“Because Caribbean music was such a central part of Juan Carlos’ life, his social world, and his teaching, he possessed a singular gift: the ability to transform sounds into the syllables of a shared language of humanity,” Buendia said. “Every encounter revealed the affection and respect that local communities had for him, as well as his own remarkable ability to communicate that sense of connection to his students.”

Rodriguez recently passed away, leaving a legacy of scholarship and human connection that his colleagues say will live on in the work he did.

"Just as his scholarship linked diverse struggles in Puerto Rico and across Latin America to broader global concerns, the social spaces in which his interests flourished also brought people together in deeply meaningful ways," Buendia said. "Juan Carlos had an extraordinary capacity to build bridges, creating communities of friendship, learning, and mutual understanding wherever he went." 

Rodriguez joined Georgia Tech in 2008 following teaching stints at Rice University and the University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras. He earned his Ph.D. in Literature and a certificate in Latin American Studies from Duke University. While at Duke, he wrote a dissertation using the films of documentarian Patricio Guzmán to explore how Chile navigated its transition to democracy after the fall of the Pinochet regime.

With later research on Caribbean culture, documentary media, and digital archives, Rodriguez continued to follow his interest in understanding how audiovisual media captures collective memory, and historical trauma. 

Through his work, Rodriguez consistently illuminated the human, environmental, and political struggles of marginalized Latin American communities, connecting local history to global concerns of human rights and justice. 

'Positive Energy and Enthusiasm'

A prime example of this was his 2024 documentary, Vieques: Archivo Vivo (Vieques: A Living Archive). The film examines the human, environmental, and health consequences of the U.S. Navy’s decades-long use of the Puerto Rican island of Vieques as a bombing range. 

“I had heard about the U.S. military occupation of the island, but I didn't fully understand the human and environmental toll until I saw his film,” said Rodriguez’ Modern Languages colleague Malaika Serrano. “It's beautifully made, but what has stayed with me is the way Juan Carlos centered voices that have too often been overlooked." 

Rodriguez also helped make global and language learning opportunities possible for thousands of students and hundreds of faculty and staff members across many Atlanta colleges and universities as part of his work with the Atlanta Global Studies Center (AGSC), said his co-director, Tony Lemieux of Georgia State University.

“Juan Carlos brought a positive energy and enthusiasm to our work, and his impact will live on through the stories and lives of not only those who knew him but also those who benefit from the things that he built,” Lemieux said.

More Than a Mentor

While Rodriguez was eminently respected in his field, he was also revered as a coworker and mentor.

Serrano, who succeeded Rodriguez as co-director of the AGSC, said Rodriguez backed her as the new director of the center. 

“To me, that's sponsorship —  a mentor who risks their own social capital to help someone else advance,” Serrano said. “We'd only known each other for a couple of months, but he was already championing me behind the scenes. Looking back, I know I wasn’t the only person he did that for. It came so naturally to him.”

‘Making People Feel Seen, Welcomed, and Valued’

That spirit of partnership extended directly into how he worked alongside his peers; he demonstrated genuine collaboration in which teamwork was never a formality, but rather a foundational philosophy.

"For Juan Carlos, collaboration was essential,” said Modern Languages colleague Osvaldo Cleger.

His deep commitment to shared work also meant cultivating a culture of open, honest dialogue where ideas could be rigorously tested and disagreements discussed without compromising personal bonds, Cleger said.

 "I will deeply miss the man with whom disagreement was never something to avoid, but one of the ways we thought together," Cleger said. "We could debate, challenge each other, and push our ideas as far as they would go, never fearing that our friendship would fracture because we saw things differently." 

He also lived with a deep commitment to empathy and generosity, said colleague Antonio Cardentey.

“He had a rare gift for making people feel seen, welcomed, and valued,” Cardentey said. “Being around him was always a genuine joy, and those of us who had the privilege of knowing him are better people for having shared a part of our lives with him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Brian Magerko has been appointed as the James and Mary Wesley Chair for New Media Studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. Magerko is a Regents’ Professor of Digital Media and head of the Expressive Machinery Lab. He has served as director of graduate studies for the Digital Media Program for eight years and will step down from this leadership role on July 31.  

“Dr. Salomone was one of the best professors and best people I met in my time at Georgia Tech, from his ability to capture a room with battle descriptions to making everyone laugh with stories about his own life,” said Bryn Thornburgh, INTA 2018.

What many might not know, however, is he was also a consummate food and wine connoisseur. He loved to hold court at the now-defunct Veni Vidi Vici restaurant in Atlanta following university events, said his former Nunn School of International Affairs colleague, Professor Emeritus Brian Woodall. 

“Whenever I dined with Mike, it was my standard practice to try to be seated next to him. I never had a regrettable meal when heeding Mike's menu recommendations,” Woodall said.

Salomone, who retired in 2025 after more than 36 years of service to Georgia Tech, the Nunn School, and its students, passed away recently. 

A Cornerstone of the Nunn School

He was the last remaining member of the School’s original 1991 roster, having joined Georgia Tech in 1989 at the behest of his former Carnegie Mellon University colleague, —then Georgia Tech President John Patrick Crecine — to help form a new international affairs school at Georgia Tech.

Salomone’s foundational work at the intersection of technology and international affairs served as a model for the new Nunn School, according to Adam N. Stulberg, Sam Nunn School Chair in International Affairs.

“Dr. Salomone’s deft skill at managing organizational change enabled the School to make the smooth transition to embracing the STEM moorings at GT while preserving excellence at advancing social science teaching and research on international affairs,” Stulberg  wrote President Ángel Cabrera in a letter recommending Salomone for emeritus status. 

“The latter helped to pave the way for a future interdisciplinary programming profile that simultaneously speaks to the strengths of GT and distinguishes the Nunn School from peer professional schools of international affairs.”

‘Glad and Grateful to Have Learned From Him’

Alumni say Salamone’s lectures were legend.

“They were theatrical, dynamic, and unforgettable,” said Tarun Chaudhary, M.S. International Affairs 2009, Ph.D. IAST 2019, a part-time lecturer in the Nunn School who first encountered Salomone as an undergraduate student 25 years ago. 

Chaudhary recalled Salomone lying across classroom tables to reenact the likely apocryphal dying words of German Field Marshal Alfred von Schlieffen, who supposedly foreshadowed Germany's failed invasion of France by obsessing over the army's flank: “Remember, keep the right wing very strong.”

“The energy and curiosity he brought into the classroom translated into students reading deeply, asking questions, and participating fully,” Chaudhary said.

Henri Korhonen, IAML 2009, said he took as many classes with Salomone as possible, his favorite of which was a semester-long wargaming exercise.

“I made lifelong friends in that course and it is my favorite academic memory of my time at Tech, both for how hard we had to work at it and how much fun we had doing it,” 
Korhonen said. “He was brilliant and engaging and I am glad and grateful to have learned from him.”

Salomone’s passion for teaching landed him a spot in Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine’s  2018 feature on “Transcendent Teachers,” in which he spoke of his love for academia, advice for students, and his affection for teaching, even at the age of 73.

“Yes, I'm really old,” Salomone told the magazine. “But I never tire of this job; I love it.”

A Half Century of Scholarship

Salomone’s remarkable career began in 1967 with bachelor's and master’s degrees in international affairs from Lehigh University. He went on to earn his master’s degrees and Ph.D. in political science from the University of Pittsburgh, with a brief interruption between them by a stint in the U.S. Army after being drafted.

Following jobs at Pitt and the federal government, he joined Carnegie Mellon University in 1979, where he remained in a variety of roles until joining Georgia Tech.

Once here, Salomone served as executive assistant and senior counsel to Crecine, as assistant chair of the Nunn School, and as a professor, where he taught more than two dozen different courses over the years.

He developed many of them, including his signature courses on scenario writing and path gaming and modeling, simulation, and military gaming.

“Mike was very much ahead of his time in embracing experiential learning and his courses were extraordinarily popular with engineering and computing students captured by his ability to bring the links between technology, organization, and strategy across centuries of warfare to life in a classroom,” Stulberg said.

His work was also influential beyond the classroom, with his research and insights informing the work of practitioners in the defense industry, in Congress, and elsewhere, according to Stulberg.

Salomone was also an important mentor to other faculty members. Nunn School Associate Professor Jenna Jordan said Salomone’s work on scenario writing and path gaming has become a central pillar of her own teaching and research.

“Few people have had as profound an impact on the direction of my career, my academic interests, and the way I think about the world as Mike,” said Jordan, who is also the School’s Associate Chair. “He gave me opportunities that stretched me professionally and instilled in me a confidence that I did not always have in myself. His faith changed the trajectory of my career and, in many ways, changed my life.”

Chaudhary said he still hears Salomone’s advice in his head each time he steps to the front of a classroom: “Explain it like you’re talking to your mom across the table at Thanksgiving, but throw in a little P. T. Barnum to keep it interesting.”

“We would talk, not just about public policy, but about life,” said Cheryl Leggon, a retired associate professor in the Carter School.

According to those who knew her well, those small exchanges outside D.M. Smith reflected the way Persons, a professor in the Carter School, moved through the world. She built friendships and drew whole organizations together, one conversation at a time. Over more than 30 years, those connections became the bedrock of her remarkable career and legacy. 

Following her passing in July, her colleagues and friends reflected on the lasting impact of those relationships.

Building Communities

“Georgia was committed to bringing together scholars in her field,” said Willie Pearson Jr., a retired Regents’ Professor in the School of History and Sociology. 

She specialized in connecting policy and political science scholars to make a positive difference in the lives of others. Persons played an active role in founding the National Conference of Black Political Scientists and edited the National Political Science Review, the Conference’s refereed scholarly journal, for ten years — an unusual distinction in scholarship and service.

Persons’ talent for bringing people together also extended beyond colleagues in her discipline. She served all of Georgia Tech’s faculty as an ADVANCE Professor and was active in the Atlanta University Center Consortium, which promotes collaboration and public service among its historically Black colleges and universities member institutions.

“As one of the Carter School’s founding faculty members, Georgia encouraged others to engage with contemporary social policy issues and with the larger community,” said Aaron Levine, interim chair of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. “The School wouldn’t be where it is today without her.”

Widening the Doors

Persons’ talent for building communities and supporting others began during her undergraduate years at Southern University in Louisiana, where she studied under eminent scholar Jewel Limar Prestage, the first Black woman in the United States to earn a Ph.D. in political science. Throughout her career, Persons followed her mentor’s example, encouraging those who were pursuing academic paths in political science and other fields.

After receiving a bachelor’s degree in political science at Southern, Persons earned a Ph.D. in Political Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, specializing in American government and politics, urban politics and policy, and political development.

“She earned her Ph.D. at MIT at a time when there were far too few African Americans — and even fewer African American women — pursuing graduate work in such spaces. That achievement alone speaks to her determination, discipline, and exceptional capacity,” said Kaye Husbands Fealing, a professor in the Carter School and former dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

“But Georgia did not simply enter those rooms; she helped widen the doors for others,” she added.

As a teacher and mentor, Persons changed lives. 

“Your laid-back yet academically enriching teaching style is unique among the faculty, motivating me to take any course in which your name is associated,” Husbands Fealing quoted one of her students as saying. “It is under [your] insights that I am inspired to pursue a career in Public Policy.”

Persons was also known for weaving personal experience into her teaching and research in ways that students found meaningful and inspiring. 

“Georgia did more than teach courses. She opened intellectual pathways. She helped students see history more clearly, policy more critically, and their own futures more expansively,” said Husbands Fealing.

Scholarship with Human Consequence

At Georgia Tech, Persons published widely on African American politics, American national government, national institutional processes, health policy, and health disparities. She was awarded the highly competitive Ford Foundation Fellowship and was named an American Political Science Association Fellow. 

“Georgia had a gift for looking honestly at history — not as a fixed account of the past, but as a living record of struggle, resilience, exclusion, and possibility,” said Husbands Fealing.

Recently, Persons conducted research on health policy and healthcare safety nets. She was also consulting for the Fulton-Dekalb Hospital Authority. Her work focused not only on the problems with the healthcare system, but also on its potential and possible futures. 

“Georgia’s scholarship mattered because it was never detached from human consequence,” said Husbands Fealing. “She studied institutions not as abstractions, but as forces that shape opportunity, dignity, health, leadership, and democratic belonging.”

An Enduring Legacy

Across her decades at Georgia Tech, the qualities colleagues remember the most about Georgia Persons are the same ones reflected in those conversations outside D.M. Smith: her warmth, generosity, and remarkable ability to bring people together.

Associate Professor Hans Klein recalled that in his first semester at Georgia Tech, Persons saw him in the hallway and joked that she thought he was one of the undergraduates. They laughed, and that good-humored warmth remained a hallmark of their relationship. (As recalled to Kaye Husbands Fealing.)

“I had the privilege of knowing and working with her for many years and have many memories of our long association. Georgia was a unique colleague, and will be greatly missed,” said Professor Philip Shapira.

“Generations of students and faculty benefited from her wisdom and experience,” said Dean’s Distinguished Professor Mary Frank Fox. “I will miss Georgia — ever, always.”

Haizheng Li will be the next chair of the School of Economics, effective July 1. Li was selected after a national search for a five-year appointment as chair.

"I think of it less as a way to stand out and more as something that opens up work I couldn't do otherwise,” said computer science major Daniel Huang, who is pursuing a Minor in Linguistics. "It’s relatively easy to train a model with basic coding experience, but few people have training in how to interpret results from a linguistic standpoint, changing the angle from which I’d work on a problem and opening new opportunities for me."

Learn more about linguistics at Georgia Tech and how some students are benefitting from these skills in the job market by reading the full story.

Editor's note. This story was first published by Georgia Tech Research.

“Organizations need to shift the way they treat bias in AI,” said Reeham Mohammed, a postdoctoral fellow in Georgia Tech’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. “Bias isn’t a problem that can be solved once and for all, and it affects everyone. We are all stakeholders in how this technology is implemented.”

Most efforts to address AI bias focus on fixing systems after they are built. Reeham proposes starting earlier. In a recent book chapter, she outlines an approach called participatory modeling, where stakeholders help map how AI systems function before they are deployed. The process reveals where bias can enter along the way.

Her framework draws on an unexpected comparison: the human immune system. When the body detects a virus, multiple systems respond and remain active until the threat is contained. Addressing AI bias, she argues, requires a similar approach — one that is continuous, adaptive, and systemwide.

“It takes the whole body to react to a virus, and the immune system stays active until it contains it,” Reeham said. “Stopping AI bias also requires ongoing intervention. AI is rapidly evolving, and our response should evolve with it.”

To test this idea, Reeham and her co-author, Erik Johnston of Arizona State University, wrote the recent chapter reporting on three empirical studies examining how bias can emerge across complex systems.

In Peoria, Illinois, the research mapped how health services, social services, and other support systems used AI and how it affected their operations. Three main issues stood out: Access barriers to resources kept some stakeholders out, AI systems reflected their designers more than the intended users, and the complexity of public institutions made public trust challenging.

Johnston analyzed 311 service request data, showing how citizen input, usage patterns, and response systems can reflect — and sometimes reinforce — existing disparities between neighborhoods. For example, low-income, ethnically diverse communities often don’t use 311 due to language barriers or low government trust. In a third study, Reeham conducted focus groups with 57 stakeholders at a higher education institution, including students, instructors, and administrators. These interviews explored perceptions of AI use and oversight within the higher education environment. Many of the conversations addressed faculty policies on student AI usage, with students reflecting frustration that they were not consulted in the making of these policies. 

Together, the findings show AI systems cannot be designed effectively from the top down without excluding important groups that actually use the AI services. Instead, participatory modeling calls for stakeholders to be involved early to help identify where bias begins. Whether through town halls or focus groups, stakeholders should be part of discussions when designing a new system. Stakeholders also need to remain engaged after deployment to ensure that systems stay fair; this could include everything from community advisory boards to third-party consultants.

“People should know that if they see bias in AI, they need to speak up,” Reeham said. “We often assume machines are more objective than humans, but that’s not always true.”

CITATION: Johnston, E.W., Mohammed, R.R. (2026). How Participatory Modeling Can Enable Collective Bias Mitigation when AI Is Used across Systems and Institutions. In: Ahrweiler, P., Gilbert, N. (eds) Participatory Modelling and Simulation to Improve AI-based Public Social Services. Artificial Intelligence, Simulation and Society. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-032-15283-1_13

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Declan Abernethy, a lecturer in the School of History and Sociology, joined the latest episode of Generating Buzz to share his insight into how the scope and scale of the World Cup compares to events of the past, how the city’s capacity to host “mega-events” has changed since the 1996 Olympic Games, and expectations for the visitor and viewer experience. 

Abernethy teaches courses at the intersection of sport, history, and science and technology studies, with an emphasis on the culture and community around soccer.

Listen to the full podcast on the GT News Center website.

Graduates with liberal arts degrees are typically associated with skills increasingly in demand as AI’s influence grows — creativity, critical thinking, and communication. But how do hiring managers react when those liberal arts graduates also have enhanced science and technology training? 

The 3-year project will examine how obstacles, such as training and certification requirements, geographic issues, awareness gaps, and shifts in federal policy, may affect employment in the sector. 

"It’s a good time for a project like this because the renewable energy industry continues to grow and it’s at a point at which it needs to take charge of its own future. This study will help them start making some of those decisions,” said Graff. 

Graff is in her first year on campus at Georgia Tech, and is now the principal investigator on a project that spans 13 states and includes researchers from the University of Massachusetts Boston, Northwestern University, and colleagues at Georgia Tech. 

The main goal of the project is to understand issues that may complicate employment options for aspirants interested in jobs in the renewable energy sector, which continues to see employment gains despite project cancelations and headwinds due in part to policy shifts by the federal government. 

For instance, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported in September that it expects wind turbine service technician and solar photovoltaic installer will be the nation’s fastest growing occupations through 2034.  

In Georgia, the clean energy advocacy organization E2 reported that jobs in Georgia grew at five times the rate as the rest of the state’s economy in 2025. 

The researchers want to first understand how familiar job searchers are with clean energy jobs and what barriers stand in the way for them to be able to find jobs in the sector, including application hurdles, language skills, and location. Part of the work will include in-depth case studies across the country, a virtual workshop, and other outputs. 

They then plan to produce policy recommendations. 

“The goal is to not only to identify these burdens, but also think of ways to creatively reduce them without sacrificing rigor or training while recruiting the most talented people possible,” Graff said. 

Graff’s Carter School colleague Professor Dan Matisoff will act as a connection with the clean energy industry and help craft the policy recommendations. 

She expects the study, which is called “Investigating Administrative Burdens in the Renewable Energy Workforce,” will be completed in 2030.

The 2026 SEEDS conference brought together social scientists from a variety of fields, including economics, international affairs, public policy, and sociology, who are conducting research in the broad area of development. The conference is a joint initiative between the Ivan Allen College, the School of Economics, and the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.

“The SEEDS Conference is a signature event at Georgia Tech and the longest-running interdisciplinary conference within the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts,” said Shatakshee Dhongde, associate dean for academic affairs in the Ivan Allen College and professor of economics. “The SEEDS conference began in 2019 with a small gathering of 15 to 20 scholars from institutions across the Atlanta area, brought together to share research in global development. Since then, those initial ‘seeds’ have taken root and flourished. The conference has grown significantly in both size and reputation.”

This year, the SEEDS Conference received more than 70 submissions from scholars and researchers. 

Ambassador Isobel Coleman, former deputy administrator of USAID and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations, was the conference’s keynote speaker. Prior to USAID, Coleman was the chief operating Officer of GiveDirectly, where she helped scale the organization’s innovative model of providing direct cash transfers to the extreme poor. A former senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, she has written extensively about foreign affairs.

