Launched in 2025, INNS serves as a hub for neuroscience and neurotechnology research, connecting researchers across disciplines to advance discovery, innovation, and societal impact.
“A core part of INNS's mission is helping people find one another, connect around shared interests, and build something bigger than they could accomplish alone,” says Executive Director Christopher Rozell. “Simon has spent his career bringing together people, perspectives, and disciplines to tackle complex challenges. I can't think of a better person to help lead our interdisciplinary research efforts and support the next generation of collaborative neuroscience research.”
A longtime leader in Georgia Tech's neuroscience community, Sponberg helped shape the institute's early foundations through the Neuro Next Initiative, which evolved into INNS. As associate director, he will help guide research strategy, foster new collaborations, and support interdisciplinary work across the neuroscience ecosystem.
“Neuro-related research touches so many fields that we inevitably have a problem of finding all the potential right people and opportunities to tap into,” he said. “A core responsibility of this role is helping catalyze the ideas of new teams of talented researchers, educators, and trainees from inception to realization.”
Sponberg is the Glen Robinson Professor in Complex Systems with appointments in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences, where he directs the Agile Systems Lab. His work also connects him to the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM), underscoring the cross-disciplinary approach that defines both his research and leadership.
Since joining Georgia Tech in 2014, he has built a highly collaborative research program spanning neuroscience, biology, physics, engineering, and robotics while helping foster interdisciplinary connections across campus. He currently leads a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) that brings together neuroscientists and engineers from five universities to understand how brains achieve fast, flexible perception and decision-making in complex sensory environments. He also co-leads the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute, an NSF Biological Integration Institute focused on understanding movement and muscle function across scales.
His contributions have been recognized through numerous honors, including a Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Neuroethology, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in the Neurosciences, and the Leddy Family Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award.
As associate director, Sponberg will focus on helping researchers identify new opportunities for connection and collaboration. In addition to overseeing seed funding programs, he hopes to create pathways for researchers to build teams, access support resources, pursue ambitious interdisciplinary research ideas, and team with Georgia Tech’s undergraduate and graduate neuroscience degree programs.
“I look forward to being a resource for our community when people are looking for help in building teams or finding opportunities to support their ideas,” he said. “Bring your best ideas and please reach out if you want to talk about ideas in the interdisciplinary neuro space that you want to see realized.”
IMS focuses on transformational technologies and societal systems that arise where innovative materials, devices, and processes meet.
“Transformative interdisciplinary research takes time to develop, and a second year of funding gives these teams the opportunity to build on early successes, expand collaborations, and demonstrate the impact of their work,” said Eric Vogel, executive director of IMS. “This continued investment helps researchers establish a strong foundation, achieve key milestones, and position promising initiatives to grow into larger, sustainable research programs capable of attracting significant external support.”
The funded projects come from four colleges and eight schools across Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). IMS selected these projects based on their innovative approaches, potential impact, and alignment with the IMS mission to push the boundaries of science and technology. They will receive funding, access to state-of-the-art facilities, and other support from the institute to bring their research to life.
IMS supports interdisciplinary research both in nationally recognized areas of need and those just emerging. It scaffolds research from the ground up, from seed funding for new initiatives to infrastructure support for research programs and embedded support for research centers.
The 2026 research initiatives and programs include:
Extreme-Environment Microelectronics | Nima Ghalichechian, John Cressler, Farrokh Ayazi, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Multifunctional Materials for Efficient Buildings | Akanksha Menon, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Precision Agriculture in Controlled Environments | Antonio Facchetti, School of Materials Science and Engineering; Yongsheng Cheng, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Anju Toor, School of Materials Science and Engineering
Sustainable Thermoregulation Strategies for Climate Change Resilience | Matthew Flavin, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Joe Bozeman, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Noura Howell, School of Literature, Media and Communication
Autonomous Research for Materials | Mark Losego, School of Materials Science and Engineering; Shreyas Kousik, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Animesh Garg, School of Interactive Computing
Georgia Tech Center for Semiconductor and Computing | Asif Khan, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Divya Mahajan, School of Computer Science and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
Quantum Applications Research Center | Martin Mourigal, School of Physics; Robert Wylie, Georgia Tech Research Institute
]]>The Institute for Matter and Systems
]]>Georgia Tech’s Office of Sustainability, in partnership with the Office of Research Operations, is launching Georgia Tech’s first Sustainable Lab Certification program, which will provide a framework for campus laboratories to implement practical, high-impact sustainability measures. Labs earn recognition for their efforts through tiered certification levels — bronze, silver, or gold — based on the number and results of practices implemented.
On average, labs use four times more water and 10 times more energy than office spaces. This disproportionate impact makes laboratories some of the best places for reducing institutional energy use. Small actions can have a big effect; for example, increasing the setpoint of ultra-low temperature freezers by 10 degrees Celsius can reduce the device’s energy use by 30% and save over $150 per year per freezer. (That figure is derived from https://mygreenlab.org/the-beaker-blog/8-ways-to-save-energy-in-the-lab/ and Georgia Power billing documents.)
