During Chris’s years at Coca-Cola, one recurring question was how long it took for new information to make its way into a supply chain decision. At one point, the answer was measured in weeks. A lot could happen between learning that conditions had changed and doing something about it.

That delay is one reason we are interested in what AI might do for supply chains. Digital tools can shorten the time between sensing a change and deciding how to respond. Robotics and other physical technologies can shorten the time between a decision and its execution. But a faster decision is only valuable if the organization has decided what a good decision looks like.

In the first conversation of our new SCL webinar series, we asked a deliberately provocative question: If AI runs more of the supply chain, what is left to manage? Our answer begins with a familiar idea. The purpose of the supply chain has not changed. The way we organize people, processes, and decisions around that purpose may change considerably.

As AI takes on more sensing, analysis, and routine decision-making, management does not disappear. It moves up a level, from making individual decisions to designing the objectives, boundaries, and decision systems within which those decisions are made.

The destination is familiar

Set AI aside for a moment. What would we want from an excellent supply chain? It would sense demand and changes in the environment early, anticipate what might happen next, coordinate supply with demand, make decisions across functions, execute reliably, adapt when conditions change, and learn from the results. We have been working toward that kind of system for decades.

The measures are familiar too: service, cost, cash, growth, resilience, and responsibility. Better technology may help us improve several of these at once, but it will not make every tradeoff disappear. A machine still has finite capacity. Inventory still uses cash. A product moving from Atlanta to Dallas still takes time. Suppliers and customers remain people and organizations with their own constraints.

This is the point of starting with the supply chain rather than with an AI tool. We need to know what we are trying to improve before we choose which decisions to automate. A better forecast has limited value if a supplier cannot respond, a plant cannot add capacity, or a customer allocation rule has never been agreed upon.

The time between knowing and acting is shrinking

Supply chain technology has advanced in waves. Enterprise systems connected information. Sensors improved our ability to see what was happening. Forecasting, simulation, and optimization improved our ability to anticipate and evaluate choices. Generative AI has made some of that information and analysis easier to access. Agents are beginning to coordinate steps in a workflow, while robotics and computer vision extend automation into physical operations.

Each wave removes some friction, but adoption is uneven. I remember when RFID was going to change everything quickly. It took much longer to reach useful applications than many expected. Even today, some companies have not fully realized the value of earlier investments in data, planning, and integration. That matters when we talk about what is possible with AI and what a company can operate reliably at scale. Those are different questions.

Integrated business planning offers a practical example. For years, companies organized decisions around a monthly calendar: collect forecasts, reconcile supply and demand, meet, approve a plan, then act. Some can now pull in a new promotion or supply disruption, recalculate options, and circulate an updated plan much faster. The opportunity is to respond while the information is still useful. Whether the resulting action can happen immediately depends on capacity, partners, and clearly assigned decision rights.

If an allocation decision is needed today, who decides which customer receives the limited product? Who tells the other customer? What happens to margins, future demand, and the supplier’s schedule? Faster analysis makes those questions more urgent. It does not answer them on its own.

Three systems have to move together

The framework we used in the webinar separates the physical system, the management system, and the intelligence system. The physical system includes suppliers, plants, inventory, warehouses, transportation, and customers. The management system includes policies, planning routines, metrics, roles, and decision rights. The intelligence system includes people, data, models, and increasingly AI agents that help sense, interpret, recommend, and act.

AI is moving fastest into the intelligence system. That puts pressure on the management system. A company cannot take a much faster, more capable intelligence layer and assume that a meeting calendar, escalation path, and organizational structure designed years ago will still be the best way to use it. It may also discover that some physical design choices, such as the amount or location of inventory, deserve a fresh look.

The physical system can change, but it does not vanish. A decision that looks sound in a model still has to work in a plant, on a truck, and with partners whose systems may be less mature. This is why management design and technology adoption have to advance together.

Three decisions show where management moves

Consider a replenishment decision. Today, a planner often reviews a forecast, judges the inventory position, and approves an order. With better demand sensing and connected systems, routine decisions within defined limits may happen much faster. The planner’s work then shifts toward setting policy with colleagues, checking assumptions, deciding when to intervene, and learning from results. “Exception management” alone is too narrow a description; AI will also get better at handling some exceptions.

Now consider a supplier disruption. A system might identify the problem earlier, compare alternative sources, revise production and transportation plans, and show the effect on customers. The cheapest alternative might carry a labor practice concern, or a preferred supplier may be unable to move as quickly as the model assumes. We must decide which outcomes and obligations matter before delegating the choice. The system needs those values expressed clearly, and someone must remain accountable for the outcome.

A fulfillment center creates a different test. Sensors, computer vision, and mobile robots could help a team detect congestion, adjust work releases, and route equipment around a problem. Here, a digital decision can put a person in the path of a physical machine or push a shift past a safe workload. Autonomy should be bounded by operational and safety rules, with people able to intervene. These are scenarios to design and test, not claims that most facilities already run this way.

Managing the decision system is real management

The center of management work moves from touching every routine choice toward designing and governing how choices get made. Leaders have to establish objectives, define which decisions a system may take on its own, decide where approval is required, and monitor whether the results match the intent. They also have to look beyond the first result. A quick allocation might protect this week’s service level while weakening a customer relationship or creating a bottleneck somewhere else.

This work still requires deep supply chain knowledge. As AI takes on more of the analysis, and eventually more of the decisions, leaders may touch fewer individual decisions, but they will carry greater responsibility for the system making them. They need to understand why a recommendation was made, when its assumptions no longer hold, and whether the system is producing the outcomes the organization intended. You cannot govern a decision you do not understand.

It also raises a development question. Many experienced supply chain leaders built judgment by making thousands of everyday decisions and living with the results. If software takes over more of those decisions, how will the next generation develop that judgment? Companies will need to make learning part of the operating model: give people access to the reasoning behind recommendations, let them test scenarios, and review outcomes with those who know the operation.

The workforce deserves a straight answer

The anxiety around AI is reasonable. At industry conferences, professionals hear what technology may do but often hear little about how their work will change. Leaders may not have a complete answer, and some jobs will change more than others. Silence leaves employees to draw their own conclusions.

A leadership team can say what it knows now. Is the current goal to help people do their jobs better, to automate particular tasks, or both? What work is under review? What training and opportunities will be available? Those answers can evolve. An honest account of the work underway is more useful than a confident promise no one can support.

Practitioners have a role as well. Use the tools available within your organization’s rules, ask for training, and bring your knowledge of the process into the design conversation. The people who understand why a decision works in the real world will be essential to building systems that work there too.

Where the series goes next

This first episode focused on the system. AI may help us make better decisions sooner and act on them faster, while the supply chain’s purpose and physical limits remain. Managing that future means setting the objectives and boundaries, developing the people, and learning from what the system actually does.

Our next conversation turns to strategy. If competitors can buy access to similar AI tools, where will supply chain advantage come from? We think the answer will have much to do with design, judgment, and the ability to make these technologies work in a specific business. We would welcome the examples and questions you want us to examine.

Related Webinar

This is a companion article to Part 1 of The AI-Managed Supply Chain: What Changes, What Doesn't, and What Leaders Must Do. View the related webinar on our YouTube channel.

For the fourth year, Georgia Tech has retained its No. 1 ranking on the Princeton Review’s list of the Top 50 Best Value Colleges (Public Schools), which measures universities’ return on investment (ROI). The Institute earned the top spot with a ROI score of 95 out of 99, factoring in academic rating, financial aid offerings, and overall college costs.  

The Georgia Tech Library was recently awarded $195,245 from the Institute of Museum and Library Services to conduct a forum focused on academic library accessibility after the Title II implementation deadline. 

The forum will examine the topic through two complementary lenses: Internal Operations and Implementation, including workflows, governance, and responsible artificial intelligence-assisted remediation; and External Ecosystems and Accountability, including campus partnerships, vendor relations, and user-facing impacts. Georgia Tech will host the forum at the Library in May 2027. 

Those conversations led Raymaker to focus her research on maritime security, including vulnerabilities in the Automatic Identification System (AIS), which ships use to broadcast their location, speed, and course.

This summer, Raymaker brought this research to Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) Lincoln Laboratory, where she built a test bed to study AIS security in a controlled environment. The experience has also led to new research questions, from the security of shipboard Starlink connections to autonomous vessels and other maritime technologies.

We spoke with Raymaker about her research, her experience at Lincoln Laboratory, and what she hopes to investigate next.

What will you be working on at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory next?

After submitting our paper based on this summer’s work to a cybersecurity conference, we are continuing our collaboration and starting a new project to identify critical infrastructure that uses unique protocols. The project is still in the early stages of planning and design, but I’m excited to continue working with the team.

What was the biggest challenge you faced while building and testing the AIS security testbed, and how did you work through it?

The biggest challenge was getting equipment designed to be installed and operated on a boat to function properly in a lab setting. That meant using a Faraday cage so that our AIS transmissions and security experiments wouldn’t accidentally broadcast to nearby ships or interfere with real maritime traffic. I also had to simulate GPS signals and set up additional hardware to trick the AIS transponders into thinking they were operating on a real vessel. Putting all those pieces together into a safe, realistic test bed was challenging, but it ultimately let us study the equipment in a controlled environment.

You mentioned the collaborative culture at Lincoln Laboratory. Can you share a specific interaction or experience with a researcher there that had an impact on you or your work?

Working with Hamed Okhravi, a senior staff member at Lincoln Laboratory, was an amazing experience. He was my mentor and consistently went out of his way to connect me with people who could help me find datasets, access equipment, or get the lab space I needed for my work. For example, when I realized I needed a Faraday cage for my experiments, he connected me with the Mobile Device Lab and helped me get access very quickly. The lab manager was also immediately willing to let me use the space and equipment. That experience really reflected the culture I saw throughout Lincoln Laboratory. Everyone genuinely wanted to help each other get what they needed to move their research forward.

How did Georgia Tech prepare you for the work at Lincoln Laboratory, and did the internship change how you think about your research or future career?

My experience at Georgia Tech was instrumental in preparing me for my work at Lincoln Laboratory. The way I was taught to think through difficult research problems and work independently toward solutions translated well to a large research lab. I was able to hit the ground running and take ownership of a project because Georgia Tech had prepared me to lead research independently. The internship also gave me valuable experience in a research environment outside academia, which broadened my perspective on how I could pursue research in the future.

You’ve said you want to work through the cybersecurity problems mariners have shared with you “one by one.” Which problem do you most want to tackle next, and why?

Next, I’d love to look at Starlink connectivity for ships or for autonomous shipping. Mariners we’ve spoken with have raised concerns about both. With Starlink and increasingly autonomous vessels, they worry that greater remote connectivity could give attackers new ways to access onboard systems and disrupt ship operations. I think those concerns are worth investigating.

We recently had a paper accepted at CCS that examines exposed solar distributed energy resources, and I think applying a similar perspective to exposed maritime equipment could be very interesting. That paper is available here.

We also recently had a paper on measuring GPS spoofing of ships accepted at IEEE S&P. The full paper isn’t online yet, but the project was directly motivated by mariners telling us that they were struggling with GPS spoofing. That made me want to find a way to systematically measure where spoofing was occurring. 

Ultimately, the goal is to turn that kind of research into something useful for mariners, such as warning them when they are entering an area experiencing spoofing or when their own vessel may be affected and they should no longer trust their GPS. That is the kind of research I’d like to continue doing: listening to the problems mariners are actually experiencing and finding ways to investigate and address them.

Photos by Kevin Beasley and Terence Rushin/College of Computing

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.”

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.   

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. 

A promising discovery may begin in a Georgia Tech lab, but moving it into the world requires more than research. Faculty members and graduate students must identify who needs the technology, test its market potential, and determine whether it can become a viable product or company. 

Quadrant-i, a commercialization unit within Georgia Tech’s Office of Commercialization, helps researchers navigate that transition. The unit supports faculty, researchers, and graduate students with business coaching, funding opportunities, industry expertise, and other resources that help move research from the lab to real-world application. 

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

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. 

Few neuroscientists would dispute that the brain relies on prediction. From houseflies evading swatters to humans catching baseballs, living things are constantly anticipating what comes next. Understanding how the brain generates those predictions could help explain one of neuroscience's most enduring questions: how the brain builds internal models of the world that allow us to learn, adapt, and anticipate what comes next.

“Without actively predicting the world, we cannot survive,” says Farzaneh Najafi, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences and a faculty affiliate of Georgia Tech's Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society. “There is quite some sensory-motor delay in the processing. We can’t just sit there, wait for the brain to process our environment, and then react.”

Part of the puzzle may lie in signals known as neural ramps. Almost like a drumroll leading up to a big reveal, neurons in some areas of the brain have shown gradual increases in activity immediately before a stimulus appears. For decades, researchers have interpreted this ramping activity as a neural signature of prediction, reflecting anticipation of an upcoming event.

Recently published in Science Advances, a new study from Najafi’s lab reveals these signals may not be “predictions” at all, but instead a way neurons track elapsed time.

“Surprisingly,” says Najafi, “the very first study from my lab called the Predictive Processing Lab showed that no, these are not prediction signals.”

The finding challenges a long-standing interpretation of one of neuroscience's most studied signals and reveals that the search for predictive neurons may lead to different circuits — or require different experiments to uncover. 

The iGEM students are led by Catherine "Kate" Sharer (Chemistry/Biochemistry 1996), who discovered a passion for research as an undergraduate at Georgia Tech. 

“It's a joy to work with these students on real science. Instead of teaching a class, it feels very much like we're running a research lab that also has this competitive aspect to it,” says Sharer. "It's the perfect job I never knew I wanted."

Georgia Tech Beginnings

Sharer’s path to the classroom began in Tech’s chemistry labs. She initially enrolled as a chemical engineering major, before discovering she preferred chemistry and the lab work that went with it.

“I would listen in class and memorize my notes, but I learned the most when I could put chemical theories into practice in the lab,” says Sharer. ”Today, I try to bring that same learning process to my students.”

Summer research positions with Georgia Tech faculty gave her opportunities for hands-on scientific discovery. “Working in labs as a 19-year-old undergraduate made a huge impact on me,” Sharer says. “I absolutely fell in love with research.”