Her talk was titled: “Getting the Most Bang for the Buck: Using Evidence to Promote Cost-effectiveness in Global Development.”

The conference included a variety of lightning talks and presentations. 

Topics included:

• Health and education in South Asia
• Conflict, displacement, and inequality
• Education, reforms, and crime
• Agriculture, climate, and food security
• State capacity, bureaucracy, and corruption
• Land, institutions, and conflict
• Energy, climate policy, and natural hazards
• Politic; networks, partisanship, and resource allocation (fiscal and aid)
• Labor, markets, and entrepreneurship
• Government programs and service delivery
• Schools, identity, and socialization

The SEEDS conference is committed to supporting emerging scholars, with about half of the accepted papers presented by graduate students, postdoctoral fellows, and assistant professors. The conference also features research and scholarship from a number of distinguished senior scholars — associate and full professors, as well as policy professionals.

“We all have different backgrounds, skills, and experiences, but we’re all united by our core interests in global development and social impact,” said Anjali Thomas, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and director of the Nunn School Global Development program. “And we’ve all chosen to lean into those interests despite all the challenges we are experiencing.”

Biology major Sonali Kaluri is a STEM expert. Spanish major Sonali Kaluri is a language and culture expert. 

“Aaron is a trusted colleague and leader who will guide the Carter School expertly as we navigate this transition,” said Amanda Murdie, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Levine led and implemented many transformational, high-impact efforts as the Ivan Allen College’s associate dean for research and outreach. He supported interdisciplinary research during record-breaking years, expanded research support programs and excellence awards, communicated the impact of research to external and internal stakeholders, established connections with early-career faculty, and co-created a mid-career academy for associate professors.

Levine will continue to serve as the interim executive director of the Georgia Tech’s Institute for Technology and Civic Leadership and participate in the Faculty Executive Leadership Academy. 

Levine’s research addresses the intersection of public policy and biomedical innovation, particularly in the context of stem cells, cell therapy, and assisted reproduction. He has a Ph.D. in Public Affairs from Princeton University, a M.Phil. from the University of Cambridge, and a B.S. in Biology from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Levine will step down as Ivan Allen College’s associate dean for research and outreach on May 31. Effective June 1, the senior associate dean for strategic initiatives position will expand to include college-wide outreach and strategic partnership efforts. 

An expedited internal search for the next associate dean for research will launch in summer 2026. Richard Utz, senior associate dean for strategic initiatives, will temporarily oversee the College’s research portfolio.

Harding is an alumnus of the School of Economics and returned to Georgia Tech after a postdoc at Harvard University. He studies the impact of innovative technology on climate change policy and governance, focusing on solar geoengineering. In the eight years he's been researching it, Harding said it's the scale of the conversation that's changed the most: not what the researchers are speaking about, but who they're speaking to. 

"A lot of people in the climate policy and academic realms were hesitant to talk about solar geoengineering, and I think that’s starting to change," Harding said. "There's definitely wider acceptance of at least talking about it, and in that way, pathways to having spaces to talk about it and research funds are opening up." 

As the idea of solar geoengineering picks up steam, Harding invites everyone to join the conversation, starting with learning about what it is, how it works, and whether or not this once-niche proposition really can save the world. 

What is Solar Geoengineering? 

The most commonly proposed method of solar geoengineering, which also goes by names such as solar radiation modification or climate intervention, uses sulfate aerosols. When injected into the Earth's stratosphere, they reflect a small amount of the sun's radiation — less than 1% — and reduce Earth's surface temperature. This option is the most popular, and the one Harding studies, because we have natural examples, he explained. Volcanoes release sulfates when they erupt, and the largest ones are strong enough to push them into the stratosphere.  

"So we have evidence from the past that if sulfate aerosols make it up to the stratosphere, there's a cooling effect," he said. "This natural analog gives us a bit more belief that it's going to work at least in some of the ways we expect it to in the real world and not just on a computer." 

The other two types of solar geoengineering researchers consider most seriously are marine cloud brightening to reflect incoming sunlight and Cirrus cloud thinning to let light escape more easily. Each one has pros and cons. For example, marine cloud brightening would only occur over the deepest and darkest parts of the ocean, Harding said, "which would have a non-uniform cooling effect and could lead to certain adverse outcomes. " 

Stratospheric aerosol injection has a more uniform distribution and cooling effect that better mimics the warming we're experiencing. However, it comes with its own concerns, one of which is that the cooling isn't permanent.  

"If something happened to stop the deployment of the aerosols, whether it was for political or technological reasons, we would bounce right back and experience a rapid heating that we've never experienced before, and could have catastrophic impacts," Harding said. 

What are the Costs and Benefits of Solar Geoengineering? 

This question is where Harding's research makes the most impact. As an economist, he examines the costs and benefits of solar geoengineering to highlight the tradeoffs involved. Harding has published articles on how solar geoengineering could impact other climate change mitigation policies, how it affects income inequality, and the value of reducing uncertainty around solar geoengineering. 

"Making it clear what the different tradeoffs are around climate policies is super important for informing decision-making," he said. "On one side, we have these really, at their core, basic scientific questions around whether solar geoengineering will work and if it can scale up. But it's also an interesting question from a governance and economics perspective. Solar geoengineering has global repercussions, the decision will affect the entire world. How do we develop governance structures, conversations, and inclusivity to ensure we're making a choice for the collective good?"  

For example, one of the downsides of using sulfate aerosols for solar geoengineering is negative health effects. But it also has the benefit of preventing temperature-related deaths. So, how do they compare? Harding's recently submitted paper, which is not yet peer-reviewed, finds that the benefits of reduced deaths outweigh the adverse health effects of solar geoengineering "by at least an order of magnitude — if not two orders of magnitude," he said.  

Harding notes that a more comprehensive comparison of risks and benefits is still required, but in the context of the two health impacts he examined, “Yes, it’s a concern, and something we should consider, but we need to put it in perspective that the benefits are significantly greater than that negative effect." 

Why is Solar Geoengineering Controversial? 

Uncertain health outcomes? Check. What else makes solar geoengineering so controversial that some academics want a ban on public funding, experiments, patents, deployment, and support for the technology in international institutions? 

There is a running theme in climate conversations that discussing adaptation policies reduces the focus on cutting emissions, Harding said, and the concerns around solar geoengineering are the same: not just that it will pull research funds from mitigation efforts, but that it will pull attention from dealing with the source of the warming as well. (His 2023 paper examines this problem.) 

Although he disagrees, others believe that researching solar geoengineering also makes it more likely that we deploy it, Harding explained. So, for those against the technology, disrupting research efforts to prevent the idea from moving further makes sense. 

What's Next? 

As with any unfamiliar and emerging technology, questions arise, such as, will this go horribly wrong and destroy the planet? Or, will it be the solution to all of our problems? 

"Putting my realistic hat on, it's probably somewhere in between," Harding said. "It's always hard to predict the future, but I can propose what I think is a realistic hope for where it can go." 

Harding anticipates more research and is hopeful for continued discourse between academics and the public. 

"The first and most important thing to do is make people aware of this technology and educate them about it," Harding said. "We have to understand how general people, outside of policymakers, feel about it — because that matters a lot." 

He also wants to see more serious international policy discussions around governing solar geoengineering to prevent a situation where one person or country deploys it independently. Whether it's a moratorium on its use or another agreement, international guidelines would help legitimize research without fears of a rogue actor, he explained. 

Final Takeaway 

To package it all up into a neat little tagline, "Solar geoengineering is a really new technology that could alleviate a lot of suffering in the case of climate change. But there's a lot of uncertainty, and it needs a lot more attention to quell any concerns about catastrophe," Harding said.  

"The most salient concern is that we put a lot of faith in solar geoengineering, invest a lot of resources, and slow down emissions cuts because we think we have a silver bullet. And then we get to 2080 and realize it doesn't work as expected. That's a very real concern. But the one that receives less attention is if we put solar geoengineering aside and don't spend the resources investigating it. Then we get to 2080 and realize, 'Wow, this technology could have worked and relieved a lot of suffering.' I think it's important to understand the flip side of that." 

When Boys and Girls Club Digital Growth Director Tiffany Simmons met with Georgia Tech students at the organization’s national headquarters in January, her directive was simple: "dream big.” 

“It has been my greatest honor to serve this community and to witness the impact of our shared work,” Sugimoto said. “I leave with profound pride in what we have built together and unwavering confidence in the bright future ahead for the Carter School.”

During her time at Georgia Tech, Sugimoto has demonstrated an exceptional ability to lead academic organizations while fostering a culture of innovation and inclusion. Sugimoto led development efforts that helped the Carter School achieve a record as the second Georgia Tech school to meet its Transforming Tomorrow campaign goal. She also spearheaded a significant strategic and philanthropic initiative to name the School of Public Policy after former President Jimmy Carter and his wife, Rosalynn — a milestone supported by $10 million in development funds. Sugimoto also championed and oversaw the $26-million renovation of the D.M. Smith Building, preserving its historical character while updating infrastructure, accessibility, and sustainability. 

Her leadership has also resulted in substantial growth in student enrollment, national program expansion, the creation of four new interdisciplinary undergraduate minors, and expanded staff and organizational structures. In partnership with the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Sugimoto helped lead the establishment of the GTDC: Pathways to Policy program — a fully immersive, semester-long experience in Washington, D.C. available to the entire undergraduate community at Georgia Tech. She also oversaw the creation of the Center for Urban Research, a collaboration between Georgia Tech and the mayor’s office that brings together university, community, nonprofit, and municipal leaders to develop and evaluate solutions that address inequities in urban centers. These achievements reflect her deep understanding of how to bridge diverse academic fields to enhance the holistic student experience. 

“We are deeply grateful for Cassidy’s thoughtful and innovative leadership,” said Amanda Murdie, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Regents’ Professor, and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair. “She’s positioned the Carter School well to continue expanding and enhancing its human-centered, evidence-based teaching and research.”

As a past president of the International Society for Scientometrics and Informetrics, Sugimoto has spent her career examining the "science of science" and the formal and informal ways in which knowledge is produced and disseminated. A socially engaged scholar, she has served as a consultant for funding agencies including the European Research Council and the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, and as a program director for the National Science Foundation. 

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts will announce an interim chair of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy in the next few weeks. An international search for the next chair will launch in academic year 2026-2027.

Work on your character, be honest with yourself, and never stop reading. That was the advice from retired U.S. Army Gen. Stanley McChrystal at a recent fireside chat in the John Lewis Student Center’s Walter Ehmer Theater. 

Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and several other programs will form a network for liberal arts units embedded within technological universities following an IAC-led gathering in Atlanta. 

Poetry@Tech collaborated with MARTA Artbound, the transit agency’s office responsible for public art in the MARTA system, to place the poems in trains and on digital signboards in select stations throughout the month.

“It’s really exciting because it’s so colorful,” said Victoria Chang, the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Chair and director of Poetry@Tech. “And so, I feel like it gave me a lot of joy and I hope it gives the commuters and the riders on MARTA as much joy as it gave me when I saw it the first time.”

Read more in our full story.

The Truman Scholarship is awarded annually to a select group of students nationwide who demonstrate outstanding leadership potential, academic excellence, and an enduring commitment to making a difference. Named after President Harry S. Truman, the scholarship supports students in their graduate education and careers addressing society’s most pressing challenges.

“Taylor exemplifies the kind of leader we strive to develop,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “Her commitment to strengthening public institutions reflects our motto of Progress and Service. Her selection as a Truman Scholar, one of the nation’s most prestigious fellowships for public service, is an exceptional achievement, and we are incredibly proud of her.”

A Commitment to Rebuilding Trust in Public Institutions

Witte, who hails from Highlands Ranch, Colorado, is pursuing dual bachelor’s degrees while maintaining a 4.0 GPA. She balances an ambitious academic load with dedicated involvement in campus leadership, undergraduate research, and national public service experiences.

Motivated by the erosion of trust in American public institutions, Witte aims to strengthen government decision-making through rigorous economic analysis, transparent data practices, and effective regulation. Instead of viewing public trust as just another policy area, Witte sees it as the very foundation upon which all governance rests.

“While several social issues, from the climate crisis to criminal justice, demand our attention,” she explains, “our ability to tackle these challenges is only as strong as our collective faith in the institutions meant to do so. Responsible data stewardship is the first step to ensuring that communities see themselves represented in the policies that shape their lives.”

That philosophy was shaped in part by her work at the Federal Reserve Board of Governors, where she served as a statistics and data management intern in 2025. The experience reinforced her belief that sound regulation, grounded in high-quality evidence and community realities, is essential to restoring confidence in government.

It’s a perspective that also guides her long-term goals. As a Truman Scholar, Witte plans to pursue a joint J.D. and Ph.D. in economics. She hopes to work in the U.S. Office of Management and Budget, specifically the Office of Information and Regulatory Affairs, where economic analysis and regulatory oversight intersect.

Leadership at Georgia Tech and Beyond

Witte’s leadership record at Georgia Tech is extensive. She has served as an advisor for the Seek Discomfort First-Year Leadership Organization and is currently a justice on the Undergraduate Judiciary Committee within Georgia Tech’s Student Government Association.

She has also played a key role in institutional service and advocacy. As an ambassador for the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Witte helps lead Shadow Day, the College’s largest outreach event for prospective students. Previously, she sat on the Ivan Allen College Advisory Board and is now the sole undergraduate member of the School of Economics Chair Search Committee.

In addition, Witte has helped oversee the Georgia Tech Stamps Summit as conference chair, building intellectual community among fellow scholars committed to leadership and service.

Chaffee Viets, executive director of the Office of Scholar Programs, notes that Witte’s leadership is defined as much by reflection as ambition.

“Taylor is a thinker,” Viets said. "Someone who asks the same questions of herself that she might ask of society: How is this path I am on going to lead to real impact? In her answers, I see deliberative leadership and extraordinary potential.”

Bridging Liberal Arts and Technical Education

As a liberal arts student at a leading technical institute, Witte has made it a personal mission to demonstrate the essential role of economics, public policy, and the humanities in shaping technological innovation and governance. She currently serves as a teaching assistant in the School of Mathematics, one of only a handful of liberal arts majors among a large cohort, where she works to make complex mathematical concepts accessible and applicable for all her students.

“In everything I do on campus, I want to show that liberal arts majors can learn alongside STEM-focused students, and also lead among them and contribute meaningfully to the Institute’s mission of advancing technology and improving the human condition,” she said. “My experiences at Tech have left me better prepared to navigate a public-sector career in an increasingly technical world.”

Looking ahead, Witte remains focused on the long-term work of strengthening democratic institutions.

“To say we are navigating difficult and uncertain times would be an understatement,” she says. “But the most powerful force in this moment is one within our control: our collective decision to believe in the institutions we build, and to demand that they rise to meet us. It’s our choice to make.”

Students interested in applying for the Truman Scholarship can visit the Prestigious Fellowships website or contact the team at fellowshipsadvising@gatech.edu.

Before dawn on March 1, 2026, Iranian Shahed drones struck two Amazon Web Services data centers in the United Arab Emirates. A third commercial data center in Bahrain was hit, though it is less clear whether it was deliberately targeted. This is the first time that a country has deliberately targeted commercial data centers during wartime.

Iran state media issued a statement on March 31 that it will target American companies, including Microsoft, Google, Apple, Meta, Oracle, Intel, HP, IBM, Cisco, Dell, Palantir and Nvidia. The Financial Times reported that an additional Iranian drone struck an Amazon data center in Bahrain on April 1. And Iranian state media claimed that Iranian forces attacked an Oracle data center in Dubai on April 2.

Iran has also been on the receiving end of such attacks. A data center in Tehran operated by Iran’s state-run Bank Sepah was struck by a missile – apparently fired by U.S. or Israeli forces – on March 11, according to a report in The Jerusalem Post.

Data centers have been targets of espionage and cyberattacks in the past, notably when Ukrainian hackers destroyed data stored in a Russian military-affiliated data center in 2024. These strikes in the Persian Gulf region, however, were physical attacks. Drones damaged buildings.

Advances in artificial intelligence have increased the importance of data centers. The U.S. military, in particular, has made great use of AI systems for decision support in its attacks on Iran and Venezuela. Given how important data centers are, Iranian forces could be targeting the infrastructure Iran’s leaders believe is supporting strikes on Iran.

It is not altogether clear that these particular data centers were used by the U.S. military. Instead, the attacks may have been part of a broader effort to punish the United Arab Emirates for its ties with the U.S.

In my experience as a Ph.D. candidate at Georgia Tech studying how technology drives changes in international security, I don’t think the attacks signal any significant change in the nature of warfare. But they are forcing nations to recognize that data centers are targets of war – even if they don’t directly support military operations.

Data Centers and the Cloud

The United States military is increasingly incorporating advanced AI capabilities into its decision support systems. From the operation to capture Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro to supporting military strikes against Iran, the U.S. has been using AI, especially Anthropic’s Claude, for intelligence analysis and operational support.

AI is unlocking faster ways to carry out operations in war, but the AI tools the military often uses are not located on a plane or ship. When a service member uses Claude, the computing infrastructure that powers the model and its analysis usually goes to a secure Amazon Web Services cloud that hosts secret government data and software tools.

Commercial data centers are where the cloud lives. The next time you pull up Netflix and watch your favorite shows, you are likely streaming the programming from a data center, possibly AWS. When AWS data centers go down, outages affect all sorts of entertainment, news and government functions.

With AI as a driver of economic growth, data centers are key forms of infrastructure. They ensure that AI can continue to run, as well as much of the underlying internet that governments and industry rely on. When Iran attacked the UAE’s data centers, it caused widespread disruption to the local banking system.

Commercial data centers enable most of the technology that runs the modern world, including AI systems. Disrupting them is key to disrupting a country’s military and society. Given that AWS provides and operates many of the commercial data centers where the cloud lives, it is likely that its data centers will continue to be targeted in conflict.

Going After US Allies

Researchers at Just Security noted on March 12, 2026, that the United States requires cloud-computing service providers to store government and military data within the U.S. or on Department of Defense bases: “Moving such data to Amazon data centers in the Gulf region would require special authorization; we are unaware if that has been granted.”

Nevertheless, Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps claimed the strikes were against data centers supporting “the enemy’s” military and intelligence activities. And 10 days after the initial attack on the data centers, an Iranian news agency claimed that major tech company data centers and other physical assets in the region were considered “enemy technology infrastructure.”

Instead of military reasons, Iran may well have targeted the UAE to rattle the global economy and garner attention. Given the prominence of the Gulf as a major recipient of U.S. technological investment, the attack may also have been a symbolic one aimed at the heart of U.S.-Gulf cooperation. AI infrastructure such as commercial data centers is a growing part of U.S. leadership in the region, and this war could jeopardize the future of AI infrastructure in the Gulf.

Growing Importance, Easy Targets

Though data centers are increasingly important for national security, the economy and society at large, it can be tempting to suggest these strikes represent a fundamental shift in the nature of war. While that is a possibility, it is important to remember that Iran launched thousands of missiles and drones at targets in the UAE and Bahrain. Though the vast majority were intercepted, the four that struck data centers are a small portion of the ones that got through to civilian targets in those countries, including strikes on airports and hotels.

The relative vulnerability of commercial data centers – they are large, relatively fragile and lack dedicated air defenses – suggests that the ones in the UAE and Bahrain may have been targets of opportunity or convenience. In other words, they were hit because they could be hit.

Nevertheless, it seems likely that as the use of AI tools and other cloud-based resources continues to grow in importance for countries around the world, commercial data centers will be targets in future conflicts.

This article has been updated to include news of Iran’s statement about targeting U.S. tech companies and subsequent drone strikes on other data centers.

