• Wednesday, March 18 at 12:00 PM EST

January 23, 2026
10:30 AM – 4:00 PM 
ISyE Main Building 

Agenda: 

10:30 AM – Noon (ISyE Main Atrium):
XR Symposium: Invited Talks - Short talks and discussion on XR research and applications across campus

Noon – 1:00 PM (ISyE Main Atrium): 
Lunch & Networking: Informal networking in the ISyE Main Atrium

1:00 – 4:00 PM (ISyE Main 115)
XR Makerspace Open House & Demos: Hands-on demonstrations, guided tours, and conversations with XR Makerspace staff and researchers

Invited Speakers:

Bruce Walker, School of Psychology & School of Interactive Computing, Georgia Tech
Talk Title: Research With, About, and In Virtual Reality: A Sample of Sonification Lab XR R&D Projects

Bio: Bruce N. Walker is Professor of Psychology and Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech. His Sonification Lab studies multimodal interfaces, sonification and auditory displays, and human-technology interaction in complex tasks, futuristic technologies, and VR/AR/XR. Dr. Walker is founding Director of VRlandia, a GT shared collaboratory for VR/AR/XR research and development. He is also Director of the Center for Human-AI-Robot Interaction (CHART). He teaches HCI, Sensation & Perception, and Assistive Technology; and has consulted for NASA, state and federal governments, the military, and private companies.

Frederick Benaben, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Georgia Tech
Talk Title: A Framework for Immersive Technologies in Engineering: An Illustrated Perspective

Bio: Frederick Benaben is Tenured Full Professor at Institut Mines Telecom in France (Industrial Engineering Center) and Visiting Professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology. His research focuses on the use of Artificial Intelligence and Immersive Technologies for decision support and the management of complex situations in uncertain environments. He is the head of the “Digital Systems for Crisis Management and Security” research team at IMT, directs the IOMEGA VR Lab, leads the POD (Physics of Decision) and HITeC (Hybrid Immersive Teaching Campus) initiatives, and co-directs the international SIReN Lab with Georgia Tech.

Shreyas Kousik, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech
Talk Title: Do Dangerous Things Safely in XR Humanoid Robot Teleoperation

Bio: Shreyas Kousik is an assistant professor in the Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. He previously held postdoctoral appointments at Stanford University and in the NAV Lab with Prof. Grace Gao. He earned his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan, advised by Prof. Ram Vasudevan in the ROAHM Lab. His research focuses on guaranteeing safety in autonomous robotic systems through collision avoidance, with an emphasis on modeling uncertainty in perception and estimation for practical planning and control on real robots.

Wayne Li, Colleges of Design and Engineering, Georgia Tech
Talk Title: Using XR for Automotive Interior Development (Hyundai Project)

Bio: Wayne K. Li is the James L. Oliver Professor, holding a joint position between the Colleges of Design and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He leads joint teaching initiatives and advances interdisciplinary collaboration between mechanical engineering and industrial design through classes and the Innovation and Design Collaborative (IDC) and Design Bloc. Li's research areas include ethnographic research, multidisciplinary online education, and human-machine interaction in transportation design. His career spans industry and academia. Li has led innovation and market expansion for Pottery Barn seasonal home products, taught in Stanford University's design program, led interface development at Volkswagen of America's Electronics Research Laboratory, and developed corporate brand and vehicle differentiation strategies at Ford Motor Company. He has also worked as a product designer and mechanical engineer at IDEO Product Development. 

Meryem Yilmaz Soylu, Center for 21st Century Universities, Georgia Tech
Talk Title: Designing Human-Centered XR for Learning, Reflection, and Skill Development

Bio: Meryem Yilmaz Soylu is a Research Scientist at Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) within the College of Lifetime Learning, where her work focuses on human-centered learning design, immersive technologies, and AI-supported educational systems. Her research examines how XR and AI can support learning experiences and engagement, leadership, and durable skills development across online and hybrid learning environments. Her work combines mixed-methods research and learner experience (UX) design to inform the design and evaluation of real-world educational systems.

Jessica Wildman
Professor
School of Psychology
Florida Institute of Technology

Trust is one of the concepts that can seem 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. 

Sara Garden Armstrong, an internationally renowned artist whose exhibiting career and studio work with handmade paper processes spans over 50 years, leads this one-day program. The workshop begins with a brief introduction to Armstrong’s work, with hands-on examples. Then participants will focus on learning, observing, and making unique paper objects to explore the processes of pigment staining, pulp-pouring, pulp painting, and collage techniques on pre-formed sheets of paper. Technical information and recipes about sizing, pulp beating and experimenting with different fibers will be addressed.

Participants will dive deep into the practice of creating and sustaining new relationships with paper formation, pigments, and processes integral to promoting an ongoing experience with the fascinating world of papermaking, pigments, and collage.

At the end of the workshop, participants will leave with their own creation. They should bring 3 to 4 pieces of 12 x18 inch cardboard to facilitate transporting their work home.  All other supplies provided and all levels of experience welcome. There will be a lunch break from approx. 12:30pm-1:15pm, participants responsible for their own lunch.

