BIO
I have always been fascinated with the universal forces that make things move and behave the way they do at any scale. My early fascination grew into an intellectual need to explain these phenomena, underpinning my interest in mechanical and biomedical engineering. It was my father’s heart attack in the first year of my PhD, where his blood vessels were occluded by clots, that taught me the shear force of blood flow has a critical effect. I was convinced that my research should solve real-world problems. These days I apply my expertise to understand how some specialised proteins in our blood can actually sense force to enable the development of new treatments and preventative measures that will reduce the loss of life.

Andrés García, faculty host

Bio: Enric Boix-Adsera is an assistant professor of statistics and data science. His parents are originally from Barcelona, and he grew up mostly in Princeton, New Jersey. Before coming to Wharton, he earned a doctorate in electrical engineering and computer science from MIT.

Boix-Adsera studies the learning processes of artificial intelligence models, such as ChatGPT, with the goal of improving their efficiency and reliability.

 For CODA guest access, please contact shatcher8@gatech.edu at least 2 business days prior to the event.

Bio:  Hal Daumé III is a professor of computer science with appointments in the Maryland Language Science Center and the University of Maryland Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, where he is also the director of TRAILS. In addition to fairness and natural language processing, his research focuses on understanding computational properties of learning and language as well as trustworthy AI.

For CODA guest access, please contact shatcher8@gatech.edu at least 2 business days prior to the event.

Click here to register for the event. 

To register for the event, click here. 

Biological membranes perform diverse functions, including molecular transport, chemical transformation, and cellular communication, through the coordinated actions of lipids and membrane proteins. Reproducing such functions with synthetic materials remains a central challenge at the interface of polymer chemistry, supramolecular science, and chemical biology. In this seminar, I will present our efforts to construct synthetic membrane functions using polymer assemblies. First, I will describe the development of polymer-based molecularly permeable vesicles, focusing on the mechanisms that govern membrane permeability and the molecular design principles required to control transmembrane transport. I will then introduce polymer-based artificial ion channels designed to mediate ion transport across lipid bilayers. Finally, I will discuss amphiphilic random copolymers that associate with lipid membranes to form polymer-rich domains. These membrane-associated polymer assemblies provide a platform for integrating molecular transport with catalytic transformation, thereby serving as synthetic analogues of multifunctional membrane proteins.  I will also highlight their extension toward cancer-related therapeutic applications.

Together, these studies illustrate how polymer assemblies can be used to create programmable membrane functions, from molecular transport to chemical transformation, in biomimetic and biological environments.

Julie Champion, faculty host

Abstract:

Bio:

Bio: Jeremy D. Brown, the John C. Malone Assistant Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, explores the interface between humans and robotics, with a specific focus on medical applications and haptic feedback.

Brown’s research sits at the intersection of engineering, biomechatronics, medicine, and psychophysics. He develops novel haptic interfaces for upper-limb prosthetics and minimally invasive surgical robotics. Applications of this research include giving amputees a sense of touch through their prostheses ,and helping surgeons use surgical robots to improve their accuracy and precision when performing delicate procedures.

Bio: Tapomayukh "Tapo" Bhattacharjee is an Assistant Professor in the Department of Computer Science at Cornell University where he directs the EmPRISE Lab (https://emprise.cs.cornell.edu/). He completed his Ph.D. in Robotics from Georgia Institute of Technology and was an NIH Ruth L. Kirschstein NRSA postdoctoral research associate in Computer Science & Engineering at the University of Washington. His primary research interests are in the area of physical robot caregiving and physical human-robot interaction. He is the recipient of TRI Young Faculty Researcher Award'24, NSF CAREER Award'23, AFCEA 40 under 40 Award'22, and his work has won Best Systems Paper Award at HRI’26, Best Paper Award at RSS’25, Best Paper and Student Paper Award Finalist and Best HRI Paper Award Finalist at ICRA’25, Best Systems Paper Award Finalist at HRI'24, Best Demo Award at HRI'24, Best RoboCup Paper Award at IROS’22, Best Paper Award Finalist and ABB Best Student Paper Award Finalist at IROS’22, Best Technical Advances Paper Award at HRI'19, and Best Demonstration Award at NeurIPS’18. His work has also been featured in many media outlets including the BBC, Reuters, New York Times, IEEE Spectrum, and GeekWire and his robot-assisted feeding work was selected to be one of the best interactive designs of 2019 by Fast Company. 

