Researchers at Georgia Tech say they have developed a system to help answer that question.

Known as FIRA, the tool analyzes drone crashes to determine whether they were caused by tampered machine-learning (ML) models. The team will present its findings at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium in August. 

The research addresses a growing safety challenge as drones are increasingly used for deliveries, infrastructure inspections, and agriculture.

As drones rely more on machine learning to navigate and make decisions, they also become vulnerable to model poisoning attacks. In these attacks, adversaries manipulate an AI system during its learning phase, embedding hidden triggers that can cause failures under specific conditions.

“Machine learning drones are making more decisions in flight, which makes ML a safety-critical component of these systems,” said Yizhi Huang, Ph.D. student and lead researcher on the project. 

“When something goes wrong, investigators need a way to ask whether the model was responsible, but the model is the part of the system that no one can examine after a crash. FIRA gives investigators a way to investigate these cases by reconstructing what the model was doing during the crash. As more drones run with ML, this kind of forensic capability can help drones be used more effectively and safely.”

When a drone crashes, investigators must determine whether the cause was malicious interference, weather, or mechanical failure. Without reliable forensic tools, accountability is difficult to establish, and safety standards are harder to enforce.

FIRA identifies how drone components interact with machine learning models and monitors those interactions in real time, even with limited bandwidth.

The system functions like a flight recorder, capturing key system activity and reconstructing a timeline after a crash. It then analyzes the model’s behavior to determine whether a malicious trigger was introduced via poisoned ML training data.

In tests across multiple drone platforms and crash scenarios, FIRA identified failure causes and distinguished cyberattacks from environmental or mechanical issues.

The system does not require access to a drone’s source code, making it practical for real-world investigations.

“As commercial drone use expands, tools like FIRA could help improve accountability and trust in AI-powered systems operating in public airspace,” said Huang. 

FIRA: Enabling Automatic Forensic Investigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles was led by Georgia Tech’s Cyber Forensics Innovation Lab in cooperation with the Cyber-Physical Security Lab. These labs reside in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computing Engineering. 

Researchers at Georgia Tech say they have developed a system to help answer that question.

Known as FIRA, the tool analyzes drone crashes to determine whether they were caused by poisoned machine-learning (ML) models. The team will present its findings at the 35th USENIX Security Symposium in August. 

The research addresses a growing safety challenge as drones are increasingly used for deliveries, infrastructure inspections, and agriculture.

As drones rely more on machine learning to navigate and make decisions, they also become vulnerable to model poisoning attacks. In these attacks, adversaries manipulate an AI system during its learning phase, embedding hidden triggers that can cause failures under specific conditions.

“Machine learning drones are making more decisions in flight, which makes ML a safety-critical component of these systems,” said Yizhi Huang, Ph.D. student and lead researcher on the project. 

“When something goes wrong, investigators need a way to ask whether the model was responsible, but the model is the part of the system that no one can examine after a crash. FIRA gives investigators a way to investigate these cases by reconstructing what the model was doing during the crash. As more drones run with ML, this kind of forensic capability can help drones be used more effectively and safely.”

When a drone crashes, investigators must determine whether the cause was malicious interference, weather, or mechanical failure. Without reliable forensic tools, accountability is difficult to establish, and safety standards are harder to enforce.

FIRA identifies how drone components interact with machine learning models and monitors those interactions in real time, even with limited bandwidth.

The system functions like a flight recorder, capturing key system activity and reconstructing a timeline after a crash. It then analyzes the model’s behavior to determine whether a malicious trigger was introduced via poisoned ML training data.

In tests across multiple drone platforms and crash scenarios, FIRA identified failure causes and distinguished cyberattacks from environmental or mechanical issues.

The system does not require access to a drone’s source code, making it practical for real-world investigations.

“As commercial drone use expands, tools like FIRA could help improve accountability and trust in AI-powered systems operating in public airspace,” said Huang. 

FIRA: Enabling Automatic Forensic Investigation of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles was led by Georgia Tech’s Cyber Forensics Innovation Lab in cooperation with the Cyber-Physical Security Lab. These labs reside in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Electrical and Computing Engineering. 

When a bartender checks an ID, they quickly verify a customer’s date of birth and identity before serving them. 

The paper, Solution-Tunable Interfacial Interaction Landscape Governs Anomalous Nanoparticle Diffusion in Liquid-Phase Electron Microscopy, was featured on the cover for the June issue of ACS Nano. Lead author Isabel Panicker, doctoral student in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, created the cover artwork and highlights the complex interactions that influence nanoparticle motion at liquid-solid interfaces .

The team used liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy (LPTEM) to observe nanoparticles moving across a liquid-solid interface in real time. Their research shows that changing the ionic composition of the liquid alters the forces acting between nanoparticles and their surroundings. These modifications influence how the particles move, sometimes causing behavior that differs from the random motion typically expected in liquids. 

By uncovering how the liquid environment shapes nanoparticle movement, the researchers gained new insight into the fundamental processes that govern movement at the nanoscale. Understanding these processes is important for applications ranging from advanced materials and energy technologies to biological systems.

The team also developed a new framework that uses nanoparticle motion to measure the mechanical properties of the liquid-solid interface. Rather than treating LPTEM solely as an imaging technique, the approach allows researchers to extract quantitative information about a material's behavior directly from the paths of particles observed under the microscope.

The study was co-authored by Zain Shabeeb and Vida Jamali. The Institute for Matter and Systems supported the research through the research program Compressed Super-Resolution TEM Using Nanoelectronic Coded Aperture Device, led by Jamali.

The findings expand the capabilities of liquid-phase electron microscopy and open new opportunities for studying complex materials and dynamic processes at the nanoscale.

DOI: http://doi.org/10.1021/acsnano.6c04149

“I used to see ash settling on our terrace from time to time and thought it was just waste,” Tripathi said.

Years later, at Georgia Tech, Tripathi started looking at that ash differently. What once appeared to be ordinary industrial waste became the focal point for her work. 

As a postdoctoral researcher in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Tripathi, along with Ching-Hua Huang, Turnipseed Family Chair and Professor, and Xing Xie, Carlton S. Wilder Assistant Professor, both in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, developed a method to recover rare earth elements from coal fly ash.

Rare earth elements (REEs) help power electric vehicle motors, wind turbines, MRI machines, smartphones, and defense systems because of their unusually strong magnetic and electrical properties. Despite the name, most REEs are not actually rare in quantity. They’re rare in concentration. REEs are scattered through the Earth’s crust in amounts too small to mine easily, and much of their global supply chain remains concentrated outside of the United States.

That imbalance has turned REEs into both an economic and national security concern. Countries are competing for the materials sustaining advanced manufacturing, energy systems, and military technologies, increasing pressure to find domestic sources. That urgency has pushed researchers like Tripathi, Huang, and Xie to look at coal fly ash differently: not just as industrial waste but as a potential source of materials that modern technology depends on.

Coal naturally contains trace amounts of rare earth elements. Burning the coal concentrates those elements in the ash left behind.

Tripathi developed a method for extracting rare earth elements that avoids the corrosive chemicals used in conventional extraction. The same ash that once coated her rooftop could now become a secondary domestic source of critical materials.

Mining What Was Left Behind

Coal fly ash already exists in enormous quantities across the United States. About 2 billion tons are stored in impoundments, such as storage ponds and landfills, according to the Department of Energy.

Those sites require long-term monitoring because coal fly ash can release contaminants into soil and groundwater. Major storms can also damage storage sites and spread the material into surrounding communities and waterways.

Inside that ash, REEs are dispersed in tiny concentrations. Recovering them is a challenge; recovering them cleanly is an even greater one. Many existing recovery methods rely on concentrated acids, large amounts of water, or extreme heat during extraction. Some techniques require temperatures high enough to rival industrial furnaces. Others create additional waste streams.

Tripathi and her team wanted a different approach. 

They built the system around a recyclable ionic liquid, a salt-based substance stable enough to operate under conditions that would break down water-based systems. The liquid pulls rare earth elements away from the ash. An applied electrical current then causes the recovered elements to collect onto a surface where they can be removed. Afterward, the liquid can be cleaned and reused.

“The beauty of this system is that it works beyond the limits of water,” Tripathi said. 
“The ionic liquid allows us to recover rare earth elements under conditions that water-based systems just can’t handle.”

The process also changes depending on the voltage applied. At lower voltages, the system selectively recovers neodymium, an REE used in high-strength permanent magnets found in electric vehicles, wind turbines, and defense systems. At higher voltages, it recovers a broader mixture. The system recovered nearly half of the available neodymium during testing.

Beyond Coal Ash

Tripathi has shown that the chemistry works in small batches. The next challenge is scale: whether the system can recover enough rare earth elements efficiently enough to make the process commercially practical.

The same approach could extend beyond coal fly ash. Batteries, discarded electronics, and medical waste all contain valuable metals that often end up buried in landfills or destroyed during disposal.

For Tripathi, the idea began at home, where fly ash would settle on her terrace. What once seemed like an ordinary nuisance could help reshape how critical materials are recovered from waste. 

Tripathi’s research is published in Environmental Science and Technology. 
It was supported by the U.S. Department of Energy.

For most, that heart-pounding uncertainty ends the moment the foot finds solid ground. But for many individuals living with conditions like stroke or spinal cord injury (SCI), that sense of disconnect is a permanent reality.

“These conditions of course have a huge effect on our ability to move around and be independent — but the other side of it is the sensory feedback that we lose,” says Matthew Flavin, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Most rehabilitation treatments primarily focus on restoring movement, but “even if you have motor control, if you can’t feel when your foot's touching the ground it can be really hard for you to move around safely.” 

In a new study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, Flavin and an interdisciplinary team of researchers introduce a way to bridge this gap: a wearable “sensory substitution” system that translates foot pressure into high-tech patterns of heat and vibration they can feel elsewhere. 

The system uses high-resolution pressure-sensing insoles designed by the team, which are placed inside a user's shoes to record how their weight shifts in real-time. This data is streamed via Bluetooth to a flexible, skin-conformable array of haptic receivers worn on the forearms, a part of the body that often retains sensation in SCI. The receivers give quick pressure feedback through vibration, while also alerting the user to longer-term pressure “hotspots” through heat. 

“One of the limitations of a lot of approaches in haptics is that you're having to map a missing sense onto a completely different sense,” says Flavin. “We’re keeping the type of information that we're missing, which is the distribution of pressure, and we're just basically putting it on a different part of their body.”

Rerouting the lost sensation was key to making the device intuitive to learn. Participants were able to correctly identify the “feel” of the ground through their arms with high accuracy within a mere two-hour session. When tested with a small group of participants with stroke or SCI, the wearable significantly improved standing balance and led to steadier walking.

“What’s encouraging about these early results is that participants appeared to use the feedback in ways that supported balance and walking,” says John Rogers, a materials science and engineering professor at Northwestern University who collaborated on this study. “Our study suggests that providing pressure information through another part of the body could be a practical path for helping people compensate for lost sensation.” 

While vibration provides immediate feedback for walking and balance, the team views the thermal feedback as a tool for long-term health. Heat is a slower, low-frequency signal that could alert patients to pressure hotspots, potentially preventing diabetic foot ulcers or pressure injuries for those who are bedridden or use wheelchairs.

The small, lightweight system is completely untethered, making it suitable for use during daily activities in and outside the clinic. It’s also highly adaptable to different injury types, which is ideal for conditions as variable as stroke, SCI, and diabetic neuropathy. Placement of the haptic receivers can be adjusted based on where a patient has the most sensation, and the sensitivity of the insoles can be tailored to each patient. 

As a member of several of Georgia Tech’s Interdisciplinary Research Institutes — the Institute for Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society, the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, and the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences — Flavin credits the project’s success to an interdisciplinary effort and deep engagement with clinicians and patients.

“This reinforces the importance of really engaging with your stakeholders very early on,” says Flavin. “If you're not continually refining that concept with those stakeholders, you quickly find that they might be looking for something that your device isn't delivering.”

With new funding from the National Science Foundation (NSF), the team is now working to make the technology even smaller and more reconfigurable, moving closer to a standard wearable for daily clinical use.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2536577123

1. It’s not about exposure anymore. Atlanta is already a global city, so the focus is on whether the World Cup delivers lasting value for residents.
2. Economic impact is uneven. Big headline numbers do not show who actually benefits, and much of the spending may not reach local communities.
3. Infrastructure will be tested. Transportation and downtown systems will face heavy strain, raising concerns about what improvements last beyond the event.
4. The hidden story is food and logistics. Behind the scenes, Georgia Tech researchers are working to reduce food waste and strengthen systems that could outlast the tournament.

A Global Stage and Familiar Promises

As Atlanta welcomes the world for the 2026 FIFA World Cup, the promises are familiar: millions of visitors, global attention, economic growth, and a chance to showcase the city on one of the biggest stages in sports.

But Georgia Tech experts say the real question is not whether the tournament will generate activity — it is who benefits from it and what remains after the final match is played.

From Visibility to Value

Mega-events have long been sold as catalysts for transformation. The 1996 Olympics reshaped Atlanta’s physical landscape and helped position the city as a global destination. Thirty years later, the World Cup arrives at a very different moment.

“There are similarities,” said Emily Barrett, assistant professor in the School of City and Regional Planning. “Like the Olympics, the World Cup is an accelerator for infrastructure upgrades and public and private investment alike.”

Atlanta is seeing significant public investment in transportation improvements and billions of dollars in private development downtown. But today’s Atlanta is very different from Atlanta in the 1990s.

“Atlanta is no longer a city seeking recognition on the world stage,” Barrett said. “We are a thriving and growing city.”

That shifts the conversation from visibility to value.

“The open question is whether hosting mega-events makes the city work better for the people who live here,” Barrett added.

The Economics Behind the Headlines

Assessing that value becomes more complicated when economic forecasts enter the conversation.

Large projections often dominate headlines, but Declan Abernethy, lecturer in the School of History and Sociology, cautions that economic impact estimates rarely tell the whole story.

“It is far easier to put out an economic impact projection compared to the difficulty of measuring impact,” Abernethy said.

While visitors will spend money on hotels, restaurants, transportation, and entertainment, he notes that much of that spending may not reach the community.

“When we look closely at that spending, we can see that much of the profit will be taken in by large corporations or FIFA in the immediate vicinity of Mercedes-Benz Stadium and not as much by Atlanta residents or small businesses,” he said.

According to Barrett, economic studies often overlook a critical question: What could alternative investments have accomplished?

“Economic studies rarely account for displacement costs, or whether the same public dollars could have generated similar or better outcomes if invested elsewhere,” she said.

Pressure Points Across the City

The World Cup’s impact extends beyond economics; it will also test Atlanta’s infrastructure at a scale few events can match.

Michael Hunter, professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, says the biggest challenge may be the volume of people moving through the city.

“There will be a number of pressure points. However, one of the most significant will be just the number of people,” Hunter said. “This event will attract significant crowds.”

Atlanta’s transportation agencies have spent years preparing, drawing on lessons learned from events including the Super Bowl, World Series, and major concerts. Still, capacity limits are unavoidable.

“There is only so much traffic that MARTA or any transit agency can handle,” Hunter said. “People need to understand that there will be congestion and longer wait times. The key is to be patient.”