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

On April 2, Georgia Tech launched its new Institute for Technology and Civic Leadership with a symposium built around a simple idea. Society benefits when people are willing to listen, especially to those who disagree with them. 

Reliable energy is required to keep safe in cold winters and hot summers, making it a matter of national security. There are also vying economic policies to consider, political and financial incentives to navigate, and questions of social and economic inequality.

Experts in Georgia Tech’s Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts examine the challenges we face with the U.S. energy transition, and work to help make it safe, fair, and effective for all.

• Challenge No. 1: Managing National Security — with Adam N. Stulberg, professor and chair of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.
• Challenge No. 2: Confronting Inequality — with Bijesh Mishra, a postdoctoral scholar in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy.
• Challenge No. 3: Choosing the Right Economic Policies — with Bobby Harris, an assistant professor in the School of Economics.
• Challenge No. 4: Navigating Financial and Political Incentives — with Kate Pride Brown, a sociologist in the School of History and Sociology.

Read the article on the Ivan Allen College website.

Amid all the excitement, researchers at the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts are also leveraging the "world’s game" as a sophisticated lens for understanding and advancing global development.

In his recent edited book, Soccer, Globalization, and Innovation, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs Professor and Regents’ Entrepreneur Kirk Bowman argues that soccer provides a unique "contested space" to show how communities can use innovation and collective action to achieve unexpected outcomes.

For instance, soccer’s global dominance is often attributed to practices such as the system of promoting and relegating teams to higher or lower leagues based on their performance, its unique way of using single-elimination tournaments to create drama, and the evolution of the fluid and aggressive “total football” style of play. 

“Why is football the people’s game with 4 billion fans?  It’s because of these and other innovations,” Bowman said.

For more about the book and global development at Georgia Tech, read the full story.

According to the study, published in Energy Policy, widespread adoption of electric vehicles, or EVs, by 2035 would cut energy bills for U.S. households by more than 6% — including more than 4% at the gas pump. It also would drive oil imports down by 7% and increase exports by nearly 4%, the researchers say.

However, those benefits are imperiled by the repeal of national electric vehicle incentives and the recent decision by the federal government to roll back EV-boosting rules meant to increase vehicle fuel efficiency and reduce pollution, according to the study’s authors, Ph.D. candidate Niraj K. Palsule; Marilyn A. Brown, Regents’ Professor and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems; and former graduate student Suprita Chakravarthy. Their study was conducted prior to the federal decisions.

“Proponents of eliminating fuel efficiency standards and other EV-boosting policies often frame those regulatory approaches as consumer-unfriendly, but our analysis shows that such policies have many long-term benefits, both for consumers and for the nation’s energy security,” Palsule said.

For more on the study, read the full story.

On April 2, the event will feature a keynote dialogue at 10 a.m. in the Scholars Event Theater (Price Gilbert 1280) with Robert George, McCormick Professor of Jurisprudence and director of the James Madison Program in American Ideals and Institutions at Princeton University, and Cornel West, Dietrich Bonhoeffer Chair at Union Theological Seminary, followed by panel discussions designed to provide perspectives from a range of peer institutions. George and West are the authors of Truth Matters: A Dialogue on Fruitful Disagreement in an Age of Division.

Other topics will include: informing public debate and leading at the intersection of technology and policy, and engaging students and faculty successfully in civic leadership and technology policy initiatives. 

On April 3, the event will feature a panel of Georgia Tech leaders sharing their perspectives, followed by breakout sessions designed for Georgia Tech community members to share their feedback.

Explore the symposium agenda and register to attend a portion or all of the symposium.

The Institute for Technology and Civic Leadership reflects Georgia Tech’s commitment to educating leaders who create new possibilities at the intersection of technology and human flourishing and exploring ways for Georgia Tech scholarship and research to inform pressing societal issues and opportunities. It will draw on rigorous research to develop and support civic-minded, technological leaders and policy-aware innovators, equipping them to lead in a pluralistic democracy and an interconnected, innovation-driven world. 

The new Institute will give students the chance to explore a broad range of ideas about how innovation shapes communities, the economy, and public life. It aims to be a place where people can exchange ideas freely, learn from one another and find common ground — all anchored in open debate, scientific inquiry and evidence-based problem-solving. 

It will also serve as a hub for bringing together leaders from government, industry, academia and other sectors to tackle pressing challenges and pursue science- and data-driven solutions.

The report shows that between 2005 and 2024, statewide emissions fell by 33% while the carbon intensity of Georgia’s economy dropped by more than two-thirds.

The carbon intensity of the economy is a way of measuring the amount of greenhouse gas emissions produced per dollar of Gross Domestic Product. A lower carbon intensity indicates a greener economy, signifying progress in decoupling economic growth from the creation of carbon emissions.

Net emissions fell from 141 megatons of carbon dioxide equivalent in 2005 to 92 megatons in 2024. Over the same period, Georgia’s gross domestic product surged from $389 billion to $883 billion, a 127% increase. The average carbon footprint per person declined by nearly half, from 15.8 to 8.2 metric tons per capita.

“This demonstrates that climate solutions and economic growth can go hand in hand,” said Marilyn A. Brown, Regents' Professor and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the Carter School and lead author of the report. “By transforming our electricity system, improving efficiency, and harnessing the power of our forests and wetlands, Georgia has achieved steep emissions cuts while building one of the fastest-growing economies in the country. To stay on this path, we must now turn more attention to transportation, natural gas use, and agriculture.”

The report, From Peak to Progress: Shrinking the Carbon Intensity of Georgia’s Economy and Society. highlights sector-by-sector trends:

• Electricity: Retiring more than 5,000 megawatts of coal-fired power and adding 5,000 megawatts of solar capacity helped cut emissions from the grid by more than half — improving both air quality and public health.
• Land Sinks: Georgia’s 22 million acres of forests and coastal wetlands offset nearly 27% of the state’s emissions each year, making the state a national leader in natural carbon sequestration.
• Transportation: Now the largest source of emissions in Georgia, transportation produced nearly 60 megatons of CO2 equivalent in 2024. Freight growth and diesel fuel use remain major challenges, even as electric vehicle adoption has increased.
• Buildings & Industry: Cleaner electricity reduced emissions from homes and businesses, but rising direct use of natural gas has slowed progress.
• Agriculture: Emissions have held steady overall, with reductions from improved soil management practices offset by increases in emissions from energy use and manure management.

John A. Lanier, executive director of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation and a founding partner of Drawdown Georgia, said the findings show what is possible when Georgia embraces climate solutions.

“Georgia has proven that reducing emissions strengthens our economy, creates jobs, and spurs technological innovation. Continuing this momentum and remaining a leader for the South in delivering climate solutions that benefit our environment, our health, and our communities requires intention and political will – I hope we will make the right choices to keep moving forward,” he said.

William Drummond, associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of City and Regional Planning, and contributor to the report, emphasized the importance of continued monitoring to understand the trends. 

“Our Greenhouse Gas Emissions Tracker allows us to see where progress is being made and where challenges remain,” he said. “This kind of data is essential for policymakers, businesses, and communities to make informed decisions about the future of our state.”

A version of this story first appeared on the Drawdown Georgia website.

Students studying French at Georgia Tech now have another reason to be proud of their hard work. The French program in the School of Modern Languages has been designated a member of the Centers of Excellence University Network by Villa Albertine, the French Institute for Culture and Education.  

“Computer scientists often aren’t good judges of the social and political implications of technology,” said Milton Mueller, a professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. “They are so focused on the AI’s mechanisms and are overwhelmed by its success, but they are not very good at placing it into a social and historical context.”

In the four decades Mueller has studied information technology policy, he has never seen any technology hailed as a harbinger of doom — until now. So, in a Journal of Cyber Policy paper published late last year, he researched whether the existential AI threat was a real possibility. 

What Mueller found is that deciding how far AI can go, and its limitations, is something society shapes. How policymakers get involved depends on the specific AI application. 

Defining Intelligence

The AI sparking all this alarm is called artificial general intelligence (AGI) — a “superintelligence” that would be all-powerful and fully autonomous. Part of the debate, Mueller realized, is that no one could agree on the definition of what artificial general intelligence is. 

Some computer scientists claim AGI would match human intelligence, while others argue it could surpass it. Both assumptions hinge on what “human intelligence” really means. Today’s AI is already better than humans at performing thousands of calculations in an instant, but that doesn’t make it creative or capable of complex problem-solving. 

Understanding Independence 

Deciding on the definition isn’t the only issue. Many computer scientists assume that as computing power grows, AI could eventually overtake humans and act autonomously.

Mueller argued that this assumption is misguided. AI is always directed or trained toward a goal and doesn’t act autonomously right now. Think of the prompt you type into ChatGPT to start a conversation. 

When AI seems to disregard instructions, it’s caused by inconsistencies in its instructions, not by the machine coming alive. For example, in a boat race video game Mueller studied, the AI discovered it could get more points by circling the course instead of winning the race against other challengers. This was a glitch in the system’s reward structure, not AGI autonomy.

“Alignment gaps happen in all kinds of contexts, not just AI,” Mueller said. “I've studied so many regulatory systems where we try to regulate an industry, and some clever people discover ways that they can fulfill the rules but also do bad things. But if the machine is doing something wrong, computer scientists can reprogram it to fix the problem.”

Relying on Regulation

In its current form, even misaligned AI can be corrected. Misalignment also doesn’t mean the AI would snowball past the point where humans lose control of its outcomes. To do that, AI would need to have a physical capability, like robots, to do its bidding, and the power source and infrastructure to maintain itself. A mere data center couldn’t do that and would need human intervention to become omnipotent. Basic laws of physics — how big a machine can be, how much it can compute — would also prevent a super AI. 

More importantly, AI is not one homogenous being. Mueller argued that different applications involve different laws, regulations, and social institutions. For example, the data scraping AI does is a copyright issue subject to copyright laws. AI used in medicine can be overseen by the Food and Drug Administration, regulated drug companies, and medical professionals. These are just a few areas where policymakers could intervene from a specific expertise level instead of trying to create universal AI regulations. 

The real challenge isn’t stopping an AI apocalypse — it’s crafting smart, sector-specific policies that keep technology aligned with human values. To avoid being a victim of AI, humans can, and should, put up focused guardrails. 

While chess doesn’t have moral stakes, more serious ethical issues could arise in everything from medicine to self-driving cars as AI becomes even more pervasive. So, what does it mean for AI to be safe? 

“No one is saying developing safe AI will be easy, but we need to make sure we cover as many ethical concerns as possible,” said Tyler Cook, a research affiliate at the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech and assistant program director of the Center for AI Learning at Emory University. “Humans also care about being treated fairly. We care about not being deceived. We should aim for much more than safety.”

AI is too complex for simple guardrails, Cook argues in a recent Science and Engineering Ethics paper. But AI still needs to be limited and incorporated with human values of fairness, honesty, and transparency so it doesn’t make ethically dubious decisions.

AI is not just a problem to manage. It’s a technology whose impact depends on the values we choose to build in it, Cook claims. Developers must think carefully about the world their systems will shape. AI shouldn’t make our world, but instead integrate into it.

Safe vs. Autonomous AI

Some computer scientists would say “safe” AI, or AI that doesn’t cause harm, is the answer. But AI is not a simple machine like a lawnmower that needs just a blade guard to prevent harm. 

Establishing AI safety is more complex than adding protective features. Being prudent with how much autonomy AI gets is also paramount.

“We don't want AI systems deciding that they don't want to pursue fairness anymore,” Cook said. “We don't want AI to be autonomous with respect to its ethical goals or values.” 

Such ethical autonomy could lead to unpredictable or undesirable outcomes. Consider algorithmic bias: Human biases, combined with machine automation, can lead to unequal consequences. An AI mortgage lender could favor certain applicant demographics over others, for example. 

Cook posits there is a middle ground between merely safe AI and autonomous ethical AI — “end-constrained ethical AI.” 

“As designers of AI systems, computer scientists should choose what we want the AI to prioritize: fairness, honesty, transparency,” Cook said. “That's why I use the language of constraint. We're constraining the AI’s values so they can actually benefit society.”

End‑constrained ethical AI asks designers to set those boundaries intentionally, not as an afterthought. And if developers take that responsibility seriously, AI doesn’t have to reinvent our world — it can strengthen the one we already have.

"A Case for End-Constrained Ethical Artificial Intelligence." Science and Engineering Ethics 32.7 (2026).

DOI: 10.1007/s11948-025-00577-6

There was a time when artists representing two of America’s biggest homegrown musical genres wouldn’t get a look in at the Grammys.

Hip-hop and house both have their origins in the 1970s and early 1980s – in fact, they recently celebrated a 50th and 40th birthday, respectively. But it was only in 1989 that an award category for “best rap performance” started recognizing hip-hop’s contribution to U.S. music, and house had to wait another decade, with the introduction of “best dance/electronic recording” in 1998.

At this year’s awards, taking place on Feb. 2, hip-hop and house artists will be among the most talked about. House duo Justice and Kendrick Lamar, a hip-hop superstar who incorporates elements of house himself, are among those looking to pick up an award. Meanwhile, a nomination for a collaboration between DJ Kaytranada and rapper Childish Gambino shows how artists from both genres continue to feed off each other.

And while both genres are now celebrated for their separate contributions to the music landscape, as a scholar of African American culture and music, I am interested in their commonality: Both are distinctly Black American artforms that originated on the streets and dance floors of U.S. cities, developing a devoted underground following before being accepted by – and transforming – the mainstream.

The Pulse of the 1970s

The roots of hip-hop and house music both lie in the seismic shifts of the late 1970s, a period of sociopolitical unrest and electronic experimentation that redefined the possibilities of sound.

For hip-hop, this was expressed through the turntable manipulation pioneered by DJ Kool Herc in 1973, when he extended and looped breakbeats to energize crowds. House music’s innovators turned to the drum machine to create the genre’s foundational four-on-the-floor dance rhythm.

That rhythm, foreshadowed by Eddy Grant’s 1977 production of “Time Warp” by The Coachouse Rhythm Section, would go on to shape house music’s distinct pulse. The track showed how electronic instruments such as the synthesizer and drum machine could recast traditional rhythmic patterns into something entirely new.

This dance vibe – in which a base drum provides a steady four-four beat – became the heartbeat of house music, creating an enduring structure for DJs to layer basslines, percussion and melodies. In a similar way, Kool Herc’s breakbeat manipulation provided the scaffolding for MCs and dancers in hip-hop’s formative years.

Marginalized communities in urban centers like Chicago and New York were at the forefront of these innovations. Despite experiencing grinding poverty and discrimination, it was Black and Latino youth – armed with turntables, drum machines and samplers – who made these groundbreaking advances in music.

For hip-hop, this meant manipulating breakbeats from songs like Kraftwerk’s “Trans-Europe Express” and “Numbers” to energize b-boys and b-girls; for house, it meant extending disco’s rhythmic pulse into an ecstatic, inclusive dance floor. Both genres exemplified – and continue to exemplify – the ingenuity of predominantly Black and Hispanic communities who turned limited resources into cultural revolutions.

From this shared origin of technological experimentation, cultural resilience and creative ingenuity, hip-hop and house music grew into distinct yet globally influential movements.

The Message and the MIDI

By the early 1980s, both genres had found their feet.

Hip-hop emerged as a powerful voice for storytelling, resistance and identity. Building on the foundations laid down by DJ Kool Herc, artists like Afrika Bambaataa emphasized hip-hop’s cultural and communal aspects. Meanwhile, Grandmaster Flash elevated the genre’s technical artistry with innovations like cutting and scratching.

By 1984, hip-hop had evolved from its grassroots beginnings in the Bronx into a cultural movement on the cusp of mainstream recognition. Run-DMC’s self-titled debut album released that year introduced a harder, stripped-down sound that departed from disco-influenced beats. Their music, paired with the trio’s Adidas tracksuits and gold chains, established an aesthetic that resonated far beyond New York City. Music videos on MTV gave hip-hop a new medium for storytelling, while films like “Beat Street” and “Breakin’” showcased the features and tenets of hip-hop culture: DJing, rapping, graffiti, breaking and knowledge of self – cementing its cultural presence, and presenting it to a world outside the U.S.

But at its core, hip-hop remained a voice for the voiceless that sought to address systemic inequities through storytelling. Tracks like Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s “The Message” vividly depicted the reality of living in poor, urban communities, while Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” and Tupac Shakur’s “Keep Ya Head Up” became anthems for social justice.

Together these artists positioned hip-hop as a platform for resistance and empowerment.

Becoming a Cultural Force

Unlike hip-hop’s lyrical storytelling, house music focused on the physicality of rhythm and the collective experience of the dance floor. And as hip-hop moved away from disco, house leaned into it.

Italy’s “father of disco,” Giorgio Moroder, showed the way with his pioneering use of synthesizers in Donna Summer’s “I Feel Love.” Over in New York, Larry Levan’s DJ sets at Paradise Garage demonstrated how electronic instruments could create immersive, emotionally charged experiences as a club that centered crowd participation through dance and not lyrics.

By 1984, Chicago DJs Frankie Knuckles and Ron Hardy were repurposing disco tracks with drum machines like the Roland TR-808 and 909 to create hypnotic beats. Knuckles, known as the “Godfather of House,” transformed his sets at the Warehouse club into euphoric experiences, giving the genre its name in the process.

House music thrived on inclusivity, served as a safe space for Black and Latino members of the LGBTQ+ communities at a time when hip-hop was severely unwelcoming of gay men. Tracks like Jesse Saunders’ “On & On” and Marshall Jefferson’s “Move Your Body” celebrated freedom, love and unity, encapsulating its liberatory spirit, as rap music and hip-hop culture embarked on its mainstream journey with songs like Run DMC’s “Sucker M.C.s (Krush Groove)” and Salt-N-Pepa debuted their album “Hot, Cool, & Vicious.”

As with hip-hop, by the the mid-1980s house music had become a cultural force, spreading from Chicago to Detroit, to New York and, eventually, to the U.K.’s rave scene. Its emphasis on repetition, rhythm and electronic instrumentation solidified its global appeal, uniting people across identities and geographies.

Mainstays in Modern Music

Despite their differences, moments of crossover highlight their shared DNA.

From the late 1980s, tracks like Fast Eddie’s “Yo Yo Get Funky” and the Jungle Brothers’ “I’ll House You” merged house beats with hip-hop’s lyrical flow. Artists like Kaytranada and Doechii continue to blend the two genres today, staying true to the genres’ legacies while pushing their boundaries.

And technology continues to drive both genres. Platforms like SoundCloud have democratized music production, allowing emerging artists to build on the decades of innovations that preceded them. Collaborations, such as Disclosure and Charli XCX’s “She’s Gone, Dance On,” highlight their adaptability and enduring appeal.

Whether through hip-hop’s lyrical narratives or house’s rhythmic euphoria, these genres continue to inspire, challenge and transcend.

As the 2025 Grammy Awards celebrate today’s leading house and hip-hop artists and their contemporary achievements, it is clear that the legacies of these two genres are mainstays in the kaleidoscope of American popular music and culture, having come a long way from back-to-school park jams and underground dance parties.

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

Generative AI tools such as ChatGPT and Midjourney can produce text, images and videos far more quickly than any one person can accomplish by hand.

But as someone who studies the societal impacts of AI, I’ve noticed an interesting trade-off: The technology can certainly save time, but it does so precisely to the extent that the user is willing to surrender control over the final product.

For this reason, generative AI is probably most useful for things we care about the least.

Ceding Creative Control

Let’s use the example of AI image generators. You probably have a rough idea of how they work. Just type what you want – “a panda surfing,” “a piece of toast that is also a car” – and the generative tool draws it.

But this glosses over the countless possible iterations of the desired image.