Join us for an in-depth and practical session focused on the newest SharePoint Online document library experience. This session, led by Robb Lioy, Microsoft Cloud Solution Architect, is designed to help you understand what is changing, what is possible, and how to take advantage of the latest capabilities when managing documents in your team sites.

Robb will walk through the redesigned document library interface, new library templates, updated UX elements, and key differences in how users interact with content across SharePoint and OneDrive. Whether you are maintaining a shared team library or helping others adopt better document management habits, this session will provide clear guidance and real examples that you can use immediately.

In this session, you will learn:

• An overview of the new document library layout and user experience updates in SharePoint Online
• How to use the redesigned document library to organize, store, and manage files effectively
• Limitations to be aware of when working within libraries and how to plan around them
• Best practices for modern document management within team sites
• How the new SharePoint Online experience affects navigation, structure, and content organization
• An introduction to the new document library templates, with four built-in options available for different scenarios

Whether you are familiar with the classic library experience or just getting started, this session will equip you with practical knowledge to help your team work more efficiently. We look forward to having you join us.

Note: This session will be recorded for those unable to attend live.

Let us know in the form below which event series you're interested in, and we’ll make sure you receive calendar invites when new meetings are scheduled!

Subscribe to M365 Learning Hub Events

Title: Toward Foundation Agents: How Multimodal Models Learn (and Fail to Learn) the Physical World

Abstract: Today’s multimodal models are often trained with a brute-force “align everything” recipe, yet it is still unclear how cross-modal intelligence can emerge. We argue the key question is mechanistic: how can models go beyond static alignment annotations to learn from physical-world interaction and support goal-directed decision making? We systematically study multimodal learning through the MDP agent loop: state estimation, world modeling for planning, and control for safety. First, we open up the black box, and intervene inside embeddings to reveal how geometry is lost, and design ways to retain geometric structure. Second, we inject world-model priors to teach dynamics through RAGEN/VAGEN, enabling multi-step planning rather than token matching. Third, we introduce ODE-Steer for safe agents, which steers internal activations into “safe zones” where reasoning stays reliable and controllable. Lastly, we lay out the future that true multimodal intelligence requires more than aligning tokens; it requires aligning the internal mechanisms of the model with the geometry of the world.

Bio: Manling Li is an Assistant Professor at Northwestern University and an Amazon Scholar. She was a postdoc at Stanford University, and obtained Ph.D. degree in Computer Science at University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign in 2023. She works on Reasoning, Planning and Compositionality, in the intersection of Language, Vision, and Robotics. Her work has been recognized as ACL 2025 Inaugural Dissertation Award Honorable Mention, MIT Tech Review Innovators Under 35, ACL’24 Outstanding Paper Award, NAACL'21 Best Demo Paper Award, ACL'20 Best Demo Paper Award, Microsoft Research PhD Fellowship, EE CS Rising Star, etc. She served as virtual chairs of ACL 25, publication chairs at NAACL 25, demo chairs at EMNLP 24, etc. Additional information is available at https://limanling.github.io/.

Want to join a committee and work on one of our projects? Have an issue that's important to you that we should hear about? Then join us!

The symposium features:

• Undergraduate Research Showcase – Explore posterboards presenting original student research on Butler’s works.
• Anyanwu Patterns Art Installation – Olamma Oparah’s immersive visual installation inspired by Wild Seed, on display all day.
• Biographers’ Panel – Insights from Gerry Canavan, Kendra Parker, and Susana Morris on Butler’s life and influence.
• Roundtable: Peoples’ Instinctive Travels – Artists and filmmakers discuss Butler’s influence on contemporary Black speculative art.
• Keynote: From Page to Panel – Damian Duffy and John Jennings discuss adapting Butler’s fiction into graphic novels.

Books by Butler will be available for purchase from Charis Books & More, and parking is behind the Academy of Medicine. Breakfast and lunch are included for attendees.

Calling all Pokémon masters, card collectors, shiny hunters, long-time veterans, and new trainers just starting their journey! GT Esports is partnering with PokéJackets to bring you an ARCADE NIGHT social event featuring all things Pokémon! FREE PIZZA will be provided for attendants!

DON’T FORGET to bring your gaming systems, Pokémon cards, or whatever you use to play Pokémon! We’ll also have POKEMON TRIVIA for those looking to test their knowledge or learn something new.

We hope to see you there!

If you are interested in options trading, high-performance computing, or just want to learn how you can apply your CS skills to the financial markets, this is the perfect event for you. Come meet the team, learn about their unique training programs, and find out how you can make an immediate impact at one of the leading options trading firms.