The concern is whether those investments result in lasting improvements or merely support a few weeks of activity.

Abernethy argues that the World Cup should be viewed as part of a broader vision for Atlanta rather than a standalone catalyst.

“We are seeing the World Cup as a part of a longer-running and more cohesive vision for sport and economic development downtown,” he said. “Atlanta may not be repeating the same cycle nor cracking downtown’s development problem with the World Cup itself.”

Behind the Scenes: Food and Logistics

Infrastructure challenges extend beyond transportation. Feeding hundreds of thousands of visitors while minimizing waste requires its own network of logistics, coordination, and planning.

Nicole Kennard, a research scientist at Georgia Tech’s Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, views the tournament as an opportunity to strengthen how food moves throughout the city.

“These large events are a really big opportunity for us to coordinate and test our infrastructure,” Kennard said. “We have to think critically about how to improve the infrastructure and ensure its resilience and efficiency.”

Working with organizations such as Second Helpings Atlanta, the official food rescue partner for the World Cup, Georgia Tech researchers are building technologies and tools to improve coordination among food rescue groups. The effort aims to keep surplus food out of landfills by quickly moving it from stadiums and vendors to local food organizations.

“It’s really a logistics problem, a data problem, and a coordination problem,” Kennard said. “The faster you can move food from the point of surplus directly to a pantry, the more likely it is to reach people who need it.”

What Legacy Looks Like

Ultimately, Atlanta’s World Cup legacy may not be measured by attendance figures or visitor spending alone.

“How we evaluate success depends on what we choose to measure, and too often we focus on headline numbers instead of who actually benefits,” said Abernethy.

Kennard sees the tournament as a chance to build systems that outlast the event itself. “What we build for the World Cup could become critical infrastructure for future emergencies and disasters,” she said.

Atlanta already knows how to host a global event. Whether the investments, partnerships, and infrastructure created for the World Cup leave the city stronger after the crowds leave remains to be seen.

The continued recognition highlights Georgia Tech’s research leadership in advancing energy solutions across technology, science, policy, and economics and in delivering technically advanced solutions that is scalable, secure, and sustainable for the future.

“The scale and integration of our energy ecosystem is among Georgia Tech’s great strengths,” said Executive Vice President for Research Tim Lieuwen. “A defining part of that ecosystem is the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI), our interdisciplinary research institute that brings together the talents of researchers from across disciplines to accelerate energy innovation and deliver real-world solutions.”

SEI integrates energy activities at Georgia Tech by connecting more than 1,000 researchers across the entire energy value chain and enabling collaboration with industry, government, communities, and nonprofits. SEI is deeply engaged in building community, developing resources, promoting thought leadership, and marshaling the full resources of Georgia Tech around tackling the tough energy and environmental problems and opportunities society faces.

“Georgia Tech’s energy leadership is built on the depth of our research and the breadth of our collaborations,” said Yuanzhi Tang, SEI’s executive director. “By connecting expertise across the full energy value chain, we are advancing solutions that enhance affordability, reliability, security, and sustainability.” 

U.S. News & World Report evaluates the academic research performance of universities in 51 subject areas using indicators such as publications, citations, and global and regional research reputation. Georgia Tech was assessed among 292 institutions in the U.S. and continues its strong standing in the rankings, claiming the No. 32 spot overall in the nation and No. 9 among public universities.

The grant will support building a robotics and AI ecosystem for dexterous and mobile manipulation, enabling robots to move through environments, interact with objects, and adapt to changing conditions.

Ye Zhao, LIDAR director and associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, leads the project, with Anqi Wu, assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering, serving as co-principal investigator.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

It affects up to one-third of the human population and can create symptoms severe enough to lead to hospitalization, yet much about what causes it remains a mystery. It’s rarely discussed in public, often goes undiagnosed, and remains a consistently underfunded and understudied area of science.  

The seed grant program, administered by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS), reaches faculty members from a diverse array of disciplines due to the generous support provided by broad-based partnerships in addition to the funds provided by the Sustainability Next committee. This year’s partners are the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the College of Design, BBISS, the Renewable Bioproducts Institute, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, and the Institute for Data Engineering and Science.

The goal of the program is to nurture promising research areas for future large-scale collaborative sustainability research, research translation, and/or high-impact outreach; to provide mid-career faculty with leadership and community-building opportunities; and to broaden and strengthen the Georgia Tech sustainability community as a whole. The call for proposals was modeled after the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research’s Moving Teams Forward and Forming Teams programs.

This year’s seed grant awards align with the four main thematic areas in which BBISS aims to enhance Georgia Tech’s research to address some of our most pressing sustainability challenges:

• AI and Sustainability, and the Sustainability of AI Infrastructure.
• Climate Science, Technology, and Solutions.
• Healthy Environments and Sustainable Resource Use.
• Resilience and Regeneration.

The 2026 Sustainability Next Seed Grant awards are:

Forming Teams:

• Actualize Shallow Geothermal Systems for Decentralized Heating. Principal Investigator (PI): Sheng Dai.
• Building Community University Research Capacity for PFAS Testing and Treatment. PI: Ruth C. Yow. Co-Principal Investigators (Co-PIs): Joe Bozeman, Yongsheng Chen, and Ahmed Ibrahim Yunus.
• A Global Sustainability Analysis of Places “Urbanizing from Within.” PI: Gregory Randolph. Co‑PIs: Sabina Dewan, Yiyi He, John Taylor, and Celine Vacchiani‑Marcuzzo.
• Creating a Refusal Taxonomy to Explore Alternate Computing Practices. PI: Richmond Wong. Co‑PIs: Heidi Biggs and Carl DiSalvo.
• Demystifying Data Centers: Examining Georgia Tech’s Coda HPCC in the Context of Sustainability and Resilience. PI: Scott Duncan. Co-PIs: Jung-Ho Lewe and David Solano Sarmiento.
• Physical Transport of Sunlight‑Exposed Dissolved Organic Carbon in the New Arctic. PI: Lilian Dove. Co‑PI: Jennifer Bowen.

Moving Teams Forward:

• Agentic AI Digital Twins for Hurricane Resilience in Coastal Georgia. PI: Ali Sarhadi.
• CLEAR‑SE: Co‑Creating a Center‑Scale Network for Advancing Collaborative, Long‑Term Action Research on Community‑Led Resilience and Disaster Risk Reduction in the Southeast. PI: Sofía Pérez‑Guzmán. Co‑PI: Jennifer Hirsch.
• Data Center Effects on Communities in Georgia’s Black Belt. PI: Cindy Kaiying Lin. Co‑PIs: Joe Bozeman, Anthony Harding, Allen Hyde, Nicole Kennard, Jung-Ho Lewe, and Ahmed Saeed.
• Reimagining Southern Forests: Enabling Cost‑Effective Sustainable Production of High‑Value Climate‑Ready Southern Pines. PI: Caitlin Petro. Co‑PIs: Lucas Clay, Ulrika Egertsdotter, and Joel Kostka.
• Human‑Technology Collaborations: Towards Sustainable and Inclusive Food Systems. PI: Rosemarie Santa Gonzalez. Co‑PIs: Ashutosh Dhekne, Sylivia Janicki, Nicole Kennard, Yaman Sangar, and Abigale Stangl.
• Guiding Transportation with Community Action through Research, Education, and Service (GT‑CARES). PI: Rounaq Basu. Co-PIs: Sofía Pérez‑Guzmán, Jennifer Hirsch, and Scott Moffat.
• Instability‑Resolved Ocean Mixing for Climate Prediction and Climate Solutions. PI: Suhas S. Jain. Co‑PIs: Mohammad Mohaghar, and Donald Webster.
• Buildings Next: Forming a Transdisciplinary Consortium for Sustainable Building Innovation. PI: Paula Gomez. Co‑PI: Allison Bridges.
• Paper and Natural Dye Living Exhibition. PI: Anna Doll. Co‑PI: Virginia Howell.

1. You’re paying more at the pump, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Gas prices are the most visible sign of the crisis, and the increases are already significant. National average retail gasoline prices are more than $1.20 higher than they were in February, before the conflict escalated.

“Even though U.S. petroleum production often exceeds our consumption, we are not insulated from disruptions in global oil supply because oil is a globally traded commodity,” says director of the Energy Policy and Innovation Center, Laura Taylor. “If supply is restricted anywhere in the world, prices will rise everywhere, including in the U.S.”

Markets expect some relief by fall, with future prices pointing lower than today’s levels. But Tony Harding, assistant professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, cautions, “Prices are likely to remain above pre-conflict levels for the foreseeable future, and temporary relief measures, such as Georgia’s motor fuel tax suspension, will not last forever.”

Taylor puts it plainly: “Wages are not rising faster than prices, so people are feeling the pinch and will continue to do so.”

2. Your summer plans just got more expensive.

The impact does not stop at the gas station. For Americans planning summer travel, the timing of this conflict could not be worse. Matthew Oliver, associate professor in the School of Economics, points to commercial air travel as one of the most exposed sectors.

“Jet fuel prices have roughly doubled in the wake of the current oil price spike, putting immediate upward pressure on airfares,” says Oliver.

The ripple effects extend far beyond travel. 

“Oil is an input into the supply chain of nearly every good at some point,” says Bobby Harris, assistant professor in the School of Economics. “When input costs go up, prices go up.”

3. Expect to pay more at the grocery store.

The connection between Middle East tensions and the American dinner table is more direct than many realize, because petrochemicals are a key feedstock for fertilizer production.

“Higher oil prices lead to higher fertilizer prices, which lead to higher food prices,” says Oliver. 

Combined with existing tariff pressures and tight supply chains, the strain on household budgets is coming from multiple directions at once.

“If the crisis persists, there will be upward pressure on the prices of nearly every physical good,” Oliver adds.

4. The government’s options are limited, and the clock is ticking.

Washington has tools to respond, but none are silver bullets. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently holds around 400 million barrels and can release about 4 million barrels per day, roughly 20% of U.S. daily demand.

“I see the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a tool to buy time during a crisis,” says public policy professor Dan Matisoff. “But if the conflict drags on, we will ultimately be in a more vulnerable position.”

Quick fixes like price caps or demand subsidies carry trade-offs. 

“Subsidies can mitigate the impact of price shocks, but they can also mask important market signals that help balance supply and demand,” says Harding, using Europe’s 2022 energy crisis as a cautionary example.

5. The smartest thing Americans can do right now is think about efficiency.

“People in general tend to undervalue energy efficiency,” says Matisoff. “Think of energy efficiency investments as a sort of hedge or insurance against volatile energy prices.”

That means considering fuel efficiency when buying a car, and looking at heat pumps, electric vehicles, and home energy upgrades when the time is right.

“Higher energy prices increase the value of investing in energy efficiency upgrades to your home and adopting technologies that are less dependent on fossil fuels,” says Harding.

For families navigating uncertainty, both economists and policy experts point to the same practical advice: Reduce your exposure to fossil fuel price swings before the next crisis hits.

Dust-sized meteoroids and solar wind gradually alter lunar soil, producing tiny metallic particles known as nanophase iron. For years, scientists have used sensing data influenced by those particles to estimate the weathering age of the moon’s surface, but they weren’t sure which weather source primarily drives these changes.

To investigate, physics Ph.D. candidate Roshan Trivedi and Advik Vira, a recent Ph.D. graduate, exposed ilmenite, a common mineral on both the Earth and moon, to a synthetic version of solar wind. The experiment produced nanophase iron under controlled conditions, suggesting that solar wind plays a major role in shaping the lunar surface observed today. 

The team presented its findings in “Creation of Lunar-Like Rims in Ilmenite Using Synthetic Solar Wind,” published in The Planetary Science Journal in June. Their work was conducted through the Georgia Tech Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER), a NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) led by Georgia Tech Regents’ Professor Thom Orlando, a co-author of the study. A central aim of CLEVER is to understand the science and effects of space weathering as they pertain to the goals of NASA’s Artemis missions.

By understanding how the moon’s surface morphs on a microscopic level, scientists will be able to better interpret remote sensing data. Soon, we won’t have to rely just on moon missions to learn detailed characteristics of the lunar surface.

The work could also shed light on another longstanding question: how water forms on the moon. 

“Water would be a fantastic resource for humans operating on the moon, but scientifically, we are driven simply by the question of how water gets there in the first place,” said Phillip First, a professor in the School of Physics. “Solar wind is potentially one way, because protons in solar wind provide the hydrogen of H2O molecules while oxygen is present in lunar minerals.”

Using a vacuum chamber in Orlando’s lab to simulate solar wind and high-resolution electron microscopy to analyze the samples, the researchers recreated the effects of thousands of years of solar wind exposure.

“Scientists have been doing laboratory radiation experiments for years, but they haven't been able to characterize the results at this level of detail,” said lead author Trivedi.

The team can now simulate a wide range of exposure ages, which may help explain how water forms. In addition to forming nanophase iron, the experiments created tiny voids within the mineral — potential sites where hydrogen from solar wind could bond with oxygen to form water. 

“Having the ability to recreate the solar wind and having results look so similar to actual lunar samples is excellent,” said co-lead author Vira. 

DOI: 10.3847/PSJ/ae6074

Funding: This work was directly supported by the NASA SSERVI under CLEVER. Sample preparation was performed at the Georgia Tech Institute for Matter and Systems, which is supported by the National Science Foundation. Collaborations between the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory and Georgia Tech for advanced electron microscopy were supported by the Georgia Tech Center for Space Technology and Research. 

Lieuwen, the executive vice president for Research and Regents’ Professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, received the ASME medal in 2025 in recognition of his pioneering contributions to combustion, clean energy, and the science of resilient energy systems. It is the first ASME Medal ever awarded to a Georgia Tech faculty member or graduate, marking a milestone both for Lieuwen and the Institute.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

Scientists have captured the most detailed structural images to date of a specific type of protein’s DNA repair process. The research could reveal ways to inhibit the effects of the BRCA1 and BRCA2 gene mutations that heighten the risk for breast, ovarian, and other cancers.

“This work lets us see, step by step, one mechanism by which cancer cells could manage to repair their DNA when BRCA genes mutate and fail,” says study co-author Vicki Wysocki, who is chair of the Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. “By capturing this process in detail, this study opens the door to understanding how those cancerous cells survive and how treatments might disrupt that mechanism.”

Designated as a Breakthrough Article, the study Mechanism of single-strand annealing from native mass spectrometry and cryo-EM structures of RAD52 homolog Mgm101 was recently published in Nucleic Acids Research.

In addition to Wysocki, who is a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and a professor emerita at Ohio State University, the Georgia Tech research team included co-first author Zihao Qi, a Ph.D. candidate in the Wysocki Lab.

They were joined by Ohio State researchers co-first author Carter Wheat and senior author Charles Bell, who is a professor of biological chemistry and pharmacology in the College of Medicine. Additional authors include Metro High School student Miqdad Hussain and CAS researcher Katerina Zakharova.

When BRCA Fails

Normally, BRCA genes help prevent cancer by acting as tumor suppressors — producing proteins that help repair broken DNA. When cancer cells lack the tumor-suppression function of normal BRCA genes, research has shown that a protein called RAD52 performs DNA repair.