After graduation, she began a Ph.D. program in biochemistry and molecular biology at Emory University and spent about a decade in research labs. During those years, she mentored undergraduate scientists and found her enthusiasm for teaching matched her passion for research.

Realizing she wanted to make teaching a career, she earned a master's degree in secondary education and became a chemistry teacher. Just two years later, iGEM showed her that she didn't have to choose between the classroom and the lab.

Global Acclaim

The iGEM competition brings together students from more than 65 countries to conduct ambitious research aimed at solving real-world problems, culminating in the annual Global Jamboree in Paris.

The Lambert team is internationally recognized. Over the years, they’ve been profiled on 60 Minutes and Georgia Public Broadcasting and earned several competition awards. The 2022 team won the Grand Prize with their project, CADlock, an accessible, early-diagnosis screening test for coronary artery disease that uses microRNA biomarkers.

Nearly 100 students tried out for 10 openings on this year's team. According to Sharer, families move to the Lambert School District to participate. Despite the accolades, Sharer believes the team’s greatest achievement is the growth she sees in her students.

“They gain a lot of soft skills, like being a good team member and an effective communicator,” says Sharer.

Addressing Challenges

Each year the students choose the global issue they’d like to tackle.

The 2025 team developed a Lyme disease diagnostic platform using gene-editing technology, which led to an invitation for students to present their research at a Lyme disease symposium at Johns Hopkins University.

"This wasn’t a competition, this wasn’t on 60 Minutes, this wasn’t for a gold medal. This was my students being part of an important conversation with Lyme disease researchers across the world,” says Sharer. “It really showed them the power of science.”

This year's team is focusing on deformed wing virus in honey bees. Students are exploring synthetic biology approaches that could help protect bee populations critical to agriculture.

“My students are passionate, competitive, and committed to making the world a better place through the research and outreach that they do,” explains Sharer. “They’re wildly creative and ambitious, without any preconceived notions of what they can’t do.”

Beyond the laboratory, Lambert’s iGEM students host a synthetic biology summer camp for middle school students, conduct outreach in local schools, and even deliver virtual lessons to young women in Afghanistan.

All of the iGEM experiences have reinforced Sharer's belief in what young scientists can achieve:

"High school students are capable of independent research, and the more opportunities we can give them for that, the better."

A Georgia Tech Legacy

Like Sharer, the Lambert iGEM team shares strong ties with Georgia Tech.

The team traces its roots to School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Professor Mark Styczynski, who introduced former Lambert teacher, Janet Standeven, to the competition. Since then, Styczynski has remained a dedicated mentor, supporting Lambert students for more than a decade.

“He treats my high school kids like grad students, asking them great questions that make them think about the research," says Sharer.

Other Georgia Tech professors have also offered research guidance and laboratory space.

This year, the students have been working with Jennifer Leavey, principal academic professional, assistant dean for faculty mentoring, and director of the Georgia Tech Urban Honeybee Project.

“I’ve been very impressed with the Lambert iGEM team members,” says Leavey.  “They are approaching the problem of honey bee health from so many different angles — using molecular biology, protein chemistry, technology, and even education. I hope they all become scientists, but even if they don't, I know they will go on to amazing things!”

Coming Full-Circle 

Sharer sees her own educational experience reflected in the opportunities her students have today.

“Everything I was taught at Georgia Tech, my training at Emory, and all of the pieces of my education, I get to transfer into the classroom,” says Sharer.

Many iGEM students leave Lambert and come to Georgia Tech. Esther Lee, a third-year biomedical engineering major, was a member of the Lambert iGEM team in 2022 and is now a volunteer mentor.

“The endurance built from reading papers, troubleshooting, and collaborating with team members to be creative and solve problems helped me push through challenging courses and team-based projects at Tech,” says Lee. “It also encouraged me to join a research lab and continue experimenting.”

Lee speaks highly of her former advisor:

“Ms. Sharer expertly balances encouraging and pushing students to learn, explore, and ideate challenging topics while also keeping realities and timelines in check,” says Lee.

Sharer’s current iGEM students agree:

“She’s a great teacher,” says Brandon Jimerson, a senior member of Lambert’s iGEM team. “She’s really shaped the way I look at science and how it can positively affect the world.”

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.”

This year, Team Blue Water – which features nine Georgia Tech participants –came out on top after three days of intense competition.

“I've competed in DEF CON CTFs for four years now,” said Ph.D. student Kevin Stevens. “After winning second place three years in a row, it's so rewarding to finally achieve first place with such a great team.”

Blue Water finished with 578,103 points, well ahead of second-place team 0x4b52, which scored 454,797 points. SuperDiceCodeLovers took third place with 425,686 points.

The results highlighted Georgia Tech’s strength in the competition. The first-, second-, and third-place teams all included Georgia Tech students or alumni.

Georgia Tech participants on Blue Water included:

• Jalen Chuang, Ph.D. student
• Jiho Kim, Ph.D. student
• Andrew Chin, Ph.D. student
• Youngjoon Kim, postdoctoral researcher
• Kevin Stevens, Ph.D. student
• Yong Hwi Jin, Ph.D. student
• Sunghyeon Jo, Ph.D. student
• Yu-Fu Fu, Ph.D. student
• Gye Jin Lee, Ph.D. student

Blue Water consisted of members from Perfect Blue, Water Paddler, r00timentary, RedBud, BunkyoWesterns, and undef1ned. Combining multiple teams into a single roster is common at DEF CON CTF.

The competition unfolded over three days, with teams competing for about seven hours on each of the first two days and an additional two and a half hours on the final day. However, the work continued beyond the competition's official hours. The teams were allowed to continue working through the evenings and nights to find vulnerabilities, protect their systems, and gain points.

The challenges were designed by the Benevolent Bureau of Birds, the group that had won the competition for the past four years under the team name Maple Mallard Magistrates. The group is a collaboration between Plaid Parliament of Pwning from Carnegie Mellon University, The Duck from Theori Inc., and Maple Bacon from the University of British Columbia.

This year’s bird-themed competition featured a wide range of technical challenges, including escaping game softlocks, programming in a custom bird emoji language, working with a custom computer architecture and using Game of Life patterns for data exfiltration. Other challenges included a bot battleground, protecting the 1994 Netscape Navigator browser, and exploring a reimagined version of the internet built around “bird HTTP” and “bird CSS.”

For Stevens, one of his contributions to the winning effort focused on a new competition mechanic introduced this year, the “rebate mechanic.”

Teams could earn partial points back for flags stolen from them if they recovered those flags from recorded network traffic. Stevens created and maintained a service to manage the new mechanic, adding another layer of strategy to an already complex competition.

The victory adds another accomplishment to Georgia Tech’s growing record in elite cybersecurity competitions, where students regularly apply classroom knowledge and research skills into practice against some of the strongest teams in the field.

“SCP students and their collaborators continue to excel, winning elite cybersecurity competitions, including this year’s CTF at DEF CON,” said Mustaque Ahamad, interim chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy (SCP).

“This is because of the excellence of our students and the SCP research projects and courses that prepare them with the advanced knowledge and skills needed to discover and mitigate the most challenging security vulnerabilities in systems on which we all rely.”

The team also found that the new standard's core rules for sending messages and handling errors retain every known security weakness of older versions.

The vulnerabilities could allow an attacker who has already gained access to a vehicle's internal computer network to change or intercept messages, take individual vehicle computers offline, send different information to different systems, or disrupt network communication.

CAN Extra Long (CAN XL), the latest version of the controller area network (CAN), is designed for future cars and other vehicles that need to move large amounts of data between onboard computers. The technology is not yet widely deployed in production vehicles, giving manufacturers an opportunity to address security concerns before it becomes more common.

“Because it isn't widely deployed yet, we have a narrow window to get its security right,” said Associate Professor Saman Zonouz of the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, one of the researchers on the project. 

“Fixing a standard now is far easier than fixing it once it's built into the hardware of millions of cars that stay on the road for a decade or more.”

Zonouz said CAN XL is expected to become the primary version of CAN, the network that enables computers inside a vehicle to communicate. It is also expected to serve as the main network for driver-assistance systems in future vehicles.

The researchers confirmed the seven vulnerabilities in commercial CAN XL hardware and demonstrated attacks using a physical test setup that mimics a vehicle network.

Modern vehicles can have dozens of electronic control units that manage systems such as sensors, brakes, steering, and entertainment. These computers need to communicate quickly and reliably.

For decades, many vehicles have used CAN for this communication. However, the original version, known as classic CAN, was not designed to handle the volume of data generated by newer vehicle technologies.

CAN XL was developed to provide faster communication, larger messages, and new security features, but the researchers wanted to know whether the new standard’s basic rules were secure. Their testing revealed that they weren’t. They discovered that an attacker who controls one computer on the network could intercept and replace messages or take a targeted computer offline.

“These flaws are in the standard itself, so every device built to follow it inherits them,” Zonouz said. “With CAN XL, there's still time to fix these problems before they reach the road.”

The attacks would require an attacker to first gain control of a computer connected to the vehicle's internal network. The research does not show that CAN XL itself provides a means to break into a vehicle. Instead, it shows what an attacker could do after gaining access.

Several attacks were also faster and harder to detect than similar attacks against classic CAN, according to the authors.

The researchers proposed changes to the CAN XL rules to prevent several of the attacks. They also recommended additional security measures, including message authentication and systems that can detect unusual activity.

The team reported the vulnerabilities and informed the manufacturers of the commercial devices it tested about the bugs it found. One company has already released a fix. The researchers hope their findings will help manufacturers address security weaknesses before the technology becomes more widely used.

A Formal Security Analysis of CAN XL was published in the Proceedings of the 35th USENIX Security Symposium, held Aug. 12-14 in Baltimore, MD. The paper was also named a runner-up for a distinguished paper award.

The study was conducted by Georgia Tech Ph.D. student ZhaozhouTang, Professor Vijay Ganesh, Zonouz, and Provost and Executive Vice President for Academic Affairs Raheem Beyah, along with Khaled Serag of the Qatar Computing Research Institute and Z. Berkay Celik of Purdue University.

The paper and its findings result from projects sponsored by the Hyundai America Technical Center, the Georgia Department of Transportation, and the $7 million CHORUS Center through the National Science Foundation’s Cyber-Physical System Frontier Program.

To improve robot performance and advance memory capabilities needed for reliable home use, Georgia Tech researchers have developed a new benchmark to evaluate the memory capabilities of vision-language models (VLMs).

That includes Gemini 2.0-flash and GPT-4o.

In-home assistive robots could clean and organize a home while the owner is away, but without enhanced memory capabilities, they could cause more problems than they solve.

They could, for example, cause a major inconvenience if they move important objects like wallets and keys but are unable to tell the owner where they put them.

A new benchmark created by Georgia Tech researchers tests the memory capability of vision-language models (VLMs), including Gemini 2.0-flash and GPT-4o, to determine whether they could improve robot performance.

Zsolt Kira, an associate professor in Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, said that most active VLMs can process only a few hundred images at a time before forgetting them.

“There wasn’t a benchmark that could test these specialized capabilities that we might want from a robot,” Kira said. “Our purpose in creating one is to spur research in this area so that others can develop methods to solve this problem.”

The team’s benchmark consists of memory evaluations based on 60 tasks that require continuous engagement and contextual and environmental awareness. Three task categories — spatial, temporal, and multi-goal — are highly difficult.

“You can chat with a language model like ChatGPT, and it remembers all the text from your previous conversations with it because the text data is small in terms of storage,” Kira said. 

“Embodied agents and robots observe a lot of videos, and those tend to be a lot harder to recall. If you ask it where your diary is, it must efficiently store images of your diary and where it is.

“That’s just a few frames out of a million that it recorded since yesterday, and it must know where that is relative to the spatial layout of the house.”

Karmesh Yadav, a Ph.D. student in Kira’s lab, said users don’t want to repeat information about their preferences after deployment. They also expect the robot to maintain long-term memory.

“In reality, you would want it to have a memory of the entire time it has been in your house, whether that’s days or years,” Yadav said.

The team’s benchmark evaluates memory performance over an average one-day period. It challenges the models with commands like “navigate to an object you did not interact with yesterday” or “navigate to a room you did not visit yesterday.”

The results show that current state-of-the-art models have a long way to go before they can be used in embodied agents. The best model achieved roughly a 50% success rate on high-level difficulty tasks.

Surprisingly, this model wasn’t Gemini or GPT VLMs. It was an open-source reasoning model from Qwen. 

“If you use an open-source reasoning model, even one that’s small in size, it can match the performance of closed-source non-reasoning models,” Yadav said. “Reasoning models can look at the video and translate it into text. It describes what’s going on in the video in words and determines the right frame to choose in its final output.”

Kira said that converting images into descriptive text that language models easily understand could be one way to circumvent the memory storage dilemma. Another way could be to assign a hierarchy that teaches the model to identify irrelevant or redundant images and erase them from storage.

Whatever future progress researchers make in those areas, Kira and his students are confident that their benchmark will remain relevant. 

“This benchmark is scalable,” said Ph.D. student Yusuf Ali. “If two years from now, videos are easy for a model to understand and store, you can use the same infrastructure we propose and scale up the problem’s difficulty.”

Yadav and Ali are co-first authors of a paper on the benchmark, presented in early September at the 2026 European Conference on Computer Vision in Sweden.

For more information about the project, click here.

Georgia Tech continues to invest in the evolution of its campus, creating spaces that foster innovation, sustainability, and accessibility. This update provides an overview of recent project milestones, upcoming activities, and the ways these efforts support the Institute’s long-term vision for growth and excellence.  

Those costs were 10 times higher than in 2024, according to the study, published in the National Tax Journal.

To project the full-year impact of even steeper tariff hikes enacted later in 2025, the researchers used 2024 as a baseline for a typical year's worth of medical imports. They calculated that under those peak August rates, annual government-assessed duties would skyrocket to $15.8 billion — nearly 30 times higher than historical baselines — resulting in an estimated $8.1 billion in ultimate passed-through costs to the healthcare system.

