Launched in 2025, INNS serves as a hub for neuroscience and neurotechnology research, connecting researchers across disciplines to advance discovery, innovation, and societal impact.

“A core part of INNS's mission is helping people find one another, connect around shared interests, and build something bigger than they could accomplish alone,” says Executive Director Christopher Rozell. “Simon has spent his career bringing together people, perspectives, and disciplines to tackle complex challenges. I can't think of a better person to help lead our interdisciplinary research efforts and support the next generation of collaborative neuroscience research.”

A longtime leader in Georgia Tech's neuroscience community, Sponberg helped shape the institute's early foundations through the Neuro Next Initiative, which evolved into INNS. As associate director, he will help guide research strategy, foster new collaborations, and support interdisciplinary work across the neuroscience ecosystem.

“Neuro-related research touches so many fields that we inevitably have a problem of finding all the potential right people and opportunities to tap into,” he said. “A core responsibility of this role is helping catalyze the ideas of new teams of talented researchers, educators, and trainees from inception to realization.”

Sponberg is the Glen Robinson Professor in Complex Systems with appointments in the School of Physics and the School of Biological Sciences, where he directs the Agile Systems Lab. His work also connects him to the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) and the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM), underscoring the cross-disciplinary approach that defines both his research and leadership.

Since joining Georgia Tech in 2014, he has built a highly collaborative research program spanning neuroscience, biology, physics, engineering, and robotics while helping foster interdisciplinary connections across campus. He currently leads a Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) that brings together neuroscientists and engineers from five universities to understand how brains achieve fast, flexible perception and decision-making in complex sensory environments. He also co-leads the Integrative Movement Sciences Institute, an NSF Biological Integration Institute focused on understanding movement and muscle function across scales.

His contributions have been recognized through numerous honors, including a Young Investigator Award from the International Society for Neuroethology, a Klingenstein-Simons Fellowship in the Neurosciences, and the Leddy Family Dean’s Faculty Excellence Award.

As associate director, Sponberg will focus on helping researchers identify new opportunities for connection and collaboration. In addition to overseeing seed funding programs, he hopes to create pathways for researchers to build teams, access support resources, pursue ambitious interdisciplinary research ideas, and team with Georgia Tech’s undergraduate and graduate neuroscience degree programs.

“I look forward to being a resource for our community when people are looking for help in building teams or finding opportunities to support their ideas,” he said. “Bring your best ideas and please reach out if you want to talk about ideas in the interdisciplinary neuro space that you want to see realized.”
 

Counterfeit and out-of-spec components are entering U.S. defense supply chains through thousands of small and midsized suppliers that make up the lower tiers of the industrial base. Researchers at the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) say the fix isn't just better parts, but better proof: verified digital records, secured against tampering, that travel with each component from raw material to installation.   

Generating $6.3 billion in economic impact for Georgia’s economy in fiscal year 2025, Georgia Tech surpassed its own record and continues to lead all state public universities, according to a University System of Georgia (USG) study.  

School of Computing Instruction (SCI) faculty member Nimisha Roy has been named director of online undergraduate initiatives, a new role created to expand online undergraduate programs and broaden access to computing education at Georgia Tech. 

Techlanta is organized in collaboration with Georgia Tech OIT, the new Allen–Davidson–Coleman XR Makerspace, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), and the Symbiotic and Augmented Intelligence Laboratory (SAIL).

The event will feature Georgia Tech and Atlanta technology leaders exploring the convergence of artificial intelligence, extended reality, robotics, human-centered systems, and other emerging technologies. Programming will include keynote and featured presentations, live technology demonstrations, networking, and opportunities to engage with the Atlanta technology ecosystem.

“Techlanta is an exciting opportunity to share our vision for Human-Centered Systems Engineering in ISyE, where we put people at the center of how we engineer emerging technologies,” said ISyE Associate Professor, SAIL, and ADC XR Makerspace Director Mohsen Moghaddam. “Through SAIL and the ADC XR Makerspace, we are exploring how AI, robotics, XR, and related technologies can augment people and expand their capabilities in future workplaces, rather than replace them.”

Professor Moghaddam will be presenting the latest developments from ISyE’s Allen–Davidson–Coleman (ADC) XR Makerspace and ISyE’s Symbiotic and Augmented Intelligence Lab (SAIL). 

Techlanta builds on the organizations’ ongoing collaboration to showcase Atlanta’s position as a global hub for emerging technology innovation while creating new connections between industry, research, and the next generation of talent.

Registration is now open for Techlanta 2026. Register now →

https://www.eventbrite.com/e/techlanta-2026-tickets-1993945297059 

“Atlanta continues to strengthen its position as a global hub for emerging technologies, and we’re excited to build on our collaboration with Georgia Tech, one of the world’s premier universities, to drive applied R&D and strategic innovation across the Southeast and beyond,” said Adam Kornuth, Atlanta Chapter President of the VRARA and AAIA Atlanta chapters.

With over 60 chapters around the world, the VRARA and AAIA boast a network of more than 80,000 professionals and 4,000 organizations. 

For more information about the Virtual Reality Augmented Reality Association, visit thevrara.com. For more information about the Applied AI Association, visit aaiaglobal.com.

For most floods caused by dam or reservoir breaks, known as outburst floods, current data is nearly impossible to find. By the time researchers can safely reach the site, only the aftermath remains. But in the case of Kakhovka, a newly launched NASA satellite happened to be collecting measurements over the region, providing a unique view of the flood in real time.

Using those observations, Georgia Tech researchers tested how well existing outburst flood models reproduced the actual event. The results revealed a discrepancy: The models consistently underestimated flood conditions. Even improved models struggled to accurately capture both the height and timing of floodwaters.

The findings suggest that commonly used flood simulations may not fully capture the dynamics of large outburst floods. Models need improvement to be effective for hazard assessment and emergency planning.

Putting Models to the Test

Flood models are essential for estimating how deadly and costly outburst floods can be.

“Models allow us to understand which communities could be affected by an outburst flood,” said Karl Lang, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.  “They also help us estimate how long floodwaters will remain on the landscape. In many places, prolonged flooding can be just as devastating as the initial event because it can damage infrastructure, disrupt livelihoods, and contribute to public health risks.”

Until recently, however, scientists didn’t have a way to evaluate how accurate the models were. But when NASA launched its Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT) satellite, a serendipitous opportunity arose. The satellite passed over the Kakhovka flood zone repeatedly during and after the dam failure, producing detailed daily measurements across the flood plain. SWOT uses two antennas and a technique called interferometry to measure water elevation with approximately 10-centimeter accuracy across rivers, lakes, wetlands, reservoirs, and oceans.

“SWOT doesn’t observe every flood that happens, but when it does, it provides exactly the information we’ve needed to understand how floodwaters move across the landscape,” said Tamlin Pavelsky, professor at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. “Those observations help us improve computer models used to anticipate future flood events.”

Reality Versus Simulation

Researchers compared the satellite observations with models that simulate depth and spread of flooding. They found that models relying on commonly available global data consistently simulated floodwaters that were lower and slower than those SWOT observed.

The team then improved the model inputs by incorporating more realistic estimates of the reservoir and river-bottom topography. Those changes brought model results closer to real-world conditions, but they still failed to accurately reproduce both flood height and flood timing simultaneously.

“It’s really challenging to collect real-world data from these huge floods because they’re so localized, unpredictable, and energetic,” said Karin Lehnigk, a postdoctoral fellow and lead author of the study. “Because SWOT gave us a new image every day covering the entire flood path, we could compare the model with real-world conditions across many locations and points in time in ways that previously were only possible in a laboratory.”

The results suggest model limitations extend beyond simply having better maps of reservoir depth or river channels. Instead, they point to broader challenges in how scientists simulate large outburst floods and their movement across complex landscapes.

As aging infrastructure, extreme weather, and other hazards increase flood risks around the world, researchers say better models are essential for helping communities prepare for the floods.

This research was funded by NASA and the Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment at Georgia Tech.

CITATION: Lehnigk, K.E., Pavelsky, T.M., & Lang, K.A. (2026). SWOT satellite observations of the Kakhovka Dam break flood highlight limitations of outburst flood models. Geophysical Research Letters, 53, e2025GL120832. https://doi.org/10.1029/2025GL120832

The high cost of renting and buying homes in U.S. cities is no secret. But this affordability problem isn’t limited to urban regions – it affects rural areas as well.

Rural areas, home to about 25% of Americans, benefit from federally supported rental housing programs – particularly a U.S. Department of Agriculture program to provide affordable homes for low-income residents.

The USDA’s Section 515 program is the primary way that the U.S. government finances affordable rental homes in rural communities. Since its inception in 1963, the program has supported the construction of over 533,000 apartments, townhouses and other small, multifamily rental homes.

The program offers below-market-rate loans to private and nonprofit developers who build and manage residential housing for low-income residents in small towns and rural counties. The terms of the deal between property owners and the government obliges these landlords to keep rents affordable for their occupants for decades, generally restricting rent to about 30% of tenants’ income.

Last New Loans Were in 2011

People who live in Section 515 housing typically pay around US$325 per month. That’s much less than rural market-rate rents, which typically run $800-$1,100 per month for modest homes.

Because the USDA stopped issuing new Section 515 loans in 2011, this arrangement is phasing out now as existing loans mature.

Loans for about 90% of all remaining Section 515 homes will mature by 2045, according to the Housing Assistance Council, a national nonprofit that supports affordable housing efforts throughout rural America. By 2050, the owners of nearly all properties currently in the program’s portfolio are projected to have paid off their mortgages.

And once most of the owners of these homes exit the Section 515 program, it will have been fully phased out.

An Often-Overlooked Housing Program

As a public policy professor who studies housing, I wanted to understand what happens when Section 515 loans mature. I also was interested in what determines whether properties remain affordable or leave the program after the loans are paid off.

To find out, I worked with three other housing policy researchers on a national study that was peer-reviewed and published in Housing Policy Debate in September 2025.

As of 2024, these loans were still supporting some 400,000 homes on almost 13,000 properties across 87% of all U.S. counties.

The roughly 750,000 Americans in those homes are among the nation’s poorest. The average household income of someone living in Section 515 housing in 2023 was just about $16,000 per year, which was only about one-fifth of the national median household income, which hovered around $76,600 during the same period in inflation-adjusted 2023 dollars.

In addition to having a very low income, more than 60% of the people enrolled in the program are over 62, have disabilities, or fall into both of those categories.

Market-Rate Options After Maturity

The vast majority of these affordable rental homes were built in the 1970s through the 1990s and financed with USDA loans that last between 30 and 50 years.

By 2050, there will be no Section 515 housing left.

The owners of these rental properties no longer have to keep rents affordable once they have paid off their loans. And their owners and tenants may also lose access to a USDA rental assistance program, which helps keep tenants’ housing costs low.

They can refinance the homes or sell the properties. They also can continue to charge affordable rents to occupants or convert those units to market rate. Because of this flexibility, a large share of rural affordable housing units could soon be converted to properties rented at market rates.

