From fighter jets to medical devices, today’s most advanced machines depend on parts as intricate as their missions. These components aren’t just geometrically complex — they’re made from specialized metals engineered to withstand extreme heat, friction, and wear. But that strength comes with a challenge. How do you shape metals tough enough to survive the heat of a jet engine?
One solution is to start with a more moldable form of these super-metals: powder. In a specialized form of additive manufacturing (like 3D printing), manufacturers start with fine metal powders and fuse them, layer by layer, using focused energy. Known as powder bed fusion (PBF), this method enables highly complex shapes and reduces the amount of finishing work needed. Still, when a micron of extra material can make or break the final product, even near-perfect parts require precise finishing touches.
“The introduction of new, exotic materials produced through additive manufacturing has brought unique challenges, especially for applications in space and missile systems,” says David Antonuccio, business development director at Halocarbon, a Georgia-based company producing advanced chemical solutions used in manufacturing and other fields. “While these materials offer distinct properties, they are notoriously difficult to machine.”
That’s where the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) comes in. Through its Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium, GTMI connects industry manufacturers like Halocarbon with researchers and innovators to tackle real production challenges like this. Membership includes access to GTMI’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility (AMPF), where companies can test ideas and collaborate on new solutions.
Halocarbon recently teamed up with Freemelt, a leader in producing PBF systems and a fellow consortium member, to address this bottleneck. Their goal: to determine whether Halocarbon’s specialized metalworking fluids could enhance the finishing process for PBF-manufactured parts made from tungsten and molybdenum, two high-temperature, hard-to-machine metals.
“The future of manufacturing depends on how well we integrate talent, technology, and collaboration,” says Steven Ferguson, interim director of Research Operations at GTMI and managing director of the consortium. “By bringing companies together around shared challenges, we’re closing critical gaps and strengthening the nation’s advanced manufacturing capability.”
Even with advanced methods like electron beam powder bed fusion (E-PBF), which uses an electron beam to fuse metal powders inside a vacuum chamber, finishing remains a critical hurdle. “Surface finish in powder bed fusion is fundamentally tied to the particle size of the metal powder,” says Ian Crawford, a materials and application engineer at Freemelt. “Post-processing will almost always be part of the equation for high-performance components.”
In traditional machining, coolants and cutting fluids used in these finishing steps are often overlooked, and the methods haven’t changed much in decades. Halocarbon’s metalworking fluid aims to bring these fluids into a new era, using innovative polymer chemistry to extend tool life, improve surface quality, and boost efficiency when machining these challenging alloys.
The two companies initiated their joint project during their free AMPF equipment use time, which comes with the full level of consortium membership. From there, GTMI designed and executed controlled studies comparing the use of Halocarbon’s fluids to two standard finishing methods, dry machining and EDM-based finishing. The results showed a 6% improvement in side milling and a 26% improvement in end milling versus dry machining, with even greater gains over EDM. These improvements translate into higher-quality parts, tighter specifications, lower scrap rates, extended tool life, and reduced downstream costs — exactly what aerospace and defense suppliers need to meet stringent requirements.
The findings were shared at the 2025 National Space & Missile Materials Symposium, reinforcing the value of industry-academic collaboration.
“Industry keeps pushing materials to handle more heat and stress, but that makes post-processing harder,” says Matt Carroll, one of the GTMI researchers on the project. “By bringing equipment makers and chemistry innovators into the same experiment, we were able to prove where the gains really are and give manufacturers data they can act on.”
“No single manufacturing method solves every challenge,” says Crawford. “To achieve the performance and cost targets that aerospace and defense applications demand, we need to bring together the right combination of technologies, and collaborations like this show what's possible when we do.”
Contact: Belinda Vogel
Research Engagement Manager
Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute
The event marks the culmination of the semester-long I2P course, where undergraduate students develop functional prototypes aimed at solving real-world problems. Prototypes this semester include a smart military drone, a gentler device for cervical cancer screening, a rotating espresso station, tools to keep AI safe, compact data centers, systems that simulate cyberattacks to help companies strengthen their defenses, and many more.
