As many organizations and businesses are turning to AI to improve workplace efficiency, risk remains high. Between overlooked footnotes and misread graphics, small mistakes can have expensive consequences.
To address this challenge, researchers from Georgia Tech and J.P. Morgan developed SlideAgent. The new framework helps large language models (LLMs) better understand complex visual documents like presentation slide decks, brochures, and reports.
SlideAgent works by breaking documents into multiple levels, allowing the model to analyze both the big picture and the fine details. This human-inspired approach leads to more accurate and reliable interpretation than existing systems.
Beyond improving workplace tools, SlideAgent also points to a broader shift in AI. Instead of building only larger and more powerful models, the work shows how smarter design and more efficient reasoning can improve performance.
“Multimodal LLMs such as GPT, Gemini, and Claude, can save people time and reduce the mental effort required to understand these documents, but they remain imperfect,” said Yiqiao (Ahren) Jin, a Ph.D. candidate in Georgia Tech’s School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE).
“In high-stakes fields such as finance, for example, misreading a number, overlooking a footnote, or making an incorrect comparison across pages could affect reporting, risk assessment, or strategic decisions.”
The researchers tested SlideAgent on a wide range of real-world documents, including financial presentations, technical slides, and visual question-answering datasets.
The system consistently outperformed leading commercial models and open-source tools throughout the evaluation. In some cases, it improved accuracy by up to 10%. The gains were especially strong on more complex tasks, such as comparing information across slides or understanding how visuals relate to each other on a page.
“We found the results very encouraging. SlideAgent reaches an improvement of 7.9% over its proprietary base model and 9.8% over the evaluated open-source base models,” said Jin, the project’s lead researcher.
“These are meaningful gains given the strength of the underlying multimodal models and the difficulty of the tasks.”
Current multimodal AI systems often process entire pages at once. This approach can lead to mistakes, such as miscounting items in a chart or overlooking important details in dense visuals.
SlideAgent addresses this by mimicking how people read documents. Instead of treating each page as a single unit, the system looks at information at three levels: the full document, individual pages, and specific elements like charts, tables, and text blocks.
A network of agents, each specialized for a specific level, divides and coordinates analysis. Then, SlideAgent combines outputs to build a structured understanding of the overall document. This allows it to answer questions more accurately and reason across multiple pages.
“The central inspiration was how people naturally read a long presentation,” Jin said.
“We first develop an understanding of the overall narrative, then identify the relevant pages or sections, and finally zoom in on individual charts, tables, or text blocks when precise evidence is needed.”
The work highlights a growing challenge with AI. As systems become more popular and more powerful, users increasingly discover the technology’s limitations. This is especially true for real-world tasks that require structured reasoning and contextual understanding.
SlideAgent shows that better performance does not always come from building bigger models. Instead, it points to smarter ways of organizing how AI processes information that can lead to improvement.
The Association for Computational Linguistics (ACL) accepted SlideAgent for presentation at its annual meeting. The 64th ACL 2026 meeting took place July 2-7 in San Diego.
ACL is a scientific and professional organization for researchers in natural language processing (NLP). Its namesake conference is one of the world’s leading venues for presenting NLP research.
ACL 2026 followed a year after Jin completed an internship at J.P. Morgan AI Research, where he worked on SlideAgent. He interned under Rachneet Kaur, Zhen Zeng, and Sumitra Ganesh, all co-authors of the paper. School of CSE Associate Professor Srijan Kumar advises Jin at Georgia Tech.
Along with SlideAgent, Jin authored two other papers accepted at ACL 2026.
“Conferences such as ACL are valuable not only for sharing results, but also for refining future project ideas with the broader community. Discussions across institutions and research areas can reveal limitations, suggest new evaluations, and spark collaborations that are difficult to develop in isolation,” Jin said.
“For SlideAgent, I was particularly interested in feedback on how we can make the framework more computationally efficient without sacrificing accuracy or interpretability.”
]]>As many organizations and businesses are turning to AI to improve workplace efficiency, risk remains high. Between overlooked footnotes and misread graphics, small mistakes can have expensive consequences.
To address this challenge, researchers from Georgia Tech and J.P. Morgan developed SlideAgent. The new framework helps large language models (LLMs) better understand complex visual documents like presentation slide decks, brochures, and reports.
SlideAgent works by breaking documents into multiple levels, allowing the model to analyze both the big picture and the fine details. This human-inspired approach leads to more accurate and reliable interpretation than existing systems.
Beyond improving workplace tools, SlideAgent also points to a broader shift in AI. Instead of building only larger and more powerful models, the work shows how smarter design and more efficient reasoning can improve performance.
]]>Initial public offering (IPO) filings are dense disclosures submitted to the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. They can stretch hundreds of pages and combine legal language, financial data, and visuals like charts and infographics. Even experienced analysts struggle to read them end to end, leaving many everyday investors relying on headlines or summaries.
