generative AI, explainable AI, and gaming AI. 

Their paper, Between Copyright and Computer Science: The Law and Ethics of Generative AI, was published in the Northwestern Journal of Technology and Intellectual Property on Monday.

Desai and Riedl say they want to offer solutions that balance the interests of various stakeholders. But that requires compromise from all sides.

Researchers should accept they may have to pay for the data they use to train AI models. Content creators, on the other hand, should receive compensation, but they may need to accept less money to ensure data remains affordable for academic researchers to acquire.

Who Benefits?

The doctrine of fair use is at the center of every copyright debate. According to the U.S. Copyright Office, fair use permits the unlicensed use of copyright-protected works in certain circumstances, such as distributing information for the public good, including teaching and research.

Fair use is often challenged when one or more parties profit from published works without compensating the authors.

Any original published content, including a personal website on the internet, is protected by copyright. However, copyrighted material is republished on websites or posted on social media innumerable times every day without the consent of the original authors. 

In most cases, it’s unlikely copyright violators gained financially from their infringement.

But Desai said business-to-business cases are different. The New York Times is one of many daily newspapers and media companies that have sued OpenAI for using its content as training data. Microsoft is also a defendant in The New York Times’ suit because it invested billions of dollars into OpenAI’s development of AI tools like ChatGPT.

“You can take a copyrighted photo and put it in your Twitter post or whatever you want,” Desai said. “That’s probably annoying to the owner. Economically, they probably wanted to be paid. But that’s not business to business. What’s happening with Open AI and The New York Times is business to business. That’s big money.”

OpenAI started as a nonprofit dedicated to the safe development of artificial general intelligence (AGI) — AI that, in theory, can rival human thinking and possess autonomy.

These AI models would require massive amounts of data and expensive supercomputers to process that data. OpenAI could not raise enough money to afford such resources, so it created a for-profit arm controlled by its parent nonprofit.

Desai, Riedl, and many others argue that OpenAI ceased its research mission for the public good and began developing consumer products. 

“If you’re doing basic research that you’re not releasing to the world, it doesn’t matter if every so often it plagiarizes The New York Times,” Riedl said. “No one is economically benefitting from that. When they became a for-profit and produced a product, now they were making money from plagiarized text.”

OpenAI’s for-profit arm is valued at $80 billion, but content creators have not received a dime since the company has scraped massive amounts of copyrighted material as training data.

The New York Times has posted warnings on its sites that its content cannot be used to train AI models. Many other websites offer a robot.txt file that contains instructions for bots about which pages can and cannot be accessed. 

Neither of these measures are legally binding and are often ignored.

Solutions

Desai and Riedl offer a few options for companies to show good faith in rectifying the situation.

• Spend the money. Desai says Open AI and Microsoft could have afforded its training data and avoided the hassle of legal consequences.
  
  “If you do the math on the costs to buy the books and copy them, they could have paid for them,” he said. “It would’ve been a multi-million dollar investment, but they’re a multi-billion dollar company.”
   
• Be selective. Models can be trained on randomly selected texts from published works, allowing the model to understand the writing style without plagiarizing. 
  
  “I don’t need the entire text of War and Peace,” Desai said. “To capture the way authors express themselves, I might only need a hundred pages. I’ve also reduced the chance that my model will cough up entire texts.”
   
• Leverage libraries. The authors agree libraries could serve as an ideal middle ground as a place to store published works and compensate authors for access to those works, though the amount may be less than desired.
  
  “Most of the objections you could raise are taken care of,” Desai said. “They are legitimate access copies that are secure. You get access to only as much as you need. Libraries at universities have already become schools of information.”

Desai and Riedl hope the legal action taken by publications like The New York Times will send a message to companies that develop AI tools to pump the breaks. If they don’t, researchers uninterested in profit could pay the steepest price.

The authors say it’s not a new problem but is reaching a boiling point.

“In the history of copyright, there are ways that society has dealt with the problem of compensating creators and technology that copies or reduces your ability to extract money from your creation,” Desai said. “We wanted to point out there’s a way to get there.”

Haley scholars receive a one-time merit award of up to $4,000 thanks to the generosity of the late Marion Peacock Haley. Haley’s estate established the merit-based graduate fellowships in honor of her late husband, Herbert P. Haley (ME 1933).

Meet the 2024-2025 Haley Fellows

Emily Gleaton, School of Psychology

Gleaton specializes in engineering psychology. Since 2020, she has served as president, secretary, webmaster, and treasurer of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society student chapter and held multiple leadership positions in the Psychology Graduate Student Council. She was recognized by Georgia Tech’s Center for Student Engagement as part of the 2023 Celebrating Student Leadership Project.

“My research focuses on how to reduce the disuse of assistive technologies and improve user outcomes through enhanced instruction and training,” says Gleaton. “These technologies, from mobility aids to smart devices like wearables and conversational agents, help people perform tasks more easily.  I hope my work fosters the successful adoption of assistive technology — and supports individuals aging in place, improving health, and gaining greater independence.”

Alex Havrilla, School of Mathematics

A third-year Ph.D. student studying mathematics, Havrilla focuses on both theoretical and applied topics in generative machine learning. He has published several papers in academic journals and is an active attendee/presenter in the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics student chapter seminar series. Outside of Georgia Tech, Alex co-founded CarperAI, an open-source research group studying reinforcement learning from human feedback (RLHF) for large language models.

"My theoretical work tries to understand how well models generalize depending on model size and the amount and makeup of training data. My applied research improves the mathematical reasoning abilities of generative models through synthetic data generation," says Havrilla. "I love the interplay between both theory and application. Knowing the theory helps give me a more principled understanding of what is done in practice, and knowing the practice helps me decide what are the most relevant questions to study theoretically.”

Charles “Ross” Lindsey, School of Biological Sciences

As part of the Rosenzweig Lab, Lindsey investigates the evolution of multicellularity and cell differentiation. He also assists Team Phoenix Supercomputing via Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Projects program, which engages undergraduate and graduate students in long-term, large-scale, multidisciplinary project teams led by faculty. Lindsey trains the Team Phoenix Supercomputing to compete in high-performance computing (HPC) competitions while equipping them with fundamental skills necessary for HPC research.

“My research has largely focused on a small group of freshwater green algae known informally as the ‘volvocine algae’,” says Lindsey. “The varying levels of developmental and sexual complexity make these organisms a useful model system for investigating major evolutionary questions. I infer the phylogenetic relationships of this group and perform ancestral-state reconstructions of key traits thought necessary for the evolution of differentiated, multicellularity.”

Jordan McKaig, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

McKaig has two first-author publications and has presented her research nationally and internationally. She participated in the International Space Station (ISS) analog experiment at Jules’ Undersea Lodge in Key Largo and NASA outreach for the Atlanta Science Festival. On campus, she was the 2023 President of ExplOrigins, a group of young scientists interested in the origins and evolution of life, the exploration of our solar system, and the search for habitable planets beyond Earth. 

“My research focuses on detecting signs of life and characterizing microbes in very salty environments,” says McKaig. “I am interested in life at the fringe of habitability, where the environmental conditions are harsh, but adequate for living things to exist. By learning about life in the extremes on Earth, we can make predictions about what life may look like if it exists on other planets or moons, and how we might be able to detect such life forms. In my lab work, I explore the applications that nanopore instrumentation may have in the search for extraterrestrial life.”