Bio: Nadia Figueroa is the Shalini and Rajeev Misra Presidential Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics at the University of Pennsylvania, with secondary appointments in Computer and Information Science and Electrical and Systems Engineering. She is also a core faculty member of the GRASP Lab. Before joining Penn, she was a Postdoctoral Associate in the Interactive Robotics Group at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT). She earned her Ph.D. in Robotics, Control, and Intelligent Systems from the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology in Lausanne (EPFL) and previously conducted research at the Robotics and Mechatronics Institute of the German Aerospace Center (DLR) and at NYU Abu Dhabi. She holds a B.Sc. in Mechatronics Engineering from Tecnológico de Monterrey and an M.Sc. in Automation and Robotics from TU Dortmund. Her research focuses on developing integrated learning, control, and estimation algorithms that enable fluid human-robot training, co-existence and collaboration with formal guarantees of safety, efficiency, and robustness. Her work bridges control theory, machine learning, AI, perception, and biomechanics through the lens of physical human-robot interaction. She is a recipient of a 2025 NSF CAREER Award, a finalist for the 2020 Georges Giralt Best Ph.D. and 2017 KUKA Innovation Awards, and has received multiple best paper honors at leading robotics venues such as ICRA, RSS and T-RO.

Bio: TBA

Bio: Sarah Li is an assistant professor at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, a faculty member of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, a faculty member of ML@GT, and an affiliate of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute at Georgia Tech. Her research advances multi-agent models and algorithms to overcome challenges facing future air and space mobility systems. Her technical work lies at the intersection of game theory, stochastic control, and optimization to enable optimal and safe decision-making of autonomous systems in interactive settings. Sarah earned her Ph.D. in Aeronautics and Astronautics from the University of Washington and her B.A.Sc. in Engineering Physics from the University of British Columbia.

Bio: The Ghosh group engages in cross-disciplinary collaborations and welcomes students from diverse academic backgrounds. Most projects focus on addressing challenges in fundamental physics and astrophysics using computational and AI/ML tools, making the group a natural fit for students with strong skills or interests in these areas. We develop methods to automate theoretical physics calculations using reinforcement learning and LLM agents, enabling rapid testing of new theories. We also work on simulation, experimental design and high-dimensional statistical inference techniques powered by AI to accelerate scientific discovery. Data analysis problems at the scale of the Large Hadron Collider or multi-messenger astronomy often demand rapid decision-making, and we design efficient AI algorithms that can be deployed on fast hardware to meet these challenges.

For CODA guest access, please contact shatcher8@gatech.edu at least 2 business days prior to the event.

Bio: TBA

For CODA guest access, please contact shatcher8@gatech.edu at least 2 business days prior to the event.

Bio: I am an applied mathematician interested in the interplay of scientific computing and artificial intelligence. I am a Winship Distinguished Research Associate Professor in the Department of Mathematics and the Department of Computer Science at Emory University and a member of Emory’s Scientific Computing Group. I lead the Emory REU/RET site for Computational Mathematics for Data Science. Prior to joining Emory, I was a postdoc at the University of British Columbia and I held PhD positions at the University of Lübeck and the University of Münster.

For CODA guest access, please contact shatcher8@gatech.edu at least 2 business days prior to the event.

The Bench2Market Talks series is created to provide commercialization guidance to the university research community. For more details on the series, visit our website.

• Attend in-person at the Petit Biotechnology Building (IBB) - Lunch provided, while supplies last
• Register Here to participate virtually

Jennifer Glass, Jean “Chris” Purvis Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Georgia Institute of Technology

Abstract: The ocean plays a major role in Earth’s climate and biogeochemical cycles. Microorganisms are key players in ocean carbon cycle. Archaea and bacteria oxidize most of the methane that diffuses upward from vast reservoirs beneath the seafloor before it can reach the atmosphere. In this seminar, I will present recent findings from our lab on the role of microbes and their proteins on methane and methanol cycling in three habitats: under the seafloor, in a deep brine pool, and in the surface ocean. First, I will highlight our discovery of methane hydrate binding proteins made by subseafloor bacteria, and how collaboration with GT biochemists enabled characterization of these novel proteins that are only found in bacteria that inhabit deep seafloor sediments rich in methane. Second, I will present our recent study of marine archaea that prevent leakage of methane out of a deep anoxic salt pond on the seafloor of the Gulf of Mexico. Third, I will highlight our discovery of Methylaequorales, an uncultivated order of alphaproteobacteria that are highly active in the surface ocean and use lanthanide-requiring enzymes to grow on methanol. Despite recent progress, we have barely scratched the surface of knowledge of the biochemical repertoire of microbial proteins, particularly those from habitats rarely visited by humans, and the need for fundamental science to uncover the chemical potential of environmental microbes is stronger than ever.

