Coca-Cola, a neighbor to Georgia Tech since 1920, expects to sell a building and adjacent land in a transaction valued at $31.3 million. The company chose to work directly with Georgia Tech on the planned transaction, reflecting the long-standing relationship between the two organizations and a shared commitment to Atlanta’s continued growth and innovation.
The expected sale includes a two-story brick building, part of Coca-Cola’s holdings since 1988, and an adjoining two-acre park along North Avenue.
“This strategic addition to our core campus will support our growth in enrollment and research activity for years to come,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “I appreciate our long relationship with The Coca-Cola Company that allowed us to pursue this opportunity as we continue to invest in our campus, our neighborhood, and Atlanta’s innovation ecosystem.”
James Quincey, Coca-Cola’s executive chair and Georgia Tech’s 2020 Commencement speaker, said the company wanted the property to continue contributing to Atlanta’s innovation ecosystem.
“When we decided this space was no longer needed for our corporate campus, our goal was to work with Georgia Tech, as this site offers a great opportunity for them to expand,” Quincey said. “Coca-Cola has a long legacy of involvement and partnership with Georgia Tech, and we are excited to see them redevelop this important area in Atlanta.”
Georgia Tech will evaluate how the property can best support academic, research, and student needs as part of its long-term campus planning efforts. The acquisition represents a strategic step in ensuring Georgia Tech has the space needed to educate future leaders and advance research that strengthens Georgia’s economy.
About Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is one of the top public research universities in the U.S., developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.
The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees, as well as professional development and K-12 programs for fostering success at every stage of life. Its more than 56,000 undergraduate and graduate students represent 54 U.S. states and territories and more than 146 countries. They study at the main campus in Atlanta, at instructional sites around the world, and through distance and online learning.
As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.
About The Coca-Cola Company
The Coca-Cola Company (NYSE: KO) is a total beverage company with products sold in more than 200 countries and territories. Our company’s purpose is to refresh the world and make a difference. We sell multiple billion-dollar brands across several beverage categories worldwide. Our portfolio of sparkling soft drink brands includes Coca-Cola, Sprite, and Fanta. Our water, sports, coffee, and tea brands include Dasani, smartwater, vitaminwater, Topo Chico, BODYARMOR, Powerade, Costa, Georgia, Fuze Tea, Gold Peak, and Ayataka. Our juice, value-added dairy, and plant-based beverage brands include Minute Maid, Simply, innocent, Del Valle, fairlife, and Santa Clara. We’re constantly transforming our portfolio, from reducing sugar in our drinks to bringing innovative new products to market. We seek to positively impact people’s lives, communities, and the planet through water replenishment, packaging recycling, sustainable sourcing practices, and carbon emissions reductions across our value chain. Together with our bottling partners, we employ more than 700,000 people, helping bring economic opportunity to local communities worldwide. Learn more at www.coca-colacompany.com and follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn.
]]>In the International Disaster Reconnaissance (IDR) course, students now use Filio, a platform built by School of Computing Instruction Senior Lecturer Max Mahdi Roozbahani, to capture immersive 360° media, photos, and video that transform real disaster sites in India and Nepal into living digital classrooms.
Offered by the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and taught by IDR director and Regents’ Professor David Frost, the course pairs traditional fieldwork with Roozbahani’s expertise in immersive technology and data-driven learning, transforming on-the-ground observations into reusable, interactive educational resources.
Disasters are not only physical events; they are also information events, Roozbahani says. Effective response and long-term resilience depend on the ability to observe, record, and communicate critical data under pressure. Georgia Tech’s IDR course pairs structured on-campus preparation with international field experiences, enabling students to study the cascading effects of major disasters, including how local building practices, governance, and culture shape damage and recovery.
“When students step into a disaster zone, they learn quickly that resilience is a systems problem: physical, social, and informational. Our job in computing is to help them capture and reason about that system responsibly,” Roozbahani said.