Dinner will be provided for all attendees! Please RSVP so we can get an accurate headcount for Chipotle: https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSfJZoE5aVVN4xW71Kw9t9basSmbzDD_MeroXI6_nObPMqZtsg/viewform?usp=header

Learn more about the scholarship and apply at https://campusservices.gatech.edu/scholarships 

Application deadline: Sunday, March 15

Data centers are critical infrastructure powering our digital lives, but their rapid growth brings complex sustainability challenges. From energy consumption and water usage, to community impacts — understanding these tradeoffs is essential for shaping a resilient and responsible future.

We want to help Georgia Tech researchers discover how their expertise can align with the emerging research opportunities. This series will foster interdisciplinary collaboration and spark ideas for innovative solutions.

Three Virtual Panels/Webinars:
Each webinar will be 60-90 minutes with 3-5 short talks, followed by discussion and Q&A.

  •  Energy – February 25, 2026, 12:30 - 2 PM
  •  Water – Coming in March
  •  Communities – Coming in April

For questions, please contact Ameet Pinto or Kristin Janacek.

Seating will be available on a first come, first-served basis. 

RSVP to attend.

The world around us is inherently 3D, and this structure is essential from engineering and the physical sciences to photogrammetry and robotics. Yet computing and learning with real-world geometric data remains remarkably difficult, stubbornly stuck on challenges of robustness, representation, and scale. Noisy scans, mismatched representations, and massive datasets make even basic operations fragile and slow, while learning with 3D data demands a new set of architectures purpose-built for the task.

This talk will present methods that unlock 3D data for reliable processing and learning in the wild. I'll cover neural network architectures designed specifically for 3D data to offer physical consistency and geometric fidelity by-construction, simulation techniques that operate natively on scanned environments, and the foundational geometric algorithms that underpin it all. Throughout, a key theme is interfacing principled geometric methods with modern machine learning.

Bio

Nicholas Sharp's research develops algorithms and architectures to make computing with geometric data easy, efficient, and reliable. He received his PhD in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University advised by Keenan Crane, and completed his postdoc at the University of Toronto & Fields Institute for Mathematics with Alec Jacobson. Currently, he is a Senior Research Scientist at NVIDIA, leading research on 3D learning that powers applications from autonomous driving to generative AI. His work has won multiple best paper awards (SIGGRAPH '22, SIGGRAPH Asia '23, SGP '20 & '25), developed widely-used software including the award-winning Polyscope library, and has been covered in the press by the New York Times and Ars Technica. For more, see www.nmwsharp.com.

Bio

Yifei Li is a Ph.D. candidate in EECS at MIT, advised by Prof. Wojciech Matusik. Her research bridges high-fidelity physics simulation with machine learning to enable systems that reason through physical environments, powering applications across computational design, digital twins, assistive robotics, and biomedical engineering. Yifei received her B.S. in Computer Science from Carnegie Mellon University. Her professional experience includes research internships at Meta Reality Labs, NVIDIA, the Boston Dynamics AI Institute, and Facebook AI Research. She is the recipient of the MIT Stata Family Presidential Fellowship and has been named a Rising Star in both Computer Graphics and EECS.

What AI tools have you tried for writing, finding literature citations, making presentations, coding, or automating research tasks?  Come share your experiences and learn from others over coffee with the IDEaS community.

IDEaS-affiliated students and staff are also welcome.

If you do not have access to Coda, near the beginning of the event we will have a staff member or student waiting by the reception desk near the elevators to escort people up.

For questions please contact Ashley.edwards@gatech.edu

Physics simulation increasingly sits in the loop of interactive content creation, digital twins, and embodied AI. A central dilemma cuts across these applications: the tradeoff between simulation speed and fidelity, especially at scale. In practice, an equally limiting barrier is interactive control. Artists and designers need coarse previews they can manipulate in real time, with confidence that refinement will not overturn their decisions. Standard multiresolution approaches often fall short because coarse solutions can drift, and refinement can introduce surprises due to numerical stiffening, geometric inconsistency, and contact.

To address this challenge, my research program introduces Progressive Simulation, a general-purpose, coarse-to-fine level-of-detail (LOD) framework for physics simulation that brings and generalizes ideas from progressive rendering and progressive geometry to the simulation setting. The core idea is to produce a fast, coarse, artifact-free, predictive preview under tight computational budgets for rapid iteration, then apply consistent refinement across resolutions that converges to a richly detailed, high-fidelity result as more resources or stricter accuracy requirements become available. In this talk, I will present methods that realize this approach in both progressive quasistatics and progressive dynamics, with results spanning cloth, shells, and volumetric objects, enabling experimental design, interactive staging, and physics-based storytelling. Finally, I will outline future directions toward broader applicability, including multi-fidelity, multi-physics simulation systems powered by scalable solvers.

Bio

Jiayi (Eris) Zhang is a fifth-year PhD candidate in Computer Science at Stanford University, advised by Prof. Doug James, and works closely with Dr. Danny Kaufman at Adobe. She received her BS in Computer Science and Mathematics from the University of Toronto, where she conducted research with Prof. Alec Jacobson. Her research spans physics simulation, geometry processing, numerical optimization, and spatial intelligence, with a focus on building algorithms, models, and tools that enhance human productivity and creativity in science, engineering, and interactive authoring workflows. She is a Stanford Reed-Hodgson Fellow, a WiGRAPH Rising Star, and an MIT EECS Rising Star, and has received the Adobe Women-in-Technology Scholarship, the Roblox Graduate Fellowship, and the NVIDIA Graduate Fellowship. She has also interned at Adobe and NVIDIA across multiple summers.