C. Shawn Burke
University of Central Florida

Establishing and maintaining a productive research team is a difficult challenge across all stages of an academic’s career. The science of good teamwork applies across an academic career: from incorporating graduate students and post-docs to your first research team to crossing-boundaries in the creation and maintenance of an interdisciplinary expert team. In conjunction with Georgia Clinical and Translational Science Alliance, we are offering a skill series to develop the skills necessary to build and maintain your research team by leveraging existing teams research. This workshop will focus on leadership within your team. Graduate students, post-docs, and all levels of academic faculty are all welcome to attend this workshop.

Team consult opportunity:

Our Team Science Skills presenters have graciously opened their schedules to provide a limited amount of attendees with direct feedback and guidance on their personal team issues. During a one-hour consulting session, attendees will be able to directly ask our experts questions and get personalized advice on how to effectively move their team forward. Requesters must attend the full session and complete the post-evaluation survey to be eligible. 

Team consult opportunity:

Our Team Science Skills presenters have graciously opened their schedules to provide a limited amount of attendees with direct feedback and guidance on their personal team issues. During a one-hour consulting session, attendees will be able to directly ask our experts questions and get personalized advice on how to effectively move their team forward. Requesters must attend the full session and complete the post-evaluation survey to be eligible.

Jessica Wildman
Professor
School of Psychology
Florida Institute of Technology

Trust is a concept that seems like common sense at first: everyone knows what it is, everyone wants it, and yet it's all too easy to mess up. Trust is the lifeblood of any effective team, enabling many other things we know to be beneficial such as better communication, shared leadership, adaptability, and stronger performance. Knowing how to develop and maintain trust, and restore trust when it is unfortunately broken, is a critical skill for effective team management. Luckily, there is a science that can inform the most effective way to do just that.

At the end of this session, participants will be able to:

1. Define interpersonal trust as it applies within work teams.
2. Identify examples of common behaviors that build trust, break trust, and restore
   trust in work teams.
3. Develop strategies to build and maintain trust over time in work teams.

Team consult opportunity:

Our Team Science Skills presenters have graciously opened their schedules to provide a limited amount of attendees with direct feedback and guidance on their personal team issues. During a one-hour consulting session, attendees will be able to directly ask our experts questions and get personalized advice on how to effectively move their team forward. Requesters must attend the full session and complete the post-evaluation survey to be eligible. 

Shannon Marlow
Associate Professor
Management
University of Texas, San Antonio

Although communication is an inherent component of teamwork, many teams do not innately communicate effectively. Several significant difficulties complicate team members' ability to exchange information successfully. However, research consistently identifies several evidence-based guidelines and strategies that can help teams overcome these pitfalls. This 60-minute workshop will synthesize research on teams to address the fundamentals of effective team communication, common barriers faced by teams and how to overcome them, and behaviors that promote high-quality communication and, ultimately, successful teamwork.

Objectives
By the end of the workshop, participants will be able to:

1. Describe what effective team communication is and what it is not.
   Identify and overcome barriers that may prevent team members from constructively communicating with each other.
2. Engage in behaviors that foster productive, effective communication among team members.

Team consult opportunity:

Our Team Science Skills presenters have graciously opened their schedules to provide a limited amount of attendees with direct feedback and guidance on their personal team issues. During a one-hour consulting session, attendees will be able to directly ask our experts questions and get personalized advice on how to effectively move their team forward.  Requesters must attend the full session and complete the post-evaluation survey to be eligible. 

Allison Traylor
Assistant Professor
College of Behavioral, Social, and Health Sciences
Clemson University

Whether your team is starting a new project, working to establish new norms, or setting expectations for new members, a team charter can help your team lay the foundation for success. A team charter is a codified plan for how a team will manage teamwork activities. Team charters are evidence-based and are associated with improved team performance. This hands-on workshop will describe the benefits of team charters and provide the resources necessary to implement an effective charter in your team.