During spring break last year, the cohort traveled along the Teesta River corridor in Sikkim, India. The region is shaped by steep terrain, fast-moving water, and critical infrastructure in narrow valleys.
The visit followed the October 2023 glacial lake outburst flood from South Lhonak Lake, which destroyed the Teesta III hydropower dam and impacted downstream towns, including Dikchu and Rangpo. Field stops across India included Lachung, Chungthang, Dikchu, Rangpo, Gangtok, and New Delhi.
Students explored both upstream and downstream consequences.
Upstream, the team examined how steep terrain and river confinement amplify flood forces, creating cascading risks for infrastructure. Using Filio’s interactive 360° media, students captured conditions in Lachung and Chungthang, allowing viewers to explore the landscape through a 360° photo and 360° video that reveal how topography and river dynamics intensify disaster impacts.
They studied community-scale effects downstream, including damaged buildings, disrupted access, and prolonged recovery timelines.
Rangpo offered a glimpse of recovery in motion, with materials staged for rebuilding bridges and roads essential to commerce and emergency response.
Students documented their field experience using Filio, an AI-powered visual reporting platform developed by Roozbahani through Georgia Tech’s CREATE-X ecosystem. Filio captures high-resolution photos, video, and 360° immersive media, preserving both the facts and the context of disaster sites; what the site felt like, what was lost, and what communities prioritized in recovery.
“A 360° capture lets students return months later and ask better questions. That second look is where learning accelerates,” Roozbahani said.
Supported by alumni and faculty mentors, including Tech alumnus Chris Klaus and Georgia Tech mentor Bill Higginbotham, the platform is evolving into a reusable educational library for future courses on immersive technology, responsible AI, and global resilience.
The course concluded in Kathmandu, Nepal, where students examined how heritage, governance, and the everyday use of public space shape resilience.
Through Filio’s immersive documentation — including a 360° photo and 360° video from Kathmandu — the focus broadened from hazard impacts to cultural context, highlighting how recovery is not only about rebuilding structures, but also about preserving identity, memory, and community.
Frost and Roozbahani envision the IDR immersive media library as a reusable resource for students even when they cannot travel, supporting future courses on immersive technology, responsible AI, and global resilience. Spring 2026 cohorts will continue to build on this foundation by documenting, analyzing, and sharing insights that can improve education and real-world disaster response.
In the International Disaster Reconnaissance (IDR) course, students now use Filio, a platform built by School of Computing Instruction Senior Lecturer Max Mahdi Roozbahani, to capture immersive 360° media, photos, and video that transform real disaster sites in India and Nepal into living digital classrooms.
]]>Atlanta is consistently ranked among the top cities for congestion, but new projects and a commitment to improving transportation on campus and in the city have earned Georgia Tech several honors and a reputation as a transportation infrastructure leader.
Since the celebratory opening ride, led by Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera, in August 2025, the campus cycle track has signaled a new phase of transportation at Tech. Linking the Campus Recreation Center and Tech Parkway along Ferst Drive to Tech Square, the track was named among the Best New U.S. Bike Lanes of 2025 by PeopleForBikes.
The concept for the track, which promotes eco-friendly commuting options such as bicycles, e-bikes, scooters, and skateboards, and offers a dedicated, bidirectional path separated from vehicular traffic, was developed in a 2019 award-winning senior capstone project by a group of civil engineering students.
Recognizing the Institute's leadership in creating infrastructure and public spaces that support safe, sustainable, and accessible transportation options, Propel ATL awarded Tech a 2025 Institutional Leadership in Mobility Award.
Parking and Transportation Services (PTS), together with Planning, Design, and Construction, partners with Propel ATL to conduct monthly group rides and bike safety classes, and offers an online bike and scooter safety course, in which students receive a free helmet upon completion. To date, PTS has given hundreds of free helmets to students, and the next class will take place on Wednesday, March 18. These courses, along with the Georgia Tech Police Department’s efforts to educate the campus community on the safe use of micromobility, have helped Tech create a model for the city in micromobility safety and access.