“The results have nontrivial implications for impacts of tariffs on the fiscal sustainability of health care in the United States,” the authors wrote. “Although the amount of duties collected and passed through the border may seem small in the context of large aggregate U.S. spending on healthcare, increased costs land somewhere in the medical supply chain – incurred by manufacturers, distributors, providers, insurers, and patients.”

The tariffs, first imposed in February 2025, were the first by the Trump administration to include medical supplies and equipment, which traditionally have been excluded from significant tariffs.

Those tariffs were later struck down by the U.S. Supreme Court and replaced by a 10% global tariff that was later, itself, reversed by the U.S. Court of International Trade.

While the study is not the first to calculate the pass-through cost of tariffs to the healthcare sector, the authors say it is the first to build a fully comprehensive database tracking the historical changes, temporary exemptions, and other details of medical tariffs since 2017.

The researchers were also the first to use more granular customs codes to separate the pass-through effects across different categories of medical goods, revealing that final branded products and packaged medications bore a much higher pass-through rate than raw active pharmaceutical ingredients.

 Those revelations suggest that overseas market power and how buyers react to price changes play major roles in keeping pass-through rates high, the researchers said.

More than 40% of pharmaceuticals in dosage form and more than a third of medical devices come from suppliers in four countries, most of which faced substantial tariffs. Such geographic concentration makes it extremely difficult for the healthcare industry to quickly shift sourcing or avoid these tariff costs, the researchers said.

“If production of branded dosage forms and certain types of medical devices tends to be dominated by monopolies or oligopolies with facilities located overseas, these companies could pass the bulk of the cost of the tariff to US importers in response to tariff hikes without fear of losing substantial market share as long as it is difficult for new firms to enter the market,” the authors wrote.

The study was conducted by Kang and UCD coauthors Xiangtao Meng, Katheryn N. Russ, and James Waters. The paper, “Tariffs on Medical Goods: Pass-Through, Geography, and Aggregate Costs to the US Health-Care System,” was first published online on Feb. 27, 2026 in the National Tax Journal. It is available at https://doi.org/10.1086/739621.

The study is timely, arriving amid widespread public discontent over rising fuel prices, with voter frustrations reflected in a series of national polls blaming the Trump administration.

Although the researchers do not determine how much of the price differences across administrations, if any, are caused by presidents themselves, they argue economists may have been too confident in dismissing the possibility without much direct evidence.

“If economists really think that the president doesn't have influence, the burden of proof is on economists to explain that these differences can't be interpreted as the result of each president's actions," Brewer said.

Read the full story.

Spatial scholarship is a research approach focusing on social and humanistic questions, which foreground place, space, spatial data, and human experience.

Held at the Georgia Tech Library, the Spatial Scholarship Field School brought together researchers from eight top academic institutions, including Carnegie Mellon University, UCLA, NYU, and Georgia Tech, to examine how technology, data, and physical environments shape one another.

Participants shared research, joined in panel discussions with Georgia Tech faculty, and learned interdisciplinary methods such as a variation of body-mapping that uses  wearable environmental sensors to explore how data shaped their felt experience in place.

Watch a video about the Spatial Scholarship Field School on YouTube

"We're really proud to host this Spatial Scholarship Field School — to spend a couple of days together thinking about what it means to take space and place more seriously as part of the scholarship we do," said Yanni Loukissas, an associate professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) and director of IMA.

Co-led by LMC Assistant Professor Richmond Wong, the event challenged scholars to evaluate how local neighborhoods respond to emerging technologies like self-driving cars and data centers.

“We invited participants to walk around with wearable sensors tracking sound, temperature, light, CO2, and air quality, interpreting readings through colored LEDs,” said Alexandra Teixeira Riggs, who helped facilitate the event. Riggs is a 2026 Ph.D. Digital Media graduate who now works as an assistant professor at The University of North Carolina at Charlotte.

“This activity asked participants to focus on critical and interpretive approaches to bio and environmental data, situating themselves within campus environments,” Riggs said.

Stephen Yang, a doctoral candidate at the USC Annenberg School for Communication and Journalism, said the event advanced his thinking on how people experience built environments.

“I’m grateful for the thought-provoking conversations that pushed me to think hard about the taken-for-granted ways built environments are organized,” Yang said. “I left the Field School with many new ideas that I’ll continue to ruminate on.”

IMA is a collaboration between the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and the Library. 

The Georgia Institute of Technology hosted a panel and celebration on Sept. 2, 2026, in honor of a historic gift to establish the Michael E. Tennenbaum Family Institute for Technology and Civic Leadership. The new interdisciplinary institute, launched earlier this year, is designed to prepare students to navigate the intersection of technology, civic life, and leadership.

At the heart of the new lab is the miniTrashpresso, a compact recycling and manufacturing system developed by the sustainability technology company Miniwiz. The machine can take used plastics and other waste materials, process them locally, and transform them into new products in less than five minutes. By bringing manufacturing and recycling together in a single system, the Trash Lab aims to give the Georgia Tech community a way to explore sustainable design, material reuse, and the future of circular manufacturing.

“The launch of IPaT’s new Trash Lab represents an exciting step forward for sustainability at Georgia Tech,” said Jennifer Chirico, associate vice president of Sustainability. “As a living-learning lab, it provides students and researchers with hands-on opportunities to work alongside campus operations, turning used plastics into valuable new products and creating innovative solutions that support a more circular campus.”

A Makerspace Focused on Circular Innovation

The Trash Lab expands Georgia Tech’s growing network of makerspaces and innovation environments by focusing specifically on waste recovery and reuse. Instead of treating used plastics as disposable materials, the lab encourages users to view them as valuable resources that can be transformed into new products.

The miniTrashpresso represents the latest generation of recycling technology developed by Miniwiz. The company originally launched the world’s first mobile recycling line, known as the Trashpresso, to support communities that lacked access to traditional recycling infrastructure. The newer miniTrashpresso is smaller, more energy-efficient, and more portable, making it suitable for campuses and community-based applications.

The modular system uses industrial equipment, including shredders, presses, and heating technologies, to process materials on-site. Advanced heat-induction presses and specialized molds can quickly transform recovered plastics into new objects and components. The system can also be integrated with AI-powered waste-tracking tools and robotic automation technologies that help identify, sort, and process materials more efficiently.

For IPaT leaders, the Trash Lab represents more than the addition of specialized equipment.

“Community resilience and people-centered sustainability are core research areas within IPaT,” said Michael Best, executive director. “Our new Trash Lab will allow the entire Georgia Tech community to not only think about upcycling and plastic reuse but to make and do innovative projects that directly demonstrate sustainable futures.”

Turning Trash Into a Resource

Miniwiz founder Arthur Huang, who developed the miniTrashpresso system, describes upcycling as a practice rooted in centuries of human ingenuity.

“Upcycling is actually recycling old material and turning that into something new,” Huang said.

Throughout history, societies have reused existing materials in construction, manufacturing, and everyday life. According to Huang, modern waste streams, particularly plastic packaging and electronic waste, represent an enormous and often untapped source of raw materials.

The miniTrashpresso was designed around that idea. Rather than transporting waste long distances to centralized facilities, the system enables materials to be processed where they are collected. By reducing transportation needs and creating opportunities for local manufacturing, decentralized recycling systems can help lower the environmental footprint associated with traditional waste management.

Miniwiz estimates that using recycled materials can reduce embedded energy consumption by 60% to 80% compared with using raw materials. The company has developed more than 1,200 upcycled materials and products from everyday waste streams, including plastics, food packaging, coffee cups, and electronic waste.

Since its introduction, Miniwiz technology has been deployed in communities, campuses, and organizations worldwide, including projects in Taiwan, Italy, Singapore, Sweden, Saudi Arabia, Thailand, the United Kingdom, and the United Arab Emirates. According to Huang, Georgia Tech is installing and operating North America’s first miniTrashpresso recycling machine from Miniwiz.

Building a Community Around Sustainability

The new facility is also intended to serve as a gathering place for interdisciplinary collaboration. Students interested in sustainability, materials science, engineering, design, manufacturing, and public policy will have opportunities to experiment with new ideas while working with researchers and campus partners.

“When Michael Best first pitched the idea of the Trash Lab, I expected there to be interest in a space like this given the general momentum toward sustainable practices on campus, but the level of excitement from students, staff, and faculty has been outstanding,” said Tim Trent, IPaT’s lab director for the Trash, Craft, Prototyping, and Usability Labs.

“This is an opportunity to create a gathering point for sustainability initiatives, act as a catalyst for partnerships, and help strengthen the many amazing networks and projects already present on campus,” he said. “The IPaT Innovation Labs have a continuous focus on supporting the overall Georgia Tech research enterprise, and I’m happy we are adding another piece to the portfolio.”

As the Trash Lab opens its doors, members of the Georgia Tech community will be invited to explore how waste materials can be reimagined as resources, prototypes, and products. By combining makerspace culture, advanced recycling technology, and sustainability research, the lab offers a tangible demonstration of how circular economy principles can move from theory into practice.

For Georgia Tech, the Trash Lab is not simply a place to recycle plastic. It is a space where innovation, design, and sustainability intersect, helping transform discarded materials into opportunities for learning, discovery, and impact.
 

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For more information about the Trash Lab, contact the IPaT Innovation Labs at ipat-labs@groups.gatech.edu.

For decades, immunologists have known that the body's most durable defenses depend on plasma cells, the antibody-producing cells responsible for long-term immune memory. Long after an infection has passed or a vaccine has been administered, these cells continue releasing protective antibodies, sometimes for decades. 

Read more »

Over five years, researchers tracked nearly 7,000 households across 154 Mumbai settlements to determine which strategies most effectively helped residents secure water connections. They found that helping residents navigate the application process — while also organizing community advocacy — increased official water connections by 45% compared to households that received no assistance.

“There have been many studies looking at just using administrative assistance to help communities get water access,” said Anjali Thomas, an associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, director of the Global Development Program, and co-lead author of the study. “But combining this with community organizing, which helped people also exert their voice, was unique to our study.”

Thomas and collaborator Nikhar Gaikwad, an assistant professor at Columbia University, published the findings in the American Journal of Political Science, long ranked among the top three journals in the discipline.

Navigating Bureaucracy and Building Voice

The researchers first examined why so few residents applied for water connections. Residents were often unaware that recent policy changes had made them eligible for water connections and didn’t bother applying. The municipal corporation also only accepted online applications, and many residents didn’t have access to computers. Additionally, applications required onerous documentation, including tenant or land titles, plumbers’ approvals, and other proof-of-eligibility deeds. To address these barriers, the research team worked with an extensive team of nongovernmental organization workers to help residents gather required documents, complete applications, and navigate bureaucratic follow-up requests.

The second intervention focused on community advocacy. Researchers helped residents organize through WhatsApp groups, petitions, public awareness campaigns, and facilitated group visits to bureaucrats and elected officials’ offices to press for water access.

“Our community advocacy intervention helped citizens convey their collective water access demands to elected politicians,” said Gaikwad. “Local elected politicians are important actors because they help bureaucrats understand citizen needs, prioritize competing demands, and coordinate complex interagency work.”

The study’s most important finding was that neither intervention was effective on its own. Meaningful gains occurred only when administrative support and community advocacy were combined.

“Administrative assistance got citizens through the paperwork, but actually getting the water turned on took collective public pressure,” Thomas said. “Interestingly, we find that this pressure worked only in the period before local elections, when politicians were most motivated to respond.”

The finding suggests that improving access to public services often requires more than helping residents navigate government systems. Communities may also need the collective ability to demand action from decision-makers. 

A Large-Scale Effort

Conducting a study of this scale required a large team. Thomas and Gaikwad partnered with local nonprofit organizations that deployed hundreds of community workers, survey enumerators, and students across participating settlements. The researchers personally visited many neighborhoods multiple times during the five-year project.

Thomas also spent time in India and witnessed the impact firsthand.

“I was in the field when one of the pipes was being laid, and people from the community all circled around and were watching,” Thomas said. “My research assistant and I felt the gratitude from the community.”

For Thomas, moments like that underscore the broader lesson of the project: expanding access to essential services often requires both helping people navigate bureaucracy and empowering them to make their voices heard. 

“These findings offer vital lessons for sustainable development initiatives worldwide,” she said.

Gaikwad agreed.

“While our study provided novel evidence to test and advance our theoretical understanding of the barriers that marginalized citizens face in accessing core government services, the real-world impact of our interventions in Mumbai’s informal settlements was also an important contribution of our study,” he said. “We believe there are important lessons for governmental and nongovernmental organizations working on service delivery in a wide range of informal settlements that also lack essential services across the Global South.”

This research was funded by Evidence in Governance and Politics, the Department for International Development, Columbia University, and Georgia Tech’s Neal Family Endowment.

CITATION: Gaikwad, Nikhar, and Thomas, Anjali. (2026). “Getting on the grid: A field experiment on bottom-up political pressure and access to essential public services.” American Journal of Political Science 1–22.

DOI:  https://doi.org/10.1111/ajps.70068.

Policymakers, health system executives, community leaders and others working to address this challenge now have help from Rural Evaluation and Analytics for Community Health (REACH GA), an advanced decision-support platform that offers a comprehensive view of healthcare use in rural Georgia. In addition to updated information on rural health issues, the platform provides computer-based tools to guide allocation of healthcare resources and explore the potential impact of changes to rural health services. 

“The REACH GA platform provides up-to-date, actionable information to help leaders understand the big picture of healthcare in rural Georgia,” said Jon Duke, M.D., a principal research scientist in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and the project’s principal investigator. “Beyond more accurate data, the platform uses artificial intelligence (AI) and other computer-driven tools to support improved decision-making.”

Of Georgia’s 159 counties, 126 are considered rural. Approximately 24 percent of the state’s 11.3 million residents live in these rural areas.

Read the full article on the GTRI news page

The CHORUS (Community Hubs for Optimizing Resilience) project will collaborate with coastal communities in Georgia and New York and will be split into two pieces: technology development and community engagement. 

“We’re not just building a simulator and hoping it fits the needs of coastal residents,” explains Alex Robel, project leader and Jean “Chris” Purvis Associate Professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. "By collaborating with community partners from the very beginning, we can ensure that what we ultimately develop will be effective because the people who will be using it are helping design it.”