Kellie Stellmach, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry

Stellmach is a Ph.D. student in chemistry. She is heavily involved in the Student Polymer Network, serving as secretary, vice president, and president. As an adamant supporter of reducing the gender gap in STEM fields, Kellie frequently invites female researchers to Georgia Tech to share their science research and assists with outreach events through the Girls Excelling in Math and Science (GEMS) program.

"My research focuses on the chemical recycling of polymers back to their monomers, a process that enables plastic waste to be recycled in a circular fashion,” says Stellmach. “I'm particularly interested in this area of research because it combines the challenge of developing new chemical methods with the potential for significant environmental impact. By improving the efficiency of recycling processes, my work aims to reduce plastic waste and support a more sustainable future."

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

A new study from Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy, recently published in JAMA Network Open, shows that commercially insured patients living in states with legal cannabis sales filled fewer prescriptions for benzodiazepine-class anti-anxiety drugs, but turned in scripts for antipsychotic and antidepressants at rates higher than residents of states without legal cannabis access.

In one way, the news could be good: benzodiazepines are commonly misused, with sometimes fatal results. But the increase in antipsychotic and antidepressant prescriptions is uncharted territory, said Ashley Bradford, the lead researcher on the study and an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy.

“Does this reflect a social benefit with fewer people feeling anxious, or a social harm with fewer people treating their anxiety effectively and more people experiencing psychosis and depression?” Bradford said. “We can’t say. What we can say is that physicians and patients seem to be responding to cannabis access in clinically meaningful ways.”

The researchers analyzed prescription data from more than 10 million commercially insured patients and five classes of psychotropic drugs – benzodiazepines, antidepressants, antipsychotics, barbiturates, and sleep medications. They then used a synthetic control method to compare prescription fill rates in states with medical and recreational cannabis laws to those without.

 They found that in states where medical cannabis laws were in place, the prescription fill rate for benzodiazepines fell by 12.4% compared to states that did not allow any form of legal marijuana. Legal recreational marijuana caused a bigger drop: 15.2%.

However, in states with medical cannabis laws, the antidepressant prescriptions fill rate increased by 3.8% while fill rates for antipsychotics rose by 2.5%. Recreational cannabis availability resulted in an 8.8% increase in the antidepressant prescription fill rate, according to the study.

The impact of legal cannabis on barbiturates and sleeping medications was insignificant.

"This study suggests that cannabis laws may be significantly associated with the population-level use of prescription drugs to treat mental health disorders, although the associations vary by drug class and state,” the authors wrote in the paper. "Our results suggest that additional research is needed to assess whether changes in dispensing of (mental health drugs) are associated with differences in health care outcomes."

Previous studies focused primarily on the impact of medical and, to a lesser extent, recreational laws on prescription dispensing in the Medicaid and Medicare populations. This work reveals that commercially insured patients seem to respond to legal cannabis access in similar ways to those on Medicare and Medicaid.

The study also demonstrates the impact of different state laws, Bradford said. She said that the results suggest that researchers could identify which aspects of cannabis policies lead to socially optimal outcomes and help policymakers in each state tailor their laws to the outcomes they most care about.

“It’s important to remember that these results don’t tell us anything about the mental health outcomes of people who may be using cannabis instead of anxiety medications, or why prescriptions for these other drugs are increasing,” she said. “So, there’s room for a lot of future research here.”. 

The study, published Sept. 5, 2024, in JAMA Network Open, is available at https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.32021.

With looming questions about AI's growing roles and consequences in nearly every facet of modern life, School of IC organizers felt the time was right to diverge from traditional conferences that focus on past work and published research.

“Presenting papers is about disseminating work that has already been completed. Who gets to be in the room is determined by whose paper gets accepted,” said Mark Riedl, School of IC professor.

“Instead, we wanted the summit talks to speculate on future directions and what challenges we as a community should be thinking about going forward.”

The two-day summit, held at Tech’s Global Learning Center Oct. 28-30, convened to discuss consequential questions like:

• Is society ready to accept more responsibility as greater advancements in technologies like AI are made?
• Should society stop to think about potential consequences before these advancements are implemented on its behalf, and what could those consequences be?
• What policies should be enacted for these technologies to mitigate harms and augment societal benefits?

A highlight of the summit’s opening day was Meredith Ringel Morris's keynote address. As director of human-AI interaction research at Google DeepMind, she presented a possible future in which humans could use AI to create a digital afterlife.

In her remarks, Morris discussed AI clones, which are AI avatars of specific human beings with high autonomy and task-performing capabilities. Someone could leave such an agent behind as a memory for loved ones to enjoy once they are gone, and future generations could access it to learn more about an ancestor.

On the other hand, it could easily lead to loved ones experiencing extended grief because they have trouble moving on from losing a family member.

These AI capabilities are in development and will soon be publicly available. As industry and academic researchers continue to develop them, the public needs to learn about their eminent impacts.

“There’s a lot that needs to be done in educating people,” Morris said. “It’s hard for well-intentioned and thoughtful system designers to anticipate all the harm. We must be prepared some people are going to use AI in ways we don’t anticipate, and some of those ways are going to be undesirable. What legal and education structures can we create that will help?”

In addition to Morris’s keynote, the summit’s first day included 20 talks about future and emerging technologies in AI, sustainability, healthcare, and other fields. 

The second day featured eight talks on translating interventions and safeguards into policy.

Day-two speakers included: 

• Orly Lobel, Warren Distinguished Professor of Law and director of the Center for Employment and Labor Policy at the University of California-San Diego. Lobel worked on President Obama’s policy team on innovation and labor market competition, and she advises the Federal Trade Commission (FTC). 
• Sorelle Friedler, Shibulal Family Professor of Computer Science at Haverford College. She worked in the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) under the Biden-Harris Administration and helped draft the AI Bill of Rights. 
• Jake Metcalf, researcher and program director for AI on the Ground at the think tank Data & Society. The organization produces reports on data science and equity for the US Government. 
• Divyansh Kaushik, Vice President of Beacon Global Strategies, has given testimony to the US Senate on AI research and development.

Kaushik earned a Ph.D. in machine learning from Carnegie Mellon University before beginning his career in policy. He highlighted the importance of policymakers fostering relationships with academic researchers.

“Policymakers think about what could go wrong,” Kaushik said. “Academia can offer evidence-based answers.”

The summit also hosted a doctoral consortium, which allowed advanced Ph.D. students to present their research to experts and receive feedback and mentoring.

“Being an interdisciplinary researcher is challenging,” said Shaowen Bardzell, School of IC chair.

“We wanted the next generation to be in the room listening to the experts share their visions and also to provide our own experiences when possible on how to navigate the challenges and rewards of doing work in the intersection of AI, healthcare, sustainability, and policy.”

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

A new study from Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy, recently published in JAMA Network Open, shows that commercially insured patients living in states with legal cannabis sales filled fewer prescriptions for benzodiazepine-class anti-anxiety drugs, but turned in scripts for antipsychotic and antidepressants at rates higher than residents of states without legal cannabis access.

In one way, the news could be good: benzodiazepines are commonly misused, with sometimes fatal results. But the increase in antipsychotic and antidepressant prescriptions is uncharted territory, said Ashley Bradford, the lead researcher on the study and an assistant professor in the School of Public Policy.

