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.”
]]>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.
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.
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.”
]]>Georgia Tech will play a key role in the newly announced Genesis Mission, a national initiative harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to propel scientific discovery and address challenges in health, energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, and national security. The White House announced the first Genesis Mission projects on July 22 as part of a more than $5 billion investment in AI-enabled science and technology.
Georgia Tech was chosen for multiple Genesis Mission awards. Faculty will lead two projects and collaborate on others with research partners across the country.
“Artificial intelligence is rapidly transforming how we conduct research and drive discovery,” said Tim Lieuwen, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for Research. “These awards recognize Georgia Tech’s leadership in AI, advanced computing, engineering, and the sciences. By bringing together expertise from across our colleges and research units, we can help accelerate breakthroughs in areas that are crucial to the nation’s future — from energy and manufacturing to health and critical infrastructure.”
The additional Georgia Tech-supported awards span multiple disciplines and involve researchers from the Colleges of Engineering, Computing, and Sciences; the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems; the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines; the Institute for Data Engineering and Science; and the Strategic Energy Institute.
Georgia Tech’s role in the Genesis Mission highlights the Institute’s strong interdisciplinary research approach, which brings together experts across many fields to solve complex problems and rapidly advance innovation.
Note: Selection for award negotiations does not constitute a final funding award. According to the U.S. Department of Energy, awards remain subject to successful negotiations and the availability of funding. https://science.osti.gov/-/media/funding/pdf/Awards-Lists/2026/GM-RFA-Awards-List.pdf
--Written by Anne Wainscott-Sargent
From a single Atlanta church to a growing network across the Southeast, Georgia Tech engineer Sofía Pérez-Guzmán is connecting communities and researchers to support resilience in extreme weather events.
When a West Atlanta church received donated solar panels and battery storage to operate as a community resilience hub, Pérez-Guzmán led an academic-practitioner team that helped the congregation turn that hardware into an operational playbook. She is now using the same model to build a regional network that links community leaders and researchers on resilience, food access, and disaster response.
Pérez-Guzmán, an assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and a faculty fellow at the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS), focuses on addressing problems within the supply chain and transportation domains. “These challenges often encompass disruptions, human behavior, multiple stakeholders, and sustainability objectives,” she said.
Before joining Georgia Tech in 2023, she was a postdoctoral research associate at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute’s Center for Infrastructure, Transportation, and the Environment. She also holds a courtesy appointment in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.
“All of the research that I do always starts with a problem that has some sort of important social impact,” she said, “and then I try to draw from my expertise in different fields to help solve that problem.”
Building a Network, One Pilot at a Time
Through BBISS and its Sustainability Next grant program, Pérez-Guzmán co-leads a community resilience network of roughly 40 to 50 practitioners and researchers working on community-led resilience hubs across Georgia and South Carolina, with plans to expand across the Southeast.
“Neither researchers nor practitioners alone can advance community resilience as they could if they work together,” she said. “The purpose of the network is to facilitate and leverage partnerships.”
Community Church Atlanta is one of the first pilots. The church’s resilience hub, established in 2023, offers weekly support services and on-site solar and battery storage to keep power flowing during outages caused by storms, heat waves, or other disruptions. It is also the launching point for the Westside Resilience Corridor, a partnership of four churches along Cascade Road working to become resilience hubs for their neighborhoods.
Working with church leaders, emergency managers, and community representatives, Pérez-Guzmán and partners held a two-day workshop to map likely hazards, define critical services, and draft activation procedures. Among those partners was Beth Remmes, coastal outreach and climate resiliency coordinator for Georgia Interfaith Power & Light (GIPL), who helped design and facilitate the process. “The whole idea behind resilience hubs is creating social cohesion,” Remmes said. “Social connectivity and relationships in the community are one of the biggest determinants of our ability not only to bounce back, but hopefully to bounce forward in a stronger way.”
She noted that churches like Community Church Atlanta already serve as informal first responders. The resilience hub work makes that role more intentional by focusing on preparedness, programming, and connection well before an emergency. Just as important, in her view, was Tech’s ability to see how lessons from Community Church Atlanta could inform future resilience hubs across the region.
Erica Holloman-Hill, founder and chief envisioning officer of Ayika Solutions Inc. and a member of Community Church Atlanta, sees that impact from inside the congregation. In the resilience hub effort, she provides technical guidance on the solar and battery system, helps shape programming such as workforce development, and helped bring partners like Groundswell and Georgia Tech to the table.
“Georgia Tech uniquely brings the science and academia,” Holloman-Hill said. “Being able to leverage an institution like Georgia Tech gives weight to some of the work that we’re doing, while leaning on the technical expertise of professors like Sofía and partnering with organizations like GIPL to create models and support.”
