Georgia is the number one forestry state in the country, with more than 22 million of its roughly 24 million forested acres held in private hands. According to the Southern Group of State Foresters, forests and the forest products industry in the Southern U.S. provide for more than 18% of the world’s pulpwood for paper and paper-related products and 7% of the world’s industrial roundwood. The timber industry also supports thousands of rural livelihoods and sequesters enormous amounts of carbon. Yet today, Georgia forests are under pressure due to natural disasters and market changes.
The field tour promoted a Georgia-specific carbon exchange that has the potential to save forests, help companies purchase high quality carbon credits, and provide co-benefits for the entire state.
Across pine-forested Southeast Georgia, the devastation left by Hurricane Helene remains impossible to miss. A year and a half later, the cleanup – which is slow, expensive, and disheartening – is still ongoing across thousands of acres. Downed timber, too old to be sold for profit, lies in heaps. Throughout the field tour, landowners and foresters shared personal narratives that made it easy to feel the weight of what has been lost.
Helene only worsened troubles that were already underway. The markets for timber and pulpwood have been weakening. Demand for paper products has fallen sharply, taking pulpwood prices with it. In the last year alone, three mills have closed in Georgia.
Do I bother to replant? If I plant, will someone actually buy my timber in 20 years? These are the questions landowners across Georgia are wrestling with. Landowners’ decisions today can lead to a future with fewer forested acres, less healthy forests, and forests converted to development – a loss that is permanent.
The pressing question throughout the field tour was: What happens next?
One of the benefits of a field tour is the chance to hear firsthand, personal accounts from the people whose livelihoods depend on forests.
The tour began in Emanuel County at the Willie Hodges Family Farm Estate. Herbert Hodges welcomed the group to the 600-acre property his family has stewarded for four generations. Hodges shows his respect for the land through thoughtful stewardship – for which he was honored when he was named 2025 Conservationist of the Year by the Georgia Association of Conservation Districts. However, Hodges worries whether the fifth generation will keep the land, and he wants to demonstrate to his heirs that the land is worth holding onto. He remembers his father telling him, “Never get rid of the land. As long as you keep it, you have somewhere to live, somewhere to go.”
Matt Hestad, senior vice president of GFF, said, “Mr. Hodges has to identify new opportunities for his property not only to keep his family engaged but also to prove the land is economically valuable, both today and into the future.”
The carbon exchange, if built well, could be exactly that kind of new opportunity.
The initiative to develop a Georgia Carbon Exchange, launched in 2025, is being led collaboratively by the organizers of the field tour. It’s designed to create a voluntary carbon credit marketplace specifically tailored to Georgia’s forest landscape, Georgia’s landowners, and companies that are interested in purchasing high quality carbon credits.
David Eady, director of industry engagement at the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, described the vision: “We're looking at creating a marketplace for companies doing business in Georgia or headquartered in Georgia, so they can acquire credits that specifically benefit local communities and ecosystems. We want to make sure that we can continue to manage our valuable forest resources that make up well over half of the land in Georgia.”
“Companies are concerned about sustainability because their customers are – and one of the things that that's manifested is a market for carbon credits,” said Leslie Boby, director of the UGA Southern Regional Extension Forestry. “Being in forestry, we have the original carbon sequestration system: trees. And we have a lot of trees in Georgia.”
The foundation for the Georgia Carbon Exchange already exists, waiting to be built on.
The January tour was a pilot that can be replicated for other groups of potential carbon buyers, policymakers, and stakeholders who need to understand what is at stake in Georgia’s forests before they can meaningfully invest in their future.
Hestad described what made this first tour valuable: “We need all the players at the table: academics, buyers, and landowners. I feel like we’ve learned from a variety of people about forest management – from a private family landowner about intergenerational challenges, from a recreation-focused landowner about wildlife management, and from landowners who have been impacted by Hurricane Helene. We’ve been provided with context for how a carbon exchange could serve those different sectors of landowners.”
For industry representatives on the tour, the experience was eye-opening. They joined the tour to learn more about recovery efforts, community support, and the mechanics of a carbon exchange. At the end of the tour, they said they had a clearer sense of both the urgency and the opportunity.
Lucas Clay, extension professional at the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, said, “Landowners are focused on the economics of forestry, and buyers are looking for quality credits. I think there's a lot of opportunity for both of these things to happen.”
A successful carbon exchange requires trust, understanding, and shared purpose to be cultivated deliberately. Tours like this one are part of that cultivation.
Georgia has everything it needs to make a carbon exchange work: the forests, the science, the institutions, and the will. What it needs now is exactly what the field tour was designed to build: awareness, connection, and shared commitment among the people and organizations whose decisions will shape the future of the state’s forests.
Zach Johnson, procurement manager at Beasley Timber Management, LLC, told the group: “With every one green ton of tree growth, you sequester approximately one metric ton of carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. Let’s find a way to certify this wonderful resource we have and prop up these jobs in Georgia – before it’s too late.”
Maintaining Georgia’s forests is not only about carbon. Well-managed forests filter water, support native wildlife, improve air quality, protect public health, and provide opportunities for outdoor recreation. These are co-benefits that a carbon credit does not fully capture but that are very much part of the value proposition for maintaining Georgia’s private forests.
Among the pines of Southeast Georgia, a common goal came into focus. The forests are worth saving. And the right people are coming together with the right plan to make it happen.
]]>Written by Jennifer Holley Lux
Photography (unless otherwise noted) by Mike Gregory (Georgia Forestry Association & Foundation)
]]>Caused by the Vibrio coralliilyticus pathogen, the infection is one of the most notorious causes of tissue loss and death in stony corals. In the study, all untreated corals bleached within 48 hours. But corals exposed to the predatory bacteria fared much better: more than half showed no signs of bleaching beyond the infection site — and disease progression was effectively halted.
“Disease is a major driver of death for these corals, and with sea surface temperatures continuing to rise globally, we anticipate that rates of disease will only increase. It’s part of a deadly synergy profoundly threatening Caribbean coral reefs,” says lead author Lauren Speare, assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “Predatory bacteria function like a living probiotic, fighting coral disease without harsh side effects. This could be a targeted way to protect and treat our most vulnerable coral reefs."