“Does this reflect a social benefit with fewer people feeling anxious, or a social harm with fewer people treating their anxiety effectively and more people experiencing psychosis and depression?” Bradford said. “We can’t say. What we can say is that physicians and patients seem to be responding to cannabis access in clinically meaningful ways.”

The researchers analyzed prescription data from more than 10 million commercially insured patients and five classes of psychotropic drugs – benzodiazepines, antidepressants, antipsychotics, barbiturates, and sleep medications. They then used a synthetic control method to compare prescription fill rates in states with medical and recreational cannabis laws to those without.

 They found that in states where medical cannabis laws were in place, the prescription fill rate for benzodiazepines fell by 12.4% compared to states that did not allow any form of legal marijuana. Legal recreational marijuana caused a bigger drop: 15.2%.

However, in states with medical cannabis laws, the antidepressant prescriptions fill rate increased by 3.8% while fill rates for antipsychotics rose by 2.5%. Recreational cannabis availability resulted in an 8.8% increase in the antidepressant prescription fill rate, according to the study.

The impact of legal cannabis on barbiturates and sleeping medications was insignificant.

"This study suggests that cannabis laws may be significantly associated with the population-level use of prescription drugs to treat mental health disorders, although the associations vary by drug class and state,” the authors wrote in the paper. "Our results suggest that additional research is needed to assess whether changes in dispensing of (mental health drugs) are associated with differences in health care outcomes."

Previous studies focused primarily on the impact of medical and, to a lesser extent, recreational laws on prescription dispensing in the Medicaid and Medicare populations. This work reveals that commercially insured patients seem to respond to legal cannabis access in similar ways to those on Medicare and Medicaid.

The study also demonstrates the impact of different state laws, Bradford said. She said that the results suggest that researchers could identify which aspects of cannabis policies lead to socially optimal outcomes and help policymakers in each state tailor their laws to the outcomes they most care about.

“It’s important to remember that these results don’t tell us anything about the mental health outcomes of people who may be using cannabis instead of anxiety medications, or why prescriptions for these other drugs are increasing,” she said. “So, there’s room for a lot of future research here.”. 

The study, published Sept. 5, 2024, in JAMA Network Open, is available at https://doi.org/10.1001/jamanetworkopen.2024.32021.

A central figure in the post-Cold War effort to control the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, Bell tracked Iraqi compliance with U.N.-mandated weapons inspections following the first Gulf War, closely followed North Korea’s growing ICBM program, and worked to win ratification of an arms control agreement with Russia.

Through it all, he brought a pragmatic approach to international security issues that served him well as a presidential aid, a NATO official, a consultant, and, ultimately, a distinguished professor of the practice in the Nunn School. 

“The debates have become much more partisan, and the choices tend to be articulated in much more extreme black or white terms than I think the truth supports,” Bell told Air and Space Forces Magazine for a 1999 profile. “Usually, the decisions are quite tough and there is merit on both sides. The challenge is to get it right in a way that balances competing interests.”

Bell passed away suddenly in September, leaving behind a lifetime legacy of public service. He was buried in Academy Cemetery at the U.S. Air Force Academy, from which he graduated in 1969. 

“Bob was the ‘baker’s dozen’ of a colleague, teacher, and mentor — always giving something extra,” said Nunn School Professor Vicki Birchfield, who also directs the EU and transatlantic study abroad programs. Birchfield noted Bell frequently lined up high-profile NATO visitors for study-abroad students and hosted them at his home.

“People often say no one is irreplaceable, but it is difficult to imagine anyone with the stature and range of fascinating professional experiences, from inside the White House and Pentagon to his various roles at NATO, who could match Professor Bell. His commanding intellect, wisdom, and joie de vivre will be deeply missed,” Birchfield said.

A Legacy of Service Across Government, NATO, and Academia

Bell's storied career spanned five decades, encompassing high-level roles in U.S. government, NATO, and private consulting. He was commissioned as an Air Force officer in 1969 and served nine years in air traffic control and communications fields. He later earned master’s and Ph.D. degrees from the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy.

In 1981, Bell went to work for the Senate Committees on Foreign Relations and Armed Services, with part of that time spent working for Armed Services Committee Chair Sen. Sam Nunn of Georgia.

He left the Senate in 1993 to go to work on President Bill Clinton’s National Security Council as a special assistant for national security affairs and the NSC senior director for defense policy and arms control.

In was this position that solidified his reputation as a key player in shaping post-Cold War defense strategies. Bell's leadership contributed to the 1997 Presidential Directive that shifted U.S. nuclear policy toward arms control and deterrence.

In 1999, he began serving as NATO’s assistant secretary general for defense investment, where he worked with the defense industry and directed activities related to arms control, air defense, funding, and resources policy, among other things.

He left NATO in 2003 and spent until 2010 in consulting before returning to public service in 2010 as the senior civilian representative of the U.S. defense secretary to NATO, where he worked on coordinating U.S. Department of Defense policies and programs across the continent.

'Simply Star-Struck'

In 2017, Bell joined the Nunn School, where he offered students an unparalleled perspective on the inner workings of NATO. He was later appointed one of the Nunn School’s first diplomats in residence.

Birchfield recounted the incredible work Bell did for students on Georgia Tech study-abroad programs.

“The students and I were simply star-struck witnessing the respect and admiration he enjoyed from all of the high-level speakers he had lined up,” Birchfield said, “Not only did he arrange for senior-level U.S. diplomats to speak with us, but he seemed to have deep connections to many of the other national delegations to NATO as well. While Finland and Sweden were still waiting on full membership, he had the defense advisors from both countries address our group about their momentous decision to join.”

Another colleague, Nunn School Professor Alasdair Young, said Bell was always gracious with his time and insight.

“Every time I asked him, which was multiple times, he agreed to talk to my Transatlantic Relations course about how NATO really works,” said Young.

Gen. Philip Breedlove, IE 1977, who served as a distinguished professor of the practice with Bell, said Georgia Tech was fortunate to become the beneficiary of Bell's talent and effort.

“Bob began his service to this country wearing the uniform of our U.S. military and transitioned to diplomat. His devotion to his country was evident in everything he did,” Breedlove said.

A Robert G. Bell Memorial Scholarship fund has been established in the Sam Nunn School. If you would like to donate in Bell’s memory, make out a check to the Georgia Tech Foundation and write “For the Robert G. Bell Memorial Scholarship” in the memo line. You can mail checks to: Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc., 760 Spring Street NW, Suite 400, Atlanta, GA 30308.

You can also give online. In the designation box, please click on the first option, “Make a Special Gift to Georgia Tech,” then type in, “For the Robert G. Bell Memorial Scholarship.”

CDAIT: https://cdait.gatech.edu/

Are empathy and ethics as crucial as algorithms and equations? At the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts’ Humanizing STEM event on Sept. 20, scholars and practitioners across disciplines answered with a resounding yes, presenting compelling arguments on how the humanities enrich STEM fields and lead to more thoughtful and inclusive innovation. 

This partnership between an engineer and a humanist — Alamgir, a professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, and Tsufim, a former postdoctoral researcher in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts — culminated with students performing interpretations of their equations. The event showcased how creativity can deepen understanding and communication in STEM fields.

This deep integration of storytelling and science is an example of precisely what this month’s Ivan Allen College’s Humanizing STEM event aims to celebrate and encourage: the power of the liberal arts and STEM fields to enhance one another.