What the Data Shows So Far

For this study, our research team analyzed data from nearly 15,000 of the Section 515 properties throughout the country, which have been placed in service since 1963 – including many that are no longer providing rural affordable housing.

We found that the largest factors determining whether a building remains affordable after a Section 515 loan matures are who owns and manages that property. Buildings owned by for-profit companies are far more likely to leave the program than those that belong to nonprofit housing organizations.

Nonprofit-owned buildings, after accounting for building age and local market conditions, are 30% to 40% less likely to convert formerly Section 515 affordable housing into market-rate properties after the owners pay off their loans.

After analyzing this data, we also concluded that buildings run by small property management companies are more likely to leave the program than those managed by larger ones. Properties where the owner manages the homes are also more likely to exit.

Landlords owning more residential properties were also more likely to exit the program. This indicates that larger landlords may be able to afford the renovations and upgrades required to turn their buildings into market-rate housing once restrictions end.

Why Subsidies and Local Markets Matter

Having subsidies through other government programs can help keep affordable housing units from being converted to market-rate housing.

One-third of Section 515 properties also get support from other programs, including Section 8 vouchers and low-income housing tax credits. Those tax credits are another federal incentive that’s provided to developers who build and rehabilitate affordable rental housing while allowing lower rents for low-income tenants.

Those properties are more likely to remain affordable, even years after some of these tax incentives expire.

Local economic conditions can play a role too. In areas with high unemployment rates, large military populations and low housing inventory, properties are also more likely to exit the program.

That means the same rural counties experiencing economic or demographic pressures are often the most likely to have a decline in affordable housing units when owners pay off their Section 515 loans.

Steps That Can Be Taken

Congress and the USDA have taken some steps to slow the loss of affordable housing in rural areas.

For example, the USDA has funded preservation efforts such as the Multifamily Housing Preservation and Revitalization pilot program, which provides grants, loan restructuring and other financing tools to help repair aging Section 515 properties and extend their affordability.

These efforts have helped preserve some buildings and support ownership transfers from private sector landlords to nonprofit housing groups. But they spend only tens of millions of dollars per year and focus mainly on maintaining existing properties rather than building new housing.

Researchers estimate that about $5.6 billion in repairs would be needed to preserve the affordable housing currently tied to the Section 515 program.

Some lawmakers have proposed reforms aimed at doing more than chipping away at the loss of this kind of affordable housing. The bipartisan Rural Housing Service Reform Act, first introduced in 2023 and reintroduced in 2025, would modernize USDA rural housing programs and allow certain rental assistance contracts to continue after mortgages mature. As of early 2026, the bill remains under consideration.

Over the next two decades, most of these landlords will pay off their Section 515 loans. Unless the government reinvigorates the program or replaces it with something else, much of rural America’s affordable rental housing could gradually disappear as owners convert all Section 515 properties to market-rate housing.

Whether rural communities retain affordable housing will depend not only on what the federal government does, but also on the properties’ owners.

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

As manufacturing systems become more connected, the cyberthreat grows with them. Saman Zonouz has spent years documenting how vulnerable smart manufacturing environments are. He’s an associate professor in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, where he co-leads the Cyber-Physical Security Lab with Raheem Beyah, Georgia Tech’s provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. 

The U.S. has seen its printed circuit board market share plummet to 4% while becoming dangerously dependent on foreign rare earth processing. Now, with global supply chains fracturing, defense industrial capacity under pressure, and adversaries looking to dominate advanced production, the country is in a race to rebuild — and to rebuild smarter. 

The Emerging Leaders Program has cultivated leadership potential at Georgia Tech since 2016 and is open to senior and principal academic and research faculty from all academic units.

"Our faculty and researchers are at the heart of Georgia Tech's success," said Raheem Beyah, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. "The Emerging Leaders Program invests in future leaders by creating opportunities for collaboration, growth, and learning. I congratulate this year's cohort and look forward to seeing how they help shape the future of our Institute."

The 2026-27 cohort includes the following members:

College of Business

• Alex Hsu, Associate Professor of Finance
• Mingfeng Lin, Dean's Distinguished Term Professor, Professor of IT Management, and ITM Ph.D. Program Coordinator
• Karthik Ramachandran, Professor, Operations Management Area

College of Computing

• Alex Endert, Professor, School of Interactive Computing

College of Design

• Leandro Miletto Tonetto, Interim Chair and Associate Professor, School of Industrial Design

College of Engineering

• Blair Brettmann, Associate Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Santanu S. Dey, Anderson-Interface Chair and Professor; Director of Doctoral Recruiting and Admissions, School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Erin Ratcliff, Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Levi Wood, Associate Professor and Deputy Director of the Bioengineering Graduate Program, School of Mechanical Engineering

College of Lifetime Learning

• Lacy Hodges, Director of Learning Analytics & Assessment, Professional Education

College of Sciences

• Neha Garg, Associate Professor and Blanchard Early Career Professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry 
• Alexander Robel, Jean “Chris” Purvis Associate Professor, School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Emily Weigel, Senior Academic Professional, School of Biological Sciences

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

• Chris Hayter, Associate Professor, School of Public Policy

Georgia Tech Research Institute

• Adam Meier, Principal Research Scientist, CIPHER LAB

Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE)

• Jeffery Young, Principal Research Scientist

The Emerging Leaders Program is a collaborative initiative of the Office of the Provost, the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research, the Institute for Leadership and Social Impact, and the Office of the Vice Provost for Faculty. 
 

In time for the fall semester, the ribbon has been cut, and students will soon move into Georgia Tech’s newest traditional residence hall — the Bud and Val Peterson Residence Hall.  

Join Georgia Tech undergraduate Harrison Burnside on this latest episode of Engineered at Tech as he tours Katherine Graham's lab and discovers how to track pathogens in the Chattahoochee River. The goal is to help local agencies pinpoint sources of pollution in rivers and reservoirs to protect public health. 

Watch the video on the COE News page

Du, an assistant professor in the School of Physics, studies quantum materials at very small scales. This project will leverage state-of-the-art quantum sensing and imaging techniques developed in her lab to study the properties of topological magnets at the nanoscale — and create a quantum microscopy platform, which she hopes will provide a more comprehensive understanding of the fundamental properties of these materials, as dictated by quantum mechanics.

“Topological magnets serve as a novel, cutting-edge material system, which is promising for developing next-generation, transformative quantum information technologies,” says Du. 

“Currently, magnetic and charge properties of topological materials are mainly characterized by bulk measurements,” she explains. But, by using color-centers in diamonds, she plans to leverage cutting-edge quantum sensing techniques, creating ultra-sensitive quantum spin sensors.

These diamond color-centers have been shown to vastly outperform traditional methods, and Du hopes that by demonstrating their operation under previously unexplored experimental conditions, their use can be applied to other material systems, expediting progress toward future quantum sciences and technologies.

“The project has the potential to make important contributions to the burgeoning field of quantum materials,” says Du, “and to significantly promote the role of topological magnets in developing next-generation, transformative information technologies.”

Du is also the recipient of Sloan Fellowship, Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Program Award, U.S. Department of Energy Early Career Award, National Science Foundation CAREER Award, U.S. Air Force Young Investigator Award, and the International Union of Pure and Applied Physics Early Career Scientist Prize.

Monitoring these tiny changes results in a wide range of applications — from improving navigation and natural disaster forecasting, to smarter medical imaging and detection of biomarkers of disease, gravitational wave detection, and even better quantum communication for secure data sharing.

Georgia Tech physicists are pioneering new quantum sensing platforms to aid in these efforts. The research team’s latest study, “Sensing Spin Wave Excitations by Spin Defects in Few-Layer Thick Hexagonal Boron Nitride” was published in Science Advances this week. 

The research team includes School of Physics Assistant Professors Chunhui (Rita) Du and Hailong Wang (corresponding authors) alongside fellow Georgia Tech researchers Jingcheng Zhou, Mengqi Huang, Faris Al-matouq, Jiu Chang, Dziga Djugba, and Professor Zhigang Jiang and their collaborators. 

An ultra-sensitive platform

The new research investigates quantum sensing by leveraging color centers — small defects within crystals (Du’s team uses diamonds and other 2D layered materials) that allow light to be absorbed and emitted, which also give the crystal unique electronic properties. 

By embedding these color centers into a material called hexagonal boron nitride (hBN), the team hoped to create an extremely sensitive quantum sensor — a new resource for developing next-generation, transformative sensing devices. 

For its part, hBN is particularly attractive for quantum sensing and computing because it could contain defects that can be manipulated with light — also known as "optically active spin qubits."

The quantum spin defects in hBN are also very magnetically sensitive, and allow scientists to “see” or “sense” in more detail than other conventional techniques. In addition, the sheet-like structure of hBN is compatible with ultra-sensitive tools like nanodevices, making it a particularly intriguing resource for investigation.

The team’s research has resulted in a critical breakthrough in sensing spin waves, Du says, explaining that “in this study, we were able to detect spin excitations that were simply unattainable in previous studies.” 

Detecting spin waves is a fundamental component of quantum sensing, because these phenomena can travel for long distances, making them an ideal candidate for energy-efficient information control, communication, and processing.

The future of quantum

“For the first time, we experimentally demonstrated two-dimensional van der Waals quantum sensing — using few-layer thick hBN in a real-world environment,” Du explains, underscoring the potential the material holds for precise quantum sensing. “Further research could make it possible to sense electromagnetic features at the atomic scale using color centers in thin layers of hBN.”

Du also emphasizes the collaborative nature of the research, highlighting the diverse skill sets and resources of researchers within Georgia Tech. 

“Within the School of Physics, Professor Zhigang Jiang's research group provided the team with high-quality hBN crystals. Jingcheng Zhou, who is a member of both Professor Hailong Wang’s and my research teams, performed the cutting-edge quantum sensing measurements,” she says. “Many incredible students also helped with this project.”

Du is a leading scientist in the field of quantum sensing — this year, she received a new grant from the U.S. Department of Energy, along with a Sloan Research Fellowship for her pioneering work on developing state-of-the-art quantum sensing techniques for quantum information technology applications. The prestigious Sloan award recognizes researchers whose “creativity, innovation, and research accomplishments make them stand out as the next-generation of leaders in the fields.” 

DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.adk8495

This work is supported by the U. S. National Science Foundation (NSF) under award No. DMR-2342569, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under award No. FA9550-20-1-0319 and its Young Investigator Program under award No. FA9550-21-1-0125, the Office of Naval Research (ONR) under grant No. N00014-23-1-2146, NASA-REVEALS SSERVI (CAN No. NNA17BF68A), and NASA-CLEVER SSERVI (CAN No. 80NSSC23M0229).

“It is an honor to join this prestigious scientific organization,” says Sherrill, who also serves as associate director of the Institute for Data Engineering Science. “The members are the very top experts in quantum chemistry from around the world.”

Sherrill’s research is at the intersection of chemistry, algorithms, and data science. His research group leverages advances in machine learning to develop tools for modeling data from quantum mechanical computations. These tools can be applied to chemical problems like drug discovery and crystal engineering. The research group makes its methods and algorithms publicly available through the open-source quantum chemistry program Psi4.