Since RAD52 allows cancer cells to survive and replicate without tumor suppression, researchers have wondered if blocking it would kill the cancerous cells. Blocking RAD52, however, requires fully understanding its repair activities, which have been difficult to capture with even the most sophisticated techniques. 

DNA strands break every day in cells, which is why proteins exist to fix the breaks and keep cellular processes running smoothly, the team says. But because repairs must happen quickly and human proteins are often more complex than their ancestral counterparts, even the most advanced imaging equipment can’t capture every step in the process.

In order to understand RAD52 better, the research team turned to its ancestral protein, Mgm101, to observe several key steps in its DNA repair process.

A Clearer Image

The team decided to leverage multiple types of imaging. Wysocki’s lab at Georgia Tech conducted native mass spectrometry and mass photometry, using light to measure masses of protein-DNA complexes. The results showed that the ancestral protein Mgm101 assembled from a single copy of itself into a large multi-unit ring composed of 19 copies of the protein.

“This ring is essentially a template,” Wysocki explains. “The first strand of DNA can come down, and then the second strand comes on and starts being annealed to the first strand.” Annealing occurs when two single strands of DNA come together to form the characteristic double helix structure.

The findings were supported by what Bell’s lab determined using cryogenic electron microscopy, observing structures floating in solution and frozen in a thin layer of ice.

“RAD52 high-resolution structures have been determined with single-stranded DNA, but not with the two DNAs that it’s trying to anneal,” Bell says. “Its job is to bind single-stranded DNA and anneal it to its complement sequence. It’s been captured structurally, but only in a few states relevant to the reaction.”

“Here, we have more of the states along the full pathway from substrate, to intermediate and product. And the duplex intermediate is a conformation that’s never been seen before.”

Previously, researchers were unsure if this DNA repair process used one protein ring or two rings working together, the team says. Their findings show that just one ring is used — and that this is likely consistent across different species.

Paths to Treatment

Next, the team plans to try capturing the same phases of the DNA repair process with RAD52 from humans. A clearer understanding of how this family of proteins binds to DNA strands and coaxes them back together after a break provides insights for drug targets that could halt the process in cancer cells empowered by mutated BRCA genes, they say.

“It’s still a proposed mechanism: Just because we see these snapshots of the process doesn’t mean we know all the details, but we do have the best snapshots for any protein that does this single-strand annealing,” says Bell. “This focuses our strategies for drug development.”

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1093/nar/gkag320

Funding: This work was supported by the U.S. National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health. The cryo-EM data were collected at Ohio State’s Center for Electron Microscopy and Analysis and processed using the Ohio Supercomputer Center.

It was Ferguson’s own first manufacturing industry job at Glidden Paint in high school that tipped a row of dominoes, clearing his way out of poverty. Following next in the Hall County native’s favor was his receiving the Pell Grant and HOPE Grant, which led to his associate’s degree and first job in education.

Since then, Ferguson has spent the better part of three decades advancing workforce preparation and education access in Georgia, first as chief information officer for the Technical College System of Georgia, and now through his current roles at Tech.

“Access to higher education changed the trajectory of my life. The question now is how we build systems that create those same opportunities for others — whether someone starts their career right out of high school, earns credentials while working, or returns later to pursue advanced technical education or engineering. We need to create flexible pathways that develop talent at every stage of life.”

Steven Ferguson

Forged in Manufacturing

Ferguson was born into a family of “makers,” who got by on odd jobs and money from their small bait and tackle shop on Lake Lanier and later peddling a variety of goods. At a young age, Ferguson learned salesmanship and picked up the tinkering spirit.

“My dad was always entrepreneurial, and I think you might even consider us manufacturers, always making fishing equipment or other things,” said Ferguson. “From a very young age, I was out making jig heads, tying flies, and bagging hooks or sinkers. It was definitely in my blood.”

When he was in 10th grade, a teacher nominated Ferguson for a new youth apprenticeship program. That opportunity ultimately led to his role as an information technology apprentice at Glidden Paint, which became Ferguson’s first job in the manufacturing industry. The job was a perfect fit for Ferguson, who enjoyed learning more about the manufacturing process and the practical outlet for his computing knowledge.

He continued working there until he began studying computer science at North Georgia College and State University. Later, he transferred to Gainesville College (GC) to participate in a joint enrollment program designed to lead to eventual enrollment for a bachelor’s degree at Tech.

However, before Ferguson completed his time at GC, he had an associate’s degree and, more importantly, a job offer. GC wanted him to train others for careers in information technology.

Read Full Story on the Enrollment Management News Page

But the radiation in harsh space environments can significantly degrade data stored in NAND flash memory. To counteract this, Georgia Tech researchers have developed a new form of NAND flash memory that can both handle AI and withstand extreme radiation.

This technology uses ferroelectricity, which is when certain materials can hold a permanent, spontaneous electric charge, called polarization. In a recent Nano Letters paper, the researchers show that NAND flash memory made with ferroelectric materials can withstand radiation levels up to 30 times higher than more conventional NAND flash memory. 

“If you send traditional flash memory to space, the radiation interacting with flash memory’s trapped electric charge can easily corrupt the data,” said Asif Khan, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “In contrast, ferroelectric NAND flash storage does not store data as trapped electrical charge, but rather stores it as polarization in the material. And polarization is very resilient to radiation effects.”

Radiation Revelation

The insight that NAND flash-compatible ferroelectric memory could withstand high amounts of radiation surprised the researchers. Ferroelectricity in hafnium oxide — the silicon-compatible material that makes this memory possible — was discovered just 15 years ago, and Khan’s lab has been determining its capabilities for the past decade. The team knew ferroelectricity was radiation-tolerant, but not exactly how tolerant when implemented in NAND flash architectures.

Lance Fernandes, an ECE Ph.D. student and the paper’s first author, built the ferroelectric NAND memory chips in Georgia Tech’s cleanroom, then sent the chips for radiation testing to collaborators at Pennsylvania State University. Those tests revealed just how extreme the technology’s tolerance could be.

The Penn State researchers’ testing showed that ferroelectric flash technology can sustain radiation as high as 1 million rads (radiation absorbed doses) — the equivalent of 100 million X-rays — making it 30 times more durable than traditional memory. This is well within the radiation-tolerance threshold for most spacecraft: Low-Earth orbit satellites require a tolerance of 5 – 30 kilorads, geostationary orbits need 100 – 300 kilorads, and deep space missions top out at 1 million rads. 

“For data storage in space, it’s not enough for memory to work. It has to remain reliable under extreme radiation,” said Fernandes. 

“And what makes our storage especially exciting," added Khan, “is that ferroelectric NAND flash isn't just radiation-tolerant; it also stays reliable even in extremely harsh radiation environments. That's exactly what we need for space.”

From orbiting satellites to future missions surveying Jupiter’s moons, successful space exploration requires electronics that can process abundant AI data and will not fail when communication is delayed. Ferroelectric memory offers a way to keep critical data intact, no matter how harsh the environment.

The work was supported in part by SUPREME, one of seven centers in JUMP 2.0, a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) program sponsored by DARPA. The work was performed as part of the Interaction of Ionizing Radiation With Matter University Research Alliance, sponsored by the Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, under grant HDTRA1-20-2-0002.

Enabling Radiation Hardness in Solid-State NAND Storage Utilizing a Laminated Ferroelectric Stack Lance Fernandes, Stuart Wodzro, Prasanna Venkatesan, Priyankka Ravikumar, Ming-Yen Lee, Minji Shon, Dyutimoy Chakraborty, Taeyoung Song, Sanghyun Kang, Salma Soliman, Mengkun Tian, Jason Yeager, Jackson Adler, Jiayi Chen, Zekai Wang, Douglas Wolfe, Shimeng Yu, Andrea Padovani, Suman Datta, Biswajit Ray, and Asif Khan. Nano Letters 2026 26 (10), 3390-3397

DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05947

Read more »

That principle is especially relevant today across the artificial intelligence (AI) landscape. As systems scale, they increasingly become harder to measure, compare, and fix, particularly within proprietary environments. 

A team led by Georgia Tech, working with collaborators across industry, has developed a new approached called Chakra to bring greater clarity to complex AI systems. 

“Imagine a room where everyone is trying to collaborate, but each person speaks a different language,” said Tushar Krishna, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who is leading the effort. “That’s a bit like today’s AI ecosystem. The internet worked because it was built on shared practices and protocols. In AI, we’re still building that kind of common foundation.” 

The work, which Krishna leads through the nonprofit MLCommons, was released alongside a paper at the 2026 Conference on Machine Learning and Systems(MLSys) in Bellevue, Wash.

Godavarti, then a second-year chemical and biomolecular engineering (ChBE) student, joined a course on chemical equity focused on reducing chemical exposure in vulnerable communities. The class, part of Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program, embeds students in long-term research teams that span disciplines and semesters.

She and her classmates developed a computational model that estimates how dangerous chemical vapors build up in enclosed spaces, such as tanker trucks. Their work culminated in a paper, “Modeling Time-Dependent Chemical Concentrations in Confined Spaces for General Safety Applications,” published recently in ACS Chemical Health & Safety.

For Godavarti, the experience helped clarify her future career endeavors. 

“I was always motivated to keep going on this project because chemical equity is something I genuinely care about,” she said. “I realized I really enjoyed working on open-ended projects after this class, and this confirmed my desire to pursue a Ph.D.”

She will begin her ChBE doctoral studies at Northwestern University this fall.

Bridging Disciplines

The VIP class grew out of a gap between research labs and reality. Pamela Pollet, a faculty member in Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, is used to working in controlled lab settings with safety measures like vent hoods. But after she consulted on a project where commercial workers were accidentally exposed to harmful chemicals, she started to think about safety differently.

“There was a disconnect between what we do with chemicals in our controlled environments, which we understand very well, and how people interact with chemicals every day,” she said.

To bridge that gap, Pollet partnered with Jenny Houlroyd, the occupational group health manager of the Enterprise Innovation Institute’s (EI2) Safety, Health, and Environmental Services Program. Houlroyd works with Georgia businesses to reduce workplace hazards and protect employee health.

“We realized how siloed this work can be,” Houlroyd said. “Chemical safety researchers and chemists often operate separately, but their skills are complementary. That’s how we came up with the idea for the class.”

The VIP format made that collaboration possible. The 20-student team included majors from chemistry, biochemistry, biology, computer science, neuroscience, and ChBE. In addition to research, students heard from guest speakers — including journalists, lawyers, and policymakers — whose work intersects with chemical safety.

Modeling a Real-World Risk

The students focused on a practical problem in industrial hygiene: quickly estimating a person’s exposure to hazardous chemicals after a spill or open container in a confined space.

“If you hire an industrial hygienist like me, it’s going to take time to schedule, and it’s going to be expensive,” Houlroyd said. “But if there’s a chemical spill event happening, you need that safety data right away.”

To address this, the students built a computational model that simulates how chemicals evaporate and spread through air in enclosed environments. Using benzene, a common solvent, as a test case, the model predicts how benzene concentrations change over time, from minutes to hours after a spill or residual pool in an enclosed space. It can also estimate exposure at different heights, accounting for whether someone is standing upright or crouching in a chemical-heavy area.

“We’re addressing important gaps in modeling chemical exposures,” said John Pederson, a chemistry Ph.D. student who mentored the student team. “There’s been strong work in industrial settings, but less attention to environments found in transportation, agriculture, and sanitation, for example. It's an easily overlooked fact that working with paints, coatings, cleaning solutions, and other solvents presents a risk of acute or chronic exposure.”

From Classroom to Impact

The team ultimately hopes to make the model widely accessible and create a user-friendly app. While that work is ongoing, Pollet and Houlroyd say the project already demonstrates the power of interdisciplinary learning.

“This project was a very nice overlap of our fields,” Pollet said. “It helps students understand real-world scenarios in a way you can’t replicate in a traditional classroom.”

For Houlroyd, the collaboration also extended her impact beyond the field.

“I work for EI2, and we’re primarily external-facing and helping businesses out across the state of Georgia, but this has been a great opportunity to take what I'm learning in the field and then share it with the students,” she said. “I am so proud of the students. To see them take this big issue and make it into something the industry can use is so exciting.”

Modeling Time-Dependent Chemical Concentrations in Confined Spaces for General Safety Applications

Diya Godavarti, Waynell Simbafo, John Pederson, Jenny Houlroyd, and Pamela Pollet

ACS Chemical Health & Safety Article ASAP

DOI: 10.1021/acs.chas.6c00021

Read more »

RAI calls the bicycle robot an ultra-mobility vehicle (UMV). It can reach a height of 3 feet and can jump from the floor onto a platform.

The contributions of a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student helped make these feats possible through a robot control policy he developed.

Jeonghwan Kim, who is pursuing a Ph.D. in robotics under the advisement of Associate Professor Sehoon Ha, spent two semesters interning at RAI. His task was to design a policy to teach the UMV to land after a flip.

The result was iterative motion imitation (IMI), a novel method that imitates flip trajectories generated from prior examples. Kim said the robot bases its flip on a demonstration, and human engineers reconstruct and refine the flip path through simulation to fill in the gaps.

“To guide the robot to flip, we started with an imperfect trajectory generated by a motor-based controller and then ran simulations,” Kim said. “It’s an unstable trajectory, but we use it as a guide to train a single policy that can track it as it lands and tries to balance itself.”

Sticking the Landing

Kim interned under the supervision of Shamel Fahmi, a research scientist at the RAI Institute. RAI has been developing the UMV for nearly three years.

“We wanted to work on a different robot morphology that wasn’t legs or legs with wheels,” Fahmi said. “That’s when we thought of working with bikes. 

“We want to merge the athleticism of (Boston Dynamics’) Atlas with the mobility of a bike. We wanted a robot that can go anywhere, do parkour, and acrobatics.”

Fahmi said that before Kim arrived, the research team had trouble getting the UMV to land consistently without breaking or falling.

The UMV has two joints — an upper and a lower. The upper joint contains the motors and pulls the lower joint along as it propels into the air. The problem is getting the lighter lower joint to absorb the impact of landing without being crushed by the heavier upper joint.

“That’s what brings reinforcement learning into the equation,” Fahmi said. “We teach the robot to minimize its impact on the ground to land gracefully.”

Fahmi said that Kim proved the imitation examples the robot learns from don’t have to be perfect. The process takes some time, but all it needs is a rough idea to get started.

“You can have an imperfect sketch and then constantly refine it,” Fahmi said. “The first time, it’s not going to go well. 

“We don’t care about torque or power limits as long as it does the motion. Then we’ll have a slightly better reference, repeat it, and imitate it again. In every iteration, we can add more parameters.”

Up Against the Clock

Kim said he felt the pressure of time constraints during his two semesters with RAI as he worked to achieve consistent, successful landings. Even though he had multiple UMVs to experiment with, they broke down dozens of times. Each time one broke, a hardware team at RAI had to repair it.

“There was a lot of pressure to not only get this working before my internship ended, but also knowing there are costs behind every failed attempt, and every time the robot breaks, it takes time to repair it,” Kim said. 

“It took almost five months for it to land without breaking. Then we needed two more months for it to stay balanced after the landing. It requires a lot of engineering effort to achieve a robust control policy for a safe flip.”

By the time Kim left RAI, the IMI policy had achieved consistent, seamless landings.