Scheduled for Sept. 20 at the Historic Academy of Medicine Theater (just a note: registration ends soon), the event will feature TEDx-style presentations by seven noted speakers and responses from Ivan Allen College faculty discussing how integrating STEM, humanities, and social sciences can lead to more innovative, ethical, and inclusive solutions for today’s global challenges.

“Students come to Georgia Tech eager to solve complex problems, knowing no single discipline holds all the answers,” said Steve McLaughlin, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. “By integrating humanities, social sciences, and STEM fields, we are preparing our students to be the problem-finders and problem-solvers of tomorrow, equipped not just with technical skills, but with empathy, cultural awareness, and a commitment to working on the most important problems for the greater good.”

Among the speakers are Linda Adler-Kassner, associate vice chancellor of teaching and learning at UC Santa Barbara, where she is known for her work in integrating teaching and learning across disciplines; Jim Grossman, executive director of the American Historical Association; and Tina Lu, first vice president of the Modern Language Association.

Each speaker will be followed by an Ivan Allen College school chair or ROTC commander who will relate how the work done by their faculty boosts belonging, learning, and research on the Georgia Tech campus. 

One of many examples of such work includes Brian Magerko’s groundbreaking work with EarSketch and LuminAI at the intersection of cognition and creativity. Another is our collaboration with the College of Computing on the innovative two-course computing capstone required of all students seeking degrees in Computer Science or Computational Media.

That program allows students to advance and demonstrate not just their technical know-how, but also their proficiency in professional and technical communication appropriate to the software industry. 

“Looking ahead, we’re excited about the potential of our new Minor in the Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning, which blends rigorous technical training with critical discussions about ethics and policy,” said Interim Dean Richard Utz. “Programs such as these don’t only prepare students to excel in their fields. They also empower them to shape the future in ways that are socially responsible and inclusive.”

Utz said the goal is not just to celebrate the Ivan Allen College’s impressive track record in fostering collaboration between the liberal arts and STEM fields. It is also an effort to engage the academic community, policymakers, and business leaders,” he said, Ultimately it’s about emphasizing the importance of a human-centered approach to technology.”

“As our world becomes increasingly complex, the need for well-rounded problem solvers has never been greater,” Utz said. “By combining the strengths of STEM and of the liberal arts, we can prepare a new generation of leaders who will be ready to address the challenges of tomorrow – not just as experts, but as empathetic, creative, and ethical human beings.”

As McEver Professor, Hoffmann will be responsible for encouraging, cultivating, and supporting interdisciplinary exchanges among liberal arts and engineering scholars at Georgia Tech and beyond.

“I’m honored to be named the H. Bruce McEver Professor in Engineering and the Liberal Arts,” said Hoffmann. “This is a unique opportunity to further explore the intersections of engineering and the liberal arts and to advance holistic and innovative education across disciplines at Georgia Tech.”

The endowed professorship is supported by a generous gift from H. Bruce McEver, IE 1966, a longtime advisory board member and supporter of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Professors Emeriti Steven Usselman of the School of History and Sociology and Kenneth Knoespel of the School of Literature, Media, and Communication previously held the position.

With a background that spans philosophy, public policy, and engineering, Hoffmann has consistently demonstrated a commitment to interdisciplinary research and education. 

His National Science Foundation-supported work on wicked problems — issues that are difficult to define, much less solve, because of their complexity and how people view them in different ways — led to the development of the Reflect! platform for deliberating on wicked problems.

Hoffmann also is an ethicist at the NSF-funded National AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education (AI-ALOE), where he leads the “User-Engaged Design for Human Well-being” team.

As McEver Professor, Hoffmann will collaborate with faculty across the Georgia Tech campus to extend the Reflect! platform. While the current iteration is meant for use by culturally similar groups, Hoffmann plans to spend the next three years expanding its utility to culturally dissimilar groups. This will help a broader range of users understand and manage conflicts arising from different viewpoints, emotions, and identities.

Hoffmann also plans to develop a new engineering ethics class, in which students will combine their technical prowess with deliberative expertise to seek solutions to the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals. That work will be done in collaboration with stakeholders in communities worldwide where technologies proposed by engineering students would be deployed.

Hoffmann’s appointment to this position reinforces the Ivan Allen College’s commitment to integrating the humanities, social sciences, and STEM disciplines, said Interim Dean Richard Utz. 

“Effective problem-solving requires interdisciplinary collaboration, ensuring that scientific advancements are communicated clearly and policy decisions are equitable and accountable to all," Utz said. “Michael’s work to overcome the difficulties inherent in solving wicked problems exemplifies the value liberal arts disciplines can provide to our colleagues in the sciences and engineering.”

Cassidy R. Sugimoto, School chair and Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the School of Public Policy, agreed, saying that Hoffmann’s scholarship exemplifies the School's dedication to interdisciplinary work.

“Michael’s ability to bridge the gap between technical and liberal arts disciplines aligns perfectly with our School's mission. His contributions will enhance our curriculum and expand the scope of research opportunities for our students,” Sugimoto said. “He is an excellent choice for this appointment.”

They’re launching a new study focused on disability in the STEM fields of work — science, technology, engineering, and mathematics, which they hypothesize are a good fit for people with physical disabilities. Technology has made the work more accessible. Plus, the pay is good. However, there are challenges for working people with disabilities that even a great salary can’t overcome.

“We envision a scenario in which people with disabilities can get into the workforce and provide for their needs,” said Mitchell, associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.

Quinn, one of Mitchell’s former students, graduated in May with his master’s in computer science. He was well-known on campus for the sign attached to the back of his wheelchair, which said “THWG” — or “To Hell With Georgia” — a nod to the famous Georgia Tech-University of Georgia rivalry Quinn shares with his older sister, who attended UGA.

“The overall objective with this data-enabled study is to highlight the factors in academia and industry that have historically inhibited the successful inclusion of disabled people in STEM work,” said Quinn, who took the lead role in this study, which will gather data from both non-disabled and disabled people.

“We want to get a more complete picture of the current landscape, of the educational environment and the workplace,” said Mitchell, principal investigator of the Laboratory for Pathology Dynamics. 

Increasing the Sample Size

The study is part of the Science Leadership award Mitchell’s lab received in October 2022. This program, supported by the Chan Zuckerberg Initiative and the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine, supports early-career biomedical researchers who have a record of promoting diversity, equity, and inclusion. The award includes a $1.15 million grant over five years.

Mitchell, an internationally recognized Paralympian, developed a neurological condition as a teen that resulted in quadriplegia. She’s always made it a point in her lab to include students from diverse backgrounds and disabilities. 

“There is almost no data out there about the inclusion of disabled people in the workforce, only tiny sample sizes,” Mitchell said. “So we wanted to go after a larger sample size. Because if we are not reaching appropriate inclusion — and the few existing studies show that we’re not — then we want to know why.” 

Quinn added, “Stable and high-paying careers in STEM fields seem like a viable option for people with disabilities to both achieve and maintain financial independence.”

Grappling With the Disability Tax

For a person with significant disability, even a good-paying job may not be enough to offset the “disability tax.” Quinn defines the tax as “the extra time and money that living with a disability takes.”

For example, some people need a monthly disability check to cover common living expenses. But often, a more valuable government benefit is a health plan that covers “the thousands of dollars per month in personal support and care services,” Quinn explained. “You often only qualify for this if you’re on government disability benefits and making less than a certain amount of money per month.”