World models that recreate and simulate the physical world hold transformative potential across robotics, entertainment, and engineering analysis. Achieving this vision requires both generating 3D environments from limited observations and predicting how they evolve under physical actions. Pure physical modeling provides guarantees and action control but demands complete state specification rarely available in practice; pure generative learning handles incomplete information to produce realistic content but lacks the structured representations needed for physical interaction and reasoning. This talk presents physics-grounded world models, integrating these approaches to leverage their complementary strengths: physical representations provide the structured interface for actions and consistency guarantees, while generative models supply visual realism and compensate for incomplete observations. I will demonstrate this framework across two core capabilities---generating 3D worlds from single images and simulating dynamics under physical actions---and show how it extends to real engineering problems in fluid and thermal analysis.

Bio

Hong-Xing (Koven) Yu (https://kovenyu.com/) is a PhD candidate at the Computer Science Department of Stanford University, advised by Prof. Jiajun Wu. His research focuses on physics-grounded world models. He is a recipient of the SIGGRAPH Asia Best Paper Award, the Stanford SoE Fellowship, the Qualcomm Fellowship, and the Meshy Fellowship, and a finalist of the NVIDIA Fellowship, the Meta Fellowship, the Jane Street Fellowship, and the Roblox Fellowship.

Join the February meeting in-person (Student Success Center – President’s Suite A and B) or virtually.(Passcode: YQ2Zb94x). 

All staff members of the Institute may attend regular meetings of the Council but may not participate in discussion or voting procedures. Visitors will be acknowledged and given the opportunity to address the council at the end of each meeting. Visitor presentations at general meetings must be approved by the Chair and added to the meeting agenda in advance.

Nonmembers are welcome to attend all Staff Council meetings. Nonmembers who wish to address the Council will request permission to do so from the Staff Council Executive Committee prior to the meeting or from the presiding officer during the meeting. 

Join us in person for the Staff Council's ‘Council Connect’ event, held just before our monthly in-person meeting.

Come mingle with Staff Council Leadership and elected members to hear about our Spring events. Snacks will be provided. 

Stop by to learn how we’re working to support and advocate for all employees. Whether you have questions, concerns, or ideas to share, this is a great opportunity to connect with council members and learn more about our efforts to enhance the workplace experience. You’ll also discover ways to get involved and make your voice heard. We’re here to listen and help build a stronger, more engaged staff community.

Volunteer opportunities are available—we look forward to meeting you! 

Cynthia A. Chestek
Professor of Biomedical Engineering, Electrical Engineering, Neuroscience and Robotics
University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Virtual Link:  https://zoom.us/j/97421219805?pwd=b2ZUZElTQ044anlVbFRib2VIQk1IQT09
Meeting ID: 974 2121 9805 | Password: 556677
Dial by your location: +1 470 381 2552 US (Atlanta)

• Cohesive robotic units can transition between solid- and fluid-like states
• Interunit tangential forces are modulated to control shape and strength
• Collectives can form structures, self-heal, and support 500× the weight of a single robot

Hawkes’ research integrates design, mechanics, and novel materials, with applications in robotics, medicine, and biomechanics. His lab has spun out companies to commercialize medical and rehabilitation devices.

About our organization: SKY

SKY Campus Happiness is a comprehensive well-being and resilience program designed to help students, faculty and staff achieve their fullest potential. In this 40-minute live interactive session, we will share:

• How to overcome mind wandering
• a powerful breathing technique
• a guided meditation

We would love to see you in this workshop and grow on the self care journey together! If you have any questions please write to us at yesplusgt@gmail.com.

Our inspiration

We are an open space to drop in and find calm. Knowing the benefits of breath-work and meditation, we love to share these tools with more people.

A 2020 study at Yale that explored mental wellness interventions with surprising results. Discover how SKY Breath Meditation/ SKY Happiness Retreat created significant improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, mental health, social connectedness, mindfulness, and positive emotions for Yale students.

Yale press release

This is a joint effort of SOS, Scouting, and Trailblazers. This event will occur weekly, so do not worry if you can not make this one. Email me at jward98@gatech.edu or join our GroupMe at https://groupme.com/join_group/85797762/J5h8prO1. 

We'll have snacks as well!

Speakers:
Michael Best, Executive Director of the Institute for People and Technology
Michael L. Best is Executive Director of the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) and Professor with the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology where he directs the Technologies and International Development Lab. He holds a Ph.D. from MIT and has served as director of Media Lab Asia in India and head of the eDevelopment group at the MIT Media Lab.