“The jump right now is what we call the visitor demo,” Fahmi said. “If there are guests coming over to see it, we want to show them something that is extremely impressive, but also, more importantly, extremely reliable. It never fails.

“It was only possible because of the huge effort we put into designing, maintaining, and continuously improving the robot.”

Kim authored a paper on his framework and will present it at this week’s International Conference on Robotics and Automation (ICRA) in Vienna.

For more information about the UMV project, please visit the RAI blog or watch their video on YouTube.

As an energy economist, I am often asked about what contributes to gas prices and what different policies can do to affect them.

The price of a retail gallon of gas is the sum of four things: the cost of crude oil, refining, distribution and marketing, and taxes.

In nationwide figures from January 2026, crude oil accounted for about 51% of the pump price, refining roughly 20%, distribution and marketing about 11% and taxes about 18%. That mix shifts with conditions: When crude oil prices spike, that can drive more than 60% of the price; when the price drops, taxes and logistics are larger shares of the cost.

Crude Oil is the Biggest Ingredient

Because the price of crude oil is the largest element, most of the price at the pump is derived from the global oil market.

Usually, big swings in crude prices come mainly from shifts in global demand and expectations – not from supply disruptions, according to widely cited research in 2009 by the economist Lutz Kilian.

But what is happening in early 2026 with the war in Iran is one of the exceptions: a classic supply shock. Severe disruptions to shipping through the Strait of Hormuz and attacks on Middle East oil infrastructure have taken millions of barrels a day off the global market.

Most drivers generally can’t quickly reduce how much they drive or how much gas they use when prices rise, so gasoline demand doesn’t change much in the short run. That means a jump in crude costs tends to result in people paying more rather than driving less.

Refining, Regulations, and the California Puzzle

Refining turns crude into gasoline at industrial scale. The U.S. doesn’t have a single gasoline market, though. Roughly a quarter of U.S. gasoline is a cleaner-burning blend of petroleum-derived chemicals called “reformulated gasoline,” which is required in urban areas across 17 states and the District of Columbia to reduce smog.

California uses an even stricter formulation that few out-of-state refineries make. California is also geographically isolated: No pipelines bring gasoline in from other U.S. refining regions.

California’s gasoline prices have long run above the national average, explained in part by higher state taxes and stricter environmental rules. But since a refinery fire in Torrance, California, in 2015 reduced production capacity, the state’s prices have been about 20 to 30 cents a gallon higher than what those factors would indicate.

Energy economist and University of California, Berkeley, professor Severin Borenstein has called this the “mystery gasoline surcharge” and attributes it to the fact that there isn’t as much competition between refineries or gas stations in California as in other states. California’s own Division of Petroleum Market Oversight says the surcharge cost the state’s drivers about $59 billion from 2015 to 2024. It’s not exactly clear who is getting that money, but it could be gas stations themselves or refineries, through complex contracts with gas stations.

Getting the Gas Into Your Car

The distribution and marketing category covers the costs of everything involved in getting the gasoline from the refinery gate to your tank.

Gasoline moves by pipeline, ship, rail and truck to wholesale terminals, and then by local delivery truck to service stations.

At the retailer’s end, the key factors are station rent and labor, the cost to buy gasoline in bulk to be able to sell it, credit card fees of as much as 6 to 10 cents a gallon at current prices, and franchise fees paid to the national brand, such as Sunoco or ExxonMobil, for permission to put their branding on the gas station.

Most gas station operators net only a few cents per gallon on fuel itself – which is why many gas stations are really convenience stores with pumps out front. Borenstein and some of his collaborators have also documented that retail gas prices rise quickly when wholesale costs climb but fall slowly when wholesale costs drop.

The Question of Gas Tax Holidays

The federal government charges a tax on fuel, of 18.4 cents a gallon for gasoline and 24.3 cents a gallon for diesel. States charge their own taxes, ranging from 70.9 cents a gallon for gas in California to 8.95 cents in Alaska.

When gas prices rise, many politicians start talking about temporarily suspending their state’s gas tax. That does reduce prices, but not as much as politicians – or consumers – might hope. Research on past gas tax holidays has found that consumers get about 79% of the reduction in gas taxes. That means oil companies and fuel retailers keep about one-fifth of the tax cut for themselves rather than passing that savings to the public.

Gas tax holidays also reduce funding for what the taxes are designed to pay for, typically roads and bridges. That pushes road and bridge upkeep costs onto future drivers and general taxpayers.

There is an additional problem, too: Taxes on gasoline are supposed to charge drivers for some of the costs their driving imposes on everyone else – carbon emissions, local air pollution, congestion and crashes. But Borenstein has found that U.S. fuel tax levels are already far below the true cost to society. Removing the tax on drivers effectively raises the costs for everyone else.

The Jones Act: A Small Number That Adds Up

The 1920 Jones Act is a federal law that requires cargo moving between U.S. ports to travel on vessels built and registered in the U.S., owned by U.S. citizens, and crewed primarily by U.S. citizens and permanent residents. Of the world’s 7,500 oil tankers, only 54 meet this requirement. Only 43 of these can transport refined fuels such as gasoline.

So, despite significant refining capacity on the Gulf Coast, some U.S. gasoline is exported overseas even as the Northeast imports fuel, in part reflecting the relatively high cost of moving fuel between U.S. ports.

Economists Ryan Kellogg and Rich Sweeney estimate that the law raises East Coast gasoline prices by about a penny and a half per gallon on average, costing drivers roughly $770 million a year. In light of the war’s effect on gas prices, the Trump administration has temporarily suspended the Jones Act requirements – an action more commonly taken when hurricanes knock out Gulf Coast refineries and pipeline networks.

What Moves the Number

The result of all these factors is that the price that drivers see at the pump mostly reflects the global price of crude, plus a stack of domestic costs, only some of which are inefficient.

Tax holidays give a partial, short-lived rebate. Jones Act waivers trim pennies, though permanent repeal may cause more fundamental changes, such as reduced rail and truck transport of all goods, which could lower costs, emissions and infrastructure damage associated with cargo transportation. Harmonizing fuel blends across states and seasons may lower prices somewhat, but likely at the expense of increased emissions.

Ultimately, the best protection against oil price shocks is a more efficient gas-burning vehicle, or one that doesn’t burn gasoline at all. In the meantime, the best I can offer as an economist is clarity about what that $4.30 actually buys.

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

The new technology is also set to revolutionize the scale of policy training data collection, which is essential to advancing robotic capabilities and meeting growing production demand.

COBALT is a mobile app that turns smartphones into controllers for robot arms. With a secure Wi-Fi connection to a server, users can move their phones in any direction, and the robot arm will mirror the motion — from anywhere in the world.

Ayush Agarwal, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing who leads a research team developing COBALT, said it works like the games people play on smartphones. Users can press a button to have the arm grasp an object, move it, and release it with another button.

Agarwal conducted several user studies with participants in nine countries who remotely operated robot arms inside Georgia Tech’s People, AI & Robotics (PAIR) Lab. The lab is directed by Assistant Professor Animesh Garg, who advises Agarwal.

“We built an entire distribution system for remote teleoperation scaled to where we had people from Indonesia, India, and Pakistan operating for us,” Agarwal said. “They were novice operators who had never done it before. By collecting data from these new users, we showed that we can train policies to automate certain tasks.”

Garg envisions a world where data collection for policy training is done through crowdsourcing. He began working toward this goal 10 years ago as a postdoc at Stanford University, when he developed RoboTurk, an earlier version of COBALT.

“There is a large-scale data collection requirement for mass robot production to be possible, and it will not be solved purely through simulation,” Garg said.

“Our idea was, what if we could get almost every person on the planet to be a passive source for data collection? There are almost five billion people who have smartphones and know how to use them.”

Education and Economy Impact

Another major implication of COBALT could be expanded access to CS and robotics education.

Students can learn to operate a robot remotely in any classroom. In fact, Garg and his lab recently hosted students from Midtown High School in Atlanta to demonstrate COBALT and let them control robot arms from a phone.

Garg also sees the possibility of a “gig economy” in which people pay remote operators to control assistive robots in their homes and complete household chores for them.

“It could be Uber for robots,” he said. “People who want to log onto the platform can do so at their convenience and for as long as they want.”

Companies with robot-dependent labor tasks could also use the platform to enable human oversight.

“If I deploy a robot in a factory that achieves high autonomy for most tasks, but there are still times it needs help, a human could operate the robot from anywhere in the world,” Garg said.

Building a Network

Agarwal’s studies showed that people prefer to interact with and control a robot using a smartphone rather than virtual reality (VR) headsets, controllers, keyboards, mice, or other devices.

“The phone is a more intuitive interface and can provide data quality that’s on par with other commonly used devices,” he said.

Agarwal also said there is minimal latency in the video feed sent back to operators on the other side of the world. That’s because the amount of data being processed is small.

The data is carried over Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC), the same technology used by many streaming services and web conferencing platforms such as Zoom and Google Meet.

“There’s a connection from your phone to the teleoperation server, which is connected to the robots,” Agarwal said.

“Then there’s another connection from the teleoperation server back to the user, which allows for a video stream. We need low latency on both because you don’t want the user to move their phone and wait 10 seconds to see the visual feed.”

Agarwal is the co-lead author of a paper on COBALT that is being presented at the IEEE International Conference on Robotics and Automation this week in Vienna. He said the paper stands out because it has moved from theory to the implementation of an entire distribution network. 

“The real novelty of our paper is the systems that we build around it to actually support the scaling of remote operation and data collection at a global level,” he said. 

The Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI) at Georgia Tech hosted its Spring 2026 Workshop, “Resilient Forests to Renewable Futures,” on May 11 and 12. The workshop brought together university researchers, scientists, and industry partners to discuss new developments shaping the future of the bioeconomy. 

Fiona Ryan, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, is pioneering research that tracks and predicts user gaze from a first-person perspective in 3D environments.

Currently, most AR devices react to where users look, playing catch-up. Ryan’s method could give these devices a heads-up and make the user experience more seamless.

“It allows an AR system to anticipate what the person will interact with next and where they’re going to look next so it can proactively render the experience,” she said.

Ryan is the lead author of the paper Forecasting 3D Scanpaths in Egocentric Video, which she will present next week at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in Denver.

While there is existing research on predicting user gaze from 2D still images, her work is the first to address the issue through a 3D framework.

“Because we live in a 3D world and people are dynamically moving around from multiple points of view, we need to predict gaze in 3D rather than 2D,” she said. “What we’re seeing is a path of the person’s attention in 3D through space. Our paper is the first to attempt to model this.”

Ryan conducted most of the research while interning at Meta, where she used data from Meta’s Aria Digital Twin dataset. The dataset contains first-person video footage of users interacting with objects in an apartment.

“We chose that dataset because it has a high-fidelity 3D reconstruction of a full environment, which helps us get a ground-truth 3D gaze,” she said. “We can trace eye movement and see how it intersects with the environment.”

A video demonstration of Ryan’s work shows her software tracking a user’s path toward a table with a cup on it. Once the user picks up the cup, the software correctly predicts the direction the user will turn next.

“When we look at a scene, we don’t take in everything in full detail all at once,” she said. “We fixate on certain areas, and our gaze is a sequence of fixations, which might depend on what we’re trying to do. If we want to pick up a cup, we might look toward that and then the next step would be looking at where we’re going to put it down.”

Ryan said the software can predict, on average, up to three seconds into the future — and as far as 10 seconds in some cases. That’s enough time for the AR system to proactively render a more enhanced environment.

“We’re not looking that far into the future right now, but it would be interesting to explore longer forecasting windows,” she said. “I think potential futures would diverge pretty quickly, so we’re trying to explore what can reasonably be predicted from a short segment of a person looking and moving through space.”

Ryan said her paper served as a proof-of-concept, and that there is still much future work to be done. She already has some ideas.

“I think future models can include different scenarios to help narrow down possibilities. Sometimes a person’s gaze stays on one thing for a long time. If we know what someone is trying to do, we’ll have a better idea of the likely path their attention might go.”

There could also be future implications for her work in robotics research.

“It could potentially be used for training algorithms for robots to emulate active human perception. If we can understand what a person looks at as they perform a task, we could use that to facilitate a robot learning to do that same task.” 

Fiona Ryan, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, is pioneering research that tracks and predicts user gaze from a first-person perspective in 3D environments.

Currently, most AR devices react to where users look, playing catch-up. Ryan’s method could give these devices a heads-up and make the user experience more seamless.

“It allows an AR system to anticipate what the person will interact with next and where they’re going to look next so it can proactively render the experience,” she said.

Ryan is the lead author of the paper Forecasting 3D Scanpaths in Egocentric Video, which she will present next week at the IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) in Denver.

While there is existing research on predicting user gaze from 2D still images, her work is the first to address the issue through a 3D framework.

“Because we live in a 3D world and people are dynamically moving around from multiple points of view, we need to predict gaze in 3D rather than 2D,” she said. “What we’re seeing is a path of the person’s attention in 3D through space. Our paper is the first to attempt to model this.”

Ryan conducted most of the research while interning at Meta, where she used data from Meta’s Aria Digital Twin dataset. The dataset contains first-person video footage of users interacting with objects in an apartment.

“We chose that dataset because it has a high-fidelity 3D reconstruction of a full environment, which helps us get a ground-truth 3D gaze,” she said. “We can trace eye movement and see how it intersects with the environment.”

A video demonstration of Ryan’s work shows her software tracking a user’s path toward a table with a cup on it. Once the user picks up the cup, the software correctly predicts the direction the user will turn next.

“When we look at a scene, we don’t take in everything in full detail all at once,” she said. “We fixate on certain areas, and our gaze is a sequence of fixations, which might depend on what we’re trying to do. If we want to pick up a cup, we might look toward that and then the next step would be looking at where we’re going to put it down.”

Ryan said the software can predict, on average, up to three seconds into the future — and as far as 10 seconds in some cases. That’s enough time for the AR system to proactively render a more enhanced environment.

“We’re not looking that far into the future right now, but it would be interesting to explore longer forecasting windows,” she said. “I think potential futures would diverge pretty quickly, so we’re trying to explore what can reasonably be predicted from a short segment of a person looking and moving through space.”

Ryan said her paper served as a proof-of-concept, and that there is still much future work to be done. She already has some ideas.

“I think future models can include different scenarios to help narrow down possibilities. Sometimes a person’s gaze stays on one thing for a long time. If we know what someone is trying to do, we’ll have a better idea of the likely path their attention might go.”

There could also be future implications for her work in robotics research.

“It could potentially be used for training algorithms for robots to emulate active human perception. If we can understand what a person looks at as they perform a task, we could use that to facilitate a robot learning to do that same task.” 

The $250,000 funding award, made through GRA’s Innovation and Entrepreneurship (I&E) program, supports the translational work of Ankur Singh, Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, and Andrés García, Regents’ Professor in Mechanical Engineering and the Executive Director of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. Singh and García are collaborating to develop functional human antibodies against some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases. While antibody therapies already benefit an estimated 20 million patients worldwide, fewer than 10 percent of discovery efforts ultimately yield candidates suitable for clinical use.