New research from Georgia Tech’s Financial Services Innovation Lab reveals how artificial intelligence can make these critical documents more accessible and reveals where AI still has room for improvement.
“IPO-Mine: A Toolkit and Dataset for Section-Structured Analysis of Long, Multimodal IPO Documents” authors include Michael Galarnyk, Siddharth Lohani, Vidhyakshaya Kannan, Sagnik Nandi, Aman Patel, Liqin Ye, Arnav Hiray, Rutwik Routu, Prasun Banerjee, Siddhartha Somani, and Sudheer Chava.
Making the Complex Understandable
The authors developed IPO-Mine, an open-source toolkit and dataset designed to break IPO filings into manageable pieces. Instead of treating filings as a single document, IPO-Mine separates them into structured sections and extracts visuals like charts for analysis.
“IPO filings are important public documents, but they are very difficult to work with at scale,” said Siddharth Lohani, a Georgia Tech computer science major ’26, software engineer at Bloomberg, and co-first author of the study. “We wanted to make these filings easier to analyze systematically.”
Why IPO Filings Matter
IPO filings offer investors a detailed look at how a company operates before it goes public.
“IPO filings give investors a clearer look at how a company makes money, what risks it faces, and how it positions itself before entering the public market,” said Arnav Hiray, a Georgia Tech machine learning doctoral student in the Financial Services Innovation Lab, AI for Financial Markets VIP instructor, and co-author. “Even if everyday investors don’t read the full filing, these documents can help them better understand a company’s prospects.”
For retail investors, that insight can help cut through marketing hype and offer a clearer sense of a company’s underlying strengths and risks.
AI’s Strengths
Research shows that large language models and multimodal AI models can use their speed, scale, and pattern-recognition capabilities to offer significant advantages when analyzing IPO filings, including:
Together, these capabilities could help democratize financial analysis, giving more investors access to insights that were once limited to professionals.
A Key Finding
One of the study’s most striking findings is that IPO filings are evolving in two different directions.
“What stood out was that the text and visuals appear to be moving in different directions,” Lohani said. “Investors and researchers need to pay attention to both.”
The research shows that written sections are becoming more standardized, while visual elements such as charts and infographics are becoming more complex and varied.
“As text becomes more standardized, more of a company’s distinctive story shifts into its visuals,” said Vidhyakshaya Kannan, a Georgia Tech Financial Services Innovation Lab intern and co-author. “Because boilerplate language often looks the same across filings, charts and infographics are increasingly where companies differentiate themselves and make their case to investors.”
For investors, that means understanding a company requires studying the visuals as carefully as the text; figures can’t simply be skimmed or skipped over.
Where AI Struggles
Despite its promise, AI is not yet a perfect solution.
“Our results show that even strong multimodal models can disagree with expert human judgments on financial charts, especially when they are misleading,” Kannan said.
The Future of Financial Transparency
AI can accelerate analysis and uncover patterns, but human judgment remains essential for interpreting the visuals companies increasingly use to tell their story. Even with these limitations, researchers believe tools like IPO-Mine could play an important role in shaping the future of financial transparency.
“IPO-Mine can help researchers, regulators, and investors analyze IPO disclosures more systematically, revealing patterns in how companies communicate risk, performance, and strategy before entering public markets,” said Hiray.
By making complex financial disclosures more accessible and actionable, AI-powered tools have the potential to broaden access to critical market information and support more informed investment decisions.
Watch the researchers explain IPO-Mine and its impact
Learn More: Center for Finance and Technology
]]>For communities across the country, this growth hits close to home, and not without controversy. What do data centers actually deliver for the local economies that host them?
New research from Daniel Yue, assistant professor of Information Technology Management at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, and his co-author, Yiyang Zeng, examines how data center openings affect local jobs, wages, business activity, and electricity prices. Their findings suggest that geography plays a decisive role in whether communities see meaningful economic gains.
“Enormous amounts of capital are flowing into specific communities, much of it tied to new construction, while rigorous evidence on the local benefits of these facilities has been thin,” said Yue. “Community pushback has organized rapidly across the country. Our paper begins to fill that gap by providing new evidence using detailed, facility-level data paired with county-level economic indicators.”
A Historic Investment Wave
There are more than 2,500 data centers, either active or under construction, across the United States. Individual hyperscale facilities often cost more than $1 billion to construct and can consume as much electricity as a small city. Is it all worth it?
On average, Yue and Zeng found that when a data center opens, the host county sees a measurable lift: Employment rises by about 3.5%, wages by 5%, business establishments by nearly 5%, and household income by about 2%. Building permits also increase sharply, reflecting construction activity tied to new facilities.
These are real, economically meaningful gains. But Yue and Zeng discovered that these gains are much smaller than what might be expected from a large investment. And they’re not evenly distributed.
Why Metro Areas Benefit More
The researchers’ clearest finding is that metropolitan areas capture most of the economic benefits from data centers, while rural areas see far fewer spillover effects. While metro counties saw increases in employment and new business growth, non-metro counties saw no measurable gains.
