With the nod, Chang becomes one of just 180 poets named finalist for the prestigious prize since its reinstatement by the National Book Foundation in 1991.

“It's such an honor to have Tree of Knowledge selected as a finalist for the National Book Awards,” Chang said. “My book OBIT was longlisted in 2020 during the pandemic, so it will be nice to celebrate in person in New York with all the other finalists.”

Tree of Knowledge emerged from Chang’s contemplation of the felling of a tree across from her house in Los Angeles, where she was living at the time. It became, as Mother Jones said, “a meditation on abstract art, mortality, language, home, and history.”

“It spiraled out to me writing about trees in paintings that I was thinking about, and then to the expulsion of Chinese people from Eureka, California, in the 1800s,” Chang said. “I also included art that I made from historical photographs of Chinese people in Eureka, so the book threads the personal, the political, the historical, and the environmental.”

The book features not only Chang’s writing, but also her visual art. The collection incorporates original embroidered photo collages created by Chang using 19th-century archival images.

Chang holds a bachelor’s degree in East Asian Studies from the University of Michigan, a master’s degree in East Asian Studies from Harvard, an MBA from Stanford University and an MFA from Warren Wilson College.

Her previous collection of poetry, With My Back to the World, earned the prestigious Forward Prize for Best Collection, while her 2020 book OBIT received the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Anisfield-Wolf Book Award. OBIT was also named a finalist for the National Book Critics Circle Award and the Griffin International Poetry Prize.

She also is a Guggenheim Fellow and recipient of the Chowdhury International Prize in Literature.

In addition to her endowed chair, Chang teaches in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication and serves as the director of Poetry@Tech, leading one of the nation’s premier poetry centers and reading series. Through the work of Poetry@Tech, which is celebrating its 25th anniversary this year, Georgia Tech students across engineering, science, and the humanities learn the value of poetry as craft, literature, and personal expression.

Chang is the second Bourne Chair at Georgia Tech to be named a finalist for the prize. Her predecessor, Ilya Kaminsky, was named a finalist in 2019.

The winners will be announced Nov. 18 in New York.

Artificial intelligence may operate in the digital world, but it leaves a massive and very real physical and societal footprint. What does AI’s rapid growth mean for the future of humanity? How can it be steered towards a more prosperous future for all? 

Spatial scholarship is a research approach focusing on social and humanistic questions, which foreground place, space, spatial data, and human experience.

Held at the Georgia Tech Library, the Spatial Scholarship Field School brought together researchers from eight top academic institutions, including Carnegie Mellon University, UCLA, NYU, and Georgia Tech, to examine how technology, data, and physical environments shape one another.

Participants shared research, joined in panel discussions with Georgia Tech faculty, and learned interdisciplinary methods such as a variation of body-mapping that uses  wearable environmental sensors to explore how data shaped their felt experience in place.

Watch a video about the Spatial Scholarship Field School on YouTube

"We're really proud to host this Spatial Scholarship Field School — to spend a couple of days together thinking about what it means to take space and place more seriously as part of the scholarship we do," said Yanni Loukissas, an associate professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) and director of IMA.

Co-led by LMC Assistant Professor Richmond Wong, the event challenged scholars to evaluate how local neighborhoods respond to emerging technologies like self-driving cars and data centers.

“We invited participants to walk around with wearable sensors tracking sound, temperature, light, CO2, and air quality, interpreting readings through colored LEDs,” said Alexandra Teixeira Riggs, who helped facilitate the event. Riggs is a 2026 Ph.D. Digital Media graduate who now works as an assistant professor at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“This activity asked participants to focus on critical and interpretive approaches to bio and environmental data, situating themselves within campus environments,” Riggs said.

Stephen Yang, a doctoral candidate at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said the event advanced his thinking on how people experience built environments.

“I’m grateful for the thought-provoking conversations that pushed me to think hard about the taken-for-granted ways built environments are organized,” Yang said. “I left the Field School with many new ideas that I’ll continue to ruminate on.”

IMA is a collaboration between the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the Library. 

At the heart of the new lab is the miniTrashpresso, a compact recycling and manufacturing system developed by the sustainability technology company Miniwiz. The machine can take used plastics and other waste materials, process them locally, and transform them into new products in less than five minutes. By bringing manufacturing and recycling together in a single system, the Trash Lab aims to give the Georgia Tech community a way to explore sustainable design, material reuse, and the future of circular manufacturing.

“The launch of IPaT’s new Trash Lab represents an exciting step forward for sustainability at Georgia Tech,” said Jennifer Chirico, associate vice president of Sustainability. “As a living-learning lab, it provides students and researchers with hands-on opportunities to work alongside campus operations, turning used plastics into valuable new products and creating innovative solutions that support a more circular campus.”