Sherrill received his Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of Georgia and joined Georgia Tech in 1999 after having served as a National Science Foundation Postdoctoral Fellow at the University of California, Berkeley. He has received numerous distinctions throughout his career and is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Chemical Society, and the American Physical Society. Sherrill has been associate editor of the Journal of Chemical Physics since 2009.

Learn more about Sherrill’s research here. 

About the International Academy of Quantum Molecular Science (IAQMS)

Established in Menton, France in 1967, IAQMS is an international scientific society that covers the application of quantum theory, including chemistry and chemical physics. It is composed of scientists from around the world who have contributed to the advancement of quantum molecular science. The organization boasts 14 Nobel Prize laureates among its current and past members.

“Our results point to the possibility of building quantum computers using light by taking advantage of this entanglement,” said Chandra Raman, a professor in the School of Physics. 

Quantum computers have the potential to outperform their conventional counterparts, becoming the fastest programmable machines in existence. Entanglement is the key resource for building these quantum computers. 

Light has always been seen as ideal for quantum computing, but it presents challenges. Photons don’t interact with each other. “If I have two or more photons, it's extremely difficult to make them interact; they fly right by each other,” said postdoctoral researcher Aniruddha Bhattacharya. “The key discovery here is we can entangle photons in a useful, controllable, and deterministic way.” 

The researchers devised a protocol to create entanglement consistently. Their protocol makes use of a mathematical geometric structure known as non-Abelian quantum holonomy, which can entangle photons without requiring quantum measurements. Holonomy can be implemented with on-chip photonic devices, suggesting this protocol could be used to create scalable and integrable photonic quantum computers.

The research’s implications are staggering for the future of quantum computing. Photonic quantum computers work well at room temperature, are portable, and are more easily integrated with existent quantum communication systems and links. Quantum computing is the future of not just computing but innovation, and photons could unlock new frontiers. This research was published in Physical Review Letters.               

What do poetry and physics have in common? If your first answer is “the letter ‘P,’” you’re not alone. Georgia Tech Professor John Lyon, however, traces a much deeper connection between the two disciplines. 

In this brief Q&A, they discuss their research focus, how it connection to IMS’s research priorities, and the national impact of this initiative.

What is your field of expertise?

Jiang and Mourigal are quantum material physicists, specializing in optical magneto-spectroscopy and neutron spectroscopy, respectively. Wang is an engineering expert in quantum optimization and quantum AI/machine learning.

What questions or challenges sparked your current research? 

In 2025, we celebrate 100 years of quantum mechanics. A recurring question in the community is how, after a century of progress, we can fully harness the potential of quantum coherence to achieve quantum supremacy in practical devices. This program aims to address this challenge by demonstrating spectrum-based entanglement witnessing and control in quantum materials, as well as developing novel quantum sensing platforms with unprecedented sensitivity.

Matter and systems refer to the transformational technological and societal systems that arise from the convergence of innovative materials, devices, and processes. Why is your program important to the development of the IMS research strategy? 

IMS has been a strong supporter of campus-wide quantum research, which spans many GT units. Through this program, we aim to integrate existing efforts in quantum materials and quantum engineering to form an interdisciplinary team positioned to address national research needs in quantum information and technology, with a particular focus on quantum sensing. The deep involvement of GTRI quantum scientists provides unparalleled opportunities for real-world applications, aligning closely with the IMS research strategy.

What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct?

This program represents GT’s response to the National Quantum Initiative Act, which aims to accelerate quantum research and development in the United States. The quantum sensing platforms proposed here feature cutting-edge technology that is compact, highly sensitive, and easily integrated with existing classical systems. These platforms hold strong potential for transformative applications across a range of industries, including biomedical imaging in healthcare, navigation in aerospace, oil and mineral exploration, and semiconductor manufacturing. 

What are your plans for engaging a wider Georgia Tech faculty pool with the Institute for Matter and Systems research?

This program builds on an established network of quantum materials and engineering researchers, bringing together faculty from Physics, Chemistry, Mechanical Engineering, Materials Science and Engineering, Electrical Engineering, and GTRI. We plan to further expand this network by engaging GT scientists and engineers through workshops—such as IMS-organized symposiums—and collaborative team proposals. Our long-term goal is to establish a GT–led quantum center that is nationally competitive and positioned to address critical research needs in quantum information and technology.

To address that challenge, researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) have developed an improved cryogenic vacuum chamber that helps reduce some common noise sources by isolating ions from vibrations and shielding them from magnetic field fluctuations. The new chamber also incorporates an improved imaging system and a radio frequency (RF) coil that can be used to drive ion transitions from within the chamber. 
 

“There’s a lot of excitement around quantum computing today, and trapped ions are just one of the research platforms available, each with their own benefits and drawbacks,” explained Darian Hartsell, a GTRI research scientist who leads the project. “We are trying to mitigate multiple sources of noise in this chamber and make other improvements with one robust new design.”
 

The chamber design is described in a paper published January 20, 2026 in the journal Applied Physics Letters. Some of the technical improvements developed for the project are already being applied at GTRI and collaborating organizations. This work was done in collaboration with Los Alamos National Laboratory.
 

The goal of the vibration isolation is to reduce the laser amplitude and phase noise when addressing the ions, increasing operation fidelity. The goal of the magnetic field noise reduction is to preserve the coherence of qubits for longer periods of time so researchers can use them for more complex algorithms.

See the complete article on the GTRI news site

The approaches of over a dozen quantum computing companies are now being evaluated through the Quantum Benchmarking Initiative (QBI), a project of the U.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). According to the agency, QBI “aims to rigorously verify and validate whether any quantum computing approach can achieve utility-scale operation – meaning its computational value exceeds its cost – by the year 2033.”
 

Supporting the effort, a 40-person interdisciplinary research team from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has joined the test and evaluation component of QBI, providing unbiased subject-matter experts to work with 13 other research organizations in evaluating the R&D plans of participating quantum computer companies. Through this collaboration, the GTRI team is working with more than 400 other third-party experts on the project.
 

Read the complete article on the GTRI news site

This summer, a new group of Georgia Tech students embarked on Georgia Tech's annual five-week artistic and cultural journey, Feel the Korean Beat, a School of Modern Languages study abroad program in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. This international experience offered students an opportunity to explore South Korea's rich artistic traditions and contemporary culture while reflecting Georgia Tech's broader commitment to global engagement through the arts. That commitment is also reflected this summer through Georgia Tech’s partnership with the Korea Foundation on the international exhibition Crossing Grounds: Art, Design, and Technology in Seoul. 

With a record-setting $5.8 billion economic impact, Georgia Tech led all Georgia public institutions in fiscal year 2024, according to the latest data released by the University System of Georgia (USG).  

Employees who use personal vehicles for official Institute business are now reimbursed at $0.76 cents per mile, reflecting a mileage rate increase issued by the State Accounting Office. 

Despite his career in materials science, Lee’s educational background is in electrical engineering. It wasn’t until his graduate studies at Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering that he gained a newfound passion for materials science. His interest originated through his involvement with the Wearable Intelligent Systems and Healthcare (WISH) Center in the final year of his doctorate.

“I saw how IMS brings together experts from different disciplines to tackle healthcare challenges that no single field could solve alone,” Lee said. “I wanted to be part of an organization that not only advances cutting-edge research but also builds the collaborations needed to translate those innovations into real clinical impact.”

After receiving his Ph.D. from Georgia Tech, Lee became a full-time research program manager at IMS. Today, Lee’s research in the cleanroom facilities centers around wearable medical technologies to improve healthcare practices. Bringing together students, clinicians, and industry partners, Lee constantly seeks to identify opportunities for collaboration on the next generation of healthcare innovation.

“Ultimately, I hope the work we do at Georgia Tech leads to wearable and intelligent healthcare systems that improve quality of life for people around the world,” Lee said.

Lee continues to travel the world, experiencing different cultures and learning how innovation is applied in healthcare and technology globally. His dedication to humanity elevates his work to excellence. 

The first week of June marks National CPR and AED Awareness Week, but year-round, Georgia Tech students are helping equip the campus community with lifesaving skills. 

Sherman Lofton Jr. has been a Yellow Jacket for more than 40 years, as a student, alumnus, and employee, currently serving as the senior director of cybersecurity operations. He arrived on campus in 1984 and earned a bachelor’s degree in management in 1990, and he never imagined that decades later he’d be graduating with a master’s degree from Tech on the same day as his daughter.  

What started as concern about food waste has grown into a campuswide effort to help food-insecure Georgia Tech students while keeping thousands of meals out of the waste stream. Since launching in 2024, Green Forks has transformed surplus food from catered events into a valuable resource for students in need. 

School of Computer Science Assistant Professor Ahmed Saeed has received a CAREER Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support his research on improving data center efficiency.  

The award is the NSF’s most prestigious honor for early-career faculty and supports researchers with the potential to serve as academic role models and to lead advances in their department or organization.  

"Receiving the NSF CAREER Award is a tremendous honor and an opportunity to advance my long-term research agenda,” Saeed said. “It was only made possible by the creativity and dedication of my students and the unwavering support and guidance of my family and mentors.” 

Modern data center servers manage resource allocation and load distribution separately, which can result in conflicting decisions. A key idea behind Saeed’s proposal is to develop an integrated view of these operations to improve efficiency without requiring additional hardware. 

“When performing operations jointly, you can maximize performance and completely eliminate the chances of conflict,” Saeed said.  

Another driver of the project is what Saeed calls the “single queue fallacy.” This occurs when data center load controllers assume that all incoming requests to a server wait in a single queue to be processed. 

In reality, servers are much more complex than this and can handle multiple queues at the same time. Modern workloads have heterogeneous load requirements, meaning that different requests end up landing in different queues. 

“This single queue fallacy can lead to severe underutilization of these servers,” he said.  

Recent research by Saeed shows that a server’s throughput can be doubled by avoiding the single-queue fallacy.  

The potential benefits of this project are wide-ranging and impactful. Maximizing server efficiency would reduce costs and energy use. With fewer resources needed, the project could contribute to more sustainable computing infrastructure. Lower operational costs would benefit companies, application developers, and users. 

“The goal of my proposal is to develop mechanisms and policies that can allow data center operators to easily maximize the utilization of all hardware,” he said.  

As part of the educational component of his proposal, Saeed plans to organize competitions for students to design more efficient load and resource management algorithms using artificial intelligence.  

In addition to this award, Saeed was named a Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Faculty Fellow last fall to support his goal of making data centers more sustainable.  

The Air Quality Index (AQI) measures how clean or polluted the air is. A healthy AQI is between zero and 50, but when wildfire smoke blows in and settles over cities, the AQI can reach levels of 500 or more. Poor air quality changes where and how people spend their time and money, reduces productivity (even for those working indoors), and increases healthcare costs.

“Environmental regulations like the Clean Air Act dramatically improved our air quality over the past 40 years, but as wildfire season becomes the new normal, wildfire smoke is eroding those gains,” Wichman said. According to recent research, wildfire smoke has erased about a quarter of the progress made over previous decades, and more than half in many western states. 