The reason comes down to what economists call “agglomeration,” or economic density.
Data centers don’t operate in isolation. They rely on construction contractors, engineers, equipment suppliers, professional services, and a skilled workforce. Those connections are far easier to build in places that already have deep labor markets and established business networks.
Metropolitan areas are well-positioned to absorb the indirect spending that data centers generate. High-wage technical employees support restaurants, retail, and local services. Suppliers and contractors can scale up quickly. These spillover effects amplify the impact of the initial investment.
In rural areas, that amplification is much harder to achieve. Facilities tend to employ relatively few permanent workers — often fewer than 100 — and many specialized services are imported from outside the county. As a result, the broader economic ripple never materializes.
That doesn’t mean rural communities see no benefit at all. The research finds a small but real drop in unemployment rates in non-metro counties, and local governments may still gain tax revenue or infrastructure investments. But the sweeping job and wage growth often promised during local recruitment efforts will not likely arrive on its own.
“Location, not facility size, determines whether the local benefits show up,” Yue said.
The Hidden Cost: Electricity Prices
Yue and Zeng’s research also uncovers an important trade-off. Data centers use a lot of electricity. A single large facility can use as much power as roughly 80,000 homes. In areas where the researchers can cleanly measure price effects, electricity prices rise by about 5% after a data center enters.
“When the benefits to communities are small, even downsides like higher electricity prices that strain infrastructure will be felt by locals,” Yue shared.
Who pays for the increased cost of electricity isn’t straightforward. Yue and Zeng’s research suggests communities should ask specific questions about who pays for new infrastructure and how those costs will be distributed. Local utility companies divide costs differently among homeowners, businesses, and large industrial users, including data centers. Because cost-sharing systems vary by state, each data center development is unique.
What Communities Should Consider
As states and cities work to attract or push back against data center construction, Yue and Zeng hope their research will encourage more evidence-based decision-making.
For metro areas with strong labor markets and dense business ecosystems, data centers can deliver meaningful, though not transformative, economic gains. For rural communities, the positive impact is more complicated.
“In 10 years, communities will likely wish they had pressed harder on the quality of the decision itself, including whether the debate was evidence-based, whether their local economy was equipped to capture the gains, and whether the fine print aligned with residents' long-term interests,” Yue said. “It’s vital that communities look past flashy, headline incentive packages and focus on the details: tax abatement structures, electricity tariff arrangements, and who ultimately pays for infrastructure upgrades.”
As data centers continue to dot the American landscape, understanding where they create shared value — and where they don’t — will be critical for community leaders and policymakers alike.
Read More: The Local Economic Effects of Data Center Entry
Omar Garcia Urdiales, CREATE‑X’s associate director of Learn, brings a global entrepreneurial experience to Georgia Tech: founder and CEO of a startup operating in the AWS Accelerator Loft, longtime startup coach in Europe’s major innovation hubs, lecturer across multiple universities, and an external doctoral researcher in entrepreneurship and digitalization. He brings this background to his teaching of Startup Lab’s latest iteration – a significant redesign developed by VentureLab’s Director Keith McGreggor. McGreggor created the course and has evolved it over many years, building on its initial success.
“This new iteration of Startup Lab allows us to meet students exactly where they are,” said McGreggor. “By doing this, we give them the strongest foundation possible, providing them with the tools to grapple with uncertainty and build their confidence.”
Startup Lab has long anchored the Institute’s entrepreneurial pathway with clearer structure, a unified language, and a deeper focus on reflective growth, so more Georgia Tech students can discover (and trust) their own entrepreneurial judgment.
Startup Lab is expanding responsibly, with six sections in Atlanta and additional global sections in France and Asia-Pacific taught by faculty trained in the curriculum. Students here benefit from a program that’s learning across borders and bringing that learning back to campus.
“Startup Lab is not about becoming an entrepreneur, but about engaging in the unknown and adopting entrepreneurial behavior, which can be applied to all career paths,” Urdiales said. “Students become better equipped to identify problem spaces and solve them through evidence-based building.”
Urdiales emphasized that Startup Lab is built for students who are still exploring, uncertain, or are simply curious.
“Many students tell us they’re curious about entrepreneurship but feel not ready,” he said. “They worry they’re too introverted for customer interviews or assume Startup Lab is only for people with fully formed ideas. In fact, those are the most common misconceptions.”
The course’s first few weeks focus on training students to see struggles and patterns in the world. Then, they apply those skills on a team, exploring, designing, and testing a concept with real people. The nonnegotiable outcome isn’t the best idea; it’s a more confident, evidence-driven version of you.
“Startup Lab is strengthening that self-awareness. All of us who are entrepreneurs, we don’t grow linearly. We have various iterations of how we see things,” Urdiales said. “This ability to see patterns or to see problems with customer discovery, it’s a learning process and a growth process.”