Will the image appear as a watercolor painting or a pencil sketch? How lifelike will the panda be? How big is the wave? Is the toast-car parked or moving? Is there anyone inside of it?

When the images are generated, these questions have been answered – but not by the user. Rather, the generative AI tool has “decided.”

Of course, the user can be more specific: Imitate the style of Monet. Make the wave twice the height of the panda. Maybe the panda should look worried, since it isn’t used to surfing.

You can also pop open an image editor and modify the output yourself, down to the individual pixel. But, of course, drafting detailed instructions and revising the image take time, effort and skill. Generative AI promises to lighten the load. But as every manager knows, exercising control is work.

The Devil is In the Details

In all art and expression, power lies in the details.

In great paintings, not every brushstroke is planned – but each is carefully considered and accepted. And its overall effect on the viewer depends on all those considered brushstrokes together.

Filmmakers shoot take after take of the same scene, each subtly or radically different. Only a small fraction of that footage makes it into the final cut – the fraction that the editors feel does the job best. Great artists use their judgment to ensure every detail helps to achieve the effect they want.

Of course, there’s nothing new about putting someone else in charge of the details. People are used to delegating authority – even about matters of expression – to marketers, speechwriters, social media managers and the like.

Generative AI makes a new sort of contractor available. It’s always on call, and in certain ways it is very technically competent.

But compared with skilled humans, it has a limited ability to understand what you want. Moreover, it lacks intention, contemplation and the comprehensive mastery of detail that yield great expressive achievements – or even the comprehensive idiosyncrasy that spawns very unique ones.

Ask ChatGPT for a film script, plus casting and shooting instructions. It will give you neither Francis Ford Coppola’s masterpiece “The Godfather” nor Tommy Wiseau’s bizarre “The Room.”

You could, perhaps, approach a masterpiece, or a true oddity. But to do so, you’d have to exercise more and more time, more and more effort, and more and more control.

An Era of ‘Cheap Speech’

What generative AI makes possible, above all, is low-effort, low-control expression.

In the time I took to write and revise this article, I could have used ChatGPT to generate 200 grammatically correct, well-structured articles, and then I could have posted them online without even reading them. I wouldn’t have had to carefully parse each word and decide whether it really helped me make my point. I wouldn’t have even had to decide whether I agreed with any of the AI-generated write-ups.

This is not a merely hypothetical example. Low-quality, AI-generated e-books of ambiguous provenance are already making their way into online vendors’ catalogs – and into the libraries those vendors serve.

Similarly, using image generators, I could now flood the internet with superficially appealing images, dedicating only a fraction of a second to decide whether any of them express what I want them to express or achieve what I want them to achieve.

But in doing so, I would not just be skipping over drudgery. Writing, drawing and painting are not just labor but processes of considering, reviewing and deciding exactly what I want to put out into the world. By skipping over those processes, I surrender that decision-making process to the AI tool.

Some scholars argue that the internet has produced an era of “cheap speech.” People no longer have to invest a lot of resources – nor even face the judgment of their neighbors – to broadcast whatever they want to the world.

With generative AI, expression is even cheaper. You don’t even have to make things yourself to put them out into the world. For the first time in human history, the ability to produce writing, art and expression has been decoupled from the necessity of actually paying attention to what you’re making or saying.

When Intention and Effort Matter

I suspect that great art, journalism and scholarship will still demand great attention and effort. Some of that effort may even include custom-developing AI tools tailored to an individual artist’s concerns.

But unless people become much better at curation, great work will be increasingly difficult to locate amid the flood of low-effort content, which is also known as “AI slop.”

It’s appropriate that generative AI becomes more useful the sloppier its users are willing to be – that is, the less they care about the details.

I could end with some dire prognosis – that working artists and writers will be replaced with mediocre automation, that online discourse will get even stupider, that people will isolate themselves in personalized cocoons of AI-generated media.

All these things are possible. But it’s probably more useful to offer a suggestion to you, the reader.

When you need an image or a piece of writing, take a moment to decide: How important are the details? Would the process of making this yourself, or working with a collaborator or contractor, be useful? Would it yield a better output, or give me the chance to learn, or begin or strengthen a relationship, or help you reflect on something important to you?

In short, is it worth putting in real care and effort? The answer will not always be yes. But it often will.

Art, writing, films – these are not just products, but acts. They are things humans make, through a process of thousands of little decisions that encompass what we stand for and what we want to say.

So when it comes to art, expression and argument, if you want it done right, it’s probably still best to do it yourself.

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

In states where both medical and recreational marijuana are legal, fewer patients are filling prescriptions for medications used to treat anxiety. That is the key finding of my recent study, published in the journal JAMA Network Open.

I am an applied policy researcher who studies the economics of risky behaviors and substance use within the United States. My collaborators and I wanted to understand how medical and recreational marijuana laws and marijuana dispensary openings have affected the rate at which patients fill prescriptions for anti-anxiety medications among people who have private medical insurance.

These include:

• Benzodiazepines, which work by increasing the level of gamma-aminobutyric acid, or GABA, a neurotransmitter that elicits a calming effect by reducing activity in the nervous system. This category includes the depressants Valium, Xanax and Ativan, among others.
• Antipsychotics, a class of drug that addresses psychosis symptoms in a variety of ways.
• Antidepressants, which relieve symptoms of depression by affecting neurotransmitters such as serotonin, norepinephrine and dopamine. The most well-known example of these is selective serotonin re-uptake inhibitors, or SSRIs.

We also included barbiturates, which are sedatives, and sleep medications – sometimes called “Z-drugs” – both of which are used to treat insomnia. In contrast to the other three categories, we did not estimate any policy impacts for either of these types of drugs.

We find consistent evidence that increased marijuana access is associated with reductions in benzodiazepine prescription fills. “Fills” refer to the number of prescriptions being picked up by patients, rather than the number of prescriptions doctors write. This is based on calculating the rate of individual patients who filled a prescription in a state, the average days of supply per prescription fill, and average prescription fills per patient.

Notably, we found that not all state policies led to similar changes in prescription fill patterns.

Why it Matters

In 2021, nearly 23% of the adult U.S. population reported having a diagnosable mental health disorder. Yet only 65.4% of those individuals reported receiving treatment within the past year. This lack of treatment can exacerbate current mental health disorders, leading to increased risk for additional chronic conditions.

Marijuana access introduces an alternative treatment to traditional prescription medication that may provide easier access for some patients. Many state medical laws allow patients with mental health disorders such as post-traumatic stress disorder, or PTSD, to use medical cannabis, while recreational laws expand access to all adults.

Our findings have important implications for insurance systems, prescribers, policymakers and patients. Benzodiazepine use, like opioid use, can be dangerous for patients, especially when the two classes of drugs are used together. Given the high level of opioid poisonings that also involve benzodiazepines – in 2020, they made up 14% of total opioid overdose deaths – our findings offer insights into potential substitution with marijuana for medications where misuse is plausible.

What Still Isn’t Known

Our research does not clarify whether the changes in dispensing patterns led to measurable changes in patient outcomes.

There is some evidence that marijuana acts as an effective anxiety treatment. If this is the case, moving away from benzodiazepine use – which is associated with significant negative side effects – toward marijuana use may improve patient outcomes.

This finding is critical given that about 5% of the U.S. population is prescribed benzodiazepines. Substituting marijuana has the potential to result in fewer negative side effects nationwide, but it’s not yet clear if marijuana will be equally effective at treating anxiety.

Our study also found evidence of a slight – albeit somewhat less significant – increase in antipsychotic and antidepressant dispensing. But it’s not clear yet whether marijuana access, particularly recreational access, increases rates of psychotic disorders and depression.

While we found that, overall, marijuana access led to increased antidepressant and antipsychotic fills, some individual states saw decreases.

There is a lot of variation in the details of state marijuana laws, and it’s possible that some of those details are leading to these meaningful differences in outcomes. I believe this difference in outcomes from state to state is an important finding for policymakers who may want to tailor their laws toward specific goals.

The Research Brief is a short take on interesting academic work.

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

What do Americans think of when they hear the words “general education”?

By definition, general education covers introductory college courses in arts and humanities, social sciences, and science and mathematics. It has different names, including core curriculum or distribution requirements, depending on the college or university.

It is also sometimes called liberal education, including by the American Association of Colleges and Universities, which describes it as providing “a sense of social responsibility, as well as strong and transferable intellectual and practical skills.”

The liberal label can be fodder for conservative groups who argue that today’s general education is part of an indoctrination into higher education’s purported left-leaning belief systems. Some other conservatives support general education as a concept but want more emphasis on so-called traditional values and less on cross-cultural understanding. These initiatives position general education and college as a space for ideological battles.

As a scholar of historical connections between literacy and social class, I know that general education was designed to provide opportunity for all students without regard for their political preferences.

The value of a college education can be shaped by political affiliation. bernarddobo/iStock via Getty Images

An Education for All

Eighty years ago, a group of Harvard University faculty created what many colleges and universities still follow as a template for general education. This plan was outlined in the book “General Education in a Free Society.”

Harvard’s plan was meant for all students, including veterans studying under the GI Bill, and others we today refer to as first generation, where neither parent had a college degree.

General education made college more accessible to students who were not becoming doctors or lawyers but who also wanted careers outside the vocational trades. It helped make college a place for educating all citizens, not just students of socioeconomic privilege.

Expanding access to higher education was central to the 1947 special report Higher Education for American Democracy, commissioned by President Harry Truman. The goal was to provide a foundational education for all, especially in math and science. But the report, commonly known as the Truman Commission Report, also included disciplines that help students understand the world – such as writing and communication, literature, psychology and history.

The purposes of general education are central to two competing views of college today, views that I also hear expressed by students and parents I’ve met in my 28 years as a professor.

One view of college is of an on-campus experience steeped in the liberal arts that holistically prepares students to live in a functioning democracy. These benefits are seen as worth the time and costs.

The other view is of college as a sum of career-focused credentials that can begin and end anywhere, not specific to one college campus. These benefits are completely financial, to be gained via the cheapest, quickest means.

Both of these views are informed by national perspectives that further divide citizens on higher education as a whole, such as Vice President JD Vance’s 2021 statement that “there was a wisdom in what Richard Nixon said approximately 40, 50 years ago. He said, and I quote, ‘The professors are the enemy.’”

Both these groups of Americans, however, hope that obtaining a college degree will pay off for graduates who find employment and reach a standard of living better than their parents’ generation.

For the first group, general education is critical to developing the whole student for jobs and life. For the latter, it is an expensive obstacle to it.

Not surprisingly, these views on education and college often correspond to political party identification and whether a person attended college themselves.

A July 2023 Lumina Foundation and Gallup Poll showed that only 36% of Americans have a “great deal” of confidence in higher education, with significant partisan differences between the 20% of Republicans who have this confidence, the 56% of Democrats and the 35% of independents who have it. There are also measurable differences between those who have earned a postgraduate degree and those who have not.

To cut costs, more students are searching for ways to complete general education requirements before they begin college. PeopleImages/E+ via Getty Images

Questioning Value

As college costs continue to rise in 2025, families are struggling – even taking on payment plans for everyday purchases, also known as phantom debt – to make ends meet.

General education represents about a third of the requirements of a bachelor’s degree and most of an associate degree.

For those who see college as a waste of money, general education courses are a calculable loss on future income. In the past two decades, this – and the increasingly competitive admissions process for college – has contributed to a tenfold increase in low-income students who take Advanced Placement courses and a 50% increase since 2021 in the number of students in dual-credit coursework. Both programs allow students to complete general education-equivalent courses for free while still in high school.

Complete College America, a nonprofit advocacy group that works with states to increase college completion rates, supports these moves by students and parents, classifying general education under “gateway courses” to be completed “as soon as possible.”

Other groups promote stackable units of credit toward college degrees. This push to complete general education requirements before entering college is gaining momentum, despite studies that show Advanced Placement classes, and exams, favor and benefit mostly white, middle- to upper-class students because these students tend to have more time and resources to devote to AP coursework and also take multiple exams in order to earn college credit.

For college students, general education can offer benefits beyond career attainment. ferrantraite/E+ via Getty Images

Understanding the World

While arguments for streamlining college and its costs are evergreen, foundational lessons taught across fields of study are as relevant in 2025 as they were in 1945. The U.S. faces threats to its democracy, is navigating rapid advances in technology, and is adapting to population shifts that will change how its residents live and work.

General education gives students broad foundational knowledge that can be used in a variety of careers. By design, it teaches an understanding of the world outside one’s own and how to live in it – a core requirement for a functioning democracy.

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

The U.S. Department of Energy was created in 1977 by merging two agencies with different missions: the Atomic Energy Commission, which developed, tested and maintained the nation’s nuclear weapons, and the Energy Research and Development Administration, a collection of domestic energy research programs.

Today the department describes itself, with what some might call understatement, as “one of the most interesting and diverse agencies in the Federal government.” Its annual budget of roughly US$50 billion supports some 14,000 employees and 95,000 contractors.

The secretary of energy advises the president on energy policy and guides energy and nuclear weapons production initiatives. As researchers who study energy efficiency and national security and who work with the Energy Department, we have seen that its secretary needs to be able to think long-term and make strategic decisions, sometimes with incomplete information. A good grasp of science, engineering and energy technology is helpful, as are the abilities to lead a large organization and to work with Congress.

Scientific Research and Development

The Energy Department’s Office of Science supports a large portion of basic U.S. scientific research, including fusion energy, particle physics, chemistry and material science. Together with the agency’s Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, the agency manages a research portfolio with a budget of roughly $12 billion – nearly as large as that of the U.S. National Science Foundation, the other major federal funder of basic research.

Many energy secretaries have made their greatest marks by supporting and directing research. For example, during the first Trump administration, Rick Perry recognized potential cyber-terrorism risks to U.S. energy infrastructure and supported research in artificial intelligence. This led to the creation of the agency’s Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security and Emergency Response.

Steven Chu, who led the department from 2009 to 2013 under former President Barack Obama, initiated the Advanced Research Projects Agency–Energy, or ARPA-E, a division that focuses on new, cutting-edge energy innovations at stages too early to attract private-sector investment. ARPA-E projects have led to the creation of over 100 new companies and to over 1,000 patents on a wide range of energy technologies, including hybrid-electric aircraft, carbon dioxide capture from the air and improved electricity transmission.

Most recently, during the Biden administration, Jennifer Granholm focused on working with business and industry to deploy clean energy technologies in support of U.S. climate goals. This effort has included offering grants, loans and rebates, filling gaps in supply chains, and promoting domestic manufacturing of components such as advanced batteries and solar panels.

Research Payoffs

Much of the research that the Energy Department funds can take years to produce results with commercial applications, but it has had some notable successes.

Since the late 1970s, the agency has invested significantly in shale oil research. Combined with additional research and development by private energy companies, the Energy Department helped develop fracking and horizontal drilling. These technologies have revolutionized petroleum and natural gas production and made the U.S. the world’s largest producer of oil and natural gas.

Energy Department funding supported the commercialization of LED lights, which are highly efficient and long-lasting. It also has enabled breakthroughs in other energy-efficient technologies, solar and wind energy production, battery technology, and geothermal and wave energy. The agency provides critical support for research on nuclear fusion, which promises to be a clean and abundant source of energy, although it is far from commercialization today.

There also are large swaths of U.S. energy policy that the Energy Department doesn’t control. For example, leases and permits for energy production on public lands and in federal waters are awarded by the Department of the Interior.

The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, an independent agency, controls the siting of oil and natural gas pipelines and interstate electricity transmission lines. Another independent agency, the Nuclear Regulatory Commission, licenses and regulates the nuclear power industry.

Still, energy secretaries often champion broad strategies that overlap with the mission and authority of other federal departments and agencies.

Nuclear Weapons and National Security

The Energy Department’s other mission – developing and maintaining nuclear weapons – is steered by the National Nuclear Security Administration, a semi-autonomous agency within the department. Organizationally, the NNSA is the great-grandchild of the Manhattan Engineer District – the post-World War II incarnation of the Manhattan Project that developed the first U.S. atomic weapons.

The NNSA is headed by an administrator who also serves as undersecretary of energy for nuclear security, a Senate-confirmed position. When the energy secretary’s background is in domestic energy – like oil executive Chris Wright, President-elect Trump’s choice to head the agency – the leader of the NNSA is likely to be especially influential on national security issues.

Of the Energy Department’s 17 national laboratories, three – Los Alamos, Sandia and Lawrence Livermore – are officially overseen by the NNSA. Others receive significant NNSA funding and play roles in maintaining the U.S. nuclear arsenal.

The NNSA also oversees experimental and testing facilities and other sites involved in the design, production and testing of nuclear weapons. It is responsible for storing and securing warheads that are not deployed at military installations, and for dismantling retired warheads.

A separate office, Environmental Management, oversees the cleanup of nuclear research and production sites, some of which have contamination dating back to World War II. The largest environmental cleanup program in the world, it consumes about $8 billion annually – one-sixth of the agency’s entire budget. It handles large amounts of radioactive wastes, spent nuclear fuel, excess plutonium and uranium, and contaminated facilities, soil and groundwater.

The NNSA plays a critical role in preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and the materials and technologies needed to make them. It is part of the intelligence community with deep technical expertise, and responds to nuclear and radiological threats globally.

Finally, the NNSA designs and supports the nuclear reactors that propel Navy ships and submarines around the globe.

Historically, the NNSA administrator has had a great deal of autonomy. Most administrators bring deep technical and policy expertise to the job. Some are retired Navy or Air Force officers who have worked with nuclear weapons or naval propulsion systems. Others are researchers with long tenures at Department of Energy laboratories.

Aging Weapons, Sites, and Workers

The next energy secretary and NNSA administrator will face major technical, economic and management challenges. The NNSA has been working for years to modernize nuclear weapons production infrastructure, which is aging and underfunded. At the same time, the Energy Department is working with the Defense Department to update U.S. nuclear weapons and strategic nuclear forces – bombers, ballistic missiles and submarines – to deter threats from other nations. This effort could cost up to $1.7 trillion over several decades.

Many of the NNSA’s major modernization projects are over budget and years behind schedule. The U.S. Government Accountability Office recently reported that the NNSA needs to improve its program management practices in order to control costs and successfully execute these expensive initiatives.

The incoming administration will also have to recruit and sustain a highly skilled workforce for nuclear security programs. Many retirement-eligible employees have already left the agency. More will exit over the next four years, often drawn by private-sector salaries and perceived better working conditions.

While the Energy Department touts its high-tech laboratories and research facilities, the agency’s people are equally critical to its mission.

This story is part of a series of profiles of Cabinet and high-level administration positions.

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

If history tells us anything, it’s the right place at the right time.  

“This team steps into a void,” said Declan Abernethy, lecturer in Georgia Tech’s School of History and Sociology. “It’s nice to see women’s soccer be valued as a commercial spectacle and exciting for fans in Atlanta.” 

Atlanta holds a place in women’s soccer history as host of the 1996 Summer Olympics, where the U.S. Women’s National Team won its first gold medal — the introduction to women’s soccer for many Americans. 

Since then, the soccer ecosystem has expanded exponentially, in Atlanta and beyond. Atlanta United began playing in 2017, winning the MLS Cup in its second year as a franchise.  

The Business of Soccer 

Arthur Blank, who owns Atlanta United and the Atlanta Falcons and purchased the rights for the new women’s team, paid $165 million for this expansion team. Just two years ago, that cost was nearly a third. The total investment will ultimately be more than $330 million. But as Abernethy points out, the purchase price and timing show that this is a serious endeavor. 

“It shows Blank is a smart business owner — he’s willing to invest in doing things the right way,” said Abernethy, who has studied and published about both Atlanta United and the U.S. Women’s National Team. “In five years, this team could be a leader in how it is run and how it spends money. We have such a strong legacy of professional women’s soccer in Atlanta and so much youth talent, it could get very competitive.”  