A Makerspace Focused on Circular Innovation

The Trash Lab expands Georgia Tech’s growing network of makerspaces and innovation environments by focusing specifically on waste recovery and reuse. Instead of treating used plastics as disposable materials, the lab encourages users to view them as valuable resources that can be transformed into new products.

The miniTrashpresso represents the latest generation of recycling technology developed by Miniwiz. The company originally launched the world’s first mobile recycling line, known as the Trashpresso, to support communities that lacked access to traditional recycling infrastructure. The newer miniTrashpresso is smaller, more energy-efficient, and more portable, making it suitable for campuses and community-based applications.

The modular system uses industrial equipment, including shredders, presses, and heating technologies, to process materials on-site. Advanced heat-induction presses and specialized molds can quickly transform recovered plastics into new objects and components. The system can also be integrated with AI-powered waste-tracking tools and robotic automation technologies that help identify, sort, and process materials more efficiently.

For IPaT leaders, the Trash Lab represents more than the addition of specialized equipment.

“Community resilience and people-centered sustainability are core research areas within IPaT,” said Michael Best, executive director. “Our new Trash Lab will allow the entire Georgia Tech community to not only think about upcycling and plastic reuse but to make and do innovative projects that directly demonstrate sustainable futures.”

Turning Trash Into a Resource

Miniwiz founder Arthur Huang, who developed the miniTrashpresso system, describes upcycling as a practice rooted in centuries of human ingenuity.

“Upcycling is actually recycling old material and turning that into something new,” Huang said.

Throughout history, societies have reused existing materials in construction, manufacturing, and everyday life. According to Huang, modern waste streams, particularly plastic packaging and electronic waste, represent an enormous and often untapped source of raw materials.

The miniTrashpresso was designed around that idea. Rather than transporting waste long distances to centralized facilities, the system enables materials to be processed where they are collected. By reducing transportation needs and creating opportunities for local manufacturing, decentralized recycling systems can help lower the environmental footprint associated with traditional waste management.

Miniwiz estimates that using recycled materials can reduce embedded energy consumption by 60% to 80% compared with using raw materials. The company has developed more than 1,200 upcycled materials and products from everyday waste streams, including plastics, food packaging, coffee cups, and electronic waste.

Since its introduction, Miniwiz technology has been deployed in communities, campuses, and organizations worldwide, including projects in Taiwan, Italy, Singapore, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. According to Huang, Georgia Tech is installing and operating North America’s first miniTrashpresso recycling machine from Miniwiz.

Building a Community Around Sustainability

The new facility is also intended to serve as a gathering place for interdisciplinary collaboration. Students interested in sustainability, materials science, engineering, design, manufacturing, and public policy will have opportunities to experiment with new ideas while working with researchers and campus partners.

“When Michael Best first pitched the idea of the Trash Lab, I expected there to be interest in a space like this given the general momentum toward sustainable practices on campus, but the level of excitement from students, staff, and faculty has been outstanding,” said Tim Trent, IPaT’s lab director for the Trash, Craft, Prototyping, and Usability Labs.

“This is an opportunity to create a gathering point for sustainability initiatives, act as a catalyst for partnerships, and help strengthen the many amazing networks and projects already present on campus,” he said. “The IPaT Innovation Labs have a continuous focus on supporting the overall Georgia Tech research enterprise, and I’m happy we are adding another piece to the portfolio.”

As the Trash Lab opens its doors, members of the Georgia Tech community will be invited to explore how waste materials can be reimagined as resources, prototypes, and products. By combining makerspace culture, advanced recycling technology, and sustainability research, the lab offers a tangible demonstration of how circular economy principles can move from theory into practice.

For Georgia Tech, the Trash Lab is not simply a place to recycle plastic. It is a space where innovation, design, and sustainability intersect, helping transform discarded materials into opportunities for learning, discovery, and impact.
 

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For more information about the Trash Lab, contact the IPaT Innovation Labs at ipat-labs@groups.gatech.edu.

Opening the event, Ameet Pinto, BBISS faculty director for Interdisciplinary Research and Collaboration, noted that many critical infrastructure systems are facing unprecedented challenges. Aging assets, climate-related impacts, severe weather events, and growing demands on energy and water systems are testing the resilience of infrastructure that communities depend on. At the same time, infrastructure systems increasingly generate vast amounts of operational data through sensors, meters, and monitoring technologies. The opportunities for AI technologies to transform this data into actionable information and inform policy are just beginning to be explored.

