Presented by Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing (OTL), the awards recognize researchers and inventors whose work demonstrates a strong commitment to moving Georgia Tech discoveries beyond the laboratory and toward real-world applications.

Xu was selected from among Georgia Tech inventors in recognition of her commitment to commercialization and her efforts to translate research into technologies that can address practical challenges.

Her research spans analytical chemistry, sensor development, nanotechnology, and water treatment, with applications that include food safety, medical diagnostics, environmental monitoring, and pathogen detection. Her work has included developing optical sensing technologies for rapid chemical and biological detection, supported through collaborations with government agencies, industry, and other research organizations.

That emphasis on moving research into the field reflects the purpose of the Innovator Awards and OTL’s broader mission of helping Georgia Tech intellectual property reach the marketplace through licensing, startup companies, and industry partnerships.

Xu earned her doctorate in analytical chemistry from Georgia Tech and has built a research career around technologies intended to solve real-world problems. She previously was recognized as a Regents’ Researcher by the University System of Georgia Board of Regents, its highest honor.

The Innovator of the Year recognition highlights not only Xu’s technical research, but also the process required to move promising discoveries toward practical use. Commercialization can connect researchers with industry partners, entrepreneurs, and other organizations that can develop laboratory innovations into products and technologies with broader societal impact.

Through the inaugural Innovator Awards Celebration, OTL is highlighting Georgia Tech researchers who have embraced that process and helped extend the impact of Institute research beyond campus.

Xu’s selection as Innovator of the Year recognizes her contributions to that effort and GTRI’s continuing role in developing applied research that moves from innovative ideas to solutions with meaningful real-world impact.

Q&A With Jie Xu

Q:  What does being named Georgia Tech’s Innovator of the Year mean to you, particularly given that the recognition emphasizes moving research toward commercialization and real-world use?
Receiving this recognition is deeply humbling, especially knowing how much groundbreaking work happens across Georgia Tech every day. What makes this award particularly special to me is its emphasis on translation and commercialization.
Research achieves its fullest potential when it leaves the lab and improves lives, industries, or the environment. Translating early-stage science into commercialized, real-world solutions is rarely a linear path—it takes resilience, multidisciplinary teamwork, and an entrepreneurial mindset. This honor belongs just as much to my collaborators, lab team, and partners who share the commitment to moving technology from concept to application. To have Georgia Tech recognize our work through the lens of real-world impact is both a rewarding milestone and a powerful motivation to keep pushing our innovations further out into the world.

Q:  What is one example from your research where the path from an interesting scientific result to something potentially useful in the real world was especially clear to you?
With our wastewater adsorbent research, getting high target-specific capture in a beaker was a great first step, but the path to a real-world tool wasn't clear until we figured out capture and recovery. Fine adsorbents disperse quickly, but pulling them back out of thousands of gallons of water is where applied nanotech usually breaks down. Once we demonstrated a rapid, economical way to capture and reuse the spent media, that lab result became a truly scalable, field-ready solution.

Q:  What is the hardest part of translating research into something that can actually be commercialized or adopted by users, and what have you learned about overcoming that gap?
Translating research into a commercial product requires accepting that benchtop success is just the starting point; the real test is building resilience through real-world deployment. With sensor development, achieving high sensitivity in clean, controlled samples is relatively easy. The fundamental commercialization barrier is data consistency when exposing sensors to raw field matrices with shifting background chemistry, biofouling, and suspended solids. We learned that you rarely anticipate every environmental challenge from day one; robustness evolves over time through field testing and continuous iteration.

Q:  How has working at GTRI, with its emphasis on applied research and sponsor needs, influenced the way you think about innovation and commercialization?
GTRI’s applied research culture thrives on close industry partnerships. Working directly with partners gives us an unfiltered view of the real problem space and operational needs. It ensures commercialization isn't an afterthought, but an evolutionary design process driven by partner feedback, turning high-performance lab concepts into scalable, field-deployable technologies that solve genuine industrial challenges.

Q:  For researchers who may have promising technology but have never pursued licensing or commercialization, what would you encourage them to do differently, or earlier, in the research process?
My biggest advice is to step out of the lab and talk to end-users and industry partners as early as possible to confirm that the problem you are solving actually exists and that the technology is genuinely needed.

Q:  Complete this sentence: “I knew I was a researcher when …”
I knew I was a researcher when I felt that incredible excitement of cracking a tough problem at the lab bench. Experiencing the rush of a major breakthrough and realizing how much I loved the hands-on problem-solving process is what made me realize research was my calling. 
 

Lewis, a principal research scientist in GTRI’s Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research Laboratory (CIPHER), has had a wide-ranging career spanning law enforcement, information technology, and advanced cybersecurity research.