This shortfall spans major disease areas — from oncology and autoimmune disorders to heart and metabolism-related conditions and neurological and infectious diseases — limiting therapeutic options for patients. The challenge lies not only in identifying candidate antibodies, but in engineering them to function reliably in the human body.

“The I&E program exists to bridge the gap between a discovery that works in the lab and one that can anchor a company,” said Justin Burns, Chief Innovation Officer and Vice President for Innovation and Entrepreneurship at GRA. “Singh and García are tackling a problem the field has faced for decades: A significant fraction of drug targets remains inaccessible to antibody-based therapies. Our goal is to help move bold, high-potential science toward real-world impact.”

GRA’s model targets a well-known bottleneck in translation. While university labs generate promising technologies, many stall before reaching the marketplace due to a lack of validation and early-stage development. 

Singh and García aim to overcome this barrier by using a proprietary antibody-engineering framework developed in Singh’s laboratory, and supported by an earlier GRA grant. The objective is straightforward: Increase the success rate of discovery efforts so more antibody candidates can advance toward clinical use.

“The implications extend well beyond our laboratory,” said Singh. “By expanding the pipeline of functional human antibodies, we can begin to address diseases that currently lack durable treatment options. GRA’s support is transformative — not only for advancing the science, but for positioning Georgia as a leader in biotechnology innovation.”

The project is built with real-world use in mind, aiming to turn the research into a new company and eventually a clinical product. By testing the idea early and lowering risk, the team hopes to attract investment and move the technology quickly beyond the Institute. 

García emphasized the translational vision of the work. 

“This is a transformative platform technology that overcomes major bottlenecks in antibody discovery and will accelerate and increase the efficiency of this powerful class of therapeutics,” he said.

“This effort is about rethinking how we design antibodies from the ground up — integrating biological insight with engineering principles to produce molecules that are not just viable, but clinically meaningful,” he said. “With GRA’s support, we can de-risk early discovery and create a clearer path from promising concepts to therapies that reach patients.”

 Tracey Mullen, a seasoned biopharma executive, entrepreneur, and antibody discovery and engineering leader currently serving as Chief Strategy Officer at Mosaic Biosciences, is advising the team on translational strategy, commercial development, and company formation. 

“The ability to rapidly generate functional human antibodies in physiologically relevant systems could meaningfully change how therapeutic discovery is approached,” Mullen said. “By moving beyond largely empirical, animal- or screening-heavy workflows and incorporating human-specific, mechanism-informed evaluation earlier in the process, this platform has the potential to generate more relevant antibody candidates and create a stronger path from discovery concept to translational development.”

As global demand for advanced therapeutics grows, efforts like this reflect a broader shift in how innovation moves from bench to bedside — one driven not only by scientific ingenuity, but by targeted investment at critical early stages.

With more than 150 attendees from industry, academia, and research organizations, the event’s high-level engagement underscored the urgency of critical issues facing the energy sector today, including the surging electricity demand, resiliency of the grid, and evolving supply chains, as well as the value of a dedicated space for candid, solutions-oriented dialogue.

“INTERSECT 2026 demonstrated the power of bringing together leaders who are actively shaping the future of energy,” said Laura Taylor, director of EPIcenter. “What began as a forum to explore emerging ideas has grown into a critical platform for aligning perspectives and advancing actionable solutions across the Southeast.”

This year’s program focused on real-world implementation challenges, including managing large-scale load growth and coordinating infrastructure investments to meet demand reliably and affordably. Panels featuring leaders from utilities, global energy corporations, and research organizations emphasized the importance of aligning strategy across sectors to ensure that the Southeast remains competitive and resilient.

Chris Womack, chairman, president, and CEO of Southern Company, delivered the keynote address, highlighting the unprecedented scale of current energy demands. 

“Meeting this moment requires us to think differently — serving growth while ensuring reliability, resilience, and long-term value for our customers and communities,” said Womack.

Launched in 2017, the inaugural INTERSECT conference marked the launch of EPIcenter itself and established Georgia Tech’s commitment to connecting research, industry insight, and policy development. It focused on the need to bridge the gap between rapidly advancing technologies and slower-moving regulatory and market frameworks, a theme that continues to shape its mission today. 

As INTERSECT 2026 concluded, participants pointed to a shared takeaway: With its industrial base, growing population, and integrated energy systems, the Southeast is uniquely positioned to lead in the next phase of the energy transition. With AI-driven power demand and grid infrastructure playing a significant role going forward, it is imperative to bring together the right voices to shape policies and strategies that will connect ideas to action.

The highly competitive Laboratory Placement program is a paid opportunity offered through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships. It provides students from a wide range of disciplines an opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research at leading facilities, including Argonne National Laboratory, Ames National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Laboratory of the Rockies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and Savannah River National Laboratory.

The program’s 2026 cohort includes 16 Georgia Tech students from disciplines such as artificial intelligence, materials science, aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics. Their research placements reflect the interdisciplinary nature of today’s scientific challenges, with projects covering bioinformatics, high-energy and condensed matter physics, accelerator science, environmental management, and advanced materials.

Many of the internships are closely aligned with national energy priorities, with students working in research areas including nuclear energy, hydrogen and chemical systems, materials for energy applications, plasma and fusion sciences, and complex engineered systems.

“Georgia Tech’s deep engagement with the national laboratory system creates unparalleled opportunities for our students to contribute to the future of energy,” said Yuanzhi Tang, executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute. “By connecting interdisciplinary talent with world-class research environments, we are not only advancing discovery but also shaping the next generation of leaders who will drive secure, sustainable, and resilient energy systems.”

Working alongside national lab scientists, students will not only gain access to world-class facilities but benefit from mentorship and professional networks, while contributing to research critical to national security, economic competitiveness, and a more sustainable energy future. 

“These internships demonstrate the strength of Georgia Tech’s relationships across the federal research ecosystem,” said Robert Knotts, executive director of Federal Relations in the Office of Institute Relations. “They provide a direct pathway for students to engage in public service through mission-driven research at national laboratories — while strengthening connections that are vital to advancing national priorities in energy, security, and innovation.”

Traditional sleep monitoring systems often rely on bulky equipment and nasal cannulas — small tubes inserted into the nostrils to measure airflow. While effective, these systems can be uncomfortable, intrusive, and difficult to tolerate overnight, limiting their use for long-term monitoring at home.

Now, researchers led by W. Hong Yeo, Peterson Professor in Pediatric Research at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, have developed a soft, wireless nasal patch that could offer a more comfortable alternative for monitoring breathing during sleep.

The technology, described in a recent study published in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS), uses ultrathin, skin-like wearable electronics to detect subtle movements of the nose caused by breathing without tubes, wires, or direct airflow measurements.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

Read more »

The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Blazeck will receive $647,941 over five years for “Creating and evolving antibodies from scratch in yeast.”

Antibodies are key proteins of the immune system that help fight disease. In people, immune cells called B cells create antibodies and then evolve them. B cells take months to do this, which makes it difficult to study antibody creation and evolution, Blazeck explained.

His CAREER project will design a method to evolve antibodies “from scratch” in yeast, which will open new avenues for exploring antibody creation, evolution, and function. 

Read the full story on the School of Chemistry and Biomolecular Engineering's website. 

“In particular, what I have been working on the past 20 years is primarily understanding how earthquakes interact with each other, and in some cases, how other processes interact with earthquakes,” explains the professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, who also serves as associate chair for Research and Faculty Development for the School and is incoming president of the Seismological Society of America.

Peng's recent work deploying nodal seismometers in and around Georgia has led him “almost by accident” into the field of environmental seismology. 

The rise of nodal seismometers, fiber Distributed Acoustic Sensing (DAS) and machine learning have combined to produce a wealth of seismic data, and “pretty quickly you realize that there are actually quite a lot of non-earthquake events that are also there in the data,” he says.

“If you really wanted to study earthquake events, you better learn to distinguish or throw out those non-earthquake events first. But it turns out that some of those events are also equally interesting or sometimes more interesting, depending on where you are studying,” Peng adds.

Environmental seismologists are turning noise into signal to study a variety of phenomena, from urban traffic to groundwater levels. Peng and his colleagues used seismic sensors to analyze periodic vibrations from shaking homes nearly every six minutes in a neighborhood outside of Atlanta, for instance, discovering that a faulty check valve in a sewer pipe was producing a water hammer effect.

And then there are the exploding rocks. In July 2023, there was a violent spalling of rock off the face of Arabia Mountain in Georgia that scattered large chunks of gneiss. “Normally on these outcrops the outer layer of bare rock can peel off slowly, but in some cases they kind of blast off violently and generate some ground shaking,” Peng says.

Read more in the Seismological Society of America newsroom.

Candidates for the fifth annual Faculty Excellence Awards were nominated by their peers or submitted self-nominations. Materials were reviewed by a committee of academic and research faculty members within the College. 

Each honoree receives $2,000. The honorees are:

• Akanksha Menon
• Hong Yeo
• Kinsey Herrin
• Lauren Steimle
• Kevin Haas
• Omer Inan
• Scott Hollister
• Kim L. Paige

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website. 

Now, in a project led by the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers are closing the gap between Earth-based simulations and the true space environment by sending experimental materials to the International Space Station (ISS) for several months of in-orbit exposure. In a rare chance for space research, where most hardware is either left in orbit or burns up on reentry, they are getting those samples back for detailed analysis on Earth.

The materials are set to launch to the ISS in the near future as part of the Materials International Space Station Experiment 22 (MISSE-22), a testbed attached to the outside of the station. Mounted on the forward-facing side of the ISS to ensure predominant exposure to highly corrosive atomic oxygen, the test samples will spend several months enduring the extreme temperatures, radiation, and reactive environment of low Earth orbit. The team is testing a selection of lightweight, research-grade polymers designed to survive these harsh conditions. Once the samples return to Earth, engineers will examine how they held up and use that data to enhance the strategic of future satellite constellations.

This project represents a collaboration across government, academia, and industry, bringing together GTRI, Georgia Tech, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), a California-based R&D firm Hedgefog Research Inc., and DuPont de Nemours, Inc. The research is also supported by Aegis Aerospace, which owns and operates the MISSE Flight Facility platform aboard the ISS.

Why Space is So Hard on Satellites 

Harsh conditions in low Earth orbit — the region of space extending from approximately 100 miles to over 1,000 miles above Earth, where many satellites and the ISS travel — can darken, roughen, and weaken spacecraft surfaces over time. That damage shortens satellite lifetimes and requires engineers to add extra layers of protection, increasing overall logistical burden and mission costs. 

Optimizing material durability is a strategic necessity, explained Elena Plis, a GTRI senior research engineer and principal investigator for the project, because every additional unit of shielding increases the cost of getting to orbit. To design lighter, more resilient materials, researchers need to examine how they degrade in a true space environment. However, most hardware is built for a one-way trip — designed to operate in orbit and then burn up on reentry, taking that valuable material data with it.

“The beauty of this type of experiment is that the materials return to Earth,” said Plis, who is also an affiliate of the Georgia Tech Space Research Institute. “For many missions, stuff is sent up and never seen again. Being able to test returned samples from real space conditions is unique, and I can’t stress enough how exciting that is for us.”
 

A New Generation of Polymers Head for Space

Instead of relying on familiar spacecraft materials like DuPont’s Kapton — a tough, heat-resistant polyimide plastic film that has coated spacecraft exteriors since the Apollo era — the team is sending up a set of new, lightweight, research-grade polymers. These materials are designed to improve the survivability of assets against space’s unforgiving elements.

Plis and her collaborators started with dozens of candidate materials they developed. To earn a spot on the MISSE-22, a sample has to be transparent or translucent, so light can pass through it, and researchers can examine how its optical properties change in orbit. The materials also have to be tough enough to withstand intense atomic oxygen exposure without fragmenting, which would create debris near the ISS. In the end, only a select number of the team’s materials made the cut.

The MISSE-22 testbed holds multiple experimental polymers. Instead of standard illumination, the team constructed a custom on-orbit polariscope: LEDs beneath each sample shine polarized light up through the material. A small camera system then slides over the top to capture these highly specific optical changes on a set schedule over the course of several months in space.

Using Light to Reveal Space Strain

Using polarized light and machine learning to rapidly analyze color patterns in the images they receive from orbit, the researchers can track how stress inside each sample changes over time. Periodically, the system will cycle through the materials, and the images will be downlinked to Earth.

When the extended mission ends and the samples return, the team will compare those in-orbit measurements with detailed lab tests on the actual pieces that flew. Without returned materials, they would only have images and sensor data to work from. By testing the same samples in the lab, they can check how accurate the remote measurements really are and refine their methods.

If the materials perform as expected, the results could help engineers design satellites that last longer in orbit without carrying so much protective weight —providing a significant technological advantage in space domain awareness and asset longevity.

About the Space Research Institute

The Space Research Institute (SRI) at the Georgia Institute of Technology is an interdisciplinary hub that unites faculty, staff, and students to advance research, education, and collaboration in space science and technology. Bringing together expertise across engineering, science, policy, and the humanities, SRI drives innovative projects in areas such as astrophysics, aerospace systems, astrobiology, and space policy while fostering partnerships with academia, industry, and government. As Georgia Tech’s central nexus for space-related initiatives, SRI is committed to advancing discovery, developing the future workforce, and expanding humanity’s understanding of space and its impact on life on Earth. Learn more at space.gatech.edu.

For decades, bird flu was uncommon in the U.S., but that has changed. In the past several years, epidemics have threatened poultry and dairy cattle operations across the country. Higher egg prices, driven largely by bird flu-related supply disruptions, have cost American consumers billions of dollars in losses.

“The H5N1 strain of the bird flu, which has driven recent and current outbreaks, is a highly lethal virus that kills domestic chickens and other bird species in droves,” said David Pattie, GTRI research scientist and branch chief. “It can easily jump from birds to other animal species — and sometimes to humans.”

The research team will leverage artificial intelligence (AI) to design and test a probiotic avian flu vaccine that, if successful, could be served to chickens in their feed. Currently, vaccinating a flock means individually injecting every bird. 

“We’re focusing on live bacterial vaccines, which means the vaccine comes from living bacteria you swallow, instead of an injection,” said Mike Farrell, GTRI principal research scientist and the project’s lead investigator. 

“These probiotic vaccines would help protect birds and livestock from flu-like infections and lower the risk of those viruses spreading to humans,” he added.

In addition to Farrell and Pattie, the team includes researchers from an array of disciplines across the Institute: Faramarz Fekri, professor and John Pippin Chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; JC Gumbart, Dunn Family Professor in the School of Physics; Brian Hammer, associate professor in the School of  Biological Sciences; and Anton Bryksin, director of the Molecular Evolution Core at the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. 

Building on Human Influenza Research 

The project builds on Farrell’s ongoing research into developing probiotic vaccine adjuvants for human influenza. The goal is to use probiotic bacteria — the “good bacteria” found in foods like yogurt — to help create immunity for the flu vaccine.

If the researchers can get probiotic bacteria to display pieces of the flu virus (called antigens) on their surface, then they could be swallowed like a normal probiotic pill.

“The gut is a great place for building immunity. When these bacteria reach the gut, your body would recognize the virus pieces on the bacteria and start building flu antibodies,” Farrell explained. “That way, when the chickens get exposed to flu, their immune system would already be prepared to fight it.”