Maribeth Gandy Coleman, Regent's Researcher, Director of Research for the Institute of People and Technology, Assistant Vice Provost for Research Faculty
Maribeth Gandy Coleman is a Regent's Researcher and Director of Research for the Institute of People and Technology at Georgia Tech. She received a B.S. in Computer Engineering as well as a M.S. and Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. In her 20+ as a research faculty member her work has been focused on the intersection of technology for mobile/wearable computing, augmented reality, human computer interaction, assistive technology, and gaming. She is a computer scientist focused on developing novel and scientifically validated systems at the “human technology frontier” designed for purposes such as training, rehabilitation, and cognitive training, utilizing cutting-edge technology such as augmented and virtual reality. For example, she lead an initiative (funded by National Science Foundation, Dept of Education, and ACT Inc.) to research the design of games for cognitive training and assessment for older adults, persons with disabilities, and K-12 students. She also previously led a project funded by Georgia Tech’s Health Systems Institute to develop home-based computer games for stroke rehabilitation. In her AR research, she is interested in advancing AR as a new medium by focusing on authoring, evaluation, and deployment. She was the lead architect on a large open source software project called the Designer’s Augmented Reality Toolkit (DART), which had thousands of users and was used to create a variety of large-scale AR systems. She was also co-PI on an NSF grant focused on the development of presence metrics for measuring engagement in AR environments using qualitative and quantitative data. She has also applied AR technologies to a STEM education project for teens, explored how AR interfaces can enhance user abilities during maintenance and repair tasks, and is currently studying the use AR and mobile technologies to make Internet of Things environments more approachable and useful to communities. In her Director role she is responsible for organizational leadership & strategic planning, fundraising, convening & managing diverse teams, industry/academic partnerships, and translational work including commercialization of intellectual property.

Noah Posner, Research Scientist
Noah Posner is a research scientist with the Institute for People and Technology and lab manager of the Interactive Product Design Lab (IPDL) in the School of Industrial Design. His focus is on creating interactive experiences that leverage physical interaction. He holds degrees in Industrial Design, Mechanical Engineering and an M.S. in Human Computer Interaction. His research involves creating rich physical interactions, designing and fabricating interactive devices using CAD and Rapid prototyping technologies, and developing educational tools for STEAM leaning that focus on utilizing hands on learning with intentionally designed artifacts. He also teaches courses in Physical Prototyping for Human Computer Interaction and Industrial Design. 

Clint Zeagler, Director of Strategic Partnerships (IPaT), Principal Research Scientist   
While teaching textiles and fashion design studio classes at Savannah College of Art & Design, Zeagler realized his true passion lies in bridging the gap between the disciplines of Wearable design and Human-Centered Computing. A diverse background in fashion, industrial design, and textiles drive his research on electronic textiles and on-body interfaces with the Contextual Computing Group of the GVU center of Georgia Tech. As a Principal Research Scientist for the Georgia Tech Interactive Media Technology Center and Instructor for the Georgia Tech School of Industrial Design he teaches courses on Wearable Product Design and an ID section of Mobile and Ubiquitous Computing (MUC).  Zeagler enjoys working with corporations such as HP/Palm and Google to bring real-world experience into the classroom. He recently acquired a NASA Georgia Space Consortium grant to fund MUC student projects on wearable computing for space—a wonderful opportunity for undergraduate students. He is also a member of the NASA Wearable Technology Cluster a group of scientists and academics working together to give advice to those in NASA working on wearable computing or electronic textile projects. A deep understanding of the garment production process fosters innovation in his research. Zeagler’s company Pecan Pie Couture hand-dyed, embroidered, and screen-printed textiles and garments. Building upon that skillset, his recent research led to the creation of the Electronic Textile Interface Swatch Book (ESwatchBook) in collaboration with Thad Starner. The ESwatchBook is designed to help facilitate discussions between the skill and craft-based design disciplines (.i.e. fashion) and more technical disciplines (.i.e. computer science). To put the ESwatchBook’s capabilities to the test, he developed a series of workshops at multiple colleges with the purpose of bringing together designers with engineers/technology specialists. The workshops were funded by a National Endowment for the Arts grant, which he co-authored. Zeagler’s most recent endeavor FIDO: Facilitating Interactions for Dogs with Occupations is an exploration into using wearable electronics to enhance interactions between service dogs and their handler/owners.

----------------
Conversations@TechSquare is a dynamic space for new ideas, not an environment for established concepts. We gather creators and innovators from across Georgia Tech, the broader Tech Square community, and beyond, to engage in open dialogue around some of today’s biggest challenges and opportunities. These gatherings are organized and hosted by the Georgia Tech Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) and will occur several times during a semester at the Tech Square Clubhouse. The Clubhouse address is 848 Spring Street NW, Atlanta, Georgia, 30308 (street level, behind the Centergy One Bldg.).

Tech Square Clubhouse

PARKING:
Parking is available at the Centergy One parking deck, located right next door. You can also find additional street parking via Park Mobile on Spring and 5th Street. Centergy One parking deck daily rates: Half Hour: $3.00 | One Hour: $6.00 | Two Hours: $12.00 | Daily Max: $20.00

GT CAMPUS BUS: Take the Gold route bus which stops at Tech Square.