Lewis was sworn in at the Georgia State Capitol on Thursday, Oct. 8. At the ceremony, held in Gov. Brian Kemp's office, Lewis was joined by a large contingent of family members.

Lewis was sworn in by Kemp. With his hand raised, he "solemnly" swore to "discharge and perform all the duties required of a member of the board of directors of the Georgia Emergency Communications Authority, according to the best of my ability and understanding."

The appointment comes as emergency communications systems increasingly depend on interconnected digital networks, making cybersecurity an integral part of public safety. Georgia law now requires the governor to appoint a cybersecurity subject-matter expert to serve on GECA’s board. House Bill 423, which passed in May 2025, established this requirement and expanded GECA’s responsibilities for developing and implementing Next Generation 911, or NG911, across Georgia.

NG911 represents a significant technological evolution from traditional 911 systems. Georgia law defines it as an Internet Protocol-based system designed to be secure, resilient, redundant, and interoperable. In addition to voice calls, NG911 infrastructure supports other forms of emergency communications and associated data.

That increased capability also creates a larger and more complex digital environment that must be protected from an increasingly broad cybersecurity threat landscape.

The 2025 legislation also directs GECA to establish and operate a network management center in coordination with cybersecurity subject-matter experts to protect the ESInet, core services, and public safety answering points. The authority is also responsible for monitoring network performance and coordinating technical standards intended to create an interconnected and interoperable statewide system.

Lewis brings experience to that mission from both sides of the cybersecurity “battlefield.”

His research at GTRI encompasses offensive and defensive cybersecurity topics, including penetration testing, red teaming, cyber threat emulation, defensive cyberspace operations, and threat hunting, among many others. His work frequently involves approaching systems from an adversary’s perspective to identify weaknesses before a malicious actor can exploit them.

“At GTRI, our team frequently collaborates with government and commercial organizations to simulate cyber-attacker techniques, identify system vulnerabilities, and design strategies to bolster defenses against real threats,” Lewis said in an interview.

Lewis has applied those skills to critical infrastructure and national security challenges. His GTRI work has included cybersecurity research involving electric power systems and other operational technology environments. In one Georgia Tech research effort, Lewis and other GTRI red-team researchers tested the security of electric utility technology by attempting the types of malicious actions a real-world attacker might use. He has also researched ways to detect abnormal cyber activity within electric power systems.

More recently, Lewis has contributed to Georgia Tech research designed to help hospitals identify, track, and mitigate vulnerabilities in network-connected medical devices, another environment in which cybersecurity failures can have consequences extending well beyond information technology systems.

That background is particularly relevant as 911 systems become more interconnected and can carry increasingly diverse forms of digital information.

Lewis also brings prior law enforcement experience to the appointment, giving him a perspective that bridges cybersecurity technology and the operational realities of public safety. Before joining GTRI, Lewis served in law enforcement and later worked in network and security engineering before moving into advanced cybersecurity research.

For Lewis, effective cybersecurity requires understanding not only how systems are intended to work, but how an adversary might attempt to make them fail.

“To excel in cybersecurity, one must master the art of thinking like an adversary,” Lewis said. “Regardless of your chosen cybersecurity specialization, you must constantly challenge assumptions by asking, ‘How can X be broken?’ This mindset uncovers hidden flaws before malicious actors can exploit them.”

Lewis said his work has been particularly meaningful when it helps protect systems whose reliability has real-world consequences. This vital work ties into the tenets of GTRI’s mission to:

• Improve the human condition. 
• Enhance State of Georgia economic development.
• Serve national security.

“The greatest fulfillment comes from realizing my contributions to enhancing the security of power grids, critical infrastructure, and national defense systems against genuine cyber threats,” he said.

His new role with GECA extends that mission to another form of critical infrastructure: the communications systems Georgians rely on when they need help most.

Two morning panels explored research collaboration and workforce adaptation, while an afternoon student poster session and a concurrent Tech AI Career Fair connected the discussions with research and career opportunities.

For Tim Brown, Georgia Tech’s academic program director for AI, helping people find the right expertise is a practical starting point. When people ask how to become involved in AI research and partnerships, he said, Tech AI can help connect their interests with researchers and projects.

“We get these inquiries every day,” Brown said. He encouraged students to share their résumés and areas of interest, and to seek out faculty whose research methods and fields of study align with their goals.

Tech AI’s broader purpose is to help industry, government, and other organizations move from research ideas to AI systems they can put to use. Part of the university-wide Georgia Tech AI ecosystem, Tech AI draws on expertise across the Institute’s colleges and schools, interdisciplinary research institutes, AI institutes, advanced computing infrastructure, and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

The "How Tech AI Collaborates" panel, moderated by Brown, examined what it takes to make those partnerships work, particularly when research depends on sensitive information or creates intellectual property.

