The 2021 cohort includes the cities of Woodbury and Concord, and Pike and Spalding counties. As GA Smart communities, the cohort will work with researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology to expand and enhance connectivity and explore additional applications that will improve their services, efficiencies, and cost savings. The community connectivity focus for this cohort aims to link them with the resources they need to pilot relevant smart solutions within the two-year GA Smart program.

• The City of Woodbury: Woodbury has employed an innovative Wireless Internet Service Provider (WISP) network as a publicly owned utility, serving 50 community members. Georgia Tech researchers will assist in the enhancement and expansion of the WISP network by exploring measurement-driven dashboards for evaluating the end-user experience. They will also explore connectivity needs for the proposed Meriwether County AgTech Center for Innovation (MACI).
• The City of Concord: With a network similar to Woodbury’s, city representatives and Georgia Tech researchers will work together to advance connectivity in the city through further testing, evaluation, and community engagement. They will look to address challenges to wireless networks such as geographic terrain, natural foliage, and adoption rates. Tech researchers will also help Concord explore connectivity applications such as having water sensors available in public facilities for operational efficiency and potential cost savings.
• Pike County: As infrastructure investments are often driven by an intersection of cost and functionality, Tech will help Pike administrators analyze technologies to improve connectivity countywide, including exploring different broadband options to identify solutions that are both cost effective and reliable for consumers.
• Spalding County: Believing that access to the internet is a driver of economic development, officials want to identify methods to increase broadband access in the area.  Many internet service providers are unable or unwilling to provide access to households or businesses that are separated from other connections by acres or miles. Tech researchers will provide Spalding leaders with perspective on technology hardware and software options that will meet the county’s needs, as well as evaluate the current status of connectivity and how to improve it.

“Communities experiencing gaps in connectivity across the state of Georgia have sought creative solutions to bridge them, and still more communities are seeking answers about how to get connected,” said Debra Lam, executive director of PIN. “This cohort has taken steps toward being innovative in a collaborative way. By providing research services to these neighboring communities with established relationships and an interest in coordinating connectivity efforts across city and county borders, GA Smart can make a regional impact and follow the natural expansion of these services across the area. This placemaking opportunity allows communities to plan together, avoid redundancies, and accomplish more collectively.”

The cohort will be working with researchers from Georgia Tech’s College of Computing, including professor Ellen Zegura, the Stephen Fleming Chair in Telecommunications, and associate professor Ada Gavrilovska.

“The pandemic has made it clear that dependable access to high-speed internet is no longer a luxury, but a necessity,” said Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech. “At Georgia Tech, we believe in the power of technology to improve lives and communities, especially in our state, and we look forward to working with the winners of this year’s Georgia Smart Communities Challenge to achieve just that.”

Meet the Communities 
As the first city to be declared “Broadband Ready” by the Georgia Department of Community Affairs (DCA) in 2020, the City of Woodbury has pioneered a way forward for communities unserved by traditional broadband.

“Meeting the needs of our ever-changing world requires diversity in thought and a willingness to move boldly into the future,” said City of Woodbury Mayor Steve Ledbetter. “Our goal is to push beyond the possible and be a part of leading our community and our state into the future.”

“The pandemic underscores just how critical connectivity can be for a community’s economic well-being,” said City of Concord Mayor John Strickland. “Covid-19 made it clear that the internet is necessary for education, healthcare, and business, as well as access to important real-time information. We are fortunate to be geographically close to Woodbury, which introduced us to their service provider. Working together, small cities and counties can provide solutions that will serve more people at a lower cost.

Brandon Rogers, Pike County manager, echoed those sentiments. “We want to serve the citizens of the community by ensuring options for broadband access in all areas of the county, so that no communities are left behind in the digital divide. We’re excited to be working with Georgia Tech as we seek out reliable sources for connectivity that can reach unserved areas of the county at an affordable price range for all of our residents and all of our municipalities.”

Regional cooperation is a key differentiator, said Jessica Simmons, deputy chief information officer at the Georgia Technology Authority (GTA).

“Pooling strategies and resource capabilities for connectivity to benefit the broader region complements the state’s initiative to promote broadband deployment in unserved parts of Georgia,” she said. “This regional effort builds exactly the kind of momentum we want to see in rural areas that lack high-speed internet access.”

Since 2018, GA Smart has served 12 communities across the state of Georgia in a variety of projects, ranging from installing sea-level and traffic sensors to planning for connected vehicle technology. Alumni from the GA Smart program have successfully implemented their projects and garnered additional funding and technical assistance to continue their projects beyond the program period, continuing to service their residents and meet their community’s goals.

The GA Smart program has facilitated community engagement across the state by hosting more than 40 community meetings, provided in excess of 140 technologies deployed in its funded projects, and provided research support that led to successful grant proposals, academic presentations, and publications.

The grant will support the creation of the NSF AI Institute for Collaborative Assistance and Responsive Interaction for Networked Groups, or AI-CARING. The institute aims to develop new longitudinal, collaborative AI systems that work with aging adults including those diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment, and their caregivers.

Most older adults prefer to remain in their own homes. But safety concerns, medication schedules, and isolation can all make it difficult for them to do so.

“Imagine an aging parent who no longer remembers to turn the stove off after cooking,” said Mynatt. “An intelligent system could support meal preparation activities, such as reminding older adults warm up a prepared meal, detecting when the stove is left on, and sending a reminder to turn it off. Then, if the stove wasn’t turned off, the system could send an alert to a caregiver.”

Now, imagine that system extended to support a full calendar of appointments, medication reminders, and schedules for multiple caregivers, among other things.

“Our goal is to create systems that help people take care of people,” Mynatt said. “Care can be a complicated task, requiring coordination and decision making across family members managing day to day demands.”

“This kind of personalized AI presents a fascinating series of technical challenges as well,” Chernova said. “Most AI agents focus on a single choice or action — a sale, for example — and then use data from as many people as possible to understand it. But in this case, the AI is gathering in-depth data on a single person and their care team.”

“We need AI systems that can interact with users over weeks or months or even years,” Chernova said. “And in order to help someone, you need to understand their values and their relationships with other people.”

“The goal is emphatically not to replace human caretakers,” Chernova said, but to lend them a hand.

“AI is not going to become a home nurse,” she said. “Caring for an older relative or friend can be overwhelming.  Our AI system seeks to support human caregivers by offloading some of the logistics and reminders, so that people can focus on the more positive aspects of care.”

The award builds upon decades of work at Georgia Tech, both in artificial intelligence, and — through IPaT— understanding the technological needs of older adults. The new systems will be tested with Georgia families through existing programs, including the Emory-Georgia Tech Cognitive Empowerment Program, which currently serves over 100 people diagnosed with mild cognitive impairment.

“The AI-CARING Institute builds on our existing strengths in AI and in technology for aging. It will create not only novel solutions but a new generation of researchers focused on the interaction between the two,” said Charles Isbell, dean and John P. Imlay, Jr. Chair of Computing. “Our aim in the College of Computing is to build cutting-edge technologies that improve the lives of everyone, and I can’t think of a better example than AI-CARING.“

“I am delighted to announce the establishment of new NSF National AI Research Institutes as we look to expand into all 50 states,” said National Science Foundation Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “These Institutes are hubs for academia, industry, and government to accelerate discovery and innovation in AI. Inspiring talent and ideas everywhere in this important area will lead to new capabilities that improve our lives from medicine to entertainment to transportation and cybersecurity and position us in the vanguard of competitiveness and prosperity.”

AI-CARING will include faculty from Georgia Tech, Carnegie Mellon University, Oregon State University, the University of Massachusetts-Lowell and Oregon Health & Science University, and has Amazon and Google as industry sponsors. The core researchers will connect with other higher education institutions, nonprofits, and government entities across the country in order to provide education and workforce opportunities to diverse groups.

In partnership with the United States Department of Agriculture, the National Institute of Food and Agriculture, the U.S. Department of Homeland Security Science & Technology Directorate, and the U.S. Department of Transportation Federal Highway Administration, the NSF is funding 11 centers within its National AI Research Institutions program. Georgia Tech has been awarded two of the grants: AI-CARING and AI4Opt, or AI for Advances in Optimization, led by PI Pascal Van Hentenryck, the A. Russel Chandler III chair of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

“We are fortunate to have the largest and one of the best engineering programs in the nation, in large part due to the teaching, research, and national leadership of our faculty. Raheem Beyah is collaborative, visionary, innovative, and committed to people. I look forward to working even more closely with him in his new leadership role in the College of Engineering,” said Steven McLaughlin.

Beyah is a Georgia Tech alumnus. He earned his master’s and Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from Georgia Tech in 1999 and 2003, respectively. He received his Bachelor of Science in Electrical Engineering from North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in 1998. A native Atlantan, he is a graduate of the Atlanta Public Schools system.

Beyah also leads the Communications Assurance and Performance Group and is affiliated with the Institute for Information Security and Privacy. He is co-founder and board chair of Fortiphyd Logic Inc., an industrial cybersecurity company. He serves as Institute data security lead. He is co-founder and a steering committee member of the Academic and Research Leadership Network.

He has held several additional leadership roles at Tech, including serving as interim Steve W. Chaddick ECE School Chair during the 2017-18 academic year, ECE's associate chair for Strategic Initiatives and Innovation (2016-18), and chair of ECE's Computer Systems and Software Technical Interest Group (2015-17).  He received the National Science Foundation CAREER award in 2009 and was selected for the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA) Computer Science Study Panel in 2010. He is a member of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS), the American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE), a lifetime member of the National Society of Black Engineers (NSBE), a senior member of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE), and an Association for Computing Machinery (ACM) distinguished scientist.

Prior to becoming a faculty member at Georgia Tech, Beyah was an assistant professor in the Department of Computer Science at Georgia State University, a research engineer with ECE at Tech, and a consultant with Andersen Consulting (now Accenture). He has served as guest editor for a number of journals and magazines, including IEEE Network Magazine and IEEE Communications Magazine, and as associate editor of several journals in the field.

He has been named to Atlanta Magazine’s “Atlanta 500,” the Atlanta Business Chronicle’s “Up & Comers: 40 Under 40,” and Georgia Trend Magazine’s “40 Best and Brightest Under 40.” Active in the community, he is a graduate of Leadership Atlanta, Leadership Georgia, and L.E.A.D Atlanta.

Leading the 19-member College of Engineering Dean Search Committee was Ayanna Howard, professor and chair, School of Interactive Computing. “We are very grateful to Dr. Howard and all of the members of the search committee for their thorough work on a short timeline and during a challenging semester,” said McLaughlin.

The Georgia Tech College of Engineering continues to be recognized as an elite engineering school and one of the top public institutions in the nation. The undergraduate engineering program at the College is ranked No. 4, and the graduate program is ranked No. 8 in the latest America's Best Colleges edition of U.S. News & World Report. All of the programs, both graduate and undergraduate, offered by the nation’s largest and most diverse engineering college placed among the top 10 in their respective areas. The College is also ranked No. 1 in doctoral degrees awarded to African Americans (Diverse: Issues in Higher Education) and is the largest producer of engineering degrees awarded to women and underrepresented minority students, according to the American Society of Engineering Education and Diverse: Issues in Higher Education.

Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering has more than 150 interdisciplinary research centers and labs. The College occupies more than a million square feet of research and office space on Georgia Tech’s campus. It had more than $270 million in research expenditures in fiscal year 2019. More than one-third of its undergraduate students participate in research.

As one of the most research-intensive academic institutions in the nation, Georgia Tech is committed to the idea that technology, the science that supports it, the scholarship that guides it, and the leadership that deploys it can help improve the human condition. 

About the Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a top 10 public research university with nearly 40,000 students who study in person at the main campus in Atlanta, at Georgia Tech-Lorraine in France, at Georgia Tech-Shenzhen in China, as well as through distance and online learning.

Students represent 50 states and 149 countries. Its engineering and computing Colleges are the largest and among the highest-ranked in the nation, and the Institute also offers outstanding programs in business, design, liberal arts, and sciences. With more than $1 billion annually in research awards across all six Colleges and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), Georgia Tech is among the nation’s most research-intensive universities. It is an engine of economic development for the state of Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation.

Georgia Tech’s mission is to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. Its mission and strategic plan are focused on making a positive impact in the lives of people everywhere. For more than 135 years, the people of Georgia Tech have dared to imagine and then create solutions for a better future. The innovative culture and leadership continue, for Progress and Service for all.

After my undergraduate degree, I moved to the University of California, Berkeley where I got my M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering. From there, I went to UCLA from 2015 to 2017 and worked as an assistant professor.

There were a number of factors that lead me back to Georgia Tech, but I think I think first and foremost, it was the opportunity to be in such a collaborative environment between electrical engineering and civil engineering. It was clear from my visits here that there were plenty of opportunities to do new things in the space of transportation and in the area of robotics.

Tell us about your research.

My research is broadly in the area of autonomy. I'm interested in understanding how to analyze and control autonomous network systems broadly, and then in particular for transportation systems. We want to do it in a way that is efficient, but also safe. So we want to make sure that these systems, which can be very large and distributed, behave as the system designer intended with as little user input as possible.

What are some practical applications for your research?

For example, we have some work where we're studying autonomous vehicles in ride sharing networks. Think of Uber and Lyft. Today all of the drivers in these networks are human drivers, but tomorrow, some of them might be self-driving cars and even further in the future, they may all be self-driving.

We've been asking questions about if a ride sharing platform is going to do this, how should we expect them to distribute these vehicles and do it in a way that maximizes profits?

Another problem we're looking at is in the space of urban air mobility, which is kind of what it sounds like…

Flying cars?

That's right, flying cars. Initially these may be in the form of small personal helicopters. So let's say you have a bunch of what are called vertiport or heliports. You have lots of locations where these vehicles can land, but they're in an urban environment. If one of these vehicles is in the sky, it has to be able to get to a landing spot within a certain amount of time. Unlike cars where they can just pull to the side of the road, if you have a vehicle in the sky, you have to have a parking spot available for it before it runs out of fuel.

This opens up a lot of questions about how you would actually schedule these things in a way where you're being as efficient and safe as possible. We're definitely a more theoretically-oriented group, so we're trying to ask some of the underlying theory questions here. We are interested in the applications, but we're also interested the fundamental math and physics underneath these things.

You were awarded the Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professorship last year. What has that meant for your research?