The study, “Halobacteriovorax Halts Disease Progression in Endangered Caribbean Corals,” was published in The ISME Journal. In addition to Speare, the research team included Georgia Tech master's student Chloe Manley and postdoctoral scholar Macey Coppinger; University of California, Santa Barbara graduate students Sunni Patton and Eddie Fuques, and Professor Rebecca Vega Thurber, director of the UCSB Marine Science Institute.
Speare became interested in the research while completing her postdoctoral training with Thurber. “Dr. Thurber discovered that predatory bacteria are present in many coral microbiomes,” Speare recalls. “We theorized that they might be contributing to what keeps the ecosystem healthy, balancing it through predation.”
At the time, the theory was hard to test. Marine predatory bacteria are difficult to preserve long-term, making experiments challenging. The bacteria are also extremely scarce, with populations increasing during a coral infection and rapidly declining after. Catching them while their populations are high is a matter of timing, Speare says.
"It's a bit like trying to catch a mountain lion in the act of hunting a deer. If we aren’t looking at the right time, we might miss it entirely,” Speare says. “I knew that if I wanted to study these bacteria in more detail, I would need to carefully design my experiments and timing.”
To test their theory, the team spent six weeks conducting experiments at the Mote’s Elizabeth Moore International Center for Coral Reef Research and Restoration (IC2R3) in Summerland Key, Florida, a facility that maintains lab-grown living corals in seawater aquariums.
“First, we had to make our corals sick,” Speare says. “But there wasn’t an established way to reliably create these infections in this species in a laboratory setting.”
After weeks of experimenting, Speare developed a “pathogen-sticker,” a small agar patch containing the disease-causing pathogens. When placed at the coral’s base, it mimics how infections spread in the wild.
Then, at the first sign of infection, the team treated the coral with the Halobacteriovorax predatory bacteria. “Surprisingly, the most effective method was to pour the bacteria directly into the sick coral’s tank,” Speare says. “The bacteria are tiny, so we were able to create a concentrated liquid of them by using a filter small enough that only they can pass through.”
Halobacteriovorax are among the fastest-known predatory bacteria, and quickly navigate to their food source – presumably the pathogen causing the infection.
Because of the straightforward delivery method, Speare believes the team’s methods could be readily adapted for coral restoration efforts, offering a simple way to deliver treatment on natural reefs.
“There are several approaches to treating corals and mitigating stress, but these techniques don’t work for all situations and all species,” she explains. “Corals are complex, and there is no single cure-all, so we need as many tools as possible to help corals survive.”
For Speare, the next step will be to move from lab-based work to reef environments. She’s particularly curious as to why the predatory bacteria aren’t already moderating illness on natural reefs. “If this is such an effective way to control pathogens, why isn’t this system preventing disease outbreaks on reefs already?" she says. "We need to understand what's limiting this natural defense system – and that’s what we’re digging into next."
Funding: Lauren Speare was supported as a Simons Foundation Awardee of the Life Sciences Research Foundation. The Vega Thurber Lab was funded by the National Science Foundation.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/ismejo/wraf270
]]>Recycled materials promise a cleaner future, but recycled content alone does not necessarily make a product sustainable. At Georgia Tech’s Daedalus Lab, assistant professor, National Science Foundation CAREER Award recipient, and Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems Faculty Fellow Christos Athanasiou and postdoctoral researcher Danqi Sun are working to provide greater certainty to designers and engineers by rethinking how materials are tested for their fracture characteristics. Their article in Science Advances details a new testing protocol that reduces cost, increases speed, and simulates real-world conditions.
Materials shape nearly every part of modern life, from packaging and consumer products to bridges and medical devices. Choosing the right material involves balancing durability, cost, manufacturability, and environmental impact. Yet those decisions are not always guided by a clear understanding of how materials age and fail under real-world conditions, especially for recycled materials like plastics.
One way that materials frequently fail is by cracking. A small crack can begin almost invisibly. Over time, it can spread from regular wear and tear and exposure to common environmental factors like moisture, temperature fluctuations, or even dirt. Eventually, the crack expands, and the part fails. Engineers have studied fracture for more than a century, but connecting the science of cracking to practical decisions about sustainability remains a major challenge.
The characteristics of recycled plastics often vary from those of the same material in unrecycled, or virgin, form. Products made from recycled plastics may be sold with sustainability claims under the assumption that they will perform as if they were made with virgin material. However, premature failure requiring repair or replacement can quickly change the sustainability equation as well as the acceptance of recycled materials by manufacturers and consumers.
Materials rarely fail due to a single factor. They may be exposed to several factors simultaneously, such as mechanical loading, chemical environments, temperature changes, moisture, and time. Traditional fracture protocols test one specimen at a time under carefully controlled laboratory conditions, which bear little resemblance to the real world. To move beyond this limitation, Sun developed an in-situ, high-throughput platform capable of studying how materials degrade and fail under more realistic conditions.
The platform changes conventional fracture testing in three important ways. First, it can test multiple specimens simultaneously rather than one at a time. By monitoring samples in parallel, testing time can be reduced by more than 60%. Second, it allows materials to be tested in realistic environments. In this study, researchers examined virgin and recycled plastics in alkaline environments that resemble conditions encountered in applications like landfill liner membranes and geotextiles. Third, the platform incorporates an imaging technique known as photoelasticity, which reveals the formation of stress fields that form around the origin of a newly developing crack. This allows researchers to see cracks develop earlier than before, giving them a clearer picture of the forces that drive crack growth.
The researchers have made the technology available for licensing through Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing. “Our goal was to make fracture testing not only faster but also more informative,” Sun said. “By combining high-throughput testing, realistic environments, and full-field stress imaging, we can better understand how materials fail under conditions closer to real-world applications.”
Recycled plastics are often viewed as a greener choice. But according to the study, it’s not always so straightforward. If a recycled product fails prematurely and needs to be replaced frequently, its environmental and economic costs can increase despite its recycled content. As Athanasiou puts it, “Failing materials don’t just break products. They can break sustainability promises.”
For example, comparing virgin polyethylene terephthalate (PET) with recycled PET (rPET) in applications such as landfill geotextiles, the researchers discovered that rPET showed lower resistance to environmental stressors, particularly in alkaline conditions over a pH of 9. In this application, specifying rPET over virgin PET would likely eliminate all of the presumed economic and environmental advantages of using a recycled material.