Belinda Vogel, research engagement manager for the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute and the Renewable Bioproducts Institute, described plans to open advanced manufacturing capabilities to remote users in academia and industry. Such access could extend the reach of research facilities, but it also raises questions about how companies can benefit from AI while keeping their data private.

Kevin Dalmeijer, a senior research associate in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and managing director of the NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization, described safeguards used in projects involving sensitive or controlled data. Those measures can restrict where information is stored, how students access it, and which AI tools they can use.

Dalmeijer also discussed internships that divide a student’s time between Georgia Tech research and work embedded within a company. Establishing clear boundaries at the outset, he said, helps distinguish academic research from company-specific implementations and clarifies expectations for data and intellectual property.

Brown brought Ajay Upadhyaya, Tech AI’s associate director for research administration, from the audience into the discussion to explain another approach. Upadhyaya described developing foundational models with synthetic data, allowing students to publish academic work, then defining separate ownership for work incorporating a company’s proprietary data. He emphasized the importance of clearly specifying those boundaries.

The panel also looked toward emerging computing capabilities. Jeffrey Young, a Georgia Tech principal research scientist working with the Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment, discussed how AI could help researchers improve quantum systems and determine how best to map applications onto quantum hardware. His remarks pointed to a relationship in which AI can support the development of other computing technologies, even as researchers continue exploring their potential.

The second panel, “Workforce Adaptation in the Age of AI,” shifted the focus to the people learning and working with these tools. Moderator Leigh Hopkins, assistant director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Economic Development Research, described a workforce being asked to adapt while the technology itself rapidly changes.

David Joyner, Georgia Tech’s interim vice provost for AI in Education and executive director of its Online Master of Science in Computer Science program, said AI familiarity is moving toward becoming an expected professional skill. He compared that transition with an earlier era when applicants listed typing speed on their résumés before such capabilities became “baseline.”

People still need the knowledge and judgment to do the underlying work themselves, Joyner said. Learning to use AI must be paired with learning to evaluate its output and avoid overreliance on the technology.

Georgia Tech faculty are exploring that balance through classroom experimentation, from changing assignments to developing tools tailored to particular courses. Joyner described the Academic AI Playbook as a way to share what individual instructors tried, the challenges they encountered, and what others might learn from their experiences. The 2026 edition includes 67 faculty-authored articles and 20 lessons drawn from classroom experience.

Joyner also raised a longer-term question for employers and educators: If AI takes on tasks traditionally assigned to entry-level employees, how will those employees gain the experience needed to advance? He suggested that evaluating work, framing problems, and defining clear requirements will become increasingly important as people take responsibility for directing AI-assisted work.

Georgia Tech alum Brian Greene, an operations and supply-chain executive, brought the discussion back to organizational decision-making. Companies can become so focused on acquiring an AI tool, he said, that they overlook the business need it is supposed to address.

“What’s the problem you’re trying to solve?” Greene asked. He urged organizations to begin with that question and work backward to the capabilities and partnerships they need. For smaller businesses with limited resources, choosing a tool without a clear purpose can be especially costly.

Narayanan (KK) Krishnakumar, chief technology officer at Delta Air Lines, offered examples of AI at work in a large organization. He described systems that help optimize baggage routing and generative AI tools that summarize information for customer-service employees. Across those applications, he emphasized the continuing need to verify AI-generated information.

For both Krishnakumar and Greene, the qualities employers value remain the same as they have traditionally been: curiosity, problem-solving, collaboration, and an ability to deliver results. AI fluency adds to those capabilities while making sound judgments about data and answers all the more necessary.

The afternoon poster session demonstrated how widely those questions now reach. Student projects explored trustworthy optimization, AI agents and responsible design alongside research on education, city planning and biomedical diagnostics. Other work addressed materials discovery and sustainable material selection, quantum chemistry, signal analysis, and AI that could support aging in place.

A well-attended career fair ran simultaneously with the symposium. In a large auditorium filled with company booths, students lined up to meet employers as both sides sought to connect research with potential positive industry outcomes.

“It’s a week-long event celebrating the different types of space research we’ve got going on at Georgia Tech, as well as the entrepreneurship,” Ready said. Ready added that the Institute's and Space Week's reach extends far beyond Georgia Tech. He noted that Space Week's roster of speakers included leading experts from industry and military research organizations such as Aerospace Corp. and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), as well as academic institutions such as Georgia State University, the State University of New York at Albany, the University of Michigan, San Diego State University, Florida State University, and the University of Maryland.

Ready said that Space Week highlighted the collaborative nature of SRI, as it continuously works with institutions and companies that support the three foundational pillars of SRI:

• Research and Development (R&D).
• Education.
• Commercialization/Entrepreneurship.