Read Full Story on the IAC News Page

Georgia Tech will play a key role in the newly announced Genesis Mission, a national initiative harnessing artificial intelligence (AI) to propel scientific discovery and address challenges in health, energy, manufacturing, infrastructure, and national security. The White House announced the first Genesis Mission projects on July 22 as part of a more than $5 billion investment in AI-enabled science and technology. 

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.”

--Written by Anne Wainscott-Sargent

From a single Atlanta church to a growing network across the Southeast, Georgia Tech engineer Sofía Pérez-Guzmán is connecting communities and researchers to support resilience in extreme weather events. 

Instead of becoming steadily stickier as they are pulled apart, soft hydrogels first become less adhesive and then more adhesive as the pulling speed increases, revealing a previously unknown "sweet spot" where detachment is easier. The discovery challenges a long-held assumption in adhesion mechanics and reveals a new physical mechanism that governs how soft materials attach and detach.

"We expected the adhesion to increase continuously with pulling speed, as predicted by classical theories," said Yuhang Hu, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. "Instead, we found the exact opposite over a broad range of speeds. That told us there had to be a completely different physical process at work."

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

The Georgia Tech Solar Racing team returned from this year’s Formula Sun Grand Prix (FSGP) and Electrek American Solar Challenge (ASC) with hardware in hand, setting team and competition records in the process.  

Competency #2:  Leadership & Agency
Students develop the confidence and initiative to shape their learning, pursue opportunities, and lead with integrity and purpose.    

Competency #3: Engagement & Community Impact
Students actively engage with faculty, peers, and communities towards lasting and meaningful impact.  

Competency #4: Connection & Reflection
Students build meaningful relationships and connect their experiences to their purpose, identity, and future direction.

As students participate in events, engage in reflection exercises, and have experiences on campus, they accrue points through the Jacket Journey (Suitable) app.  These points allow students to earn various digital badges, which are tied to winning JMHP swag or participating in exclusive Jacket Journey experiences.  Badges are micro-credentials that can be shared in places like LinkedIn.  Jacket Journey also generates a co-curricular transcript that documents and summarizes the skills being gained OUTSIDE the classroom.   

Over the past two years, students' engagement with Jacket Journey has grown, with students attending thousands of events and completing tasks.  The JMHP staff team has worked closely with Suitable, partnering on webinars and conference presentations.  In 2024 Faculty Director Dr. Amy D'Unger participated in a webinar panel on implementing the application in a growing honors program.  In 2025, Program Coordinator Amara Anderson and Program and Operations Manager Amie Raines partnered with Suitable staff member Kelsey Krauss to present on "Strategic Partnerships for Sustainable Impact and Student Success" at the annual meeting of the National Collegiate Honors Council.  They then followed up with a national webinar on the same topic in spring 2026.

In recognition of the strength of the partnership and the success of Jacket Journey, the JMHP was nominated as a Suitable Collaborator of the Year, with the awards presented at the Suitable Pathways Conference in July 2026.  The JMHP was selected as one of three winners of the award.  The JMHP is excited to continue its collaboration with Suitable to enrich and elevate the student experience for members of the John H. Martinson Honors Program

During this period, various building systems will be affected as power is temporarily disconnected. Power will be restored to specific areas in phases as work is completed and systems are safely returned to service. 

We appreciate your patience and cooperation during this necessary work. 

For researchers in Georgia Tech's Cyber-Physical Security (CPSec) Lab, however, the vulnerabilities behind many of these incidents are far from new.

Associate Professor Saman Zonouz leads the CPSec Lab and has studied programmable logic controllers (PLCs) for years. These devices automate critical infrastructure, including water treatment facilities, power grids, manufacturing plants, and transportation systems. The lab’s work has revealed widespread internet exposure and software vulnerabilities that leave many industrial control systems vulnerable to cyberattacks.

"Out of the 16 critical infrastructure sectors defined by the Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, four are considered lifelines," Zonouz said. "Of those four, communications, energy, transportation, and water, the water sector is the most vulnerable, which is why it is so often targeted."

PLCs serve as the brains of industrial operations, monitoring sensors and controlling equipment that keep essential services operational.

"Imagine you have a thermostat that controls the temperature of your house. That is a type of controller," Zonouz explained. "The professional version does the same thing in industry."

When these controllers are directly accessible from the internet, attackers can exploit them to disrupt operations, manipulate industrial processes, or interfere with the systems that deliver essential services. Controllers may be intentionally exposed to allow operators to monitor equipment remotely. They can also be unintentionally accessible online because of configuration errors.

However, internet exposure is only part of the problem.

The CPSec Lab maintains a collection of PLCs that researchers reverse engineer to better understand their firmware, communication protocols, and security weaknesses. Their research has found that many controllers contain vulnerabilities that attackers can exploit once they gain access.

"Not only can the attackers see the house they want to rob, but the doors are also left unlocked," Zonouz said.

In 2024, Zonouz and his collaborators presented PLCHound at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS), introducing an automated system that identifies internet-connected PLCs hidden within massive internet-scale datasets collected by services such as Shodan and Censys. The work was led by Ph.D. student Ryan Pickren. Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Raheem Beyah, Assistant Professor Frank Li, and Research Scientist Animesh Chhotaray are co-authors of the study. 

Rather than relying on traditional scanning techniques, PLCHound identifies subtle network signatures that reveal industrial devices that prior methods often missed. Using the system, the researchers conducted one of the largest studies of publicly reachable PLCs from major manufacturers.

Their findings showed that previous estimates undercounted the number of internet-accessible industrial controllers by as much as 37 times. Even more concerning, nearly 96% of the identified devices exposed protocols linked to recently disclosed critical vulnerabilities.

The researchers did more than document the problem. After identifying exposed devices, the team launched a large-scale notification campaign, contacting more than 7,000 industrial operators to alert them that their systems appeared vulnerable. The effort enabled many organizations to investigate and address security issues before they could be exploited.

The recent attacks on municipal water systems reinforce concerns researchers have raised for years: many critical infrastructure operators continue to rely on operational technology designed primarily for reliability and performance rather than for cybersecurity.

Improving those defenses, Zonouz said, will require more than simply patching individual vulnerabilities.

The researchers cite the energy sector as a model. Compared with other critical infrastructure sectors, electric utilities generally operate under more mature cybersecurity requirements and undergo routine compliance audits, providing organizations with greater visibility into the devices connected to their networks and the risks they pose.

Implementing those improvements will not be easy. Many municipal water utilities operate with limited budgets and aging infrastructure, leaving little funding available for cybersecurity investments. As attacks on critical infrastructure become more frequent, the researchers argue that gaining visibility into operational technology assets and strengthening oversight are essential first steps to protect the systems communities rely on every day.

The CPSec Lab is a collaborative laboratory within the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy as well as the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

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:

• Processing massive documents: IPO filings can exceed hundreds of thousands of words, making manual review difficult. IPO-Mine structures the filings into sections and extracts visuals for analysis.
• Structuring unorganized data: IPO-Mine standardizes inconsistent sections across filings, making comparisons easier across companies and industries. 
• Analyzing text and visuals together: By extracting charts and images, AI can evaluate not just what companies say, but how they present information visually. 
• Identifying trends at scale: Researchers can analyze patterns in disclosure practices across decades, industries, and thousands of companies.
   

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.

• IPO filings are long: longer documents can reduce model performance, making it difficult for AI to maintain accuracy across an entire filing.
• IPO filings are visual: AI tools struggle to interpret visual data correctly.
• IPO filings are multimodal: filings combine text, tables, and visuals in inconsistent formats. This makes them difficult for AI models to process reliably.
   

“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

Read More: IPO-Mine

Learn More: Center for Finance and Technology

Navigating the job search after a postdoctoral appointment can be intimidating. For international scholars, the process of landing a job is often even more complex, with visa requirements and other employment considerations adding to an already challenging job market. 

Most members of the Georgia Tech community rarely think about campus utilities, and that's exactly how Jermaine Clonts likes it. 

Georgia Tech received the $18.1 million award through NSF's Programmable Cloud Laboratories initiative, a national effort to create AI-enabled automated laboratories that researchers can access remotely.  

ISyE’s contribution is led by Pascal Van Hentenryck, the A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in ISyE, and includes faculty members Nagi Gebraeel, Roshan Joseph, Kamran Paynabar, Eunhye Song, Xiaochen Xian, and Yao Xie. The broader multidisciplinary effort is co-led by Van Hentenryck, Aaron Stebner, associate director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI), Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. Chair, James R. and Sarah R. Borders Faculty Fellow, and professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, and Tom Kurfess, GTMI executive director and HUSCO/Ramirez Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power and Motion Control in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

“Manufacturing is moving toward intelligent, autonomous, and interconnected systems that can learn, adapt, and accelerate innovation,” said Pinar Keskinocak, the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair of ISyE. “This award positions ISyE and Georgia Tech at the forefront of that transformation. By combining ISyE’s strengths in AI and systems engineering with interdisciplinary collaboration and state-of-the-art facilities, this initiative will accelerate scientific discovery and autonomous manufacturing, and create new opportunities to tackle complex challenges in engineering and manufacturing.”

At the center of Georgia Tech’s contribution is the Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility (AMPF), operated through GTMI. The facility combines advanced manufacturing equipment, industrial robotics, and automated research capabilities to help accelerate the development of new materials and manufacturing technologies.  

While the initiative brings together experts from multiple disciplines, many of its core challenges align closely with ISyE’s strengths in systems thinking, optimization, machine learning, workflow design, and systems engineering. As part of the effort, ISyE researchers will contribute expertise in these areas to support the development of autonomous research workflows and AI-enabled manufacturing systems.  

“This is the AI that will transform scientific discovery and manufacturing,” said Van Hentenryck, who also serves as the director of the NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization. “This is deep multidisciplinary collaboration.”

Beyond its research impact, the initiative will provide ISyE students with hands-on experience working on complex, multidisciplinary challenges involving AI, robotics, and scientific discovery while gaining exposure to new domains where ISyE methodologies can be applied.  

“This type of deep collaboration across disciplines gives students a window of what is possible in the future and how they can help shape it,” Van Hentenryck added.   

Eunhye Song, a Coca-Cola Foundation Early Career Professor and associate professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech, has been named vice president/president-elect of the INFORMS Simulation (I-SIM) Society, recognizing her leadership and growing impact in the field of simulation.  

She took on a new one when she was promoted in the spring to Faculty Support Coordinator II in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing.

In addition to submitting proposals for SIC faculty to the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, or other government agencies, Kearney manages the hiring of student workers in the School. This can exceed 1,000 students over the course of the year.

“It’s graduate teaching assistants, graduate research assistants, student assistants, and graduate assistants, all of them,” Kearney said. “I enjoy learning new things.”

Kearney said she’s always been able to find new things to learn while working in financial administration, a field she discovered in high school through a summer job in accounts payable.

“I think that’s where it all started,” she said.