Urdiales said that students won’t have a passive experience in the lab.
“To become an entrepreneur, you need to do it. You need to engage with customers. You need to get out of the building,” he said. “It gives you the ability to incorporate theoretical frameworks into practical solutions and then understand these more practical outcomes.”
Aligning with CREATE-X’s culture of continuous iteration, Startup Lab is tightening the hands-on core of the course around four simple, repeatable tools so that entrepreneurial thinking becomes muscle memory, not a one-off assignment. The new iteration of the curriculum, developed by McGreggor, helps students learn to:
“What we have is a frontier model in entrepreneurial education,” said McGreggor. “The result is a course that teaches sound decision making and builds entrepreneurial confidence that rewards authentic discovery and iteration over performative polish. It creates a more solid foundation for entrepreneurial thinking and sets students up to engage more deeply with everything that follows in their CREATE-X pathway.”
As a part of Startup Lab, instructors integrate reflection throughout the semester, which helps students notice patterns of work, make small experiments, and adjust based on what’s learned. Students often worry they’re not the founder type or that their introversion will hold them back; Startup Lab reframes those worries as raw material for growth, including communication skill building and one-on-one interactions you won’t always get in higher-level courses.
Startup Lab integrates HaradaLite — McGreggor's adaptation of the Japanese Harada Method — as a weekly reflection practice in which students keep a reflection log, helping them notice patterns of work, run small experiments, and adjust based on what's learned. With this approach, educators are able to measure the growth of entrepreneurial confidence by self-report, leading to a more quantitative approach to teaching.
There’s no mandated order for CREATE-X courses. Startup Lab simply makes the next steps clearer by providing a shared language and milestone structure across sections and instructors, so whatever comes next (I2P, Capstone, Launch, or an internship), you can carry forward a coherent, evidence- aware story of your work.
“All CREATE‑X Learn sections will work with the same milestone objectives,” Urdiales said. “Students trained in Startup Lab are already trained in the muscles of entrepreneurship. They’re more equipped to go into Make and Launch or be a leader within their industry.”
Startup Lab is about becoming the kind of person who can see opportunities, reason from evidence, and make better decisions when the path isn’t obvious.
“Startup Lab helps students see the world’s problems and fill the gaps with fresh ideas, teaching them to see and understand the important difference between evidence and inference,” said McGreggor. “This lays the foundation that leads to good founders, and builds the entrepreneurial confidence needed to succeed.”
Students in Startup Lab can expect a workshop-heavy, conversation-rich semester with weekly artifacts, scenario-based decision prompts, startup reports, and quizzes that keep you honest about what you’re learning. You’ll assemble a Continuity Pack near the end: a compact bundle of your best discovery evidence, decisions, MVEs, economics, and final story slides so your future self (or your I2P/Launch application) can pick up right where you left off.
The course also sets norms for modern tool use. AI is welcomed as a coach and organizer, after your own baseline thinking and research, and as an enhancement of the real conversations you have. That matters because Startup Lab’s promise is that you build solid judgment under the test of uncertainty, critical to the world of today and the future that is being built.
You don’t have to have it all figured out. If you’re a first-year student still exploring, a junior craving real-world projects, or a senior looking to stand out in interviews, Startup Lab is for you.
Seats fill quickly across all sections — and for good reason.
This course gives you the clearest, most supportive on‑ramp into CREATE‑X, with a global methodology, a unified curriculum, and instructors who believe deeply in your potential to grow. Learn how to think entrepreneurially. See the world differently. Build the confidence that will follow you long after the semester ends.
Register for Startup Lab for Fall 2026.
Marketing Strategist
]]>In a new research article, “Help or Hindrance? The Role of Familiarity in Product Development Teams,” Ramachandran and his co-authors Necati Tereyagoglu and Murat Unal, show the crucial role familiarity plays in team dynamics.
“Every creative organization deals with a fundamental tension,” Ramachandran said. “People love working with teammates they know well, but innovation often depends on fresh perspectives.”
There is a lot to be said about familiarity. Famously, it breeds contempt. Previous studies have shown that repeat collaboration helps teams execute smoothly. But smooth operations don’t always translate to commercial success. Ramachandran’s research shows that it can breed a different kind of trouble — an environment free from friction, debate, and novelty. Those conditions may be comfortable, but they don’t help creativity thrive. Video game development, it turns out, provides the perfect setting for productive tension.
“Video games require both bold creative ideas and flawless execution,” Ramachandran shared. “They blend art, engineering, storytelling, and software into a single product. We were curious about how familiarity impacts team dynamics within this industry. When does it help and when does it quietly get in the way?”
]]>In 2017, faculty conversations began circulating about a new kind of capstone experience, one driven by student discovery and entrepreneurial thinking rather than predetermined client requirements. The idea intrigued Omojokun.
“I remember thinking, this is really different from anything I’ve ever taught,” he said.