Putting Flood Modeling in Residents' Hands

The technology development component will include faculty from the College of Sciences and the College of Computing. The College of Sciences team will develop an AI-based flood simulator and the College of Computing team led by Josiah Hester, associate professor and Catherine M. and James E. Allchin Early Career Professor, will create a web platform that allows users to visualize potential flood impacts.

Traditional flood models can take hours or days to generate results and often require specialized expertise and expensive computing resources. The CHORUS platform will be designed to provide easy-to-understand results in seconds, producing building-scale flood maps that show how water moves through streets, yards, and structures during a range of flooding scenarios. Researchers will use the model to test how specific interventions, such as seawalls, restored marshes, or improved stormwater infrastructure, could affect flooding.

Eventually, users will be able to test their own scenarios through the browser-based tool, enabling them to explore how different decisions could change flood impacts in their communities:

“Users will be able to go into a web browser and indicate where a sea wall could go or change a parking lot into a porous vegetated landscape, then click simulate. Within a few seconds, they’ll have a new flood map showing the impacts of these interventions,” says Robel.

A Community-Driven Approach

A collaborative effort with the New York Climate Exchange, the project will be funded by Georgia Sea Grant and IBM, with support from Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow (GT2), Georgia Tech’s Coastal Equity and Resilience (CEAR) Hub, and the National Sea Grant College Program. The CHORUS project is an initiative of the New York Climate Exchange, where Georgia Tech is a core partner institution.

Community engagement in Georgia is being led by CEAR and the Pin Point Betterment Association, which represents descendants of the historic Gullah Geechee community near Savannah. In New York, the project team is partnering with the New York Climate Exchange and the Waterfront Alliance to work with communities surrounding Jamaica Bay.

“What makes this partnership meaningful is that it puts community voices at the center,” says Jasmine Smith, president of the Pin Point Betterment Association. “Too often, decisions are made to ‘better’ communities without actually involving the people who live there. We hope this partnership can serve as a blueprint for how communities are included in future sustainability projects from the very beginning.”

The project includes community advisory boards and technical advisory boards in both locations. Community members will help identify priority assets, select flood scenarios for analysis, and shape the design of the web-based tool. They’ll also test and offer feedback. Technical advisory boards made up of local officials, planners, and other experts will help evaluate the feasibility of proposed solutions.

“The aim is to blend information from both groups without allowing the technical perspective to override community priorities,” says Robel.

According to Robel, giving communities direct access to flood modeling tools can help close the gap between public input and infrastructure planning.

“We are putting decision making in the hands of the community. With a tool like this, the community can say: ‘We want to prevent flooding at this community center, this school, or this road,’” says Robel. “They can run the model, produce data, and present it to local governments or the Army Corps of Engineers  — advocating for potential solutions themselves rather than relying on outside experts.”

Robel sees this project as just the beginning:

“Funded by two-year grants, CHORUS is meant to be a pilot for how this kind of community-centered project can be done. Once we understand some of the challenges and opportunities involved, it will hopefully make it easier for us to scale this work to additional community partners.”

About Community-Engaged Research at Georgia Tech

Georgia Tech is actively working to foster more projects that foster community engagement. Collaborative groups at Georgia Tech involved in the CHORUS project include:

• The CEAR Hub, part of the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), and housed at the Georgia Tech Savannah campus, advances community-engaged research and planning throughout coastal Georgia, helping communities build resilience to environmental and climate challenges. 
• The Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE) trains faculty, students, and staff in best practices for conducting community-engaged research as well as facilitating connections directly with communities.
• The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) houses SCoRE and is Georgia Tech’s point of contact to the New York Climate Exchange. BBISS forms partnerships like these to fulfill its mission to expand the reach and impact of Georgia Tech’s sustainability research. 

The agreement was signed during a Sept. 14 visit by PNNL leadership to Georgia Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility. It builds on years of successful collaboration between researchers at the two institutions. 

The enhanced collaboration has three primary goals: solving big problems through multidisciplinary, multi-institutional research; sustaining and engaging human capital by creating opportunities for students, faculty, researchers, and interns to work on complex real-world challenges; and accelerating technology adoption by taking scientific discoveries and innovations into industry and the federal marketplace.

"Strengthening our partnerships with national laboratories is a strategic priority for Georgia Tech,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech. "PNNL is an outstanding partner, and we look forward to deepening connections among our researchers and students, expanding opportunities and access to world-class capabilities and facilities, and advancing discovery, innovation, and national impact together."

PNNL is a U.S. Department of Energy national laboratory that advances scientific discovery and innovations that support reliable energy, national security, and economic competitiveness. Georgia Tech is one of the nation's leading research universities, conducting more than $1.5 billion in research annually and pursuing a mission to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

"PNNL and Georgia Tech have a long history of working together," said Deb Gracio, laboratory director of Pacific Northwest National Laboratory. “This agreement provides the foundation to take on difficult research challenges and to leverage our complementary expertise and investments in the years ahead.”

The Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) has played a central role in advancing Georgia Tech's engagement with the national laboratory system and connecting researchers with partnership opportunities.

"As SEI takes on a greater role in coordinating Georgia Tech's national laboratory partnerships, this agreement with PNNL demonstrates how we are building stronger pathways for faculty, researchers, and students to engage with world-class national lab capabilities," said Yuanzhi Tang, SEI executive director.

The National Laboratory Partnership Program supports engagement between Georgia Tech and the U.S. national laboratories. SEI now leads the program, with ongoing support from Georgia Tech’s Office of the Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research. The agreement with PNNL is the first formal agreement established through the program since its transition to SEI.

"This MOU formalizes and strengthens relationships that have been growing for many years," said Scott McWhorter, SEI director of national laboratory partnerships. “It leverages the unique strengths of Georgia Tech and PNNL and provides a framework for expanding engagement across areas of mutual interest.”

Georgia Tech and PNNL bring complementary strengths in energy and environmental systems, electric grid resilience, cybersecurity of critical infrastructure, alternative fuels and advanced materials, biofuels, radiation detection, data science and visual analytics, nuclear nonproliferation, and national security. These capabilities will be brough together through two upcoming Genesis Mission projects.

Bill Pike, PNNL's deputy director for Science and Technology, who joined the laboratory’s leadership delegation for the MOU signing, said the projects reflect the growing partnership and expanding collaboration between the two institutions. 

About Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the nation's leading research universities, with strengths spanning engineering, computing, science, business, design, and the liberal arts. With more than $1.5 billion annually in research awards across its Colleges and the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Georgia Tech is among the nation's most research-intensive universities. The Institute's mission is to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition.

About Pacific Northwest National Laboratory
Pacific Northwest National Laboratory draws on its distinguishing strengths in chemistry, Earth sciences, biology and data science to advance scientific knowledge and address challenges in energy resiliency and national security. Founded in 1965, PNNL is operated by Battelle and supported by the Office of Science of the U.S. Department of Energy. The Office of Science is the single largest supporter of basic research in the physical sciences in the United States and is working to address some of the most pressing challenges of our time.

For students seeking international experience, studying abroad can offer opportunities that extend well beyond the classroom. Computer Science (CS) Student Nicholas Byrd’s year-long experience in Germany gave him the chance to study CS at the Technical University of Munich (TUM) and to intern at TNG Technology Consulting. 

Saman Zonouz, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is helping address those concerns as a member of a planning committee for the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine.

Since May 2026, Zonouz has served on the planning committee for an upcoming public workshop on integrating AI into the electricity system. The workshop is scheduled for Oct. 26 and will convene experts to discuss how to safely and reliably use AI across the power grid.

The workshop will explore how AI is used today, the challenges of integrating AI into existing power systems, and how people and AI can work together. The event will also examine relationships between AI and cybersecurity, data centers, workforce development, and future research.

For Zonouz, cybersecurity and resilience are key parts of the conversation.

“AI is both a shield and a target for the grid,” Zonouz said.

Zonouz leads Georgia Tech’s Cyber-Physical Systems Security Research Laboratory. The lab’s research, much of it funded by the U.S. Department of Energy, investigates how AI can protect power systems from cyberattacks.

One recent initiative combines AI with detailed knowledge about power system operations to detect attacks in near real time. Another project sought to identify security weaknesses in solar inverters and other devices that connect energy sources, such as solar panels, to the power grid.

Regardless of the challenge, Zonouz and his lab work to identify and fix these weaknesses before attackers can exploit them. Despite their best efforts, however, Zonouz said that some AI tools meant to secure a system can create new ways for attackers to target a power grid.

The lab has demonstrated in several studies that AI systems can be tricked by false or manipulated data. Attackers can also target the software and systems that AI depends on. As AI becomes more advanced, some systems may even be able to modify grid operations.

This raises an important question: What happens if an AI system fails or is attacked?

“That is why the right frame is resilience,” Zonouz said.

For Zonouz, the goal is not to create an AI system that can never fail or be attacked. It’s to build a trustworthy power grid that can continue operating safely even if an AI system fails or is compromised.

Zonouz will bring his perspective to the National Academies workshop. In addition to helping organize the event, he will lead a session on cybersecurity and resilience. He will also help summarize the workshop’s key takeaways during the closing session. The workshop will be held virtually in late October.  

“Lessons learned from the electricity grid can be applied to other critical infrastructure as AI monitoring and control tools continue to advance and become more common,” he said.

Now, researchers at Georgia Tech and Emory University have discovered that delivering LNP medicines directly to various areas of the gastrointestinal (GI) tract — from the cheeks to the stomach to the rectum — could alter where the therapies travel in the body after being absorbed. This enables more precise targeting and opens new possibilities for mRNA therapies and vaccines.

Several technologies are currently in development that enable oral and GI nucleic acid delivery, including pills, patches, and endoscopic injections. 

"Here we show that oral delivery of mRNA wouldn’t just enhance the patient experience compared to injections, but it also may enable improved or even completely new treatments," said Alex Abramson, an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE).

"We're able to deliver to organs that are hard to target via traditional administration methods while simultaneously reducing uptake in organs normally associated with toxicity."

The researchers published their findings in ACS Nano in September.

Delivery Direction

Typically, LNPs are delivered subcutaneously or intravenously, but that can mean the drugs affect more than just the intended target. Drug interactions with organs such as the liver, lungs, and spleen can cause unwanted side effects that limit how much medicine can be administered. The researchers found that delivering LNPs to different regions of the GI tract changed where the nanoparticles traveled in the body, allowing them to reach targets like the pancreas and lymph nodes while reducing targeting to the liver, lungs, and spleen. 

"We found that the LNP was completely safe at a very high dose when delivered via a gastric route of administration," said Abdulraouf Abbas, a Ph.D. student in James Dahlman's Emory lab. Dahlman is a McCamish Early Career Professor in the Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory School of Medicine.

"What's really exciting about not affecting the liver and the lungs is that it may allow us to increase the dose without increasing the side effects," Abramson said.

Even better, if the goal is vaccination, the dose could be smaller because the therapy is delivered more directly to the desired target. "Not only are we potentially improving LNP benefits by changing how it is administered, but we could even potentially decrease the cost of those mRNA vaccines or mRNA drugs," said Ramy Ghanim, a ChBE Ph.D. student.

Different Routes, Different Results

Using mouse models, the researchers mapped where nanoparticles traveled after microneedle injections delivered them to different parts of the GI tract. Once they identified which organs received the therapy, they could begin exploring potential medical applications. 

"If you're designing mRNA for a vaccine, then you want to prioritize targeting the lymph nodes. We saw in that case that delivering to the cheek matched or improved the immune response of a vaccine compared to a traditional injection," Ghanim said. "But just because that route is optimal for that application doesn't mean one solution fits all applications."

For example, delivery through the stomach was particularly useful for targeting the pancreas. The researchers also showed that delivering glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) mRNA doses through the stomach improved blood sugar regulation in mouse models. GLP-1 medications are potent treatments used to treat obesity and diabetes.

The researchers hope to test more disease models in the future and eventually bring this technology into the clinic to help patients.

This work was funded in part by: The Georgia Research Alliance and Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance’s 2023 Regenerative Engineering Medicine pilot grant co-awarded to Dahlman and Abramson labs, Lakshmi and Subramonian Shankar Fellowship and Diabetes Translational Accelerator, a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship Program, National Institutes of Health Maximizing Investigators' Research Award grant R35GM150689, and the National Research Foundation of Korea.

CITATION: Abdulraouf M. Abbas, Ramy Ghanim, Sebastian Rudden, David Schultz, Bora Jang, Avraham Shakked, Hyejin Kim, James E. Dahlman, Alex Abramson; Targeted Gastrointestinal Delivery of mRNA Lipid Nanoparticles Enables Systemic Vaccination and Glucagon-like Peptide-1 Metabolic Therapy. ACS Nano 2026; https://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.5c18549

Before a promising new therapy can reach a patient, researchers need to answer a deceptively simple question: Will it work? 

And, for some, the rent rises.

Long after a natural disaster fades from the headlines, economic aftershocks can still push people out of their communities, not because their homes were destroyed, but because they can no longer afford to remain there.

A new Georgia Tech-led study found that rents were 6.5% to 12.5% higher than expected four years after a disaster. Similar communities that weren’t hit did not see the same jump.

Brian An, an associate professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy within the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, and his team studied two decades of rental housing data and federal disaster records from California and Florida. 

“We often think of housing as a market that will sort itself out,” An said. “But a natural disaster is not a normal market condition. Housing is destroyed. People are displaced. In those moments, renters can become especially vulnerable.”

After a disaster, the housing market’s usual rules no longer apply. Damaged apartment buildings mean reduced supply. Displaced homeowners enter the rental market while their homes are repaired or rebuilt. Construction, repairs, and insurance all get more expensive.

The largest rent increases followed hurricanes and wildfires more than earthquakes, flooding, and tornadoes. For communities hit repeatedly, each new storm or fire added more rent pressure. 

More Demand, Less Room

“When rents go up after a disaster, we're not talking about a small segment of housing,” An said. “We're talking about the broader rental market. That means the effects reach far beyond the homes that were damaged.”