Kearney has held several finance roles since she moved to Atlanta 20 years ago. She spent 10 years at Georgia State University before joining SIC’s administrative staff in 2023.

During her career, the New Jersey native has handled everything from preparing spend authorizations and managing budgets to scheduling events, processing travel expenses, faculty supplies, and reimbursements.

In SIC, she balances all of that with the most important part of being a faculty support coordinator — grant proposals. The funding that faculty rely on for their research hinges on Kearney meeting deadlines under pressure. While she does less of that now, it can still create a heavy workload throughout the year.

“You just have to stay on top of it,” Kearney said. “Before you know it, it’s due, and you might not get everything you need until the day of. Then this has to be changed, and something else isn’t right. 

“It can be a lot if multiple proposals are due around the same time. But knowing that you helped work on a proposal that was rewarded is a good feeling.”

Although she was born in New Jersey, most of Kearney’s family is from Georgia. She and her husband are New York Knicks fans and recently celebrated the team’s first NBA Finals championship since 1970.

When her mother and sisters started returning to their roots in Georgia, she figured she should move to the Peach State since she was visiting so often.

“We always came to visit family,” she said. “My mother and father saved all their vacation and took a month off every summer, and that’s what we would do. My mother ended up going back to Georgia, and then two of my sisters moved here. I started visiting them a lot and thought I might like to live here.”

Kearney said she most enjoys spending time with her extended family in Georgia.

When the Fall 2026 semester begins, her job will be as busy as ever, as she estimates she will have to process hundreds of student hires.

“It’s definitely a challenge,” she said. “But I’m still learning, and I’m enjoying that part of it.”

As during previous editions, this year’s conference featured more than two dozen scientists, engineers, policy experts, and thought leaders from Georgia Tech and beyond, illustrating how collaboration across fields – from science and engineering to public policy and international affairs – helps to advance strategic research priorities. 

“Frontiers is about discovery and connections across disciplines and generations,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences and Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair. “This edition provided an inspiring glimpse into the future of space exploration and the many ways Georgia Tech is contributing to research and missions seeking answers to what lies beyond our planet.” 

Commitment to Space

Space research is a key institutional priority at Georgia Tech, which is home to numerous academic and research programs in planetary sciences, robotics, mission design, space policy, and other areas. 

The recently established Space Research Institute (SRI) serves as the central hub connecting the broad range of space-related research across campus. Led by Jud Ready, who also serves as principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, SRI has expanded support for space research and commercialization through initiatives such as the CreationsVC Space Fellows Program and Centers, Programs, and Initiatives seed grant program.

SRI’s efforts are in line with Georgia Tech’s long-standing contribution to space exploration. Hundreds of Yellow Jacket alumni work in the space sector, including several graduates who are playing key roles in the Artemis program. To date, more than a dozen Georgia Tech alumni have traveled to space.

Exploring the Final Frontier

The conference featured a series of panels and discussions led by faculty and researchers from the Colleges of Sciences and Engineering as well as the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. 

Sessions explored how researchers are studying the processes and conditions that support planetary habitability, seeking to answer one of humanity’s greatest questions: Does life exist beyond Earth? Speakers also examined how analog fieldwork in Earth’s extreme environments can inform space exploration, and how space research, in turn, can deepen our understanding of our own world.

Additional conversations centered on building better space missions through improved understanding of team and individual resilience, data collection, navigation, and the development of advanced technologies like the robots developed through the NASA LASSIE Project. 

Frontiers also highlighted Georgia Tech’s commitment to preparing the next generation of space scientists, engineers, and leaders. Student training and engagement were recurring themes throughout the day, with speakers emphasizing opportunities for student-led and student-run missions and research. A panel of Georgia Tech alumni shared their own STEM career journeys, challenging the idea of “one right path” to success — and acknowledging the resources and opportunities available at the Institute. 

A highlight of the conference was a fireside chat with Atlanta-native, retired U.S. Army Colonel and NASA Astronaut R. Shane Kimbrough (M.S. Operations Research 1998). Kimbrough, who spent a total of 388 days in space and performed nine spacewalks across three missions, reflected on his career and the evolution of spaceflight. He emphasized the expanding role of public-private and international partnerships in advancing ambitious goals, such as creating a permanent human outpost on the Moon. 

Policy and Public

The conference also explored how policy influences space discovery and innovation, with discussions touching on such issues as space security, access, governance, sustainability — and the influence of technology and science fiction on public perception and policy. 

Panelists described current policy frameworks governing outer space as struggling to keep pace with rapidly advancing technologies and expanding activities. According to these experts, increasing tensions among commercial, research, and recreational uses of space call for greater coordination among private and government entities to balance competing priorities while maximizing opportunities for innovation and exploration. 

The conference was punctuated by a networking lunch connecting attendees with Atlanta’s public astronomy community – including partners at several universities and the Georgia Tech Astronomy Club, which set up telescopes for attendees to safely observe the sun. Later that evening, the Georgia Tech Observatory hosted its Public Night, welcoming the broader Atlanta community to campus for telescope views of Jupiter, the Orion Nebula, and other celestial bodies. 

The Observatory Night was a fitting conclusion to a full day focused on Georgia Tech’s commitment and contributions to inspiring future generations of space explorers through research, education, and outreach. 

Experience the Frontiers conference in pictures on the College of Sciences’ Flickr account.

Georgia Tech is one of America’s best colleges, according to Money magazine.  

A professor in the School of Computer Science (SCS) was among nineteen faculty members recently recognized by the University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents (BOR). 

Sophie Landrieux Kartochian has been named the Assistant Dean for Student Success and Leadership, effective Aug. 10. This new position will report to the Associate Dean for Academic Affairs.   

IMS focuses on transformational technologies and societal systems that arise where innovative materials, devices, and processes meet.

“Transformative interdisciplinary research takes time to develop, and a second year of funding gives these teams the opportunity to build on early successes, expand collaborations, and demonstrate the impact of their work,” said Eric Vogel, executive director of IMS. “This continued investment helps researchers establish a strong foundation, achieve key milestones, and position promising initiatives to grow into larger, sustainable research programs capable of attracting significant external support.”

The funded projects come from four colleges and eight schools across Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). IMS selected these projects based on their innovative approaches, potential impact, and alignment with the IMS mission to push the boundaries of science and technology. They will receive funding, access to state-of-the-art facilities, and other support from the institute to bring their research to life.

IMS supports interdisciplinary research both in nationally recognized areas of need and those just emerging. It scaffolds research from the ground up, from seed funding for new initiatives to infrastructure support for research programs and embedded support for research centers. 

The 2026 research initiatives and programs include:

Research Initiatives:

Extreme-Environment Microelectronics | Nima Ghalichechian, John Cressler, Farrokh Ayazi, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Multifunctional Materials for Efficient Buildings | Akanksha Menon, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Precision Agriculture in Controlled Environments | Antonio Facchetti, School of Materials Science and Engineering; Yongsheng Cheng, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Anju Toor, School of Materials Science and Engineering

Sustainable Thermoregulation Strategies for Climate Change Resilience | Matthew Flavin, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Joe Bozeman, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Noura Howell, School of Literature, Media and Communication

Research Programs: 

Autonomous Research for Materials | Mark Losego, School of Materials Science and Engineering; Shreyas Kousik, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Animesh Garg, School of Interactive Computing

Georgia Tech Center for Semiconductor and Computing | Asif Khan, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Divya Mahajan, School of Computer Science and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Research Center:

Quantum Applications Research Center | Martin Mourigal, School of Physics; Robert Wylie, Georgia Tech Research Institute

Learn more about IMS’s research focuses and see a full list of its centers, programs, and initiatives.

As Atlanta continues to grow as one of the nation's leading technology and innovation hubs, Georgia Tech is helping to shape that growth through strategic partnerships, entrepreneurial programs, and community-driven experiences that connect innovators across the region. 

SAINT-AVOLD, France. On a June afternoon at the Lorraine American Cemetery in Saint-Avold, 250 Georgia Tech-Europe (GTE) students stand looking over a field of 14,246 white marble headstones, one for each U.S. service member buried beneath. Silence surrounds the group as Matthew Ramsey, a Georgia Tech undergraduate, leans a wreath against the tombstone of his great-grandfather, Staff Sergeant Russell Wilson, an Army infantryman killed in the Battle of the Bulge. Ramsey performs the familial ceremony, rubbing sand from Omaha Beach and planting a flag in front of the headstone. "I am the first person in my family to ever get the chance to do so," he shares. Other GTE students witness the moment, connecting to a history that has shaped the world as they know it.

Exploring personal and shared world histories is central to a Georgia Tech-Europe education. Situated in one of the most contested landscapes in modern Western history, GTE offers students direct access to the trenches, forts, and cemeteries of two world wars. Courses such as Professor Timothy Stoneman’s HTS 2037: 20th-Century Europe, and portions of Professor Jennifer Orth-Veillon’s LMC 3234: Travel Writing, incorporate these sites into their curriculum. This summer, GTE partnered with the University of North Georgia on an immersive military history program featuring Professor Jon Beall’s HTS 3803: War & Leadership, Middle Ages to Present. Across these courses, students move beyond dates and statistics to engage with the human stories of history and reflect on their connections to the past.

Like Matthew Ramsey, Cadet Kyle Gallentine, a UNG cybersecurity major, reported standing in the Lorraine Cemetery brought him closer to his great-grandfather, a WWII soldier. "When I left the cemetery, I felt a strong desire to learn my family's story," Gallentine said. "We still have his uniform, campaign map, photographs, and other keepsakes, but I never truly knew the story behind them."

After the Lorraine Cemetery visit, Orth-Veillon, Stoneman, and Beall led an overnight trip to the Meuse region. Nicolas Czubak, official historian of the Verdun Memorial Museum, guided the group through the Meuse-Argonne cemetery, the Butte de Vauquois, and the Montsec Memorial before reaching Verdun itself, France's most symbolic WWI battlefield. For Peter Kobes, a mechanical engineering major, the cemetery reframed how he thought about war’s cost. "By resting at the place they fell, these soldiers let strangers like me stop and reckon with their loss," he wrote in a photo essay assigned for the trip.

The students’ second trip to Belgium carried a different weight, as it was inspired by Orth-Veillon’s own family history. Her grandfather, Dr. William J. Hagood Jr., served as a battalion surgeon with the 335th Infantry Regiment, 84th Division, during the Battle of the Bulge. Orth-Veillon interviewed him before his death in 2009 and has since drawn on an archive of over 500 of his wartime letters. That research led her to Jacques Bourguignon, 104, a former Belgian resistance fighter who sheltered Hagood's medical unit in his family's cellar in Marche-en-Famenne over Christmas 1944. "On Christmas Eve, they sheltered there with about fifty others, including neighbors, other soldiers, and even German prisoners," Orth-Veillon shares. The two men remained friends by letter until the 1960s. 

The highlight of the trip came when thirteen students from Orth-Veillon's, Stoneman's, and Beall's classes spent the morning with Jacques Bourgignon at his retirement home. Bourguignon, an active member of the Lion’s Club and current president of Marche-en-Famenne’s motorcycle club, told them the story of his life, focusing on the resistance, which he joined at age 17. 