Team consult opportunity:

Our Team Science Skills presenters have graciously opened their schedules to provide a limited amount of attendees with direct feedback and guidance on their personal team issues. During a one-hour consulting session, attendees will be able to directly ask our experts questions and get personalized advice on how to effectively move their team forward. Requesters must attend the full session and complete the post-evaluation survey to be eligible. 

REGISTER HERE for virtual participation link.

Blue Sky Groups are unstructured meetings that provide a unique opportunity for attendees to drive the agenda and catalyze future collaborations and research opportunities.

The discussion will be opened by a panel discussion featuring five researchers from across the CTSA in this field: Thom Orlando, William Dynan, Binu Tharakan, Chunhui Xu, and Phillip Stancil.

Discussion topics may include, but are not limited to:

• What are the burning research questions in this area?
• What are the known funding opportunities?
• What are the cross-institutional collaborative research opportunities
  in this field?

Share your experience, learn from others, enjoy opportunities for interdisciplinary networking and find potential collaborators!

Register HERE to participate virtually

Ashish Ranjan is an Endowed Professor in the Department of Radiation Oncology. He also serves as Vice Chair for Comparative Oncology and Research Innovation and Director of the Veterinary Research and Oncology Clinic. He earned his B.V.Sc. degree (DVM equivalent) from Madras Veterinary College, in Chennai, India, followed by a Ph.D. in biomedical and veterinary sciences from Virginia Tech. Ranjan was then a visiting fellow at the Center for Interventional Oncology, Department of Radiology and Imaging Sciences at the National Institutes of Health (NIH).

Ranjan's research interests are in the application of device-directed nanoparticles for solid tumor chemo-immunotherapy. His lab is actively engaged in preclinical and bench-to-bedside veterinary clinical trials and has received funding from several federal, state, and private sources. Ranjan has received several distinguished awards, including the NIH Merit Award. He also serves on the Scientific Advisory Board of Focused Ultrasound Foundation, UK's Humanimal Trust, and NIH panels.

Faculty host: Yue Chen

 

Register HERE to participate virtually

Bianxiao Cui is the Job and Gertrud Tamaki Professor of Chemistry and a fellow of the Wu Tsai Stanford Neuroscience Institute at Stanford University. She holds a Ph.D. degree in Chemistry from the University of Chicago and a BS degree from the University of Science and Technology of China. Cui develops new tools to study the nano-bio interface, membrane curvature, electrophysiology, and signal transduction in cells at normal and disease conditions. As a scientist and a teacher, she enjoys working with young scholars to explore the natural world with scientific innovations. Research in her group spans the disciplines of biophysics, cell biology, chemistry, material science, nanotechnology, and neurobiology. Her awards and distinctions include Ono Pharma Breakthrough Science Initiative award, Barany Award from the Biophysical Society, NIH New Innovator Award, NSF CAREER award, NSF Inspire award, Packard Fellowships in Science and Engineering, Hellman Scholar, Searle Scholar Award and Dreyfus New Faculty Award.

Faculty host: Cheng Zhu

 

Interested in presenting? Submit your abstract by July 30.

Learn more about events and programming here.

Interested in presenting? Submit your abstract by July 30.

Learn more about events and programming here.

Interested in presenting? Submit your abstract by July 30.

Learn more about events and programming here.

Interested in presenting? Submit your abstract by July 30.

Learn more about events and programming here.

Meetings are open to Members, Guests, Sponsors, Partners, and presenting Entrepreneurs from any of our Keiretsu Forum Global chapters and regions.

Due to SEC 506(c) regulations guests MUST pre-register to attend our meetings.

Meetings are open to Members, Guests, Sponsors, Partners, and presenting Entrepreneurs from any of our Keiretsu Forum Global chapters and regions.

Due to SEC 506(c) regulations guests MUST pre-register to attend our meetings.

Meetings are open to Members, Guests, Sponsors, Partners, and presenting Entrepreneurs from any of our Keiretsu Forum Global chapters and regions.

Due to SEC 506(c) regulations guests MUST pre-register to attend our meetings.

Meetings are open to Members, Guests, Sponsors, Partners, and presenting Entrepreneurs from any of our Keiretsu Forum Global chapters and regions.

Due to SEC 506(c) regulations guests MUST pre-register to attend our meetings.

Meetings are open to Members, Guests, Sponsors, Partners, and presenting Entrepreneurs from any of our Keiretsu Forum Global chapters and regions.

Due to SEC 506(c) regulations guests MUST pre-register to attend our meetings.