The showcase is free and open to students, faculty, staff, and members of the local community.
Winning teams will receive prizes and a “golden ticket” into CREATE-X’s Startup Launch, a summer accelerator that provides optional seed funding, accounting and legal service credits, mentorship, and more to help students turn their prototypes into viable startups.
This is a free event, and refreshments will be provided. Register for the Fall 2025 I2P Showcase today!
]]>Marketing Strategist
]]>Georgia Tech roboticists are attempting to identify the most stressful periods that human teleoperators experience while performing tasks remotely. A novel study provides new insights into determining when a teleoperator needs to operate at a high level of focus and which parts of the task can be delegated to robot automation.
School of Interactive Computing Associate Professor Matthew Gombolay calls it the “sweet spot” of human ingenuity and robotic precision. Gombolay and students from his CORE Robotics Labconducted a novel study that measures stress and workload on human teleoperators.
Gombolay said it can inform military officials on how to strategically implement task automation and maximize human teleoperator performance.
Humans continue to hand over more tasks to robots to perform, but Gombolay said that some functions will still require human input and oversight for the foreseeable future.
Specific applications, such as space exploration, commercial and military aviation, disaster relief, and search and rescue, pose substantial safety concerns. Astronauts stationed on the International Space Station, for example, manually control robots that bring in supplies, move cargo, and make structural repairs.
“It’s brutal from a psychological perspective,” Gombolay said.
The question often asked about automating a task in these fields is, at what point can a robot be trusted more than a human?
A recent paper by Gombolay and his current and former students — Sam Yi Ting, Erin Hedlund-Botti, and Manisha Natarajan — sheds new light on the debate. The paper was published in the IEEE Robotics and Automation Letters and will be presented at the International Conference on Robotics and Automation in Atlanta.
The NASA-funded study can identify which aspects of tedious, time-consuming tasks can be automated and which require human supervision. If roboticists can pinpoint the elements of a task that cause the least stress, they can automate these components and enable humans to oversee the more challenging aspects.
“If we’re talking about repetitive tasks, robots do better with that, so if you can automate it, you should,” said Ting, a former grad student and lead author of the paper. “I don’t think humans enjoy doing repetitive tasks. We can move toward a better future with automation.”
Military officials, for example, could measure the stress of remote drone pilots and know which times during a pilot’s shift require the highest level of attention.
“We can get a sense of how stressed you are and create models of how divided your attention is and the performance rate of the tasks you’re doing,” Gombolay said.
“It can be a low-stress or high-stress situation depending on the stakes and what’s going on with you personally. Are you well-caffeinated? Well-rested? Is there stress from home you’re bringing with you to the workplace? The goal is to predict how good your task performance will be. If it indicates it might be poor, we may need to outsource work to other people or create a safe space for the operator to destress.”
For their study, the researchers cut a small river-shaped path into a medium-density fiberboard. The exercise required the 24 participants to use a remote robotic arm to navigate through the path from one end to the other without touching the edges.
The experiment grew more challenging as new stress conditions and workload requirements were introduced. The changing conditions required the test participants to multitask to complete the assignment.
Gombolay said the study supports the Yerkes-Dodson Law, which states that moderate levels of stress increase human performance.
The experiment showed that operators felt overwhelmed and performed poorly when multitasking was introduced. Too much stress led to poor performance, but a moderate amount of stress induced more engagement and enhanced teleoperator focus.
Ting said finding that ideal stress zone can lead to a higher performance rating.
“You would think the more stressed you are, the more your performance decreases,” Ting said. “Most people didn’t react that way. As stress increased, performance increased, but when you increased workload and gave them more to do, that’s when you started seeing deteriorating performance.”
Gombolay said no stress can be just as detrimental as too much stress. Performing a task without stress tends to cause teleoperators to become disinterested, especially if it is repetitive and time-consuming.