It has definitely given me enough flexibility to think about some of these more “out there” questions—like the urban air mobility problem that I mentioned. We're thinking of this is as a future direction that we want to go, but we need to get some fundamental results before we can sell this to sponsors. It helps look at these problems from a new perspective in ways that aren’t constrained by parameters set forth in a grant, for instance.

The other big thing that I used the Demetrius T. Paris Professorship for is to found and organize the Southeast Controls Conference. The purpose of the Conference was to foster the controls theory community in the Southeast. It’s the first of its kind in our region of the US and the funding from the Professorship made it free to attend for the 100 attendees.

So what is next for you and your research team?

We have a couple of interesting projects that we are working on with other departments. One involves electric vehicles in emergency or disaster scenarios and the unique strains they could make on both the transportation and electric infrastructure. Another project we're thinking about also involves the coupling between transportation and electric infrastructure. In this case, we're trying to understand how electric vehicle charging is going to impact the grid--how we should expect users to pay for electric charging without overloading the grid.

Our research allows us to collaborate with other departments like Industrial and Systems Engineering, Civil Engineering, and even Public Policy. I expect there will be more of that in the future as the questions we are trying to answer are essentially cross-disciplinary. Finding these connections is important and the potential for these types of collaborations is one of the reasons I came back to Georgia Tech.

Desai, an associate professor in the Scheller College of Business, will be the center’s first associate director for Legal, Policy, Ethics, and Machine Learning. Not a technologist by training, Desai will draw from his experience working at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy and Google as Academic Research Counsel to help policy makers, legal scholars and technologists work better together. This includes helping each party understand how a given technology works and what issues it might raise.

“I am excited to be part of ML@GT because of the opportunity to be part of a world class group of thinkers and to connect our work to the world.  I believe there is a need to bridge the worlds of technology and law, policy, and ethics,” said Desai. “ML@GT is poised to increase not only machine learning insights and breakthroughs but also the way in which machine learning is built and used to serve society. I am honored and thrilled to be part of building that future.”

Xie, an associate professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial Systems Engineering (ISyE), is the first woman to join the leadership team. She will serve as the associate director for machine learning and data science where she will create better synergy between the ongoing research and education efforts between data science and machine learning as Georgia Tech builds a leading program in these areas.

“I am particularly excited to work with the broader community of students and faculty on campus who are interested or involved with machine learning and data science and foster their participation,” said Xie.

Lan, also an associate professor in ISyE has been appointed as the associate director for machine learning and statistics. In this role, Lan will promote research at the intersections between optimization, statistics, and machine learning and how they also apply in engineering. He will also help better facilitate communications for students coming from different home colleges or schools across campus.

“I am excited to be joining the team with active and dynamic academic leaders. I look forward to working with them to address a diverse set of challenges that ML@GT faces, e.g., being adaptive to the priorities and criterions for our affiliated faculty members and students across different academic units,” said Lan.

As the associate director for machine learning and artificial intelligence, Riedl, an associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing, will coordinate ML@GT’s strategy with respect to the broader field of artificial intelligence.

“Artificial intelligence and machine learning have the potential to radically change virtually every aspect of our lives. With thought and care, these technologies can be a force for good. Georgia Tech is well-positioned to be a major voice in how technology and policy shape the future,” said Riedl.

With more corporations integrating machine learning and artificial intelligence into their businesses, the center’s need for managing those relationships has increased significantly. Chau, an associate professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering, will lead those relationships as the associate director for corporate relations for machine learning.

“I enjoy bringing people together, connecting industry with Georgia Tech researchers, bridging disciplines and innovating at their intersections. I’m excited to begin my new role as it will be a great way to help Georgia Tech further expand its national and global footprint,” said Chau.

As the associate director for community and students, Davenport is charged with creating a tight-knit community among faculty and students. Davenport, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will work closely with the center staff to coordinate events and other opportunities to increase discussion and collaboration between research units.

The six new members will join existing leadership members Irfan Essa, Justin Romberg, Zsolt Kira, and Le Song.

About the Machine Learning Center at Georgia Tech

The Machine Learning Center at Georgia Tech is an interdisciplinary research center bringing together more than 190 faculty members and 60 machine learning Ph.D. students from across the institute for meaningful collaboration and innovation in machine learning and artificial intelligence. Students and faculty are experts in areas including, but not limited, to computer vision, natural language processing, robotics, deep learning, ethics and fairness, computational finance, information security, and logistics and manufacturing. For more information, visit www.ml.gatech.edu

Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) is on a mission to solve this challenging problem through the application of optimization and machine learning to the MARTA system. He specifically plans to increase accessibility to public transportation by creating a scalable, On-Demand Multimodal Transit System (ODMTS) model that will be validated through implementation in the Atlanta region.

The backbone of the proposed ODMTS is small shuttles that take passengers to and from high-frequency light rail and bus hubs, which will only be used in high-density corridors. The shuttles will expand the reach of the system, so people are picked up much closer to their homes and dropped off at or near their destination, making it significantly more convenient for riders to use.

To date, Van Hentenryck has conducted successful case studies on the transit systems in the mid-sized cities of Canberra, Australia and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In both cities, his multi-modal approach has shown a significant reduction in both cost and passenger wait times, and he hopes to apply the same strategies in Atlanta.

In July 2019, Van Hentenryck and his team were awarded a $1.7 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant through the LEAP HI Program to scale the optimization and machine learning algorithms that were created in Ann Arbor and Canberra for a large city like Atlanta. And in late October 2019, the Socially Aware Mobility (SAM) Lab opened for business. The SAM Lab has an interdisciplinary research team from Georgia Tech and the University of Michigan and an external advisory board comprising representatives of many key metro Atlanta transportation agencies.

“The purpose of NSF’s Leading Engineering for America’s Prosperity, Health and Infrastructure (LEAP HI) Program is to identify opportunities for fundamental engineering research to address major societal problems,” said NSF Program Director Bruce Kramer, who attended the opening event. “The SAM Lab will use new mathematics to reduce the congestion in transportation systems that impacts every resident of our major cities. The enthusiastic cooperation of local agencies has made it possible to use Atlanta as a living laboratory where potential breakthrough methods can be evaluated. NSF looks forward to following the progress of Professor Van Hentenryck and his students.”

The inauguration of the SAM Lab began with a meeting of the external advisory board followed by a panel discussion and reception to which the public was invited. The panel included Van Hentenryck, City of Atlanta Senior Transportation Policy Advisor Jacob Tzegaegbe; Uber Public Affairs Manager (Southeast) Evangeline George; The Ray Executive Director Allie Kelly; and Cox Automotive Mobility Vice President of Business Development and New Ventures Daniel Liniado. The discussion was moderated by Debra Lam, managing director for Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation at Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology. Steve McLaughlin, dean of the College of Engineering and Southern Company Chair, gave the opening remarks.

“With traffic you always have to be aware that fixing a problem in one place may create a problem in another,” said McLaughlin. “The SAM Lab knows that for reducing congestion, it requires minds that can break apart a problem and work through complexity. Road congestion is the product of interconnectedness that requires an interdisciplinary team working through all facets of the problem.”

Van Hentenryck is eager to get started on the practical aspects of the project. “We have the NSF grant, which provides for the theory, the foundation, the algorithms behind the redesign of the entire MARTA system,” he said. “But we don’t want this to stay in the lab – we want to have a pilot program in place by the end of the project. The next step is to get the partners to work together on this. We have an excellent team put together to make all this happen.”

The SAM Lab pilot program is projected to be ready for implementation in two or three years. In the meantime, Van Hentenryck is refining the ODMTS algorithm with his research partners Subhrajit “Subhro” Guhathakurta, chair and professor of the Georgia Tech School of City and Regional Planning; Patricia L. Mokhtarian, Susan G. and Christopher D. Pappas Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; and Yafeng Yin, professor in the University of Michigan School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

In addition, Van Hentenryck's work on mobility issues includes student researchers. Through the Vertically Integrated Projects program, a team is using data and decision science to improve mobility and accessibility in Atlanta through optimization and machine learning. He is also advising an ISyE Senior Design team that is working with MARTA to create a hypothetical redesign of MARTA’s bus network to better align routes with current usage.

“Given the rapidly evolving mobility landscape and attendant challenges facing MARTA, the opening of the SAM Lab couldn’t have happened at a more opportune time,” said Rob Goodwin, director of research and analytics at MARTA. “I look forward to working with Professor Van Hentenryck to explore new technologies and approaches that will help shape the future of transit in metro Atlanta.”

“If we successfully implement the ODMTS here in Atlanta, it will prove that the algorithm can be scaled for a major city,” Van Hentenryck added. “And then it can be effectively used in large cities around the world.”

You can stay updated on the SAM Lab's work through its Twitter account: @AwareSam.

In a military setting, the result of poor judgement or an oversight can be catastrophic. For veterans, that awareness manifests as an unrivaled dedication to precision, focus, and follow through. That meticulous attention to detail coupled with a practiced capacity to rapidly absorb new information, results in a highly effective decision maker who is comfortable under pressure. Even more, a veteran’s understanding of goal orientation is tied with accountability to their team, where a successful mission is greater than the accomplishments of one.

While the unique blend of characteristics developed by Veteran's due to their training can position them to excel in the workplace, it’s key to remember that many have been conditioned to a setting that can operate quite differently than the civilian world – from the terminology, to the processes, and everything in between. That is why it is crucial to push beyond generalization and look at their value as individuals. When given the support needed to reframe their deep skill set in a way that can be translated more accurately, the potential is great.

Meet Wanda Perry, for example. Wanda currently serves as military services coordinator at WorkSource Coastal, a Savannah-based service organization that provides career development opportunities for adults and youth. In 2016, she retired after 20 years of service in the U.S. Army and Army National Guard. That’s also when she received her Lean Six Sigma Black Belt Certificate through Georgia Tech.

Lean Six Sigma is a managerial concept designed to improve performance and reduce waste. It is also a specific and highly sought-after skill in the private sector that is often easily relatable to veterans due to the heavily logistical nature of the military.

“Part of my job through outreach and networking is to ensure that my clients are aware of the services that WorkSource Coastal provides," explains Perry. "Lean Six Sigma has helped me to build upon the leadership and management skills that I learned on active duty.”

The certificate comes as part of the Veterans Education Training and Transition (VET²) program at Georgia Tech-Savannah. This fully-funded program equips veterans for civilian careers through a combination of classroom learning and/or online instruction as well as internship opportunities with employer partners. Lean Six Sigma is a key program offering that can help veterans position themselves in the civilian job market.

"The classroom component of VET² provides skill-set training in an industry-recognized certificate program," said James Wilburn, Ed.D., U.S. Army veteran and academic director of military programs at Georgia Tech-Savannah. "We match these service members with companies who are looking to hire based off of that training."

Charles Hudson, another graduate of the program, is currently working as a National Security Advisor with Booz Allen Hamilton. He tells a story similar to Perry’s: "The Lean Six Sigma Black Belt (LSSBB) certification through the VET² Program put me ahead of other job seekers. It’s helped with my studies at Harvard Business School. It helped me to look at things strategically and technically from a process standpoint."

The VET² program is one of the first of its kind in the nation. When it was founded in 2013, veteran unemployment in the state of Georgia was nearly double that of civilian unemployment. Since then, VET² has seen 1,500 graduates. Today, the veteran unemployment rate is at an all-time low of 4%, which means a more competitive market for businesses since fewer veterans and service members are available in the workforce to fill open positions.

Fully-funded military transition program to prepare veterans, active-duty service members, and military spouses for jobs in the civilian world.

For veterans and service members, this statistic describes both an opportunity and a challenge. The jobs are out there, but it is necessary to effectively articulate how the invaluable experience and skills they developed in the military align with positions available in the civilian workforce. That’s why successful students like Hudson and Perry value the professional certificates they received from VET².

Employers also recognize what an education from a world-renowned institution like Georgia Tech means, which makes certification a key bridge between military service and landing a civilian job.

“I knew that a Lean Six Sigma certification would help me stand out to potential employers," said Dylan Thomas, former captain in the U.S. Army and advanced management partner at Cintas. "Process improvement and using data to help improve function in our company has been a real asset to help me get to where I am today."

Learn more about Georgia Tech’s education for veterans programs at the Veterans Education Training and Transition (VET²) website.

Colin Strickland was a contributing author to this article.

Georgia Tech Professional Education is a leader in innovative educational delivery, designed for working professionals in tech, business, and leadership. Our connection to the marketplace — coupled with our world-class faculty, researchers, and subject matter experts — provides an unparalleled prospective to education innovation, industry trends, future work, and lifelong learning. To uncover additional resources to help with questions and challenges around career advancement visit our Working & Learning page.

A Smart City Digital Twin is a virtual platform that utilizes data and internet-of-things technology to replicate and emulate changes happening in a real city’s infrastructure systems to provide insight that could help improve sustainability, resilience and livability.

John Taylor, the Frederick Law Olmsted Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, published the first research paper on smart city digital twins in 2017 along with Neda Mohammadi, the city infrastructure analytics director of the Network Dynamics Lab at Georgia Tech. In just two years, interest and research on the topic has grown rapidly.

ABI Research predicts that there will be more than 500 smart city digital twins in operation by 2025

So what will that near future look like?  

Leaders in the field gathered at Georgia Tech recently to discuss the possibilities. Funded by the National Science Foundation, the Smart City Digital Twin Convergence Workshop was held Sept. 16-17 at the Coda building in partnership with Stanford University, Columbia University and the University of Illinois at Chicago. 

The workshop brought together a hand-selected group of thought-leaders in the realm of smart city digital twins, representing eight municipal governments, three national laboratories, six industries and 17 universities with representatives from 15 disciplines.

The wide array of attendees underscores the interdisciplinary nature of the research, which has applications for engineers, data scientists, city planners, architects and more. 

“I think it really upholds what the National Science Foundation wanted to do here: putting smart people together to make amazing things happen,” said Debra Lam, managing director of smart cities and inclusive innovation at Georgia Tech. 

So what exactly is a digital twin?

The term is a concept borrowed from the manufacturing industry.

“It’s a bringing together of the virtual and the physical worlds, where you create a virtual version of the real-world system and you stream data into it,” Taylor said. “What the digital twin does is allow you to monitor how the system is performing, but importantly, it can also allow you to see potential issues that are coming up before they actually occur. And you can do scenario analysis and simulation with that data to determine what the future state might be.”