The Institute has also been recognized by Georgia Commute Options as one of Metro Atlanta’s top 5 best workplaces for commuters. The group highlights Tech’s partnership with the Midtown Alliance as an example of how the Institute “plays a critical role in advancing sustainable commuting both on campus and across Midtown Atlanta” through subsidized transit passes, extensive bike infrastructure, on-site showers and changing areas for cyclists, a robust campus shuttle network, carpool and electric vehicle parking, and dedicated transportation staff who provide personalized commute support.
PTS is continually working to promote sustainable travel to and from campus, seeking input from the community through its annual Campus Commute Survey. The survey has become increasingly revealing as campus infrastructure changes, leading to the creation of new bike storage facilities, and the results will be used in the planning phase of future projects.
In 2024, Tech retained its status as a Gold-level Bicycle Friendly University, as issued by the League of American Bicyclists. The prestigious distinction, which Tech has held since 2016, is awarded to institutions that successfully promote and establish safe and accessible campus bicycling programs and amenities.
For five consecutive years, Georgia Tech has won Love to Ride’s Atlanta Bicycle “Biketober” Challenge, with employees cycling 22,132 miles in October 2025.
“Each of these honors and awards tells us that we are moving in the right direction and are doing our part to make it easier and safer to get to our campus and move throughout it,” said Lisa Safstrom, PTS transportation program specialist. “We know we are able to take on these projects and continue to step up our efforts, and that’s because of the expertise that exists on our campus and the input we receive from the community.”
Georgia Tech researchers say HPC and artificial intelligence (AI) advances this year are poised to improve how people power their homes, design safer buildings, and travel through cities.
According to Qi Tang, scientists will take progressive steps toward cleaner, sustainable energy through nuclear fusion in 2026.
“I am very hopeful about the role of advanced computing and AI in making fusion a clean energy source,” said Tang, an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE).
“Fusion systems involve many interconnected processes happening across different scales. Modern simulations, combined with data-driven methods, allow us to bring these pieces together into a unified picture.”
Tang’s research connects HPC and machine learning with fusion energy and plasma physics. This year, Tang is continuing work on large-scale nuclear fusion models.
Only a few experimental fusion reactors exist worldwide compared to more than 400 nuclear fission reactors. Tang’s work supports a broader effort to turn fusion from a promising idea into a practical energy source.
Nuclear fusion occurs in plasma, the fourth state of matter, where gas is heated to millions of degrees. In this extreme state, electrons are stripped from atoms, creating a hot soup of fast-moving ions and free electrons. In plasma, hydrogen atoms overcome their natural electrical repulsion, collide, and fuse together. This releases energy that can power cities and homes.
Computers interpret extreme temperatures, densities, pressures, and plasma particle motion as massive datasets. Tang works to assimilate these data types from computer models and real-world experiments.
To do this, he and other researchers rely on machine learning approaches to analyze data across models and experiments more quickly and to produce more accurate predictions. Over time, this will allow scientists to test and improve fusion reactor designs toward commercial use.
Beyond energy and nuclear engineering, Umar Khayaz sees broader impacts for HPC in 2026.
“HPC is the need of the day in every field of engineering sciences, physics, biology, and economics,” said Khayaz, a CSE Ph.D. student in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
“HPC is important enough to say that we need to employ resources to also solve social problems.”
Khayaz studies dynamic fracture and phase-field modeling. These areas explore how materials break under sudden, rapid loads.
Like nuclear fusion, Khayaz says dynamic fracture problems are complex and data-intensive. In 2026, he expects to see more computing resources and computational capabilities devoted to understanding these problems and other emerging civil engineering challenges.
CSE Ph.D. student Yiqiao (Ahren) Jin sees a similar relationship between infrastructure and self-driving vehicles. He believes AI will innovate this area in 2026.