Why Atlanta Is Ready 

It’s not the first time a women’s soccer team has made its home in Atlanta. The Atlanta Beat played at Georgia Tech’s Bobby Dodd Stadium in the early 2000s, and the Atlanta Silverbacks Women followed.  

Since those attempts, Atlanta has welcomed a professional men’s team in Atlanta United, along with its ATL UTD 2 reserve team and extensive youth development programs. A $50 million contribution from Arthur Blank is helping build a new home for U.S. Soccer south of the city in Fayetteville with the Arthur M. Blank U.S. Soccer National Training Center. 

“It’s hitting at this opportune time with the U.S. training facility, sparks of excitement for the men’s national team, a strong run by the women’s national team with players from Atlanta, and six World Cup games being hosted in Atlanta next year. It could have a nice impact on the soccer ecosystem here,” said Kirk Bowman, Regents’ Entrepreneur and professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.  

Bowman also points to the culture that has grown from Atlanta United and the infrastructure that supports it. Team flags adorn houses, the BeltLine and MARTA connect in-town fans to a downtown stadium that is surrounded by new development at the Gulch — not to mention a growing pool of legacy soccer players around the metro area, and the surrounding perennial success of ACC women’s soccer teams.  

“You’ve now had cohort after cohort of female soccer players of all ages, and families with mothers and daughters who have played soccer and are eager to go to games,” he said. “If they brand it correctly, there’s a lot of enthusiasm and a built-in audience that loves the game.” The WNBA also had record-high viewership last year, with its most-watched game garnering nearly 3 million viewers, demonstrating the increasing popularity of women's professional sports.

The team also enters an open market for fans, without another professional women’s team nearby. Abernethy notes that it takes time to build economic success and fandom, and with more than 50 years of women’s soccer now played, it may have finally hit its stride.

He replaces Alasdair Young, professor and Neal Family Chair in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, who has served as interim associate dean since April 2024. Winders will collaborate with human resources and the faculty affairs team this summer to ensure a smooth transition.

“Bill’s deep experience with faculty issues and his devotion to shared governance and non-tenure track faculty make him an exciting addition to our College’s leadership team,” said Amanda Murdie, dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, Regents’ Professor, and Ivan Allen Jr. Chair in Liberal Arts and Technology. “I’d also like to express my appreciation to Alasdair Young for his excellent work as interim associate dean over the past two years.”

As associate dean for faculty development, Winders will advise the dean, the college’s executive leadership team, and department/school chairs on matters related to faculty affairs. He will also support the needs of the faculty community and provide resources, mentorship, and leadership that promotes advancement of tenured, tenure-track, non-tenure-track, and research faculty, as well as research and teaching postdoctoral fellows. 

Winders has many years of experience in administration, leadership, and the Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure (RPT) process. In HSOC, he served as the director of undergraduate studies from 2008 to 2014 and the director of graduate studies from 2014 to 2020. He has also served on HSOC’s RPT committee since 2009 and currently serves as the chair of the HSOC RPT Committee. He also serves as the Georgia Tech representative to the University System of Georgia Chief Academic Officer Advisory Group for Sociology. 

Winders has chaired several faculty search committees and was involved in shaping and conducting the annual evaluation process for faculty.

A political sociologist, Winders’ research focuses on national policies, social movements, and inequality in a global context. His courses include Introduction to Sociology, Food and Society, Sociology of Development, and Social Movements. In addition to many journal articles and book chapters, he has written two books and co-edited one book. He is currently working on two projects aimed at producing book manuscripts – one examines the global meat industry and the other focuses on global food crises in historical perspective.

Co-founded by Daniel Forcade and Hanna Bodnar, recent graduates of Georgia Tech’s Master of Science in Analytics program, Politheon is designed to overcome the limitations of standard artificial intelligence in providing businesses and other organizations with accurate and actionable information about legislative activity.

Bodnar credits the team's collaboration with Associate Professor Omar Asensio’s Data Science and Policy Lab in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy for helping shape the platform.

"Collaborating with Professor Asensio’s lab was pivotal," Bodnar said. "As engineers, we had to expand our perspective beyond the technical implementation and deeply understand how public policy researchers and practitioners interpret legislative data. That interdisciplinary feedback helped us design a system that is both technically rigorous and policy-aware."

Forcade agreed, saying it took the combined resources of CREATE-X and the collaboration with Asensio’s lab to make Politheon what it is.

“CREATE-X gave us the business foundation to build and scale, while our collaboration with Professor Asensio’s lab helped us strengthen the scientific rigor behind the system. In policy, it's incredibly important to have testing, validation, and empirical grounding behind what you build.”

When it comes to understanding the potential impact of sometimes obliquely written legislation, precision and insight are vital. Publicly available large language models often struggle in these environments, sounding authoritative but often hallucinating in place of facts and failing to reason out the hidden impacts of legislation. Politheon, however, offers a potential solution, Asensio said.

"This is a very exciting use case for agentic AI in the context of evidence-informed policy," he said.

The project originally started as the final project for Bodnar and Forcade’s analytics program. Forcade said their instructors encouraged them to apply to CREATE-X to take the project further.

Forcade said CREATE-X liked the idea but asked them to talk to more experts. Forcade and Bodnar then reached out to Asensio.

Asensio was enthusiastic and invited them to present at his lab, where his team spent two and a half hours offering Forcade and Bodnar intensive constructive feedback. The duo has been collaborating with the lab ever since.

Asensio noted that this kind of cross-pollination is an embedded feature of his lab.

"We often start with data or policy solutions to guide technical development, and not the other way around," Asensio said. "This means our technologists learn to do causal inference and policy impact evaluation, and our policy scholars learn to code and train models and algorithms as part of their work."

That focus on critical evaluation aligns seamlessly with the founders' technical training.

"My background in mathematics and Georgia Tech’s Analytics program gave me a strong foundation in statistical modeling and machine learning systems," Bodnar said. "The program emphasizes not just building models but evaluating them rigorously. That mindset shaped how we designed Politheon, especially how we validate outputs and measure accuracy in a space where precision really matters."

The platform is already demonstrating its capabilities. Recent agent outputs include a large-scale scan of more than 25,000 Oregon bills, drawn from a broader searchable database of over 1.6 million state and federal bills, identifying emerging trends in artificial intelligence regulation. The system has also delivered validated, cross-jurisdictional analysis of “buy-now-pay-later” legislation in New York and Congress, with findings reviewed by senior government affairs professionals, tracing how the issue emerged and how it evolved over time.

The startup recently secured $100,000 in funding which helped build complete, and near real-time, data coverage across the federal government and  all U.S. states.

“The raise enabled us to bring in the live data stream,” Forcade said. “With real-time coverage in place, we’re now advancing pricing discussions and pilot rollouts with multiple organizations.”

Ultimately, the platform is designed to provide clarity amid the noise of modern governance.

"Policy moves quickly, and missing a compliance date or legislative shift can be costly," Bodnar said. "Our goal is to surface what’s relevant, explain why it matters, and provide clear citations to the original bills so teams can make informed decisions with confidence.”

From crafting the winter-themed design language for Team USA’s social media feeds a year in advance to prepping graphics for the events still to come, Broussard and her team strive to have all the necessary elements at their fingertips so they’re able to execute their vision for a gold medal moment or capture a historic performance as it plays out on the world stage.

A former Georgia Tech cheerleader, Broussard found her passion for graphic design while helping to manage the team’s social media account. She changed her major from computational media to literature, media, and communication, and when she stepped onto the field one Saturday and saw her design being worn by students in Bobby Dodd Stadium at Hyundai Field, she knew she’d found her path.

"I just remember seeing all of those shirts I designed and thinking that this is a feeling I’m going to hold onto forever,” she said. “Georgia Tech taught me so much about time management and about what drives me. It was at Tech that I realized I loved celebrating passion, and not just my own. I love working in sports because I get to share athletes’ stories and make them accessible to everyone. With the Olympics, especially the Paralympics, I’m so proud to elevate the hard work that these athletes do behind the scenes and share that with fans.”   

After graduating from Tech in 2020 and spending time with Georgia Tech Athletics as a postgraduate intern, Broussard spent a year with the University of Missouri football program before joining Team USA. She was hired as a full-time contractor in 2024 before the Paris Summer Olympics and stayed on to become one of the team’s three graphic designers.  

As a cheerleader, Broussard knew what resonated with fans, but as a designer, she has found other ways to measure success in place of the roar of a live crowd. She recalls a graphic of hers posted during the Paris Games, highlighting Simone Biles and Jordan Chiles, that was shared by President Joe Biden, as well as Barack and Michelle Obama.  

Having her graphics go viral or reach a high-profile audience, she finds, "are the moments that reignite my passion each day," she said. 

The Milan Cortina Games continue through Sunday, Feb. 22, and the Paralympics take place March 6 – 15, so there are still more graphics to be created. But Broussard’s favorite graphic from the Games thus far, reaching over 50,000 likes on Instagram, celebrates snowboarder Chloe Kim for becoming the first woman to medal at three straight Olympics in the halfpipe event. Another of her favorites showcases the U.S. Biathlon team in various stages of competition, and while it has a unique look, Broussard says design is about trusting her instincts and finding ways to differentiate their graphics from other teams.  

“We may end up with five versions of the same graphic while trying to figure out how to make it work. I am a Georgia Tech graduate at heart, so my math guided me on the composition of the biathlon graphic. But knowing the brand so well and knowing where to push it is one of my favorite parts about working in sports,” she said. 

The work continues after the closing ceremony of the Paralympics, as Broussard’s team will immediately begin preparing for the 2028 Los Angeles Summer Olympics. 

He replaces Richard Utz, who has been named interim dean of the College, effective April 20.

As interim associate dean for faculty development, Young will advise the dean, the College’s executive leadership team, and school/department chairs on matters related to faculty affairs. This position supports the needs of the faculty community and provides resources and leadership that promote the advancement of tenure-track, tenured, non-tenure-track, and research faculty.

Young has extensive experience in faculty affairs, specifically as chair of his School’s Promotion and Tenure Committee, chair of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts’ Promotion and Tenure Committee, and as the College’s representative on the provost’s Promotion and Tenure Committee.

Young will continue to co-direct the Center for European and Transatlantic Studies and serve as the director of the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy. He held a Jean Monnet Chair (2012-15), was chair of the European Union Studies Association (2015-17), and was co-editor of JCMS: Journal of Common Market Studies (2017-22).  

Before joining Georgia Tech in 2011, he taught at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom and held research posts at the European University Institute in Florence, Italy, and the University of Sussex in the United Kingdom.

Young has written five books, including Supplying Compliance with Trade Rules: Explaining the EU’s Responses to Adverse WTO Rulings (Oxford University Press, 2021), and has co-edited 15 other volumes. He has published almost a score of refereed journal articles — including in Global Environmental Politics, the Journal of Common Market Studies, and others — and more than 40 book chapters.

Midway through her doctoral studies in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Zhao’s commitments expanded in two demanding directions: she became a mother and a business co-owner with her husband. Suddenly, time for research became a particularly precious commodity.

“After becoming a mother, my available working time each day became extremely limited — sometimes only two hours,” Zhao said. “I had to become very efficient and focused with the time I had.”

It was within those tight constraints — balancing the rigors of entrepreneurship and parenthood — that Zhao developed BioVR, which looks to reimagine how humans interact with technology. The technology is at the heart of Zhao’s other startup.

Innovating from the Inside Out

Zhao’s research moves beyond the standard handheld controllers and head-tracking used in many virtual reality and augmented reality experiences. BioVR, on the other hand, is all about how internal physiological signals such as heart rate, blood pressure, and breathing rhythm can control a virtual environment in real time.

"I wanted to investigate what happens when the interaction comes from inside the body," Zhao said. "BioVR demonstrates how internal states can become meaningful, expressive input for interactive systems."

The applications of her work are myriad, from horror games that adapt to a player’s fear levels to rehabilitation systems that automatically adjust difficulty based on a patient's physiological response.

Zhao credits the pressure of her personal life with sharpening her academic focus. Running a business while pursuing a degree prevented her from staying in an "academic bubble."

"Running a business opened my eyes to another path — how research can connect to real societal needs," she said. "Becoming a mother also reshaped my values. It reminded me that health and family relationships should never be taken for granted."

Next Steps

Zhao is now headed to Yale University, where she will work as a postdoctoral associate and continue her research.

Before she goes, however, she has advice to other Georgia Tech students facing similar juggling acts: success is built on sustainability.

"I learned that physical and mental health are the foundation of everything," she said. "No matter how many tasks you have, try not to panic or rush. Organize priorities step by step, and most importantly, protect your sleep."

While the trip will remain a cornerstone experience for many interested in Europe and international affairs, the program now offers more opportunities for students, including STEM majors, to gain deep on-the-ground insight into international technology governance by directly engaging with the global bodies that regulate tech.

The program, which is accepting applications through Feb. 15, now also includes an optional research extension with two tracks — economic security and space policy.

“Despite the rapidly changing international system, the European Union remains the key trade and investment partner of the United States, an indispensable ally, and an essential area of study,” said Vicki Birchfield, professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and the program’s director.

“With talented new faculty like Carly Potz-Nielsen and Thomas González Roberts, it is an opportune moment to evolve the program and incorporate a new focus on technology governance where their respective expertise can provide intellectual depth and dynamism," said Birchfield, who also is co-director of the Center for European and Transatlantic Studies.

The program allows students to earn 12 credit hours in 10 weeks, with the possibility of earning up to three more credit hours through an optional research add-on. 

A seminar course on the European Union (INTA 4230/6320) and a class on Human Rights in Europe (INTA 3031/6803) will return. However, to accommodate the new focus on tech governance, a European security course previously taught during the study abroad will be folded into the Transatlantic Relations course (INTA 3223/6833). 

That will free up space for a new technology governance class taught by Potz-Nielsen and Roberts: Global Politics of Technology (INTA 3044/8803).

"The added focus on technology governance taps into some of the biggest challenges future policymakers will face,” said Potz-Nielsen. “With tech woven into almost every part of our lives and digital markets booming, understanding the roles that governments can — or should — play in regulating technology tackles fundamental questions about privacy, security, and fairness.” 

Students participating in the program will visit centers of European power, influence, and culture, including Metz, Strasbourg, and Paris in France; Brussels; The Hague and Amsterdam in the Netherlands; and Bucharest, Romania, where students will visit Romanian military headquarters, research firms, and cultural sites. The program also visits Munich and Berlin, as well as Geneva and Bern, Switzerland.

Those stops in Switzerland will be particularly interesting to students interested in technology and space policy, said Roberts, an assistant professor and director of the new Engineering Space Policy Laboratory.

“Switzerland plays a unique role in shaping how technology is governed worldwide, from outer space to the digital economy,” he said. “This program is a chance to see that innovation and governance evolve together — and showcase how both liberal arts and STEM students have a vital place in shaping that future."

Students may also extend their program with a two-week research option, choosing between a track on economic security and digital economies offered by Potz-Nielsen, as well as Roberts’ track on space policy. 

Both tracks will guide students through a full-cycle research experience, utilizing semi-structured interviews, document analysis, and structured observation with partners throughout the 10-week itinerary to develop a final project.

Applications for the program are due Feb. 15, with payment due on April 15.

For more than half a century, Georgia natives President Jimmy Carter and first lady Rosalynn Carter exemplified this work, forging a partnership in service that’s recognized around the world. It’s a legacy that will continue with the naming of the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy.

The naming, first announced in April 2025, was formally celebrated at a ceremony on Nov. 13, 2025, at the newly renovated D.M. Smith building. A standing-room-only crowd, including President Ángel Cabrera, University System of Georgia Chancellor Sonny Perdue, former U.S. Sen. Sam Nunn, civil rights icon and former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young, members of the Carter family and other luminaries attended the event.

The milestone marked more than the honoring of a homegrown president and first lady by Georgia’s top public university. It serves as a profound statement of identity — a declaration that the School’s mission to create leaders who "ethically address societal problems" is indelibly linked with the Carters’ lifelong commitment to improving the human condition.

"Names matter,” said Cassidy R. Sugimoto, Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the Carter School. “When you evoke the Carter name, it means something. In that one word, you encompass decades of public service, values of humility, respect, faith, integrity, justice, a deep commitment to human rights and democracy.”

Georgia Tech Roots, Global Impact

The Carters’ connection to Georgia Tech is not merely symbolic. It’s foundational. Before James Earl Carter Jr. was a naval officer, a governor, or a president, he was a Georgia Tech student. Carter arrived in 1942 and attended for one year before moving on to the U.S. Naval Academy. 

While his time at Georgia Tech was brief, it was impactful, said the Carters’ fourth grandson, Josh Carter, ME 2006.

“Georgia Tech is where my grandpa learned to love engineering,” Josh Carter said. 

“And every time my grandpa talked about the Naval Academy, he always made a point to say that he got his start at Georgia Tech and left here to graduate from an easier school.”

A Shared Commitment to Problem-Solving

A problem-solver’s mindset winds through Jimmy and Rosalynn Carters’ careers in public service as well as through the Carter School’s core pillars of sustainability, equity, and innovation.

For instance, decades before "sustainability" became a global watchword, Carter framed the energy crisis as the "moral equivalent of war."

He formed the Department of Energy, oversaw the creation of the Superfund program to pay for critical environmental cleanups, and placed solar panels on the White House roof.

Today, Georgia Tech students and faculty champion sustainability through degree programs such as the Master of Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management and through projects such as the Drawdown Georgia research effort led by Regents’ Professor Marilyn A. Brown, whose team recently reported how Georgia has slashed its carbon output while significantly growing its economy.

Carter also possessed an unwavering commitment to equity, speaking out against racial discrimination and making civil and human rights a central tenet of U.S. foreign policy.

The School continues this legacy through programs such as the Center for Urban Research, which seeks to address socioeconomic inequities in urban areas. The Center was recently named the research lead for the city of Atlanta’s $5 billion neighborhood revitalization effort.

Carter also understood the growing importance of technology, becoming the first president to install computers in the executive offices, well before they became common in every household.

Today’s Carter School is nationally ranked for its programs in environmental policy, information and technology management, and public policy analysis. The school helps train tomorrow’s cybersecurity leaders to spot the impact of technological change on network security, develop experts in ethical frameworks for artificial intelligence systems, and more.

Globally, the School extends its reach through partnerships with universities around the world, including the University of Manchester, Colombia’s Universidad Externado, the University of Stellenbosch in South Africa, the National Institute of Science and Technology Policy in Japan, and KAIST, a South Korean university. 

These agreements help the School extend its reach and provide students and faculty to collaborate on research, academic programs, and more.

The First Lady's Enduring Policy Legacy

While the former president’s career garnered more attention, Rosalynn Carter’s life in public service was deeply impactful, as well. Her work gave a policy voice to millions of unseen and unheard Americans.

"My grandmother was more politically savvy than my grandfather,” Josh Carter said. “She was a strategist. She was his confidant. My grandmother was involved in just about every decision, peace deal, cease fire, and political triumph of my grandfather's life."

She became the first first lady since Eleanor Rooselvelt to testify before Congress as she fought to reduce the stigma of mental illness and create new programs to help those struggling with mental health. Her work on the President's Commission on Mental Health led directly to the landmark Mental Health Systems Act of 1980.

Perdue said he learned much about mental health need from Roslaynn Carter while visiting the couple during his time as governor.

“I know that we are glad that Georgia has made some progress in that group, but she laid that foundation,” Perdue said.

Rosalynn Carter also founded the Rosalynn Carter Institute for Caregivers, reframing the act of caregiving as a universal public policy challenge. 