Space Week’s sponsors underscored SRI’s ability to bring together a broad network of collaborators extending well beyond Georgia Tech’s Atlanta home. Support came from Amazon; CreationsVC, Mantis Space and Varda Space Industries; Deleon.bio, Reed Smith and the Georgia Center of Innovation; and Nelson Mullins, Qcells and West Coast Solutions. The roster connected Georgia’s space community with companies across the country, including  Varda Space Industries and West Coast Solutions, which are based on the other coast in California.

The event highlighted the breadth of research across sensing, materials, computing, policy, and human exploration. Participants examined problems that demand expertise from multiple disciplines. SRI provides a home for those connections, bringing together faculty, staff, and students whose work contributes to space exploration and discovery. Space Week made it visible through research presentations, conversations about new collaborations, and student projects supported by the institute.

GTRI's Role

GTRI, the applied research arm of Georgia Tech, played a significant role during Space Week and in the Institute’s growing contributions to research on the technical challenges of reaching space and operating there.

Michael Peterson, director of GTRI’s Severe Storms Research Center (SSRC), organized the Terrestrial and Space Weather session and presented FulminoSat, a concept examining severe-weather lightning signals as a space-based sensing opportunity for studying ionospheric effects.

Elena Plis, a senior research engineer in the Electro-Optical System Laboratory (EOSL), led a program on the weathering of materials in space, where researchers considered how exposure changes the materials spacecraft depend on. GTRI’s Ryan Gaylo, a senior research engineer in the Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems Laboratory (ATAS), presented SolarWing, a bio-inspired deployment system for solar arrays.

During a track dedicated to hypersonics, GTRI ATAS laboratory researcher and GT Regents' Professor Krish Ahuja spoke on the HyperSat project. Graduate Research Assistant Michael Milone presented on GTRI's experimental hypersonic test capabilities. At the same time, ATAS senior research engineer Alex Forbes discussed hypersonic computational fluid dynamics. Those topics highlighted complementary approaches to understanding flight under extreme conditions.

Ahuja, one of the foremost experts in hypersonics and a pioneer in the field, led the track alongside ATAS laboratory Principal Research Engineer Rob Funk.

Understanding what surrounds a spacecraft is another essential part of protecting it. That challenge anchored a session organized by Douglas Hope, who moved from GTRI to Georgia Tech’s School of Physics at the end of August.

Hope described space domain awareness as a progression: detect an object, track its orbit, identify it, and use that knowledge to predict its behavior. Distinguishing an operational satellite from debris requires more than knowing where a point of light appears in the sky.

“Essentially, where is it? What is it? What is it doing?” Hope said.

He described an SRI-supported initiative to establish a center for space domain awareness research, connecting expertise in physics, engineering, policy and machine learning. The effort seeks to bring researchers across schools together to pursue opportunities that draw on their combined strengths.

Hope’s own presentation examined the difficult problem of detecting faint objects near bright satellites. Optical sensing and image analysis could help reveal objects that would otherwise be obscured, providing a clearer understanding of a spacecraft’s surroundings. His move to Physics carries that research forward while strengthening connections between GTRI experience and Georgia Tech’s academic community.

Policy discussions explored how those technical capabilities fit within the rules and relationships governing space activity. Mariel Borowitz, an associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and an SRI associate director, emphasized the connections among engineering, policy, and international affairs. Topics included orbital sustainability, commercial activity, and the choices governments make about space programs.

“It’s really those interconnections that give Georgia Tech an edge,” Borowitz said.

Astronauts - Past and Future

Sandra Magnus, a former NASA astronaut and now a Georgia Tech professor of the practice, brought an operational perspective to the evolution of human spaceflight and the changing relationship between government and commercial providers. Her discussion linked decisions about future destinations with the institutions and partnerships needed to reach them.

Space Week also demonstrated that Georgia Tech’s role extends to preparing the people who will build, test, and maintain future aerospace systems. Ready and Stephen Ruffin, interim chair and a professor at the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering at Georgia Tech and director of NASA’s Georgia Space Grant Consortium, discussed the Southeast Space Technology and Aerospace Readiness Skills initiative (SE-STARS).

Georgia Tech leads the Georgia hub in NASA’s inaugural cohort of seven Aerospace Skilled Technical Workforce Hubs, or NASA State Hubs. Announced in August, the national initiative has awarded approximately $10.5 million across the seven institutions. Georgia Tech’s SE-STARS award provides $1.5 million over three years.

NASA Associate Administrator for STEM Engagement Elaine Ho described the program’s origins and workforce priorities during her Space Week keynote. NASA had convened the inaugural hub leaders in Houston just the previous week, underscoring how early Georgia Tech is helping shape this new effort.