A static simulation will typically provide the same predictive future today that it would if you ran it again in a week. But a digital twin runs on real-time data, meaning that outcomes will vary based on conditions.

For example, Taylor’s lab built a digital twin of Georgia Tech’s campus that enables visualization of the energy consumption of each building. During a particularly hot week, the data will reflect the burden on buildings’ HVAC systems for that period of time. 

While there are many potential applications for digital twins, the NSF Smart City Digital Twin Convergence Workshop at Georgia Tech focused on research and application in three areas: mobility, water and energy infrastructure. 

Digital twins are still quite new, but many cities are using sensors and internet-of-things technology to move in the direction of a true digital twin. 

Representatives from the cities of Atlanta, Chicago, Pittsburgh, Louisville, Ky., and Syracuse, N.Y. shared the way that they are utilizing smart city technology. 

Lillie Madali, the smart city director for the city of Atlanta, says Atlanta is working towards a digital twin that residents could access to view mobility data in real time. 

The program is employing a network of sensors and cameras to provide more complete data about vehicle and pedestrian traffic to make intersections safer. Madali says Atlanta’s focus is on bringing residents closer to their government through data and technology to improve equity. 

“We hope to use it to inform our policy and make streets safer for all modes of transportation,” Madali said. 

“In order to increase acceptance of public transportation, we need a system that gets people where they want to go in a more convenient and affordable way,” said Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). “If we make public transportation more attractive to riders, it will decrease traffic congestion and greenhouse gas emissions and increase accessibility to jobs, health care, education, and food.”

Van Hentenryck has done significant research in the areas of artificial intelligence, data science, and operations research — all of which are essential to address the current problems in mobility. His goal is to create an equitable system that is both efficient for everyone and decreases reliability on personal vehicles.

Most public transportation systems in the U.S. have a significant first- and last-mile problem. “If you don’t pick people up within a quarter of a mile of where they live and drop them off very close to their final destination, you lose 90% of your ridership,” he explained.

In order to address this problem, Van Hentenryck suggests a multi-modal transportation solution in which small on-demand shuttles take passengers to and from high-frequency light rail and bus hubs, which will only be in high-density corridors. Shuttles will expand the reach of the system, so people are picked up much closer to their homes and dropped off at or near their destinations, making it significantly more convenient for riders.

In addition to addressing the first- and last-mile problem, the use of on-demand shuttles is also more cost effective and environmentally friendly. According to Van Hentenryck, most city buses are expensive to operate and drive with very few passengers on board. Replacing buses in low-demand routes with a greater number of smaller, inexpensive shuttles will increase efficiencies and lower overall costs. To further reduce greenhouse gas emissions, electric vehicles will be used whenever possible.

While the multi-modal approach may involve more transfers than the traditional model, the process will be simple and organized, allowing riders to reach their destinations in a similar amount of time to individuals driving personal vehicles. Each trip will require only one ticket, cost the same as traditional public transportation, and be completely synchronized to avoid long waits at the various transfer points. To facilitate this, Van Hentenryck and his team created algorithms that use machine learning and distributed optimization to predict ridership in real time, manage shuttle and passenger volume, and reduce wait times.

To date, Van Hentenryck has conducted successful case studies on the transit systems in the mid-sized cities of Canberra, Australia, and Ann Arbor, Michigan. In both cities, his multi-modal approach has shown a significant reduction in both cost and passenger wait times, and he hopes to apply the same strategies in Atlanta.

“Atlanta is one of the most congested cities in the world, but only about 3% of the population currently uses public transportation,” Van Hentenryck said. “There is a tremendous opportunity here if we can make public transportation easier and faster to use.”

In July 2019, Van Hentenryck and his team were awarded a $1.7 million National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to scale the optimization and machine-learning algorithms that were created in Ann Arbor and Canberra for a large city like Atlanta. The NSF Leap HI (Leading Engineering for America's Prosperity, Health, and Infrastructure) grant is in collaboration with civil engineering and urban planning, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority (MARTA), the Atlanta Regional Commission, and the City of Atlanta.

ISyE students — from undergraduates to post-docs — are also getting the chance to be a part of this exciting initiative. Van Hentenryck connected with MARTA shortly after joining the ISyE faculty in 2018, and he is leading an interdisciplinary Vertically Integrated Project team that is assisting with this initiative. In addition, in spring 2019 he advised two Senior Design teams that worked with MARTA to provide greater visibility into how patrons use the transit system — and one of the teams was a finalist for ISyE’s Best of Senior Design.

“The work that the students have done to date has been very useful,” said Rob Goodwin, MARTA’s director of research and analysis. “They are working with our data to give us a much more robust picture of how our patrons are using the system, which will allow us to see where there are opportunities and challenges in our system. We look forward to a continued relationship with Pascal and ISyE.”

Van Hentenryck and his team are eager to begin work on the grant and hope to have an impact on Atlanta traffic and accessibility. “Atlanta is a daunting challenge, which is why this project is so interesting,” Van Hentenryck noted. “We are looking at this bottom up, understanding mobility in the city and then step by step developing and integrating machine-learning and optimization algorithms for various novel mobility services that we will simulate at scale and hopefully pilot at some point.”

“We are fortunate to have one of the world’s premier research institutions in our hometown,” said Steve Fisher, president and CEO of Novelis. “As we pursue our purpose of shaping a sustainable world together, we have a tremendous opportunity to collaborate with Georgia Tech to help train a new generation of the best and brightest students who are poised to advance the frontiers of engineering and research for the betterment of society.”

With the Novelis funding, Georgia Tech intends to recruit a senior interdisciplinary faculty member to serve as the director of the Novelis Innovation Hub. The director is expected to be identified and in place by the 2020-21 academic year.

“The collaboration with Novelis demonstrates our continued focus on providing students and faculty with unmatched academic and practical experiences through the creation of innovative corporate relationships,” said Chaouki Abdallah, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research. “Our expertise in materials science, advanced manufacturing, and business and AI systems is among the very best in global higher education. We look forward to working with Novelis’ scientific, engineering, and business innovators to develop new, industry- and world-changing solutions.”

Under the terms of the agreement, Novelis will annually identify sponsored research and provide a list of innovation needs, for which Georgia Tech faculty will be invited to offer proposals. An advisory board comprised of representatives from Georgia Tech and Novelis will evaluate the proposals that utilize the Novelis funding and external funding opportunities as well as foster future technology collaborations.

“Establishing closer ties with Georgia Tech provides tremendous benefits for both the students and the company,” said Todd Summe, chief research and development officer at Novelis. “Our combined efforts will advance our mission to lead the aluminum industry as the partner of choice for innovative solutions. At the same time, we are helping fill the industry’s talent pipeline with outstanding innovators. We see this as just the next step in our partnership, which can serve as a model for transformative innovation across Novelis, the Aditya Birla Group, and our industry at large.”

With this investment, Novelis is building upon longstanding ties with Georgia Tech. Historically, the company has provided internships and full-time employment as well as mentorship to more than 50 graduate students over the years. Novelis has consistently funded sponsored research as well as research equipment at Georgia Tech, most recently co-investing in additive manufacturing in the Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility. In addition, the company provides funds for graduate student research with renowned faculty and for Georgia Tech’s InVenture Prize, a student competition that fosters creativity, invention, and entrepreneurship.

About Novelis 
Novelis Inc. is a global leader in innovative products and services and the world's largest recycler of aluminum. The company is headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, operates 23 facilities in nine countries, has approximately 11,000 employees, and recorded $12.3 billion in revenue for its 2019 fiscal year. Novelis is a subsidiary of Hindalco Industries Limited, an industry leader in aluminum and copper, and the metals flagship company of the Aditya Birla Group, a multinational conglomerate based in Mumbai, India. 

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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu).

U.S. flu vaccine distribution logistics could use an update, according to Pinar Keskinocak. The researcher at the Georgia Institute of Technology co-led a recent study that compared the current approach with a proposed allocation method calculated to save many more lives in a pandemic or similarly intense influenza outbreak that taxes vaccine supplies.

The study's recommendations, which apply to resupplying vaccine stocks during a running outbreak, boil down to this: To put a bigger dent in the spread of flu, replenish vaccine stocks in regions where they are being used up and don't replenish them in areas where vaccines are just sitting on shelves, because few people are getting flu shots there.

A simple tweak

The tweak in the supply chain could also save thousands of lives annually in regular flu seasons in the U.S., which can be plenty deadly. A flu season can take more lives than murders in the same time period.

“Even seasonal flu kills tens of thousands of people each year, so we would benefit immediately,” said Keskinocak, who is William W. George Chair and Professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and Director for the Center of Health and Humanitarian Systems.

“In a pandemic, nearly no one would have natural immunity, so the death toll could be significantly high if we don’t improve vaccine coverage.”

What makes a pandemic a pandemic? The flu virus represents a mutation that human immune systems have not had a chance to build prior resistance to, thus the lack of natural immunity. When the next one strikes, in addition to the many lives saved, the researchers’ recommendations could massively prevent flu infections, secondary infections like bronchitis, hospitalizations, and unnecessarily high medical costs.

Keskinocak, co-principal investigator Julie Swann from North Carolina State University, and first author Zihao Li of Georgia Tech published their results in the journal Plos One in October 2018, around the start of the 2018-19 flu season. The research was supported by the Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Junior Faculty Endowment Fund.

A logic breakdown

When a pandemic hits, or a flu season that taxes the vaccine stocks, vaccine supply may become limited but then catch up over time. When that happens, the vaccine distributors commonly take what’s called the population-based approach.

“Areas with larger populations get more vaccine, proportional to the population. It’s a straightforward approach that seems fair,” Swann said.

As more vaccine becomes available over time, restocking follows the same principle, and that is where distribution logic breaks down. In some regions, few people get vaccinated, but under population-based allocation, resupply stocks go there anyway and may go to waste. Meanwhile, restocking may fall short of demand elsewhere, where people are lining up for inoculations.

A mathematical fix

As a result, in a pandemic, people eager for a vaccination might not get one despite adequate vaccine production, and the resulting additional unvaccinated people are more likely to get the flu and also spread it to others. That intensifies the outbreak for the entire population.

The wasted vaccine stocks also drain medical finances, and the new model would releave some of that strain even in regular flu seasons.

“Production, storage, and delivery of vaccine are costly, and unused inventory can’t just be thrown away. It costs money to dispose of,” Keskinocak said.

Restocking doses where they are actually being used would benefit the entire population by boosting the total number of vaccinated individuals, who would then be less likely to get sick and to infect other people. That would tamp down the flu wave for everybody.

A data dearth

Leftover inventory could be slashed to about 20 percent of current levels, saving considerable costs, and the data about which areas were not resupplied could be used to identify areas where more people need encouragement to get vaccinated.

“The data would tell you where you need continued education about the importance of vaccination, and some of the money saved from unnecessary resupplying could be invested in public health campaigns,” said Swann, who collaborated with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention during the 2009-10 H1N1 Swine flu pandemic.

But the needed data is missing at present in the U.S. vaccine distribution system.

“Surprisingly few states have systems in place that tell them how much vaccine has been administered where and how much is still left in inventory at provider locations,” Swann said.

The next “big one” 

The next “big one” flu pandemic will sneak up on humanity someday.

Ultimately, the best way to cut its death toll by more than half and save possibly hundreds of thousands of lives will be for virtually everyone to get vaccinated against influenza annually. Currently, fewer than 50 percent of Americans do.

The 1918-19 outbreak, which may have consisted of multiple concurrent influenzas, killed 678,000 people in the U.S. Other “big ones:” The 1957 “Asian flu” killed 116,000 in the U.S.; the 1968 “Hong Kong flu” killed 100,000. The 2009 bird flu pandemic, which was a less contagious virus, killed 12,500 people in the U.S. and hospitalized some 275,000.

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The study was supported by the Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Junior Faculty Endowment Fund, and by the following Georgia Tech benefactors: William W. George, Andrea Laliberte, Joseph C. Mello, Richard “Rick” E. and Charlene Zalesky. Any findings, conclusions, or recommendations are those of the author(s) and not necessarily of the funders.

Media relations assistance: Ben Brumfield

(404) 660-1408

ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Writer: Ben Brumfield

In this article, we’ll look at some of the key supply chain trends -- as well as a glance ahead to what the future may hold and what it means for the workforce.

Trend #1: Omni-Channel Distribution

E-commerce plays a commanding role in the way we acquire goods and services, but according to Tim Brown, managing director for Georgia Tech’s Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, omni-channel distribution takes us one step beyond.

“Omni-channel distribution enables customers to interact with the seller in multiple ways to select, purchase, and deliver items,” Brown says. “So, if you look at The Home Depot for example, you can buy from the website and have it delivered to your house. You can buy it from the website and pick it up at the store, or you can just go into the store and pick it up off the shelf.”

These options increasingly extend to both small and large scale products -- as well as services.

“When The Home Depot started, it was basically just a warehouse or store that you roamed around in and picked up things,” Brown says. “Now, there are multiple different ways to interact between retailers and consumers. That's a big driver of change.”

Trend #2: Robotics

With increasing complexity in the supply chain and the added demands of omni-channel distribution, robotics and artificial intelligence are becoming more important.

“Companies are looking to AI, robotics and related technologies to help them manage the complex channels, different flows, and different inventory pools,” Brown says. “So where companies used to want to avoid complexity and try to be very simple and have very defined roles in the supply chain, now companies like Amazon and The Home Depot are embracing complexity.”

Automated vehicles continue to offer a great deal of promise, but Brown stresses that the trucking industry won’t change over night. Certain parts of the country, such as Georgia’s I-16 corridor between Savannah and Macon, will serve as effective initial targets for automation. Savannah is home to the Port of Savannah, the fastest growing and fourth busiest port in the nation and the largest single-terminal container facility of its kind in North America. Semi-automated systems such as platooning or flocking, which allow a single driver to handle linked vehicles, will likely arrive ahead of fully automated fleets.

Trend #3: Additive Manufacturing

Additive Manufacturing or 3D printing is also a major game changer in supply chain and logistics. Previously, products left the factory only to be stored for weeks, months, or even years. Now, an increasing number of products are created on demand.

“In Atlanta, Adidas actually makes shoes in an on-demand center,” Brown says. “So, instead of guessing what's going to sell and in what sizes, and distributing them throughout the world; they just make them on demand.”

Additive manufacturing can improve the availability of spare parts for a given product, and Brown believes it could also enable more sustainable products that can be easily renewed or recycled.