Also, policies vary by state, so individuals can easily fall through the cracks due to the complexities of various programs. And private or employer-funded healthcare plans typically can’t compete with government plans, which cover these expensive personal support services. 

For many people with disabilities, it comes down to a choice between working or government-supported services.

“There doesn’t seem to be a middle ground,” said Mitchell, who estimates approximately 60% of her income supports her medical and disability needs. “And that’s after insurance.”

The researchers hope their study provides momentum that will result in something close to full accessibility.

“This study will illuminate the challenges, even if it doesn’t solve them,” said Mitchell. “And while we’re focusing on STEM, this kind of study can be extrapolated to other fields as well. Whether you’re in science or not, I think people understand we’re asking important societal questions.”

Take the Survey

Georgia Tech's new GROWER VIP is creating the country's most comprehensive real-time power outage tracker for research use. The database will help researchers explore questions about the causes and effects of power outages and how policy interventions can help strengthen grid resilience. 
 

Eight multidisciplinary participants from Georgia Tech, including postdoctoral students, graduate students, research faculty, and research associates from public policy, economics, electrical and computer engineering, industrial and systems engineering, and EPICenter, presented an overview of an energy-related research project during the session.

Laura Taylor, chair of the School of Economics and interim director of EPICenter, introduced the organization’s new faculty affiliate program through which affiliates, their students, and postdocs present and share research ideas and receive feedback from the audience.

Topics covered during the session included understanding the social costs of natural gas deregulation, managing EV charging during emergencies, exploring whether daylight saving time saves energy, the green energy workforce, the effects of community solar on household energy use, the Atlanta Energyshed project, clean hydrogen production in Georgia, and household responses to grid emergencies.

The interactive session was well attended with over 25 attendees asking thought-provoking questions and providing suggestions on future areas to explore.

The first round was held on March 1 and was such a success that this second round had a full slate of presenters and a full house of audience members. The agendas for both lightning round talks are available below, along with links to presentation slides.

A unit of the Strategic Energy Institute of Georgia Tech, EPICenter’s mission is to conduct rigorous research and deliver high-impact insights that address the energy needs of the southeastern U.S., while keeping a national and global perspective. EPICenter calls upon broad, multidisciplinary expertise to engage the public and create solutions for critical emerging issues as our nation’s energy transformation unfolds.

After two years in the Peace Corps in Rwanda and a year as a Fulbright Scholar in Brazil, Santos joined the first cohort of master's students in Georgia Tech's Global Development program. 

"I wanted to go to the next level in my career, so I knew this was the right time for me to do my master's degree," Santos said. As the one-year curriculum winds down and Santos prepares for graduation, she reflects on her experience and what she plans to do next.  

Preparing for a Changing World 

Santos said she chose Georgia Tech because the blend of technical skills and theoretical knowledge was unlike any other program she was considering. 

"A lot of global development work in the modern era is very data-based, and you need computer skills to succeed," Santos said. "For example, monitoring, reporting, and evaluating, known as MRE, is a growing field in global development. This program taught me the computer skills to work with data for global development, including statistical analysis, empirical research methods, and geographic information systems." 

Santos put those skills to the test in her spring capstone course in Puerto Rico. The Urban Planning Studio, led by Assistant Professor Albert Fuentes in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, traveled to the U.S. territory for one week over spring break.  

There, the team combined research, data analysis, and fieldwork — such as talking with community leaders, government officials, industry leaders, and legal aid organizations — to understand the impact of the recent natural disasters in Puerto Rico and what the recovery effort has been like in the public sector. Now, they are finalizing a written report for their clients at the Center for New Economy in Puerto Rico. 

12 Months, One Degree 

The M.S. in Global Development combines courses from the School of Economics, the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and the School of City and Regional Planning.  

Students take five required courses and can choose from over 50 electives to complete their curriculum. Classes range from econometric analysis to urban ecological design to big data and security and can be tailored based on personal interests and future plans.  

"One of the things that made the program the best option for me was that it could be done in one academic year," Santos said. "I wanted to study what was most relevant for me and the skills I needed and then re-enter the workforce as soon as possible. And this one-year program enabled me to do that." 

Santos hopes to work in U.S. foreign assistance after graduation, but says leaving Georgia Tech and the Global Development program is bittersweet. 

"I would love to stay. I'm having a great time, and I'm sorry I couldn't take every single class that was offered," she said. "But I've learned a lot for such a short amount of time." 

Ready to embark on your own journey in global development? Explore Georgia Tech's program today! 

Quillen will complete his B.S. in International Affairs this spring and said participating in the inaugural cohort of the GTDC: Pathways to Policy program in Washington also helped solidify his aspirations to work in data visualization after graduation.

"Going into college, I had no idea what I wanted to do," Quillen said. “Coming to Tech and working as a researcher showed me my interest in data science, which I had never had exposure to previously. And that was further reinforced going to D.C., where it was such a great experience working on deeper data science and getting to see what it's really like to be in my field."

Merging STEM and Humanities

How exactly does data science tie into the liberal arts, and why is it such a critical skill for success?

"It's how you communicate to people," Quillen said. "People are often visual learners, so being able to show a piece of data concisely and how it's changed over time is a huge part of communicating to people on a variety of issues. It's a skill I really value having and is critical for informing people of the point of the research."

During the Pathways to Policy program, Quillen and his classmates worked full-time while taking classes at night. The internships vary based on interest, and Quillen split his time between two organizations at the National Defense University, conducting research at the College of International Security Affairs and creating data visualizations at the Near East South Asia Center for Strategic Studies. The visualizations he worked on used economic, societal, and political data to help the organization track trends in the region and inform where they could best focus and direct their work in the future. 

Quillen says international affairs is an “often misunderstood” field, so communicating data is an essential part of making an impact.

"The average American voter votes primarily on domestic issues and doesn't pay attention to many international issues. I'm biased because I'm an international affairs major, but I think that's a shame," Quillen said. "Creating good data visualizations is a huge part of informing the public about various issues and is why I respect the Center for Strategic International Studies. They do a great job of making interactive data displays to inform the average person about issues in international affairs and show that information in a way that's easy for anybody to understand."

Turning Passion Into a Career

The aptly named GTDC: Pathways to Policy emphasizes just that — that there are many different ways to have an impact and create change in the policy sphere. Quillen's research journey at Georgia Tech and semester in Washington helped him discover a unique interdisciplinary passion for data visualization and international affairs that he will take into his career.

After graduation, Quillen wants to move back to Washington and land a full-time job at the Center for Strategic International Studies, something he hopes the alumni networking and internship experiences on the GTDC program will help him achieve. 

"I never would have known about this without doing the research at Tech, and then it's just been further reinforced over time as I've gotten more experiences and exposure to the field," Quillen said. “I feel very lucky that I had the opportunities that I did to get exposed to all this."

As Clark becomes a household name, she elevates a question WNBA players, fans, and advocates have asked for decades: why is there such a significant pay disparity between men's and women's basketball? 

Mary McDonald, a professor of sociology and Homer C. Rice Chair of Sports and Society in the School of History and Sociology, explains how racism, sexism, cultural narratives, and under-investment all have helped perpetuate the long-standing wage gap between the NBA and WNBA. She also discusses how a confluence of changes, including Clark's star power and a new bargaining agreement in 2025, may affect it. 