Turning Infrastructure Data into Action

Molzahn's presentation focused on the electric grid and the ways AI-enhanced optimization can support smarter infrastructure management. He described the ongoing transition from large, centralized power plants to more distributed systems that incorporate renewable energy, battery storage, electric vehicles, and other distributed energy resources. While these technologies create opportunities for cleaner and more resilient energy systems, they also introduce new layers of complexity for planners and operators.

Among the examples Molzahn shared was research examining how electric vehicle charging could affect emergency evacuations during disasters such as wildfires. Traditional evacuation planning focuses on optimizing transportation networks for rapidly moving vehicles away from danger. However, with more EVs on the roads, consideration must be given to ensure that EVs will have sufficient charge to travel a safe distance when an evacuation order is given without overloading the electrical grid. By linking transportation and power-system models, researchers are demonstrating how planning strategies can significantly reduce stress on infrastructure while supporting faster evacuations.

Wildfire mitigation was another major focus. In recent years, several devastating wildfires have been linked to electricity infrastructure, prompting utilities to increasingly rely on Public Safety Power Shutoffs during high-risk conditions. Molzahn discussed how machine learning and optimization tools can help utilities make these difficult decisions more quickly by balancing ignition risk and minimizing customer outages.

He also highlighted emerging cybersecurity concerns associated with the trend towards more distributed energy resources. Decentralized and digitally connected energy infrastructure, such as internet-connected solar and battery systems, can be more vulnerable than legacy centralized energy sources. AI is playing an important role in identifying potential vulnerabilities.

Practical Applications in the Water Sector

Loe offered examples of how AI is already being deployed by water utilities and municipalities. One pressing challenge involves identifying lead service lines. New federal regulations require utilities to locate and replace lead service lines, but many organizations lack complete records identifying pipe materials. Loe described how utilities can combine statistical sampling and machine learning models to estimate which service lines are most likely to contain lead. Rather than excavating thousands of suspect locations, utilities can use AI to narrow the search, reducing costs while still meeting regulatory requirements and maintaining confidence in the results.

Loe also explained the overarching challenges of maintaining aging water infrastructure. Utilities across the country have significant backlogs of aging pipes that need replacement but lack the resources to replace every asset at once. Machine learning models can predict which pipes are most likely to fail, while optimization tools can prioritize and package disparate replacement jobs into efficient and practical construction projects for which funding can more easily be obtained. This approach allows organizations to move beyond simple age-based replacement strategies and incorporate factors such as risk, community priorities, paving schedules, traffic impacts, and equity considerations.

The Human Element

Although the discussion centered on AI, both speakers repeatedly emphasized that people remain critical to successful implementation. Panelists and audience members also discussed the importance of keeping "humans in the loop" since utility systems directly affect public safety. AI may generate recommendations, identify risks, or highlight priorities, but engineers, operators, and planners should remain responsible for evaluating those recommendations and making final decisions.

Workforce development emerged as another important theme. Both the water and energy sectors face challenges replacing experienced workers as many long-time professionals approach retirement. AI offers opportunities to preserve and transfer institutional knowledge that could enable smaller workforces, but both speakers stressed that future professionals will need expertise that spans engineering, data science, computing, and domain knowledge.

Looking Ahead

The discussion demonstrated that infrastructure resilience is increasingly both a physical and digital challenge. From wildfire management and grid reliability to lead service line replacements and predictive maintenance, AI and digital twins are enabling new opportunities to improve how critical systems are planned, operated, and maintained. However, better algorithms alone will not be enough to counter our aging infrastructure, climate impacts, cybersecurity risks, and rising resource demands. The thoughtful integration of advanced tools and human expertise and judgment built on a foundation of public trust offers the most effective solutions for keeping essential systems running.

Next in the Insights Series 

On October 14, BBISS will hold the next Insights Series at the John Lewis Student Center in the Rafael Bras Meeting Room. The topic will be “AI for Climate Resilience.” This session will explore how artificial intelligence is being leveraged to address pressing sustainability challenges and strengthen communities, infrastructure, and environmental systems in a changing climate. The program will open with an update from Jennifer Chirico on the Georgia Tech Climate Action Plan. Presentations from leading researchers will follow, including Suhas Jain, Ali Sarhadi, Abigale Stangl, and Iris Tien, followed by an interactive panel discussion. Breakfast will be served. Registration is required.

How does Atlanta's local food ecosystem function today? How do the people working inside it envision its future? And where are the opportunities for transformation?