“Recycling is essential, but recycled content alone does not tell the full story. If a material fails too soon, the environmental benefits can disappear,” Athanasiou said.
For the researchers, the significance of the work extends beyond recycled plastics. The broader goal is to provide a fast, affordable, and realistic platform for evaluating the sustainability of any material choice. Because current testing protocols are costly, not widely available, and limited in the information they yield, engineers, manufacturers, and policymakers often have little choice but to continue to specify non-recycled materials because they will perform as expected. Having cheap and accurate data on recycled materials will help to accelerate their adoption because matching the engineering properties of recycled materials to their most appropriate applications will become more obvious.
The researchers also hope to expand the platform to simulate even more complex environments and apply it to a wider range of materials. Because the system generates large amounts of detailed data, it may enable opportunities to use computational modeling or artificial intelligence to digitally simulate mechanical testing, driving down costs and expanding availability even more.
The larger vision is a future in which sustainability is judged not by labels or assumptions, but by evidence for how a material performs, how long it lasts, how it fails, and what it costs society and the environment over its full lifetime.
Please visit the Daedalus Lab YouTube channel to see an explainer video about this new testing protocol: https://youtube.com/watch?v=zmRhiRIiAkQ
Read the paper here: https://www.science.org/doi/10.1126/sciadv.aeh0456
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation CAREER Award No. 2338508.
]]>It’s a role she knows well.
For more than 11 years, Stoinski has served as president, CEO, and chief scientific officer of the Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund, leading efforts to help the world better understand and protect Rwanda’s mountain gorillas — a species with only about 1,000 left in the wild.
Although she now oversees a multimillion-dollar budget and 400 employees worldwide, she never planned to be a CEO.
“I’m a scientist at my core,” says Stoinski. “Day to day, I function more as a leader and executive, but I still think of myself as a scientist first.”
Her job covers a wide range of responsibilities, including fundraising, public speaking, budgeting, and strategy. One week, she might find herself observing gorilla behavior in Rwanda; the next, she’s back in the U.S., discussing conservation on the popular Armchair Expert podcast.
“I love my job,” she says. “It doesn’t feel like work; it’s a passion.”
One of the reasons Stoinski chose Georgia Tech for her Ph.D. was its connection to Zoo Atlanta.
Her doctoral advisor, the late Terry Maple, emeritus professor in the School of Psychological and Brain Sciences, served as director of Zoo Atlanta, giving students rare access to conservation-focused research.
“The zoo was our lab. I studied elephants, lemurs, gorillas, and golden lion tamarins, both in the zoo and in the wild in Brazil and Africa,” says Stoinski.
She appreciates how Georgia Tech prepared her for the challenges of her career.
“The rigor of a Georgia Tech education is something you need as a scientist,” she says. “I also had the opportunity to do a lot of public speaking and teaching, which are huge parts of my job now.”
After earning her Ph.D., Stoinski spent 14 years with Zoo Atlanta while also working with the Atlanta-based Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund. She became CEO in 2014 and now oversees conservation and research programs in Rwanda and the Democratic Republic of the Congo.
Under her leadership, the Fossey Fund has expanded its footprint, including opening its Ellen DeGeneres Campus in 2022, a 12-acre research and education center in Rwanda.
The site includes labs, classrooms, and a restored landscape, where roughly 250,000 plants from 110 species have been planted to reestablish native ecosystems.
“We host hundreds of students — including groups from Georgia Tech, and support dozens of graduate and postdoctoral researchers, from countries all over the world including many from Africa,” she explains. “Seeing their excitement and commitment gives me lots of hope for the future.”
A Gorilla Story follows the Pablo family of mountain gorillas living on the slopes of Volcanoes National Park in northwestern Rwanda.
“The Pablo group goes back to Dian Fossey’s time,” explains Stoinski. “It’s the largest group of gorillas ever recorded, at one point reaching 65 individuals. An average gorilla family is about 10.”
Due to Rwandan regulations, filming could take place for just one hour each day. Filmmakers and scientists would often have to hike for five to six hours to reach the gorillas.
Because Dian Fossey Gorilla Fund researchers have followed these gorilla families for decades, they were already familiar with the individual gorillas, including six generations of family history, which “makes the story incredibly rich,” says Stoinski.
“You see grief, relationships, alliances — all of it,” she says. “Ultimately, I hope that connection leads people to care and to take action.”
Stoinski’s career is all about taking action — and inspiring others to do the same.
“We need people on the ground doing this work, but we also need people outside of our field to support and be aware of what’s happening to gorillas and the planet’s biodiversity,” she says.
She encourages Tech students to stay informed:
“Even if you’re not going into conservation, take a class, listen, learn,” she says. “Unfortunately, there are real challenges facing the next generation.”
She frequently points out that by helping gorillas, we’re saving ourselves, sharing that gorillas live in the Congo Basin, one of the most important ecosystems on Earth. By dispersing seeds and maintaining forest structure, they help sustain environments critical for climate stability and planetary health.
“Protecting gorillas means protecting those ecosystems, which ultimately support human survival.”
Stoinski maintains strong ties to Georgia Tech through research collaborations and student engagement. Projects over the years have included helping to establish the Center for Geographic Information Systems and Remote Sensing at the University of Rwanda, geospatial mapping, and architectural design and planning.
She invites alumni and students to engage with the work firsthand.
“I encourage more Georgia Tech alumni and students to work with us or come see us. And if you want to meet with a Georgia Tech grad, I lead tours: we can put on our Tech gear and take a photo with the gorillas!”
]]>
The North Georgia Lightning Mapping Array (NGLMA) uses specialized detection equipment to generate detailed maps of the lightning that occurs in the metropolitan Atlanta area. Through a collaboration between GTRI and the National Weather Service (NWS), the array provided continuous lightning information to agencies responsible for visitor safety.
“The North Georgia Lightning Mapping Array is providing decision-support information to agencies responsible for protecting events in Atlanta related to the World Cup,” said Michael Peterson, director of the GTRI Severe Storms Research Center (SSRC). “The system has been up and running and gave us excellent measurements of the thunderstorms that occurred in mid-June. It complements the other sources of weather information that the agencies have available.”
Read the full article on the Georgia Tech Research Institute news page
]]>
Communities across Georgia and the nation are navigating a range of economic and energy-related pressures. Gas prices, inflation, and the rapid growth of data centers are shaping the cost of goods and services, influencing everyday household financial decisions.