Looking ahead, Holloman-Hill said Community Church Atlanta is focused on refining how the hub operates and sharing lessons learned with other churches in the Westside Resilience Corridor. That means clarifying how the church will run the hub during emergencies, which partners need to be at the table, and how a third-party technical advisor can help keep the system performing as designed.
For Pérez-Guzmán, those kinds of relationships are the real outcome. “The relationship, the trust, the partnership — it’s probably the most important outcome we’ve seen,” she said.
Jennifer Hirsch, senior director of BBISS’s Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE) and the network co-lead, sees the same value at an institutional scale.
“Universities are important members of their communities and can be key partners in sustainability and resilience efforts when they mobilize their research capabilities, students, and other resources to partner with and support local leadership and innovations,” Hirsch said. “Networks of universities and communities can serve as multipliers of innovative approaches. With the resilience hubs network, we are excited to incubate new ideas that are community-centric and evidence-based and tailored to the Southeast communities that our partners know best.”
Where Resilience Meets Food Access
This partnership model also shapes what Pérez-Guzmán calls her most immediately actionable project: a decision-support tool connecting local food producers, distributors, and access points in Atlanta. Her team has gathered survey and experimental data from residents in West End and citywide, testing how distance, travel time, price, and a store’s ties to the community shape where people choose to shop. “We’re trying to design tools for logistics and food distribution decisions that bring food closer to people,” she said.
A parallel thread runs through her disaster response work, where she studies how people choose among points of distribution for emergency relief. Proximity matters, she’s found, but it isn’t everything. Many people will travel farther if they believe they’re more likely to receive supplies, or if it lets them move closer to family. In urban freight, she has applied the same lens to city logistics, studying behavior around emerging technologies such as sidewalk delivery robots and autonomous trucks.
“Atlanta’s mix of freight infrastructure, food access challenges, and weather vulnerability makes it fertile ground for that range of work,” she said.
“Across every project, the constant is not only patience but also resilience. Along the way, we realize that the original research idea may no longer make sense, or that different approaches are required. The process is very nonlinear and requires revision, reassessment, and a lot of pivoting,” she said. “It basically requires tons of resilience!”
Lindsey Bullinger, associate professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, has been named associate dean for research, effective Aug. 1.
Bullinger is the Associate Director of the Health Economics and Policy Innovation Collaborative and a co-editor for the Journal of Policy Analysis & Management and a consulting editor for Child Maltreatment. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Georgia Policy Labs at Georgia State University, the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of Notre Dame, the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Children's Pediatric Research Alliance at the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.
“Dr. Bullinger’s deep expertise in research and leadership will be a tremendous asset to supporting and amplifying the amazing research in the College,” said Amanda Murdie, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Regents’ Professor, and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair. “Her leadership roles both at Georgia Tech and in her research area make her an ideal leader for the College’s research enterprise.”
Bullinger’s research examines how public policies affect child and family health and well-being, especially among low-income families. Her work has been published in American Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, Contemporary Economic Policy, Review of Economics of the Household, Economics & Human Biology, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Housing Policy Debate, Child Abuse & Neglect, Children and Youth Services Review, Health Affairs, BMC Pediatrics, Health Services Research, American Journal of Public Health, JAMA Pediatrics, Maternal and Child Health Journal, and more.
Bullinger’s research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE), Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, Spencer Foundation, Cash Transfer Lab at NYU, and Pew Charitable Trusts.
For the past three years, Bullinger has co-chaired the Georgia Tech Office of the Executive Vice President for Research's steering committee, developing recommendations for a new Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) on health and well-being. She has also served two elected terms on the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy’s Faculty Executive Committee and co-hosts the annual Atlanta Workshop on Public Policy and Child Well-being.
She earned a Ph.D. from the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. She holds an MPA from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from Miami University in Ohio.
]]>Brian Magerko has been appointed as the James and Mary Wesley Chair for New Media Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. Magerko is a Regents’ Professor of Digital Media and head of the Expressive Machinery Lab. He has served as director of graduate studies for the Digital Media Program for eight years and will step down from this leadership role on July 31.
The endowed chair appointment is a renewable, three-year term, starting on Aug. 1. The endowed professorship is supported by a gift from James and Mary Wesley, long-time Atlanta philanthropists. The chair conducts research and develops and teaches courses within the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) and has recognized expertise in digital environments across media platforms.
"Dr. Magerko's innovative work in cognition, coding education, and creativity makes him an ideal fit to serve as our Wesley Chair,” said Amanda Murdie, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Regents’ Professor, and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology. “This chair will help advance his groundbreaking research while also supporting his transformative leadership of LMC’s Digital Media Program.”
Magerko’s expertise lies at the intersections of computation, cognition, and the social/creative interactions between humans and artificial intelligence. His research explores how studying human and machine cognition can inform the creation of new human/computer creative experiences. He has been research lead on more than $15 million of federally funded research and has authored over 100 peer-reviewed articles related to computational media, cognition, and learning.