“A lot times, an item reaches the end of its life and has to be scrapped because it's made up of hundreds of thousands of parts that are too hard to take apart to reuse,” Brown says. “But you can 3D print some of the items and design them so they can be easily disassembled and put into the supply chain again.”

Trend #4: The Physical Internet

Manufacturing 4.0 is transforming the landscape of industry through the widespread adoption of new technologies. Advancing alongside it is a leading-edge global logistics system termed the Physical Internet: a revolution in transportation planning that transforms the way physical objects are moved and stored.

The aim is to create a leaner, more effective supply chain in which companies share infrastructure -- such as trucks and warehouses -- for maximum efficiency. Advancements in AI, the internet of things, and blockchain make this sort of sharing possible.

“If companies can feel comfortable with these technologies and they know where their items are, then they can open up and share,” Brown says. “It’s like how we share cars now with the Uber model. Why not do the same thing with freight?”

What’s Next?

Looking ahead to the future, Brown is hopeful for the merging of people mobility and freight mobility. While some forms of transportation, such as air transportation, move both cargo and passengers, most forms of transportation keep them separate.

“MARTA could be moving freight through Atlanta, particularly at night” Brown says. “Even during the day, there could be a couple of freight cars so that freight’s moving under the city instead of through it on trucks.”

While major shared people and freight initiatives are further off, a number of start-up companies are already exploring what’s possible via a transportation networking system -- including the Atlanta-based Roadie.

“Let's say you need to send a bed or something from your mother to your aunt and you don't want to bother with a regular van line,” Brown says. “With Roadie, you find somebody who happens to be traveling between those two points and they agree to stop by and pick it up and move it.”

Job Prospects

What does this mean for the workforce? Industry data provided by the O*NET Resource Center indicates that supply chain and logistics jobs are on the rise. The opportunities go far beyond truck and forklift drivers, encompassing everything from data analysis and cloud solutions.

“There are also exciting roles involved in supply chain planning, risk management, and strategic supply chain gaming involved in supply chain tradeoff analysis,” Brown says. “They leverage technologies such as immersive reality, geographic information systems, artificial intelligence, and data analytics.”

As with jobs in manufacturing, supply chain and logistics workers have to roll with continuous change in the digital world – but the jobs themselves are not going away.

“Many young people aren't attracted to logistics because they think it's hard, physical work,” Brown says. “Obviously there are a lot of jobs like that, but there are a lot of exciting jobs in supply chain and logistics that people should think about: perhaps starting in operations but then moving to managerial or tactical planning roles leveraging the latest technologies.” 

GTPE offers a robust list of professional development options to prepare supply chain and logistics professionals for success in this field. Check out our overview of the learners we served last fiscal year.

As such, The Port of Savannah is one of the nation's fastest growing and includes two deep-water terminals: Garden City and the Ocean Terminal. To handle the surge of additional freight, governments of the United States and state of Georgia are funding a 10-year, $2.5 billion plan to expand the port to serve larger vessels and a greater volume of cargo. It is scheduled for completion in 2022.

The port expansion has included massive infrastructure needs and these changes have created several logistic challenges. In July 2018, the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) turned to two in-state resources to help: the state's Center of Innovation for Logistics and the Supply Chain and Logistics (SCL) Institute at Georgia Tech. The three bodies signed a Memorandum of Understanding to provide research and data analysis to help the GPA navigate its growth strategies.

"Over the past three years we were getting to know the ports management team, we opened a supply chain and logistic branch on the Georgia Tech-Savannah campus and started interacting with the port more," said Tim Brown director of the SCL Institute at Georgia Tech. "We had the international emphasis and an international faculty with those interests, and we wanted to start working more here in the state and domestically."

Each of the project's partners has a distinct role. For Georgia Tech's SCL, its data research. In January 2019, the SCL's research teams were ramping up efforts to analyze data to find solutions to various issues, such as helping cargo owners and third-party logistics providers streamline their supply chains. While the port is benefiting from the expertise of Georgia Tech's team of data analysts, the faculty and students are able to gain real-world experience in solving such problems.

Read the full article on the ISE Magazine website to learn more about the project and how Georgia Tech is using their supply chain expertise to analyze data and anticipate problems.

As such, The Port of Savannah is one of the nation's fastest growing and includes two deep-water terminals: Garden City and the Ocean Terminal. To handle the surge of additional freight, governments of the United States and state of Georgia are funding a 10-year, $2.5 billion plan to expand the port to serve larger vessels and a greater volume of cargo. It is scheduled for completion in 2022.

The port expansion has included massive infrastructure needs and these changes have created several logistic challenges. In July 2018, the Georgia Ports Authority (GPA) turned to two in-state resources to help: the state's Center of Innovation for Logistics and the Supply Chain and Logistics (SCL) Institute at Georgia Tech. The three bodies signed a Memorandum of Understanding to provide research and data analysis to help the GPA navigate its growth strategies.

"Over the past three years we were getting to know the ports management team, we opened a supply chain and logistic branch on the Georgia Tech-Savannah campus and started interacting with the port more," said Tim Brown director of the SCL Institute at Georgia Tech. "We had the international emphasis and an international faculty with those interests, and we wanted to start working more here in the state and domestically."

Each of the project's partners has a distinct role. For Georgia Tech's SCL, its data research. In January 2019, the SCL's research teams were ramping up efforts to analyze data to find solutions to various issues, such as helping cargo owners and third-party logistics providers streamline their supply chains. While the port is benefiting from the expertise of Georgia Tech's team of data analysts, the faculty and students are able to gain real-world experience in solving such problems.

Read the full article on the ISE Magazine website to learn more about the project and how Georgia Tech is using their supply chain expertise to analyze data and anticipate problems.

These students have diverse backgrounds and a wide variety of interests both inside and outside of the classroom. Today, we’d like you to meet Jana Boerger, a Ph.D. student who is passionate about supply chain management and building stronger connections across ML@GT.

Hometown: Osnabrück, Germany

Home School: H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE)

Advisor: Benoit Montreuil

Current Georgia Tech degree program: Machine Learning Ph.D.

Other degrees earned: B.S. in Logistics from Technische Universität Dortmund, and M.S. in Industrial Engineering from Georgia Tech

Previous experience: Before going to graduate school I worked in the industry for a few years at Audi AG, Beiersdorf AG, and Deloitte where I focused on supply chain management, logistics, and material management.

Tell us about your research: I’m interested in the application of Machine Learning in Supply Chain and Logistics Systems. Currently, I focus on Reinforcement Learning in Inventory Management.

Favorite place to hang out on campus or in Atlanta and why: The Beltline is a great place to spend a sunny Sunday.

What are your summer plans? This summer, I’ll be interning as a JSPS research fellow at RIKEN Advanced Intelligence Project (AIP) in Tokyo, Japan.

Favorite Georgia Tech experience: This actually has not happened yet, but I’m excited about a project that my friend and fellow Ph.D. student Nathan Hatch and I are working on for this upcoming academic year.

Starting this fall, Nathan and I will be organizing a bi-weekly seminar for machine learning (ML) Ph.D. students. The talks will be given by an ML student about their current research or a tool that they like to use with time for questions and mingling.

We created this seminar series to help ML students get to know each other on a personal basis and build a stronger community. Because machine learning is spread out across campus, it’s often hard to know what other students are working on. We’re hoping these seminars will help continue to build connections while also giving students an opportunity to share their work and practice giving talks for conferences and other presentations.

When it comes to smart cities, it is one thing to develop the technology. It is quite another to ensure those technologies serve the wants and needs of residents.

That was the premise of the recent Georgia Institute of Technology conference,” Smart Cities Dialogue: Building Inclusive Communities and Partnerships.” The two-day event held May 7-8 focused on inclusiveness and equity in smart city design. Chaouki T. Abdallah, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research, offered remarks to open the conference.

“We want to frame the discussion around developing solutions that create smarter communities with social ecosystems as a primary consideration,” said Abdallah. “We are proud to be unique in our approach to embed the best and brightest minds as part of the teams in these communities and create powerful social platforms and a model by which other communities can learn.”

The conference was “standing room only” according to Joe Bankoff, chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, which helped organize the event.

“This conference makes clear that Georgia Tech has an extraordinary range of things to offer in the smart cities arena,” he said.

Site Visits to View Georgia Tech Initiatives

In addition to panel discussions, participants also got the opportunity to make site visits to labs and campus locations showcasing Georgia Tech efforts in the smart cities space. These ranged from a community map room created by faculty in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication to examples of resilient spaces, such as the nearly-completed Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design.

“There are a lot of conferences on smart cities,” said Dennis Lockhart, distinguished professor of the practice in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs who helped organize the conference as the third in his series of Infrastructure Dialogues. “However, there are very few that actually take the participants into a lab and show them firsthand some of the work that is being done,” he said.

The Nunn School is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Discussion Highlighted Need for Inclusion, Equity

The conference, which brought in smart cities scholars and practitioners with an interest in human factors from around the world, included plenty of discussion about the role of smart cities in promoting inclusiveness and eliminating social inequalities, the role of mobility in creating smart cities, and putting people at the heart of smart-city decision making.

“Do things with folks, not for them, have them in the room, make sure the interface makes sense, make sure it’s culturally appropriate, make sure it’s filling a need that actually exists and not one you assume exists” Deb Socia, executive director of Next Century Cities, told audience members during a panel discussion. Next Century Cities is an organization that works with community leaders to ensure access to high-speed internet.

Debra Lam, managing director for smart Cities and inclusive innovation in Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology, played a leading role in organizing the conference, which was funded by the Nunn School and the Strategic Energy Institute. Georgia Tech Professional Education, the School of Public Policy, and the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering also supported the event.

Yet, ridership has been falling, and the system — known as MARTA, the Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority — hasn’t grown as quickly as the population it serves. After Amazon decided to build new headquarters operations in D.C. and New York City, some speculated Atlanta’s comparatively limited public transportation system might have been a factor.

Pascal Van Hentenryck, A. Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) at Georgia Tech, has a few ideas as to why MARTA has problems:

“The public system here is not as developed as in other cities,” said Van Hentenryck, a Belgium native. “It only has a few train lines, which were originally developed for other purposes. So, you’re really not connecting people to where they want to go. The necessary connections are just not there for low-ridership areas. But, thanks to new technologies and mobility models, MARTA has tremendous opportunities to change this.”

In the summer of 2018, Van Hentenryck left the University of Michigan to join ISyE and has already started working with MARTA and the Atlanta Regional Commission. His plan is to look at the transit system holistically and consider how it can scale. In addition to MARTA, that means bike lanes, walking paths, roads — all the ways people get where they’re going.

Van Hentenryck’s lab is working on optimization and machine learning algorithms that take into account congestion, driving behaviors and data collected from MARTA to create a simulation of mobility in Atlanta that can help local, regional and state policymakers.

You can read the rest of this article on the Georgia Tech College of Engineering website: https://b.gatech.edu/2XsZ9Lp.

But from the Mercedes-Benz Stadium to downtown real estate to the finer points of development, our faculty have plenty to say.

Learn what Center Director Catherine Ross and other College faculty have to say about the Super Bowl and its effects on the city of Atlanta.

Read more here.

Research teams at the University of Georgia (UGA) and the University of Pennsylvania (UPenn), along with four private firms, are also taking part in the $1.4 million effort to develop training materials for cell and gene therapy manufacturing and cell-based biologics manufacturing.

“Cell-based therapies have the potential to benefit many patients, but to achieve that we need a highly-skilled workforce to support the growth of the cell manufacturing industry,” said Chuck Zhang, the principal investigator of this project and Harold E. Smalley Professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.

The curriculum development project is part of the National Institute for Innovation in Manufacturing Biopharmaceuticals (NIIMBL), which the U.S. Department of Commerce is supporting with a five-year, $70 million grant.

The goal of the training project is to develop course modules that can be used for certificate or graduate degree programs in biomanufacturing. The modules will be designed to give students instruction in traditional classrooms and through distance learning courses, covering topics such as cell processing and culturing, quality control and supply chain logistics. The modules will also train students in best manufacturing practices, regulatory compliance as well as cultural sensitivity and policy awareness.

The faculty team at Georgia Tech will focus on developing training that involves cell characterization and bioprocessing, logistics and supply chain management and other process-oriented aspects of manufacturing. Researchers at UGA will, among other things, focus on biopharmaceuticals process development, risk management and regulatory aspects, while the team at UPenn will develop training related to the delivery of cell and gene therapies as well as regulatory and entrepreneurial aspects of the industry.

“The upstream and downstream processing modules will have hands-on training components which will be benefit our students who rarely see biomanufacturing operations in a traditional university lab setting,” said David Blum, a co-principal investigator of this project and an associate research scientist and director of the Bioexpression and Fermentation Facility at UGA. Blum will work with colleagues in UGA’s College of Veterinary Medicine Educational Resources group and its Institute for International Biomedical Regulatory Sciences. “We are also excited about the use of virtual reality technology as part of our upstream process module, which will enhance the learning experience and result in more engaging content for students.”

The universities are also partnering with Merck, Akron Biotechnology LLC, RoosterBio and Unum Therapeutics, which will provide input on the curriculum during the development process.

“Recent FDA approvals of cellular therapies and the increase in investment by industry to manufacture these new medicines for patients has resulted in a great need for workforce development and education,” said Bruce Levine, a co-principal Investigator of this project and the Barbara and Edward Netter Professor in Cancer Gene Therapy at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine. “This NIIMBL project will allow us and our partners to build the foundation for training the cell manufacturing workforce.”

The overall NIIMBL effort involves more than 150 companies, academic institutions and other organizations and is being coordinated by the University of Delaware in partnership with the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The effort began two years ago with a private investment of at least $129 million from institute members across the country in addition to the federal funding.

The consortium aims to improve the way biological medicines, also known as biopharmaceuticals, are produced, with a goal of bringing down costs and finding ways to get the drugs into the hands of clinicians and patients faster.

The new curriculum development effort is just one of several cell manufacturing research projects ongoing at Georgia Tech. The Marcus Center for Therapeutic Cell Characterization and Manufacturing (MC3M) was established in 2016 and made possible by a $15.75 million gift from philanthropist Bernie Marcus, with a $7.25 million investment from Georgia Tech and another $1 million from the Georgia Research Alliance. In 2017, Georgia Tech was picked to lead the $20 million National Science Foundation Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies (CMaT).