We will focus on questions like:

• What prevents promising grid innovations from moving beyond demonstration projects to become scalable, reliable, and economically viable components of the national energy infrastructure?
• How can breakthroughs in generation, storage, and control systems be integrated into real-world grid operations without compromising reliability or resilience?

and more!

Meet the Panelists:

Constance Crozier | Assistant Professor, School of Industrial Systems Engineering
Santiago Grijalva | Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Georgia Power Distinguished Professor 
Gaurav Doshi | Assistant Professor, School of Economics 
Joe Bozeman | Assistant Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena (moderator) | Associate Professor and Goizueta Early Career Faculty Chair

Reception: 5:15 p.m.

Event Begins: 6 p.m.

There will be plenty of free books from the featured poets available at the event, with a book sale and signing following the reading. All Poetry@Tech events are free and open to the public. No tickets or reservations required. Parking is available in Visitor Parking 2 (Student Center Lot) off Ferst Drive.

Register to attend via Zoom.

The Bench2Market funding series is created to provide commercialization guidance to the university research community. Learn more at https://biolocity.gatech.edu/news-and-events/b2m-talks/. 

Agenda

FRIENDSHIP—SCHOLARSHIP—SERVICE since 1921. The Georgia Tech Women’s Club (GTWC) brings women together to connect, give back, and support Georgia Tech. The club hosts social and educational events, serves the community, and awards scholarships to Georgia Tech students each year. Open to all who want to be part of something meaningful — and fun. Find out more at https://www.gtfwc.org/.

Register

Keynote speakers include James Marlow, President of the Southface Institute, and Alex Fitzsimmons, Director of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response at the U.S. Department of Energy(tentative).

The event will take place on February 18, 2026. A ticket includes access to all conference sessions, breakfast and lunch, and the opportunity to present in the Student Symposium, Georgia Tech’s only energy themed poster competition.

The 2026 Georgia Tech Energy Conference is centered around the theme Future Focused: Advancing the Energy of Tomorrow. This year’s conference will examine how innovation, infrastructure, security, and policy are shaping the next generation of energy systems. Discussions will explore emerging technologies, system resilience, workforce development, and the challenges and opportunities involved in building a reliable, secure, and sustainable energy future.

Energy underpins nearly every aspect of modern life, and the choices made today will define how societies power themselves for decades to come. Join students, professionals, and leaders from across the country for a day of conversation, insight, and connection focused on advancing the energy of tomorrow.

Click Here to Register

Click Here to Register

Click Here to Register

This event is a collaboration between the GT Permaculture Interest Group led by Brent Verrill and the student-run Permaculture project under SOS.

About our organization: SKY

SKY Campus Happiness is a comprehensive well-being and resilience program designed to help students, faculty and staff achieve their fullest potential. In this 40-minute live interactive session, we will share:

• How to overcome mind wandering
• a powerful breathing technique
• a guided meditation

We would love to see you in this workshop and grow on the self care journey together! If you have any questions please write to us at yesplusgt@gmail.com.

Our inspiration

We are an open space to drop in and find calm. Knowing the benefits of breath-work and meditation, we love to share these tools with more people.

A 2020 study at Yale that explored mental wellness interventions with surprising results. Discover how SKY Breath Meditation/ SKY Happiness Retreat created significant improvements in stress, anxiety, depression, mental health, social connectedness, mindfulness, and positive emotions for Yale students.

Yale press release

Come hang out, try some keyboards, solder a key switch keychain, and win some giveaways from our club sponsors Zeal, Keebio, KBDFans, and Mekibo!

As always, bring your keyboards if you have them! If you don't, that's completely ok too, feel free to come try out some keyboards and learn more about the hobby!

Also, join the Discord at http://gt.keyboard.chat/ for updates!

Join us for a portfolio design workshop with Zawadi Pilipili. She is an Adobe Campus Ambassador and popular LinkedIn content creator who will share her tips and tricks on designing your dream portfolio to land job opportunities! Our workshop is great for students in design and business who want to build and refine their portfolios for their future career.

We will have free food!

Abstract: Modern machine learning systems achieve impressive performance, but are largely built under a closed-world assumption: that the data distribution does not change from the distribution of the training set.  Real environments are open, dynamic, and filled with unknown unknowns. In such settings, knowing when a model’s output is reliable is critical.

This talk focuses on out-of-distribution (OOD) detection, a key capability for safe and reliable AI. The first part presents a mathematical theory of OOD detection that places state-of-the-art methods, largely heuristically derived, within a unified variational information-theoretic framework [1].  The theory provides plausible assumptions behind existing approaches and predicts new OOD detectors that are simple to implement and outperform state-of-the-art methods.