“No stress led to complacency,” Gombolay said. “They weren’t as engaged in completing the task.
“If your excitement is too low, you get so bored you can’t muster the cognitive energy to reason about robot operation problems.”
Roboticists have made significant leaps in recent years to remove teleoperators from the equation. Still, Gombolay said it’s too early to tell whether robots can be trusted with any task that a human can perform.
“We’re a long way from full autonomy,” he said. “There’s a lot that robots still can’t do without a human operator. Search and rescue operations, if a building collapses, we don’t have much training data for robots to go through rubble by themselves to rescue people. There are ethical needs for humans to be able to supervise or take direct control of robots.”
]]>The project was part of Computer Science Junior Design Capstone Expo, where students collaborate in teams to build functional software solutions for real-world clients. For team members Jonathan Collins, Joel Cave, Srithan Nalluri, Mark Podrazhansky, and Caden Virant, that client was the U.S. Army. School of Computing Instruction Lecturer Aibek Musaev led their Junior Design section.
“The Army spends a significant amount of time maintaining, documenting, and repairing equipment that allows them to complete their mission,” said Collins, a U.S. Army veteran. “Our system essentially took the current maintenance process and converted it from an entirely paper-based process to a completely digital one.”
The team built a streamlined web application utilizing a set of modern tools that enhance data management, create a user-friendly interface, and ensure seamless operations. The new system improves accountability and visibility across Army maintenance operations by digitizing the intake and tracking processes. It eliminates the risk of lost paperwork and makes it easier for personnel to stay updated on equipment status and repair needs.
2nd Lt. Noah Parsons, the Army’s point of contact for the project, was impressed with both the product and the team’s professionalism.
“Georgia Tech students have completed the intake system to perfection,” Parsons said. “They performed exceptionally and professionally. I cannot stress how great of a job they have done for their class and for the Army as well. Our company intends to start using the intake system as early as next month.”
For Collins, who served four years in the Army before enrolling at Georgia Tech, the experience was meaningful.
“A large part of my role in the Army involved the very maintenance processes we’ve been working to improve,” he said. “I can’t even count how many hours my coworkers and I spent with the current system. Now, being able to use this new chapter of my life to make meaningful improvements feels incredibly rewarding.”
Collins also took the lead in communicating with the military client, helping the team navigate strict requirements and non-negotiable specifications.
With this system, the Army decided what they wanted, and the team was tasked with delivering exactly that with no variation.
The project taught the team critical lessons about ownership, communication, and collaboration under pressure.
“Communication with the client is the absolute most important thing,” Collins said. “You could have the best programmers in the world, but it won’t matter if you can’t deliver the product the client wants. Meeting often and getting consistent feedback was key.”
The Army plans to begin using the system as early as June, bringing the students’ work full circle and marking a meaningful contribution to real-world military operations.
]]>The project was part of Computer Science Junior Design Capstone Expo, where students collaborate in teams to build functional software solutions for real-world clients. For team members Jonathan Collins, Joel Cave, Srithan Nalluri, Mark Podrazhansky, and Caden Virant, that client was the U.S. Army. School of Computing Instruction Lecturer Aibek Musaev led their Junior Design section.
]]>Researchers from Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) recently piloted an in-depth crisis simulation exploring the national security implications of advanced artificial intelligence. Designed by the AI Safety Initiative in collaboration with Model UN at Georgia Tech, the immersive half-day workshop challenged faculty to respond to a series of escalating threats — including a potential biological attack, cyberattacks, and rising global tensions.
Participants represented major governments, corporations, and organizations — including OpenAI and Google DeepMind — and were inundated with simulated press releases and intelligence reports describing the rapid evolution of AI technologies. Their task: to debate and coordinate policy responses in real time.
In one scenario, a preliminary World Health Organization report revealed AI-enabled pathogens spreading across Central Asia. The player representing China quickly moved to close borders and reimpose pandemic-era lockdowns, a move that caused global confusion and economic instability.