“Were you afraid during your missions?” asked the students. 

“We weren’t scared,” he replied, chuckling. “We were crazy. I joined the resistance because I wanted to do something to fight back. It felt like the only human way to respond.”

“What do you want to say to people today?”

“Try to do as much good as possible in life. I am grateful to the Americans for the liberation of Belgium. After years of occupation and suffering, seeing them arrive was unforgettable.”

They also visited Bastogne War Museum to commemorate the Ardennes Offensive, during which  89,000 American soldiers were killed or wounded between December 1944 and January 1945. For Tucker Messer, a rising second-year business administration major, the visit brought a family story to life: his great-grandfather, Oscar Messer, fought there with the 10th Armored Division's 61st Armored Infantry Battalion. "Walking around the scene of the heavy fighting, I realized how fragile human life is and how one small thing changes history," Messer said. "If a random German teenager fighting in the battle had aimed better and killed my great-grandfather, I would not be here."

"Few academic programs place students directly inside the geography of the history they study," said Beall, who guided the group through Stavelot, a resistance stronghold during the Ardennes Offensive. Learning deepens when students stand where history happened and connect their identities to the people and events that shaped it. As Orth-Veillon, Stoneman, and Beall suggest, they leave with more than a photograph or final assignment; they carry a lasting relationship with the past that shapes how they see the world and their place within it.

With a Ph.D. in biomedical engineering and as a former trainee in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB), it’s no surprise that Georgia Tech alumnus and serial entrepreneur Chris Lee loves numbers. One in four. Eighty percent. Five times.  

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Plan accordingly for delays in the following areas: 

• West Campus.
• Techwood Drive.
• Centennial Olympic Park Drive (East Campus and North Avenue move-in).
• Tenth Street (graduate housing).

Additionally, drivers should abide by all posted signage, including parking notices and “No Parking” signs, as these areas are necessary for resident check-in, unloading, and short-term parking. 

Some parking areas will be reserved for move-in use only. If you park in the following areas, see alternate parking locations for move-in days:

• W10 – Campus Recreation Deck 
  • Alternate parking location: W02 – Student Center Deck
• ER54 – North Avenue Apartments South Deck 
  • Alternate parking location: Park on levels 2 and 3 only
• WR29 – On-street parking near Armstrong/Hefner Residence Halls (West Campus Residential)
  • Alternate parking location: W31 – Institute of Paper Science and Technology (IPST) Lot 
• ER51 – On-street parking near Gray/Hayes Residence Halls (Southeast Housing)
  • Alternate parking location: E52 – Peters Deck 

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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.

Beyond Conventional Fracture Testing

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.”

An Honest View of Sustainability

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.

From Cracks to Circularity

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.

But discovering and vetting those materials can be slow, expensive, and hands-on, requiring researchers to prepare samples, run experiments on specialized equipment, and repeat the cycle through trial and error.

Now, Georgia Tech aims to deliver a paradigm shift in materials and manufacturing research with a new Programmable Cloud Laboratory that will leverage artificial intelligence (AI), simulation, and autonomous experimentation to accelerate that process dramatically.

Built upon Georgia Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility (AMPF), a core facility of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI), the cloud lab will allow researchers across the country to direct work remotely, refine experiments based on results and AI recommendations, and tap into advanced manufacturing capabilities without spending weeks on-site. In effect, the cloud lab will bring the facility to the researcher.

“By making advanced manufacturing and AI-driven experimentation accessible from anywhere, we are accelerating the discovery of critical new materials and shaping the future of U.S. innovation,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research. “Georgia Tech is proud to provide the world-class infrastructure to help meet this national need and strengthen our research partnerships.”

The cloud lab is supported by $18.1 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is part of a broader effort to build a national network of 20 AI-enabled cloud laboratories. The labs are designed to work together, eventually allowing researchers to combine capabilities and workflows across the network. The new research ecosystem will connect advanced scientific infrastructure with expertise across the country.

“Researchers can ask a question, have work recommended by AI agents, have experiments carried out at the facility using robotics, and get the results back,” said Aaron Stebner, GTMI associate director, Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. Chair, James R. and Sarah R. Borders Faculty Fellow, and professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering and the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering (ME). “They can use AMPF resources to advance their own research without having to be experts in each piece of equipment or send students to AMPF for weeks at a time.”

By lowering costs and barriers to conducting that research, Stebner said, the cloud lab will dramatically expand who can take advantage of AMPF’s capabilities.

A Self-Driving Research Lab

AMPF is a mixed-use facility where both industry and academic partners can discover new materials and do manufacturing research. Today, the facility is approaching autonomous workflow capabilities across about 38 pieces of equipment. Through the cloud lab, the team aims to expand automated and autonomous workflows to more than 100 of AMPF’s 160 pieces of equipment.

The cloud lab will also bring together stages of materials development that have traditionally happened separately, allowing researchers to explore materials discovery, manufacturing, testing, and scale-up within the same research environment.

Pascal Van Hentenryck, director of the NSF AI Institute for Advances in Optimization and A. Russell Chandler III Chair in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, said the automation extends beyond individual pieces of equipment. Robots can operate machines and move materials from one station to another, physically carrying out workflows requested by researchers from afar. AI will help determine which machines and robots are needed for each task and manage their movements across the facility.

Van Hentenryck compared the process to following a recipe.

“When you cook, you have a recipe, and the recipe tells you what you have to do,” Van Hentenryck said. “You don’t need to understand exactly how the stove is working. You just need to know what you need to accomplish with it.”

AI agents will take those high-level “recipes” from researchers, translate them into detailed workflows, and coordinate experiments, simulations, and data flows across the facility.

The system will rely in part on digital twins — virtual models of the facility that can help plan, monitor, and improve experiments before and during execution. Van Hentenryck said the system is also designed to learn from each run, improving how machines are tuned and how future workflows are scheduled.

The project will integrate Duke University’s Automatic FLOW for Materials Discovery software platform, led by professor Stefano Curtarolo, to connect computational discovery with physical experimentation and help researchers more rapidly identify and evaluate promising new materials. Contextualize, led by founder and CEO Branden Kappes, will provide the data platform that seamlessly connects researchers, instruments, data, and IT systems across the distributed network. Tech AI will also contribute to the project as part of the broader research team.

The cloud lab will help bridge a longstanding gap between research and industrial adoption. Companies can be reluctant to interrupt working production lines to test unproven technologies, while startups and academic researchers often lack access to industrial-scale facilities where they can demonstrate that their ideas work. AMPF provides an environment where emerging technologies can be tested and de-risked without disrupting commercial production.

“The cloud lab will give industry partners and manufacturers the ability to evaluate new ideas before they commit to large-scale deployment,” said Tom Kurfess, executive director of GTMI and Agustin A. Ramirez/HUSCO International Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power Systems in ME. “This initiative will shorten development cycles and make it easier to bring promising technologies into production, enabling our partners and us to innovate at the speed of thought.”

Expanding Access to Advanced Research

The project aims to serve more than 400 users from 150 academic, industry, and government institutions, with more than half participating remotely.

“Making these autonomous labs available to a very wide community is key to innovation,” Van Hentenryck said. “You just give a lot of people the opportunity to try things out.”

The cloud lab builds on a larger effort Georgia Tech has pursued through AMPF for years: integrating AI, automation, and advanced manufacturing to create a flexible research environment that can evolve with technology, expand access, and strengthen U.S. leadership in materials and manufacturing.

For Stebner, the cloud lab represents a critical next step in bringing that vision to life.

“We are six years into this effort, and we’re already at a place I thought would take us 20 years to reach,” Stebner said. “This cloud lab is going to take us to a level of technology, research, leadership, and access that I didn’t know if we would reach by the end of my career.”

CultivAgents is a three-agent system that fields gardening questions and creates tailored plans based on a user’s gardening skill level, climate and environment, and cultural background.

The experience agent, environmental agent, and ethnobotanical agent inform one another and work together to guide users through the gardening process.

“Multi-agent systems provide multi-faceted support,” said Diana Wang, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing who created CultivAgents. “My interest was in how we could provide more personalized and aligned support to individuals trying to grow food themselves while facing unique environmental or cultural factors.”

Gardening is a hobby that many people start but give up because of the time and effort it requires to be successful. Ryan Pemberton, a horticulturist at Georgia Tech’s community garden, said the two biggest mistakes he sees novice gardeners make are starting too big and overwatering.

“If you’ve never gardened before, trying to manage a large plot could be overwhelming,” Pemberton said.

“You can start small. You don’t have to have a big garden right away. You can start with one tomato plant and grow from there. See how well you can keep that one plant alive and then expand as you feel comfortable.”

Aside from the built-in health benefits of growing fresh food and working outdoors, Pemberton said gardening can lower your grocery bill and reduce carbon emissions by minimizing food transportation. 

It can also be a great way for international students at Tech to grow foods native to their homelands. He said a tool like CultivAgents could be useful for determining whether Atlanta’s climate is suitable. 

“People might want to grow a lot of different vegetables in their garden, but if you go too far south of here, it gets a little too hot to grow things like broccoli and strawberries,” he said. 

“A little north of here, it gets a little too cold to grow some species of peppers. Having something tell you what grows well in your region means you’re not having to pick and choose or guess.”

That’s one of the reasons Wang designed CultivAgents to feature multiple agents that consider unique environmental and cultural contexts.

“Multiple agents help distribute specific types of support as opposed to the generic support you often get from a single chatbot,” Wang said.

“Another advantage is that they tend to build on each other. The environmental agent builds on the experience agent’s detailed steps. This allows the system to tell you how to grow bush beans, for example, within a specific local community.”

Wang said she surveyed and interviewed new and experienced gardeners who use Tech’s community garden to learn what they would want from a conversational agent. She found that many wanted step-by-step instructions and guidance on what to plant, how to plant it, and a schedule for upkeep.

“All of our users told us they view gardening as something that’s long term, so they wanted this platform to be able to facilitate that kind of relationship,” she said.

The community garden is a shared space with nine garden beds. Pemberton said it’s a great place for new gardeners to learn to grow food before starting their own gardens. Much of the food grown there is donated to Klemis Kitchen, Georgia Tech’s on-campus food bank.

For more information about the community garden and how to get involved, visit https://sustainability.campusservices.gatech.edu/community-garden/

To see a live demo of CultivAgents, visit https://cultivagents.onrender.com.

The Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS) at Georgia Tech has announced the Spring 2026 Core Facility Seed Grant recipients. The primary purpose of this program is to give graduate students in diverse disciplines working on original and unfunded research in micro- and nanoscale science and engineering the opportunity to access the most advanced academic cleanroom space in the Southeast. In addition to using the labs' state-of-the-art fabrication, lithography, and characterization tools, the awardees will have the opportunity to gain proficiency in cleanroom and tool methodology and access the consultation services provided by research staff members in IMS. Seed Grant awardees are also provided travel support to present their research at a scientific conference. 