“Cell manufacturing has become a growing area of research at Georgia Tech, and we will leverage all of our resources and expertise in developing these course modules,” Zhang said.

The Smart City Expo World Congress awarded the project its Mobility Award. Georgia Tech serves as the research partner for this Atlanta initiative. 

“This corridor is becoming the most connected one in the state of Georgia, serving as a living lab for active, multi-modal traffic management through technology deployment and data analytics. Smart technology solutions applied here are improving roadway and public safety, mobility and the environment,” according to the news release announcing the award. 

In August 2017, the City of Atlanta announced an expanded research project with the Institute for the North Avenue project. It involves multiple Smart City technology components designed to: facilitate and promote safety for pedestrian and bicycle traffic; use the latest technology-adaptive traffic signals for a safer, more efficient flow of bus and vehicular traffic in real time conditions; and prioritize fire engines and ambulances traveling along the corridor on emergency response calls.

Georgia Tech has partnered with the City since 2015 to design, implement and study Smart City initiatives. 

Georgia Tech leads several initiatives to bring together industry and public agencies to help local governments implement smart development. The strategies developed serve as models that could be implemented across Georgia and the country. 

The Georgia Smart Communities Challenge provides seed funding and access to a Georgia Tech research team to develop and implement smart design solutions to tackle big challenges such as housing, traffic congestion, sea level rise and shared autonomous vehicles.  

Coogan joined the ECE faculty in July 2017 after two years on the faculty at UCLA. He is a member of the systems and controls technical interest group and holds a joint appointment in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. 

Coogan’s research is in dynamical systems and autonomy and focuses on developing scalable tools for verification and control of networked, cyber-physical systems. He and his team of nine graduate students are interested in applying these tools to create efficient, intelligent, and autonomous transportation systems. He is a member of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute. 

Coogan received the B.S. degree in Electrical Engineering from Georgia Tech and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of California, Berkeley. Before joining Tech as a faculty member, he was an assistant professor in the Electrical Engineering Department at UCLA from 2015-2017.

Coogan has published almost 40 refereed journal and conference papers. Since arriving at Tech last year, he has won a National Science Foundation CAREER Award and an Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award. Coogan also received the IEEE Transactions on Control of Network Systems Outstanding Paper Award in 2017.

Boerger was selected for the award based on an application about her goals in machine learning and her current focus in the research space.

Her research involves the application of machine learning in supply chain management and logistics systems. She is currently working on applying reinforcement learning to inventory management and hopes to one day bridge the gap between industry and academia.

“This award means a lot to me because it is recognition that I’m on the right path. This motivates me even more to pursue the work that I am currently dedicating my time to,” said Boerger.

Associate Director of ML@GT, and Boerger’s advisor, Sebastian Pokutta added, “This scholarship is a great honor and will enable Jana to pursue innovative research at the intersection of supply chains and machine learning. We’re very proud of her and look forward to seeing what else she accomplishes throughout her education and her career.”

The scholarship was awarded through MHI’s Material Handling Education Foundation Inc., which promotes the study of logistics, supply chains, and material handling by exposing students and educators to the industry through financial support. The foundation has provided more than $2.5 million in scholarships and grants to students at colleges and universities in the United States and Canada. 

Listen here. Their talk starts about 35 minutes into the show.

Opening this June in an initial 15,000-square-foot space at Atlanta's TechSquare Labs, Georgia-Pacific's Point A Center for Supply Chain Innovation will serve as a collaborative space for businesses ranging from multi-national corporations to emerging startups and academic institutions. 

Georgia-Pacific is investing between $5 million and $7 million in the overall center and has begun actively recruiting members. Among the first member organizations to offer their unique capabilities and expertise include: Chick-fil-A, Delta Air Lines, Genuine Parts Company, Grainger, Siemens, as well as Georgia-Pacific's parent company Koch Industries. 

Point A's members will explore use cases for applying Industry 4.0 innovations, including robotics, artificial intelligence, blockchain, machine learning and autonomous vehicles, among others, to tackle some of the supply chain's most pressing challenges, including retail models, network efficiency and data visibility. 

Read the entire article here.

Thomas has been active in a wide variety of research areas including nuclear arms control, energy policy, high-energy physics, environmental sustainability, and technology assessment. Her collaborations are equally varied, including colleagues from academia, and the public and private sectors. The nature of her collaborations and diverse subject expertise has resulted in research that engages the public and has had meaningful impacts in policy making. The award will be presented at the annual Georgia Tech Faculty and Staff Honors Luncheon to be held on Wednesday, April 11, 2018.

Thomas holds a joint appointment in the Stewart School and in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. Her research interests include energy systems, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Her current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning.

Thomas is a member of the USDA/DOE Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee. In 2004-2005, she was the American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society, and has been a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board. She is currently a member of the board of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance and a member of the Federation of American Scientists Board of Experts. 

She has previously worked at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute. Thomas received a B.A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.

Existing models for disaster preparedness and response address network design and resource allocation challenges. However, these models typically adopt a global optimization point of view, which may not be attainable since they do not consider the actual decision-making process after a disaster occurs. In this talk, I will present a new mathematical model to optimally determine the design of a relief supply chain. The model is based on the realization that at times of crises, the instructions given by the authorities to the affected population regarding which facility they should visit, are often not followed, which may cause some facilities to be congested, while others to be under-utilized. The model incorporates practical considerations such as the population behavior and equitable supply allocation. An efficient optimal solution method and a heuristic algorithm based on the Tabu-search method were developed and were tested on real data obtained from the Geophysical Institute of Israel. The results indicate that the suggested modeling approach improves the entire supply chain performance.
To further improve the system performance, an incentive mechanism is added to the model, whose objective is to increase compliance with the centralized planning. A comprehensive numerical experiment and sensitivity analysis were conducted, which reveal an interesting insight, namely: even a low investment in a small proportion of the population can lead to a relatively large improvement. In addition, it is shown that proper planning of the incentive mechanism may affect the relief supply chain design decisions.
In the second part of my talk* I will introduce the Sample Referral Design (SDR) problem. The goal is to design a supply chain network for delivering test samples that diagnose and monitor the HIV epidemic, in an environment where test resources are scarce and costly. The problem is based on a case study from Tanzania, in which the objective is to minimize the expected number of infants who die due to delays in return of results. A prediction model for Early Infant Diagnosis (EID) results is developed, as well as a simulation model that describes the system. The objective is addressed through restructuring the sample referral network using analytical tools from queuing theory. The results indicate that our model can lead to significant improvements and has a great potential to save lives of many infants.
The work was performed under the supervision of Prof. Michal Tzur.
* This part was performed jointly with Dr. Dan Yamin

BIO: Reut Noham is a PhD student in the Department of Industrial Engineering, Faculty of Engineering at Tel-Aviv University. She holds a BSc. and MSc. in Industrial Engineering, both from Tel-Aviv University. Reut’s research is in the field of Humanitarian logistics, Supply chain management and Network design in healthcare systems. Her research is based on data-driven applications alongside with the theoretical analysis and mathematical modeling. Her work was funded by the Ministry of Science, Technology and Space in Israel.

Patients at Emory Winship have been experiencing long wait times resulting in low patient satisfaction scores. The team focused on improving process flow, communication, and visibility throughout the center. Deliverables consist of a simulation with a user interface, a real-time visibility tool, and a list of recommendations and policy changes, several of which were implemented. Patient wait times were reduced significantly, increasing patient satisfaction and allowing more patients to be treated, bringing in an additional $1.2 million annual profit.

Finalists in the competition were three senior design teams who worked with the CDC, Interface, and UPS.

The CDC Senior Design team placed as a finalist in the Fall 2014 Senior Design Competition for their project titled Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC): Identification and Allocation of Increased-Risk Encephalitis Organs. Students Nishi Anand, Dylan Buczek, Nicholas Buczek, Timothy Lin, Tanay Rajore, and Muriel Wacker were guided by their faculty advisor William W. George Chair Pinar Keskinocak. Since 2002, 13 clusters of infectious encephalitis have been transmitted through solid-state organ transplantation. Currently, there is no standardized screening procedure to differentiate between infectious and non-infectious encephalitis. In this project, they developed two decision-support tools: 

1. An infectious encephalitis risk calculator for physicians to estimate the probability that a donor has infectious encephalitis.

2. A liver transplant decision aid for transplant doctors and patients to evaluate the trade-offs between accepting/rejecting an increased-risk encephalitis liver.

The Interface Senior Design team placed as a finalist in the Fall 2014 Senior Design Competition. Students include Andrew Bedenk, Kaitlyn Castaneira, Margaret Massey, Jonathan Porter, James Tanzy, and Andrew Taylor. Their faculty advisor is Associate Professor Marc Goetschalckx. Their project focused on redesigning Interface's warehousing systems and strategies in order to reduce the excessive pick and stage cycle times, lost inventory, and high inventory levels. They developed a four-step solution to address all of these issues, including investments in more advanced Warehouse Management System software, reevaluation and reduction of inventory levels, racking and forklift upgrades, and internal process improvements. Their solution will save Interface an estimated $1.6 million annually, with an estimated 30% ten-year internal rate of return.

The UPS Senior Design team placed as a finalist in the Fall 2014 Senior Design Competition for their project. Team members are April Ahn, Jessica Dow, Lucas Onsgard, John Rice, Philip Tylman, Song Wang and Jongkwan Woo. Their advisor is Stewart Faculty Fellow and Professor Shabbir Ahmed. United Parcel Service (UPS) is the world’s largest package delivery company. The project focused on optimizing UPS’s hub-to-hub routes for the peak holiday season. The team developed a systematic route planning approach that explicitly addresses uncertainty of load and driver availability during the peak season. The new approach is able to realize a reduction in unnecessary miles by an average of 3.4% with a potential savings of $12.1 M.

All senior students in ISyE culminate their undergraduate educational experience with the Senior Design course in order to provide firsthand experience at solving real world problems in a team environment. Students typically work in teams of six to eight individuals with 15-25 Senior Design teams running each semester. Each group is advised by an ISyE faculty member, and the faculty coordinator manages the overall course. Companies interested in submitting a project for consideration can either contact Joel Sokol, at 404 894-6484 or can post a project through the ISyE webpage at http://www.isye.gatech.edu/seniordesign/. Senior design teams look for projects before the start of the fall and spring semesters.

The NIST grants, which range from $378,900 to $540,000, were part of $9 million in advanced technology planning grants awarded to 19 universities and other nonprofit organizations and are the first conferred by NIST’s inaugural Advanced Manufacturing Technology Consortia (AMTech).

Todd McDevitt, associate professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and director of the Stem Cell Engineering Center, will serve as the technical lead for the $499,636 AMTech grant awarded to the Georgia Research Alliance, in partnership with Georgia Tech. With cell therapy manufacturing projected to grow rapidly over the next decade, the funds will be used to establish a national road map and consortium in cell manufacturing to improve access to cutting-edge medical technology for patients.

Ben Wang, executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute, will serve as the lead for a second AMTech grant totaling $385,112 that will help speed development and deployment of advanced composites.

Georgia Tech’s Institute of Paper Science and Technology, part of the Agenda 2020 Technology Alliance, is a collaborator on the $482,078 NIST funded project that will map pathways for developing advanced technologies for pulp and paper manufacturing. The Agenda 2020 Technology Alliance is an industry-led consortium that promotes development of advanced technologies for the pulp and paper industry. 

Tom Kurfess, professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and HUSCO/Ramirez Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power and Motion Control, is part of a $434,577 award led by the National Center for Defense Manufacturing & Machining focused on developing a strategy and roadmap to identify current barriers to full adoption of MTConnect, an evolving interoperability standard for manufacturing. The funding will also determine the best path forward to achieve widespread implementation across manufacturing industries.

Technology road mapping is a key component of all funded AMTech projects. Each consortium will engage manufacturers of all sizes, university researchers, trade associations and other stakeholders in an interactive process to identify and prioritize research projects that reduce shared barriers to the growth of advanced manufacturing in the United States. 

Georgia Tech is a national leader in research, education, policy and industrial assistance related to manufacturing. President G.P. “Bud” Peterson serves on the Steering Committee of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership, and Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute runs the Manufacturing Extension Partnership for the state of Georgia (http://gamep.org/).    

The NSF Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) grant, entitled “Research Experience for Student Veterans in Advanced Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship (REVAMP),” will provide technical training, entrepreneurship and research experience for 10 students each summer. The students will learn the latest manufacturing techniques as well as how to work with the new technologies. They will work side by side with world-class researchers and business leaders in additive manufacturing, precision machining, scalable manufacturing and sustainable design and manufacturing.

“This program will leverage GTMI’s world-class facilities, diverse technical expertise and inspiring interdisciplinary research environment,” said Chuck Zhang, the principal investigator of the grant, and a professor in Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and GTMI. “It will provide a great opportunity for transitioning veterans and underrepresented minority students to learn the latest manufacturing techniques that can give them hands on experience and prepare them for the workforce in manufacturing.”

In addition, the curriculum will also include an entrepreneurship component that will allow students to learn firsthand from experts at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute as well as startup leaders at the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC).

The program is currently recruiting students nationwide and hopes to attract transitioning military veterans as well as underrepresented minorities to participate.

“We’re really excited about this opportunity,” said John Morehouse, Director of Manufacturing Programs and Partnerships at GTMI, and co-principal investigator for REVAMP. “This type of program can truly be transforming for the students. It can open their eyes to other possibilities for a career path and even show them the possibilities of starting their own business.”

Students will be required to be in Atlanta for the summer. Each student will be provided support for travel expenses, a $5,000 stipend, and on-campus housing. The program is set to begin on May 27, 2014.

Those interested can find additional information at http://manufacturing.gatech.edu/revamp-nsf-reu.

A new online tool takes the guesswork out of developing individualized catch-up immunization schedules by allowing parents and health care providers to easily create a schedule that ensures missed vaccines and future vaccines are administered according to approved guidelines.

“The immunization schedule is complex,” said Larry Pickering, executive secretary of the Advisory Committee on Immunization Practices (ACIP) of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and a collaborator on the project. “By using the online immunization scheduler, parents can ensure that their children stay current on all recommended vaccines, and they can also obtain useful information about vaccines and vaccine-preventable diseases.”

The online catch-up immunization scheduling tool, which was developed by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), is available at https://www.vacscheduler.org/. Since the new tool launched in January 2012, the site has recorded nearly 63,000 visits, 22 percent of them repeat visitors. Nearly half of the visitors identified themselves as health care providers.