At the same time, ongoing geopolitical tensions are driving fluctuations in global oil markets and fuel prices. The expansion of AI data centers is also increasing demand for land, power, and water resources. And conflicts involving energy infrastructure in parts of the Middle East and Europe have affected supply stability.
Responding to these challenges requires careful analysis of emerging trends, supported by strong research in policy and economics. Faculty Affiliates of Georgia Tech’s Energy Policy and Innovation Center study these complex, interconnected issues affecting energy systems, costs, and access. They analyze emerging trends, evaluate policy options, and identify practical pathways forward.
Read Full Story on the EPIcenter News Page
]]>Communities across Georgia and the nation are navigating a range of economic and energy-related pressures. Gas prices, inflation, and the rapid growth of data centers are shaping the cost of goods and services, influencing everyday household financial decisions.
]]>Through a major investment from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE), Georgia Tech is helping accelerate the development of domestic critical minerals from unconventional and secondary resources. The $7.5 million award positions the Institute to advance supply chain solutions that span resource discovery, processing, recycling, and circular materials management.
Selected by DOE’s Office of Critical Minerals and Energy Innovation, Georgia Tech will lead the Critical Minerals in the Atlantic Seaboard Plain (CM-MAP) project. The regional effort builds on DOE’s Carbon Ore, Rare Earth, and Critical Minerals (CORE-CM) initiative and will examine potential resources across the Atlantic coastal plain.
The CM-MAP project will focus on sedimentary deposits, including kaolin, bauxite, heavy mineral sands, and phosphates, as well as legacy mining residues, coal combustion byproducts, and other unconventional and secondary resources that could support future recycling and circular economy opportunities.
Drawing on existing infrastructure, regional assets, industry bases, and scientific expertise, CM-MAP will establish a regional innovation ecosystem that supports domestic critical mineral production, recycling, and advanced manufacturing, while fostering new economic opportunities throughout the Southeast.
“This is a powerful example of how Georgia Tech brings together leading research capabilities and partnerships from industry, government, nonprofits, and national labs to address complex national challenges,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research. “By identifying and domestically sourcing critical minerals, we are helping secure essential supply chains, while enabling the next generation of energy and materials technologies.”
The DOE award builds on a growing network of research, industry, regional, and international partnerships led by Georgia Tech to translate scientific discovery into real-world supply chain solutions, including:
As part of CM-MAP, researchers will analyze materials collected from natural deposits and industrial sites throughout the Southeast to identify their critical mineral content. The resulting large datasets will be combined with artificial intelligence and machine learning approaches to better understand and predict where resources exist, optimize extraction pathways, and inform future recovery and recycling strategies.
“This project brings together a highly collaborative team from Georgia Tech, national labs, industry partners, and research institutions across the region,” said Yuanzhi Tang, the principal investigator and Georgia Power Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, with a courtesy appointment in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Tang is also the founding director of the Center for Critical Mineral Solutions and executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute.
“Through this award, we are working to build secure and resilient critical materials supply chains, from resource discovery and characterization to processing, recovery, recycling, and advanced manufacturing, while also developing the skilled workforce needed to support these emerging industries,” Tang said. “Our vision is to create a regional innovation ecosystem that embraces both unconventional resources and circular economy approaches to maximize the value of materials already in use.”
Learn more about critical materials research and workforce development efforts at Georgia Tech by visiting the Center for Critical Mineral Solutions webpage.
]]>The seed grant program, administered by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS), reaches faculty members from a diverse array of disciplines due to the generous support provided by broad-based partnerships in addition to the funds provided by the Sustainability Next committee. This year’s partners are the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the College of Design, BBISS, the Renewable Bioproducts Institute, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and the Institute for Data Engineering and Science.
The goal of the program is to nurture promising research areas for future large-scale collaborative sustainability research, research translation, and/or high-impact outreach; to provide mid-career faculty with leadership and community-building opportunities; and to broaden and strengthen the Georgia Tech sustainability community as a whole. The call for proposals was modeled after the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research’s Moving Teams Forward and Forming Teams programs.
This year’s seed grant awards align with the four main thematic areas in which BBISS aims to enhance Georgia Tech’s research to address some of our most pressing sustainability challenges:
The 2026 Sustainability Next Seed Grant awards are:
Forming Teams:
Moving Teams Forward:
The peak of the severe weather season is nearing its end, but in Georgia, it's been a quieter period than residents have become accustomed to in years past, devoid of the flurry of tornado warnings, heavy rain bands, and thunderstorms. Zachary Handlos, director of the B.S. in Atmospheric and Oceanic Sciences degree program, explains that the region lacked a major component of the severe weather formula.
For an active season, four key ingredients typically exist:
1. Moisture
2. A mechanism to lift air upward
3. Instability
4. Wind Shear
Despite drought conditions persisting throughout the state, there is sufficient moisture in the air, carried by warm air from the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic Ocean, to create favorable conditions for severe weather. Instability is created as the air warms, and wind shear is created by the changing direction and speed of the wind.
According to Handlos, what was missing this season was a consistent lifting mechanism.
"We've been stuck with high-pressure systems for most of the season. The air in these systems spirals clockwise instead of counterclockwise and spins away from the center, causing the air above it to sink, which in turn suppresses or shuts off any cloud or precipitation formation. So, even if all the other factors aligned, there would've been nothing to lift that air into creating those storms," he said.
The lingering high-pressure systems over Georgia are the result of the state’s location relative to the jet stream, which Handlos describes as an interstate highway for storms. The jet stream is a fast current of air above the Earth's surface that brings storm activity with its movement. This season, the stream moved through the Midwest, resulting in record precipitation in the region, while a drought rages on in the Southeast. As of May 4, Illinois had confirmed 119 tornadoes in 2026, which began with a historically busy early season.
"If you didn't pay attention to any other part of the country (outside of Mississippi recently), you'd think it was the most boring severe weather season because there was very little activity in Georgia.But if you live along that jet stream line between Oklahoma, Kansas, Missouri, and Illinois, and southern Minnesota, Wisconsin, and southern Michigan, that has been the active area of severe weather."
While it has been a uniquely quiet season in Georgia, Handlos says that as it ends, the region can expect a typical summer.