Those three questions drive the systems and network mapping research of Nicole Kennard, a research scientist and assistant director for Community-Engaged Research at Georgia Tech’s Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS). Within a systems map, Kennard charts intersecting food challenges and the intervention strategies that could address them. A companion social network map reveals the relationships that already exist across the food ecosystem and who needs to be brought together to create change. Both feed into the Atlanta Food System Research Network, an effort to increase coordination and build teams around the food system's most stubborn, systemic challenges.

The mapping regularly shows one significant gap: One in eight metro Atlantans are struggling to access food. Although more local farmers are growing good food, there is a “missing middle layer” of infrastructure connecting that food to those who need it, according to Atlanta’s 2026 Climate Resilience Action Plan. Food produced by smaller farms often can’t enter traditional supply chains due to small quantities, so new models are needed to move that food in ways that people can access it within their everyday routines. A summer research trip through France, Belgium, and the U.K. provided her with fresh models for closing that gap.

"I learned a lot from these models that I'm trying to bring back to Atlanta for my systems mapping research," Kennard said. "One of the biggest issues is we're missing that middle layer — better ways to distribute local food so it's reaching all neighborhoods equitably, and it's actually accessible."

It's not Kennard's first time working on food systems abroad. After graduating from Georgia Tech with a degree in materials science and engineering and running a student-led hydroponics project that grew food for the Atlanta Community Food Bank, she spent nearly four years in the U.K. as a Fulbright Scholar, earning a master's in sustainable agriculture and food security at Newcastle University before completing a Ph.D. in chemistry and biosciences at the University of Sheffield in 2023. That background, she said, is part of what draws her to the field. "Food is the great connector."

Bringing Ideas Home From Europe

This summer, Kennard split her time between France, Belgium, and a return visit to Sheffield. At Georgia Tech-Europe, the institute's Metz campus, she met with Paul Voss, director of academic programs, to explore future partnerships around sustainable entrepreneurship and research, potentially bringing BBISS-affiliated faculty and coursework to the campus.

In Montpellier, she presented her work to three organizations clustered on a single campus: INRAE (France's National Research Institute for Agriculture, Food, and Environment), L'Institut Agro Montpellier, and CIRAD, the country's international agricultural development research arm, along with MOISA, an interdisciplinary CIRAD-affiliated research unit focused on sustainable food systems. There, she encountered a "right-to-food" pilot in which Montpellier residents, half of whom live in poverty, pay a voluntary monthly amount on a sliding scale, from as little as 1 euro to 150 euros, and all receive a flat 100 euros back, redeemable at a handful of partner supermarkets. She also saw "social grocery stores" reaching rural areas through mobile markets, and digital platforms, letting neighbors pool their money to buy directly from local farmers.

Kennard also attended the European Ecological Economics Society Conference in Belgium, where she presented her food systems mapping research and learned about other local food models, specifically farmer-based cooperatives.

In Sheffield, Kennard gave a talk on community-engaged research methods and came away with insights from their local food network, ‘ShefFood,’ which is community-led rather than run by the university or city (though both have seats on its board). Leadership rotates every couple of years to keep it grounded in the community it serves.

From Campus to Community

Kennard's Atlanta work leans heavily on the students and community partners building it with her. This semester, she is working with incoming computer science Ph.D. student Tristan Daniel to automate her network map, scraping newsletters, news articles, and annual tax filings to keep the map's data updated in near-real time. Rhutvi Ahir, a master’s student in city and regional planning, has been working on integrating the systems map into a publicly available and interactive online platform.

Last semester, through a BBISS 2025 Sustainability Next Seed Grant project, Kennard, along with principal investigators Johannes Milz, Ingeborg Rocker, and Carl DiSalvo, professor in the School of Interactive Computing, convened 16 community and civic partners for a participatory design workshop mapping how food moves across metro Atlanta and where better data sharing could prevent waste. Drawing on feedback from that session, DiSalvo’s team is now exploring tools such as digital maps that show where surplus food, refrigerated trucks, and distribution sites are located, as well as a dedicated messaging system to coordinate what is now handled through ad hoc texts and calls.

This fall, DiSalvo’s graduate students in the interdisciplinary M.S. in Human-Computer Interaction program — from computing, design, and social science backgrounds — will turn those concepts into early prototypes to test with partners, giving students experience designing technology for real community needs rather than just commercial products.

DiSalvo says the core issue isn’t only a lack of food, but the difficulty of coordinating people, resources, and logistics at scale. “There’s so much need with food insecurity, and resources as well. It’s a coordination challenge. Most people didn’t get into this because they love logistics; they have a commitment to feeding people,” he said.