"There are only four kinds of people in this world: those who have been caregivers, those who are currently caregivers, those who will be caregivers, and those who will need caregivers,” she said.

Her advocacy also helped lead to federal vaccine programs that have saved countless lives.

Today, the Carter School strives to continue this work by providing policymakers with rock-solid research on complex medical and social issues.

For instance, the Health Economics and Policy Innovation Collaborative, a partnership with the School of Economics, provides rigorous, data-driven analysis on everything from healthcare access to child well-being, applying that same blend of compassion and policy acumen Rosalynn Carter championed. Another example: Recent research published in JAMA Network Open that reveals a link between energy insecurity and mental health. Another paper brings attention to a potential housing crisis brewing in rural America.

Carrying the Legacy Forward

It is this dual legacy — Jimmy Carter’s engineering-forward approach to policy, and the  compassionate approach to public well-being he shared with his wife — that the Carter School now embodies. 

The School's home in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts drives the point home.

The College is named for former Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr., a Georgia Tech graduate and another Southern political leader who championed desegregation. Allen’s calls for transformative urban leadership continue to shape the College’s mission today.

"Mayor Allen was a beacon of light for Jimmy and for me … standing up for what was good and what was right,” Rosalynn Carter said on receiving the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage with her husband in 2017.

Now, the Carters’ legacy of ethical public service, technological advancement, commitment to sustainability and human and civil rights serves as another guiding principle for Carter School students, faculty, and staff.

Their example serves as a model for the generations of leaders to come — leaders who will graduate from the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy ready to continue the work of translating technology, conviction, and compassion into a better world.

"They both led with humility and unshakable moral compass,” said President Ángel Cabrera. “And they showed us what true service looks like. I could not think of a better name to be associated with the school. This is a proud day for Georgia Tech.”

The space around Earth is central to life on the surface, encompassing myriad economic, technological, political, and even military considerations that affect the lives of millions. A new center devoted to space policy in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs seeks to support the School’s increasingly robust research and teaching in the area. 

His dedication to students even extended to learning Italian so that he could better teach a class called “The Age of Galileo.”

“For ten ‘generations’ of Tech students, Bob brought news of Dante and DaVinci and Galileo and Shakespeare and exposed them to the masterworks of classical Hollywood,” said LMC Associate Professor Blake Leland, who worked with Wood for nearly four decades.

Wood, a poet and scholar who retired as an associate professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) in May 2025 after 50 years of service with Georgia Tech, passed away recently.

“He will be missed,” Leland said. “I will miss him.”

Wood, who had a Ph.D. in English and a master’s degree in mathematics, arrived at Georgia Tech in 1974 after two years as a math instructor at Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute.

A poet and specialist in Renaissance drama, the science and culture of the renaissance, and film and television, he was the author of books including Some Necessary Questions of the Play: A Stage-Centered Analysis of Shakespeare's 'Hamlet’; the 2014 Georgia Author of the Year award-winning book of poetry, The Awkward Poses of Others; Alms for Oblivion, and a chapbook — a short book of poetry — called Gorizia Notebook.

His poems were published in outlets including Blue Fifth Review, Jelly Bucket, Jabberwock Review, Sojourn, and Prairie Schooner.

At Georgia Tech, he taught classes ranging from English Composition to Shakespeare to Intro to Film to Theater Production. He also helped establish LMC’s Film Studies program, recalled his retired colleague, Professor Emeritus Jay Telotte.

The two spent many hours together, lugging heavy projection equipment to other buildings with enough space for film screenings, Telotte said.

“And when, as often happened, we encountered technical problems — a sound system not working, a screen that wouldn’t go down, a projector bulb suddenly blown, or even an auditorium or projection booth that was locked when it wasn’t supposed to be — Bob would typically entertain the student audience with his wealth of jokes while I went looking for help,” Telotte said. “My sense, and probably that of many students as well, is that his other calling was neither drama nor poetry, but stand-up comedy, at which he was very good.”

For years, Wood and other LMC faculty members met regularly as a writing group they called the “Not Dead Yet Poets Society.” Some members collaborated on a book of poetry, On Occasion: Four Poets, One Year.

“He was a generous and thoughtful reader of poetry and often found just the right word needed to turn a poem on its head,” said JC Reilly, director of creative writing curricula in LMC. “He was kind and funny in a quiet, snarky way, and he made me — all of us — a better writer. “

Travis Denton, associate director of Poetry@Tech, called Wood “a staple in the Atlanta poetry community.”

“There’s no doubt Bob made a huge impact on his many students over the years, sharing his love of poetry, and he served as a force and advocate for the craft in the School,” Denton said.

Wood was one of the first faculty members Professor Carol Senf met when she joined the faculty in what was then Georgia Tech’s English Department.

“Bob never failed to charm and delight though his wit was sometimes so subtle that it snuck up on me,” Senf said. “Appropriately for a Shakespearean, he was a true Renaissance man. A teacher who genuinely loved his students, he was also a very fine poet, and a connoisseur of art, music, and film.”

Senf said Wood adored his family, evident in a series of poems inspired by his granddaughter:

No footprint mars
her lunar wondering,
the first philosophy.

“There are terrible beauties as Yeats has shown us, but the beauty of a child’s first exploration of the world renews us all,” Wood wrote in a “Writer’s Statement on Beauty” published with the poems. “My Thora poems began when I heard a speaker quote Aristotle as saying, ‘Philosophy begins in wonder.’”

Reilly said she’s grateful Wood left behind such a trove of poetry and other writing.

“I am heartbroken that he’s gone, and I’m really going to miss him,” she said. “He left us way too soon, but he lives on in his poems, and I keep them close.”

“EPSL is a policy-impact laboratory, dedicated to creating domain-informed, data-driven tools for outer space decision-makers,” Roberts said. “I’m thrilled to be taking on this work with our world-class students here at Tech.”

To learn more, read the full story.

Will Jimerson, college administrative officer for the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at Georgia Tech, has been selected by the National Association of College and University Business Officers (NACUBO) to participate in the organization’s prestigious 2025-26 Emerging Leaders Program. 

A new study from Georgia Tech’s Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy finds that incorporating convergence into empirical (data and observation-based) climate models drastically reduces estimated global income loss and inequality from climate change by 2100.

“Very few, if any, explicitly include this convergence effect,” said Anthony Harding, an assistant professor in the Carter School and author on the paper. “But it makes a huge difference.”
 

Main Findings

The study was published in Energy Economics by Harding and co-authors Juan Moreno-Cruz, Martin Quaas, Wilfried Rickels, and Sjak Smulders.

The researchers find that empirical models ignoring convergence can calculate average global income losses of up to 19% by the end of the century in one study, while allowing for convergence reduces these losses to around 8.5%.

Additionally, including convergence spreads the damage more evenly across all countries, resulting in more moderate estimated increases in global income inequality — around 8% by 2100 rather than the up to 118% increase that another empirical model suggested.  

Finally, accounting for convergence also predicts economic impacts from climate change that are more in line with what we expect: the more temperatures increase, the more economic damage is done. Without convergence, empirical models can predict exponential benefits for “winning” countries (such as large northern nations like Canada and Russia) that eventually outpace the losses to losing countries (which can only go to zero), causing it to look like climate change has a net economic benefit in the long run (it doesn’t).  

“This model consistently pushes countries back together in a way, so you don’t get that counterintuitive result,” Harding said. “Including convergence moderates the effects of climate change relative to models without convergence, but they are still large and require immediate action to address.”
 

Why Isn’t Convergence Always Accounted For?

Convergence is an economic theory, while empirical models are based on observable past data. This data is the only way we can forecast future trends, such as the economic impacts of climate change, but using the data alone is not enough.  

“When we use data to estimate a historical relationship between temperature and economic growth, we find evidence of convergence, but it doesn’t directly affect that estimated climate-economy relationship” Harding explained. “So, if you’re building a model about what predicts the relationship between temperature and economic growth, you wouldn’t think to include convergence because it doesn’t show up as meaningful in that backward-looking model.”  

However, it matters when projecting the effects of climate change in the future because convergence changes the persistence of climate change impacts. When temperatures increase, economic growth slows. But when growth slows, convergence offsets that, increasing growth and recovering some of those economic losses. Without convergence, those economic losses are never recovered.

When Harding and his colleagues incorporate convergence into the empirical model, they obtain results that are much closer to those from the more widely used theory-based integrated assessment models, thus calibrating the empirical model and pinpointing the discrepancy between the two.
 

Policy Impacts

Harding and his team are working on a second paper using this model to calculate the value of carbon sequestration. Right now, there are many different ways to predict the economic costs and benefits of capturing and storing carbon out of the air. The results range from a negative economic benefit up to a thousand dollars per ton of carbon, Harding said, which is a “massive, massive spread.”  

But having an accurate number is critical for policymakers determining the economic value of conservation efforts like forest protection and reforestation efforts, which naturally sequester carbon. As organizations and governments choose and build these models, Harding’s work shows how important considering convergence is.

“Distribution of climate damages in convergence-consistent growth projections” was published in Energy Economics. It is available at https://doi.org/10.1016/j.eneco.2025.108705.

While EV charging locator apps can show drivers where the nearest charger is, they aren’t always accurate enough to show real-time status, such as whether a charger is working and available. How are drivers supposed to hit the road when they aren’t sure where their next charge is coming from? This uncertainty can be enough to deter drivers from purchasing an EV altogether.

New research from Georgia Tech, Harvard University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology suggests that state governments should step in to help. The right policy could inspire data transparency by station hosts, ensuring that EV drivers have reliable networks — and thus encourage EV ownership. The researchers presented their findings in the paper, “Charger Data Transparency: Curing Range Anxiety, Powering EV Adoption,” in September’s Brookings. 

Data Deserts

The researchers conducted a field experiment to discover the extent of the problem. This analysis showed that just 34% of EV charging stations provide real-time status updates across six major interstates in 40 U.S. states. The researchers found 150 to 350-mile stretches without real-time charger availability, longer than the stated range of many EV models. This leaves thousands of miles of highways in a data desert. 

“We just don't have real-time data infrastructure necessary to build confidence in the reliability of charging, especially in communities along transit corridors,” said Omar Asensio, an associate professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. “It's not that the capability isn’t there. It's that there aren't clear incentives to encourage EV charging station operators to do the right thing and share the data.” 

Charging Transparency

Government regulation is necessary to improve charging reliability, according to the researchers. State governments could offer funding for charging stations only if the station host agrees to data transparency. A simpler policy proposal would be for all fast chargers on highways to post their real-time status to an application programming interface, where software developers could access it. This approach would provide reliable information on whether a public charger is operational, and it can make government spending more efficient by leveraging network effects. The research team is already collaborating with state governments from Massachusetts to Georgia to discuss how to make this government regulation a reality. 

State governments will also benefit, as EVs can help them close the gap on decreasing carbon emissions. 

“Electric vehicles are a key strategy for decarbonizing the transportation sector and delivering public health co-benefits, but consumers need to trust that public chargers will work when they need them,” Asensio said. “Until real-time data disclosure standards are addressed, reliable, widespread adoption will be hard. A data-centric approach can enhance the efficiency of existing transportation investments.”

Many states, including Georgia, have also supported EV manufacturing. EV brand Rivian recently broke ground on an assembly plant outside Atlanta. More widespread EV adoption is paramount to making these plants economic successes. Data transparency regulations could be a start toward finally making EVs the ideal road trip vehicle. 

A new student-run undergraduate law review debuted Sept. 30 with two articles written by Georgia Tech students. The new annual publication will give students the opportunity to begin developing the kinds of skills that generations of law students have learned working on law reviews, said Andy McNeil, director of the Law, Science, and Technology Program in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy.

“While obviously this won’t be at the level or pace students will encounter in law school, this is a great next step for the students to focus not only legal research, but also the writing, editing, and verification of other sources that are so important in law school and beyond,” McNeil said.

Students will be responsible for selecting, writing, editing, and preparing articles for the publication. So far, about 20 students are working on the review, which will be published exclusively online.

The first two articles are "Monopoly in the Machines: How Antitrust Can Spur AI Innovation," by Aarush Maheswaran, and "From Guidelines to Battlegrounds: The Future of Checks and Balances," authored by Dean Evan

Very few universities without an affiliated law school publish undergraduate law reviews, according to McNeil, and none at other top STEM-focused schools without a law school.

“This law review will represent the kind of innovative edge, critical thinking, and unique approach to law, that Georgia Tech is known for,” said Sarah Weitz, a second-year Economics major from Alpharetta and the review’s editor-in-chief. “It demonstrates a commitment to expanding legal opportunities and its emerging leadership in the legal field.”

The review is the brainchild of fourth-year student Dean Evans, a mechanical engineering student from Augusta.

An Advantage for Prospective Law Students

“My hope is that this will become a platform for students to launch their academic writings and gain great experience for law school,” Evans said.

The effort wasn’t without challenges, he said.

“It was a lot harder than I thought it would be to coordinate,” he said. “Building it from scratch was difficult, but I think those lessons will be beneficial in the long run.”

Being on a law review staff while in law school has long been seen as a feather in the cap for students, said McNeil, who was lead articles editor while a law school student.

Years ago, it was common for the top 10% of students at top law schools to receive an automatic invitation to join the school’s law review. Now, many schools have moved to an even more competitive model where only the top 1% or 2% of students receive an automatic bid.  Other students who want to participate must submit an article to prove their writing prowess, McNeil said.

“For students who maybe don’t go to one of the top ten law schools, being on the law review is something that helps differentiate candidates and makes them stand out to potential employers,” McNeil said. “My hope is that this journal will help Georgia Tech students who want to go on to legal careers learn the skills they need to make a law review staff and go on to make an impact in the law and beyond.”

That’s how Weitz sees it.

“I’ve already learned so much, and I know this opportunity is going to be a big benefit in developing the necessary analytical writing, critical legal thinking, and collaboration skills for myself and my peers who hope to pursue law school,” she said. 

For more information about the undergraduate law review, visit the review’s website.

Although McNeil is advising the students, the review is not an official Georgia Tech publication and doesn’t reflect the viewpoints of Georgia Tech or the Carter School.

Hosted by the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Georgia Tech Arts, and Spelman College, the bomb event on Sept. 16 gave the audience an uncomfortable and unsettling front-row seat to the nuclear threat that hangs largely unnoticed over our daily lives.

The event began with the bomb film, an almost hour-long film that combines disturbing and sometimes beautiful archival footage, animation, music, and text to explore the complex cultural and technological impact of nuclear weapons. The film is available streaming on Amazon, Apple TV, Tubi, Roku, and other platforms.

After the screening, there was a panel discussion with former Senator Sam Nunn, co-chairman of the Nuclear Threat Initiative; Smriti Keshari, one of the bomb’s creators; and Rachel Whitlark, a Georgia Tech expert on nuclear proliferation, moderated by WABE host Rose Scott.

“When you look at the film you realize that basically this is God’s universe at stake. It’s not winning or losing a war. It’s a question of whether we destroy the Earth. And that means all of us, whether we want to or not, have to pay attention to it,” Nunn said.

The panel discussed the need for more public debate and awareness of nuclear threats. Keshari said her team conducted informal interviews with members of the public while working on the bomb. They were surprised by the number of people who thought nuclear weapons were no longer a real threat and had little knowledge of how many there were and where.

“I remember when we were editing the film in Los Angeles, I would drive past the Hollywood sign and I would think ‘instead of the Hollywood sign, what if there was just a nuclear weapon right here?’ What if, instead of every single weapon being hidden underground or on a submarine, they were above and people could actually see them? We would start having a lot of strong opinions about them.”

The panel discussed how AI could accelerate nuclear threats. Whitlark outlined how AI’s increasingly intense use of power may ramp up demand for nuclear power across the globe.

“We can very quickly get from the data needs of AI to the need to power those data centers,” Whitlark said. “One of the ways we may be doing that is with nuclear energy, and with nuclear energy comes the possibility of nuclear weapons. We need to be thoughtful about that.”

Spreading awareness among young people of the threat of nuclear war or accidents is particularly important, said Nunn.

“It may take 20 years but if we don’t do that the dangers we now see and the dangers we saw during the Cold War are going to get much, much worse with the speed of nuclear weapons, the lack of decision time, and the conflict between nuclear powers,” Nunn said.

The bomb exhibition runs free through Oct. 16 at the Ferst Center and includes student art and a graphic narrative on nuclear close calls.

Combining archival footage, animation, music, and text, the bomb offers a visceral, non-linear, and unsettling experience, taking audiences inside the complex cultural and technological realm of nuclear weapons.

The installation will kick off its run at Georgia Tech with a screening of the bomb film Sept. 16 at 6:30 p.m. at the Ferst Center for the Arts. The screening will include a discussion moderated by WABE host Rose Scott with special guest Senator Sam Nunn, a global leader in nuclear threat reduction and a Distinguished Professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and the film’s creators.

The conversation will delve into the film’s themes, the urgent relevance of nuclear disarmament today, and how art and keenly crafted policy, in tandem, can provoke change. 

After the kick-off event, the bomb exhibit will run until Oct. 16 at the Ferst Center of the Arts. Throughout the duration of the exhibition, the Sam Nunn School will host a series of other panels and guest lectures themed around various aspects of this topic. Links to those events already announced can be found below and stay tuned for more:

• 9/17 - Reassessing Nuclear Proliferation in an Era of Global Disarray
• 9/17 - What is the Future of Nuclear?

The exhibit launched at Princeton University in Fall 2024 and has made its way to University of British Columbia, University of Denver, and University of New Mexico. It now arrives at Georgia Tech. Our version of the exhibit also features a powerful graphic narrative of a nuclear close call produced by the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies (CNS) at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey alongside submitted student art that focuses on what the theme “activism through art” means to them.

Live performances of the bomb were staged at the Tribeca Film Festival, the Berlin Film Festival, the Glastonbury Festival, the Sydney Festival, the National Academy of Sciences, and the Nobel Peace Prize Ceremonies.

Register: https://arts.gatech.edu/event/georgia-tech-arts-presents-bomb-symposium

Murdie offered that assessment at the end of a nearly 40-minute address in which she highlighted the many successes of the College and its faculty, staff, and students over the past year.

“I’m so happy with what I’ve seen so far,” Murdie said. “I’m so excited for the future of the college. And I really think we are at the heart of Georgia Tech's mission.”

View a video of the address

Among the successes mentioned by Murdie are the all-time high level of degrees awarded, soaring interest in attending the College, Fall course enrollments that are higher than the Georgia Tech average and, of course, Murdie’s own Ivan Alen Advantage initiative highlighting the high return on investment for liberal arts students at Georgia Tech when compared to their peers at other Georgia public research institutions.

“Your return on investment is better if you get your degree here at Tech than if you were to go to a comparable school anywhere else in the state,” she said. “Those students are getting a better return on investment, a better salary one year, five years, and 10 years out if they got their degree at Tech than if they went elsewhere, and this, I think, is really our Ivan Allen Advantage.” 

She also highlighted the School of Economics’ ranking as the No. 1 public university in Georgia for economics students, expansion of the GTDC program, and expanded academic offerings through several new minors, including the Minor in Science, Communication, and Policy and the Minor in the Business of Sports and Entertainment.

Murdie noted that the College’s research output remains high and touted the success of the School of Public Policy and the School of Economics for reaching their Transforming Tomorrow fundraising goals.

“I am excited to be your cheerleader-in-chief for the next year, to share this message both on campus, across the state, and around the world,” Murdie said.

The good news is that the gap between what health scientists are studying and the actual worldwide disease burden has narrowed since 1999. That’s according to a new study from a global team of health policy researchers, including Georgia Tech’s Cassidy R. Sugimoto.