"No matter if it's an El Niño or La Niña or neither, the quintessential Atlanta summer is one where, most days, you wake up, and it's warm and humid out in the morning with clear skies. Then, it's hot and just awful in the afternoon before you start to see the puffy cumulonimbus clouds pop up, and sometimes you get hit with a thunderstorm. For what feels like about three straight months, if you live here, you don't even need to look at the weather forecast to know what the weather will be like outside here until we get to the fall,” he said.
A quiet spring season could be a precursor to a brewing “super El Niño” at summer's end, experts predict. The potential pattern could cause a drastic rise in sea temperatures in the Pacific Ocean, and the disruption of weather systems could increase the likelihood of precipitation and severe weather in the Southeast. The increased precipitation could be a welcome sight for the region, lessening drought concerns and reducing the likelihood of wildfires.
Christopher Zuo never thought of himself as someone mosquitoes singled out. They bit him from time to time, he said, but no more than anyone else who spent a lot of time outdoors.
“I don’t know if I would say I’m prone,” Zuo said. “I do get bitten, but I also think that’s partly because I’m just outside a lot more.”
However, that assumption did not hold up once he stepped inside a sealed mosquito chamber as part of a Georgia Tech research study.
Zuo, a Georgia Tech alum and co-author on the study, worked alongside Georgia Tech faculty member David Hu and researchers in Hu’s fluid dynamics lab — and co-authors Chenyi Fei, Alex Cohen, Jorn Dunkel from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology — on a multi-year effort to understand how mosquitoes locate people. Using high-speed cameras, careful controls, and mathematical modeling, the research examined how mosquitoes respond to carbon dioxide and visual cues. To confirm whether the data reflected real-world behavior, the team needed a human subject.
Zuo volunteered.
Before entering the chamber, he knew the mosquitoes were safe. They had been raised in a laboratory environment and were carefully controlled, making the experiment safer than being outdoors during peak mosquito activity.
“We knew exactly how all of these mosquitoes were reared, so we knew they’re disease-free,” he said. “Honestly, even if I got bitten 100 plus times, the actual danger that I was in was very little.”
Wearing a mesh suit, Zuo stood nearly motionless inside the chamber while mosquitoes were released and flew freely around him. Any movement could disrupt the data, so remaining still was critical even as mosquitoes gathered close to his face and upper body.
The response was immediate.
“You release the mosquitoes, and they’re already on top of you,” Zuo said. “Almost felt like it was instant.”
What surprised him most was not the bites but the sound.
“I didn’t realize how loud they were,” he said. “When they’re flying around your head, it’s that annoying buzzing sound. I didn’t realize how annoying it can get with just enough mosquitoes flying around.”
The experience was not limited to a single trial. Zuo entered the chamber multiple times as the research progressed, testing different variables including posture, clothing, and body positioning. In some experiments, he was required to hold his arms extended so cameras could capture a consistent silhouette.
“It felt more like an exercise at the gym,” Zuo said. “I was very much more focused on keeping my arms up and being as still as possible.”
Across those repeated interactions, patterns emerged that closely matched what the data predicted. Mosquitoes found him quickly, clustered in specific areas, and lingered only when certain conditions aligned.
“And once the conditions were right,” Zuo said, “they stayed.”
Zuo’s role helped bridge the gap between abstract modeling and human experience. It also challenged common assumptions about mosquito behavior that many people take for granted.
What follows are some of the most common mosquito myths, and what the Georgia Tech research and Zuo’s firsthand experience actually showed.
Myth: Mosquitoes swarm because they are following each other.
Reality: Mosquitoes respond independently to the same cues, which creates the appearance of swarming.
Trajectory data collected during the experiments showed no evidence that mosquitoes were coordinating or communicating with one another. Zuo explained that what people often describe as swarming is the result of multiple mosquitoes responding simultaneously to the same environmental signals. When carbon dioxide and a clear visual target are present, many mosquitoes converge on the same area independently. Zuo compared it to people arriving separately at the same crowded place because something there is attractive, not because they are following the crowd.
Myth: Mosquitoes randomly target different parts of the body.
Reality: In this study, mosquitoes concentrated near the head and shoulders, but only for the species observed, which is present in parts of the Southeast.
The Georgia Tech experiments focused on Aedes aegypti (dengue or yellow fever mosquito), a species found in parts of Georgia and other areas of the southeastern United States. Within that species, both trajectory data and Zuo’s experience inside the chamber showed mosquitoes repeatedly clustering near the head and shoulders rather than distributing evenly across the body. Zuo observed this pattern while standing still in the mesh suit, as mosquitoes returned again and again to his upper body. The study also confirmed previous biting studies showing that Aedes aegypti mosquitoes target the upper body, while other mosquitoes might focus on other areas. Researchers linked the behavior to carbon dioxide released through breathing near the mouth and nose, paired with a strong visual target. Zuo emphasized that other mosquito species behave differently and that these findings should not be applied to all mosquitoes.
Myth: Carbon dioxide alone explains why mosquitoes find people.
Reality: Carbon dioxide and visual cues work together, and neither is enough on its own.
Zuo described experiments that isolated carbon dioxide using inanimate objects before introducing a human subject. Carbon dioxide alone helped mosquitoes locate the general area of a target but did not consistently keep them there. Visual cues alone helped mosquitoes recognize an object but did not hold their attention. When both signals were combined, mosquito behavior changed significantly. The research showed the response was nonlinear, meaning the combined effect was stronger than simply adding the two cues together.
Myth: Once mosquitoes find a target, they always stay nearby.
Reality: Mosquitoes do not linger unless conditions align.
The data showed that mosquitoes often passed by targets unless both carbon dioxide and visual signals were present at the same time. Zuo observed that once those conditions aligned during the mesh suit experiments, mosquitoes stayed close and returned repeatedly to the same areas. Without the full set of cues, they were less likely to remain focused on a target.
Myth: All mosquitoes behave the same way.
Reality: Mosquito behavior varies by species and environmental conditions.
Aedes aegypti, Zuo described, are capable of feeding in well-lit conditions rather than relying solely on dusk. He contrasted this with Anopheles (marsh) mosquitoes, which require darker conditions and are closely tied to light and dark cycles during experiments. Zuo emphasized that the findings reflect the behavior of a single species and that different mosquito species respond to different cues.