At Georgia Tech, Jin develops efficient multimodal AI systems. An autonomous vehicle is a multimodal system that uses camera video, laser sensors, language instructions, and other inputs to navigate city streets under changing scenarios like traffic and weather patterns.
Jin says multimodal research will move beyond performance benchmarks this year. This shift will lead to computer systems that can reason despite uncertainty and explain their decisions. In result, engineers will redefine how they evaluate and deploy autonomous systems in safety-critical settings.
“Many foundational problems in perception, multimodal reasoning, and agent coordination are being actively addressed in 2026. These advances enable a transition from isolated autonomous systems to safer, coordinated autonomous vehicle fleets,” Jin said.
“As these systems scale, they have the potential to fundamentally improve transportation safety and efficiency.”
]]>Georgia Tech researchers say HPC and artificial intelligence (AI) advances this year are poised to improve how people power their homes, design safer buildings, and travel through cities.
]]>Some were still alive, but most of the birds were dead. They were all too easy to find.
“I knew birds hit buildings, but I didn’t know much more about the issue at that time, and I was surprised how easily I just found birds,” Betuel said.
Birds flying into windows aren’t isolated events. Environmentalists estimate between 365 million and one billion birds die each year from colliding with structures in the U.S.
“That statistic is hard for most people to comprehend,” Betuel said. “When you think about the millions of homes we have and these high-rise buildings, and if each one is killing a few a year, that number can get big pretty quick.”
Betuel is the executive director of Birds Georgia, a nonprofit affiliate of the Audubon network that leads bird conservation efforts in Georgia. For 10 years, volunteers from the organization have combed Atlanta’s streets, collecting bird specimens.
Birds Georgia launched Project Safe Flight in 2015 to reduce bird building-collision mortality through data collection. Through legislation, the group aims to make building construction bird-friendly and reduce light pollution.
Environmentalists who study the issue have ranked Atlanta, which sits squarely on a migration route, as the fourth-most dangerous city for birds during fall migration. It is the ninth-most dangerous city during spring migration.
The number of bird deaths from collisions in Atlanta and across the state remains unknown. However, new data tools developed by student researchers in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech are helping Birds Georgia get a clearer picture of the issue.
“We’ve been working with different folks at Georgia Tech for years now, but it’s really picked up lately,” Betuel said. “There’s a lot of momentum and interest on campus to try to make the city safer for birds.”
Ashley Boone, a Ph.D. student in human-centered computing in Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, has led the student effort to help Birds Georgia organize its data.
Boone said organizing data and knowing how to use it is critical to spark conversations about adopting legislation.
“We often see a gap between data collection and data advocacy,” she said. “Birds Georgia has done an amazing job of tracking collisions in Atlanta over the last 10 years. My goal is to understand the role technology can play in making data useful for policy change.”
User-interface tools designed by computer science undergraduate students James Kemerait and Ian Wood have ramped up that process. One tool converts data input into visualizations optimized for social media, while another consolidates the data collected by volunteers and external sources.
Boone said the desired legislation would mirror policies implemented by New York City. Those policies require the use of bird-safe materials — like window film with patterned designs that break up reflections — in new buildings and buildings undergoing significant renovations.
Residents, whose homes account for about 40% of bird collision deaths in the U.S., can also make an impact.
“Households are an underexamined cause of bird collisions,” Boone said. “We focus on the big buildings because it’s easier to convince one manager of a large building to use bird-safe materials, and it’s easier for a policy to address a commercial building. But the sheer volume of residential buildings in the U.S. has a tremendous impact on the number of collisions.”
Steps that homeowners can take include:
Betuel said millions of birds can fly over Atlanta on a single night during migration, and they are attracted to the city lights.
“They’ll come into urban centers and collide with an illuminated building, or maybe they overnight somewhere that isn’t safe,” he said. “The next day, they’re surrounded by glass, and birds don’t understand reflection.”