WNBA Players Earn Less Than 1% of Their Male Counterparts 

McDonald begins with a statistic: while women across all occupations make roughly 84 cents on the dollar compared to men, Black women make only 64 cents when compared to white men.  

"This racialized gendered devaluing of labor is important to highlight given the WNBA's predominantly Black playing force," McDonald says. In sports, the wage gap is even more pronounced, she says, pointing to estimates from economist David Berri that WNBA players earn less than 1% of what NBA players make.  

"There is much more at play than simple market economics," she says. "A legacy of exclusion, a complicit sports media, and differing levels of investment by NBA owners have disadvantaged the women's game and ability to earn a fair wage." 

Anticipated Changes in 2025 

WNBA players like WNBA Player’s Association President Nneka Ogwumike of the Seattle Storm have not only argued the need to build the basketball-related revenue pie but also to provide WNBA players with a larger percentage of the resulting revenue, McDonald explains. The NBA founded the WNBA in 1997 and still owns 42% of the league. However, NBA players receive 50% of the NBA basketball-related revenue while WNBA players receive only an estimated 10% of the WNBA pot.  

But this may change in 2025 when the current WNBA collective bargaining agreement expires and the players negotiate a new contract, McDonald says. Importantly, this is also when the WNBA's current TV rights deal expires, she adds. Based upon their long-standing advocacy, the players will likely continue to ask for what NBA players receive in the form of 50% of the basketball-related revenues from both the teams and the league.  

"Receiving 50% of total basketball revenue would greatly elevate player salaries. Before scaling for rookie and veteran salary differences, this translates into an average of over $500,000 per player per year. And this is based on 2022 figures — the pot of money available in 2025 will likely be much larger, especially with a new TV deal on the horizon," McDonald says. “The open question is: Will WNBA owners realize the opportunity they have to grow the league and the game by investing in player salaries and improving travel and working conditions?”  

Caitlin Clark, ESPN, and Social Media 

Although basketball experts have long known about Clark, "her national exposure during Iowa's 2022-23 national championship runner-up season last year certainly elevated her status, cultural visibility, and marketability," McDonald says.  

Clark's rise occurred at the same time as two other important factors: ESPN increasing coverage and promotion of the Women's NCAA tournament and players' ability to use social media to bypass the legacy media gatekeepers and narrate their own "fresh and appealing" storylines, McDonald says. Both of these factors have generated greater interest in women's sports.  

"Clark's celebrity has helped to generate new public interest in the pay of WNBA players, as did the 2022 detainment of Phoenix Mercury player Brittany Griner in a Russian prison for nearly ten months," McDonald says. "That story had people questioning why stars like Griner have to play overseas in the offseason to earn greater salaries than they receive in the WNBA." 

The Takeaway 

Clark is entering the WNBA in a period of league expansion and increased media attention. As revenues expand and WNBA players continue their work to gain more leverage in the next round of collective bargaining, McDonald anticipates compensation increases for WNBA players in the coming years.  

"The new TV contract in 2025 — which will likely exceed $100 million compared to the existing $65 million deal — will provide greater exposure for the league and its players," McDonald explains. "This, in addition to public pressure generated by WNBA players' advocacy — now including Clark's advocacy — and social media activism, all bolster the push for what WNBA players have desired and fought for since the league's inception: better marketing, more media exposure, higher salaries, and improved working conditions." 

McDonald has published extensively on the intersection of sports and gender and is currently writing a book on the WNBA tentatively titled 'We Got Next': The Affective Politics of the WNBA. Learn more in her faculty profile or our March Madness Q&A with McDonald in 2022.  

"You would almost think that all those wires and poles just appeared by magic," Calhoun said.

As a student in the School of History and Sociology, Calhoun researches how the emergence of telecommunications infrastructures shaped the wire and cable industries. While digging into the history of overhead wires, she was struck by the way people created narratives about the "fears" and "promises" of emerging telegraph and telephone infrastructures — and how much they resembled the competing narratives around artificial intelligence (AI) today.  

Fears, Promises, and Public Discourse   

"Your viewpoints on the fears and promises of technology are often shaped by what you stand to gain or lose, so they vary from person to person and by time and place," Calhoun said. "With telecom infrastructure, some people's wildest hopes were realized, while others' worst fears came true. Some made lots of money from the networks, and others died building them."  

The fears and promises around emerging technologies range from high expectations to deep skepticism. For example, telegraph technology promised to send messages quickly, annihilating time and space in communication, Calhoun explained. But others worried about how the wires degraded urban environments and how people could use the telegraph to distort the free flow of market information. With AI, the discourse is similar. We hope the technology will eliminate mundane tasks or solve problems we haven't yet cracked. However, concerns remain: Can we prevent bias in AI algorithms? Will job replacement disrupt the labor market?  

Technology Doesn't Appear in Isolation  

Just like telegraph debates raged through newspapers in the 1800s, the release of OpenAI's ChatGPT language learning model in 2022 unleashed a blizzard of opinions in the media, with even some prominent AI researchers changing their minds about the technology.

What factors cause this range of opinions? Calhoun explains that the technology's use, its physical presence, its symbolic meanings, and its interactions with other technologies can all affect how we perceive it.

New technology is unpredictable because people often co-opt it in ways their inventors didn't intend or anticipate. Its physical presence also affects how we perceive it — even if it's invisible, "which can sometimes seem like a good thing, as for urban aesthetics, but can also make it feel more sinister," Calhoun said.

Symbolic meanings also vary, with a typical example being railroads, Calhoun explained. Were they a symbol of progress or a machine in the garden, as the historian Leo Marx famously phrased it? And finally, just as technology is often used in unintended ways, it also interacts with other tech in surprising ways. For example, low-voltage telecommunications lines aren't hazardous alone but can be lethal if crossed with high-voltage power lines, Calhoun said.

In a nutshell, "There is no blank slate. Technology doesn't appear in isolation or operate in a vacuum. We don't go overnight from inventing new technology to having it fully deployed and understood," Calhoun said. "People's perceptions change as their wants, desires, and expectations change."    

The Regulatory Challenge  

And then what? Fear and promises anticipate, but regulation reacts, Calhoun said. And often, there is a lag between the two. 

"No matter how obvious it might be that somebody needs to do something, it's often not at all obvious who that somebody is or what they need to do," she said.

Calhoun explained that the main challenge for regulators is balancing competing stakeholder interests and dealing with a technology that evolves as they try to regulate it. For example, city leaders in Montreal tried to move the wires underground for 30 years. The overhead system was dangerous, with wires blocking firefighters from reaching burning buildings and deteriorating poles posing a safety hazard.  

"And they hemmed and hawed and dithered, and finally, the fire insurance underwriters said, 'If you don't move these wires underground, we will no longer offer casualty insurance in the city center.' And that finally moved them to start doing something about it," Calhoun said. "That's a long way of saying that when the consequences of doing nothing outweigh the consequences of change, even with all the uncertainties the change may bring, that's when it usually starts to happen."  

Kranzberg's Law  

Mel Kranzberg, the founder of the History and Sociology of Technology and Science program at Georgia Tech, published Kranzberg's Laws in 1986. The first states, "Technology is neither good nor bad, nor is it neutral."

"That view was evolving then, and it's the same thing we're still discussing here," Calhoun said. As narratives of fears and promises play out with AI, it's impossible to label the tech itself as good or evil "Because the social component of it is not the technology but the use. Technologies are human productions, and humans are neither all good nor all bad. So you have to focus on how we use it more than the technology itself."  