While the Georgia Tech research explains how mosquitoes locate people, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) outlines steps people can take during mosquito season to reduce the risk of bites.
The CDC recommends using Environmental Protection Agency-registered insect repellents on exposed skin and wearing loose-fitting, long-sleeved shirts and long pants. Clothing and gear can also be treated with permethrin, which is designed for use on fabrics and not directly on skin. The agency also advises controlling mosquitoes indoors and outdoors by eliminating standing water and keeping window and door screens in good repair. The CDC notes that mosquitoes can bite during the day or night, depending on the species, and encourages precautions whenever mosquitoes are active.
Institute Communications
]]>Amino acids also play a critical role commercially where they are manufactured and added to pharmaceuticals, dietary supplements, cosmetics, animal feeds, and industrial chemicals — an energy-intensive process leading to greenhouse gas emissions, resource consumption, and pollution.
A landmark new system developed at Georgia Tech could lead to an alternative: a commercially scalable, environmentally sustainable method for amino acid production that is carbon negative, using more carbon than it emits.
The breakthrough builds on a method that the team pioneered in 2024 and solves a key issue – increasing efficiency to an unprecedented 97% and reducing the bioprocess cost by over 40%. It’s the highest reported conversion of CO2 equivalents into amino acids using any synthetic biology system to date.
Published in the journal ACS Synthetic Biology, the study, “Cell-Free-Based Thermophilic Biocatalyst for the Synthesis of Amino Acids From One-Carbon Feedstocks,” was led by Bioengineering Ph.D. student Ray Westenberg and Professor Pamela Peralta-Yahya, who holds joint appointments in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. The team also included Shaafique Chowdhury (Ph.D. ChBE 25) and Kimberly Wennerholm (ChBE 23); alongside University of Washington collaborators Ryan Cardiff, then a Ph.D. student and now a Chain Reaction Innovations Fellow at Argonne National Laboratory, and Charles W. H. Matthaei Endowed Professor in Chemical Engineering James M. Carothers; in addition to Pacific Northwest National Laboratory Synthetic Biology Team Leader Alexander S. Beliaev.
"This work shifts the narrative from simply reducing carbon emissions to actually consuming them to create value,” says Peralta-Yahya. “We are taking low-cost carbon sources and building essential ingredients in a truly carbon-negative process that is efficient, effective, and scalable.”
The work builds on the cell-free technology the team used in their earlier study. “Previously, we discovered that a system that uses the machinery of cells, without using actual living cells, could be used to create amino acids from carbon dioxide,” Peralta-Yahya explains. “But to create a commercially viable system, we needed to increase the system’s efficiency and reduce the cost.”
The team discovered that bits of leftover cells were consuming starting materials, and — like a machine with unnecessary gears or parts — this limited the system’s efficiency. To optimize their “machine,” the team would need to remove the extra background machinery.
"Leftover cell parts were using key resources without helping produce the amino acids we were looking for,” says Peralta-Yahya. “We knew that heating the system could be one way to purify it because heat can denature these components.”
The challenge was in how to protect the essential system components from the high temperatures, she adds. “We wondered if introducing enzymes produced by a heat-loving bacterium, Moorella thermoacetica, might protect our system, while still allowing us to denature and remove that inefficient background machinery.”
The results were astounding: after introducing the enzymes, heating and “cleaning” the system, and letting it cool to room temperature, synthesis of the amino acids serine and glycine leaped to 97% yield — nearly three times that of the team’s previous system.
To make the system viable for large-scale use, the team also needed to reduce costs. “One of the most costly components in this system is the cofactor tetrahydrofolate (THF),” Peralta-Yahya shares. “Reducing the amount of THF needed to start the process was one way to make the system more inexpensive and ultimately more commercially viable.”
By linking reaction steps so waste from one step fueled the next, the team devised a method to recycle THF within the system that reduces the amount of THF needed by five-fold — lowering bioprocessing costs by 42%.
“This decrease in cost and increase in yield is a critical step forward in creating a method with real potential for use in industry and manufacturing,” Peralta-Yahya says. “This system could pave the way for moving this carbon-negative technology out of the lab and onto the continuous, industrial scale."
Funding: The Advanced Research Project Agency-Energy (ARPA-E); U.S. Department of Energy; and the U.S. Department of Energy, Office of Science, Biological and Environmental Research Program.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1021/acssynbio.5c00352
]]>Selena Langner
College of Sciences
Georgia Institute of Technology
Reliable energy is required to keep safe in cold winters and hot summers, making it a matter of national security. There are also vying economic policies to consider, political and financial incentives to navigate, and questions of social and economic inequality.
Experts in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts examine the challenges we face with the U.S. energy transition, and work to help make it safe, fair, and effective for all.
Read the article on the Ivan Allen College website.
]]>The Department of Energy Office of Science recently released two reports through its Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. The reports were produced by workshops that brought together researchers from universities, national labs, government, and industry to set priorities for scientific computing.
Professor Felix Herrmann served on the organizing committee for the Workshop on Inverse Methods for Complex Systems under Uncertainty. Assistant Professor Peng Chen joined Herrmann as a workshop participant, contributing expertise in data science and machine learning.
Inverse methods work backward from outcomes to find their causes. Scientists use these tools to study complex systems, like designing new materials with targeted properties and using past wildfires to map vulnerable areas and behavior of future fires.
The ASCR report highlighted Herrmann’s work on seismic exploration and monitoring through digital twins. Founded on inverse methods, digital twins upgrade from static models to virtual systems that accurately mirror their physical counterparts.
Digital twins integrate real-time data sources, including fluid flows, monitoring and control systems, risk assessments, and human decisions. These models also account for uncertainty and address data gaps or limitations.
The DOE organized the workshop to support the growing role of inverse modeling. The group identified four priority research directions (PRDs) to guide future work. The PRDs are:
“A digital twin is a system you can control, like to optimize operations or to minimize risk,” said Herrmann, who holds joint appointments in the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Computational Science and Engineering.
“Digital twins give you a principled way to consider uncertainties, which there are a lot in subsurface monitoring. If you inject carbon dioxide too fast, you will will increase the pressure and may fracture the rock. If you inject too slow, then the process may become too costly. Digital twins help us make balanced decisions under uncertainty.”