Before Sustainable Lab Certification, some campus labs had begun exploring reduced energy, water, and materials consumption through My Green Lab certification, a pilot program also sponsored by the Office of Sustainability.
Shweta Biliya, a research scientist in the Molecular Evolution Core Lab, explained that while My Green Lab offered a helpful framework, translating certification requirements into actionable steps for her lab was difficult without local examples or tailored support. “Now that we have a resource on campus, it’s extremely helpful in that initial stage,” she said. “It helps you see how to approach everything, get support, and make it feel possible.”
Biliya hopes more laboratories across campus will participate in Sustainable Labs Certification, helping to create a shared culture of sustainable research at Georgia Tech. “It might feel like one lab doesn’t make a difference, but when every lab contributes in small ways, it really adds up,” she said.
A Sustainable Lab Certification information and celebration session will take place in September. To learn more about the program, visit the Sustainable Labs page at https://sustain.gatech.edu/sustainable-labs/.
Director of Sustainability Engagement
Office of Sustainability
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Researchers at Georgia Tech play a key role in the international collaboration. The Georgia Tech-LIGO research group includes School of Physics Professor Laura Cadonati, Assistant Professor Surabhi Sachdev, Research Scientist Margaret Millhouse, Postdoctoral Scholar Prathamesh Joshi, eight graduate students, and multiple undergraduates.
The LVK network detects gravitational waves when a massive cosmic event — like the collision of two black holes — creates invisible ripples in the fabric of space-time. Waves ripple out at the speed of light, and millions of years after the events that first created them, they reach the LVK detectors.
But detecting gravitational waves does not simply mean capturing a signal — clues first need to be untangled from background noise.
“Identifying gravitational-wave signals requires carefully separating real astrophysical events from random fluctuations in the data,” says School of Physics graduate student Urja Shah, whose work to quickly identify phenomena supports rapid follow-up by the broader astronomical community.
To support the identification of phenomena, School of Physics graduate student Megan Arogeti conducts consistency tests between waveforms, checking results to find unexpected or unusual features. “Tests like this give us confidence in our models as we continue to observe gravitational waves with increasing sensitivity,” she explains. “They support new observations and help identify exciting new physics.”
“These efforts help ensure that gravitational-wave signals are robustly identified and accurately characterized, turning each detection into a precise measurement,” adds Shah. “In turn, these measurements deepen our understanding of some of the most massive and dense objects in the universe and the fundamental laws governing the cosmos.”
When a sensor detects a gravitational wave, it produces a distinctive response, says School of Physics graduate student Shobhit Ranjan. “Those signals encode a wealth of information we can analyze to learn about their sources — their masses, spins, distance, and location.” But in order to detect these chirps, the detectors must be carefully calibrated, and if calibration is not optimal, the signals can be compromised.
Now, a new tool is helping the LVK collaboration recalibrate less optimal signals. The technique is already showing promise: In an article recently accepted in Physical Review Letters, LVK researchers successfully applied it to two interesting signals. The first signal served as a testing opportunity for the method. The team used astrocalibration to recover the data and check it against secondary independent calibration data that was available. They then put the technique to use, recovering information from a second event where no secondary calibration data were available.
“Like autotune in the music industry, the new research shows that theoretical models can be used as guides, similar to how sheet music can help a studio shift off-key music to its correct tone,” Ranjan explains. “These theoretical models suggest the shape of the signal, and together with data from other detectors, we can adjust the data and read it correctly.”
“The fact that these detectors can now not only sense cosmic events, but leverage them to improve the data being collected marks a new era in gravitational wave science,” he adds.
The LVK Collaboration also published their fifth catalog of gravitational wave events this spring. The findings include an updated estimate of how fast the universe is expanding, evidence for the existence of second-generation black holes, the most precise sky localization ever achieved for a gravitational wave source, and the first measurement of three vibrational modes of a black hole.
“Our group helped enable 140 detections out of the 161 reported in this catalog,” says Joshi, who contributed to one of the flagship searches and designed a specialized search focused on detecting especially heavy black hole mergers.
Joshi also worked on determining precise locations of where the gravitational waves originated from in the universe — research that he says will allow astronomers around the world to perform long-term follow-up observations of interesting events.
One record-setting detection showed two black holes that had violently collided more than 3 billion light-years from Earth. Researchers were able to pinpoint its location in the sky more precisely than any other gravitational wave event observed before.
Improvements in the LVK network’s ability to localize events along with the large number of detections allowed for a better estimate of the Hubble constant, which measures the rate at which the universe is expanding. The new measurement is over 25% more precise than previous estimates.
The new catalog also includes the “clearest” gravitational wave signal ever detected. The clarity of the signal led to the most accurate test of general relativity ever performed and confirmation of Stephen Hawking’s black hole area theorem.
“This catalog provides not just the largest number of black hole detections, it marks a new era of rapid progress,” Sachdev says. “This is just the beginning of what these observations will allow us to uncover.”
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