“There’s just no way I could have predicted that response,” said Parv Mahajan, the director of the simulation. “But that kind of extreme response tells us so much about how unprepared countries might react.”
Divjot Kaur, who constructed the simulated documents participants received throughout the workshop, agreed. “This valuable information can shed light on the research and work we must put in,” she said.
Some players took advantage of the chaos. The simulation concluded with a discussion about how profit motives might distort information access and accelerate a potential AI arms race.
What stood out most to participants was the range of ideas that emerged during the crisis. “It was great to see the perspectives of diverse disciplines on the future of AI,” said Amaar Alidina, an undergraduate researcher. “Debate provided meaningful insight on topics we wouldn't even have thought of,” Kaur said.
Looking ahead, the AI Safety Initiative hopes to expand the simulation through collaborations with labs and departments across campus.
“The future of our work will depend, in some way or another, on AI," said Mahajan. "And the best way to understand the future is to try and experience it.”
Georgia Tech Model UN
gatechmun@gmail.com
Wang is a recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI). The award recognizes Wang for his lifelong work on democratizing human-centered AI.
“Throughout my Ph.D. and industry internships, I observed a gap in existing research: there is a strong need for practical tools for applying human-centered approaches when designing AI systems,” said Wang, now a safety researcher at OpenAI.
“My work not only helps people understand AI and guide its behavior but also provides user-friendly tools that fit into existing workflows.”
[Related: Georgia Tech College of Computing Swarms to Yokohama, Japan, for CHI 2025]
Wang’s dissertation presented techniques in visual explanation and interactive guidance to align AI models with user knowledge and values. The work culminated from years of research, fellowship support, and internships.
Wang’s most influential projects formed the core of his dissertation. These included:
“I feel extremely honored and lucky to receive this award, and I am deeply grateful to many who have supported me along the way, including Polo, mentors, collaborators, and friends,” said Wang, who was advised by School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) Professor Polo Chau.
“This recognition also inspired me to continue striving to design and develop easy-to-use tools that help everyone to easily interact with AI systems.”
Like Wang, Chau advised Georgia Tech alumnus Fred Hohman (Ph.D. CSE 2020). Hohman won the ACM SIGCHI Outstanding Dissertation Award in 2022.
Chau’s group synthesizes machine learning (ML) and visualization techniques into scalable, interactive, and trustworthy tools. These tools increase understanding and interaction with large-scale data and ML models.
Chau is the associate director of corporate relations for the Machine Learning Center at Georgia Tech. Wang called the School of CSE his home unit while a student in the ML program under Chau.
Wang is one of five recipients of this year’s award to be presented at the 2025 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2025). The conference occurs April 25-May 1 in Yokohama, Japan.
SIGCHI is the world’s largest association of human-computer interaction professionals and practitioners. The group sponsors or co-sponsors 26 conferences, including CHI.
Wang’s outstanding dissertation award is the latest recognition of a career decorated with achievement.
Months after graduating from Georgia Tech, Forbes named Wang to its 30 Under 30 in Science for 2025 for his dissertation. Wang was one of 15 Yellow Jackets included in nine different 30 Under 30 lists and the only Georgia Tech-affiliated individual on the 30 Under 30 in Science list.
While a Georgia Tech student, Wang earned recognition from big names in business and technology. He received the Apple Scholars in AI/ML Ph.D. Fellowship in 2023 and was in the 2022 cohort of the J.P. Morgan AI Ph.D. Fellowships Program.
Along with the CHI award, Wang’s dissertation earned him awards this year at banquets across campus. The Georgia Tech chapter of Sigma Xi presented Wang with the Best Ph.D. Thesis Award. He also received the College of Computing’s Outstanding Dissertation Award.
“Georgia Tech attracts many great minds, and I’m glad that some, like Jay, chose to join our group,” Chau said. “It has been a joy to work alongside them and witness the many wonderful things they have accomplished, and with many more to come in their careers.”