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“I wanted to help students,” he said, “the ones who need it the most.”

Battaglia serves as VP of Engineering for Sysdyne, a cloud-native software platform for the construction materials industry – concrete, asphalt, gravel. He calls it “Sweaty SaaS.”

“It’s the ugly industries that are my bread and butter now.”

He has a long history of entrepreneurship. During a Georgia Tech study-abroad program in Barcelona, he crossed paths with Oscar Pierre (AE 2014), joining him on the ground floor of what became Glovo, now one of Europe’s largest delivery platforms.

Back in Atlanta, Battaglia joined a team for the Inventure Prize competition that served as the basis for FIXD, which makes a device that decodes check-engine lights for drivers. He helped launch the company, serving as a founding engineer.

He later co-founded Triple Axle, a routing platform for the specialty trucking industry, before joining Slabstack – a CRM and pricing platform for concrete, aggregate, and asphalt producers – as a founder and CTO. Sysdyne acquired Slabstack in December 2025.

When he was at Tech, Battaglia did “a little of everything” – lacrosse, Phi Delta Theta, a co-op at GTRI, study abroad in Barcelona. He started in 2012 and graduated in December 2017, having taken time along the way to work with startups and travel.

He says Tech’s emphasis on applied computing – not just computer science theory – prepared him well for a career spent building real products in unglamorous industries. “It’s about what you do with the skills, not the skills themselves,” he said. The scholarship, he adds, was always going to be for the College of Computing. “I just wanted to make sure it was going to the right place.”

“For me, it was like my playground,” he said. “I’m so thankful I got exposed to so many different things.”

Dust-sized meteoroids and solar wind gradually alter lunar soil, producing tiny metallic particles known as nanophase iron. For years, scientists have used sensing data influenced by those particles to estimate the weathering age of the moon’s surface, but they weren’t sure which weather source primarily drives these changes.

To investigate, physics Ph.D. candidate Roshan Trivedi and Advik Vira, a recent Ph.D. graduate, exposed ilmenite, a common mineral on both the Earth and moon, to a synthetic version of solar wind. The experiment produced nanophase iron under controlled conditions, suggesting that solar wind plays a major role in shaping the lunar surface observed today. 

The team presented its findings in “Creation of Lunar-Like Rims in Ilmenite Using Synthetic Solar Wind,” published in The Planetary Science Journal in June. Their work was conducted through the Georgia Tech Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER), a NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) led by Georgia Tech Regents’ Professor Thom Orlando, a co-author of the study. A central aim of CLEVER is to understand the science and effects of space weathering as they pertain to the goals of NASA’s Artemis missions.

By understanding how the moon’s surface morphs on a microscopic level, scientists will be able to better interpret remote sensing data. Soon, we won’t have to rely just on moon missions to learn detailed characteristics of the lunar surface.

The work could also shed light on another longstanding question: how water forms on the moon. 

“Water would be a fantastic resource for humans operating on the moon, but scientifically, we are driven simply by the question of how water gets there in the first place,” said Phillip First, a professor in the School of Physics. “Solar wind is potentially one way, because protons in solar wind provide the hydrogen of H2O molecules while oxygen is present in lunar minerals.”

Using a vacuum chamber in Orlando’s lab to simulate solar wind and high-resolution electron microscopy to analyze the samples, the researchers recreated the effects of thousands of years of solar wind exposure.

“Scientists have been doing laboratory radiation experiments for years, but they haven't been able to characterize the results at this level of detail,” said lead author Trivedi.

The team can now simulate a wide range of exposure ages, which may help explain how water forms. In addition to forming nanophase iron, the experiments created tiny voids within the mineral — potential sites where hydrogen from solar wind could bond with oxygen to form water. 

“Having the ability to recreate the solar wind and having results look so similar to actual lunar samples is excellent,” said co-lead author Vira. 

DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ae6074

Funding: This work was directly supported by the NASA SSERVI under CLEVER. Sample preparation was performed at the Georgia Tech Institute for Matter and Systems, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. Collaborations between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Georgia Tech for advanced electron microscopy were supported by the Georgia Tech Center for Space Technology and Research. 

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:

• Research leadership — Founded in 2024, Georgia Tech’s Center for Critical Mineral Solutions serves as a hub for interdisciplinary research and technology development across the Institute.
• Regional partnerships —Through the Georgia Partnership for Essential Materials, a flagship regional collaboration platform, Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, and the Georgia Mining Association convene stakeholders from across the critical minerals sector. The partnership brings together industry, nonprofit organizations, regional economic development agencies, national labs, universities, and technical colleges to connect, collaborate, and stay engaged in the latest developments.
• International engagement — A U.K.-U.S. working group extends partnerships across the Southeastern United States and Southwest United Kingdom, connecting researchers, industry leaders, and government agencies working to strengthen global supply chains.
• Georgia Critical Mineral Supply Chain Manufacturing Demonstration Center — Supported through congressional funding, the center is developing capabilities and regional supply chain demonstrations that connect resource development, materials processing, recycling, and advanced manufacturing.

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.   

When most people think of hurricanes, they picture howling winds tearing off roofs and snapping trees. But for Ali Sarhadi, a Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Faculty Fellow, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, and director of the Climate Risk and Extreme Dynamics Lab, the real killer is often less visible. “People think that hurricanes are about wind, but sometimes that’s not the whole story,” he said. “The majority of fatalities are coming from the water, not the wind.”

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

Rethinking Hurricane Risk

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

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

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

Physics-Informed AI: Street-Level Flood Warnings

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

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

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

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

Targeting Georgia’s Coastline 

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

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

Building Climate-Resilient Power Grids and Cities

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

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

The ACS is one of the world’s largest scientific societies, and its Fellows Program recognizes outstanding achievements in scientific research, education, leadership, and service to the chemical profession and honors a select group of members each year.

"Election as an ACS Fellow is a significant honor that recognizes not only scientific excellence but also leadership and service to the profession," said Julia Kubanek, Georgia Tech's vice president for Interdisciplinary Research. "Yuanzhi's pioneering research, her leadership within ACS and the Strategic Energy Institute, and her commitment to advancing interdisciplinary collaboration have strengthened Georgia Tech's impact in chemistry, energy, and environmental research. We are proud to celebrate this well-deserved recognition."

Tang was recognized for her contributions to environmental chemistry, biogeochemistry, and energy-related research, as well as for her leadership and service to the chemical sciences.

"Given her exceptionally energetic research program, which spans topics ranging from the basic understanding of chemical cycling on Earth to creative solutions to recover rare elements from wastes, this honor is richly deserved and completely unsurprising," said Jean Lynch-Stieglitz, chair of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "We are lucky to have Yuanzhi as part of EAS."

As SEI executive director, Tang leads Institute-wide efforts to strengthen Georgia Tech's energy research enterprise by connecting expertise across disciplines and fostering partnerships with industry, government, and national laboratories. She also maintains an internationally recognized research program focused on understanding the chemical and biological processes that shape natural and engineered environments.

Established in 2008, the ACS Fellows Program honors a distinguished group of scientists who have made exceptional contributions to chemistry and related fields while also demonstrating dedicated service to the society. With this election, Tang joins 17 Georgia Tech ACS Fellows.

"I’m deeply honored," Tang said. "This recognition reflects the contributions of many outstanding students, postdoctoral researchers, colleagues, collaborators, and mentors throughout my career. I am grateful for the opportunity to work alongside such talented people to advance scientific discovery and build interdisciplinary partnerships that address critical energy and environmental challenges."

Founded in 1876, the American Chemical Society represents more than 170,000 members worldwide and is a leading source of scientific information through its journals, conferences, and educational programs.

Georgia Tech’s Office of Sustainability, in partnership with the Office of Research Operations, is launching Georgia Tech’s first Sustainable Lab Certification program, which will provide a framework for campus laboratories to implement practical, high-impact sustainability measures. Labs earn recognition for their efforts through tiered certification levels — bronze, silver, or gold — based on the number and results of practices implemented.  

Fueled by the generosity of thousands of alumni, donors, corporations, foundations, and friends, this defining moment builds on the strongest two-year fundraising performance in Georgia Tech’s history and reflects extraordinary engagement across the Institute. Recent milestones underscore the breadth of support behind Transforming Tomorrow, including the 79th Roll Call, which raised $8.8 million, and Georgia Tech Athletics’ Full Steam Ahead initiative, which led to more than $100 million in gifts and commitments.

The collective support of donors, including gifts from first-time donors, is already making a difference across campus — in the experiences of students, the work of faculty, and the spaces that shape learning and discovery.

Transforming Campus and Expanding Opportunity

Donor support has fueled major projects such as the Thomas A. Fanning Student-Athlete Performance Center, which opened in May, and George Tower | Scheller Tower, which will open in September. Scheller Tower will house MBA and executive education programs for the Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business, while George Tower will become the new home of the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. These facilities are designed to foster collaboration, innovation, and student success.

This momentum continues as Georgia Tech advances new capital projects, including the Aerospace Engineering Building, Medical Innovation Building, Creative Quarter, and Alumni Welcome Center — each critical to the Institute’s future growth.

At the same time, philanthropy is transforming access to education. Donors have contributed more than $513 million to expand scholarship and fellowship support, opening doors for talented students and ensuring that financial barriers do not limit opportunity.

Investing in Students, Faculty, and Research

Support for students extends from undergraduate access to graduate-level research and discovery. Graduate fellowships funded through the campaign are enabling students to pursue advanced study, contribute to research labs, and play a central role in Georgia Tech’s academic mission.

At the faculty level, donor investment continues to strengthen Georgia Tech’s ability to attract and retain world-class educators and researchers. A landmark example is the $100 million bequest from the estate of alumnus John W. Durstine, the largest gift in the Institute’s history, supporting faculty excellence in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

In health research, a significant commitment has established the Parker H. Petit Center for AI-Driven Health Innovation, a new research hub focused on using artificial intelligence to model diseases, identify treatment paths, and move discoveries closer to patient care.

Driving Innovation Through Collaboration and Industry Engagement

Philanthropy is also fueling new interdisciplinary initiatives that reflect Georgia Tech’s collaborative, forward-looking approach. The Tony Kepano Joint Center for Real Estate brings together the Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business and the College of Design to create a multidisciplinary platform for education, research, and industry engagement.

Corporate and foundation partnerships are accelerating progress in key areas. The Delta Air Lines Foundation’s $5 million commitment is helping fund the new Aerospace Engineering Building. This facility will elevate one of the nation’s top-ranked aerospace programs, fuel the state’s economy, and accelerate innovation across the aviation industry.

Georgia Tech’s multidecade partnership with Hyundai Motor Company is advancing research and education in sustainable mobility, hydrogen technologies, and workforce development, while strengthening the Institute’s role in driving innovation and economic growth.

Looking Ahead: Sustaining Momentum

The campaign’s success reflects the collective efforts of alumni, donors, volunteers, faculty, staff, students, and partners who have advanced Georgia Tech's mission and strengthened its impact. The momentum created through their generosity will help shape the Institute’s future for years to come.