In his previous courses, Omojokun took pride in providing the structured, rigorous framework students needed to master complex concepts. While those interactions were dynamic, the curriculum required a specific, focused trajectory. CREATE-X offered a different kind of challenge: the "X" of the program, representing undefined, endless potential.
“CREATE-X is full of unknowns. You don’t know what industry the students are diving into, what roadblocks they’ll run into and navigate out of, or what small- to large-scale successes they’ll achieve throughout the semester. It really had my blood pumping,” he said. As someone who loves the challenge of academia, it was an invigorating way to help the next generation apply what they’ve learned in a new context.
Omojokun co-taught the first CREATE-X Capstone section with College of Computing students in fall 2018 alongside Craig Forest, associate director of the Invention Studio. While the initial computer science cohort was small, the experience was immediately powerful.
“It was humble beginnings but deeply eye-opening,” he said.
In this new environment, students weren't just solving problems; they were seeking them and sometimes pivoting. Traditional client-driven capstones offer students invaluable experiences in delivering high-quality products, responding to clients’ often evolving needs, and adhering to professional standards. CREATE-X added a layer of venture-validation, requiring students to identify a gap in the market and build something with commercial viability.
As the semesters continued, CREATE-X grew from a program with an interesting capstone course Omojokun enthusiastically co-taught to a professional inflection point for him. He found himself talking about it frequently, with colleagues, with students, even with prospective undergraduates who may not see a capstone for years.
He began encouraging prospective and incoming students to take CREATE-X pathways.
“I would tell students, down to first-year students, when you get that opportunity to engage with CREATE-X, take it. You don’t even have to wait until capstone, as there are multiple pathways; in fact, Startup Lab has no prerequisites. Whatever path you take, you’ll remember it for years to come. Whether you officially take a problem solution to market or not, the entrepreneurial confidence gained is priceless.”
By 2020, when the first Jim Pope Faculty Fellowship cohort opened, applying felt natural. He had already become an unofficial ambassador for CREATE-X, helping students navigate options, promoting programs in classes, and rallying colleagues to engage.
“It was an opportunity to become more connected to this thing that I felt was changing the game on campus,” he said. “It cemented my affiliation with CREATE-X.”
The fellowship gave name and weight to the work he was already doing, while also expanding what was possible.
The Jim Pope Faculty Fellowship provides faculty with $15,000 in discretionary funding, which can support a one-semester break from teaching, along with structured training in evidence‑based entrepreneurship, dedicated mentorship, and the opportunity to work closely with students launching startups.
The fellowship also equips faculty to become entrepreneurial instructors and mentors through the CREATE‑X ecosystem, giving them tools to integrate entrepreneurship into their coursework and curricula. Each cohort of fellows is trained to embed entrepreneurial methods, develop new innovation‑focused assignments, and serve as advisors within programs like Startup Lab, Idea‑to‑Prototype, and Startup Launch.
For faculty across Georgia Tech, the fellowship offers something rare: institutional backing, resources, and formal recognition for bringing entrepreneurship into their teaching and shaping how students learn to become problem‑solvers.
Omojokun said he sees CREATE-X as the apex of applying technical fundamentals.
As part of the fellowship, Omojokun brought the program’s ethos into his courses, even a foundational course like CS 1331: Introduction to Object Oriented Programming, where he created a CREATE-X–branded final project. Students built a “problem database” application as their final homework assignment, cataloging real issues they encountered in daily life, assessing their skills to solve them, evaluating markets and metrics, and then deciding potential pathways forward.
“It’s an innovation diary,” he said. “A tool that can get them closer to thinking like a founder.”
The response from students, including many non-computing majors who take his section each semester, has been overwhelmingly positive. While the project is challenging, the open-ended nature and real-world relevance motivate deeper engagement.
“When students believe their work will solve a meaningful problem for a meaningful population, they bring passion to it,” he said. “They start observing the world differently.”
The more Omojokun saw, the deeper his enthusiasm grew.
Even as he stepped into the role of inaugural chair of the School of Computing Instruction in 2022, CREATE-X remained at the forefront of Omojokun’s conversations. Interest in the program continued to grow significantly. Students stopped him in the hallways to talk about their ideas. Faculty reached out to ask about mentorship opportunities. And he continued championing the program in the many settings he entered.
“It turns out that the most engaged group of students in CREATE-X is computing undergraduates,” Omojokun said. “I wanted to make sure that high involvement continued, no matter what size we are,” he said.
Over time, Omojokun strengthened the partnership between the College of Computing and CREATE-X, weaving entrepreneurship deeper into the College's curricular fabric.
Last January, Omojokun was appointed as the associate dean for Undergraduate Education in the College of Computing. One of his priorities was highlighting CREATE-X’s curricular impact. In coordination with key stakeholders — including Kelly Ann Fitzpatrick (computing), Craig Forest (mechanical engineering), and Raul Saxena (CREATE-X) — he nominated the program for the ABET Innovation Award. The award honors programs that challenge the status quo in technical education and demonstrate a measurable impact on student learning in ABET-accredited disciplines, such as natural sciences, computing, engineering, and engineering technology. CREATE-X won.