For renters, the consequences extend beyond monthly housing costs. Higher rents can make it harder for families to remain close to support networks. Children may have to change schools. Workers may face longer commutes. Longtime residents can find themselves priced out of communities they helped build.

The findings point to a central tension in disaster recovery: Rebuilding homes is not the same as keeping communities intact.

A Different Path Home

Not every community experienced the same outcome.

Areas that received federal support through Community Development Block Grant Disaster Recovery (CDBG-DR) funds saw smaller rent increases than similar communities that did not. The money can be used to build and preserve affordable rental housing, giving residents more options as their communities recover.

An said the study cannot prove that funding alone caused rents to rise more slowly. But the pattern suggests that recovery resources may shape who can afford to stay in a community once rebuilding begins.

Rebuilding Lives, Not Just Homes

As communities face repeated hurricanes, wildfires, and other disasters, An believes policymakers need to think differently about recovery. That could mean investing in more resilient housing, expanding affordable rental options, and strengthening protections for renters after disasters strike.

“Everyone needs a place to live,” An said. “As disasters become more frequent, housing can't be an afterthought in recovery.”

An’s research is published in The Russell Sage Foundation Journal of the Social Sciences.

In a landmark study published in Nature, 11 researchers tracked the impacts on the carbon cycle across the Mississippi watershed and its 11 states after almost a century of liming. The results show that while liming can initially release carbon, it becomes a carbon sink after a few decades, effectively removing the greenhouse gas from the atmosphere.

“Farmers have been doing enhanced weathering in U.S. agriculture for a little over a half century,” said Chris Reinhard, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and an author on the paper. “This is a giant natural experiment that's been going on for decades that allows us to figure out how much carbon makes it all the way through the watershed system."

The study grew out of a U.S. Department of Energy Earthshot Initiative grant focused on understanding the role agricultural liming could play in long-term carbon removal.

Tracking Carbon

When limestone or other carbonate minerals are added to soil, the effects don't stop at the field's edge. The minerals’ reaction with the ground’s acidity results in chemical products that move through rivers and eventually reach the ocean. While carbon-related changes can be measured in the field, tracing them across an entire watershed is far more difficult.

But data from decades of agricultural lime applications, fertilizer usage numbers, and river alkalinity measurements at the mouth of the Mississippi helped researchers piece together the larger picture. By analyzing more than a century of agricultural and river records, the team found that liming in the Mississippi River Basin has acted as a net carbon sink.

The findings also challenge how liming's climate impacts are typically measured. Current carbon accounting often treats lime application itself as a source of emissions. But the researchers say this approach misses an important part of the picture: Fertilizers can make soils more acidic over time, creating the need for liming. When the team accounted for both processes, they found that liming removed carbon in the long term, but fertilizer causes acidity and drives emissions. 

Modeling a Better Future

Reinhard and colleagues also created a model that captures the physics and chemistry of agricultural soils. The model can determine liming’s theoretical carbon-removal potential, testing its predictions against the historical data. In this case, about 90% of the carbon-removal benefit predicted from the model ultimately appeared in the records of river chemistry from the Mississippi River Basin. 

“The long-term goal for the model is to develop a way for farmers to plan and be able to answer questions like, ‘How do I stagger the application of lime so I'm helping the crops while also emitting as little carbon as possible?’” Reinhard said.

Beyond its climate implications, liming could help strengthen the long-term resilience of the agricultural industry. The findings suggest that managing soil pH can improve soil health and crop yields, while simultaneously reducing net greenhouse gas emissions. If managed well, one of agriculture's oldest soil management practices may offer a rare double benefit: helping farmers grow healthier crops while reducing the industry's climate footprint.

CITATION : Suhrhoff, T.J., Reinhard, C.T., Kanzaki, Y. et al. Agricultural liming is a carbon sink in the Mississippi River Basin. Nature (2026). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-026-11040-2

Students will work with faculty mentors from both institutions and complete advanced coursework and a capstone project focused on developing and applying technologies in healthcare. The master’s degree is offered through Georgia Tech’s interdisciplinary Master of Science in Robotics program, which brings together faculty and expertise from six schools, including the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering.

According to Jaydev Desai, professor and Cardiovascular Biomedical Engineering Distinguished Chair in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, the pathway will help future physicians develop the technical expertise to understand and apply emerging technologies as they shape patient care.

Read the full story on the Emory School of Medicine website.

His paper, “Brain Speaks Louder Than Words: Neurophysiological Opinion Inference via Cognitive Dissonance Triggers,” recently received the 2026 Dr. Hermann Zemlicka Award for the most visionary paper at the NeuroIS Retreat. 

Wu discusses the research, its potential applications, and the ethical and privacy considerations it raises.

Q&A With D.J. 

What was your reaction when you learned your paper received the 2026 Dr. Hermann Zemlicka Award for “most visionary” research?

The Dr. Hermann Zemlicka Award is presented annually at the NeuroIS Retreat to the paper selected as the year’s “most visionary.” I was surprised and deeply honored to receive it. The recognition was especially meaningful because it affirmed our vision of bringing neuroscience and information systems research together to explore a new way of understanding human opinions.

For readers unfamiliar with your research, what problem were you trying to solve?

We wanted to find a better way to understand people’s opinions in situations where traditional methods, like surveys or tracking behavior, may be biased, intrusive, slow, or difficult to use. Our research explores whether brief brain activity measured by electroencephalography (EEG) can reveal when a statement matches or conflicts with a person’s beliefs. If so, it could provide another way to understand opinions without relying only on what people say or how they behave.

Most people are used to answering surveys, reviews, and polls. What made you wonder if there might be a better way to understand what people really think?

Surveys are extremely useful, but they depend on people actively participating. Those answers can be shaped by factors such as memory, the way a question is worded, social pressure, or a person’s ability and willingness to respond. We wondered whether brain activity could offer another way to understand people’s opinions, especially in situations where those challenges come into play. We wanted to see whether we could capture an immediate reaction before a person has to translate it into words.

The paper title, “Brain Speaks Louder Than Words,” is interesting. Can you give an example of what that means in everyday life?

Imagine someone is asked to rate the statement, “I like this product or service.” Even if they feel pressure to give a positive answer, their brain may respond differently depending on whether the statement matches their experience. Our method looks for patterns of brain activity that occur when there is a mismatch between what a person truly believes and what they are evaluating. It is not mind-reading or lie detection. Instead, it uses the brain’s response to conflicting information as one signal that may help us understand whether a statement reflects someone’s genuine opinion.

Were there any findings that surprised you or challenged what you expected going into the project?

One finding was that cognitive conflict depended on more than whether a statement contradicted someone’s opinion. When a heuristic cue, a simple signal that offers a mental shortcut, was present, the brain response to a conflicting statement became weaker. Put intuitively, some contextual cues can soften our immediate sense that “this does not match what I believe,” even when our underlying opinion remains unchanged.

Privacy is a growing concern in today's digital world. Can you compare the privacy implication of the proposed approach versus the traditional methods?

Our approach could reduce the need to store information such as browsing histories, ratings, or written survey responses. Instead of continuously tracking a person’s behavior, it focuses on collecting a specific brain response during a defined interaction with the user’s consent.

At the same time, brain activity is sensitive biometric information and could reveal more than what is needed for a particular task. Any privacy benefits therefore depend on robust safeguards, including data minimization, meaningful informed consent, clearly defined limits on data use and retention, and strong data security through offline, locally controlled processing and calibration.

Our study offers some initial guidance on these issues, but more research is needed to fully understand the privacy implications of this approach.

How could this research change the way organizations understand customers, employees, or other stakeholders in real time?

In situations where surveys may not tell the whole story, receiving feedback is difficult, or past behavioral data are unavailable, our research could eventually help organizations better understand how people are reacting in near real time. For example, it could help identify whether stakeholders' immediate responses suggest agreement or disagreement with a message, product, digital experience, or decision.

These insights would not replace surveys. Instead, they could complement them by showing where people's immediate reactions align with, or differ from, what they later report. Any use at the individual level, however, would require informed consent, a clearly defined purpose, and strong privacy safeguards.

The paper points to opportunities for helping people who may have difficulty communicating through traditional methods. What possibilities do you see for making technology more inclusive?

Brain-computer interfaces have already shown promise in helping people with severe motor or communication impairments interact with technology. Our research explores one possible way to better understand a person's opinions or preferences through brain activity during specific tasks. Over time, this type of work could contribute to technologies that are more responsive to individual needs and more accessible for people who face challenges communicating through traditional methods.

For readers who haven’t thought about neuroscience or brain-computer interfaces before, what’s the one takeaway you hope they remember from this research?

Brain signals do not provide a direct window into a person's thoughts. They reflect many different processes happening in the brain and body, which means they can be difficult to interpret.

That is why theory and experimental design matter. Rather than searching brain data for patterns without a clear explanation, our research focuses on a specific mechanism: how people respond to information that conflicts with their beliefs. By testing that idea in a controlled setting and calibrating the approach for each individual, we can make the results more meaningful and easier to interpret.

Learn More: Information Technology Management

These questions will be at the center of a conversation with Kamau Bobb, senior director of Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Education in Computing, on Friday, Oct. 16, as part of the CTRL+CM Speaker Series.

Bobb will discuss his new book, The Bullwhip's Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence and America's Racial Caste System, from 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. in the Scholars Event Theater at Price Gilbert Library. Lunch will be provided, and registration is required.

Drawing on the themes of his book, Bobb will examine the connections among AI, public policy, education, and social systems. The discussion will consider both the opportunities and challenges posed by emerging technologies and the responsibilities that accompany their development and use.

Bobb brings experience spanning higher education, government, and industry to the conversation.

He is the founding senior director of Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Education in Computing, which opened in 2017. Before joining Georgia Tech, he served as director of STEM Education Strategy and Research at Google, a program officer in the National Science Foundation’s Directorate for Computer and Information Science and Engineering, and director of the STEM Initiative for the University System of Georgia. He also served on President Obama’s My Brother’s Keeper STEM Task Force.

He earned a Ph.D. in science and technology policy from Georgia Tech and master’s and bachelor’s degrees in mechanical engineering from the University of California, Berkeley.

The speaking engagement follows Bobb’s September appearance at the Richard Tapia Celebration of Diversity in Computing in Atlanta. He co-headlined a session with data scientist and Tapia co-founder Valerie Thomas on AI and its impact on underrepresented groups, a topic also explored in his book.

The Constellations Center’s Collective Impact Creative Technology program organizes the CTRL+CM Speaker Series. The Oct. 16 event is open to those interested in AI, computing, education, public policy, and the social impact of emerging technologies.

Register for the Oct. 16 event.

Author: Alain Louchez, CDAIT Co-founder and Director Emeritus.

Most people would recognize that something unexpected has happened and adjust accordingly.  

For machines, it’s not always that simple.  

Researchers at Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) are addressing this very challenge: how can autonomous systems recognize when something unexpected has happened, determine whether it matters, and decide how to respond?

In a recent paper published in the INFORMS Journal on Data Science, the research team introduced a new framework called Mutual Information Surprise, designed to help machines identify meaningful surprises in complex environments. The work could help lay the foundation for AI agents, robots, and autonomous systems that can better navigate unexpected situations, avoid costly mistakes, and make more informed decisions when faced with situations they weren’t designed or trained to handle.  

"Traditional automation systems are designed to follow instructions. They do not have a sense of surprise. Machines follow a predetermined recipe and produce the expected result," said Yu Ding, the Anderson-Interface Chair and professor in ISyE, who is leading this project. " Intelligent agents, however, must do more than simply follow instructions. They need to recognize when their current understanding or reasoning process has become inadequate. Humans routinely use surprise for this purpose. An autonomous machine needs an analogous computational capability."

This research concept was jointly worked out by Xiao Liu, the David M. McKenney Family Associate Professor, as well as a former postdoctoral fellow in ISyE, Yinsong Wang, and Ph.D. student Quan Zeng.

While several methods already exist to measure surprise in machines, such as the "Shannon Surprise" and "Bayesian Surprise," the ISyE team saw limitations in both approaches.  

Shannon Surprise tends to focus on the rarity of an event, while Bayesian Surprise focuses on how much a new observation changes a system's beliefs.

To illustrate the limitations of existing surprise measures, Ding pointed to the examples of someone noticing a specific type of car parked nearby or a student who consistently earns top grades but suddenly performs poorly on an exam.

Existing surprise measures don't always flag the right kinds of moments to be surprised, Ding said. To the examples given, the Shannon Surprise would flag the specific car parked nearby, although people typically wouldn’t be surprised by that event. Conversely, people would be surprised by the student performing poorly, but the Bayesian Surprise would not flag it.    

"We introduce this new surprise definition because it measures the gain of knowledge and epistemic progression, thus capturing the right moments when a system should be surprised and ignoring the moments when it shouldn't," Ding added.  

The framework could eventually help systems determine when to continue as planned or when to stop and reassess, whether that's an AI assistant struggling to answer a question, a robot encountering a situation it has never seen before, or an autonomous factory detecting a disruption that could affect production and require human intervention.

Looking ahead, the ISyE research team is exploring potential applications in engineering autonomous systems and is developing a proposal for federally funded programs.  

The Office of the Executive Vice President for Research and the Library invite the Georgia Tech community to help recognize that work at the sixth annual Georgia Tech Authors Celebration in Spring 2027. 

It was a chance to find community, encounter new ideas, and see a place for themselves in the future of computing.

The Sept. 16-18 conference at the Hyatt Regency Atlanta brought together students, researchers, educators, and industry professionals from across the country to advance diversity in computing.

The College of Computing had a strong presence throughout the conference, with Vivek Sarkar, John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing, delivering welcoming remarks at the opening session and several College faculty, researchers, and leaders participating in panels and other programming.

Unprecedented student demand

The College has funded students to attend Tapia for more than a decade, typically covering attendance for about eight graduate students. However, with Tapia in Atlanta this year, a record number of students sought registration support from the College.

To manage the demand, Associate Dean of Access and Advancement and Regents’ Professor Dana Randall established the GT Computing Tapia Award. She led a small committee that reviewed 54 student applications and selected 17 for conference registration support.