The hubs are designed to connect employers, education providers and workforce organizations around technical careers such as machining, electronics, welding and systems integration. These jobs require substantial expertise, with many offering pathways that do not require a bachelor’s degree.

Ruffin serves as principal investigator for SE-STARS, with Ready among its co-principal investigators. Partners include SRI, the Georgia Space Grant Consortium, the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute, the Technical College System of Georgia, Georgia Southern University, and aerospace employers. The Technical College System’s 22 colleges and 88 campuses give the partnership statewide reach.

The goal is to connect education with industry needs through relevant curricula, credentials, and practical experience. For Georgia Tech, leading an inaugural hub creates an opportunity to help develop a model for aerospace workforce preparation while extending access to careers across Georgia and beyond.

Students at Space Week showed what taking responsibility for a mission can look like well before a first industry job. Georgia Tech aerospace engineering undergraduates Bella Diedrich and Gabriel Buggi presented Southeast Analog, a student-led program that simulates space missions on Earth.

More than 100 students have contributed as mission designers, investigators, analog astronauts, and flight controllers, the presenters said. Early SRI funding helped the team purchase equipment and support selection and training activities, turning an ambitious concept into an operational program.

An August mission placed analog astronauts in Arkansas and flight controllers in Georgia, with a simulated 20-minute communications delay in each direction. That separation required participants to plan carefully, communicate clearly, and make decisions without the convenience of an immediate reply. Students gained experience with the technical and human demands of mission operations while developing a more accessible route into spaceflight-related work.

Their presentation exemplified a point Ready emphasized throughout the event: students were contributing to the research community while also learning from it.

“It’s been great to see the students get involved, both as attendees as well as presenters,” he said.Former NASA astronaut Jeanette Epps offered a real-world view of preparation, describing her training in T-38 jets, robotics, spacewalk procedures, and emergency response. Drawing on her experience during NASA’s SpaceX Crew-8 mission, which included 232 days aboard the International Space Station, she explained the teamwork and adaptability required to operate in demanding environments.

That connection between preparation and practice ran through the four-day Space Week program. Georgia Tech researchers presented work on microgravity systems, lunar resources, robotics and spacecraft design. A poster presentation gave students and researchers opportunities to discuss their projects with visitors from government, industry and academia. Entrepreneurship sessions examined how space companies are financed and built, while a public observatory night extended the event’s reach beyond the research community.

Space Week brought the Institute’s capabilities to the fore for attendees from throughout the nation. Georgia Tech’s academic expertise, GTRI’s applied research, and SRI’s support for collaboration form a common foundation for work already “in flight” and to be “launched."

Hosted at the Georgia Tech Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, the workshop was organized by a committee of researchers and practitioners from across the macro-energy systems community. The committee was chaired by Micah Ziegler, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. 

The two-day workshop brought together more than 130 participants and featured lightning talks, poster presentations, interactive learning sessions, and keynote addresses that strengthened connections across the macro-energy systems research community.

“The energy challenges facing society today are increasingly interconnected, and solving them requires a systems-level perspective,” said Christine Conwell, director of planning and operations at the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute. “Supporting events like the MES Workshop, which provides a unique space for academic collaboration and knowledge sharing, aligns with the Strategic Energy Institute’s commitment to advancing research and workforce development that support more resilient and effective energy solutions.”

The workshop received financial support from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation, which supports research and education in science, technology, engineering, math, and economics. Through its Energy and Environment program, the foundation helps advance interdisciplinary research and collaboration across the macro-energy systems field.

“The Macro-Energy Systems Workshop has become a significant forum for interdisciplinary energy systems researchers to share and discuss their work,” said Evan Michelson, director of the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation’s Energy and Environment program. “We were especially glad to help ensure participation from early-career researchers spanning a wide range of institutions, providing them access to the collaborations and conversations that will help them develop as scientists.”

Graduate students and postdoctoral scholars played a central role in this year's workshop, presenting research on energy system planning, grid reliability, technology deployment, energy transitions, and policy. Their sessions gave the early-career researchers opportunities to share new approaches to studying large-scale energy systems, interact with faculty and industry experts, refine research ideas, and build collaborations beyond their home institutions.

“This year, we significantly expanded the MES Workshop to include more early-career scholars,” said Ziegler. “The workshop provides a great opportunity for young researchers to develop ideas, connections, and a better understanding of how to design research to have a positive impact on the world.”

The workshop also featured keynote presentations from Kelly Sanders, professor of civil and environmental engineering at the University of Southern California, and Erin Mayfield, assistant professor at Dartmouth College's Thayer School of Engineering. Both speakers discussed insights from their experience contributing to policymaking and highlighted opportunities for energy systems research to inform policy decisions.