When faculty are considering something like the Jim Pope Fellowship, Omojokun said the biggest barrier he hears about from them is time. With courses that can enroll 300 students per section and extensive responsibilities beyond the classroom, time is a scarce resource.
He could relate.
“There are always lots of things on my physical and virtual desktop. I always warn people before they enter my office,” he said.
However, Omojokun argued that participating in the fellowship program was time well spent because it helps them rediscover the most exciting parts of teaching.
“It’s worth the time. One of the goals of teaching is to see students passionate about what they’re learning, and CREATE-X makes that happen consistently,” he said.
As AI reshapes industries, Omojokun believes that CREATE-X equips students to navigate the unknown and forge new paths as existing ones shift, providing a versatile skill set that transfers to employment, potentially self-employment, and beyond.
“There’s a lot of uncertainty with AI in the workspace, but CREATE-X gives students the confidence and skills to succeed at whatever comes,” he said. “We are putting students through this process of finding a problem that’s meaningful and matters to the world; mastering that allows them to lead in any environment.”
The 2026 Jim Pope Faculty Fellowship is now accepting applications. For faculty who want to explore integrating entrepreneurship into their teaching, mentoring student founders, and helping shape a culture of innovation across campus, this fellowship offers resources and a supported pathway to begin. Faculty from all disciplines are encouraged to apply to the Jim Pope Fellowship. Priority deadline: July 1; final deadline: Aug. 11.
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“It was frustrating, but it showed me how many people were being left out of the digital world,” Espinosa said. “In Colombia, only about two out of 10 people have a credit card. Cash is the main form of payment, but everything online requires digital access.”
That gap sparked the idea that would evolve into Loto Punto, a fintech startup building self-service kiosks to bridge the physical and digital worlds for unbanked communities.
Espinosa began his startup as an online platform for buying lottery tickets. He saw that customers didn’t trust the idea of a digital receipt because they were used to a printout, so he pivoted to a kiosk similar to the ones in U.S. grocery stores. Customers could walk up, insert cash, and print a lottery ticket instantly.
“It worked, but it had a ceiling,” Espinosa said. “It only served people buying lottery tickets. We knew it wouldn’t scale.”
To address this, he expanded the kiosks to handle mobile phone top-ups, bill payments, and basic banking services. Then, in 2024, the company incorporated advanced technologies such as biometric recognition and blockchain. Stellar Blockchain, first a partner, later became an investor of the startup, which helped Loto Punto to enable low-cost, real-time digital transactions and remittances.
Now, users can convert physical cash into digital value or withdraw cash from digital wallets through a single machine.
Espinosa is the sole founder of Loto Punto, supported now by a 10‑person team of highly specialized engineers, designers, and manufacturing experts. He is currently pursuing his master’s degree in computer science at Georgia Tech while leading the company through its next chapter as part of the CREATE-X Startup Launch Spring 2026 cohort.
Espinosa learned about CREATE-X during his first semester at Georgia Tech. In 2024, CREATE-X widened its Startup Launch program to include a spring cohort to give founders, particularly graduating seniors, another chance to go all-in on developing their startup.
Espinosa admits he didn’t expect much when he first learned about the program.
“I didn’t know universities had programs like this. In Colombia, we don’t have accelerators embedded inside universities with venture support and dedicated staff,” he said. “So, I assumed CREATE X would be small, maybe one office helping a few students.”
“They’re leveraging every resource that Georgia Tech offers. They can help with any challenge by tapping the doors of the network they already have established,“ he said. “It’s an ecosystem.”
As a part of the Startup Launch program, CREATE-X brings in founders from its ecosystem to speak to participants and give them actionable insights — founders who have raised funds, been acquired, and have had other successes as entrepreneurs.
“That’s different,” Espinosa said. “They’ve brought successful founders who have walked the talk. It’s different to interact with somebody who was already successful in doing what you’re doing.”
Even as a remote participant, Espinosa has connected well with his mentor, who meets with him weekly, and his mini-batch. During the program, startup teams are grouped together. They share their strategies, successes, and struggles as they develop throughout the program. Teams have weekly sprints where they focus on one or two activities and then measure those activities, which Espinosa said is helpful for maintaining focus and actually executing on ideas.
“If you, as an entrepreneur, start thinking of the whole world of activities that you must do to get somewhere with your startup, you won’t start,” he said. “By creating attainable goals, step by step, that’s how it compounds to reach bigger goals. But, you have to begin with something.”
Teams are also encouraged to take calculated risks.
“CREATE-X gives us a safe environment to test ideas,” Espinosa said. “As an entrepreneur, it’s a lonely road, but having someone who has been in your shoes before, it makes you brave to try things.”