Putting AI to the Test

“The idea behind this oral bird flu vaccine is to leverage artificial intelligence and the vast historical database for H5N1 available to us, because it's a very well-studied virus,” Farrell said. “There is a ton of structural data out there.” 

Gumbart is an expert in protein modeling and simulation. Part of his role is figuring out the best design for a viral protein piece (antigen) — one that looks and behaves like the real virus protein, so it triggers the right immune response. To do this, he will combine Fekri’s AI-generated predictions with computer modeling. 

“That’s where my team adds real value,” Gumbart said. “We use simulations to test how stable and realistic these protein designs are, which allows us to choose the best ones for lab experiments.”

AI has already identified new medicines and antibiotics by studying chemical databases. If the team can use AI to help design virus proteins for vaccines, it could transform how vaccines are made. 

Pattie says that any viral infectious disease with a high mortality rate has the potential to become a national security threat. “At that point, developing countermeasures becomes exceedingly important from a national security perspective,” he said.  

This is the first time several of the team members are working on poultry research. For Gumbart, the project is a full-circle moment.

“I grew up in rural Illinois, and as a kid, one of my daily chores was to take care of chickens, and I kind of hated it,” he said. “It is some sort of universal irony that I am back to taking care of chickens again.”

“Her outstanding research accomplishments and contributions to the School and Georgia Tech led to this selection,” said Professor Christopher W. Jones, the John F. Brock III School Chair in ChBE@GT.

The $20,000 in discretionary funding from this one-year fellowship will support Jamali’s research activities focused on developing new tools for in situ liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy, stochastic thermodynamics, and nanoscience-based platforms.

The Spencers established the endowment from which the term fellowship funding comes in 2017. This endowment will eventually lead to the establishment of a professorship in ChBE@GT.

“Bob Spencer is a successful alumnus who has remained connected to our chemical engineering program,” according to Jones. “His family’s gift will allow ChBE@GT to support an early career professor at a critical stage of their development—the crucial years just before their promotion and tenure review. We are grateful for their support and generosity.”

Read Full Story on the ChBE Newspage

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia awarded the program the 2026 Teaching Excellence Award for Department or Program.

MSHCI program director Dick Henneman and assistant director Carrie Bruce received the award on May 12 during a Board of Regents (BOR) meeting.

Henneman has served as director of the program since 2015, and Bruce has served as assistant director since 2014. The program began in 1996 and has since expanded to be offered by four Georgia Tech schools:

• Interactive Computing
• Industrial Design
• Literature, Media, and Communications
• Psychology 

“As we put our award submission together, it was nice for us to reflect on all our hard work and to understand the impact this program has had on students,” Bruce said. “We recently surveyed alums, and so many said they were thankful for the way this program shaped their careers.”

Under the leadership of Henneman and Bruce, the program has achieved a 99% graduation rate, with about 60 graduates per year, up from about 30 since 2015. Henneman said the program has become one of the most competitive of its kind in the world, with an admission rate under 10%.

“We have some incredibly qualified students who are a part of the program,” he said. “We’ve had a number of graduates move into design management positions, and some have started their own companies.”

Henneman and Bruce said that one thing that distinguishes Tech’s MSHCI program is its close partnerships and alignment with industry. The program has an industry advisory board that keeps students informed about the skills companies value.

“We adapted our core classes quite a bit to ensure that they weren’t just getting the academic version of HCI methods,” Bruce said. “Our program is practical and focuses on what they are going to do when they get into industry.”

Though the program continues to grow, Henneman says it has maintained a sense of community among students, which he says is another thing that sets it apart. Many alumni keep in touch and return to offer industry advice, critique resumes, and conduct mock interviews with current students.

“A lot of times graduate school can be all about the individual,” he said. “As we prepare students to go work in industry, it’s all about collaboration and the people you’re working with and learning how to work on teams.”

Georgia Tech had 21 faculty and researchers recognized in the 2026 Regents Awards. From the College of Computing, Santosh Vempala was named a Regents’ Professor, while Srinivas Aluru and Ellen Zegura had their Regents’ titles renewed.

Led by Joel E. Kostka, Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professor and director of Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow (GT²), the research effort will help restore coastal salt marshes through AI-enabled micropropagation and developing probiotics for plants. It is the only salt marsh-focused effort funded nationally in the cohort.

The award supports both the development of more climate-resilient salt marsh plants, as well as new capacity for coastal restoration in Georgia — an effort that aligns closely with GT²’s mission to connect research, innovation, and community needs to address critical environmental and community challenges.

Healthy Coasts

Salt marshes are among Georgia’s most important natural resources, helping buffer communities from storms, support fisheries, and sustain coastal economies. Yet the state currently lacks a reliable source of salt marsh seedlings needed for large-scale restoration.

The funded project addresses that gap by advancing the production of hardier marsh plants and laying the groundwork for a broader restoration economy.

“The opportunity here is to build something that doesn’t currently exist in Georgia — a scalable, science-driven supply of salt marsh plants for safer, healthier coastal communities and ecosystems,” Kostka says. “By combining biotechnology, ecology, and partnerships across the region, we are accelerating coastal resilience while supporting long-term environmental and economic benefits.”

Kostka will work with project co-researchers Else-Marie Ulrika Egertsdotter (Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute) and Caitlin Petro (Georgia Tech Biological Sciences), Heather Joesting (Georgia Southern University), Emily Coffey and Lauren Eserman-Campbell (Atlanta Botanical Garden), and Sydney Williams (University of Georgia and Georgia Sea Grant) — along with several anticipated regional partners, including University of Georgia Marine Institute, GA/SC/NC Departments of Natural Resources, Southeastern Plant Conservation Alliance, and Bald Head Island Conservancy.

The team will create a “Climate-Ready Spartina Toolkit” with automated plant tissue culture, AI-based screening tools, a culture collection that serves as probiotics for plants, a seed bank and library of preserved plant materials, step-by-step instructions for successful growing, and ready for regional deployment.

The project also continues the evolution of Kostka’s collaborative research Egertsdotter and the Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute. “RBI shares the goal of using biotechnology to produce climate-resilient plants that benefit society,” Kostka says. “Their expertise in plant tissue culture and automation make this work possible. It also is a great example of collaboration between GT Sciences and Engineering — the automation of plant tissue culture was developed by mechanical engineers in RBI.”

Regional Resilience

The new award builds on growing momentum for Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow and its expanding network of collaborators focused on coastal resilience. Based in the College of Sciences, GT² is designed to align discovery science with technological innovation and data-driven tools to deliver practical solutions for communities across the state.

In April, GT² launched a formal research fund and partnership with the Bald Head Island Conservancy (BHIC), connecting Georgia Tech researchers with BHIC’s Johnston Center for Coastal Sustainability in North Carolina to advance shared work in coastal sustainability, ecosystem health, and environmental resilience.

The partnership combines BHIC’s applied, field-based conservation work with Georgia Tech’s strengths in technological innovation and data analysis, creating new opportunities for graduate research, community engagement, and real-world implementation.

Better Together

These “all hands on deck” approaches reflect a broader strategy to scale tangible solutions across regional ecosystems by connecting researchers and partners with community stakeholders.

“Together, we hope these projects will demonstrate that genetic rescue is a powerful lever for the blue carbon ecosystems that underpin both ecological and human communities in the face of climate change,” said Liv Liberman, Director of Ocean and Climate at Revive & Restore and program manager for the Climate Resilience Fund.  

The efforts reflect GT²’s goal of creating pathways from research to implementation, working across sectors to deliver measurable outcomes for the southeastern environment and its communities.

“This award recognizes the kind of integrated, real-world research that GT² is built to deliver,” says Kostka. “We’re bringing together researchers, agencies, and community partners to move from science to scalable solutions — especially along southeastern coasts, where the need is urgent and the opportunities are significant.”

###

About Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow

Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow (GT²) is a College of Sciences–based initiative that connects discovery science, innovation, and partnerships to address pressing challenges in environmental and community resilience across Georgia. The initiative works with state agencies, industry, non-profits, and local communities to develop solutions that improve quality of life and strengthen the state’s future. 

About Revive & Restore 

Revive & Restore is a nonprofit conservation organization that develops and promotes genetic rescue technologies to protect and restore endangered and extinct species. Founded in 2012 by Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan, the organization works across birds, mammals, coral, and marine ecosystems to demonstrate that biotechnology is an essential tool in the conservation toolkit.

Among those recognized is Yong Ding, principal research engineer and electron microscopy core lead at the Materials Characterization Facility (MCF) within the Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS), who was named a Regents’ Researcher.

Ding received his Ph.D. in Physics from Nanjing University. Since joining Georgia Tech in 2003, he has made widespread contributions to interdisciplinary materials research through collaborations with faculty, national laboratories, and industry partners, enabling advanced materials characterization and scientific discovery. His current work focuses on the development and application of advanced transmission electron microscopy (TEM) techniques, including in-situ TEM, electron tomography, and quantitative spectroscopic analysis. He also leads major instrumentation initiatives, including the acquisition and deployment of the Thermo Fisher Scientific Spectra Ultra TEM.

Ding’s work has had a significant impact on nanoscience, catalysis, and energy materials. In addition to his research, he is a dedicated educator and mentor, providing training to dozens of microscopy users annually and teaching courses in electron microscopy and nanomaterials.

The Regents’ Awards are among the University System of Georgia’s highest honors, recognizing sustained excellence, national distinction, and long-term impact by faculty and researchers across the state’s public institutions. 

Regents’ distinctions may be granted to outstanding faculty members for a period of three years by the BOR and are awarded only after unanimous recommendation from the president of the recipient’s university, their chief academic officer and dean, and three additional members of the faculty who are named by the university president. Approval by the chancellor and the BOR Committee on Academic Affairs is also required. These distinctions are given to those who make outstanding contributions to their respective institutions.

See the full list of Georgia Tech honorees. 

The NSF CAREER Award supports early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization. The award provides $662,045 over five years to support Sanders’ project, Patterning Hard Interlocking Particles to Achieve Soft Materials and Structures.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

Omar Garcia Urdiales, CREATE‑X’s associate director of Learn, brings a global entrepreneurial experience to Georgia Tech: founder and CEO of a startup operating in the AWS Accelerator Loft, longtime startup coach in Europe’s major innovation hubs, lecturer across multiple universities, and an external doctoral researcher in entrepreneurship and digitalization. He brings this background to his teaching of Startup Lab’s latest iteration – a significant redesign developed by VentureLab’s Director Keith McGreggor. McGreggor created the course and has evolved it over many years, building on its initial success.  

“This new iteration of Startup Lab allows us to meet students exactly where they are,” said McGreggor. “By doing this, we give them the strongest foundation possible, providing them with the tools to grapple with uncertainty and build their confidence.” 

Startup Lab has long anchored the Institute’s entrepreneurial pathway with clearer structure, a unified language, and a deeper focus on reflective growth, so more Georgia Tech students can discover (and trust) their own entrepreneurial judgment.

Startup Lab is expanding responsibly, with six sections in Atlanta and additional global sections in France and Asia-Pacific taught by faculty trained in the curriculum. Students here benefit from a program that’s learning across borders and bringing that learning back to campus.

“Startup Lab is not about becoming an entrepreneur, but about engaging in the unknown and adopting entrepreneurial behavior, which can be applied to all career paths,” Urdiales said. “Students become better equipped to identify problem spaces and solve them through evidence-based building.” 

Start Where You Are

Urdiales emphasized that Startup Lab is built for students who are still exploring, uncertain, or are simply curious.

“Many students tell us they’re curious about entrepreneurship but feel not ready,” he said. “They worry they’re too introverted for customer interviews or assume Startup Lab is only for people with fully formed ideas. In fact, those are the most common misconceptions.”

The course’s first few weeks focus on training students to see struggles and patterns in the world. Then, they apply those skills on a team, exploring, designing, and testing a concept with real people. The nonnegotiable outcome isn’t the best idea; it’s a more confident, evidence-driven version of you. 

“Startup Lab is strengthening that self-awareness. All of us who are entrepreneurs, we don’t grow linearly. We have various iterations of how we see things,” Urdiales said. “This ability to see patterns or to see problems with customer discovery, it’s a learning process and a growth process.” 

Building Muscle Memory

Urdiales said that students won’t have a passive experience in the lab.

“To become an entrepreneur, you need to do it. You need to engage with customers. You need to get out of the building,” he said. “It gives you the ability to incorporate theoretical frameworks into practical solutions and then understand these more practical outcomes.”

Aligning with CREATE-X’s culture of continuous iteration, Startup Lab is tightening the hands-on core of the course around four simple, repeatable tools so that entrepreneurial thinking becomes muscle memory, not a one-off assignment. The new iteration of the curriculum, developed by McGreggor, helps students learn to: 

• Elicit grounded problem stories from real people (and separate observations from interpretations).
• Make explicit strategic decisions — who you serve, what you offer, how you deliver, how you get paid — and back them with discovery evidence.
• Externalize your logic with clear Business Model Canvas snapshots (hypotheses ≠ decisions ≠ open questions).
• Design minimum viable experiments (MVEs) that can falsify assumptions, not just confirm them. 

“What we have is a frontier model in entrepreneurial education,” said McGreggor. “The result is a course that teaches sound decision making and builds entrepreneurial confidence that rewards authentic discovery and iteration over performative polish. It creates a more solid foundation for entrepreneurial thinking and sets students up to engage more deeply with everything that follows in their CREATE-X pathway.” 

Reflection as a Feature

As a part of Startup Lab, instructors integrate reflection throughout the semester, which helps students notice patterns of work, make small experiments, and adjust based on what’s learned. Students often worry they’re not the founder type or that their introversion will hold them back; Startup Lab reframes those worries as raw material for growth, including communication skill building and one-on-one interactions you won’t always get in higher-level courses. 

Startup Lab integrates HaradaLite — McGreggor's adaptation of the Japanese Harada Method — as a weekly reflection practice in which students keep a reflection log, helping them notice patterns of work, run small experiments, and adjust based on what's learned. With this approach, educators are able to measure the growth of entrepreneurial confidence by self-report, leading to a more quantitative approach to teaching.

A Common Language Across CREATE‑X

There’s no mandated order for CREATE-X courses. Startup Lab simply makes the next steps clearer by providing a shared language and milestone structure across sections and instructors, so whatever comes next (I2P, Capstone, Launch, or an internship), you can carry forward a coherent, evidence- aware story of your work. 

“All CREATE‑X Learn sections will work with the same milestone objectives,” Urdiales said. “Students trained in Startup Lab are already trained in the muscles of entrepreneurship. They’re more equipped to go into Make and Launch or be a leader within their industry.”

Built To Be Inclusive Across Disciplines and Needs

Startup Lab is about becoming the kind of person who can see opportunities, reason from evidence, and make better decisions when the path isn’t obvious. 

• You do not need an idea or a pre‑built team — curiosity is enough.
• You do not need special permits to enroll. Startup Lab is open to anyone ready to explore.
• You can benefit from the course before or after I2P or Capstone, since there’s no fixed order to the CREATE‑X pathway.
• Introverts are welcome. The course intentionally builds communication skills through structured, low-pressure interviews and guided interaction. 