Interactive sessions led by Michelle Graff, assistant professor in the Georgia Tech Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy encouraged participants to consider how macro-energy systems research can more effectively inform and support policymakers and other decision-makers. Graff developed and facilitated the sessions, with support from Morgan Edwards, assistant professor of public affairs from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and Micah Ziegler. The first session explored how researchers can identify policy windows and position their work to inform decision-making at the right time. The second focused on matching research to the appropriate audiences and jurisdictions, highlighting opportunities to inform policy at the state and local levels.

Designed for industry professionals, policymakers, educators, students, community leaders, and members of the public, the lunchtime webinar series provided an accessible introduction to the key issues influencing the nuclear energy sector at a time of growing interest in nuclear power as part of the global energy transition.

The series began on Aug. 20 with The New Nuclear, presented by Steven Biegalski, chair of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics program. The session examined the evolution of nuclear reactor technology, from today's operating fleet and the AP1000 reactors at Plant Vogtle to emerging small modular reactors and advanced reactor designs.

The second webinar, held Sept. 3, focused on the economics and policy landscape of nuclear power. Laura Taylor, director of EPIcenter and professor of economics at Georgia Tech, joined Stephen Comello, executive vice president and executive director of the Nuclear Scaling Initiative at the EFI Foundation, to discuss the economic drivers, policy considerations, and opportunities influencing nuclear energy development in the United States.

The series concluded on Sept. 17 with a discussion of nuclear fuel, security, and geopolitics. Anna Erickson, Woodruff Professor of Nuclear Engineering, and Rachel Whitlark, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, explored global nuclear energy growth, fuel supply chains, and the policies needed to support the safe, secure deployment of nuclear technologies worldwide.

Recordings and presentation materials from all three sessions are available on the webinar series webpage. Those who were unable to attend can watch the presentations and access the accompanying slides to learn more about the technologies, policies, and global trends shaping the future of nuclear energy.

View webinar recordings and presentation slides on the EPIcenter website.

Supported by two Sustainability Next Seed Grants, Sarhadi’s work draws on climate science, fluid physics, engineering, and artificial intelligence. He’s using AI-powered, physics-informed models to better anticipate water hazards that can cripple cities and power grids in both coastal and inland communities.

Rethinking Hurricane Risk

Sarhadi focuses on compound flooding, the dangerous interaction between storm surge, torrential rainfall, and river flooding that increasingly defines hurricanes. He points to Hurricane Mitch, which hit Central America in 1998, as a stark example, noting that more than 12,000 people died, “all from freshwater flooding — none from wind,” he said.

His work has shown how climate change and sea-level rise are reshaping flood risk from storms like Hurricane Sandy, which devastated New York and New Jersey in October 2012. In the current climate, a Sandy-level natural disaster has a recurrence period of roughly once every 150 years. But that is changing fast. “Because of climate change and sea-level rise, by the middle of this century, the same level of flooding is likely to occur once every 60 years. By the end of the century, that goes up to once every 30 years,” he says. “Hurricane Sandy caused about $70 billion in damage. Imagine experiencing that kind of destruction every 30 years.”

Since 1970, Sarhadi notes, damage from tropical cyclones has increased by about 380% globally, a trend driven by the combined effect of stronger storms and more people and infrastructure being located in harm’s way.

Physics-Informed AI: Street-Level Flood Warnings

While storm forecasting has improved dramatically in recent decades, Sarhadi argues, “We’re in good shape in terms of track forecasting, and we’re getting better at rapid intensification forecasting. But what is missing is the hazard part, and specifically the water part. That’s the number one killer.”

His lab is developing AI models tightly coupled with physics-based simulations to forecast hurricane-induced flooding at unprecedented resolution.

Using Hurricane Sandy as a test case, his team showed that by integrating physics-based surge and rainfall models with generative AI, they could forecast building-level flood depths three to five days before landfall. “We could predict that a storm was surge-dominant and estimate how much flooding could happen at the level of each building with an accuracy beyond 90%,” he says.   

Those extra days, and that level of granularity, could give emergency managers and local leaders the information they need to order earlier evacuations, pre-stage resources, and protect critical infrastructure. “We hope by combining AI and physics-based models we can come up with faster, more accurate modeling, first, to save lives, and then to minimize the economic damage,” Sarhadi says.

Targeting Georgia’s Coastline 

Although much of the public’s attention focuses on the Gulf Coast and megacities on the Eastern Seaboard, Georgia’s coastline is also highly vulnerable to surge and compound flooding. Sarhadi is collaborating with Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow to model risk in places like Savannah and the surrounding coastal region. “We’re working to come up with good long-term solutions for protecting coastal communities and infrastructure,” he says.

Events like Hurricane Helene in 2024, which triggered extended blackouts in Georgia and lethal flooding in western North Carolina, underscore how far inland these risks can reach. “People think hurricanes are just a problem for coastal areas,” Sarhadi says. “But even if you are far from a coastline, you can be at risk when saturated soils, torrential rain, and river flooding combine.”