“Of course, we wish that the College could have covered registration for all of the students who applied,” said Randall. “Tapia is an incredible opportunity for students to discover their community as they develop a richer understanding of where a career in computing can take them.” 

The 17 GT Computing Tapia Award winners were joined by eight students from the Online Master of Science in Computer Science program, and about 10 student volunteers, for a GT Computing contingent of approximately 35 students.

Connecting to community

For Abramson, a CS master’s student whose research focuses on inclusion in computing, the conference offered an opportunity to connect her academic interests with a broader community.

“Tapia was especially meaningful to me because much of my research focuses on inclusion in computing and on creating spaces where everyone feels welcome,” Abramson said. “Attending Tapia allowed me to network and to see how others in my field are working toward those goals.”

But most of all, Tapia reinforced Abramson's sense of belonging.

“The biggest lesson I learned from this conference is that there will always be a place for me at Tapia where I can be myself,” she said. “The best way to carry that legacy forward is to create the same space for others in my own community.”

The Tapia experience provided Muniz, a second-year CS major, with an equally personal perspective.

As a Latina student, Muniz said she remembered attending a first-year seminar in which the student panel didn’t include anyone who looked like her. At Tapia, she found a diverse, supportive community focused on helping students succeed.

“Their continued advocacy for diversity in the computing industry was inspiring,” Muniz said, “and they provided me with numerous resources so I can work toward my future.”

Muniz made the most of these resources by participating in resume review sessions and speaking with recruiters. She also drew inspiration from a presentation by Omar Florez, team lead for LatamGPT, a large language model for Latin America.

As a bilingual student assistant, Muniz saw the potential for technology like LatamGPT to help address representation and information gaps for communities that may lack access to college application resources.

Gaddam, a third-year CS major, also appreciated Tapia’s emphasis on diversity in computing.

She found the conference particularly relevant to her academic and professional interests. A session on the Evolution of Software Engineering with AI directly connected to her coursework and internship experience, while a career panel featuring engineers from Meta and Netflix offered insight into career growth for people of color in technology.

“Being in a room where most of the attendees and speakers didn't match the default image of who works in AI reinforced something I already believe,” said Gaddam.

“The industry needs more people who lead with empathy and intuition, not just technical throughput.”

GT Computing at Tapia

The College’s presence extended beyond student attendance. Along with Sarkar’s opening remarks, faculty, researchers, and students also participated in conference programming.

Kamau Bobb, senior director of Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Computing Education, co-headlined a session with data scientist and Tapia co-founder Valerie Thomas. The two discussed artificial intelligence (AI) and its impact on underrepresented groups, which is the subject of Bobb’s recent book, The Bullwhip’s Algorithm: Artificial Intelligence and America’s Racial Caste System.

Additional programming contributions from the GT Computing community included:

• Reeda Shimaz Huda, a first-year Ph.D. student in human-centered computing, participated in a panel discussion titled Cultivating Tomorrow’s Innovators: The Transformative Power of Undergraduate Research.
• Alex Cabral, a former postdoctoral fellow in the Ka Moamoa Lab at Georgia Tech, and Josiah Hester, an interactive computing associate professor, participated in a Birds of a Feather session titled Impact-Focused Research in Computing: Publishing, Career Paths, and Community-Building Without Losing Your Values.

Their system means devices can work together like never before, sensing in one part of the body and triggering a therapeutic response elsewhere — perhaps releasing medicine or stimulating a nerve. 

Described Sept. 24 in the journal Science, their communication method is expandable to include multiple interconnected devices across the body, even deep inside the stomach.

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website.

Jeff Young, OSPO director, noted, "We had several attendees who noted the diversity of scientific software that was covered by our summer program and by Georgia Tech students in general. I believe this breadth speaks to the broad interests of our student researchers as well as the impact of Georgia Tech researchers on the wider open-source software community."

The Institute rose three places to No. 29 among national universities and three places to No. 6 among public national universities. It also moved from No. 108 to No. 39 among Best Value Schools, a 69-place rise and the largest year-over-year improvement among Georgia Tech’s listed rankings. 

Georgia Tech also ranked No. 5 in the new Best Value Schools for the In-State Students category. 

“At a time when students and families are asking important questions about the value of higher education, Georgia Tech continues to demonstrate that world-class academic quality and affordability can go hand in hand,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “Our rise among the nation’s top universities and our strong performance in value rankings reflect our commitment to delivering an education that creates opportunity, drives innovation, and creates lasting impact for our students ​and our communities.”

Engineering Reaches No. 2

Georgia Tech’s undergraduate engineering program rose one place to No. 2 nationally, tied with Stanford University and the University of California, Berkeley. Every ranked Georgia Tech engineering discipline remains in the top five nationally. 

Civil engineering moved into the No. 1 position, joining environmental engineering and industrial and systems engineering at the top of their respective disciplines. The Institute now holds three No. 1 undergraduate engineering rankings. 

Other top engineering program rankings include:

• Mechanical engineering rose two places to No. 2.
• Materials engineering moved to No. 2 (up from No. 3).
• Computer engineering advanced to No. 5 (up from No. 6). 
• Aerospace engineering at No. 2.
• Chemical engineering at No. 2.
• Electrical engineering held at No. 3.

Computing Maintains Top-Five Standing

Georgia Tech’s undergraduate computer science program held at No. 5 nationally, tied with Princeton University and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. Six ranked computing specialties placed among the nation’s top 10. 

Cybersecurity remained No. 2, software engineering held at No. 3, and artificial intelligence and data analytics/science each ranked No. 5. Computer systems advanced one place to No. 6, while theory remained No. 10. 

Scheller Business Programs Show Continued Strength

Georgia Tech’s undergraduate business program ranked No. 20 nationally, remaining among the country’s top 20 programs. Business analytics and management information systems each ranked No. 3. Quantitative analysis rose to No. 4, while production and operations management and supply chain management both maintained at No. 6. Finance advanced four places to No. 30.

Teaching and Hands-On Learning Advance

Georgia Tech climbed seven places to No. 14 for Best Undergraduate Teaching, entering the top 20. The Institute also remained No. 3 among the nation’s Most Innovative Schools. 

Experiential learning continues to distinguish the undergraduate experience. Georgia Tech ranked No. 4 for internships and co-ops, No. 12 for senior capstone experiences, and No. 14, up from No. 19, for undergraduate research and creative projects.

*Please note that this summary includes the latest rankings issued by U.S. News & World Report. Not all Georgia Tech Colleges, Schools, and subjects are ranked every year by this organization.

Two Georgia Tech projects explore those distinct possibilities. College of Lifetime Learning researchers Meryem Yilmaz Soylu and Jeonghyun “Jonna” Lee collaborated with School of Biological Sciences lecturer Lesley Baradel to study AI-facilitated Socratic dialogue in large courses. In a separate project, Karen Peterson, a principal lecturer in the College of Lifetime Learning, used AI to develop clinical scenarios, pronunciation feedback, and vocabulary exercises for healthcare communication courses.

Both projects are featured in Georgia Tech’s first Academic AI Playbook, which shares practical examples of how faculty are using AI to support specific learning goals.

Encouraging Students to Think More Deeply

“One of the things that interested me most was the opportunity to extend meaningful academic conversations beyond the time and space available in a classroom,” Baradel said. “Using Socratic Mind in my classroom showed me how AI can facilitate reflection and discussion at a scale difficult to achieve through one-on-one interactions alone.”

Socratic Mind is an AI-powered conversational assessment tool developed by researchers in Georgia Tech’s College of Computing and College of Lifetime Learning. The team piloted the tool with more than 700 students in online and in-person courses. Their research examined whether AI could help students engage more deeply with course concepts by prompting them to explain their reasoning, apply their knowledge, and identify gaps in their understanding.

In Using AI-Facilitated Socratic Dialogue for Formative Learning in Large Undergraduate Courses, Baradel, Yilmaz Soylu, and Lee document the long-term collaboration among the instructor, researchers, and students to better understand how the tool may influence learning at cognitive and behavioral levels.

“Being part of the AI Playbook is especially meaningful because it allows us to share the idea behind the project and what we learned from putting it into practice with colleagues across Tech,” Yilmaz Soylu said. “Readers will see outcomes from research guided by student feedback and interaction data, which continually refined the activity and helped us better understand what makes AI-supported dialogue significant for learning.”

Building Communication Skills by Practice

In AI-Supported Healthcare Communication Training, Peters describes how she used AI to provide healthcare professionals and nurses with opportunities to develop communication skills through learning activities. Those skills include AIDET (Acknowledge, Introduce, Duration, Explanation, and Thank You) and SBAR (Situation, Background, Assessment, and Recommendation). She used generative AI to identify relevant healthcare vocabulary, develop instructional materials, create realistic clinical scenarios, and design activities tailored to students’ vocabulary gaps.

“One of the most important lessons from this work is that AI should be used to support a specific learning objective, not simply because the technology is available,” Peterson said. “When implemented intentionally, AI can help create more personalized opportunities for practice and feedback while supporting the learning goals that matter most.”

Keeping Learning at the Center

Results from the Socratic Mind pilot indicated that AI could promote greater engagement when it challenges students to think through and revise their ideas rather than simply providing answers. Peterson’s work expanded access to authentic healthcare communication experiences, giving learners opportunities to engage in workplace interactions that are difficult to replicate with traditional instructional materials. 

“Beyond the classroom outcomes, the Socratic Mind project generated valuable insights into how students engage with AI-guided educational experiences,” Lee said. “Those findings contribute to a growing body of research that helps educators better understand when and how generative AI can support meaningful learning and inform its thoughtful use in higher education.”

Together, these projects demonstrate that AI’s value in education goes beyond efficiency or automation. Whether prompting students to reflect more deeply on course concepts or helping healthcare professionals practice high-stakes communication, the most effective applications are grounded in clear learning goals. AI can enrich teaching and learning when intentionally designed to support meaningful engagement, practice, and feedback. 

“Rather than replacing existing teaching practices, AI prompted me to reconsider which aspects of the learning experience benefit most from human expertise and which can be enhanced by technology,” Peterson said. “It also opened new possibilities for designing learning experiences that are both responsive and scalable.”

Interim Vice Provost for AI in Education David A. Joyner and Nimisha Roy, a lecturer in the School of Computing Instruction, edited the 2026 edition of the Georgia Tech Academic AI Playbook. The authors of the featured articles, Peterson, Baradel, Yilmaz Soylu, and Lee, hope their work will inspire new ideas for using AI thoughtfully and purposefully to support teaching and learning.

Speaking Sept. 17, 2026, at the Georgia Tech Alumni House, Murdie told the IAC community that despite the headwinds facing higher education, the College has smashed through fundraising goals, largely held its own in enrollment, and continues to innovate, on campus and beyond.

“We have never been better as a community, and the Institute increasingly recognizes the value of our work in the humanities and social sciences, especially as the rise of artificial intelligence puts what it means to be human front and center,” she said.

View Murdie’s State of the College Presentation

Presentation Slides

Video

The College recently convened leaders of liberal arts units at tech institutions from around the country to discuss AI in education and is leading the upcoming AI & Society speaker series focused on the intersection of data, human rights, energy, and health.

The College has also taken a foundational role in the Michael E. Tennenbaum Family Institute for Technology and Civic Leadership, created to prepare students to navigate technology, civic life, and leadership.

She also highlighted the Ivan Allen Advantage, the lifetime earnings premium Georgia Tech liberal arts graduates enjoy thanks to the additional STEM training represented in their bachelor and master of science degrees.

Georgia Tech students with IAC credentials on their resumes also are ranked as more hirable, whether they are primarily liberal arts students or studied a STEM curriculum, Murdie noted.

“It works both ways, for our students being embedded in a tech institute having that B.S. with that math training, but also for the rest of the Institute and having those future-proof skills that come from the liberal arts.”

Under Murdie’s leadership, the College also recently completed a refresh of its Strategic Plan. The Spring 2026 update didn’t change the College’s core mission or goals but provided ways to better measure progress and address emerging challenges and opportunities.

In all 86 IAC faculty members, staff, students, alumni, and friends of the College participated in the update.

Murdie also highlighted initiatives such as the launch of the Staff Advisory Council, fully funding Ivan Allen College Ph.D. students, and course evaluations that continue to show Ivan Allen College units coming out on top with students.

Murdie said that the College must continue to focus on recruiting and retaining the best students, overcoming barriers to transfer that make it difficult for some students to switch to Georgia Tech.

One way to do that is through new offerings, she said. The College is holding listening sessions soon to discuss possible opportunities in computational social science, medical humanities, AI and society, and interdisciplinary social science.

"Our students are still writing their stories and contributing to that Ivan Allen Advantage, and that all depends on you,” Murdie told attendees. “Thank you for the work that you're doing. I hope you see yourself reflected in where we're going and where we've been this past year, and I am super excited about how we are all contributing to this important conversation about the role of humanity in the age of AI."

A film production crew will be at the Blake R. Van Leer Building and the Campus Recreation Center (CRC) from Wednesday, Sept. 23, through Tuesday, Sept. 29, with operations beginning as early as 5 a.m. and concluding as late as 10 p.m. During this time, community members should allow extra travel time when moving through these areas due to crew activity and production vehicles. 

Following a competitive application process, IMS selected students whose research interests align with its core capabilities in fabrication and characterization. Apprentices work closely with IMS staff and faculty mentors to support facility operations and contribute to research projects. 

“The graduate apprentice program gives students hands-on experience with facilities operations, process development, data analysis, and user support while helping IMS meet the growing demand for our research infrastructure,” said Eric Vogel, executive director of IMS.

The IMS Graduate Apprenticeship Program is a structured, paid alternative to traditional teaching assistantships. Apprentices commit 10 hours per week to facility operations and receive support for 50% of their graduate stipend and tuition. 

"We saw a significant increase in applications this year, and IMS expanded its support for the program in response,” said Anna Österholm, principal research scientist and IMS Graduate Apprenticeship Program coordinator. “We’re growing from nine apprentices last year to 13 students working across our facilities this year.”