From telegraphs and telephones to social media and artificial intelligence, deploying new technologies involves a learning process of trial and error. Most people will use it for good — "or at least try to," Calhoun said — and just like telegraph infrastructure, AI will be another lesson to look back on and dissect when the next society-changing creation comes along. But the history of technology has already taught us at least one thing, she said.  

"New tech does not simply follow a predetermined path. It increases the range of possible paths but does not dictate which we follow or what will happen next. That's up to us."

A recent executive order issued by President Joe Biden seeks to establish "new standards for AI safety and security" while addressing consumer privacy concerns and promoting innovation. Georgia Tech experts have examined the key elements of the order and offer their thoughts on its scope and what comes next.  

A Precautionary Tale 

The order calls for the development of standards, tools, and tests to ensure the safe use of AI. From voice scams and phishing campaigns to larger-scale threats, the technology’s potential dangers have been widely documented. But Margaret Kosal, associate professor in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, says that additional context is often needed to dispel hysteria. 

"No one is going to be hooking up AI to launch nuclear weapons, but AI capabilities may enable targeting, or enable the command and control and the decision-making time to be compressed,” she said.  
 
The order will create an AI Safety and Security Board tasked with addressing critical threats. Companies developing foundation models that "pose a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety” will be required to notify the federal government when training the model and required to share the results of all red-team safety tests — a simulated cyberattack to test a system's defenses.  

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, a CNBC report details a 1,267% rise in phishing emails. Srijan Kumar, assistant professor in the College of Computing, attributes the increase to the technology's availability and an inability to rein in "bad actors."  

He says these scams will only continue to get more sophisticated and personalized. They “can be created by knowing what you might be willing to fall prey to versus what I might fall prey to,” said Kumar, whose systems have influenced misinformation detection on sites like X (formerly Twitter) and Wikipedia. “AI is not going to autonomously do all of those bad things, but this order can ensure there are consequences for people who misuse it.”  

A Delicate Balance 

Building an AI platform requires large amounts of data regardless of its intended application. Two primary goals of the executive order are protecting privacy and advancing equity.  

To protect personal data, the order tasks Congress with evaluating how agencies collect and use commercially available information and address algorithmic discrimination.  

Acknowledging that everyone should be allowed to have their voice represented in the outputs of AI data sets, Deven Desai, associate professor in the Scheller College of Business, noted, "There are people who don't want to be part of data sets, which is their right, but this means their voices won't be reflected in the outputs.”   

The order also includes sections to address intellectual property concerns among inventors and creators, though legal challenges will likely set new precedents in the years ahead.  

When that time comes, Kosal says that defining “theft” in the context of AI becomes the true challenge and that, ultimately, money will play a significant role. "If you spit out a Harry Potter book and read it yourself, nobody will care. It's when you start selling it to make money, and you don't share proceeds with the original people, then it becomes an issue," she said.   

What Does AI-Generated Mean? 

The order instructs the Department of Commerce to develop guidelines for content authentication and watermarking to label AI-generated content. Desai questions what it means for something to be truly created by AI.  

An important distinction lies between using AI to assist a writer in organizing their thoughts and using the technology to generate content. He likens the trend to the music industry in the 1980s.  

"Synthesizers really changed people's ability to generate music and, for a while, people thought that was horrible. They can just program the music. They're not. I am still the human responsible for that music, or that article in this case, so what is the point of the label?" he asks. 

As AI assistance becomes commonplace in content creation, trusting the source of information is increasingly important. Recently, articles published on Sports Illustrated's website featured AI-generated content provided by a third-party company that had used a machine to write the content and create fake bylines. Sports Illustrated, which may not have known of the problem, ran the material without disclosure to readers. CEO Ross Levinsohn was ousted shortly after the story broke.  

“Perhaps if the third party had disclosed its use of AI software, SI would have been able to assess how much AI was used and then chosen not to run the material, or to run it with a disclaimer that AI helped write the material,” Desai said. "Of course, even if they label the content as AI-generated, a reader still won't know exactly how much of the content came from AI or a human.” 

AI and the Workforce 

As AI systems and models become more sophisticated, workers may become more concerned about being replaced. To counteract these concerns, the order calls for a study to examine AI’s potential impact on labor markets and investments in workforce training efforts.  

Kumar compares the rise of AI to similar technological innovations throughout history and sees it as an opportunity for workers and industries to adapt. "It's less a matter of AI replacing workers and more of reskilling people to use the new technology. It's no different from when assembly lines in the auto industry were created."  

Promoting Innovation and Competition 

The power to harness the full potential of AI has initiated a race to the top. Desai believes that part of the executive order providing resources to smaller developers can help level the playing field.   

"There is a possibility here for markets to open up. Current players using models that weren't built with transparency in mind might struggle, but maybe that's OK." 

The issue of reliability and transparency comes into focus for Desai, especially as it relates to government usage of AI. The order calls on agencies to "acquire specified AI products and services faster, more cheaply, and more effectively through more rapid and efficient contracting."  

When taxpayer dollars are at stake, government can’t afford to trust a technology it doesn’t fully understand — a topic Desai has explored elsewhere. "You can’t just say, ‘We don’t know how it works, but we trust it.’ That’s not going to work. So that’s where there may be a slowdown in the government’s ability to use private sector software if they can’t explain how the thing works and to show that it doesn’t have discriminatory issues.” 

What's Next 

Promoting and policing the safe use of AI cannot be done independently. Georgia Tech experts agree that participation on a global scale is necessary. To that end, the European Union will unveil its comprehensive EU AI Act, which includes a similar framework to the president's executive order.  

Due to the evolving nature of AI, the executive order or the EU's actions will not be all-encompassing. Law often lags behind technology, but Kosal points out that it's crucial to think beyond what currently exists when crafting policy.  

Experts also agree that AI cannot be regulated or governed through a single document and that this order is likely the first in a series of policymaking moves. Kosal sees tremendous opportunity with the innovation surrounding AI but hopes the growing fear of its rise does not usher in another AI winter, in which interest and research funding fade. 

The research, published in Nature Sustainability, shows how community development block grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) generated an average of 5% to 11% energy savings in economically burdened households in Albany. The savings equate to the cost of roughly two months of groceries per household per year. 

"These housing participants who didn't come in thinking about energy efficiency saved anywhere from $75 to $482 per year in energy bills," Asensio said. "Those are meaningful savings that really impact people. So, we ended up finding very significant hidden social benefits from these policies that were previously unknown." 

https://youtu.be/eWqOFj9qRxw

The findings are surprising because HUD grants do not specifically target energy efficiency or sustainability measures in exchange for governmental assistance. Instead, they are given at the discretion of the local government to residents facing housing emergencies such as deteriorating roofs or broken HVAC systems in the hot summer. Because of the high amount of deferred maintenance in these homes, the fixes have a spillover effect of significantly reducing energy use — for example, by adopting more efficient technologies and bringing structures up to building codes — and saving money for people who receive them.  

The multidisciplinary research team in Asensio’s Data Science & Policy Lab, including current and former Public Policy students Olga Churkina and Becky D. Rafter and industrial engineering alumna Kira E. O'Hare, also found that the cost-effectiveness of housing-based interventions rivals standalone energy efficiency policies, offering a promising alternative for reaching marginalized communities.  