He credits Kennard with helping position Georgia Tech as a hub for food systems and community-engaged sustainability research. “Nicole’s work is important — not just her food systems research, but also the oversight she gives to community-based research. It’s amazing we have her as a colleague.”

DiSalvo isn't the only faculty collaborator. Sofía Pérez-Guzmán, an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a BBISS Faculty Fellow, has partnered with Kennard to survey Atlanta residents in West End and citywide about how they access food. Their next step: building a tool based on what they learned.

"We're designing a decision-making tool that helps connect food locally, from producers to distributors and food access points in the community," Pérez-Guzmán said.

Not every connection requires a grant or a formal project. Through the networks she is building and her continued engagement, Kennard has linked a local consulting group with a co-op needing strategic guidance and introduced a farmers market organizer to a food rescue partner. Community partner Fresh Harvest even referenced her food system network map in a recent presentation to WABE radio. According to Kennard, it generated a lot of buzz, underscoring the appetite that Atlantans have for a shared picture of the food distribution ecosystem.

Two Maps, One Goal

Both of Kennard's maps are expected to go live by the end of the summer. The network map identifies the organizations working in the space and how they connect. The systems map, still being finalized, distills her interviews and engagement work into nine key thematic areas emerging as priorities for the city, along with competing visions of what a more resilient food system could look like.

The maps also anchor the research network Kennard co-leads with Emory University Associate Professor Emily Burchfield and agrifood systems researcher Kate Mundon-Dixon. The network has held two gatherings so far, one at a local hydroponic farm, where attendees added their own connections to the map. The network’s active listserv now includes more than 55 organizations.

For Kennard, the goal was never a single map or tool. It was building the foundation and the infrastructure that let everyone else act together. "I wanted to create this foundational research so that the academics and partners most poised to address specific challenges can create those teams and move forward together," she said.

She added that while most of her work is Atlanta-focused, it has implications for regional food access across Georgia. “A key insight that came from my systems mapping work is the need to connect rural and urban growers to move forward a statewide agenda for a resilient food system,” Kennard said. “My colleague at Emory, Emily Burchfield, is doing a lot more of the rural engagement, and we hope to align our work later.”

Everybody in Atlanta's food space is doing amazing work, she added, noting that, "If we can better align and coordinate under a shared vision and strategy, then we can actually move the needle on systems change, instead of just a few isolated things happening in different neighborhoods.”

Established in 2014, the BBISS Faculty Fellows program brings together distinguished faculty from across Georgia Tech to foster interdisciplinary collaboration, strengthen the sustainability research community, and advance the Institute's mission of generating real-world impact through research, education, and engagement. Serving three-year terms, fellows act as strategic advisors, community ambassadors, and thought leaders within the broader sustainability ecosystem. Building on this foundational vision, the BBISS Faculty Fellows program has evolved to meet the dynamic needs of modern sustainability leaders. The newly revamped program emphasizes active leadership development, offering tailored networking opportunities, connections with broader sustainability networks, and focused training to help fellows grow as influential voices in their respective fields. Through these enhancements, the BBISS Faculty Fellows program aims to empower early-career researchers to maximize their reach, elevate their research, and innovate transformative sustainability solutions.

The 2026 cohort represents a wide range of expertise spanning AI and sustainability, sustainable finance, computational materials discovery, infrastructure systems, environmental chemistry, urban resilience, and community-engaged research.

The 2026 BBISS Faculty Fellows are:

• Heidi Biggs, Assistant Professor, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
• Jennifer Bowen, Assistant Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences.
• Gaurav Doshi, Assistant Professor, School of Economics, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
• Xindi He, Assistant Professor, Scheller College of Business.
• Guoxiang (Emma) Hu, Assistant Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering, College of Engineering.
• Suhas Jain, Assistant Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering.
• Patrick Kastner, Assistant Professor, School of Architecture, College of Design.
• Cindy Kaiying Lin, Assistant Professor, School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing.
• Julia Yang, Assistant Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, College of Engineering.

Collectively, their research addresses the sustainability of interconnected human, natural, and engineered systems, encompassing topics such as watershed resilience, resource stewardship, carbon cycling, circular materials management, and evidence-based environmental decision-making. Their diverse expertise fosters new interdisciplinary collaborations that accelerate the development of practical, scalable solutions for communities, industries, and ecosystems.

“We are delighted to welcome this exceptional group of faculty leaders to the BBISS community,” said BBISS Executive Director Beril Toktay. “Their expertise, creativity, and commitment to sustainability will help expand opportunities for collaboration and accelerate the impact of sustainability research across Georgia Tech and beyond.”

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