Building Climate-Resilient Power Grids and Cities

Sarhadi’s work doesn’t stop at forecasting. A central focus of his research is climate-resilient infrastructure, particularly the power grid. His team is exploring digital twin modeling — virtual replicas of energy and infrastructure systems. “When you have a digital twin of your grid, you can run that hurricane through it and identify which substations or power lines are more vulnerable,” he says, explaining that this knowledge could trigger utility crews to fix or reinforce power lines ahead of storms.

Looking decades ahead, these tools could help utilities and planners prioritize where to upgrade aging infrastructure as hurricanes intensify and water levels rise. “We know hurricanes are getting more intense, and our infrastructure is aging,” Sarhadi said. “By combining engineering, climate science, and AI, we’re trying to design better adaptation plans so our communities and power systems are more resilient in the future.”

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. 

Few neuroscientists would dispute that the brain relies on prediction. From houseflies evading swatters to humans catching baseballs, living things are constantly anticipating what comes next. Understanding how the brain generates those predictions could help explain one of neuroscience's most enduring questions: how the brain builds internal models of the world that allow us to learn, adapt, and anticipate what comes next.

“Without actively predicting the world, we cannot survive,” says Farzaneh Najafi, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences and a faculty affiliate of Georgia Tech's Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society. “There is quite some sensory-motor delay in the processing. We can’t just sit there, wait for the brain to process our environment, and then react.”

Part of the puzzle may lie in signals known as neural ramps. Almost like a drumroll leading up to a big reveal, neurons in some areas of the brain have shown gradual increases in activity immediately before a stimulus appears. For decades, researchers have interpreted this ramping activity as a neural signature of prediction, reflecting anticipation of an upcoming event.

Recently published in Science Advances, a new study from Najafi’s lab reveals these signals may not be “predictions” at all, but instead a way neurons track elapsed time.

“Surprisingly,” says Najafi, “the very first study from my lab called the Predictive Processing Lab showed that no, these are not prediction signals.”

The finding challenges a long-standing interpretation of one of neuroscience's most studied signals and reveals that the search for predictive neurons may lead to different circuits — or require different experiments to uncover. 

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.

For decades, immunologists have known that the body's most durable defenses depend on plasma cells, the antibody-producing cells responsible for long-term immune memory. Long after an infection has passed or a vaccine has been administered, these cells continue releasing protective antibodies, sometimes for decades. 

The CHORUS (Community Hubs for Optimizing Resilience) project will collaborate with coastal communities in Georgia and New York and will be split into two pieces: technology development and community engagement. 

“We’re not just building a simulator and hoping it fits the needs of coastal residents,” explains Alex Robel, project leader and Jean “Chris” Purvis Associate Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "By collaborating with community partners from the very beginning, we can ensure that what we ultimately develop will be effective because the people who will be using it are helping design it.”

Putting Flood Modeling in Residents' Hands

The technology development component will include faculty from the College of Sciences and the College of Computing. The College of Sciences team will develop an AI-based flood simulator and the College of Computing team led by Josiah Hester, associate professor and Catherine M. and James E. Allchin Early Career Professor, will create a web platform that allows users to visualize potential flood impacts.

Traditional flood models can take hours or days to generate results and often require specialized expertise and expensive computing resources. The CHORUS platform will be designed to provide easy-to-understand results in seconds, producing building-scale flood maps that show how water moves through streets, yards, and structures during a range of flooding scenarios. Researchers will use the model to test how specific interventions, such as seawalls, restored marshes, or improved stormwater infrastructure, could affect flooding.

Eventually, users will be able to test their own scenarios through the browser-based tool, enabling them to explore how different decisions could change flood impacts in their communities:

“Users will be able to go into a web browser and indicate where a sea wall could go or change a parking lot into a porous vegetated landscape, then click simulate. Within a few seconds, they’ll have a new flood map showing the impacts of these interventions,” says Robel.

A Community-Driven Approach

A collaborative effort with the New York Climate Exchange, the project will be funded by Georgia Sea Grant and IBM, with support from Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow (GT2), Georgia Tech’s Coastal Equity and Resilience (CEAR) Hub, and the National Sea Grant College Program. The CHORUS project is an initiative of the New York Climate Exchange, where Georgia Tech is a core partner institution.

Community engagement in Georgia is being led by CEAR and the Pin Point Betterment Association, which represents descendants of the historic Gullah Geechee community near Savannah. In New York, the project team is partnering with the New York Climate Exchange and the Waterfront Alliance to work with communities surrounding Jamaica Bay.