]]>Wang is a recipient of the 2025 Outstanding Dissertation Award from the Association for Computing Machinery Special Interest Group on Computer-Human Interaction (ACM SIGCHI). The award recognizes Wang for his lifelong work on democratizing human-centered AI.
]]>Even though artificial intelligence (AI) is not advanced enough to help the average person build weapons of mass destruction, federal agencies know it could be possible and are keeping pace with next generation technologies through rigorous research and strategic partnerships.
It is a delicate balance, but as the leader of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), Countering Weapons of Mass Destruction Office (CWMD) told a room full of Georgia Tech students, faculty, and staff, there is no room for error.
“You have to be right all the time, the bad guys only have to be right once,” said Mary Ellen Callahan, assistant secretary for CWMD.
As a guest of John Tien, former DHS deputy secretary and professor of practice in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy as well as the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Callahan was at Georgia Tech for three separate speaking engagements in late September.
"Assistant Secretary Callahan's contributions were remarkable in so many ways,” said Tien. “Most importantly, I love how she demonstrated to our students that the work in the fields of cybersecurity, privacy, and homeland security is an honorable, interesting, and substantive way to serve the greater good of keeping the American people safe and secure. As her former colleague at the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, I was proud to see her represent her CWMD team, DHS, and the Biden-Harris Administration in the way she did, with humility, personality, and leadership."
While the thought of AI-assisted WMDs is terrifying to think about, it is just a glimpse into what Callahan’s office handles on a regular basis. The assistant secretary walked her listeners through how CWMD works with federal and local law enforcement on how to identify and detect the signs of potential chemical, biological, radiological, or nuclear (CBRN) weapons.
“There's a whole cadre of professionals who spend every day preparing for the worst day in U.S. history,” said Callahan. “They are doing everything in their power to make sure that that does not happen.”
CWMD is also researching ways to implement AI technologies into current surveillance systems to help identify and respond to threats faster. For example, an AI-backed bio-hazard surveillance systems would allow analysts to characterize and contextualize the risk of potential bio-hazard threats in a timely manner.
Callahan’s office spearheaded a report exploring the advantages and risks of AI in, “Reducing the Risks at the Intersection of Artificial Intelligence and Chemical, Biological, Radiological, and Nuclear Threats,” which was released to the public earlier this year.
The report was a multidisciplinary effort that was created in collaboration with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, Department of Energy, academic institutions, private industries, think tanks, and third-party evaluators.
During his introduction of assistant secretary, SCP Chair Michael Bailey told those seated in the Coda Atrium that Callahan’s career is an incredible example of the interdisciplinary nature he hopes the school’s students and faculty can use as a roadmap.
“Important, impactful, and interdisciplinary research can be inspired by everyday problems,” he said. "We believe that building a secure future requires revolutionizing security education and being vigilant, and together, we can achieve this goal."
While on campus Tuesday, Callahan gave a special guest lecture to the students in “CS 3237 Human Dimension of Cybersecurity: People, Organizations, Societies,” and “CS 4267 - Critical Infrastructures.” Following the lecture, she gave a prepared speech to students, faculty, and staff.
Lastly, she participated in a moderated panel discussion with SCP J.Z. Liang Chair Peter Swire and Jerry Perullo, SCP professor of practice and former CISO of International Continental Exchange as well as the New York Stock Exchange. The panel was moderated by Tien.
Led by Assistant Secretary Mary Ellen Callahan, CWMD works closely with federal and local law enforcement and partners in academia, government, and the private sector to explore how AI could enhance surveillance systems and accelerate responses to potential WMD threats. While AI is not yet advanced enough to facilitate weapon creation for malicious actors, Callahan emphasized the importance of being vigilant, as the consequences of a single error could be catastrophic. The agency’s multidisciplinary efforts were showcased in a report that highlights both the risks and opportunities AI presents in managing CBRN threats.
]]>School of Cybersecurity and Privacy | Georgia Institute of Technology
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]]>Shandler’s latest study looks at the effect this uncertainty has on public opinion after a cyber incident.
