A new partnership between Georgia Tech’s Aware Home Research Initiative and the Georgia Tech EXCEL program is helping students with intellectual and developmental disabilities gain essential life skills—starting in the kitchen.

The EXCEL program—short for expanding career, education, and leadership opportunities—is a four-year college experience designed for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It leads to two certificates and focuses on academic enrichment, social growth, career development, and independent living. 

“We accept students from across the country, not just Georgia,” said Sherri Burrell, EXCEL’s mentorship coordinator. “Our goal is to prepare our students for life after college, and that includes learning how to live independently.”

Burrell joined the EXCEL team in August 2024 and quickly identified a gap in the program: students needed a hands-on space to learn about nutrition, cooking, and healthy living—skills that could not be taught effectively in a traditional classroom. That’s when she connected with Brian Jones, director of research at Georgia Tech’s Aware Home lab.

The Aware Home, a three-story, 5,040-square-foot living laboratory, is designed to simulate a real home environment where Georgia Tech researchers, faculty, and students can develop and test innovative technologies. With its fully equipped kitchen and smart home capabilities, it offers an ideal setting for EXCEL students—many of whom are tactile learners—to engage in real-world, hands-on learning.

The partnership began with current EXCEL students and their Georgia Tech mentors—traditional students who support EXCEL participants in areas like social development, wellness, and life transitions. Together, mentors and mentees learned to prepare simple, nutritious meals. “It wasn’t just beneficial for our EXCEL students,” Burrell noted. “Many of the mentors were also new to cooking. They learned new skills and knowledge right alongside their mentees.”

The collaboration expanded into the EXCEL Summer Academy, a two-week program for high school juniors and seniors interested in applying to EXCEL. During the summer sessions, prospective students visited the Aware Home to explore topics like nutrition, dining, and making healthy food choices. “Even though incoming students are on a meal plan and don’t have kitchens, it’s still important they understand how to make smart decisions about what they eat,” Burrell said.

A Legacy of Research Innovation

Beyond this Excel program educational role, the Aware Home, the first residential laboratory of its type, has a rich legacy of shaping the future of smart home technology. One of its most influential contributors is Shwetak Patel, a Georgia Tech alumnus and now a professor at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Patel’s time in the Aware Home as a Ph.D. student profoundly influenced his career and the broader field of ubiquitous computing. He described how the Aware Home lab’s impact on his research career fell into three distinct “buckets”:

1. Career Transformation

Patel credits the Aware Home with fundamentally reshaping his career path. His early exposure to real-world research problems in a home-like setting helped him discover his passion for applied computer science and human-centered innovation. “It totally informed the way I do research now,” he said.

2. Living Laboratory Innovation

The Aware Home’s immersive environment allowed Patel to explore practical challenges in home sensing and automation. His doctoral work, Infrastructure Mediated Sensing, focused on detecting water and electricity usage, human presence, and environmental context—technologies that laid the foundation for the smart home industry. This research led to the creation of startups like Zensi and Phyn, and influenced commercial products such as Belkin’s Conserve line, smart meters, and even [Google] Nest and Sense devices. Patel is also a distinguished engineer and health technologies leader at Google who guided  many of Google’s smart home technologies. “You can draw a direct line from our early work in the Aware Home to the smart home technologies we see today,” Patel explained.

3. Defining Innovation

Patel’s experience in the Aware Home helped him refine his understanding of innovation—not just as a technical achievement, but as a meaningful solution to everyday problems. “The Aware Home really informed my view on how to do innovation,” he said. “It’s about solving real-world problems in ways that matter to people.”

 

Helping People Today and in the Future

As the EXCEL program and Aware Home Lab continue to collaborate, they’re not only teaching students how to cook—they’re also contributing to a broader legacy of innovation. With future research opportunities on the horizon, this new partnership and other ongoing research projects across Georgia Tech, such as the Aware Home collaboration with the AI Caring Institute, are poised to further explore how smart environments can support independent living and improve the quality of life.

If you are a researcher, company, or start-up interested in using the Aware Home lab for research, testing, or evaluating in-home technologies, contact Brian Jones, lab director of the Aware Home, at brian.jones@gatech.edu.