The bad news? The study shows the improvement was mostly accidental, and things are likely to start getting worse again — especially if the U.S. follows through on plans to cut global health research funding.

“Our current situation is going to lead to an increasing imbalance between the diseases burdening the world and the research that is produced,” said Sugimoto, the Tom and Marie Patton Chair in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy.

To read more about the paper, published Aug. 27, 2025, in Nature Medicine, read our full story.

Andy McNeil, BSPP 2021, has been named the permanent director of the Law, Science, and Technology (LST) program in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. 

Georgia Tech’s writing program has a fresh look this Fall. 

Nethra Rammohan LMC 2021 will serve as an English Teaching Assistant at a preparatory high school in Zurich, Switzerland. With a background in conversational design and a passion for cross-cultural exchange, she looks forward to immersing herself in Swiss culture while refining her public speaking and language learning skills.

Read the full article from the Office of International Education. 

Fortunately, some people make it their mission to bring down those barriers. Salimah LaForce, senior research scientist for Georgia Tech’s Center for Advanced Communications Policy (CACP), studies where information systems fail and where they can be improved. Her research shapes policies, tools, and educational resources to make sure everyone — not just the non-disabled — can access the same opportunities and protections.

“Technology works best when it works for everyone,” LaForce said. “There should be no sociodemographic or systemic barriers to accessing lifesaving information or having the tools you need to work and live well.” 

LaForce’s work spans the breadth of accessibility research. She makes recommendations on how emergency mobile alerts can be improved, accesses job outcomes for people with disabilities, and even designs virtual games that help older adults protect themselves in the face of disaster.

But how did a humanities enthusiast from California end up designing virtual reality (VR) studies in Atlanta? It’s a path that, while unexpected, ended up coming full circle.

Read the full article.

Explore our search website to learn more about the position, and check back for updates throughout the search process.

Candidates are encouraged to apply by Oct. 31; however, the search will remain open until the position is filled.

Learn more about the job profile, search timeline, and search committee on the search website. 

Proponents of emotion AI — a type of artificial intelligence that analyzes facial expressions, text, voice, and other cues to infer emotions — say it can do just that.

Georgia Tech researcher Noura Howell, who received an NSF CAREER award to study emotion AI in 2024, said the technology has a number of shortfalls that can lead to inaccurate results. Like generative AI, emotion AI is also subject to bias, and its use raises ethical and privacy concerns.

Despite these shortcomings, Howell said emotion AI has quietly shaped decisions in areas like hiring, education, mental health, and public safety in recent years. 

Yet most people don’t know it exists.

Howell and Digital Media Ph.D. students Xingyu Li and Alexandra “Allie” Teixeira Riggs in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication are working to change that. They held workshops across Atlanta over the last two months, giving participants a rare opportunity to try emotion AI for themselves — and then share their impressions, ideas, and concerns.

Read the full article.

The collaboration between the Scheller College of Business and the Ivan College of Liberal Arts offers undergraduates a new way to explore new career paths and capitalizes on Georgia Tech’s proximity to sports and entertainment venues and industries. 

Atlanta frequently hosts major events such as the College Football National Championship and is home to several professional sports teams. Meanwhile, the entertainment sector adds $14 billion annually to the state economy and supports more than 40,000 jobs, according to a 2021 TAG Media and Entertainment Ecosystem Report. 

Richard "Dick" Bergmark, IM 1975, HON Ph.D. 2022, a former swimming and diving student-athlete who has directed his philanthropy to both academic and athletic initiatives, said he was thrilled to support the program.  

“My management degree gave me the foundation for my career,” he said. “I’m thankful for both the academic and athletic experiences I had at Georgia Tech. Supporting the next generation is a great way for me to give back.” 

The program requires: 

The new offerings include the Minor in Collaborative Social Innovation, the Minor in Science Communication and Policy, and the Minor in Creative Writing.

Minor in Collaborative Social Innovation

This program, offered by the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, is designed to help prepare students to be “agents of change.” The project-based curriculum combines policy, design thinking, and team dynamics, and it complements any major.

“The Collaborative Social Innovation minor helps students move from idea to impact — preparing them to lead teams, create change, and design solutions that matter. It’s about turning your education into action,” said Ilya Gokhman, an academic professional in the School of Public Policy.

Students must take two or more courses with a micro focus, such as PUBP 1142 – Teams and Collaboration or PUBP 4140 – Foundations of Leadership. They also must select at least two courses with a macro focus, just as COE 1201 – Design Thinking and Innovation for Grand Challenges, PUBP 4200 U.S. Health Policy, or PUBP 4416 – Critical Issues in Science and Technology.

Minor in Science Communication and Policy

The Carter School is also partnering with the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) to offer the Science Communication and Policy minor. This program offers an in-depth look at how science is communicated to the public, how policy shapes research, and how science communication affects society. It’s open to students in all majors.

The interdisciplinary program is designed for humanities students interested in careers in health and science, media, technical communication, or public relations, as well as STEM majors seeking to develop their human-centered communication skills.

Students must take LMC 3310 – The Rhetoric of Scientific Inquiry and PUBP 4410 – Science, Technology, and Public Policy and also choose three electives from a list of courses that includes LMC 3412 – Communicating Science and Technology to the Public, LMC 3318 – Biomedicine and Culture, and LMC 4406 – Contemporary Issues in Professional Communication.

A unique feature of this minor is the optional study-abroad experience in Dublin, Ireland, on storytelling and AI in journalism, offered in partnership with CNN.

“This is an exciting opportunity for Georgia Tech students to learn how policy shapes and is shaped by how we talk about science and to learn how scientific advances are communicated by professionals to different public audiences,” said 
LMC Chair Kelly Ritter.

Minor in Creative Writing

Finally, LMC is offering another new minor, in Creative Writing, for students who are particularly interested in improving their communication skills for careers and life.

The minor is open to all Georgia Tech students except for those already majoring in LMC. The primary focus of the program is on poetry, but it also includes other genres.

Students must take LMC 3234 – Creative Writing; two writing electives, which include courses on poetry and stage and screen writing; and one literature elective, with options ranging from LMC 2060 – Introduction to Literary Studies to LMC 3214 – Science Fiction.

“This minor gives students the opportunity to showcase their skills in the literary arts and fosters a community of writers who will support and inspire them,” said JC Reilly, director of Creative Writing Curricula. “It’s a perfect outlet for students to embrace all aspects of their expressive selves.”

Other Notable Minors

IAC students also will have the opportunity to take the new Minor in Business of Sports and Entertainment offered by The Scheller College of Business and including classes taught by IAC faculty.

The minor is meant for those interested in careers in sports management, live events, media, or entertainment law, among others.

IAC courses available for credit as part of the program include HTS 2015 – History of Sports in America, HTS 3073 – Sociology of Sports, and HTS 3089 – Science, Technology, and Sports.

Also, the Carter School and the School of Economics also offer the fairly new Minor in Economics and Policy of Environmental Sustainability.

The minor is available to any student who wants to better understand how economics and policy shape our environment, climate, and energy resources.

Courses include the required PUBP 3600 - Sustainability, Technology, and Policy and ECON 4440 - Economics of Natural Resources and the Environment, as well as electives such as ECON 3300 – Economics of International Energy Markets, PUBP 3350 – Energy Policy, and INTA 3042 – Energy and International Security.

The new minors join 35 others offered by the Ivan Allen College, including the Minor in Applications of Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning launched last year in partnership with the College of Engineering. Other minors include Economics; Energy Systems; Film and Media Studies; History; International Business, Language, and Culture; and International Affairs.

From swans to sparrows, birds are bridging the humanities and STEM fields in Stéphanie Boulard’s new Vertically Integrated Project (VIP). 

Starting in the fall, the Georgia Tech School of Modern Languages will offer graduating students the opportunity to certify their language skills for free with the Global Seal of Biliteracy.  

Murdie, the new dean of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and an expert in international relations, also has extensively studied game theory and finds it incredibly relevant to her work in human rights and human security. Typically defined as the study of mathematical models of strategic interactions, game theory relies on understanding distinctively non-mathematical factors like psychology and cultural norms.

“To make a good game theory model, you have to understand the motivations of individuals, and you can't understand those motivations from only the sciences. You really need the humanistic side,” Murdie says. “If you're going to do anything as a game theorist, you must understand how humans function, and that's more than just the natural sciences or the social sciences. It’s inherently interdisciplinary.”

The liberal arts provide that understanding not just in game theory but in any discipline, says Murdie. “Liberal arts are the lifeline through which all other knowledge flows,” she says.

Interdisciplinary Lens

Murdie’s background in human rights gave her an early appreciation of how many research areas outside of international relations play a key role in improving lives worldwide.

“Coming from a human rights tradition, you always start with an interdisciplinary lens,” she says.

Murdie’s training and research have included a wide range of students, professors, and collaborators — from economics, law, history, sociology, business, statistics, and more. She says human rights and international affairs are not at all unique in demanding an interdisciplinary approach. Solving any complex problem requires knowledge of many direct and indirect factors.

To connect the dots, you need collaborators from a range of disciplines. And to trust and work with collaborators from each discipline, you need at least a basic, working level of knowledge about it, says Murdie.

“How do you respect someone else's method of inquiry and someone else's method of creation? That's something universities don't train students well for unless there’s a truly interdisciplinary focus,” she says.

Ivan Allen Advantage

Whether someone is launching a business, creating a new technology, or negotiating a treaty, connecting the dots is crucial to innovation, as well as staying more than a few steps ahead of AI and automation. The Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts is perfectly positioned to make more of those connections as a liberal arts hub embedded within an institute making the latest breakthroughs in engineering, computing, and sciences, says Murdie, who joined Georgia Tech from the University of Georgia. She calls it the “Ivan Allen Advantage.”

“I think the Ivan Allen Advantage goes in two directions. I think in one direction, our advantage for all Tech students is that they need that liberal arts training in order to be better communicators and actually think about humanity and how technology can be used,” Murdie says. “And I think the Ivan Allen Advantage also is for those of us who are passionate about the liberal arts, who want to focus on the human condition. Doing so in an environment that is tech-informed leads to better student outcomes.”

The College is also well positioned (as a connector of dots) to channel faculty and student research expertise toward solving problems and improving lives, Murdie says. The Center for Advanced Communications Policy (CACP) and Center for Urban Research represent excellent examples of how the liberal arts can act as a hub and facilitator for tackling complex challenges, she adds.

Training for the Future

As AI and other technologies accelerate changes in nearly every aspect of our lives, the ability to be creative, lead complex teams, solve problems, and connect with others has never been more important. What better way to master those skills than to enhance your education with the study of literature, languages, history, and culture? Murdie asks.

“We're going to build the liberal arts into what it should be — the best place for people to get training for the future. But that training needs to be informed by technology, and it needs to be informed by the deep understanding of AI and machine learning,” Murdie says.

“If you’re an engineer who can't write or express ideas clearly, it's easier for your job to be taken by AI. It's our ability to be human that keeps us in the game.”

The Southern Company Foundation awarded a $2.5 million grant to the Georgia Tech Center for Urban Research to support Mayor Andre Dickens’ effort to address socioeconomic inequities in Atlanta neighborhoods.

“This investment is a major step forward in Mayor Dickens’ effort to improve the quality of lives of all Atlantans,” said David Edwards, the founding executive director of the Center for Urban Research and the policy advisor for neighborhoods in the City of Atlanta Office of the Mayor.

“My goal is to ensure that the city of Atlanta is the best city in the country to raise a child,” said Mayor Andre Dickens. “And we’re going to achieve that by ensuring every child in the city lives in a healthy, thriving, and accessible neighborhood. This investment by the Southern Company Foundation will help us ensure that we track and evaluate our progress against that goal. I am very appreciative of their willingness to support this critical work.”

What: The Center for Urban Research, hosted in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, is a collaboration between Georgia Tech and the mayor’s office. It brings together university, community, nonprofit, and municipal leaders to develop and evaluate solutions that address inequities in urban centers. Current projects include neighborhood improvement plans and climate-oriented engineering for housing and facilities on public land.

Why: The Center will use the $2.5 million from the Southern Company Foundation to evaluate and inform the mayor’s “Achieving Fairness of Place” initiative, which is investing in seven historically disinvested neighborhoods to improve outcomes in housing, education, health, and economic mobility.

How: The Center for Urban Research will develop an impact measurement strategy for the project and track the results of the investments. It will also lead the research, informing the work on the ground and conducting and supporting local and national work on issues related to place-based transformation and neighborhood health. The Center is collaborating with more than 40 researchers at colleges and universities across the region.

“With this funding, we hope to establish the Center as a leader in research, practice, and partnerships and use Atlanta as a blueprint of what can happen nationwide to address urban inequity,” said Ishita Chordia, the associate director of the Center.

“Policymakers in Atlanta and beyond desperately need research support,” added Center Co-Director Brian An, an assistant professor at the Carter School.

The Southern Company Foundation’s grant will allow the Center to create fellowships and build an interdisciplinary team of master’s and doctoral students from the Carter School, the School of City and Regional Planning, the College of Computing, and others to provide the research analytics that policymakers often don’t have the time or money to procure themselves, An said.

“We are pleased to support the mayor’s Fairness of Place initiative with the Center for Urban Research to conduct research and determine best practices in community transformation,” said Myra Bierria, president of the Southern Company Foundation.

“This initiative, taking shape in several economically disadvantaged communities to provide residents with access to quality housing, education, workforce development, and public spaces, aligns with our focus on elevating our communities for generations to come. This grant reflects our commitment to these efforts and supporting the Atlanta communities we are privileged to serve.” 

Nearly three decades ago, the United States government began relinquishing control over an obscure but crucial bit of internet bureaucracy: overseeing the assignment of the names and numbers allowing computers and networks worldwide to find and talk to one another. 

"My mother instilled in me to be kind to everyone and to see the best in people,” he explained.

Pearson and his older sister were raised during the segregated 1960s in the small east Texas city, Tyler. However, his hometown had two historically black colleges and universities (HBCUs), underscoring to him the value of educational opportunities. But with football being a large part of Texan tradition, Pearson came of age in a time and place where sports and education collided.

“There is a very macho culture in Texas in general, but particularly in east Texas; it seemed kind of antithetical to be an athlete and then be smart,” explained Pearson. “Fortunately, my high school football, basketball, and track coaches held college degrees in math, science, and social studies.”

Those coaches and several other teachers in the school were among the role models who shaped his career path. Pearson was both athletically and academically inclined. He was an honors student on the football, basketball, and track teams. However, his classmates who excelled at sports were not always, he felt, given the opportunity to pursue higher education. This did not sit well with him.

“The faculty saw some of us had college potential and motivated and encouraged us to go further. But for the others [students], teachers made the best athletes focus on sports — and not excelling in courses,” Pearson said.

The way athletes were often dissuaded from academics inspired him to build a career of making education opportunities available to more people. 

“About 98% of students [from my high school] on the non-college prep track did not attend college. I knew that there were classmates who were very capable but were not encouraged to go to college,” Pearson said.

So, he wanted to make change enabling more people to realize their full potential. The social change happening in the late 1960s fueled his passion.

“A lot of activism around the Civil Rights Movement took place at that time. It influenced me to study sociology and economics,” Pearson recalls. 

Pearson’s postsecondary education began at Wiley University, depicted in the Denzel Washington film, The Great Debaters. After graduating with a bachelor’s in sociology (with honors), he went on to earn his master’s in sociology from Atlanta University (now, Clark Atlanta University). He then earned his Ph.D. in Sociology of Science from Southern Illinois University in Carbondale. After his doctoral studies, he engaged in research at the Educational Testing Service for education policy, and at the Office of Technology Assessment in the U.S. Congress where he researched science and technology policy.

Pearson's Georgia Tech career began in 2001, when he served as professor and chair of the School of History, Technology, and Society (now History and Sociology) until 2006. He then continued his work as a professor of sociology and was appointed Regents’ Professor in 2022. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, Pearson was a faculty member at Wake Forest University from 1980 to 2001, where he held a distinguished appointment as a professor and adjunct in Medical Education at the Bowman Gray School of Medicine (now Wake Forest University School of Medicine). He has also served in the U.S. Army, worked for the Social Security Administration, and in private industry.

As a sociologist of science, Pearson has focused his research on the challenges faced by underrepresented groups in science and engineering disciplines, especially at the doctoral level. His work has explored career paths, workforce development, and human resource concerns, resulting in nine books, 49 articles and book chapters, and numerous national and international presentations.

At Georgia Tech, he has taught courses on the sociology of science and technology, education, sports, family, and medicine. Known for his rigorous yet supportive teaching style, Pearson pushes his students to excel while fostering a deep appreciation for the human experience.

Pearson also believes one of the greatest skills sociologists, engineers, and other STEM-minded students should develop is the ability to effectively communicate orally — and especially through writing. This belief was reinforced by his longtime friend Maya Angelou, the celebrated poet and author, who also taught at Wake Forest.

“You can get a technical job, but you can't go very far if you can’t communicate. You have to write reports to the people above you, no matter what your field happens to be,” he said. “I’ve had graduate students who I kept returning papers to revise, but I found, in the long run, they would thank me because they learned to clearly communicate their ideas.”

Pearson's commitment to mentoring is evident in the success of his students, all of whom have produced verified research papers and presented at national and international scientific meetings. He has also involved undergraduate research assistants in all his funded activities, encouraging them to present their work at various forums.

After several decades in education, Pearson is planning to retire in July. When asked what he will remember most about his time at Tech, he says it is the sharing of his knowledge — especially to first-generation college students or students from rural areas.

“My answer is very solidly the students. I think it’s the diversity of the students and seeing students who are very smart but come from all kinds of class backgrounds,” he said. “Some of my brightest students have come from parts of Georgia that are economically depressed areas.”  

Pearson is considered one of the top researchers in his field of sociology of science and science and technology policy. He has often been one of very few — if not the only African American professor — with his level of expertise in the subject. This has fueled his desire to contribute to work that opens doors for underrepresented students.

“What mattered most to me was that I could continue to make a change,” said Pearson. “During my Georgia Tech interview, [then provost] Mike Thomas was honest about the challenges I would face as the first Black school chair. He is the person who convinced me that Georgia Tech was the best place to reach my final goal of improving the lives of students.”

Thomas stayed in touch with Pearson for many years after his retirement from Georgia Tech, and Pearson says his presence had a significant impact on how he spent his time at the Institute.

“Although Provost Thomas is no longer with us, he continues to inspire me because there is no price one can place on educating the next generation of talent,” he said.

Quotes From Colleagues:

“Dr. Pearson is a groundbreaking researcher who has made critical and sustained contributions to the sociological study of scientific careers in STEM and the study of public health. His work has inspired and shaped conversations and policies in higher education, national research agencies, and the White House. As a teacher and mentor, Dr. Pearson is unparalleled, providing students with the tools to achieve scholarly excellence and the opportunities to do work that effects positive change. He is a valued member of our community, and we will miss him.” – Victoria Thompson, Professor and Chair, School of History and Sociology  

“Dr. Pearson was the most influential teacher I had at Georgia Tech. His insights and the rigor he expected from me pushed me past a surface-level understanding of social science work —something few of my peers in computing were able to access. The capacity in social sciences that he taught me set me apart from other computing researchers, helping me secure interviews for faculty positions at several top-tier institutions. His involvement went far beyond what a faculty member would normally provide a Ph.D. student from a different College.” – Betsy DiSalvo, Professor, School of Interactive Computing 

“Dr. Pearson’s impact is difficult to quantify because it extends beyond conventional academic advising. He embodies what it means to be a true mentor, champion, and leader in higher education. He never sought to impose his own research agenda onto me, nor did he relegate me to a subordinate role within his work. Instead, he prioritized intellectual independence, ensuring that I was well-informed, critically engaged, and equipped with the necessary skills to develop and articulate my own scholarly voice. Dr. Pearson understood the unique potential of each of his students and actively created pathways for us to lead — not just to participate but to establish ourselves as subject matter experts, whether through collaborations with the National Academies, authorship of book chapters and journal articles, or strategic engagement in national and global scholarly networks and STEM initiatives — all experiences I had as his graduate student.” – Sybrina Y. Atwaters, Academic Professional, Office of the Provost 

“I would not be a professor if it weren’t for Dr. Pearson. His mentorship, both inside and outside the classroom during my time at Georgia Tech, provided me with the essential guidance needed to navigate the complex path of higher education. Dr. Pearson offered a concrete path toward graduate studies by making me aware of invaluable summer research opportunities. Throughout my graduate school years and now as a professor, he has remained a trusted advisor — a constant source of sage wisdom and encouragement.” – Laurence Ralph, William D. Zabel ’58 Professor of Human Rights, Princeton University

It was 2019. She had been struggling with neck pain for two years, but doctors kept telling her it was simply a byproduct of bending her neck while studying too hard.