“Behind every gift is someone who believes in Georgia Tech’s mission and wants to help us amplify our impact,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “Their generous support has expanded access to education, strengthened research and innovation, and strengthened our Institute to make sure it keeps creating value for generations to come. I am profoundly grateful to each of our donors for investing in Georgia Tech. 

I’m equally grateful to our deans, faculty, Campaign Steering Committee volunteers, and every member of our Development team for opening doors, carrying our message everywhere, and persuading others to participate in this campaign. Congratulations to all of them on reaching the most ambitious philanthropic goals in Institute history.”

A New Perspective

For Kelseigh Williams of Berrien County High School, the 2026 Georgia Tech Summer Institute (GTSI) changed the way she viewed college life and community.

“One of the biggest things I learned is just that whenever I do get to college, it’s not as intimidating as it seems," she said. “Being from a small town myself and getting to experience Atlanta, which is way bigger than where I’m from, it was just a great experience seeing that big towns aren’t as scary as what they seem online.”

Williams was among 105 rising high school juniors representing 62 counties across Georgia who participated in GTSI this summer. Developed and hosted by Expanded Learning Programs in the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC), the weeklong residential program helps students prepare for the transition to college while exploring academic pathways and building connections with peers, faculty, and staff.

Participants were selected from more than 200 nominations submitted by school districts across Georgia. Support from Georgia Tech allowed the program to be offered at no cost to students.

Vice Provost for Enrollment Management Rick Clark said the success of the program depends on strong partnerships with Georgia educators who identify students for these opportunities. “We all want the same thing, which is to develop talent and invest in the next generation of innovators and problem-solvers," he said. "GTSI is a group project, that only works when our partners—superintendents, principals, counselors, and teachers in communities all around Georgia—raise their hand to identify potential. Ultimately, talent is distributed broadly, but access to opportunity is not. And this is one effort we’re making to solve that challenge.”

Academic Exploration

During the week, students experienced college life firsthand by navigating campus, attending sessions about admissions, financial aid, scholarships, and student life. They also participated in hands-on learning activities led by faculty and staff from Georgia Tech’s College of Design, College of Engineering, College of Computing, College of Sciences, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and Scheller College of Business.

Case Johnson, who attends Hawkinsville High School in Pulaski County, said the experience reinforced a goal he has had for years. “I’ve wanted to attend Georgia Tech for some years now, but this whole experience has served to solidify my aspirations,” he said.

“Though I've had a lot of enjoyable moments, a couple of them that are most memorable for me would be the time that I was learning block coding in the computer science academic session, as well as the recreational activities I’ve participated in with both my peers and group leaders,” Johnson added.

Future Pathways

Beyond the classroom, students formed lasting friendships with fellow participants and Georgia Tech student group leaders while taking part in campus tours, team-building activities, and recreational events.

JaRyelle Mackey, a student at Charles R. Drew High School in Clayton County, said one of her favorite moments was participating in a chemistry lab that demonstrated how cockroaches use smells to navigate their environment. The experience also helped her gain a better understanding of the college application process.

“Another thing I learned was that when applying to Georgia Tech, they really look at the things you give to your community and not just your academics,” she said.

For many students, especially those from rural and under-resourced communities, the experience provides a tangible opportunity to see that college and future career pathways are within reach.

That sense of confidence and self-discovery is at the core of the Georgia Tech Summer Institute and a key reason it was established in 2025. Collaboration among CEISMC in the College of Lifetime Learning, the Office of Strategic Student Access, and Georgia Tech’s academic colleges makes this program possible.

“The Georgia Tech Summer Institute continues to expand access to educational opportunities for students across the state, working to combine immersive STEM experiences with practical college preparation,” said Sirocus Barnes, director of Expanded Learning Programs. “It’s more than an introduction to Georgia Tech. It provides participants with the knowledge, confidence, and support to begin envisioning their futures in higher education and STEM careers.”

From June 4–6, Georgia Tech’s Exhibition Hall transformed into a showcase of creativity, engineering, and teamwork as 48 FIRST LEGO League Challenge teams from across the United States and around the world gathered for the inaugural Georgia Ramblin’ Robots Invitationals. 

The three-day event welcomed students ages 9-16, along with coaches, mentors, and families. More than 700 attendees from 17 states and 24 countries participated. As one of nine international FIRST LEGO League events held at the conclusion of the “UnEarthed” season, the invitational brought together top-performing teams that advanced through previous competitions. 

Georgia Tech has long served as an affiliate partner for FIRST LEGO League. Building on that work, Timothy Cone, senior director of the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC) on the Savannah campus, led the successful bid to bring a world-level invitational to Atlanta. For nearly two decades, CEISMC has supported FIRST LEGO League across Georgia, including coordinating regional events and hosting the state championship.  

 “We saw this as an opportunity to welcome students from around the world to Georgia Tech and create an experience that reflects the scale and significance of their work,” said Cone, who serves as the co-program delivery partner for FIRST LEGO League Challenge in Georgia. “Hosting the invitational allowed us to combine high-level competition with exposure to a university environment focused on access, innovation, and community engagement.”

This year’s “UnEarthed” theme challenged students to explore archaeology through research, problem-solving, coding, and engineering. Students programmed LEGO robots to complete archaeology-inspired missions in timed matches. Teams followed the engineering design process to build, code, test, and refine their robots. They prepared their robots to complete as many missions as possible in 2.5-minute rounds, earning points for each successful mission. 

Teams also participated in innovation projects, investigating real-world challenges faced by archaeologists and developing creative solutions. Students used their research, design, and communication skills to present their ideas, including robot designs, to a panel of judges and explain how their solutions could make a meaningful impact. 

Beyond the competition, teams explored Georgia Tech’s campus through tours of The Hive Makerspace and the Robotarium and visited the Georgia Aquarium. They also attended an undergraduate admission presentation highlighting the college search and application process. The weekend concluded with an awards ceremony recognizing teams across multiple categories and highlighting both technical excellence and teamwork. 

Competition Manager Jorge Hernandez Cervantes said hosting an international event of this scale creates opportunities to connect Georgia Tech with students who are already immersed in robotics and the engineering design process. Through his work co-leading GoSTEM, an outreach program and partner school network, he has seen firsthand how early experiences on a college campus can influence students' educational pathways.

“We want students to feel like they belong here,” Hernandez Cervantes said. “For many, this was their first interaction with a university, and we wanted it to be memorable and inspiring. By offering a multi-day experience, we created an event that celebrates STEM while supporting Georgia Tech’s commitment to providing students with early exposure to STEM and expanding pathways into STEM majors and careers.”

For many teams, the most meaningful part of the weekend was the opportunity to connect with other young innovators from different cultures. Participants highlighted the excitement of exploring Georgia Tech’s campus, experiencing a new city, and building connections with fellow students and mentors.    

Coaches also emphasized the personal growth students experienced through FIRST LEGO League. Spyros Kourias, coach of Greece’s Talodia team, has watched students develop through five years of FIRST LEGO League competitions. "It’s been rewarding to see them grow up, develop their skills, and interact with teams from all over the world," he said.

Christina McCarthy Burger, coach of Wisconsin’s Gram Gram Jones and the Drippy Stones team, said the invitational reflected months of hard work and preparation. 

"This international-level opportunity is so rewarding and exciting because the team worked so hard all the way through sectionals, regionals, and state competition,” she said. “It's been wonderful to watch this friendly, funny, clever, smart team of kids develop their skill sets to get to be here!” 

2026 Georgia Ramblin’ Robots Invitationals Awards 

Breakthrough Award 

• Quantum Warriors, Arizona
• Gram Gram Jones and the Drippy Stones, Wisconsin

Rising All-Star Award

• Super Duper Strawberries, Denmark
• Capybaras, Paraguay

Motivate Award

• Green Hawks, Maryland

Champions’ Award

• 1st place – Catskill, Israel
• 2nd place – SESI SENAI SC – Robo Rangers, Brazil
• 3rd place – REM-2, Spain
• 4th place – VENABOTS, Mexico

Core Values Award

• 1st place – Syntax Terror, Vermont
• 2nd place – Gadget Girls, Tennessee
• 3rd place – Jr. Metal Crusaders, Georgia
• 4th places – Team Unearthed Creativity, Washington

Innovation Project Award

• 1st place – Cybertronic, Illinois
• 2nd place – Knockout Knights, Arkansas
• 3rd place – Delta Team, Israel
• 4th place – Bots N’at, Pennsylvania

Robot Design Award

• 1st place – Raptors.JU, Switzerland
• 2nd place – Spirited Kamakura, Japan
• 3rd place – Kinetic Koalas, Utah
• 4th place – Neon Nerdettes, Massachusetts

Robot Performance Award

• 1st place – TechnoCatz, Florida
• 2nd place – Catskill, Israel
• 3rd place – REM-2, Spain
• 4th place – Tanager All-Starz, Norway

Lindsey Bullinger, associate professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, has been named associate dean for research, effective Aug. 1.

Bullinger is the Associate Director of the Health Economics and Policy Innovation Collaborative and a co-editor for the Journal of Policy Analysis & Management and a consulting editor for Child Maltreatment. She is also a faculty affiliate with the Georgia Policy Labs at Georgia State University, the Wilson Sheehan Lab for Economic Opportunities at the University of Notre Dame, the Institute for Research on Poverty at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and the Children's Pediatric Research Alliance at the Children's Healthcare of Atlanta.

“Dr. Bullinger’s deep expertise in research and leadership will be a tremendous asset to supporting and amplifying the amazing research in the College,” said Amanda Murdie, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Regents’ Professor, and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair. “Her leadership roles both at Georgia Tech and in her research area make her an ideal leader for the College’s research enterprise.”

Bullinger’s research examines how public policies affect child and family health and well-being, especially among low-income families. Her work has been published in American Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Health Economics, Journal of Policy Analysis & Management, Contemporary Economic Policy, Review of Economics of the Household, Economics & Human Biology, Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, Housing Policy Debate, Child Abuse & Neglect, Children and Youth Services Review, Health Affairs, BMC Pediatrics, Health Services Research, American Journal of Public Health, JAMA Pediatrics, Maternal and Child Health Journal, and more.

Bullinger’s research has been funded by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, Foundation for Opioid Response Efforts (FORE), Doris Duke Charitable Foundation, Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy, Spencer Foundation, Cash Transfer Lab at NYU, and Pew Charitable Trusts.

For the past three years, Bullinger has co-chaired the Georgia Tech Office of the Executive Vice President for Research's steering committee, developing recommendations for a new Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) on health and well-being. She has also served two elected terms on the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy’s Faculty Executive Committee and co-hosts the annual Atlanta Workshop on Public Policy and Child Well-being.

She earned a Ph.D. from the O'Neill School of Public and Environmental Affairs at Indiana University, Bloomington, Indiana. She holds an MPA from the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs at Syracuse University and a bachelor's degree from Miami University in Ohio.

Conversations about artificial intelligence in education are unfolding across Georgia Tech, influencing classroom experiences, shaping student behavior, and raising important questions about the future of learning.