The apprentices represent disciplines across science and engineering and will receive training in microfabrication, nanofabrication, or materials characterization. They also will assist with instrument calibration, process development, sample testing, and data analysis for internal and external research projects. 

2026 Cohort 

• Ehiremen Asemewanlen, Ph.D. student in the School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Kayla Chuong, Ph.D. student in the School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Parker Dulin, Ph.D. student in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• Kristen Gram, Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Abigial Hefferan, Ph.D. student in the School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Matthew Kim, M.Sc. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Justin Nakamura, Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Shweta Ram, M.Sc. student in the School of Materials Science and Engineering
• David Thompson, Ph.D. student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Oscar Toro, Ph.D. student in the School of Materials Science and Engineering
• Wei-Chen Wang, Ph.D. student in the School of Physics
• Eric Zhang, Ph.D. student in the School of Physics
• Olivia Zhang, Ph.D. student in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Mentors 

• Devin Brown
• Lila Dahal
• Josh Davies-Jones
• Durga Gajula
• Melissa Hunt 
• Seung-Joon Paik
• David Tavakoli
• Mengkun Tian
• Stephan Turano
• Todd Walters

To inform that work, he has researched beyond his home country, asking how higher education institutions, including those traditionally data-driven, can evolve in the age of AI and how they are responding to that change. He brought this question with him to Georgia Tech.

With an academic background in computer engineering and a specialization in computer vision, a core technology behind modern AI, he has worked with AI-related concepts and technologies long before they became widely commercialized and part of everyday life.

Where Data Meets AI

“I have long believed that data would become the 'oil' of the future—a critical resource driving innovation, economic growth, and decision-making. That belief naturally led me to focus on data governance and AI, which I see as essential to the future of education, industry, and society,” he said.

Jang's research on data-informed institutional decision-making in the age of AI underscores the need for thoughtfully designed data governance to ensure data accuracy and trustworthiness and to protect personal information.

At universities, Jang has observed practices that fragment data production and management, including colleges pursuing independent projects, siloed administrative practices that discourage interdepartmental sharing, and passive approaches to its exchange due to concerns about personal data protection. As a result, a centralized data governance framework is necessary to oversee and coordinate data across the institution.

The biggest challenge with AI in higher education “is not how fast you adopt AI—it’s whether you can govern it responsibly. Without clear policies and accountability, rapid adoption can create more problems than benefits,” he said.

AI in Practice at Tech

In South Korea, Georgia Tech has long been recognized as one of the world's leading innovation-driven universities, particularly in applied technology and research. Because Jang's work focuses on higher-education innovation, he was already familiar with Tech’s reputation before coming here as a visiting scholar at the Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) in the College of Lifetime Learning in October 2025. In fact, he recommended Georgia Tech to his son during his college search.

Jang first connected with C21U at the 1EdTech 2022 Digital Credential Summit and later reached out to explore collaboration, which led to his invitation. From day one, he set out to observe how the Institute integrates diverse forms of institutional data across campus and uses it to support student success and inform broader decision-making in the age of AI. 

Alongside Director of Research in Education Innovation Jeonghyun (Jonna) Lee, he has facilitated virtual seminars and advanced cross-institutional knowledge exchange between Georgia Tech and Korean institutions. He also collaborated with Lee on a project to explore learner personas over their lifetimes and to design recommendations for a learning platform to support them. Because Jang has expertise in lifelong learning research and policy in Korea, his input has greatly benefited this project.

“There is real momentum toward building thoughtful, shared approaches to AI,” Jang said, reflecting on campus discussions. He also noted that the Institute invites scholars to host seminars and conferences, offering opportunities to hear expert perspectives and incorporate them into institutional practice.

A few months into his residency, he presented “Strategies for Using Data and AI in Education” at a C21U Learning Lab. The session brought together leaders from AI-related units across the Institute, demonstrating that they are actively exchanging ideas and working toward better AI policies and guidelines.

Based on what he has seen at Georgia Tech, Jang views the Institute’s efforts to implement AI usage guidelines as a strong example. For him, it is particularly significant that the policy treats AI as a technology that affects “teaching and learning, research, and everyday operations,” he said. “It treats AI as part of the entire institution—not just a classroom issue.” 

“While some institutions approach AI primarily through a 'ban or allow' framework, Georgia Tech combines controlled access, experimentation, training, and security review,” he added.

One aspect that stood out was that responsible data stewardship is embedded in everyday research practice, not just in formal governance procedures. Georgia Tech provides researchers with a clear, structured pathway for using de-identified institutional data, with appropriate oversight and training. “Responsible access to data is what makes meaningful research possible,” he said.

Rethinking What Matters

On a personal level, Jang’s time at Tech made him realize that the future of institutional research will be defined not by data collection alone but by an institution’s capacity to connect data, governance, human judgment, and AI to support better decisions for students, faculty, and society. One way he has seen this at the Institute is by preserving space for individual initiative and innovation while fostering collaboration within the Institute and beyond. 

“People take ownership of their work while enjoying the freedom to explore,” he said. “This drives innovation at the Institute and across its fields, thereby amplifying each individual’s impact.”

During his time here, he has participated in seminars and conversations across campus. Jang would like to bring back to South Korea the strong collaboration among higher education institutions, local communities, and industry that he observed in Atlanta and at Tech. His son, Ricky Jang, a third-year Yellow Jacket majoring in industrial engineering, recently participated in a program in partnership with Invest Atlanta to address challenges facing the local community. The students presented their project outcomes and received feedback in the mayor's presence. In some cases, students’ ideas were accepted on the spot, later leading to business development by companies or policy initiatives at the city government level.

His time at Georgia Tech has provided him with valuable data for his ongoing research and unexpected opportunities. In South Korea, his work consumed most of his time, including frequent business trips, leaving little time for himself. By contrast, although Atlanta’s traffic has been challenging, the campus and reduced work travel have given him more time and space to reflect.

“My experience at Tech has broadened my understanding of AI’s role in society—not just as a technology, but as a tool that must be guided by trust, responsibility, and public engagement,” he said. “Surrounded by nature and spending more time with my family, I find myself thinking every day about how AI and humans should collaborate and coexist, and about the essence of humanity, the redefinition of work, and the role of education—questions I keep returning to.”

Since its launch in 2025, SRI has brought together researchers from across campus to advance interdisciplinary space initiatives and create new opportunities for collaboration. In their new roles, Ballantyne and Borowitz will help guide the institute's growth by strengthening both internal research connections and external partnerships across the broader space community.

“David and Mariel bring complementary strengths that will be invaluable as we continue building SRI,” said Jud Ready, executive director of SRI. “David has a deep understanding of the research enterprise at Georgia Tech and a passion for connecting people and ideas across disciplines. Mariel brings extensive experience working across government, industry, and the international space community. Together, they will help us strengthen Georgia Tech's space ecosystem and expand our impact far beyond campus.”

Strengthening Georgia Tech's Research Community

Since joining the Institute in 2008 as a founding faculty member of the Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, Ballantyne has helped advance both space science and academic leadership across campus.

A professor in the School of Physics, he studies the evolution of galaxies and their central black holes, as well as the physics of accretion disks around black holes and neutron stars. He has authored more than 140 peer-reviewed publications and served as associate chair of the School of Physics for nearly a decade.

As associate director, Ballantyne will focus on cultivating connections across Georgia Tech's space research community and identifying opportunities for new interdisciplinary collaborations.

“I view SRI as a catalyst — a mechanism to spark new and transformative areas of space research at Georgia Tech that will grow to national and international prominence,” Ballantyne said. “There is so much innovative space research happening across campus, and one of SRI's most important roles is helping researchers find the connections and collaborations that can spark new ideas and discoveries.”

Ballantyne says he is particularly interested in helping position Georgia Tech as a leader in understanding the opportunities and challenges presented by artificial intelligence in space systems.

“My goal is to be out in the community, learning about the breadth of space research happening across campus and identifying ways SRI can accelerate that work,” he said. “AI technologies are poised to transform space exploration, scientific discovery, national security, and commercial space operations. SRI is uniquely positioned to help Georgia Tech lead those conversations.”

Building Partnerships Beyond Campus

As space activities become increasingly interconnected across government, industry, and academia, strong partnerships are essential to translating research into real-world impact. That collaborative spirit is central to the work of Mariel Borowitz, an associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.

Borowitz, who also serves as director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Space Policy and International Relations, is widely recognized for her expertise in space policy, international cooperation, and the governance of emerging space activities. Her work has connected her with space agencies, private companies, and policymakers around the world, providing a valuable perspective on opportunities for Georgia Tech to expand its engagement with the broader space community.

In her role as associate director, Borowitz will focus on growing SRI's partnerships with industry, government, and the broader space community.

“My focus as associate director will be on building partnerships between Georgia Tech and the broader space community,” Borowitz said. “Georgia Tech has tremendous expertise across science, engineering, policy, economics, and international affairs. By working across those disciplines, we can help address the complex challenges facing the future of space development while creating new opportunities for collaboration and impact.”

Borowitz sees SRI as a powerful mechanism for connecting Georgia Tech's diverse strengths and amplifying their collective impact.

“Real-world challenges and opportunities are inherently interdisciplinary,” she said. “The Space Research Institute allows us to bring together expertise from across Georgia Tech to develop more complete solutions and create new possibilities for the future of space.”

Looking Ahead

Together, Ballantyne and Borowitz will help advance SRI's mission of connecting researchers, educators, students, industry leaders, and policymakers to address the most pressing opportunities and challenges in space.

“Space exploration has always challenged us to think bigger, work across boundaries, and pursue questions that no single discipline can answer alone,” said Ready, who also serves as a principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. “David and Mariel embody that spirit of collaboration, and their leadership will help us create new opportunities for discovery, innovation, and impact at Georgia Tech and beyond.”
 

The annual U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings are based on assessments from academic leaders at peer institutions nationwide.  

The recognition comes at a time of significant momentum for ISyE. This fall, the school moved into George Tower in Tech Square, a new home designed to support learning, collaboration, and innovation while creating new opportunities for engagement with students, alumni, industry partners, and the broader Georgia Tech community.  

Demand for ISyE's undergraduate program continues to grow, with a record 1,536 students enrolled for the fall 2026 semester, a 10% increase from the previous year. ISyE graduates continue to find success after graduation, with a median starting salary of $90,000 for 2025-26 bachelor's degree recipients and 84% of job-seeking graduates receiving at least one job offer before graduation. Alumni pursue careers across consulting, logistics, finance, technology, manufacturing, and startups, with top employers including The Home Depot, Delta Air Lines, McKinsey & Company, Capital One, and PwC.

The College of Engineering also achieved a historic milestone in the latest U.S. News rankings, rising to No. 2 nationally. All 10 undergraduate engineering programs were ranked among the nation's top five. 

Top-tier specialty rankings in artificial intelligence and cybersecurity continue to drive the program's standing, with AI retaining its No. 5 rank nationwide and Cybersecurity holding firm at No. 2.

“Maintaining a top-five national ranking reflects the extraordinary excellence and dedication of our faculty, students, and staff,” said Vivek Sarkar, John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing.

“Our research strength in critical areas such as cybersecurity and AI, together with our distinctive threads-based curriculum, reflects our commitment to a comprehensive education that keeps pace with rapid technological change and prepares our graduates to thrive in a workforce undergoing major transformation.”

The 2027 U.S. News Best Colleges rankings reflect performance across several specialized undergraduate tracks within the College:

• Cybersecurity: No. 2
• Software Engineering: No. 3
• Artificial Intelligence: No. 5
• Data Analytics: No. 5
• Computer Systems: No. 6 (up 1 spot)
• Theory: No. 10
• Programming Languages: No. 13 (down 3 spots)

Building on prior years' gains in national recognition, the latest results mark continued consistency across both foundational theory and specialized subfields.

Earlier this year, U.S. News and World Report ranked Georgia Tech No. 7 overall among the best graduate CS programs.

The challenge gives participants an opportunity to set up teams for their workplace, encourage each other to ride, and win prizes for participation and mileage. Last year, a Georgia Tech team won the citywide challenge. 

It’s also a chance to learn about or get reacquainted with on-campus cycling resources. That includes a virtual Ride Smart class and monthly in-person group rides. Learn more. 

Georgia Tech has long been a great place to ride, and in 2024, it earned renewed recognition as a gold-level Bicycle Friendly University. Campus bicycle infrastructure took a major step forward last fall with the opening of the Ferst Drive cycle track, which provides a bidirectional path separated from vehicular traffic. And, with last year's opening of a bike shop in the Campus Recreation Center, riders can get help with repairs, parts, and maintenance right on campus. (Not to mention Atlanta's recent inclusion in The New York Times' 5 Great North American Biking Cities.)

To learn more about campus bicycling resources, including maps and other information, visit the Parking and Transportation Services website. And get on your bikes and ride!

ATLANTA, Ga. — The Georgia Forestry Innovation Initiative (GFII), a collaborative effort led by Georgia Tech and the Georgia Forestry Commission (GFC), today announced the selection of The Langdale Company as its industry collaborator for development of a pilot-scale manufacturing facility designed to accelerate commercialization of innovative forest-based products and technologies. 

Malhar Rathod, a second-year computer engineering student and John H. Martinson Honors Program member, was selected as Georgia Tech’s 2026 Second Year New Student Convocation Speaker. A passion for making an impact and his first-year experience at Georgia Tech led Malhar to become a convocation speaker, hoping to guide the next cohort of students as they begin their academic journey. 

Upon returning to Georgia Tech, Phute reflected on her summer internship and what it taught her about the evolving relationship between research and industry.

Student: Mansi Phute

Research Interests: Machine learning (ML) robustness and artificial intelligence (AI) safety

Degree Program: Ph.D. in Computer Science

Faculty Advisor: School of CSE Professor and Associate Chair Polo Chau

2026 Internship: International Business Machines (IBM), San Jose, California

What about IBM interested you in applying for and accepting an internship there?

IBM is often at the forefront of AI safety, my field of interest, and has a culture that encourages exploratory and fundamental research. I felt this would give me a closer look at cutting-edge industry approaches without compromising on my research interests or my progress toward my thesis.

How well did your coursework and experience at Georgia Tech prepare you for your IBM internship?