“Startup Lab helps students see the world’s problems and fill the gaps with fresh ideas, teaching them to see and understand the important difference between evidence and inference,” said McGreggor. “This lays the foundation that leads to good founders, and builds the entrepreneurial confidence needed to succeed.”

What You’ll Actually Do 

Students in Startup Lab can expect a workshop-heavy, conversation-rich semester with weekly artifacts, scenario-based decision prompts, startup reports, and quizzes that keep you honest about what you’re learning. You’ll assemble a Continuity Pack near the end: a compact bundle of your best discovery evidence, decisions, MVEs, economics, and final story slides so your future self (or your I2P/Launch application) can pick up right where you left off. 

The course also sets norms for modern tool use. AI is welcomed as a coach and organizer, after your own baseline thinking and research, and as an enhancement of the real conversations you have. That matters because Startup Lab’s promise is that you build solid judgment under the test of uncertainty, critical to the world of today and the future that is being built. 

Jump Into Startup Lab

You don’t have to have it all figured out. If you’re a first-year student still exploring, a junior craving real-world projects, or a senior looking to stand out in interviews, Startup Lab is for you. 

Seats fill quickly across all sections — and for good reason.
This course gives you the clearest, most supportive on‑ramp into CREATE‑X, with a global methodology, a unified curriculum, and instructors who believe deeply in your potential to grow. Learn how to think entrepreneurially. See the world differently. Build the confidence that will follow you long after the semester ends.

Register for Startup Lab for Fall 2026.

 

“I went to a smaller university because I came from a very, very small town,” she said. “I did some research there, but we didn’t have a lot of equipment or resources.”

During the 10-week program, undergraduate students live on campus and conduct research in faculty labs with mentorship and access to advanced facilities. The program also prepares students for graduate studies and STEM careers through professional development, research communication training, and opportunities to present their work.

“I applied to the REU at Georgia Tech. And when I got in, I was super excited because Georgia Tech is a big deal,” she said.

That summer didn’t just expand her lab experience; it reshaped her career trajectory.

As a physics major, Howell had never been exposed to materials science, nanotechnology, or cleanroom environments before arriving in Atlanta. That summer marked her first time using advanced equipment, including scanning electron microscopes (SEMs), and working hands-on in Georgia Tech’s cleanroom facilities. 

Her project focused on aluminum alloys, testing their strength and fracture behavior under simulated harsh conditions such as saltwater and heat. The research explored how lightweight, affordable materials like aluminum could be made stronger for applications such as shipbuilding. 

The experience opened a door for Howell. 

“It inspired me to go to grad school for materials science,” she said. 

After completing her undergraduate degree at Troy University, Howell pursued graduate studies in materials science at the University of Colorado Boulder, where she earned her master’s degree. 

Her REU experience gave her a technical advantage early in her career.

“In my first job, I worked with the same machines I used at Tech because I already had experience with them,” she said. 

Today, Howell is back at Georgia Tech. This time not as a student, but as an industry researcher using the Institute’s cleanroom facilities as part of her full-time job. 

She conducts advanced lithography and SEM analysis in the same facilities, expanding far beyond what she was able to do as an undergraduate. Still, she credits the REU with giving her a strong foundation.

“I came in already knowing how to do some things, and it’s just kind of cool to be back in the same space I was in years ago,” Howell said. 

In a full-circle moment, the place that first introduced her to materials science is now part of her professional experience.

For Howell, the impact of the REU extended well beyond lab work. The REU provided her technical training, exposure to a new discipline, and the confidence to pursue graduate education. It connected her with mentors who supported her next steps and introduced her to equipment she would later use professionally.

For students considering an REU, her advice is simple:

“Do it.” 

Sometimes, a single summer can shape an entire career — and even bring you right back to where it all began.

Effective August 1, Chris Luettgen will assume the role of interim director of RBI.

“Carson has made lasting contributions to Georgia Tech and to RBI during his time as executive director,” said Julia Kubanek, vice president for Interdisciplinary Research. “We are grateful for his leadership and wish him continued success in this next chapter.”

During his tenure, Meredith helped expand RBI’s research footprint, strengthen partnerships across academia and industry, and advance the Institute’s leadership in sustainable bioproducts and bio-based innovation. His work helped position RBI as a key driver of collaboration and research in the forest products and renewable materials sectors.

Luettgen brings extensive experience in forest-based and bio-based research, industry collaboration, and technical leadership. He has held leadership roles at Georgia Tech and has longstanding ties to the Institute of Paper Science and Technology (IPST), working extensively at the intersection of academic research and industry collaboration. He currently serves as Professor of the Practice in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, where he teaches in Georgia Tech’s pulp and paper program and serves as RBI’s strategic lead for Pulp and Paper.

Before joining Georgia Tech, Luettgen spent many years at Kimberly-Clark and Scott Paper Company, where he held senior technical and research leadership positions focused on translating research into commercial impact. He is also widely recognized for his longstanding involvement with the Technical Association of the Pulp and Paper Industry (TAPPI), reflecting his commitment to advancing innovation, workforce development, and collaboration across the forest products and bioproducts industries.

“Chris brings deep expertise, strong industry connections, and a clear understanding of RBI’s mission and community,” Meredith said. “I’m confident he will provide steady leadership and continuity for the Institute during this transition.”

RBI will share additional details regarding the transition in the coming months.

The Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (IBB) at Georgia Tech has launched the Spatial Omics and Data Analytics (SODA) Center, a new interdisciplinary research hub advancing the next frontier of biomedical discovery. 

Mizan Rahman knows there’s much that academia and industry can learn from each other.

He’s living proof of it.

The 52-year-old entrepreneur will receive his Ph.D. in human-centered computing (HCC) as he walks across the stage on Thursday at Georgia Tech’s Spring 2026 Ph.D. Commencement.

When Rahman was accepted into the HCC Ph.D. program, he’d already founded three successful tech startups and was an angel investor in numerous others. He also earned a master’s in computational science and engineering from Georgia Tech in 2013.

Rahman took on the challenge of a Ph.D. because he’s always been in pursuit of a holistic view of technology. One perspective he said he needed to understand was that of the end user.

“I’d already done computer science and computational science and engineering, so I wanted to look at the human dimension, the user’s perspectives, and society,” Rahman said. “You’ve got to build technology that fits into our human dynamics.”

Rahman’s journey began as an undergraduate in chemical engineering at Miami Dade College and Florida Atlantic University. He switched to computer science after his roommate, also a CS major, showed him some programming he had been working on.

“I couldn’t sleep after that,” Rahman said. “I was writing software all night. I loved solving problems through technology.”

Early Success

Rahman invented BayBuilder, a strategic sourcing automation technology, in 1999. The software was adopted by major Fortune 500 companies. Rahman estimates it has saved these companies $1 billion in procurement spending.

Baybuilder was acquired by a NASDAQ-listed firm in 2001, and he was ready to start his next company.

“I’ve been an entrepreneur as far back as I can remember,” Rahman said. “I was born with it. If I saw something that didn’t exist, I created it.”

After relocating to Atlanta, Rahman founded a new company, M2SYS Technology. Governments around the world used the company’s innovative identity technology to automate processes and deliver efficient services to citizens. M2SYS also worked with the CDC to treat HIV in Haiti and Zambia, as well as many U.S. hospitals, including Grady Memorial in Atlanta, to protect patients from fraud and receiving the wrong treatment.

Rahman’s most recent startup, CloudApper AI, introduced a new system architecture that generates secure software requiring minimal ongoing maintenance. His non-biased algorithm, which he created during his Ph.D. for CloudApper, is now used by major companies to streamline automated resume analysis and candidate scoring.

Living in Two Worlds

Rahman began his Ph.D. in 2021, but he kept his new venture to himself and his family. He didn’t tell his employees he was pursuing a Ph.D., and he didn’t disclose his industry background to his fellow doctoral students.

“I kept the other side of me far away,” he said. “The people who knew, they knew, but I purposefully didn’t discuss my outside activities and experience. I wanted to fit in, and I think I was able to do that.”

When Rahman was at his company, he was a CEO and entrepreneur, and when he was at Georgia Tech, he was a researcher. But what he was learning as a researcher began to change how he perceived his business. 

“I wanted to be a researcher and think like a researcher and not just always think about sales and marketing,” he said. “I started bringing in more ideas about how the user should be thought of in our products. I’m sure they were wondering why I was emphasizing that so much, but it was because I was applying what I was learning in my Ph.D. 

“Now I’ve been on both sides, I want to be connected to both in the future, applying research principles and practices in product development and innovation.”

Building Community Through Makerspaces

When it came time for Rahman to choose a subject for his dissertation, he returned to his roots and looked for ways technology can support young entrepreneurs and their startups. That’s when he began conducting research in makerspaces.

“I wanted to find out how we can bring innovation to a scale where anybody can participate,” he said. “I saw this happening in makerspaces where regular people learn, collaborate, and build products and companies from scratch. I saw that the community at large is facing a sustainability crisis.”

Rahman argued in his dissertation that makerspaces can play a significant role in local innovation. When people struggle to survive, it disrupts communities in numerous ways.

Rahman details four studies conducted over three-and-a-half years that show how socio-technical factors drive organizational sustainability in makerspaces and how AI tools can foster an innovative culture within them.

“The compelling thing about his research is that he shows that people come to makerspaces for the tools, but they stay for the people,” said Rosa Arriaga, associate professor and Rahman’s advisor.

“He has plenty of work from his ethnographic research that shows that a makerspace can have all the tech and resources, but if there isn’t cohesion among the people, there’s a problem.”

It Takes a Village

Rahman is the first to admit that it’s not possible for one man to run a company while pursuing a Ph.D. He needed a community. This starts with his family. His wife, Mohu Sultana, now serves as interim CEO of M2SYS and has supported Rahman throughout his Ph.D. research.

The Georgia Tech community has been part of Rahman’s life in some way since he started his career. 

Sultana holds a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Tech, and their daughter, Malisha Rahman, is graduating this week with a bachelor’s in economics and international affairs. Malisha Rahman has also been accepted into the HCC program and will begin her Ph.D. in the fall. 

Rahman said that any student who wants to create a tech startup will have an advantage from access to Georgia Tech’s network.

“The Georgia Tech startup community is fantastic,” he said. “There is a tremendous amount of knowledge here, and the research community can help shape the next big thing. We have CREATE-X, a place where you can find mentorship from faculty who started in industry. You’ll learn things I wish I knew before I started.”

As an energy economist and an international trade economist, we field a lot of questions during such episodes, because when oil prices go up, manufacturers, businesses and ultimately consumers pay more.

Some basic economics

Crude oil may be the most important commodity in the global economic system.

It’s a literal fuel for the industrial economy. It powers the engines that drive transportation and paves the roads vehicles drive on. It’s a source for plastics from which the world’s products get made and packaged, and a key ingredient at some point in almost every supply chain. Even fertilizers that boost the food supply are made from it. In short, it is difficult to imagine modern life without oil and its derivatives.

And when its supply changes, its price changes. Economists explain this using a fundamental model of our field: the supply-demand diagram. When there’s less of something to go around, competition among consumers who want it and companies that need it can drive the price up.

Sometimes this process can play out over time, allowing people to adjust their purchasing or activities to dampen price shocks. But when a significant source of the world’s oil is effectively blocked without much advance notice, such as when the the U.S. and Israeli attacks on Iran closed the Strait of Hormuz, prices can rise sharply in a short period of time.

A natural question many people ask when oil prices spike is: Where does all that additional money go, and who benefits from it?

Some people have written entire books dissecting all the places that money goes when it leaves consumers’ pockets. But ultimately, the bulk of the money heads in the direction of the source of the oil itself – the oil companies.

What they do with the money varies widely, depending on where in the world an oil company is operating and who owns it. What also matters is the business environment – the set of laws and regulations – in which the company operates.

Middle East faces danger

Oil producers in the Middle East face significant new risk because of the war in Iran, including threats to production, processing locations and shipping routes. These risks raise their costs for insurance, security and transportation.

But production costs in the region are relatively low, so higher global oil prices typically still translate into strong profits.

For a major exporter such as Saudi Arabia, the government owns and controls nearly all oil production, so high prices generally benefit the government’s finances and investments, even during a war. In Saudi Arabia, oil revenue has historically been used to fund public spending.

West Texas gets a windfall

The Permian Basin, the largest oil field in the U.S., is a long way from the Persian Gulf. When global oil prices rise because of the war in Iran, oil companies operating in West Texas effectively get a windfall gain: Prices rise more quickly than costs, at least in the short run.

The immediate effect is more income from higher prices. The money largely goes to company owners – meaning shareholders – through dividends, debt reduction, company-backed purchases of its own stock, and reinvestment in drilling and production. Over time, companies may decide to spend some of that windfall on building more production capacity or pipelines to get more oil and gas to market.

North Sea boosts government revenue

In the North Sea, between the island of Great Britain and Scandinavia, a mix of multinational and government-owned companies produce most of the oil.

In the U.K., private shareholders are the primary beneficiaries of higher profits from increased oil prices, though an additional tax on oil and gas companies’ profits means the government also collects a significant share of the money, which it uses to help pay public expenses.

In Norway, oil revenues flow into the Government Pension Fund Global, the world’s largest sovereign wealth fund, valued at over $2 trillion. Laws govern how much, and for what purposes, money can be withdrawn from the fund, supporting public spending and preserving wealth for future generations. This is a similar model to Alaska’s state-owned program, funded by oil revenue, that pays for government services and sends an annual dividend to every permanent resident.

Russian oligarchs get rich

Russian oil is subject to stringent economic sanctions imposed by major industrial countries as a response to the Russian invasion and occupation of parts of Ukraine. While the U.S. cannot control how much Russia charges for its oil, it can control services needed to move Russian oil around the world. Under current price sanctions, Western shipping, insurance and financing can be used to ship and sell Russian crude oil only if the price is below $60 per barrel.

Russia’s oil industry is dominated by government-controlled companies whose leaders maintain close ties to President Vladimir Putin. The dealings of those shadowy figures are often shrouded in secrecy, but it is likely that they and Putin’s military-industrial complex – not the Russian people – are the main beneficiaries of high oil prices.

What this means for you

Everyday U.S. consumers may not like the idea of their hard-earned cash going into the already deep pockets of any of these groups. But in the short run, there’s not much to do but pay the price. For the long run, however, people around the world are already thinking and talking about, and opting for, sources of energy that don’t depend on fossil fuels.

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

Now in its second year, the conference continues to grow as a national platform for collaboration across more than 30 Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), all working to strengthen diversity and talent pipelines in microelectronics and semiconductor industries. Centered on the theme of Championing New Approaches to Reestablishing U.S. Dominance in Semiconductors and Microelectronics, the event featured technical sessions, panel discussions, poster presentations, and networking opportunities. 

“This conference provides a national platform to showcase the depth of talent within the HBCU community, including leading edge research and innovation,” said George White, executive director of strategic partnerships and chief CHIPS strategy officer at Georgia Tech. “It also raises awareness of public and private funding opportunities and promotes collaboration across academia, industry, and government.” 

Attendance reflected strong interest across the network. The conference drew approximately 180 participants, including representatives from 26 HBCUs, 17 industry and nonprofit organizations, five government agencies, and the Technical College System of Georgia. The career fair attracted 231 students from the same 26 institutions.