Then her hands started going numb. Painful shocks would race down her arms. Joints began popping out of place. The discomfort kept her up at night.

“It was extremely painful, and most days I couldn’t move, yet I was always told, no, this is in your head,” said Lee, who applied to and was accepted to Georgia Tech even while attempting to figure out the mystery ailment disrupting her life. 

She tried to do what she’s always done: push through to achieve her academic goals. But, eventually, the weight of her illness became too much. In 2020, Lee had to put her Georgia Tech studies on hold, head home, and focus on finding out just what was happening to her body.

It took two years away from Georgia Tech, being shuffled from doctor to doctor, but she finally got an answer: hypermobile Ehlers-Danlos Syndrome (hEDS) and a trio of leaking heart valves — a combination Lee said has put her future at risk.

EDS is a connective tissue disorder that affects every part of the body, causing severe pain and mobility issues. One of 13 subtypes, the hypermobile form is the most common and often comes along with other health issues that significantly impact quality of life. 

Less than two months after her diagnosis, Lee began alternating between relying on a walker and wheelchair to help her move around. She was just 22.

Lee said her parents wanted her to stay home in Augusta so they could help take care of her. But to Lee, there was just one thing for her to do: come back to Georgia Tech and go after that degree.

"I live every day in excruciating pain,” Lee said. “But I won't let anybody or anything take my academic prowess away from me."

On Friday, a little less than three years after she returned to Georgia Tech to continue her studies, Lee will graduate with honors and a B.S. in Public Policy, having forged a love for health policy and advocacy in her time here.

One of her favorite professors, Andrew Buskell, remembers her as an outstanding — and inspiring — student.

“Despite all her hardships — debilitating fatigue, chronic pain, struggles with the healthcare system — Michelle was always present and always engaged,” Buskell said. 

“Present didn’t always mean in-person, though she would be in the classroom when she could,” Buskell said. “But she would also join from parking lots and waiting rooms where she was seeking emergency care. Once, she even joined from her hospital bed. No matter where she was located, her dedication to learning shone through.”

Lee is sticking around Georgia Tech for one more semester to finish her master’s degree in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, in hopes of furthering her ability to shape health policy. She wants to continue making an impact for as long as she can.

"I want to cultivate a life for myself,” said Lee, who also works as an executive administrator at the National Alliance on Mental Illness’ Georgia office. “Whatever time I have left, that's not significant. It doesn't matter. What matters is what I can build in the time I do have.”

As something of an expert on overcoming adversity, Lee has advice for other Georgia Tech students going through rough times. You can do it, she says.

“Yeah, failure is an option. But is that really the route you're going to choose? Because ultimately everything in life is a choice. And you hold the power.”

Oh, and you better bet Lee will be at Commencement.

“You'd have to drag me kicking and screaming away,” Lee said.

“It’s truly humbling to be the first Ivan Allen College student to represent Tech at USG Recognition Day, especially as I know firsthand how many incredible, deserving students I’ve studied alongside,” Cotsman said.

Each institution in the University System of Georgia chooses one student to honor with the award each year.

“As you can imagine, the competition is tough at Georgia Tech,” said Shatakshee Dhongde, the associate dean for academic affairs in the Ivan Allen College. “Ashley’s strength as a candidate was the combination of using advanced machine learning and analytical models to inform policy. Her research experience shows how we can use technology to improve the human condition, and thus, she is a perfect representative of a Georgia Tech senior.”

Cotsman said she’s incredibly grateful for the mentors who encouraged her to explore the intersection of technology, machine learning, and smart policymaking. Alongside her public policy degree, she is completing a Minor in Applications of AI and Machine Learning. She also has worked in Associate Professor Omar Isaac Asensio’s Data Science and Policy Lab since she was a first-year student.

“This is a well-deserved recognition,” Asensio said. “Ashley has shown excellence in the classroom and multi-disciplinary research settings.”

Her stand-out achievements include co-authoring a journal article on the use of large language models to detect global service reliability issues in electric transportation policy, earning her a first-place award at the Georgia Tech Undergraduate Research Symposium, and a mention by Microsoft AI in a feature story on Azure cloud computing.

She also led a project using GPT-4 and prompt engineering to analyze the sea of sustainability reports published by organizations each year and help policymakers reduce evaluation costs. Cotsman presented her work at the Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management Conference with support from a President’s Undergraduate Research Award.

In the Fall, Cotsman won a competitive Federal Jackets Fellowship to participate in the GTDC “study at home” semester in Washington. Alongside her classes and internship at the House Finance Committee, she researched and wrote an analysis of gender dynamics in policymaking spaces, examining the challenges, opportunities, and future for gender equity.

“This recognition is more than a personal honor; it marks a significant first for the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts,” Cotsman said. “It celebrates the growing impact of students whose work brings depth, context, and humanity to our world’s most pressing scientific challenges. I am honored to represent that legacy and hope this recognition affirms the enduring relevance of humanistic perspectives in building a better future.”

The cocktail hour and awards ceremony at the Georgian Terrace recognized graduates from each of the six Schools in Ivan Allen College and the three ROTC units. This year’s winners have forged exceptional careers in public health, policy, business, and the Armed Forces.

The event also included the Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Awards, honoring a standout graduate student, undergraduate student, and faculty member, as well as the Dean’s Appreciation Award, celebrating extraordinary contributions to the College’s advancement, reputation, and mission.

2025 Dean’s Appreciation Award

This year’s recipient of the Dean’s Appreciation Award is Amy Phuong, a 2005 graduate of the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and a 2014 MBA from the Scheller College of Business. Among Phuong’s many contributions to the Atlanta community is a clear dedication to her alma mater — she served as student body president in her senior year, is the chair of the Ivan Allen College Advisory Board, and has volunteered with the Nunn School and Georgia Tech Alumni Association boards, as well.

2025 Distinguished Alumni Awards

The 2025 Distinguished Alumni Award winners come from many backgrounds and careers but have one important thing in common: a dedication to service, leadership, and excellence in their fields.

Air Force ROTC: Maj. Gen. Kelly K. McKeague (Ret.)
B.S. Industrial Engineering 1981, M.S. Industrial Engineering, 1987

McKeague has served as director of the Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency since 2017, overseeing efforts to account for missing U.S. personnel from past conflicts. He leads research, recovery, and identification operations worldwide, ensuring the fullest possible accounting for families and the nation. 

Army ROTC: Brig. Gen. Tom Blackstock (Ret.)
B.S. Civil Engineering, 1987 

Over 38 years of service, Blackstock served in Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Kuwait, Afghanistan, South Korea, Honduras, and the country of Georgia. He remains active in the Georgia Tech ROTC Alumni Network and the Ivan Allen College Alumni Leadership Team.

Navy ROTC: Maj. Gen. Larry Taylor USMC (Ret.)
B.S. Industrial Management, 1962 

In 2008-09, Taylor served as a State Department contractor in Iraq, managing a program for Civilian Police International. He is active with the Reserve Officers Association of the United States, the USO Council of Georgia, the Reserve Forces Policy Board, and the Marine Corps Coordinating Council of Greater Atlanta.  

John Wylder
B.S. Economics, 1973 

Wylder was a member of the first class to graduate with Economics degrees at Georgia Tech. Now retired, he worked with SunTrust Bank, Hewlett-Packard, PwC, and Microsoft during his career.

Wilson A. (Arnie) Garrett
B.S. History, Technology, and Society, 2024 

Garrett is a retired Air Force systems analyst with decades of experience in information technology. After failing to complete a computer science degree in 1982, Garrett returned to Georgia Tech after his retirement to earn a degree from the School of History and Sociology.

Jessica Cox
B.S. International Affairs, 2000 

Cox serves as director for defense plans and policy at the U.S. Mission to NATO, where she is responsible for advocating U.S. defense policy within the NATO alliance.

Molly Heacock
B.S. Science, Technology, and Communication 2010 

Heacock is the managing director and CEO-elect of UnTold, a public health nongovernmental organization supporting people affected by AIDS in East and Southern Africa.

Yvonne Ploder
B.S. International Affairs and Modern Languages — French, 2015

Ploder leads a Trust and Safety team at Snapchat, dedicated to maintaining platform safety and user protection in New York. 

Lynn Austin
Ph.D. Health Policy and Management, 2000 

Austin managed operations for organizations with budgets up to $5 billion over the course of her career, holding positions at the National Institutes of Health and the Centers for Disease Control, among others. Since retiring she has provided executive coaching to more than 500 professionals.  

2025 Ivan Allen Jr. Legacy Awards

Sanghyun Han is a Ph.D. student in International Affairs, Science and Technology. He specializes in emerging technology, statecraft, international security, and political economy. He co-founded the STAIR (Science, Technology, And International Relations) workshop and was a research assistant at the Center for International Strategy, Technology, and Policy.

Jinxia Loo is an undergraduate student majoring in History, Technology, and Society and minoring in Computer Science. They are a committed member of the Delta Phi Lambda Sorority, involved with undergraduate research and first-generation student initiatives, and have served as the president of Georgia Tech’s Asian American Student Association.

Janet Murray is the Distinguished Professor of Digital Media in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. She is a pioneer researcher and teacher in women’s studies, digital humanities, interaction design, and game studies. Throughout her career, Murray has focused on how changes in cultural narrative can expand our understanding of what it means to be human. Her best-known work is Hamlet on the Holodeck: The Future of Narrative in Cyberspace.

Congratulations to our 2025 winners! 

“The Carter family is a true gem of Georgia, demonstrating what can be accomplished through a focus on public service, resilience, and a desire to improve the human condition,” said Cassidy Sugimoto, Tom and Marie Patton Professor and School Chair in the School of Public Policy. “We are grateful to have the opportunity to honor the Carters for their work since the founding of the Carter Center in 1982, focused on preventing and resolving conflicts, enhancing freedom and democracy, and improving health.”

“I am grateful to the Carter family, the Carter Center, and the Georgia Tech alumni and donors who supported this naming,” said Cabrera. “The Carter School will contribute to preserving the memory of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter’s extraordinary life of public service and will inspire and develop new generations of public leaders committed to Progress and Service.” 

Jimmy Carter, who attended Georgia Tech as a student in 1942, received the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Service and Progress at Georgia Tech in 2002 and the Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage at Georgia Tech in 2017. The School of Public Policy is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, named for former Atlanta Mayor Ivan Allen Jr. Allen who was known for his transformative urban leadership and socially and ethically conscious action.

“It’s a pleasure always to be associated with the Ivan Allen family in any way. We’ve been close to the family for a long time,” said Jimmy Carter at the award event in 2017. “In every respect, my heart is with Georgia Tech.”

“Mayor Allen was a beacon of light for Jimmy and for me and so many others actually in our whole country, standing up for what was good and what was right,” said Rosalynn Carter at the 2017 award event.

The School of Public Policy partnered with the Carter Center on the two-year naming process, and Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter were engaged and personally supportive.

“My family and I are honored by Georgia Tech’s naming of the School of Public Policy after my grandparents," said Jason Carter, grandson of Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter. "Georgia Tech was extremely important to my grandfather, and I am so glad that this institution chose to celebrate my grandparents' decades-long partnership of service.” 

"Georgia Tech always held a special place in President and Mrs. Carter's hearts. In fact, Mrs. Carter kept a Georgia Tech blanket draped across a chair in her office at The Carter Center — a sweet reminder of her very favorite Tech student — and it still sits there today," said Carter Center CEO Paige Alexander. "Georgia Tech played a formative role in their lives and it helped shaped their policy perspectives from the Governor's mansion to the White House and beyond. It is only appropriate that the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy will now bear their names."

The School of Public Policy in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts educates leaders who can ethically address societal problems through policy processes and generates knowledge that contributes to sustainability, creates a more equitable society, and serves to enhance innovation at the intersection of science and technology.

During one such “Grand Challenges” course on climate change, taught by an engineer, a rhetorician, and a politician, students concluded that it wasn’t the science that was interesting, said Richard Scheines, dean of CMU’s College of Humanities and Social Sciences.

“They could see that the action was really on the humanities and social science side,” he said.

Scheines spoke at “The Future of the Humanities at Georgia Tech: A Workshop,” an event organized by liberal arts school chairs at Georgia Tech and held on April 4 at the Technology Square Research Building. The event explored ways leading universities, including Georgia Tech, are reshaping the humanities for our technological age.

Georgia Tech faculty presented some of their groundbreaking research. Meanwhile, scholars from CMU, MIT, the University of Texas-Austin, the University of Kansas, and Virginia Tech, alongside representatives from funders such as the American Council of Learned Societies and Schmidt Sciences, discussed ways to empower humanities and social science research.

The consensus? In an age of unparalleled anxiety about the accelerating march of technology — particularly artificial intelligence — finding ways to foster interdisciplinary collaboration intentionally is crucial. So, too, is the need to clearly articulate the inherent value of the humanities and social sciences and to help employers identify candidates with the right kinds of skills.

“Students are told not to pursue a degree in English because it doesn't lead directly to a career. The humanities don't teach job readiness, they say. And that's fine. People are allowed to be wrong,” said Allegra Smith, an assistant professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication.

A key consideration in enhancing humanities and social sciences research and employment outcomes, panelists said, is ensuring buy-in from across campus for interdisciplinary research that recognizes the unique value humanities and social sciences scholars and graduates can bring.

For instance, MIT recently created a new humanities center after years of trying. Agustin Rayo Fierro, dean of MIT’s School of Humanities, Arts, and Sciences, said the participation of MIT’s engineering dean was crucial.

“Forging a coalition with the other sides of the Institute really allowed us to do things at a scale that we could not have otherwise,” he said.

The center is hardly insular: staff intentionally reached out to faculty from across campus looking for potential connections. The result? An avalanche of 47 applications seeking $6.7 million in support against $2 million in available funding.

At CMU, Scheines’ college is using seed grants to help faculty in STEM fields pair up with humanities and social sciences scholars who are “looking for interesting problems to apply them to.”

Paul Quigley, director of the Center for Humanities at Virginia Tech, agreed that making humanities central to campus collaboration is key.

“One of the things I think you can do is to make the humanities center... well known on campus as the place to come for people who are seeking collaborators,” he said.

James Shulman, vice president and chief operating officer of the American Council of Learned Societies, said he sees another avenue for success: finding ways to make universities increasingly relevant to the communities where they are located.

“Universities embedded in their communities, and working with their communities, people are going to care, and employers are going to care,” he said. “And I that’s where our clearest path to being valued again is.”

Ultimately, helping faculty in the sciences and engineering, prospective students, and their parents understand the value of the humanities and social sciences is key, Smith said.

"Most of it comes down to something that the humanities do best: changing narratives,” Smith said.

They are Margaret E. Kosal, an associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, and Juan D. Rogers, professor and associate chair in the School of Public Policy.

Rogers was selected for his contribution to “the development of new models and tools for impact assessment of R&D programs.” Kosal was chosen for her work helping develop “testable frameworks to explore the relationships between science, technology, and security and to explain their impacts on geopolitics,” according to the AAAS.

Founded in 1848, AAAS says it is the world’s largest general scientific society. It seeks to advance science through programs that include science policy as well as education and public engagement.

“This year’s class of fellows are the embodiment of scientific excellence and service to our communities,” said Sudip S. Parikh, the organization’s chief executive officer and executive publisher of Science journals. “At a time when the future of the scientific enterprise in the U.S. and around the world is uncertain, their work demonstrates the value of sustained investment in science and engineering.”

Kosal’s work focuses on explaining the intersection of emerging science and technology and security, especially in the areas of reducing threats from the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction and the relationship of emerging science and technology and geopolitics.

“My research is driven by scholarly, theoretically grounded discourse and discovery; by a commitment to bridging the academic/scholarly-policy gap; and by a dedication to advancing and championing research by students and young scholars that bridges the physical, life and social sciences, and engineering,” Kosal said.

"I'm honored and humbled to be selected as a fellow and look forward to further work bridging across disciplines," Kosal said.

Rogers’ work addresses the design, implementation, and evaluation of public policies that focus on science and technology, especially the uses of science and technology to address special social or economic needs. He has developed models for the evaluation of research and development processes and a framework for public expenditure reviews, including public policy functional analysis, evaluation of the impacts of R&D policies and scientific research, and technology transfer and diffusion policies for science and technology.

“I feel honored and humbled to be recognized for my research work by AAAS,” he said. “It is very rewarding to see that others find value in my contributions and, at the same time, feel responsible for communicating the importance of the research enterprise in today's world.”

Rogers and Kosal join five other Georgia Tech faculty in being selected for the honor this year. AAAS also chose Krista S. Walton and Chaouki T. Abdallah in the College of Engineering, Wilbur Lam and Anant Madabhushi in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Daniel I. Goldman in the College of Sciences.

In all 32 other Georgia Tech faculty members are active AAAS fellows, according to the organization’s website. This includes four in the Ivan Allen College: Diana Hicks, Kaye Husbands Fealing, retired Associate Professor Cheryl Leggon, and Aaron Levine, all in the School of Public Policy.

For more information on the other Georgia Tech recipients, see the campuswide announcement. For more information on the AAAS and this year’s class of fellows, visit the AAAS website.

We’ll tackle these questions and more at The Future of the Humanities at Georgia Tech Workshop on April 4  — and we need your expertise. 

“The humanities are at the heart of Georgia Tech’s mission to develop leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition,” said John Lyon, Chair of the School of Modern Languages. “This workshop is an opportunity to bring together faculty, funders, and national leaders to ensure that the humanities continue to thrive at the Institute.”

This full-day event hosted by the Schools of History and Sociology, Literature, Media, and Communication, Modern Languages, and Public Policy will explore how to expand and strengthen the humanities at Tech through faculty research, external partnerships, and institutional support.

It will feature lightning-round presentations from Georgia Tech faculty, discussions with representatives from Schmidt Scientific, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Newberry Library, and a roundtable with humanities leaders from MIT, Carnegie Mellon, and more. A collaborative workshop will finish out the day, focusing on strengthening the institutional presence of the humanities at Georgia Tech. 

Join us to forge new opportunities in research, teaching, and beyond! Breakfast, lunch, and refreshments will be provided. Space is limited — please register by March 28.

The study indicates such policies are not only good for children but also could reduce the burden on child protection agencies — and maybe even ease the associated budgetary strain on governments.

“There are potentially vast implications for government budgets and other macroeconomic factors,” the authors wrote in their paper. “In addition to demonstrating possible cross-program interactions between family services and employment services, this work may in turn offer a more complete cost-benefit analysis of PFL programs.”

Read the full story at https://iac.gatech.edu/featured-news/2025/03/paid-family-leave-reduces-abuse-georgia-tech-study.