My experience at Georgia Tech was very helpful in preparing me for IBM. My coursework and other academic experiences certainly transferred over, but I believe that the wide range of people I met during those courses and what I learned from them helped me connect and relate strongly with people at IBM. Being conversant in different fields of research really helped me interact better with IBM coworkers and feel comfortable in a new environment.

What did you work on while interning at IBM?

I worked on IBM’s AI Foundations team, focusing on the security of multimodal agent communication during my internship. This is an important problem as we see an increase in agents applied in many use cases. It was also closely aligned with my research interests of AI safety.

Do you have a favorite memory or remarkable achievement from your internship?

One of my favorite moments was presenting my work to a broad, cross-team audience of technical and non-technical members. Afterward, my manager told me I was good at explaining my research to people with varying levels of familiarity with the domain. This feedback meant a lot to me because communicating clearly across different audiences is a skill I've deliberately worked to improve. So, hearing that the effort was paying off was very rewarding.

Overall, how helpful was this internship toward your studies at Georgia Tech and your career as an aspiring researcher?

This internship was very valuable for my development as an aspiring researcher. I worked alongside accomplished people in the AI safety field on projects that aligned closely with my research interests. I also saw how those same projects connect to a company's broader business priorities, a perspective that isn’t easily available in academic settings. I shared many fruitful discussions with people working in safety, policy, and alignment, which gave me a much clearer sense of how industry approaches these issues compared to the more academic-oriented framing I am used to.

Based on what you learned during your internship, how important is private industry in progressing research and scientific discovery?

Working in private industry was a fascinating experience. I come away believing that industry plays an important role in advancing research, especially in AI, where companies have access to computing resources that are less prohibitive than in academic environments. I also think that because private industry has a strong hand in implementing and deploying research, understanding industry priorities can help us frame and design our research in ways that complement industry applications. This ensures research has a bigger impact, particularly in the domain of ML safety and reliability.

This summer, M.S. student Joey Cuthbert contributed to this mission through an internship at the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL). Upon returning to campus, Cuthbert reflected on his internship and what he learned working alongside researchers in government and the defense community.  

Student: Joey Cuthbert

Research Interests: Machine learning (ML), model-based systems engineering

Degree Program: M.S. in Computational Science and Engineering, home unit in H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering

2026 Internship: Sensors Directorate Internship Program with Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) and the National Air and Space Intelligence Center (NASIC), Beavercreek, Ohio

What about AFRL interested you in applying for and accepting an internship there?

The Sensors Directorate Internship Program (SDIP) provided a unique opportunity to work alongside mentors from AFRL and NASIC on a defense-related research project over a 14-week internship. This aligned with my desire to work on applied ML research in the defense sector and allowed me to better understand the ins and outs of government and government-contracting work. The program provided competitive pay and housing throughout the program, which was a huge plus for me.

How well did your coursework and experience at Georgia Tech prepare you for your AFRL internship?

My experience and coursework at Georgia Tech helped me a great deal this summer. I believe my understanding of ML has greatly improved over the past two semesters, which helped me complete my internship project. All of my experiments ran on high-performance computing (HPC) systems, and I felt I had a head start since I completed an HPC class last spring. 

What did you work on while interning at AFRL?

I worked on an image-classification robustness project for convolutional neural networks (CNNs) using synthetic aperture radar (SAR) data. I built a robustness benchmark by testing a model against nine types of noise, and used it to show how we can effectively increase robustness by inducing shape-bias in the model during training. 

Do you have a favorite memory or remarkable achievement from your internship?

During the summer, we went on a tour of nearby Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, where we visited the sensors directorate buildings and checked out some of their labs. I also received the best poster presentation award among approximately 40 interns. 

Overall, how helpful was this internship toward your studies at Georgia Tech and career as an aspiring researcher?

This program provided great strides toward my research career goals. My coursework has provided a great foundation in ML, and I was able to apply this knowledge to a project. The internship offered me lots of autonomy, as well as time to explore different paths to find results. 

From what you learned on your internship, how important are government agencies in progressing research and scientific discovery?

I believe government agencies are massively valuable in advancing research and scientific discovery, especially within the defense sector. All work at AFRL has the goal of giving warfighters the greatest advantage possible. This often entails looking 10 to 20 years into the future of science and technology and trying to get there as fast as possible. 

The internship provided Burnett with valuable insight into national laboratory research and reinforced skills he developed through his studies at Georgia Tech. When he returned to campus, we asked Burnett to share more about his internship and what he learned.

Student: Tage Burnett

Research Interests: Fusion energy, computational plasma physics, high-performance computing, and structure-preserving machine learning

Degree Program: Ph.D. in Computational Science and Engineering

Faculty Advisor: School of CSE Assistant Professor Qi Tang

2026 Internship: Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Oak Ridge, Tennessee

Many people are unfamiliar with national laboratories, like ORNL. Could you explain the purpose of these institutions and why they are important?

The Department of Energy (DOE) national laboratories are responsible for moving forward science and technology in the United States and solving high-consequence challenges in science, energy, and national security. They work on both applied and theoretical research with both short-term and long-term returns. ORNL has eight core research areas: biology and environment, energy science, fusion and fission, isotopes, physical sciences, national security, neutron science, and supercomputing. I was an intern in the supercomputing division.

How well did coursework and experience at Georgia Tech prepare you for your ORNL internship?

My coursework at Georgia Tech was vital in my preparation for this internship. I wrote highly parallel code where I leaned heavily on what I learned in CSE 6220: High-Performance Computing. I also worked on numerical methods which required an understanding of partial differential equations and numerical linear algebra which I also learned at Georgia Tech from classes like CSE 6643: Numerical Linear Algebra and a space plasma physics course.

What did you work on while interning at ORNL?

At ORNL, I was a developer on the Adaptive Sparse Grid Discretization (ASGarD) codebase. The code uses adaptive sparse grids and the Discontinuous Galerkin method to beat the curse of dimensionality and solve high-dimensional partial differential equations (PDEs). The code is designed to simulate fully kinetic plasmas in up to 6-dimensional phase space. My project was to implement an iterative method to solve the efficiently solve the Poisson equation within the codebase. This project gave me hands on experience with linear algebra, numerical PDEs, parallel computing and software engineering which was invaluable to my development as a CSE researcher.

Do you have a favorite memory or remarkable achievement from your internship?

My favorite memory from my internship was spending time with the other ORNL interns outside of work. There was an amazing group of interns at ORNL, and it was great getting to know them. One particularly good memory was when we went out to a restaurant with live music and played laser tag during our last week of the internship to celebrate our time at ORNL. The achievement I am most proud of was getting a working, highly efficient version of the Poisson solver into ASGarD. The ASGarD codebase is open source, so I hope other plasma physics researchers will use the code and find it helpful for their research.

While interning, you were selected for a GEM Fellowship, which Georgia Tech and ORNL nominated you for. What does this fellowship mean to you and is there anything you would like to say to your supporters?

To me, receiving the GEM Fellowship indicates that other people recognize the hard work I am doing, and they believe in my ability to meaningfully contribute to the field. Having this support from GEM, ORNL, and Georgia Tech gives me greater confidence in myself and my potential and inspires me to put my all into my work. I would like all my supporters to know that I am so grateful for the opportunity you have given me to be a part of the excellent community of researchers within GEM, ORNL, and Georgia Tech. I will do my very best to make your support worthwhile!

Overall, how helpful was this internship toward your studies at Georgia Tech and career as an aspiring researcher?

The internship was extremely important to both my studies at Georgia Tech and my career as a researcher. The hands-on experience I gained is irreplaceable and it helped me to apply all the skills I have developed throughout my education. I am also optimistic that the internship will open doors for me when I am seeking a job post-graduation.

The ribbon-cutting ceremony marks the completion of a project years in the making. The facility brings together the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the Scheller College of Business in a shared environment designed to encourage collaboration among students, faculty, researchers, entrepreneurs, and industry partners. 

The building reflects Georgia Tech’s belief that many of the challenges facing Georgia and the nation require expertise from multiple fields. From advanced manufacturing and artificial intelligence to healthcare, supply chains, and entrepreneurship, the next generation of leaders must understand both technology and business — and know how to work across disciplines. 

The project was made possible through support from the state of Georgia and the extraordinary generosity of Georgia Tech alumni and their families: Bill and Penny George, Ernest “Ernie” Scheller, and H. Milton “Milt” Stewart and Carolyn Stewart. Their leadership investments, along with the support of many other donors who contributed to the facility, reflect a shared commitment to generations of engineers, business leaders, entrepreneurs, and innovators who will help shape Georgia’s future. 

“People will notice the striking architecture, the classrooms, and the technology inside the new towers,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “What matters most is what that design enables — the learning and exchange of ideas between students, the multidisciplinary collaborations between engineering and business faculty, and the support of innovation and entrepreneurship at the heart of Tech Square. We are grateful to the Georges, the Schellers, the Stewarts, and all our donors for their truly transformative investment, which will make our signature innovation district even more vibrant.”  

Located in the heart of Tech Square, George Tower | Scheller Tower strengthens connections between Georgia Tech and the companies, startups, researchers, and entrepreneurs that make Atlanta one of the nation’s leading innovation communities. By bringing education, research, and industry closer together, the building creates more opportunities for ideas to move into the marketplace and benefit communities across Georgia and beyond. 

The building also reflects the kind of engineering Georgia Tech teaches. Designed for the next 50 years, George Tower | Scheller Tower incorporates advanced systems and sustainable design strategies that significantly reduce energy and water use, lower environmental impact, and create efficient, flexible spaces for learning and collaboration. The project recently earned LEED Platinum certification, the highest level awarded by the U.S. Green Building Council, and a 4 Peach rating, the highest rating through the Georgia Peach Green Building Rating System administered by the Georgia State Financing and Investment Commission. The Georgia Peach Program recognizes state-owned and state-managed buildings that demonstrate excellence in energy efficiency, sustainable construction, environmental stewardship, and resource conservation. 

George Tower | Scheller Tower represents more than an investment in Georgia Tech. It is an investment in Georgia — one that will pay dividends through the talent, discoveries, and partnerships created here for generations to come. 

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. 

“It was something I had wanted since I was a kid,” he said. “Growing up in India, it wasn't known for martial arts.”

Agrawal knew he needed something to help him balance his physical health with the challenges of graduate school. He checked the list of classes offered by Georgia Tech’s Campus Recreation. One stood out: Georgia Tech Taido.

Taido is a niche martial art that applies a modern, scientific approach to traditional Okinawan karate. There is only one school in the U.S. that teaches it — Taido Karate in Peachtree Corners, Ga., which is currently the world’s largest taido school.

Taido means “the way of the body and the mind.” It was invented in the 1960s by Seiken Shukumine. 

One of Shukumine’s students, Mitsunobu Uchida, brought the new martial art to the U.S. when he immigrated in 1975. Uchida decided that Atlanta would be an ideal place to open a new school. 

Since then, generations of students have trained at Taido Karate, including Georgia Tech alumnus Bryan Sparks (EE 2000), and Andy Fossett, who started as a student at Tech in 1996 before transferring to Georgia State.

Sparks and Fossett learned taido together as kids. Both became black belts before graduating high school. 

Shortly after becoming students at Tech, they started an official taido club on campus. They taught their first class in 1996, which only had one student. By the next semester, they had almost a dozen. 

“The class was held in an open area, and a lot of people would walk by and see us training,” Sparks said. “That was the best advertisement we could ever have. We’d invite them to work out, and it grew from there. We did some demonstrations around campus in the early days.”

The taido club is still going strong and celebrating its 30th anniversary this year. 

Agrawal discovered it in 2018 as a first-year Ph.D. student. He earned his doctorate in robotics from Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing in 2025.

While keeping his Ph.D. studies first, Agrawal trained for five years to earn a black belt. He said the process was the most physically and mentally challenging he’s ever experienced.

“The tenets of taido teach you how to compose yourself and how to have a good mindset, which becomes helpful in dealing with daily life stress,” Agrawal said. “It helps you focus on what’s important in the moment.”

“There were times when I felt like nothing was going right, and I kept asking ‘What am I even doing?’ But I knew if I could do some of the harder things in taido, there’s no reason I couldn’t do the same thing in my Ph.D.”

Agrawal’s commitment paid off in 2022 when he became one of five students from Tech Taido to pass the black belt test that year.

“The test is grueling,” he said. “It’s four hours long. It’s the hardest thing I’ve ever done physically, and I’ve run several marathons. They test you on everything you’ve learned from white belt level to brown belt level. I was training five days a week for five months.

“It was one of the best days of my life. It felt like no matter what happened, I could move forward with my life and be proud of that accomplishment.”

Agrawal landed a remote job with a robotics startup after graduating. His new position allowed him to stay in Atlanta and continue with Georgia Tech Taido as an instructor.

He said the unique aspect of taido is its emphasis on community and culture, which can be attributed to Uchida’s influence. 

“A lot of times, American senseis open dojos after learning martial arts overseas. They bring the techniques and the discipline over, but they don’t bring the culture that comes with it. I love how taido is a part of our lives. It’s not a separate workout; it’s a communal thing.”

Agrawal teaches classes with Lacy Hardcastle, who took over as lead instructor when Sparks moved out of the area in 2019. Hardcastle took her first Taido class at Tech in 2007.

Hardcastle said students trying taido for the first time will get a challenging workout.

“I didn’t know how weak my legs were until I took taido,” she said. “It kicked my butt the first semester. We do whole body conditioning with lots of push-ups, lunges, squats and other exercises. It’s a very athletic martial art and requires whole-body fitness and control.”

Hardcastle describes the environment as welcoming and supportive, with regular get-togethers outside of class and a biennial trip to Japan with the Taido Karate school.

“We have a great social community where we support each other,” she said. “We occasionally go out to social events together. Sometimes we’ll get together to watch MMA fights, things like that. But we also work out hard.” 

Georgia Tech Taido classes are held every Monday and Wednesday from 8:30 p.m. to 9:45 p.m. in Studio A of the Georgia Tech Campus Recreation Center. The registration cost for the fall semester is $75. To register, visit https://crc.gatech.edu/martial-arts-4/.