The new online tool replaced a downloadable software program that was released by Georgia Tech and the CDC in 2008. The original software was designed by Professor Pinar Keskinocak and former graduate student Faramroze Engineer from the Georgia Tech Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Researchers in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) converted the software program into the new online tool and adapted it to show different views tailored for parents and health care professionals.

“We’ve resolved several issues that existed with the downloadable catch-up immunization scheduling program by creating the online tool,” explained Keskinocak. “For instance, some physicians told us that they were not able to download the original software program to their work computers because of information technology security restrictions and some users expressed concern because the program had to be downloaded again whenever updates to the vaccination rules were issued.”

The online tool removes the challenging task of simultaneously considering complex rules, guidelines and discretionary considerations when creating a catch-up schedule. A physician or caregiver simply inputs a child’s date of birth and previous immunization dates, and selects whether to administer the vaccines as soon as possible or to administer the vaccines when recommended. Then the program displays a personalized schedule of the recommended dates to administer all future vaccines, which can be saved to the user’s computer.

“I have found the online scheduling tools to be very user friendly and helpful,” said Thomas J. Steiner, the pediatric lead physician with Kaiser Permanente Gwinnett, in Duluth, Ga. “One of the most useful aspects is the fact that after the patient’s immunizations are entered, you can print a ‘catch up’ schedule which can be given to the patient and scanned into the patient’s chart.”

Vaccines included in the scheduler are those required between birth and six years of age: Hepatitis A and B, Rotavirus, Diphtheria/Tetanus/Pertussis, Haemophilus influenzae type b, Pneumococcal, Polio, Measles/Mumps/Rubella, Varicella (Chickenpox).

The scheduler follows the guidelines developed and revised each year by ACIP in collaboration with the American Academy of Pediatrics and the American Academy of Family Physicians. These guidelines include the feasible number, timing and spacing of doses of each vaccine based on the child’s age, the number of doses and the age at which each dose was administered.

In addition, each dose of each vaccine has a minimum, maximum and recommended age for administration, and there are minimum and recommended gaps between doses. These gaps as well as future administrations of a particular vaccine may vary depending on the age of the child and the age at which previous doses were administered.

If a child requires more than one live vaccine to be administered, there are two options: administer all live vaccines on the same day or wait 28 days between live vaccine injections. There also may be discretionary considerations such as limiting the number of simultaneous administrations a child receives or the number of visits required to complete the series for all vaccines.

GTRI researchers converted the downloadable program into software that could run online. While doing so, they added the capability to show slightly different information depending on whether the visitor was a health care professional or a parent.

“We can have the same algorithm and recommendation rules, but the interface can vary slightly based on the audience,” said Sheila Isbell, a GTRI research scientist who led the software conversion effort. “If the visitor is a parent, we can show parent-friendly footnotes instead of physician-specific ones and provide more basic information about the vaccines and the importance of completing the immunization regimes.”

As part of the redesign for online operation, the researchers also separated the information that are likely to be changed and housed it in a database that would be easier to update as recommendations change. Housing the rules in a database could also allow the system to be used in other countries where vaccination schedules differ from those of the United States.

For the future, the GTRI team is creating a version that combines child and adolescent schedules to allow it to serve persons up to 18 years of age. A version designed for mobile devices is also under development.

In addition to Isbell, GTRI researchers Scott Appling, Therese Boston, Josh Cothran, Moon Kim and Arya Irani also contributed to the software conversion project, which was supported by GTRI’s Independent Research and Development program.

Beyond advising on vaccination schedules, the tool may also encourage interactions between parents and physicians.

“By using the scheduler, parents will enhance their knowledge of vaccines and the diseases they prevent, and receive assistance in formulating questions that can be discussed with their child’s physicians and nurses, resulting in more productive interactions,” said Pickering, who is also a professor of pediatrics at Emory University School of Medicine.

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Writer: Abby Robinson

To address that need, systems engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are using computer models to help resource-poor nations improve supply chain decisions related to the distribution of breast milk and non-pharmaceutical interventions for malaria. They are also forecasting what health care services would be available in the event of natural disasters in Caribbean nations.

“We are using mathematical models implemented in user-friendly tools like Microsoft Excel to improve the allocation of limited resources across a network, especially in resource-poor settings,” said Julie Swann, an associate professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.

Swann reported on three global health case studies designed to improve the allocation of limited health care resources on Feb. 19, 2012 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada.

For the first project, Swann and a group of graduate students created models to strategically determine how a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in South Africa should expand its breast milk donation and distribution network to the whole country. In the network, healthy mothers donate breast milk, which is stored in a local repository, transferred to a milk bank to be processed and then distributed to neonatal units where mothers cannot provide it themselves because of disease status or physical inability.

“We wanted to determine how we could provide breast milk to the most people while also being geographically equitable in terms of access,” explained Swann, who holds the Harold R. and Mary Ann Nash chair at Georgia Tech. “We looked at the cost of equity and how that changed the distribution design.”

To determine where the organization should expand its network and the best way to do so, the team used operations research to examine the existing and proposed locations in the network as well as what type of transportation would work best to cover the increased geographic area. The model recognized that breast milk supply increases with higher income and education levels and low HIV prevalence, while breast milk demand increases with lower income and education levels and high HIV prevalence.

The researchers recently recommended locations for expansion to the NGO and advised the organization to pay a courier service to carry the milk to the neonatal units, in order to balance cost and reliability and improve efficiency. Volunteers, who are inherently less reliable, were driving the milk from one location to another.

In another project, done in collaboration with the World Health Organization, Swann and a team of undergraduate and graduate students used models to optimize the distribution of non-pharmaceutical interventions for malaria, such as nets or sprays, with pilot data from a country in Africa called Swaziland.

Their models provided a time-based deployment plan for the country, including details on what geographic zones to target for spraying, when to deploy in each zone, how many people can be protected in each zone, what resources should be located at the distribution centers, and the opening and closing dates of the distribution centers.

The researchers showed that using a systems approach to examine allocation decisions could increase the number of people covered with the same amount of funding by more than 25 percent. The team worked with Pinar Keskinocak, a professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, to develop a teaching game based on the work. The game has been used worldwide in classes of humanitarian students.

For the third project, Swann and a team of graduate students are using technology to estimate the performance of disaster preparedness plans in advance of an event. The project is part of the Caribbean Hazard Assessment Mitigation and Preparedness (CHAMP) initiative, which is supported by a Georgia Tech alumnus and led by Reginald DesRoches, a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech.

In Puerto Rico, Swann’s team evaluated the existing hospital networks and other health care provider locations described in the island’s emergency preparedness plans.

“To forecast the country’s ability to provide health services following an earthquake, we took population data and overlaid it with projections of earthquake locations and severity to estimate the capacities and amount of congestion that would result at health care facilities,” said Swann.

The researchers recently presented the initial results of their study to the Puerto Rico Department of Health and made recommendations for health care resources and hospital capacities based on predicted bottlenecks in the system. They are currently examining Belize’s hurricane evacuation plans. Keskinocak and Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering associate professor Ozlem Ergun and visiting assistant professor Pelin Pekgun-Cakmak are also contributing to the CHAMP initiative.

“We have found that technology innovations like mathematical models can help to solve problems in global and public health, such as the allocation of limited health care resources,” noted Swann. 

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Media Relations Contacts: Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu; 404-385-3364) or John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu; 404-894-6986)

Writer: Abby Robinson

Georgia Tech is among the top U.S. public and private institutions invited to be part of the World Economic Forum’s Knowledge Advisory Board, a group of senior representatives from the foremost 200 universities worldwide that will advise the forum on how to engage with academic partners and the field of higher education.

“The World Economic Forum is the premier convener of thought leaders around the world,” said Steven McLaughlin, Georgia Tech’s vice provost of international initiatives. “Having Georgia Tech as the only public university in that group expands our global impact and influence, and connects us to an important international network of leaders.”

McLaughlin will be traveling to Geneva this fall to represent Georgia Tech on the Knowledge Advisory Board.

The partnership between Georgia Tech and the World Economic Forum has yielded other initiatives.  Several Georgia Tech faculty members, for example, will be participating in the Annual Meeting of the New Champions in Dalian, China, Sept. 14-16.

Known as “Summer Davos,” the Annual Meeting of the New Champions is the foremost global business gathering in Asia and is designed to foster interaction, generate insight and achieve impact across more than 1,500 participants attending.

Four faculty members will be representing Georgia Tech at “Summer Davos” in Dalian.

Elizabeth Mynatt, interactive computing professor and executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT); Blair MacIntyre, interactive computing professor; Ian Bogost, literature, communication and culture professor; and Michael Best, associate professor of international affairs, will be presenting in the “IdeasLab with Georgia Tech: Connectivity and Social Interaction.”

They will discuss persuasive gaming to address societal issues; augmented reality in media, healthcare and politics; creative discovery to manage personal information; and social media in civic engagement and political development. The IdeasLab is a unique format during the meeting in which the world’s top academic institutions present their current thinking and the audience interacts on their ideas.

MacIntyre and Bogost will also be filming a short documentary at the meeting that profiles their research work, and Mynatt will be participating in an executive think tank on Innovation and Energy Technology hosted by NBC, Harvard Business Review, Caixin Media and Shell.

Besides holding meetings, the World Economic Forum produces a series of research reports and engages its members in sector-specific initiatives.  Georgia Tech faculty members have been asked to be academic partners on three studies for the forum.

• Renu Kulkarni, founder & executive director of FutureMedia and principal research associate at Georgia Tech, will be serving on a World Economic Forum Steering Committee focused on “The Future of Content." This committee, comprised of such global media companies as Bloomberg, Thomson Reuters, comScore and Disney, will examine the disruptive role media is playing across many industries worldwide. Findings of the report will be issued at Davos in 2012.
• Mustaque Ahamad, director of the Georgia Tech Information Security Center and professor of computer science, will be directing a study on cyber security.
• Donald Ratliff, executive director of the Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute, has been invited to become a member of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council on Logistics and Supply Chain for the 2011-2012 term. In this role, Ratliff will lead a global trade supply study.

In addition to Dalian, the World Economic Forum hosts an annual meeting in Davos, Switzerland, which brings together top business leaders, international political leaders, selected intellectuals and journalists to discuss world issues.

• A Novel Limbless Robot for Complex Terrain Navigation via Passive Mechanical Interactions - Tianyu Wang, Velin Kojouharov, Daniel I. Goldman.
• Integrating Motion Planning, Machine Learning, and a Robotic Exoskeleton to Improve Human Intuition and Dynamic Movements in Unstructured Environments - Aakash Bajpai, Aaron J. Young, Anirban Mazumdar.
• MIND MELD: Personalized Meta-Learning for Robot-Centric Imitation Learning - M. L. Schrum, E. Hedlund-Botti, N. Moorman, M. C. Gombolay.

-Christa M. Ernst

Georgia Tech has been actively engaged in artificial intelligence (AI) research and education for decades. Formed in 2023, the AI Hub is a thriving network, bringing together over 1000 faculty and students who work on fundamental and applied AI-related research across the entire Institute.  

“Pascal Van Hentenryck will drive innovation and excellence at the helm of Georgia Tech’s AI Hub,” said Abdallah. “His leadership of one of our three AI institutes has already shown his dedication to fostering impactful partnerships and cultivating a dynamic ecosystem for AI progress at Georgia Tech and beyond.” 

The AI Hub aims to advance AI through discovery, interdisciplinary research, responsible deployment, and education to build the next generation of the AI workforce, as well as a sustainable future. Thanks to Tech’s applied, solutions-focused approach, the AI Hub is well-positioned to provide decision makers and stakeholders with access to world-class resources for commercializing and deploying AI. 

“A fundamental question people are asking about AI now is, ‘Can we trust it?’” said Van Hentenryck. “As such, the AI Hub’s focus will be on developing trustworthy AI for social impact — in science, engineering, and education.” 

U.S. News & World Report has ranked Georgia Tech among the five best universities with artificial intelligence programs. Van Hentenryck intends for the AI Hub to leverage the Institute’s strategic advantage in AI engineering to create powerful collaborations. These could include partnerships with the Georgia Tech Research Institute, for maximizing societal impact, and Tech’s 10 interdisciplinary research centers as well as its three NSF-funded AI institutes, for augmenting academic and policy impact.  

“The AI Hub will empower all AI-related activities, from foundational research to applied AI projects, joint AI labs, AI incubators, and AI workforce development; it will also help shape AI policies and improve understanding of the social implications of AI technologies,” Van Hentenryck explained. “A key aspect will be to scale many of AI4OPT’s initiatives to Georgia Tech’s AI ecosystem more generally — in particular, its industrial partner and workforce development programs, in order to magnify societal impact and democratize access to AI and the AI workforce.” 

Van Hentenryck is also thinking about AI’s technological implications. “AI is a unifying technology — it brings together computing, engineering, and the social sciences. Keeping humans at the center of AI applications and ensuring that AI systems are trustworthy and ethical by design is critical,” he added. 

In its first year, the AI Hub will focus on building an agile and nimble organization to accomplish the following goals: 

• facilitate, promote, and nurture use-inspired research and innovative industrial partnerships;  

• translate AI research into impact through AI engineering and entrepreneurship programs; and 

• develop sustainable AI workforce development programs.  

Additionally, the AI Hub will support new events, including AI-Tech Fest, a fall kickoff for the center. This event will bring together Georgia Tech faculty, as well as external and potential partners, to discuss recent AI developments and the opportunities and challenges this rapidly proliferating technology presents, and to build a nexus of collaboration and innovation.  

Limited resources make it difficult to keep up with rising demand, and NCM’s goal to distribute one million pounds of food annually by 2026 seemed out of reach. Thanks to the Georgia Tech team, that goal is now within grasp.

The team’s first innovation was a 24/7 notification system powered by Python technology. This system monitors affordable food listings from the Atlanta Community Food Bank and sends real-time alerts to NCM staff. By acting quickly on these alerts, NCM’s food supply increases by an additional 20,000 pounds every month while saving $1.31 per pound, allowing the organization to feed more people on a tighter budget. 

Recognizing that storage is another hurdle, the team analyzed NCM’s warehouse and recommended changes to maximize space. Their solutions increased storage capacity by 70%, paving the way for NCM to handle larger food deliveries without needing additional facilities.