BIO
Marcela Maus grew up in New York, NY and attended Massachusetts Institute of Technology for her undergraduate degree in Biology and Literature. She then earned her MD, PhD from the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine where she studied the biology of human T cell activation under the direction of her PhD mentor, Dr. Carl June. After completing her doctorate degrees, Marcela did a one-year postdoctoral fellowship with Dr. Kathy High at the Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia studying patient immune responses to liver-directed AAV-mediate gene transfer as a treatment for hemophilia. She then completed her clinical training in internal medicine, hematology, and oncology as a resident at the University of Pennsylvania Health System and a fellow at Memorial Sloan Kettering Cancer Center. While at Memorial Sloan Kettering, she worked in Michel Sadelain’s lab to engineer new genetically modified T cells to target the cancer-testis antigen NY-ESO-1 and received specialized training in Phase I developmental therapeutics. She was also awarded a K08 grant by the NIH to facilitate her transition to a faculty position.

Following her extensive training (11 years), Marcela returned to the University of Pennsylvania in 2012, where she was recruited by her former PhD mentor, to expand their research efforts in the development of CAR T cells for lymphoma, myeloma, and other cancers. While there, Marcela continued her efforts on preclinical development of CAR T cells and correlative studies of CAR T cell-related toxicities and resistance to therapies. They discovered and reported on the first cases of anaphylaxis to CAR T cells and off target cross-reactivity. She also led an entire arc of translational research, from preclinical testing to a first-in-human clinical trial of EGFRvIII CAR T cells for treatment of recurrent glioblastoma. Correlative data collected from this trial led to an understanding of CAR T resistant mechanisms that have led further refinement of these CAR T cells, which is one current area of focus in her current laboratory and has led to the development of another Phase I clinical trial for GBM patients.

Now, Dr. Maus is a Professor of Hematology and Oncology at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, where she runs a laboratory focused on developing and improving CAR T cell therapy for cancer patients while also periodically attending for the bone marrow transplant service. Marcela is the Paula O-Keeffe Endowed Chair of the Massachusetts General Hospital Cancer Center and the Director of the Cellular Immunotherapy Program. She has won numerous awards for her transformative research and is achieving her goal of using science to determine the best way to treat patients by harnessing the power of the immune system to solve intractable problems like cancer. She also enjoys training clinicians and scientists and watching her mentees succeed and become independent scientists and collaborators.

He is Professor of Bioengineering and Materials Science at UC Berkeley and Faculty Scientist at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Chemistry, the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering, the Materials Research Society and the American Association for the Advancement of Science. In addition to his research, he mentors and teaches students in the fields of biomaterials design, materials science, polymer science, and nanomedicine.

Faculty host: Felipe Quiroz

 

Special emphasis is given to Tissue Engineering and Regenerative Medicine and particular applications and more details are described on the lab web page.

Faculty host: Alexander Vlahos

 

BIO
Jeffrey Hubbell is a pioneer in the field of immuno-modulatory materials whose research spans biology, chemistry, and engineering to generate novel solutions to common health problems. His work focuses on using biomaterials and engineered proteins to enhance the body’s own immune system to fight inflammatory and autoimmune disorders, allergies, and disease states like cancers. With more than 400 papers and 100 issued US patents, Hubbell uses biomaterials and protein engineering approaches to investigate topics in regenerative medicine and immunotherapeutics. In regenerative medicine, he develops both materials and protein therapeutics to address issues such as chronic wound healing in diabetes and bone repair after trauma. In immunotherapeutics, he pursues nanomaterials in vaccination for infectious disease and cancer as well as targeted therapy with RNA, protein-material conjugates for inverse vaccines to induce antigen-specific tolerance in autoimmunity and allergy, and in protein therapy to tip immune balances toward aggression in immuno-oncology and toward tolerance in inflammatory disease. His interests are both basic and translational, having founded or co-founded six biomedical companies based on his technology.

Before moving to New York University, Hubbell was at the University of Chicago in the Pritzker School of Molecular Engineering, where he helped build its strength in immunoengineering. Prior to that, he was on the faculty of the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Lausanne (EPFL, where he served as founding Director of the Institute of Bioengineering and Dean of the School of Life Sciences), the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich (ETHZ) and University of Zurich, the California Institute of Technology, and the University of Texas in Austin. He was elected to the US National Academy of Engineering in 2010, the National Academy of Medicine in 2019, the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in 2021, and the National Academy of Sciences in 2023.