One of the first major tests he shared with the cohort was an ad campaign timed around the Super Bowl. In Startup Launch, Espinosa learned how to structure the experiment: defining KPIs, iterating audiences, and evaluating performance compared to industry benchmarks.
“We got around 45,000 views and above-average click-through rates,” he said. “But the biggest lesson was that brand awareness alone can’t be our only marketing strategy.”
Espinosa said his mentor helped open doors for him and kept him accountable, and the program itself kept him from being overwhelmed by all that a founder has to do.
“In Startup Launch, you see how different approaches fit different phases,” he said. “They’re creating a path to grow and execute on your goals as a founder.”
Espinosa also emphasized that the tools to build and test ideas have never been more accessible.
“When I started, we didn’t have AI. You had to do everything by hand. It was harder, and it took more resources,” he said. “Right now, it’s a matter of prompting. In one hour, you can file for a grant. Before, it took at least a week to get your documents together.”
He said the ability to test quickly and learn has also become inexpensive.
“You don’t need millions of dollars to do this,” Espinosa said. “It's very cheap to fail, right? If that doesn't work, you can just try again in the morning.”
Above all, Espinosa encouraged budding founders to take advantage of the opportunities around them.
“As a founder, you must tap every door that you have available to you. You have to explore different paths,” he said. “Some of those are networking, some are physical space, some are interest. Get your hands on every single resource that comes your way.”
As he thinks about where the finance world is going, Espinosa said the payments industry is rapidly converging toward blockchain, stablecoins, and faster, frictionless user experiences.
“We’re seeing a lot of movement around stablecoins. We’re seeing resource flow from one country to another. We believe things are converging to leverage blockchain and driving down the cost of moving money,“ he said. “That’s how we see the future of our industry.”
Espinosa will travel to Atlanta for the first time in May to present Loto Punto at the CREATE-X Spring Startup Launch Showcase, where the public can meet founders and see their ventures firsthand. The event will be held in The Biltmore Ballrooms on Thursday, May 21, from 5 to 7 p.m.
The showcase will feature dozens of startups built by Georgia Tech students and alumni. Tickets are free but limited. Register for the showcase today to grab your spot.
Marketing Strategist
]]>The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) in Georgia Tech’s Office of Commercialization announced two of its health technology (HealthTech) portfolio companies, Nephrodite and OrthoPreserve, earned the designation.
Achieving this rare milestone underscores the caliber of founders, science, and support in ATDC’s 30-company HealthTech portfolio, the incubator’s largest focus area. It’s also a win for Georgia because it reflects the strength of the state’s health innovation ecosystem.
“This designation is one of the strongest signals the FDA gives that a technology could change the standard of care,” said Greg Jungles, HealthTech catalyst at ATDC. “For ATDC to have two in the same year is remarkable.”
The Breakthrough Device Program doesn’t waive evidence requirements, but it accelerates learning with the FDA, ATDC’s Jungles said. “That means shorter response times, more frequent meetings, and prioritized review. Teams avoid dead ends and align earlier on study designs and endpoints.”
For the founders of both startups, their technologies come one step closer to moving their innovations to market. Nephrodite’s technology improves the lives of dialysis patients. OrthoPreserve’s device addresses challenges faced by those who suffer from chronic knee pain.
Nephrodite: Advancing Continuous Artificial Kidney Technology
Dr. Nikhil Shah and Dr. Hiep Nguyen, cofounders of Nephrodite, aim to improve care for dialysis patients with end-stage kidney disease who need transplants. These patients often spend three to four hours in a dialysis clinic up to three times a week. Being tethered to stationary machines with needles drawing blood via arm grafts complicates everyday activities — from work tasks to the ability to travel.
Dialysis addresses chronic kidney disease, which means kidneys no longer work properly. The treatments filter out toxins, waste, and other fluids in the blood. Kidney disease costs Medicare $124.5 billion every year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. And those costs are expected to rise because of increasing rates of kidney failure and chronic kidney disease.
“Dialysis, while lifesaving when it was pioneered in 1952, is incredibly burdensome,” Shah said. Besides being a long process that keeps the patient in a fixed location, it’s physically tiring. “Taking out your blood continually many, many times over, and over the course of four hours is the equivalent of running the Boston Marathon, hitting the finish line, and then someone saying, ‘You're not done; go do it again,’ ” he said.
A surgeon by training, with expertise in transplantation and oncology, Shah is also an adjunct associate professor in Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. He worked with Nguyen to develop a continuously functioning mechanical artificial kidney, leading to Nephrodite’s formation.
The FDA’s breakthrough designation on its artificial kidney allows the company to pursue approvals to begin tests in human trials.
The company traces its beginnings to a German aerospace facility outside Munich, where Nguyen and Shah watched engineers demonstrate a pediatric artificial heart — the Berlin Heart.
“That’s how we got started,” Shah said. “Seeing an artificial heart that led us to think about doing this for kidneys — because the kidney space has been largely ignored for 70 years.”