Supercomputers, algorithms, and artificial intelligence now power modern science. However, these tools consume enormous amounts of energy. This raises concerns about how to sustain computing and scientific research as we know them in the decades ahead.
Professors Rich Vuduc and Hyesoon Kim co-authored the report from the Workshop on Energy-Efficient Computing for Science. At the three-day ASCR workshop, participants identified five key research directions:
“I’m cautiously optimistic about the future of energy-efficient computing. The ASCR report says, from a technological point of view, there are things we can do,” said Vuduc.
“The report lays out paths for how we might design better apps, hardware systems, and algorithms that will use less energy. This is recognition that we should think about how architectures and software work together to drive down energy usage for systems.”
]]>The Department of Energy Office of Science recently released two reports through its Advanced Scientific Computing Research (ASCR) program. The reports were produced by workshops that brought together researchers from universities, national labs, government, and industry to set priorities for scientific computing.
]]>As artificial intelligence (AI) drives explosive growth in data centers, communities across the U.S. are facing rising electricity costs, new industrial development, and mounting strain on an aging power grid.
At Georgia Tech, several faculty members are approaching these sustainability challenges from different but complementary angles: examining how data center policy affects local communities, modeling how AI-driven demand reshapes regional energy systems, and building tools that help the public understand the tradeoffs embedded in grid planning. Together, their work highlights how better data, thoughtful policy, and public engagement can guide more resilient and equitable decisions in an AI-powered future.
AI’s Hidden Footprint: How Data Centers Reshape Communities
Ahmed Saeed studies the infrastructure most people never see. An assistant professor in the School of Computer Science and a Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Faculty Fellow, Saeed focuses on how data centers — the backbone of modern AI — are built, operated, and regulated, and what their growth means for host communities.
“Data centers are the infrastructure for our digital life, so more of them are necessary to keep doing what we’re doing,” he said.
Data center energy consumption could double or triple by 2028, accounting for up to 12% of U.S. electricity use, according to a report by Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. U.S. spending on data center construction jumped nearly 70% between May 2023 and May 2024, according to the American Edge Project.
Georgia is an AI data center hub, ranked fourth globally, with $4.6 billion in AI-related venture capital invested across 368 deals, the American Edge Project reported. At a recent town hall in DeKalb County, Georgia, Saeed helped residents connect AI’s promise to its local consequences. Training large AI models can require tens of thousands of graphics processing units (GPUs) running for days or weeks, driving an unprecedented wave of data center construction. AI-focused chips, he noted, can consume 10 to 14 times more power than traditional processors.
That demand often shows up as pressure on local infrastructure. Communities are increasingly concerned about electricity and water use, grid upgrades, and who ultimately pays. In Virginia, Saeed pointed to a legal dispute in which consumer advocates warned that data centers could raise electricity bills by 5% in the short term and up to 50% over time, while utilities argued those investments were inevitable and could benefit customers in the long run.
Environmental concerns add another layer. Saeed cited controversies over water use and backup diesel generators in states, including Georgia and Tennessee, alongside a recent Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) ruling that tightened generator regulations. While diesel generators are clearly harmful, he cautioned that long-term, rigorous evidence linking data centers to regional health impacts remains limited.
Saeed’s research aims to reduce those impacts directly. By optimizing how workloads are scheduled across large server fleets, his team has demonstrated power savings of 4 – 12%, a meaningful gain if U.S. data centers approach projected levels of up to 12% of national electricity use by 2028.
For Saeed, data centers are akin to highways: essential to modern life, disruptive to nearby communities, and shaped by policy choices. The question, he argues, is not whether AI infrastructure should exist, but how transparently and fairly it is built.
Economist Probes the Energy Costs of the AI Boom
While headlines often frame AI as an energy crisis, Georgia Tech environmental and energy economist and BBISS Faculty Fellow Tony Harding is focused on measuring its real — and uneven — impacts. Harding, an assistant professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, uses economic modeling to examine how AI adoption affects energy use, emissions, and local communities.
In recent work published in Environmental Research Letters, Harding and his co-author analyzed how productivity gains from AI could influence national energy demand. Their findings suggest that, at a macro level, AI-related activity may increase annual U.S. energy use by about 0.03% and CO₂ emissions by roughly 0.02%.
“Those numbers are small in the context of the overall economy,” Harding said. “But the impacts are highly uneven.”
That unevenness is evident in where data centers are built. While Northern Virginia remains the country’s top data center hub, with 343 operational data centers, states like Georgia, which currently has 94 operational data centers, are rapidly attracting facilities due to reliable power and favorable tax policies.
Harding’s latest research focuses on local effects, asking why data centers cluster in urban areas, how they influence housing markets, what happens to electricity prices, and whether they exacerbate water stress. Early evidence suggests large facilities can increase local electricity rates, contributing to public backlash and regulatory response. In Georgia, the Public Service Commission has begun requiring new, high power draw customers (like data centers) to cover more of the costs associated with grid expansion.
Harding’s goal is to give policymakers better evidence to design incentives and guardrails. “To manage these technologies responsibly,” he said, “we need a clear picture of their intended and unintended consequences.”
Gamifying a Strained and Aging Power Grid
Daniel Molzahn is tackling another side of the problem: how to modernize an aging power grid under growing demand. Electricity demand is expected to rise about 25% by 2030, driven by data centers, electric vehicles, and broadscale electrification. At the same time, much of the U.S. electricity grid is nearing the end of its lifespan, with many transformers being decades old.
To make these challenges tangible, Molzahn, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, developed a browser-based game with a group of students through Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Projects program called Current Crisis. Players take on the role of a utility decision-maker, balancing reliability, wildfire risk, renewable integration, and affordability.
The game grew out of Molzahn’s National Science Foundation CAREER award and reflects his belief that complex systems are best understood experientially. Its initial focus is wildfire resilience, modeling how grid infrastructure can both spark and suffer damage from fires.
But resilience comes at a cost. Burying power lines, for example, reduces wildfire risk but dramatically increases expenses. Players must confront the same tradeoffs utilities face: improve reliability or keep rates low.
Molzahn hopes the game will help students and the public grapple with the realities of planning future power systems. “These choices aren’t abstract,” he said. “They shape affordability, resilience, and our path toward a cleaner grid.”