The students didn’t stop there. They introduced SmartChoice, an inventory system designed specifically for food pantries. This system not only tracks inventory but also lets clients select the food they need based on a points system. This added flexibility means NCM can offer a greater variety of food to better meet individual needs.

“It’s amazing to know that we are a part of the reason why these shelves are so full.  It’s an amazing feeling to know that this all helps the community we have been working with this entire time and to know that our work helps families have access to the food they need,” said team member Jacqueline Olsen.

“I was so impressed with their ability to relentlessly dig into what the problem is and get to the very bottom of what we’re trying to accomplish,” said Ryan Jones, executive director of Neighborhood Cooperative Ministries. “We accomplished so much more than we set out to in the first place.”

The Georgia Tech team didn’t just solve problems for NCM — they helped change lives, showing how students can make a lasting difference in their communities.

Companies around the world are increasingly committed to cutting their greenhouse gas emissions to slow and ultimately reverse climate change.

One indicator is the number of companies that have set emissions targets as part of the Science Based Targets initiative, or SBTi, a global nonprofit organization. That number grew from 164 companies in late 2018 to over 6,600 by November 2024. And thousands more have committed to lower their emissions.

It’s not always a smooth road, however. Some of those companies – including big names like Microsoft and Walmart – have had to pull back on some of their SBTi commitments.

We study the history of SBTi pledges to understand these commitments and what can undermine them. We believe there is more to the story of these pullbacks than meets the eye.

What is Net Zero?

To understand corporate climate commitments, let’s start with the concept of “net zero.”

The Paris Agreement, an international treaty on climate change, aims to limit global warming to well below 2 degrees Celsius (3.6 Fahrenheit) and ideally to 1.5 C (2.7 F). Meeting the more ambitious target of 1.5 C will require reaching net-zero greenhouse gas emissions by around 2050.

Net zero is the point at which the amount of greenhouse gases released into the atmosphere is balanced by greenhouse gases removed, either through natural sources like forests or technologies such as carbon capture and storage.

The Science Based Targets initiative, developed alongside the Paris Agreement in 2015, provides a framework to help companies align their efforts with the 1.5 C goal.

SBTi Commitments Have Grown Quickly

To join the initiative, companies begin by signing a letter of commitment to set near-term (2030) and long-term (2050) targets for reducing their emissions. Companies have 24 months to develop targets that adhere to SBTi guidelines. If the targets are validated and approved by SBTi, the company announces its targets publicly. The targets must be revalidated every five years, or they expire.

The number of global companies committing to and setting targets with SBTi has grown rapidly in recent years.

By the end of 2023, 7,929 companies representing 39% of global market capitalization had committed to set targets, and 4,205 had targets already validated by SBTi. By November 2024, that number had grown to 6,614.

This impressive participation is particularly significant given SBTi’s high expectations. SBTi requires near-term targets to be set so companies reduce emissions by at least 42% by 2030 from 2020 levels.

Why Some Companies Have Pulled Back

So, why are companies like, Walmart, Microsoft and Amazon scaling back their commitments with SBTi?

While some people attribute these moves to political pressure from fossil fuel supporters, a closer look at data since 2013 reveals a more complex set of factors that may better explain their actions.

We found that, over the past decade, 695 companies either withdrew near- or long-term commitments or had a commitment that expired and was terminated by SBTi. These actions were concentrated in two distinct periods.

The first period followed SBTi’s decision in April 2019 to update its criteria, including tightening the minimum target from under 2 C to either “well below 2 C” or 1.5 C. We believe several companies were unprepared to meet the new requirements. Among the 500 companies that had either committed to or set a target by the end of 2018, 94 (18.8%) terminated their initial commitments after the criteria changed.

The second period was after January 2023, when SBTi introduced a new compliance policy and began removing commitments that had expired. In this period, 531 commitments were terminated – 497 of them because the commitment expired, and 16 because the company withdrew.

It’s important to recognize that SBTi strategically raised the bar to encourage companies to accelerate their progress in addressing climate change.

Reasons Some Companies Have Struggled

In a report in March 2024, SBTi provided a candid look at companies’ climate commitments from 2019 to 2021 and, importantly, where they struggled.

Approximately half of the companies that responded to its survey identified the complexity of addressing Scope 3 emissions – emissions from a company’s supply chain and use of its products – as a primary obstacle to setting net-zero targets. The supply chain is often considered a blind spot for measuring environmental impact and is difficult for companies to control.

On the day the report was released, SBTi removed the long-term commitments of 239 companies. About 60% of those companies had near-term targets that remained.

This helps explain the news around companies such as Walmart, Microsoft and Amazon.

Walmart’s and Microsoft’s long-term net-zero commitments were terminated, though both companies still have valid near-term targets with SBTi.

Moreover, both reaffirm their environmental commitments in their annual reports. Walmart is currently finalizing its Scope 3 emissions analysis to inform future strategy development, and Microsoft is investing in carbon removal technologies to become carbon-negative by 2030.

Amazon presents a more challenging case. The company may have faced difficulty meeting SBTi’s stringent mandate, particularly around supply chain emissions. Amazon has said it is still committed to reaching net-zero emissions and plans to explore setting targets with other organizations.

Many Companies are on Track

Our analysis of SBTi’s progress data, which includes all companies that had set a target by 2022 for which SBTi has emissions data, reveals that companies are cutting their emissions by a median annual rate of 5.4%.

Looking just at direct emissions from companies’ operations (Scope 1) and their purchased electricity (Scope 2), companies did even better. The median annual emissions decrease was 7.25% for companies with both Scope 1 and Scope 2 targets.

Scope 2 emissions are the low-hanging fruit and frequently align with cost-saving measures like improving energy efficiency.

Scope 3 emissions, those generated by companies’ suppliers and by consumer use of their products, are the biggest challenge. Companies with a separate Scope 3 target only reduced those emissions by a median annual rate of about 3%.

In 2024, SBTi announced plans to revise its Net-Zero Standard and allow companies to use carbon offsets to meet their Scope 3 emissions targets, drawing intense criticism. Carbon offsets allow companies to pay projects to reduce emissions on their behalf, such as by planting trees or managing forests.

SBTi’s challenge lies in finding a balance that maintains the integrity of its standards while encouraging broader participation, especially from high-impact industries.

Other Ways Companies are Reducing Emissions

While setting and achieving SBTi targets signals a strong commitment to combating climate change, many companies are setting emissions goals and working toward them without joining SBTi.

An example is the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact. It was created to accelerate the adoption of 20 technology- and market-ready solutions and includes nearly 70 companies, from multinationals headquartered in Georgia like Delta and UPS to small- and medium-size enterprises operating in the state.

Through the compact, companies are advancing initiatives with local economic benefits. For example, they are exploring ways to maximize Georgia forests’ ability to remove carbon and discussing effective ways to deploy sustainable aviation fuels.

The road to net-zero emissions will be bumpy. Yet the rapid growth of global corporate commitments, as well as action by a wider range of companies at the regional level, suggests corporate efforts are nevertheless moving forward.

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

• Date: January 30, 2025
• Meeting Time: 9:00 AM – 5:00 PM
• Location: Georgia Tech Global Learning Center
• All-day parking validations will be provided for attendees. GLC parking garage address: 770 Spring St. NW, Atlanta, GA 30308-1031

Register here.

We’re planning an engaging agenda, more detailed information and a finalized agenda will be shared in the coming weeks.

For any questions, please reach out to Rasha Shawky at rasha.shawky@gatech.edu.

About the Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium

The Georgia Tech Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium is a membership-based consortium that brings together industry, academia, and government to develop and deploy manufacturing technologies and workforce into the market. By leveraging the latest in manufacturing developments and technologies, members have unique opportunities to compete more effectively to become global leaders. Learn more here.

Developed in collaboration with the NSF AI Research Institute for Advances in Optimization (AI4OPT) and with support from the National Science Foundation’s ExpandAI program, the new project aims to expand AI learning and accessibility, positioning CAU as a leader in AI advancements at historically Black colleges and universities (HBCUs) and beyond.

AIHUB@CAU is dedicated to bridging the gap in AI knowledge and skills for minority students, providing new pathways into one of today’s fastest-growing sectors.

HBCUs are crucial in diversifying the tech sector, producing nearly 50% of Black engineers in the U.S., despite representing only 3% of U.S. higher education institutions, according to the United Negro College Fund and the National Science Foundation.

This initiative highlights the commitment to elevating HBCUs as leaders in AI education and research, creating a lasting effect that will benefit generations of learners and faculty.

AIHUB@CAU builds on a successful collaboration between CAU and AI4OPT, starting with the Faculty Training Program in AI. “We are now in our third cohort of faculty from CAU’s mathematics department, bringing together professors dedicated to making AI accessible and applicable,” said Charles Pierre, co-principal investigator of AI4OPT and lead PI for AIHUB@CAU. “AIHUB@CAU strengthens our partnership, expanding its reach across the CAU community.”

Francis Williams, CAU’s vice president of research and sponsored programs, emphasized the broader potential of the partnership. “Through new programs at both the undergraduate and graduate levels, AIHUB@CAU will be instrumental in training the next generation of AI professionals. Increasing minority representation in AI will ensure that we have a diverse workforce prepared to shape tomorrow’s AI-driven economy.”

Empowering Local Communities with a Global Vision

Focusing on AI literacy and community impact, AIHUB@CAU connects academic instruction with real-world applications, closing the gap between education and industry. The center’s mission aligns closely with CAU and AI4OPT’s shared goals of bringing AI resources to traditionally underrepresented areas in technology. The hub will offer workshops, hands-on learning, and foster collaboration and partnerships.

Pascal Van Hentenryck, director of AI4OPT and Tech AI at Georgia Tech, expressed the significance of the milestone: “We’re grateful to support this initiative and honored to witness the start of a powerful movement for diversity in AI,” he said. “AIHUB@CAU is not only about making resources accessible; it’s about empowering students and faculty with the tools to lead and innovate.”

Creating a Blueprint for Inclusive AI Progress

Supported by NSF’s ExpandAI initiative, which promotes the spread of AI expertise to underrepresented institutions, AIHUB@CAU is poised to become a model for similar programs nationwide. Georgia-Ann Klutke, NSF’s program director, highlighted the broader significance: “This is a significant step not just for CAU but for all institutions looking to increase engagement in AI. AIHUB@CAU is a prototype for inclusive AI education and innovation.”

As AI continues to shape the future of global industries, initiatives like AIHUB@CAU are vital for building a diverse talent pipeline in the field. Clark Atlanta University is leading the way in addressing representation gaps in technology, helping to create a future where diverse voices drive AI advancements across sectors and communities. With its commitment to equitable AI education, CAU is paving the way for a more inclusive AI ecosystem—one that opens new opportunities for HBCU students and drives meaningful change.

About AI4OPT

The Artificial Intelligence (AI) Research Institute for Advances in Optimization, or AI4OPT, aims to deliver a paradigm shift in automated decision-making at massive scales by fusing AI and Mathematical Optimization (MO) to achieve breakthroughs that neither field can achieve independently. The Institute is driven by societal challenges in energy, logistics and supply chains, resilience and sustainability, and circuit design and control. To address the widening gap in job opportunities, the Institute delivers an innovative longitudinal education and workforce development program.

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at international campuses, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

About Clark Atlanta University

Clark Atlanta University was formed with the consolidation of Atlanta University and Clark College, both of which hold unique places in the annals of African American history. Atlanta University, established in 1865 by the American Missionary Association, was the nation’s first institution to award graduate degrees to African Americans. CAU is also the largest of the 37-member UNCF institutions. CAU, established four years later in 1869, was the nation’s first four-year liberal arts college to serve a primarily African American student population. Today, with over 4,000 students, CAU is the largest of the four institutions (CAU, Morehouse College, Spelman College, and Morehouse School of Medicine) that comprise the Atlanta University Center Consortium.

About National Science Foundation

The U.S. National Science Foundation propels the nation forward by advancing fundamental research in all fields of science and engineering. NSF supports research and people by providing facilities, instruments and funding to support their ingenuity and sustain the U.S. as a global leader in research and innovation. With a fiscal year 2023 budget of $9.5 billion, NSF funds reach all 50 states through grants to nearly 2,000 colleges, universities and institutions. Each year, NSF receives more than 40,000 competitive proposals and makes about 11,000 new awards. Those awards include support for cooperative research with industry, Arctic and Antarctic research and operations, and U.S. participation in international scientific efforts.

About NSF ExpandAI

The National Science Foundation Expanding AI Innovation through Capacity Building and Partnerships (ExpandAI) program aims to significantly broaden participation in AI research, education, and workforce development through capacity development projects and through partnerships within the National AI Research Institutes ecosystem. The NSF ExpandAI program includes a track for minority serving institutions and AI institutes to propose together new partnerships. ExpandAI program information can be found at the official program page.

The National Science Foundation and its partners support the continued growth of a broad and diverse interdisciplinary research community for the advancement of AI and AI-powered innovation, providing a unique opportunity to broadly promote the NSF vision and core values, especially inclusion and collaboration. 

Before these futuristic aircraft can take off, Georgia Tech researchers say there’s serious work to do — in the air, on the ground, and in policy.

Why Now? The Technology Is Catching Up

“The same battery and automation technologies we’re using in electric ground vehicles are now being scaled for aircraft,” said Laurie Garrow, professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and co-director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Urban and Regional Air Mobility. “We’re also seeing improvements in distributed propulsion and composite materials that make these aircraft lighter, quieter, and more efficient.”

Garrow cautions that widespread commercial service is years away. “We may see high-profile demonstrations soon, maybe even at global events like the Olympics, but aviation certification is a rigorous process. It takes time to earn public trust.”

Safety, Regulation, and Public Acceptance

The promise of AAM depends on more than aircraft design — it also requires new safety frameworks and public confidence.

“We’ll need to define what I call ‘roads in the sky’ — safe corridors where these aircraft can operate alongside traditional air traffic,” Garrow said. “And we’ll need to ensure certification standards, air traffic control, and pilot training evolve alongside technology.” 

Understanding how these vehicles interact with complex urban environments is essential to safe operation. Marilyn Smith, David Sloan Lews Professor in the School of Aerospace Engineering and director of the Vertical Lift Research Center of Excellence, leads research on modeling and simulation to prepare aircraft for real-world conditions.