His work has been shown at galleries and museums internationally, and he co-founded a music-based learning environment for computer science, called EarSketch, that has been used by about 2 million learners worldwide. Magerko and his work have appeared in the New Yorker, USA Today, CNN, Yahoo! Finance, NPR, and other global and regional outlets.
Magerko joined Georgia Tech in 2008 as an assistant professor of digital media. He received his B.S. in Cognitive Science from Carnegie Mellon University and his M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science and Engineering from the University of Michigan.
“Dr. Magerko exemplifies our teaching and educational mission in his work on behalf of our Digital Media program,” said Kelly Ritter, chair of LMC and professor of Writing and Communication. “He has built an already strong and forward-looking program into an even better one that provides pathways for students and fellow faculty to accomplish their own professional and intellectual goals.”
“We would talk, not just about public policy, but about life,” said Cheryl Leggon, a retired associate professor in the Carter School.
According to those who knew her well, those small exchanges outside D.M. Smith reflected the way Persons, a professor in the Carter School, moved through the world. She built friendships and drew whole organizations together, one conversation at a time. Over more than 30 years, those connections became the bedrock of her remarkable career and legacy.
Following her passing in July, her colleagues and friends reflected on the lasting impact of those relationships.
“Georgia was committed to bringing together scholars in her field,” said Willie Pearson Jr., a retired Regents’ Professor in the School of History and Sociology.
She specialized in connecting policy and political science scholars to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Persons played an active role in founding the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and edited the National Political Science Review, the Conference’s refereed scholarly journal, for ten years — an unusual distinction in scholarship and service.
Persons’ talent for bringing people together also extended beyond colleagues in her discipline. She served all of Georgia Tech’s faculty as an ADVANCE Professor and was active in the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which promotes collaboration and public service among its historically Black colleges and universities member institutions.
“As one of the Carter School’s founding faculty members, Georgia encouraged others to engage with contemporary social policy issues and with the larger community,” said Aaron Levine, interim chair of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. “The School wouldn’t be where it is today without her.”
Persons’ talent for building communities and supporting others began during her undergraduate years at Southern University in Louisiana, where she studied under eminent scholar Jewel Limar Prestage, the first Black woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in political science. Throughout her career, Persons followed her mentor’s example, encouraging those who were pursuing academic paths in political science and other fields.
After receiving a bachelor’s degree in political science at Southern, Persons earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in American government and politics, urban politics and policy, and political development.
“She earned her Ph.D. at MIT at a time when there were far too few African Americans — and even fewer African American women — pursuing graduate work in such spaces. That achievement alone speaks to her determination, discipline, and exceptional capacity,” said Kaye Husbands Fealing, a professor in the Carter School and former dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.
“But Georgia did not simply enter those rooms; she helped widen the doors for others,” she added.
As a teacher and mentor, Persons changed lives.
“Your laid-back yet academically enriching teaching style is unique among the faculty, motivating me to take any course in which your name is associated,” Husbands Fealing quoted one of her students as saying. “It is under [your] insights that I am inspired to pursue a career in Public Policy.”
Persons was also known for weaving personal experience into her teaching and research in ways that students found meaningful and inspiring.
“Georgia did more than teach courses. She opened intellectual pathways. She helped students see history more clearly, policy more critically, and their own futures more expansively,” said Husbands Fealing.
At Georgia Tech, Persons published widely on African American politics, American national government, national institutional processes, health policy, and health disparities. She was awarded the highly competitive Ford Foundation Fellowship and was named an American Political Science Association Fellow.
“Georgia had a gift for looking honestly at history — not as a fixed account of the past, but as a living record of struggle, resilience, exclusion, and possibility,” said Husbands Fealing.
Recently, Persons conducted research on health policy and healthcare safety nets. She was also consulting for the Fulton-Dekalb Hospital Authority. Her work focused not only on the problems with the healthcare system, but also on its potential and possible futures.
“Georgia’s scholarship mattered because it was never detached from human consequence,” said Husbands Fealing. “She studied institutions not as abstractions, but as forces that shape opportunity, dignity, health, leadership, and democratic belonging.”
Across her decades at Georgia Tech, the qualities colleagues remember the most about Georgia Persons are the same ones reflected in those conversations outside D.M. Smith: her warmth, generosity, and remarkable ability to bring people together.
Associate Professor Hans Klein recalled that in his first semester at Georgia Tech, Persons saw him in the hallway and joked that she thought he was one of the undergraduates. They laughed, and that good-humored warmth remained a hallmark of their relationship. (As recalled to Kaye Husbands Fealing.)
“I had the privilege of knowing and working with her for many years and have many memories of our long association. Georgia was a unique colleague, and will be greatly missed,” said Professor Philip Shapira.
“Generations of students and faculty benefited from her wisdom and experience,” said Dean’s Distinguished Professor Mary Frank Fox. “I will miss Georgia — ever, always.”
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