“When faced with the unknown, people conjure visions of doom, where one bad guy in his mom’s basement clicks a button and takes over the world.”
According to Shandler, even a minor cyberattack can generate the kind of fear that “changes world views or causes people to vote a certain way, sacrificing their civil liberties for security and surveillance, regardless of how intrusive.” By way of example, Shandler refers to a digital mishap hyperbolically reported as a major cyberattack on a Florida water plant that actually resulted from an employee mistake.
“These reactions from the general public, even when they don’t know who is behind an attack, can have strong political and societal consequences,” he said.
Sometimes he refers to this uncertainty as “a shadow of ambiguity.” Shandler and his collaborators have added a new element to the body of cyber-conflict literature, most of which deals with ambiguity from an operational or strategic perspective. His team has written an article for a special issue of the Journal of Peace Research that focuses on the uncertainty surrounding cybersecurity incidents. Shandler also co-edited the issue.
The researchers surveyed 2,025 participants, who were asked to evaluate potential cyber threat scenarios and decide on various retaliatory measures.
A typical question presented two scenarios positing a cyberattack on the U.S. In one, intelligence sources might be 70% certain that China was the perpetrator; in the other, intelligence might be 40% certain it was caused by the United Kingdom. Other options in the scenario included the proposed means of retaliation and the chance of conflict escalation. Participants were asked which strategic course they preferred — whether to retaliate and, if so, against whom.
“As the government’s certainty percentage goes down, the level of support for retaliation goes down, which is unsurprising,” said Shandler, whose collaborators on the study were Nathaniel Porter of Virginia Tech and Eric Jardine of cybersecurity firm Chainalysis. “But when we dig a little deeper, we can see that it depends on who the other country is. If we’re 50% sure China is behind it, we tend to lean more toward retaliation than if we’re 50% sure that England is behind it.”
Faced with the complexities of cyberspace and the potential threats inhabiting it, most people will fall back on mental shortcuts when forced to decide in the face of uncertainty, the researchers assert. As such, perceptions of countries as adversaries or allies play a role in decision-making.
Political partisanship also played a role in how people responded to the scenarios. For Republicans, the perception of another country as an ally or rival mattered more than it did for Democrats. This also wasn’t particularly astonishing to the researchers.
“We didn’t want to guess — we wanted to find out how people react when faced with the ambiguity of a cyberattack,” Shandler said. He and his colleagues hoped to identify what they called a “certainty threshold.”
That is, they wanted to answer a basic question: How sure do authorities need to be about the perpetrator to gain public support for economic, diplomatic, or military responses? After gathering and crunching the numbers, the researchers put the threshold at 60% certainty, though it shifts depending on the identity of the presumed attacker.
Shandler’s colleagues in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy are mostly computer scientists who work in bits, bytes, and rational logic — everything is mapped out and orderly, unlike human beings, who aren’t logical or rational.
“People are not computer code. We’re messy, emotional, and use mental shortcuts to make decisions,” Shandler said. “So, we thought a human analysis of the uncertainty that is so much a part of cyberspace would be a good idea.”
Ultimately, Shandler hopes his research will force policymakers and national security officials to pay more attention to the way the public experiences cyber threats, because voters won’t write a blank check and support retaliation in response to every attack.
“When states volley cyberattacks back and forth, the public gets caught in the crossfire, and they need to be a stakeholder in decisions about how to react,” he said.
Authorities should be more open with the public, he added. That would go a long way toward demystifying cyberattacks and avoiding the potential of a mass panic.
“In my experience, mystifying the situation is how we get to the theories of cyber doom and Armageddon and Mission Impossible and the robots coming to get us,” Shandler said. “I think what people are imagining is much worse than the reality. It’s the lack of information that scares them.”
CITATION: Eric Jardine, Nathaniel Porter, Ryan Shandler. "Cyberattacks and public opinion – The effect of uncertainty in guiding preferences," Journal of Peace Research. doi.org/10.1177/0022343323121
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