The second part of the talk addresses an often overlooked problem in practical deployment of OOD detectors, that is, OOD detectors depend on parameters that must be tuned, and a “given OOD” dataset is required [2]. In practice, such given OOD data may be difficult to obtain.  We formalize this problem and introduce a new tuning strategy that uses only the model’s training data and achieves similar or better performance compared to tuning on given OOD data, enabling robust and practical deployment.

The ideas will be illustrated across applications including automatic target recognition, cyber-security, large language models, and radio-frequency (RF) fingerprinting.

[1] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2506.14194

[2] https://arxiv.org/pdf/2602.05935

Bio: Dr. Ganesh Sundaramoorthi is Senior Research Fellow/Director of Research at RTX Technology Research Center, which is the research center for RTX (encompassing Raytheon, Collins Aerospace, and Pratt & Whitney) and also Adjunct Professor of ECE at Georgia Tech.  His research is in machine learning, computer vision, and artificial intelligence (AI), e.g., robustness, explainability, acceleration, and low size, weight & power.  Prior to his current position, he was on the faculty of KAUST, where he led a research group in computer vision.  His PhD was from Georgia Tech and he did postdoctoral work at UCLA in computer vision. He has led a number of internal and external research programs in AI including IARPA, NGA, ARPA-E and AFRL.  He was area chair for leading AI conferences (IEEE/CVF CVPR & ICCV). He has more than 60 publications in AI and nearly 50 patents and/or applications.

http://ganeshsun.com/

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

ZOOM ACCESS 

https://gatech.zoom.us/j/92002341992?pwd=ZLAiI8WdAu8arEo23SEArIhGU2smxm.1

Meeting ID: 920 0234 1992 
Passcode: 253459 

Consider RETURNING TO OVERWATCH with a night of casual custom lobbies hosted by GT Overwatch! Whether you’re new to the game or returning to try any of the FIVE brand new heroes, this event is perfect for anyone who wants to experience Overwatch with fellow members of the Georgia Tech community!

The games begin SATURDAY @ 8PM in the Georgia Tech Overwatch Discord Server! 

We hope to see you there!

RSVP 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.

Abstract:

Bio:

John Besley
Ellis N. Brandt Professor of Public Relations
Michigan State University

Anthony Dudo
Associate Professor
Stan Richards School of Advertising & Public Relations
University of Texas at Austin

As we move toward the era of physical AI systems that perceive, reason, and act, the demand for virtual worlds that behave like reality has never been higher. My work targets this challenge through 'Physically Grounded Visual Computing': a perspective that bridges high-fidelity computer graphics engines with modern 3D vision, generative AI, and robots. I will present our breakthroughs in robust graphical simulations, specifically showing how continuum mechanics and contact mechanics provide the mathematical guarantees needed to model complex phenomena, from glacial calving to tactile manipulation. Beyond dynamic simulations, I will discuss how we are fusing these engines with generative models, such as physics-informed 3D Gaussian Splatting, video diffusion, and 3D reconstruction models, to create digital twins that look photorealistic and act physically valid. We build towards a roadmap for using these physics-based world engines to generate synthetic data at scale and equip agents with the physical intuition they need to succeed in the real world.

Bio

Chenfanfu Jiang (PhD’15) is a Professor of Mathematics and the director of the Artificial Intelligence and Visual Computing (AIVC) Lab at UCLA. He primarily works on computer graphics and its interdisciplinary synergies with 3D vision, generative AI and physical AI. He has led the development of widely-adopted simulators with Particle-In-Cell, Material Point, and Incremental Potential Contact methods. He received the dissertation award from UCLA, NSF CAREER, and multiple faculty awards from Amazon, Style3D, and Sony, as well as best paper awards/honorable mentions at SIGGRAPH, SCA, MIG, ICRA, and IROS.

ABSTRACT: AI is increasingly deployed in high stakes environments that shape access to essential resources such as food, logistics, or healthcare. Yet, many AI efforts struggle in long term deployment, not because of technical limitations, but because challenges related to people, communities, and real world contexts in which they operate. This talk presents a people first, socio technical approach to designing and deploying AI systems with humans in the loop. By integrating community engaged research with optimization and agent based modeling, the work demonstrates how participatory design reshapes data practices, modeling assumptions, and evaluation criteria. Drawing on deployments in food access planning, decentralized cold chain logistics, and AI technologies designed with seniors, the talk highlights how real world constraints and community knowledge surface critical design and deployment considerations often invisible in lab based workflows. The talk concludes with open research directions for building people centered AI infrastructures through interdisciplinary collaboration, translation to impact, and long-term stewardship.

BIO: Rosemarie Santa González, Ph.D. is a Georgia T ech Research Faculty working at the intersection of AI, optimization, and people centered system design. Her research focuses on ethical, deployable AI enabled decision support tools for high stakes domains such as food access, logistics, healthcare, and aging services, using community-engaged methods to translate research into real-world impact.

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IPaT: GVU Lunch Lecture Series

 Join on Teams to speak with an Office of Licensing representative!

Held the 2nd Tuesday of each month in IBB.