Backed by a German federal grant, Nephrodite grew, moving from Germany to Boston, Massachusetts, then to Austin, Texas, before calling Atlanta home. The company joined ATDC and tapped into other Georgia Tech programs. This included the Center for MedTech Excellence and the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership. Nephrodite also drew on student talent as the researchers quietly worked on their continuous mechanical artificial kidney.
Nephrodite began interviewing patients to find out what they wanted the artificial kidney needed to solve.
They learned patients want the ability to be mobile. Patients also desire an alternative therapy to large needles being inserted into arm grafts because the injection sites are prone to infection and the grafts can fail. In addition, the process can be painful and disfiguring. Finally, patients want a quality of life independent of machines.
“Those quality-of-life needs, especially being free and mobile, were absolutely universal,” Shah said.
Nephrodite began developing the technology to build its device — a filter surgically implanted in the pelvis area.
“We developed an implant designed to run constantly, connected to larger blood vessels in the pelvis to avoid arm graft failures, and paired with an external interface that lets patients sleep at night while the system removes toxins and excess fluid,” Shah explained.
The device also has built-in sensors, with data uploaded to the cloud, enabling medical care teams to remotely monitor their patients while freeing patients from frequent in-clinic visits.
Shah said Nephrodite’s device could restore everyday independence, while potentially lowering infection risk.
“It's like having an actual kidney, but without all the issues of an unhealthy one,” Shah said.
OrthoPreserve: Innovating a Minimally Invasive Meniscus Implant
OrthoPreserve’s technology aims to address issues from people have with their meniscus, the C‑shaped piece of cartilage in a knee joint that acts as a shock absorber between the thigh bone and shin bone.
Though patients undergo a now-routine surgery to address it, incomplete recoveries are also common. An estimated quarter of patients later experience recurring knee pain. No FDA-approved implant currently exists for this population. Now, OrthoPreserveis developing a minimally invasive, artificial meniscus implant to restore cushioning, relieve pain, and delay — or even prevent — knee replacement for some patients.
“There are a million meniscus surgeries every year, and 25% of those patients still live with recurring pain,” said Jonathan Schwartz, OrthoPreserve’s founder and CEO.
Patients can face daily pain from ordinary activities, such as prolonged standing or walking a dog. Other activities like jogging and recreational sports can trigger flares that can lead to swelling and prolonged discomfort, Schwartz said. “Those patients have no reliable options today,” he said. “We’re building a minimally invasive implant to restore cushioning and help people get back to the activities they love.”
OrhoPreserve’s durable implant restores cushioning, and it could help people return to normal activities and delay invasive knee replacement. Along with this comes potential cost and recovery benefits for the healthcare system.
Schwartz created the implant as his Georgia Tech master’s thesis in the lab of David Ku in the Lawrence P. Huang Endowed Chair for Engineering Entrepreneurship and Regents' Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. After industry experience, Schwartz returned to further develop the technology, building on Georgia Tech’s translational expertise
OrthoPreserve has completed mechanical testing and a successful study. The company is raising a $2 million seed to complete validations and begin human trials, which Schwartz expects to start in 18 months.
“The FDA breakthrough designation validates that nothing like this technology exists, and that it has the potential to disrupt the standard of care,” Schwartz said, adding the U.S.’ market opportunity is roughly $1.5 billion. “We finally have a minimally invasive option to bridge the gap between meniscus surgery and knee replacement.”
What FDA Breakthrough Designation Means for ATDC’s HealthTech Startups
Having a faster and clearer path is a derisking milestone for investors who are evaluating capital intensive medical device technologies, Jungles said.
“This breakthrough device designation is a really big deal for medical device companies,” Jungles said, adding that startups often fear navigating the FDA approval process. “But this designation adds to the legitimacy of their technologies and the problemsthey are solving. The designation will help them get to market faster, assuming their data continues to meet expectations.”
ATDC launched its HealthTech vertical in 2018, which is now sponsored by Catalyst by Wellstar ATDC’s HealthTech portfoilo companies include medical devices, biotech, and digital health, among other segments.
ATDC’s Role in Accelerating HealthTech Innovation
Nephrodite and OrthoPreserve’s founders noted ATDC’s coaching and programming as critical in navigating fundraising and regulatory milestones. Another factor, they said, was ATDC’s connection to Georgia Tech’s labs and facilities and prototyping support and clinical advisors from across metro Atlanta.
“We meet with ATDC coaches every two to four weeks to troubleshoot and plan,” Schwartz said. “Having that level of seasoned guidance, all without consultant-level costs, has been huge.”
Jungles added that two Breakthrough device designations in the same year reflects ATDC’s selection rigor, noting he’s evaluated hundreds of technologies since the HealthTech vertical launched.
“It reflects the caliber of the companies in ATDC, specifically in the medical device space,” Jungles said. “It’s the strength of their teams, the persistence of the founders, and the collaboration of the ecosystem in Georgia and Atlanta.”
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