Residents can visit the Birds Georgia website to sign up for the Lights Out Pledge. Those who sign up will receive a text on the 10 busiest migratory nights of the year, and they will be asked to turn their lights off early.
The tools provided by Georgia Tech gave Birds Georgia insight into the number of bird species affected by collisions — more than 140, according to Betuel.
Betuel said that when the organization reaches an estimate of bird collisions, he hopes the number will raise alarms and turn people’s attention to the ecological impact.
“All these birds being lost results in fewer birds to eat pest insects, fewer birds to pollinate flowers, fewer birds to disperse seeds — all the ecological functions that we need, that they’re doing in the background that most people aren’t keen to,” he said. “If this decline in bird life continues to happen, at some point, there will be issues with our ecosystems functioning as they always have.”
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Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing
ndeen6@gatech.edu
]]>311 systems allow residents to report potholes, broken fire hydrants, and other municipal issues. In recent years, the use of artificial intelligence (AI) to provide 311 services to community residents has boomed across city and state governments. This includes an artificial virtual assistant (AVA) developed by third-party vendors for the City of Atlanta in 2023.
Through survey data, researchers from Tech’s School of Interactive Computing found that many residents are generally positive about 311 chatbots. In addition to eliminating long wait times over the phone, they also offer residents quick answers to permit applications, waste collection, and other frequently asked questions.
However, the study, which was conducted in Atlanta, indicates that 311 chatbots could be causing residents to feel isolated from public officials and less aware of what’s happening in their community.
Jieyu Zhou, a Ph.D. student in the School of IC, said it doesn’t have to be that way.
Zhou and her advisor, Assistant Professor Christopher MacLellan, published a paper at the 2025 ACM Designing Interactive Systems (DIS) Conference that focuses on improving public service chatbot design and amplifying their civic impact. They collaborated with Professor Carl DiSalvo, Associate Professor Lynn Dombrowski, and graduate students Rui Shen and Yue You.
Zhou said 311 chatbots have the potential to be agents that drive community organization and improve quality of life.
“Current chatbots risk isolating users in their own experience,” Zhou said. “In the 311 system, people tend to report their own individual issues but lose a sense of what is happening in their broader community.
“People are very positive about these tools, but I think there’s an opportunity as we envision what civic chatbots could be. It’s important for us to emphasize that social element — engaging people within the community and connecting them with government representatives, community organizers, and other community members.”
Zhou and MacLellan said 311 chatbots can leave users wondering if others in their communities share their concerns.
“If people are at a town hall meeting, they can get a sense of whether the problems they are experiencing are shared by others,” Zhou said. “We can’t do that with a chatbot. It’s like an isolated room, and we’re trying to open the doors and the windows.”
In their paper, the researchers note that one of the biggest criticisms of 311 chatbots is they can’t replace interpersonal interaction.
Unlike chatbots, people working in local government offices are likely to:
MacLellan said residents are likely to grow frustrated with a chatbot when reporting issues that require this level of contextual knowledge.
One person in the researchers’ survey noted that the chatbot they used didn’t understand that their report was about a sidewalk issue, not a street issue.
“Explaining such a situation to a human representative is straightforward,” MacLellan said. “However, when the issue being raised does not fall within any of the categories the chatbot is built to address, it often misinterprets the query and offers information that isn’t helpful.”
The researchers offer some design suggestions that can help chatbots foster community engagement and improve community well-being:
“Government agencies may focus mainly on fixing individual issues,” Zhou said, “But recognizing community-level patterns can inspire collective creativity. For example, one participant suggested that if many people report a broken swing at a playground, it could spark an initiative to design a new playground together—going far beyond just fixing it.”
These are just a few examples of things, the researchers argue, that 311 services were originally designed to achieve.
“Communities were already collaborating on identifying and reporting issues,” Zhou said. “These chatbots should reflect the original intentions and collaboration practices of the communities they serve.
“Our research suggests we can increase the positive impact of civic chatbots by including social aspects within the design of the system, connecting people, and building a community view.”
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