• Do you have a patentable invention and want to protect it?
• Interested in commercializing your research either through licensing to an existing company or a startup?
• Want to learn about the commercialization resources available for entrepreneurs?

Stop by the IP and Commercialization Office Hours in the IBB atrium and meet with experts from the Office of Technology Licensing and Quadrant-i. We are at your service!  

The Experts:

• Cynthia Sundell, Senior Director of Life Sciences and Quadrant-i Principal
• Harold Solomon, Quadrant-i Principal
• Kashmira Kulkarni, Licensing Associate Office of Technology Licensing

This event will be held on February 12 from 11:00AM-12:15PM in the Caddell Flex Space. A light lunch will be served. Space is limited, so please only indicate in person if you truly intend to be in person. For those interested in the online option, a teams link will be sent closer to the time of the event. 

About the speaker: Brandon Biggs is an entrepreneur, researcher, inclusive designer, developer, and life-long learner. He is a PhD candidate at Georgia Tech, the CEO of XR Navigation, an Engineer at the Smith-Kettlewell Eye Research Institute, and Co-Founder and board treasurer at Sonja Biggs Educational Services Inc. He is almost completely blind from Lebers Congenital Amaurosis (LCA). His projects and ventures center around building tools to solve some of the most difficult problems in the blindness field. He leverages his lived experience coupled with human centered inclusive design principles to create solutions that create lasting and sustainable impact.

Register: Can You Hear This Map? Research on audio and text maps. – Fill out form

Join TOM, ABLE Alliance, CIDI, and MultiSense.Studio for a hands-on workshop exploring braille, Universal Design for Learning (UDL), and accessible health communication.

Feb 20, 9:00 AM–1:00 PM, CIDI Braille Lab, Georgia Tech

All students welcome — no prior experience required

Register by Feb 16: https://gatech.universitytickets.com/w/event.aspx?id=2214

Options:

Braille training only (9–10 AM)

Braille + Accessible Health Communication workshop (9 AM–1 PM) 35 person cap 

Date: Wednesday, February 18 
Time: 9 – 10 a.m. 
Location: U.A. Whitaker Biomedical Engr-165 – Room 1103
313 Ferst Dr., Atlanta, GA 30332                 
RSVP to Amy Smith at asmith872@gatech.edu 

Join the Office of Technology Licensing for our Coffee & Commercialization lecture series. Jonathan Goldman, director of Quandrant-i will speak to how faculty can take their idea and create a startup. 

Get your questions answered: 

• How baked must an idea be?
• Why do teams matter?
• How do I position myself to engage (successfully) with investors?
• How to dilute intelligently?
• What are equity splits/cap tables?
• Why does IP matter to investors? 

RSVP to Amy Smith at asmith872@gatech.edu 

Virtual options via Teams below 
________________________________________________________________________________

Microsoft Teams meeting

Join: https://teams.microsoft.com/meet/25234216075833?p=GYsA3gVwMDGBqkJImA

Meeting ID: 252 342 160 758 33

Passcode: S8DX2zG6

Need help? | System reference

Dial in by phone

+1 470-705-2566,,233676578# United States, Atlanta

Find a local number

Phone conference ID: 233 676 578#

For organizers: Meeting options | Reset dial-in PIN

Org help

Date: Tuesday, February 17, 2026 at 11:00 am

Location: Coda Building, Room 114 (Google Maps link)

Link: The recording of this in-person seminar will be uploaded to CSE's MediaSpace

Coffee and snacks provided!

Title: Uncompromising Performance with Exocompilation

Abstract: Performance is the currency of modern computing. Achieving peak throughput on fast‑evolving accelerators demands more control than today's compilers provide. I will present Exo and the Exocompilation paradigm: a user‑schedulable programming language that shifts two responsibilities traditionally hard‑coded in compilers--hardware backends and optimization strategies--into safe, extensible user libraries. In Exo, optimizations are expressed as verified rewrites that guarantee functional equivalence, and low‑level primitives (e.g., explicit instruction selection, GPU asynchrony) give programmers precise control. This design enables targeting CPUs, GPUs, and matrix engines, and supports concise, reusable scheduling libraries that match or surpass the performance of state-of-the-art libraries such as cuBLAS and MKL. Exo‑generated kernels already ship at scale, including on Apple devices.

Bio: Yuka Ikarashi is a sixth-year Ph.D. candidate at MIT CSAIL. She received her M.S. from MIT in 2022 and her B.S. from the University of Tokyo in 2020. Passionate about compilers and programming languages for high-performance computing, she created the Exo programming language. She has previously worked at Apple, Amazon, and CERN, applying her research to various accelerators and applications. She has been awarded the Quad Fellowship, the Masason Foundation Fellowship, the Funai Foundation Fellowship, the ML and Systems Rising Stars Award, and the Rising Stars in EECS Award. Originally from Tokyo, Japan, she is an avid traveler and has visited 36 countries.

We're offering three time options: 11 a.m., 12 p.m. , and 1 p.m.

Sign up at https://gatech.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_6LobrXrfQq8EXtA