"For decades, we’ve struggled to get meaningful participation with conventional policies in these lower and moderate-income communities, including among renters and people in multi-family homes,” Asensio said. "Using housing block grants as an entry strategy to drive efficiency is an important policy innovation.” 

With support from the National Science Foundation, ESRI, Inc., and the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge, Asensio and his co-authors spent nearly four years collecting, cleaning, and combining Albany's previously siloed city data into one community analytics repository. They linked records for 5.9 million utility bills per month from 2004 to 2019, allowing them to see long-run impacts of policy intervention, energy consumption, and payments by household — an uncommonly granular level of data.  

"Overall, HUD-funded block grants in Albany reduced electricity use by 4.72 million kilowatt hours over the study period versus the control group," the researchers wrote. "The reduction in non-baseload emissions is equivalent to 3.70 million pounds of coal not being burned or the carbon sequestered by 3,695 acres of forest." 

Asensio's research is timely because the Southeast has some of the country's highest energy-burdened households. In the U.S., spending over 6% of net income on energy is considered a burden. In Albany, renters' and homeowners' energy costs can surpass ten or even 20% of household budgets, Asensio said, and many housing applicants are elderly and on fixed incomes.  

Unlike conventional energy initiatives that are reliant on self-selection, housing programs can provide a more equitable and localized strategy. That's because "most of the standalone policies for energy efficiency have two main outcomes," Asensio said. "First, the programs generally attract more affluent and informed homeowners, in which case, questions arise as to whether this might be a good use of public funds. Second, when these policies are restricted to certain income eligibility limits, we don't get enough participation from lower-income residents for a long list of reasons. So, reaching low- and moderate-income households has become a fundamental challenge." 

In contrast, housing block grants naturally target a broader range of residents with high energy burdens and help circumvent the problem of low participation. Rather than trying to market an energy-saving offer to people who aren't interested or are distrustful of the government, HUD grants have long waiting lists.  

"There are thousands and thousands of communities that look very much like Albany within and outside of major metro areas,” Asensio said. "This is a relatively untapped opportunity for driving energy efficiency within households who may not necessarily have an awareness of or interest in energy efficiency measures.”  

The paper, “Housing Policies and Energy Efficiency Spillovers in Low and Moderate Income Communities,” was published online in Nature Sustainability on March 18. It is available at https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-024-01314-w. This work was partially supported by awards from the National Science Foundation (Award No. 1945332), ESRI, Inc., the Georgia Smart Communities Challenge, and the Institute for the Study of Business in Global Society at Harvard Business School. 

The Center’s Democracy Program and Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology are supporting one fellowship during the spring 2024 academic semester for a doctoral candidate researching the intersection of technology and democratic governance.

“I am thrilled to visit Georgia Tech again and celebrate our strong partnership,” said Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander. “There is an important relationship between technology and democracy. Together, we are committed to promoting secure and transparent technologies that reinforce democratic principles.”

The fellow, Daniel Nkemelu, who is from Nigeria, is working closely with the Carter Center’s Democracy Program director, data scientist, and members of the digital threats to democracy initiative.

The fellowship builds on the institutions’ long collaboration, including with Michael Best, executive director of the Institute for People and Technology, who played an important role in establishing this fellowship.

“From social media platforms to computer-based voting machines, technologies today are profoundly impacting democracies across the globe,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “This new fellowship and our ongoing partnership with The Carter Center express a shared commitment to strong democracies supported by secure technologies.”

The fellowship began in January. It aims to advance the fellow’s research agenda and give access to experts in democratic elections and participatory democracy. The fellow will also connect the Carter Center’s Democracy Program with Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology research.

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Contact: In Atlanta, Maria Cartaya, maria.cartaya@cartercenter.org

The Carter Center
Waging Peace. Fighting Disease. Building Hope.

A not-for-profit, nongovernmental organization, The Carter Center has helped to improve life for people in over 80 countries by resolving conflicts; advancing democracy, human rights, and economic opportunity; preventing diseases; and improving mental health care. The Carter Center was founded in 1982 by former U.S. President Jimmy Carter and former First Lady Rosalynn Carter, in partnership with Emory University, to advance peace and health worldwide.

Visit our website CarterCenter.org | Follow us on X @CarterCenter | Follow us on Instagram @thecartercenter | Like us on Facebook Facebook.com/CarterCenter | Watch us on YouTube YouTube.com/CarterCenter

About the Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its more than 47,000 undergraduate and graduate students, representing 50 states and more than 148 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in Europe and Asia, and through distance and online learning.

As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1.2 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society. 

“Beginning with just a few courses in applied psychology, psychology at Georgia Tech has evolved into one of the most dynamic and distinctive psychology schools globally,” says Tansu Celikel, professor and chair of the School of Psychology. “Our educational and research endeavors are designed to meet the needs of our students and the society as we explore the causal interplay between the mind, brain, behavior and technology.”

Though psychology courses had been taught at the Institute prior, it was in 1924 that psychology became a core requirement for three of Tech’s then 12 degree programs, solidifying it as a staple of the Georgia Tech curriculum. 

To commemorate the past century of psychology at Georgia Tech, we’re taking a deep dive into its storied history at the Institute. 

Read more on the College of Sciences website.

Shah noted that too often, many people settle for "good enough" in problem-solving and stop short of seeking comprehensive solutions.  

Drawing on his expertise after leading the U.S. response to the 2010 earthquake in Haiti, the Ebola outbreak in West Africa, and working to increase access to immunizations worldwide, Shah outlined the framework of a "big bet." It begins with identifying innovative solutions and building broad alliances to transform the lives of large numbers of people.  

"If there's one message I hope people take away from the book, it's that these problems are actually solvable," he said. "If 50% of the world's global birth cohort is not getting vaccinated and immunized from simple diseases, it may take 20 years and $30 billion, but we're going to solve the problem of universal childhood immunization. If an Ebola pandemic is ravaging West Africa and threatening the rest of the world, we're not going to settle for what we can do. We're going to really study the issue, invent new solutions, and engineer new solutions." 

Georgia Tech's mission to advance technology and improve the human condition was on display throughout the Covid-19 pandemic as testing infrastructure and contingency plans were created and implemented. Cabrera and Shah discussed how such crises give way to creativity in developing solutions and how the Institute can use the same ambition to lead the world through the next decade's problems.  

"Coming to Georgia is so exciting because what's happening in the state is very much the epicenter of clean technology and jobs — power, manufacturing, science, and technology all coming together to shape the future. The question is, are you going to shape a future that solves the problems we face? Or are we going to shape a future that just serves the human desire for luxury and optimizing for those who have plenty? That's a set of judgments that's in your hands," he said. "To me, this is a great institution to be a part of because you have the position to be problem solvers." 

Before the public conversation, Shah participated in a faculty roundtable discussion about combating climate change — a primary goal of the Rockefeller Foundation.  

When thinking of their own "big bets" or those that have a global impact, Shah encouraged students to simplify the problem they are trying to solve and apply what they've learned at Georgia Tech to change the world for the better.  

"I'm a big believer that you all, especially students, can be change agents within whatever institutions you go to when you leave this great one, and I hope the book offers a bit of a playbook for how to do that," he said. "Asking simple questions is a gift we all tend to lose as we grow up professionally, but I hope you will retain it."

Watch the full conversation.