The project now involves nearly 40 students from across campus, supported by Sustainability NEXT funding and a collaboration with Jessica Roberts, former BBISS Faculty Fellow and director of the Technology-Integrated Learning Environments (TILES) Lab in the School of Interactive Computing.
“As a learning scientist, I look at how to engage people with science and scientific data and get people having conversations they might not otherwise have,” says Roberts, who hopes the seed grant helps the team determine first that they are going in the right direction and, second, how to broaden the impact.
One student, Stella Quinto Lima, a graduate research assistant in Human-Centered Computing, has made the game the focus of her doctoral thesis. Through the game, she wants players to notice their misconceptions about the power grid, energy use, and AI, and to use critical thinking to identify, question, and possibly undo those misconceptions.
“I hope that we can really engage adults and help them see it’s not black and white. The game is not only about power grids, but how AI affects the grid, how it affects our lives, and how it will impact our future.”
The team plans to expand the game’s features, use it in outreach programs, and analyze player decisions as a source of data to study energy-system decision-making.
“We want to change the conversation about power and power grid stability, reliability, and sustainability, Roberts said, “and find a way to get this message to a larger public.”
]]>What does it mean to design systems that endure even after major disruptions? This question framed the 2026 Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Sustainability Showcase, where conversations over two days spanned the Georgia coast, wildfire modeling, AI data centers, infrastructure, community engagement, and the joy of working for a more sustainable and resilient world. Across disciplines and scales, a unifying theme emerged: resilience is not a single solution. It is a systems-level challenge requiring integration across science and technology, policy, communities, and human experience.
From Coastlines to Communities
The showcase opened with a keynote from President Emeritus G. Wayne Clough on wildlife management and resiliency along Georgia’s coast. The conversation that followed between Clough and BBISS Executive Director Beril Toktay highlighted the interconnection between public policy, wilderness conservation, community leadership, and scientific research. The session highlighted not only the urgency of protecting fragile ecosystems, but also that resilience works best when it is community-focused and community-driven.
Subsequent panels continued this systemic perspective. Sessions on community engagement, biotechnology-derived, climate-resilient plants, the flood resilience of Georgia coastal communities, wildfire prediction and prevention, and infrastructure resilience analytics all emphasized that resilience depends on the synthesis of many disciplines.
Across sessions, researchers emphasized that infrastructure resilience must include governance frameworks informed by good science, community engagement based on trust, and sustained collaboration that seeks to constantly improve the science, policy, and stakeholder relationships. The researchers demonstrated that they understand their role to be greater than merely modeling risk, but as collaborators who translate research into practical solutions that communities can adopt, maintain, and trust.
AI Data Centers: A New Resilience Frontier
Day two shifted attention to data centers, which are emerging as a critical resilience frontier. As artificial intelligence systems scale rapidly, so does the infrastructure that powers them, as well as the growing realization that digital systems are physical systems. Conversations examined the feedback loops that play a significant role in determining environmental impacts, such as chip architecture, AI workloads, data center sustainability, appropriate AI usage, and who makes the decisions on data center infrastructure development.
One of the most fascinating sessions came from Alexandria Smith, assistant professor in the School of Music at Georgia Tech. She presented an artistic yet algorithmic composition that sonified data from AI data centers. Through translating kilowatt-hour usage and interconnection data into immersive soundscapes, she reframed data centers not as static input-output machines, but as adaptive, living systems. Drawing inspiration from Physarum polycephalum, a slime mold without a brain or nervous system known for its innate problem-solving abilities, she invites the listener to imagine infrastructure that senses, adapts, and self-optimizes.
Campus as a Living Laboratory
In her session, Professor Jennifer Chirico, associate vice president of Sustainability, highlighted Georgia Tech’s 2024 Climate Action Plan, focusing on building energy efficiency, renewable integration, materials management, and mobility transitions. The plan frames the Georgia Tech campus as a test bed for resilience strategies — an ecosystem where research, operations, and policy intersect. Chirico highlighted several examples where the alignment between research and implementation was essential in moving projects from modeling to pilot projects to sustained institutional change.
Finding Joy in Climate Action
Rebecca Watts Hull, Matthew Realff, and Christie Stewart led an interactive discussion inspired by Ayana Elizabeth Johnson’s framework for accelerating long-term climate action. Participants were asked three simple questions: What are you good at? What work needs doing? What brings you joy? Sustainability and climate research are fields often defined by serious urgency, crisis narratives, and burnout. This session offered a personal framework for resilience where emotional sustainability, professional fulfillment, and joy matter just as much as the motivation to drive a mission ever forward.
Building a Shared Vision
The Sustainability Showcase concluded with a facilitated visioning session led by Kristin Janacek, associate director for Interdisciplinary Research Impact, and Beril Toktay. In small groups, leaders, researchers, and community members worked to define what resilience looks like for them.
After the conversations, several themes emerged:
Over two days, it became clear that Georgia Tech is not approaching resilience as a narrow technical problem. It is approaching it as a systems challenge — one that spans coastlines, campuses, disciplines, data centers, the Appalachian Mountains, data models, the arts, and human relationships. Designing systems that endure requires more than innovation. It requires collaboration, stewardship, and a shared commitment to long-term impact. The conversations launched at this year’s BBISS Sustainability Showcase laid the foundation for continued coordination and ambitious action in the months ahead.
]]>The Eshelby Mechanics Award was established in 2012 in memory of Professor John Douglas Eshelby to promote the field of mechanics, among young researchers. The award will be formally presented at the 2026 Applied Mechanics Division Awards Banquet during the ASME International Mechanical Engineering Congress and Exposition in November.
Athanasiou and his team advance the fundamental mechanics and physics of materials and translates these insights into systems-level design strategies that address global challenges in resource efficiency and sustainable development. His research integrates advanced experimental methods capable of capturing material behavior under realistic operational conditions, mechanics-based design principles, and tailored AI- and physics-informed modeling frameworks.
Together, these efforts enable the development of life-cycle-efficient, cost-effective materials and structures for applications ranging from sustainable packaging to aerospace systems and space construction. His recent work published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) introduced a bioinspired framework to improve plastic recycling while addressing a foundational mechanics question: how can we build reliable structures from inherently variable materials?
Athanasiou is also the recipient of the 2024 NSF CAREER Award and the ASME Orr Early Career Award, and is a Climate Tech Fellow at the New York Climate Exchange.
]]>