Her lab is developing real-time simulations that factor in turbulence, wind shear, and other transient effects. “These predictions are not trivial,” Smith said. “We need fast, physics-based models that can run in near-real time to inform both design and regulation. There are significant and abrupt variations in the atmosphere that must be accounted for, both for passenger vehicles and smaller delivery drones.”

Smith’s team is also integrating artificial intelligence to improve speed and accuracy in certification — but always under expert oversight. “AI can accelerate our work,” she said. “Without the knowledge of domain experts, machine learning can generate misleading results, and that’s unacceptable when safety is on the line.”

Infrastructure, Airspace, and the Urban Puzzle

Even the most advanced aircraft cannot operate without new infrastructure on the ground and in the sky. 

Vertiports are needed to allow aircraft to take off and land vertically. Also required are “charging systems and robust fire safety protocols for high-energy batteries,” Garrow said. “And perhaps most critically, we need ‘rules of the road in the sky’ to manage air traffic around existing airports.”

Atlanta could offer a unique advantage. “The runways at Hartsfield-Jackson run east to west, while most of the metro population centers are north and south,” Garrow noted. “That natural separation could make it easier to integrate vertical takeoff and landing operations.”

Alex Oettl, professor in the Scheller College of Business, cautions that AAM’s benefits could concentrate in major hubs without inclusive planning. “Improved connectivity will raise productivity in ‘superstar cities,’ but we’ll need new strategies if we want to ensure smaller communities aren’t left behind,” he said.

China’s Head Start and What It Means for the U.S.

Oettl notes that China has surged ahead in AAM thanks to coordinated government action, flexible regulations, and significant infrastructure investment.

“In contrast, the U.S. and Europe face more stringent certification requirements,” Oettl said. “That slows deployment but ideally ensures stronger safety standards. It’s a tradeoff between innovation speed and risk management.”

Cities and companies that move first into AAM could shape standards and attract investment — but they also shoulder more risk. “There’s a danger of technological lock-in or stranded assets if early systems don’t scale or demand falls short,” Oettl said. “We’ve seen parallels before, like the scooter boom that left cities with thousands of idle vehicles.”

Looking Ahead: The Urban Sky 

For now, AAM remains on the horizon — visible but not yet within reach. Coordinated efforts between government, industry, and academia will determine how quickly it moves from prototype to daily reality.

“Georgia has been proactive in attracting aviation manufacturing,” Garrow said. “Coupled with our state’s infrastructure and Georgia Tech’s research ecosystem, we’re well positioned to lead.”

She added, “In aviation, we like to say we crawl, we walk, we run. These technologies are coming, but safely integrating them into our skies will take time, teamwork, and trust.”

“Saving 10 hours a week with GenAI tools and techniques? That attracts leaders in this field,” said Chris Gaffney, Managing Director of the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute (SCL) and presenter of the seminar. “But they also seek deeper expertise that addresses what leaders need to know now about AI, including prompting as a strategic skill, AI policy implications for both students and companies, and real examples of how GenAI can move the needle on decision speed and quality.”

Gaffney is also the Edenfield Executive-in-Residence and a Professor of the Practice in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

The free seminar was part of a regular “Learners and Leaders” series, which usually meets before work over breakfast. The interactive session began by defining confusing terms in AI and the significance of its rapid development, then focused on use cases and strategies. It presented emerging trends and a new Advanced Analytics Learning Ladder, an actionable guide to training teams in AI.

Georgia Tech-Savannah, an educational outreach arm of Georgia Tech to the Coastal Empire of Georgia and beyond provides a range of learning experiences, including education for veterans, K12 STEAM enrichment and outreach, leadership training, OSHA training, and more.

It is also home to the region's Enterprise Innovation Institute's office for the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), and Georgia Tech’s regional presence for Apex Accelerator.

In a recent applied research partnership, the Georgia Ports Authority along with Georgia Tech experts from the GT Supply Chain and Logistics Institute (led by Gaffney) showed through research that routing Asia cargo through the Port of Savannah delivers lower costs, greater reliability, and comparable transit times versus West Coast ports.

This Learners and Leaders seminar series responds to regional needs and offers practical strategies and solutions to workplace or educational challenges. This includes the supply and logistics sector, predominant in the Savannah region, but also extends to other topics like K-12 education, safety and health, workforce demands, etc. Among more than 110 attendees in September (face-to-face and online) were representatives of the largest regional companies, the Georgia Ports Authority, local universities, and local economic development authorities.

Georgia Tech-Savannah plays a vital role in the College of Lifetime Learning efforts to address the needs of learners in timely and meaningful ways that help the workforce remain agile, capable, and engaged. 

Countries around the world have been discussing the need to rein in climate change for three decades, yet global greenhouse gas emissions – and global temperatures with them – keep rising.

When it seems like we’re getting nowhere, it’s useful to step back and examine the progress that has been made.

Let’s take a look at the United States, historically the world’s largest greenhouse gas emitter. Over those three decades, the U.S. population soared by 28% and the economy, as measured by gross domestic product adjusted for inflation, more than doubled.

Yet U.S. emissions from many of the activities that produce greenhouse gases – transportation, industry, agriculture, heating and cooling of buildings – have remained about the same over the past 30 years. Transportation is a bit up; industry a bit down. And electricity, once the nation’s largest source of greenhouse gas emissions, has seen its emissions drop significantly.

Overall, the U.S. is still among the countries with the highest per capita emissions, so there’s room for improvement, and its emissions haven’t fallen enough to put the country on track to meet its pledges under the 10-year-old Paris climate agreement. But U.S. emissions are down about 15% over the past 10 years.

Here’s how that happened:

US Electricity Emissions Have Fallen

U.S. electricity use has been rising lately with the shift toward more electrification of cars and heating and cooling and expansion of data centers, yet greenhouse gas emissions from electricity are down by almost 30% since 1995.

One of the main reasons for this big drop is that Americans are using less coal and more natural gas to make electricity.

Both coal and natural gas are fossil fuels. Both release carbon dioxide to the atmosphere when they are burned to make electricity, and that carbon dioxide traps heat, raising global temperatures. But power plants can make electricity more efficiently using natural gas compared with coal, so it produces less emissions per unit of power.

Why did the U.S. start using more natural gas?

Research and technological innovation in fracking and horizontal drilling have allowed companies to extract more oil and gas at lower cost, making it cheaper to produce electricity from natural gas rather than coal.

As a result, utilities have built more natural gas power plants – especially super-efficient combined cycle gas power plants, which produce power from gas turbines and also capture waste heat from those turbines to generate more power. More coal plants have been shutting down or running less.

Because natural gas is a more efficient fuel than coal, it has been a win for climate in comparison, even though it’s a fossil fuel. The U.S. has reduced emissions from electricity as a result.

Significant improvements in energy efficiency, from appliances to lighting, have also played a role. Even though tech gadgets seem to be recharging everywhere all the time today, household electricity use, per person, plateaued over the first two decades of the 2000s after rising continuously since the 1940s.

Costs for Renewable Electricity, Batteries Fall

U.S. renewable electricity generation, including wind, solar and hydro power, has nearly tripled since 1995, helping to further reduce emissions from electricity generation.

Costs for solar and wind power have fallen so much that they are now cheaper than coal and competitive with natural gas. Fourteen states, including most of the Great Plains, now get at least 30% of their power from solar, wind and battery storage.

While wind power has been cost competitive with fossil fuels for at least 20 years, solar photovoltaic power has only been competitive with fossil fuels for about 10 years. So expect deployment of solar PV to continue to increase, both in the U.S. and internationally, even as U.S. federal subsidies disappear.

Both wind and solar provide intermittent power: The sun does not always shine, and the wind does not always blow. There are a number of ways utilities are dealing with this. One way is to use demand management, offering lower prices for power during off-peak periods or discounts for companies that can cut their power use during high demand. Virtual power plants aggregate several kinds of distributed energy resources – solar panels on homes, batteries and even smart thermostats – to manage power supply and demand. The U.S. had an estimated 37.5 gigawatts of virtual power plants in 2024, equivalent to about 37.5 nuclear power reactors.

Another energy management method is battery storage, which is just now beginning to take off. Battery costs have come down enough in the past few years to make utility-scale battery storage cost-effective.

What About Driving?

In the U.S., gasoline consumption has remained roughly constant but fuel efficiency has generally improved over the decades.

Sales of electric vehicle, which could cut emissions more, have been slow, however. Some of this could be due to the success of fracking: U.S. petroleum production has increased, and gasoline and diesel prices have remained relatively low.

People in other countries are switching to electric vehicles more rapidly than in the U.S. as the cost of EVs has fallen. Chinese consumers can buy an entry-level EV for under US$10,000 in China with the help of government subsidies, and the country leads the world in EV sales.

In 2024, people in the U.S. bought 1.6 million EVs, and global sales reached 17 million, up 25% from the year before.

The Unknowns Ahead: What About Data Centers?

The construction of new data centers, in part to serve the explosive growth of artificial intelligence, is drawing a lot of attention to future energy demand and to the uncertainty ahead.

Data centers are increasing electricity demand in some locations, such as northern Virginia, Dallas, Phoenix, Chicago and Atlanta. The future electricity demand growth from data centers is still unclear, though, meaning the effects of data centers on electric rates and power system emissions are also uncertain.

However, AI is not the only reason to watch for increased electricity demand: The U.S. can expect growing electricity demand for industrial processes and electric vehicles, as well as the overall transition from using oil and gas for heating and appliances to using electricity that continues across the country.

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

For decades, manufacturing has been synonymous with job creation, a pillar of economic growth and stability. Today, the industry is evolving into something far more dynamic: a hub for innovation, sustainability, and purpose-driven careers. Experts say this transformation is reshaping not only what manufacturing looks like but why it matters. 

This semester’s Capstone Design Expo showcased the ingenuity and problem-solving skills of more than 118 student teams across seven disciplines. Among them, 17 teams represented H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), presenting a wide range of solutions, from optimizing scheduling for medical clinics, to refining inventory management for a major auto manufacturer, to enhancing sepsis detection through data-driven patient monitoring. 

Consumer Behavior: Confidence Lagged; Spending Did Not
Grade: C

Consumer forecasts were among the least accurate.

“Consumer confidence started the year at low levels,” says Samuel Bond, associate professor of marketing in the Scheller College of Business. Many analysts expected households to pull back, particularly on discretionary spending. Instead, consumers kept spending — especially on travel, dining, and entertainment.

Bond notes a persistent gap between sentiment and behavior. “People expressed worry, but they did not significantly reduce spending.”

He also points to a major 2025 shift: the rise of AI “shopping assistants.” Rather than using search engines or retailer sites, consumers increasingly turned to tools like ChatGPT, Gemini, and other bots that consolidate search, comparison, and advice.

Automation Expectations: Progress Without the Breakthrough
Grade: B-

Supply chain automation was expected to leap forward in 2025, but progress came in targeted pockets.

“2025 did not deliver a broad, step-change leap in automation performance,” says Chris Gaffney, professor of the practice in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE). “Instead, it delivered selective progress.”

Automation delivered the most value in tightly scoped environments with clear ownership, particularly in new distribution and manufacturing facilities. Semi-automated systems that supported human judgment and stabilized throughput outperformed complex retrofits that promised full automation.

Forecasts missed by assuming technology alone could overcome workforce readiness, data gaps, and organizational complexity. “The gap between expectation and reality was less about technology and more about readiness to operate automated systems day-to-day,” Gaffney says.

Still, Gaffney gives 2025 a B-, calling it “a healthy, if humbling, outcome” that reset expectations and clarified what actually matters heading into 2026.

Artificial Intelligence: Adoption Advanced; Hype Outran Reality
Grade: Hard to define

No trend attracted more hype in 2025 than AI, and predictions routinely overshot reality.

“There’s been so much hype around AI that keeping track of specific forecasts is difficult,” says Jorge Huertas, a researcher in the ISyE. “AI has grown in many different areas and scopes, but not at the pace it was hyped.”

Some applications matured quickly, particularly code generation and AI tools embedded into existing platforms. “Claude has grown very well with code generation, and Gemini has grown by integrating across the Google ecosystem,” Huertas says.

Other highly touted areas lagged. “Agentic AI was hyped, only to see many cases where engineers spent two or three times longer fixing errors from AI-generated code,” he adds.

AI delivered the most value when narrowly applied to the right problems. Looking ahead, Huertas points to accuracy, guardrails, and regulation, rather than model capability, as the key constraints shaping AI’s 2026 trajectory.

Alex Hsu, associate professor in the Scheller College of Business, notes that business adoption is accelerating regardless. “The AI revolution is here to stay,” he says. “Tech companies are investing hundreds of billions in large language models and data centers, while companies outside tech are using models to improve margins. This will heighten competition and put downward pressure on the labor market.”

Economic Outlook: Forecasts Tested by Policy Volatility
Grade: C+

Economic predictions faced unusual turbulence in 2025, driven largely by rapid policy shifts.

“2025 was a difficult year to forecast gross domestic product (GDP) growth given the immense number of changes in policy at the federal level,” says Danny Woodbury, lecturer in the School of Economics.

Early forecasts projected solid growth in the first quarter, but GDP instead contracted slightly as government spending fell and imports surged following tariff announcements. “Forecasters did not foresee the magnitude of the shift in trade policy,” Woodbury says, noting that projections only converged with reality weeks before official data releases.

Later in the year, export growth pushed GDP forecasts sharply higher, again catching analysts off guard.

Hsu adds that inflation and unemployment will be the key indicators to watch in 2026 as the Federal Reserve balances price stability with employment amid rising bond yields and global fiscal pressures complicating the outlook.

What Forecasters Should Adjust Going Forward

Across sectors, 2025 revealed a common blind spot: Predictions assumed smoother execution than reality allowed.

For 2026, experts point to discipline over hype, operational readiness over technology promises, policy risk over static models, and actual behavior over stated intentions.

As Gaffney puts it: “2026 will reward operators who treat automation as a system to be run, not a solution to be bought.”

ISyE researchers are applying AI to complex manufacturing environments, including multistage production systems, asset management, quality improvement, and human‑centered manufacturing. Faculty leaders emphasize the importance of contextualizing large volumes of manufacturing data so AI can support reliable decision‑making, efficient operations, and sustainable outcomes. At the same time, the initiative acknowledges challenges such as data integration, system complexity, and the need to balance automation with human involvement. Together, these efforts position ISyE at the forefront of shaping AI‑powered manufacturing systems that are innovative, resilient, and socially responsible.

Read the full article in ISyE Magazine