“What makes this partnership meaningful is that it puts community voices at the center,” says Jasmine Smith, president of the Pin Point Betterment Association. “Too often, decisions are made to ‘better’ communities without actually involving the people who live there. We hope this partnership can serve as a blueprint for how communities are included in future sustainability projects from the very beginning.”

The project includes community advisory boards and technical advisory boards in both locations. Community members will help identify priority assets, select flood scenarios for analysis, and shape the design of the web-based tool. They’ll also test and offer feedback. Technical advisory boards made up of local officials, planners, and other experts will help evaluate the feasibility of proposed solutions.

“The aim is to blend information from both groups without allowing the technical perspective to override community priorities,” says Robel.

According to Robel, giving communities direct access to flood modeling tools can help close the gap between public input and infrastructure planning.

“We are putting decision making in the hands of the community. With a tool like this, the community can say: ‘We want to prevent flooding at this community center, this school, or this road,’” says Robel. “They can run the model, produce data, and present it to local governments or the Army Corps of Engineers  — advocating for potential solutions themselves rather than relying on outside experts.”

Robel sees this project as just the beginning:

“Funded by two-year grants, CHORUS is meant to be a pilot for how this kind of community-centered project can be done. Once we understand some of the challenges and opportunities involved, it will hopefully make it easier for us to scale this work to additional community partners.”

About Community-Engaged Research at Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech is actively working to foster more projects that foster community engagement. Collaborative groups at Georgia Tech involved in the CHORUS project include:

• The CEAR Hub, part of the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), and housed at the Georgia Tech Savannah campus, advances community-engaged research and planning throughout coastal Georgia, helping communities build resilience to environmental and climate challenges. 
• The Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE) trains faculty, students, and staff in best practices for conducting community-engaged research as well as facilitating connections directly with communities.
• The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) houses SCoRE and is Georgia Tech’s point of contact to the New York Climate Exchange. BBISS forms partnerships like these to fulfill its mission to expand the reach and impact of Georgia Tech’s sustainability research. 

The agreement was signed during a Sept. 14 visit by PNNL leadership to Georgia Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility. It builds on years of successful collaboration between researchers at the two institutions. 

The enhanced collaboration has three primary goals: solving big problems through multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research; sustaining and engaging human capital by creating opportunities for students, faculty, researchers, and interns to work on complex real-world challenges; and accelerating technology adoption by taking scientific discoveries and innovations into industry and the federal marketplace.

"Strengthening our partnerships with national laboratories is a strategic priority for Georgia Tech,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech. "PNNL is an outstanding partner, and we look forward to deepening connections among our researchers and students, expanding opportunities and access to world-class capabilities and facilities, and advancing discovery, innovation, and national impact together."

PNNL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that advances scientific discovery and innovations that support reliable energy, national security, and economic competitiveness. Georgia Tech is one of the nation's leading research universities, conducting more than $1.5 billion in research annually and pursuing a mission to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

"PNNL and Georgia Tech have a long history of working together," said Deb Gracio, laboratory director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “This agreement provides the foundation to take on difficult research challenges and to leverage our complementary expertise and investments in the years ahead.”

The Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) has played a central role in advancing Georgia Tech's engagement with the national laboratory system and connecting researchers with partnership opportunities.

"As SEI takes on a greater role in coordinating Georgia Tech's national laboratory partnerships, this agreement with PNNL demonstrates how we are building stronger pathways for faculty, researchers, and students to engage with world-class national lab capabilities," said Yuanzhi Tang, SEI executive director.

The National Laboratory Partnership Program supports engagement between Georgia Tech and the U.S. national laboratories. SEI now leads the program, with ongoing support from Georgia Tech’s Office of the Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research. The agreement with PNNL is the first formal agreement established through the program since its transition to SEI.

"This MOU formalizes and strengthens relationships that have been growing for many years," said Scott McWhorter, SEI director of national laboratory partnerships. “It leverages the unique strengths of Georgia Tech and PNNL and provides a framework for expanding engagement across areas of mutual interest.”

Georgia Tech and PNNL bring complementary strengths in energy and environmental systems, electric grid resilience, cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, alternative fuels and advanced materials, biofuels, radiation detection, data science and visual analytics, nuclear nonproliferation, and national security. These capabilities will be brough together through two upcoming Genesis Mission projects.

Bill Pike, PNNL's deputy director for Science and Technology, who joined the laboratory’s leadership delegation for the MOU signing, said the projects reflect the growing partnership and expanding collaboration between the two institutions. 

About Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation's leading research universities, with strengths spanning engineering, computing, science, business, design, and the liberal arts. With more than $1.5 billion annually in research awards across its Colleges and the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech is among the nation's most research-intensive universities. The Institute's mission is to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

About Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in energy resiliency and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle and supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

Before a promising new therapy can reach a patient, researchers need to answer a deceptively simple question: Will it work?