The addition of the career fair this year, which created space for more focused interaction between students and employers, gave students opportunities to speak one-on-one with recruiters and industry professionals. These conversations gave them a clearer understanding of career pathways, available roles, and how to enter the field.

“This experience strengthened my interest in pursuing a career in the semiconductor industry, particularly in fabrication, validation, and reliability,” said Mustafa Ali, a student at Prairie View A&M University and a Student Achievement in Microelectronics Award recipient. “Engaging with both industry professionals and the academic community showed me the importance of connecting research with real-world applications.”

The addition of the career fair also reflects the broader mission of the HBCU CHIPS Network: not only to advance research, but also to build a robust, diverse talent pipeline ready to meet the nation’s growing demand for semiconductor professionals. With the U.S. projected to need tens of thousands of new workers in this sector in the coming years, integrating a career fair directly into the conference experience ensures that students are not just participants in conversations, but active candidates in the future workforce. 

Six employers participated in the career fair: Savannah River National Laboratory, Sandia National Laboratories, Teradyne, GlobalFoundries, Synopsys, and Micron. They offered internships and full-time positions, while also connecting with students interested in long-term career development. Graduate programs from Clark Atlanta University, Norfolk State University, Georgia Tech, and North Carolina A&T State University were also represented, highlighting academic pathways alongside industry roles.

“At Teradyne, we believe that innovation thrives when our teams reflect the full spectrum of talent and perspectives that exist across the engineering landscape,” said Danielle S. Ferguson-Macklin, talent communities program manager at Teradyne. “HBCUs have a proven legacy of cultivating exceptional STEM talent, and partnering with these institutions allows us to connect with students who bring both technical rigor and a deep sense of purpose to their work. Strengthening our HBCU recruiting pipeline is not a diversity initiative; it is a strategic investment in the future of our workforce and the semiconductor industry.”

“We look for students with strong technical foundations, intellectual curiosity, and the adaptability to thrive in fast-moving, complex environments,” added Armond Duncan, staff program manager, MSI network collaboration, at Micron. “Collaboration, communication, and a willingness to continuously learn are just as critical as technical acumen. Students who demonstrate hands-on experience and a clear sense of purpose are best positioned to make an immediate and lasting impact.”

Beyond recruitment, the event placed a strong emphasis on mentorship and networking. Many students sought guidance in addition to job opportunities, and the format of the career fair, supported by shared meals and informal spaces, encouraged natural conversations and relationship-building. For some students, the experience highlighted the value of connecting research to industry trends. 

“Attending the conference was an extremely enriching experience,” said Roshan Padhan, a student at Jackson State University and another Student Achievement in Microelectronics Award recipient. “It further motivated me toward the advancement of next-generation semiconductor devices and provided a broader understanding of how academic research translates into real-world technological innovations.”

Sustained engagement throughout the event highlighted the demand for career-focused programming within the HBCU CHIPS Network. Organizers expect that demand to continue growing. “In the coming years, we expect the conference to expand in scope and impact,” White said. “Ultimately, our goal is for many — if not all — HBCUs to have awareness of, representation at, and meaningful participation in the conference.”

Eight faculty members received funding for projects that advance Georgia Tech energy research by generating early insights, expanding shared research tools, and exploring solutions related to energy policy, grid reliability, clean energy incentives, and industry‑driven innovation shaping Georgia’s energy future.

By supporting timely, policy-relevant research and engagement that connect Georgia Tech expertise with pressing regional energy challenges, the ACCELERATE program encourages collaboration across the Institute and with external partners, supports graduate student involvement, and amplifies research outputs that inform policy, regulatory, and market decisions. 

“ACCELERATE is designed to help early- and mid-career faculty move quickly on ideas that can shape energy policy and practice,” said Laura Taylor, director of EPIcenter. “By supporting both early‑stage collaboration and more developed policy research, the program enables Georgia Tech researchers to engage decision‑makers and stakeholders when it matters most.”

Proposals considered for funding were grounded in policy and behavioral research, including studies that examined how past or potential policies and regulations worked, and analyses of current market and behavioral outcomes that revealed management, policy, or regulatory gaps and opportunities.  

Funded projects span a range of disciplines and policy‑focused topics aligned with EPIcenter’s mission, with a strong emphasis on challenges facing Georgia and the Southeast. Collectively, the awards support research development, data creation, stakeholder engagement, and public-facing thought leadership intended to inform energy policy and implementation.

"As electricity demand grows, it is increasingly important to understand how industrial processes could use energy flexibly to enable efficient use of renewable resources like solar and wind,” said Micah Ziegler, assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy. “Support from the EPIcenter ACCELERATE program enables us to ask fundamental questions about how to design flexible systems and supply chains."

Awards ranged from $5,000 to $75,000. Projects that received ACCELERATE funding include:

Measuring the Alignment Between Legislators’ Energy Bill Votes and Their District Characteristics in the Georgia House of Representatives
Faculty Researcher: Clio Andris, Associate Professor, School of City and Regional Planning and School of Interactive Computing

Strengthening Georgia Tech’s National Energy Modeling of Priority Research Areas
Faculty Researcher: Marilyn Brown, Regents' Professor and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy

Protecting Consumers From Price Volatility: Evidence and Policy Lessons From Georgia's Natural Gas Market
Faculty Researcher: Dylan Brewer, Assistant Professor, School of Economics

Can Place-Based Incentives Accelerate the Energy Transition?
Faculty Researcher: Gaurav Doshi, Assistant Professor, School of Economics

The Revolving Door in Utility Regulation
Faculty Researcher: Michelle Graff, Assistant Professor, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy 

How Do Data Centers Affect Tradeoffs Between Reliability and Decarbonization?
Faculty Researchers: Tony Harding, Assistant Professor, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, and Brian An, Assistant Professor, Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy

Calculating the Emissions Cost of the Solar Rebound for the United States
Faculty Researcher: Matt Oliver, Associate Professor, School of Economics

Evaluating Long-Duration Flexibility of Industrial Demand in Electric Power Systems
Faculty Researchers: Micah Ziegler, assistant professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, and Constance Crozier, Assistant Professor, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering

ACCELERATE is an annual program open to all Georgia Tech faculty, focusing on policy‑ and decision‑relevant research that advances energy affordability, reliability, resilience, and decarbonization in the region.

More information about EPIcenter’s research areas and programs is available at epicenter.energy.gatech.edu.

GT² is a newly established research initiative at Georgia Tech that focuses on discovery science, engineering innovation, and AI-enabled decision tools to address urgent challenges at the intersection of environmental and community resilience in the Southeast. The initiative fosters research in direct service to regional communities through public-private partnerships, and it provides opportunities for graduate student engagement.

The BHIC-GT² research fund and partnership will pursue shared initiatives in the fields of coastal sustainability, ecosystem health, and environmental resilience. By combining BHIC’s applied, field-based conservation work with Georgia Tech’s expertise in technological innovation and data analysis, new opportunities for impactful research will be created through graduate student projects and community engagement.

About the Partnership
Like the GT² initiative, BHIC’s Johnston Center for Coastal Sustainability was created to translate research into real-world impact. BHIC established the Johnston Center as a research partnership and education hub for sustainability initiatives on Bald Head Island, with the broader goal of advancing coastal sustainability across the Southeast. Seed funding for the Center was provided in 2021 by Dick and Pat Johnston, longtime supporters of BHIC. 

Dick, a Georgia Tech IM 1962 alumnus, and Pat Johnston shared their enthusiasm for the BHIC and Georgia Tech collaboration, noting: 

“We are delighted to see our two favorite institutions come together through this partnership. It brings additional resources, expertise, and leadership to our shared focus on keeping the historic tagline ‘Living in Harmony with Nature’ in the hearts of future generations.”

Joel Kostka, Faculty Director of GT² who also serves as Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professor and associate chair for Research in the School of Biological Sciences with a joint appointment in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at Georgia Tech added:

“The Bald Head Island Conservancy and its Johnston Center for Coastal Sustainability exemplify how place‑based conservation and rigorous science can work together to create real impact. The Bald Head Island Conservancy’s long‑term stewardship, research infrastructure, and commitment to translating science into action make it an ideal partner for Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow as we advance collaborative research that strengthens coastal resilience across the Southeast.”

This partnership will focus on Georgia Tech graduate student research projects that use innovative technology and data analyses to directly support the conservation work of BHIC.

Graduate student research already plays an important role in BHIC’s conservation efforts. Gabie Krueger, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student in Ocean Sciences and Engineering and BHIC’s 2025-26 Johnston Graduate Fellow in Coastal Sustainability, has been working with BHIC scientists on a salt marsh ecology project that examined how ribbed mussels and fiddler crabs influence the health of Bald Head Island’s dominant salt marsh grass Spartina alterniflora. These flora-fauna interactions serve as primary indicators of marsh health, so her research is important for understanding the resilience of Bald Head Island’s salt marsh to environmental concerns such as sea-level rise and development.

Through the BHIC-GT² partnership, Georgia Tech student researchers who work with the Conservancy will also gain invaluable experience with local conservation efforts and community engagement.

G. Christopher Shank, Ph.D., Executive Director of BHIC, commented:

“The Bald Head Island Conservancy is thrilled about this opportunity to create a formal research partnership with Georgia Tech, one of the nation’s most esteemed research universities. It is recognition of the quality of conservation studies we are currently pursuing at the Conservancy and it also augments the impact of our work for BHI and beyond because of the technological and data analysis talent that Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow will bring to this partnership.”

Why This Matters
This research fund and partnership represents an important step forward in strengthening connections between academic research and applied conservation institutions. Together, BHIC and GT² aim to inform coastal management decisions, support resilience planning, engage students, and advance research that benefits coastal ecosystems and communities across the southeastern U.S.

Looking Ahead
Additional details about joint initiatives, research priorities, and collaborative opportunities will be shared in the coming months.

In 2018, the company broke ground in Social Circle, a small town an hour east of Atlanta with about 5,000 residents, to build one of its largest U.S. data centers. It opened in 2020.

Local officials called it a win. Shane Short, president and CEO of the Development Authority of Walton County, said the plant generates about $10 million annually in property tax revenue and has led to road improvements and expanded broadband.

Electric vehicle maker Rivian followed Meta’s lead and began construction on a plant near Social Circle in September 2025, adding to the area’s rapid industrial growth.

But for residents, the shift from a largely rural, agricultural economy to an energy-intensive industrial one has put new pressure on power and water systems.

“They’re seeing higher water and power bills, worse air quality, and very few jobs in return for this, while large corporations get tax benefits,” said Ahmed Saeed, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Computer Science, describing why residents in some communities push back on new data center development.

Saeed and Josiah Hester, associate professor of interactive computing and computer science and director of the Center for Advancing Responsible AI, have spent the past year studying the energy, water, and financial demands associated with these facilities, and how those costs are distributed.

Betting on Demand

AI data centers run on specialized chips that use large amounts of electricity. That power generates heat, which requires energy- and water-intensive cooling.

The state is adding capacity based on expected demand, not current use.

Last year, the Georgia Public Service Commission approved an estimated $16 billion expansion for Georgia Power to support that growth. It is expected to produce about 10 gigawatts of electricity at a given time. That’s enough energy to power about 7.5 million homes for a year.

If that demand materializes, the electricity is used. If it doesn’t, the cost still has to be paid.

Grid Stability

“Those workloads can put a very large demand on the grid all at once, and then remove it just as quickly,” Saeed said. “That sudden change is difficult for the system to handle.”

That volatility is a separate issue.

Even if data center operators pay for the infrastructure they use, large swings in demand can still strain grid operations, especially during peak periods or extreme weather.

What Comes Next

Back in Walton County, the Meta facility is already attracting additional data centers.

Each new site adds power and water infrastructure designed to operate for decades.

The servers inside need to be upgraded every few years.

Saeed and Hester said if Georgia wants to remain an AI and cloud hub, the state needs to set the terms and companies need to meet them.

That starts with disclosure — how much power data centers draw from the grid, how that demand spikes, and how much water they use. It includes clear expectations for how those facilities respond when the grid is under stress, and protections for the communities where they’re built.

The researchers maintain that “build it and hope” is not a strategy.

A research team led by Yuhang Hu, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, has created a new material designed to do exactly that. In a new study published in Advanced Materials, Hu and her collaborators describe a groundbreaking class of “living” polymers that can grow, shrink, heal, and even regenerate long after fabrication.

Their work combines advances in chemistry, mechanics, and materials design into a polymer platform that could reshape how engineered products are built, maintained, and recycled.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

But powering devices is only part of the challenge. Enabling those same systems to communicate at modern data rates is a much harder. That’s the leap the team is now making. The same lens-based approach is being used to unlock high-speed communication once considered out of reach for ultra-low-power systems.

In a study published in Nature Communications, researchers in Professor Manos (Emmanouil) Tentzeris’ Agile Technologies for High-performance Electromagnetic Novel Applications (ATHENA) lab demonstrated a first-of-its-kind lens-enabled backscatter system capable of multi-gigabit data rates, reaching up to 4 gigabits per second (Gbps). At the same time, it operates using only a fraction of the power required by conventional wireless devices — bringing high-speed connectivity to systems that were never meant to support it.

For years, backscatter has been treated as a tradeoff: extremely low power, but extremely limited performance. Rather than generating its own radio signal, a backscatter device modulates and reflects existing wireless transmissions to communicate, allowing it to operate with minimal energy. 

As a result, backscatter has typically been used only to send small amounts of data, most often in simple identification and sensing systems.

“What we’ve shown is that backscatter doesn’t have to be slow,” said Marvin Joshi, the research lead and Ph.D. candidate in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “With the right architecture, it can operate at gigabit‑per‑second speeds while remaining ultra‑low power.”

Associate Professor Alan Ritter and Ph.D. student Ethan Mendes were awarded fellowships for their work on creating artificial intelligence (AI) agents that function as teammates.

Mendes was named a fellow, while Ritter will serve as his fellowship advisor.

The Microsoft Research Fellowship is open to faculty, students, and postdocs. Ritter said that if Microsoft sees alignment in a project, it gives recipients the opportunity to work even closer with their collaborators by inviting them to join as additional fellows.

That turned out to be the case with Mendes after Ritter listed him as a collaborator in his fellowship proposal.

“I’m delighted to serve as Ethan Mendes’ fellowship advisor,” Ritter said. “He is an exceptionally strong researcher, and I’m excited to see his work recognized through the Microsoft Research Fellowship.”

Through the fellowship, Ritter and Mendes will design AI systems that better support collaboration and decision-making within organizations. 

“The goal is to move beyond AI as a tool for a single user and instead study how AI can help groups make more informed, transparent, and coordinated decisions,” Ritter said. “We will focus on methods that bring together information from many different sources, help people reason under uncertainty, and generate analyses that support collective problem-solving in complex work settings.”

Professor Named to Sustainability Cohort

The Purple Mai’a Foundation has selected Associate Professor Josiah Hester to join its Eahou Global Immersion Cohort.

The Purple Mai’a Foundation is a technology education nonprofit headquartered in Aiea, Hawaii, that teaches coding and computer science to Native Hawaiian students.

The 29 members of the Eahou Global Immersion Cohort from 15 countries are leaders from indigenous communities recognized for their contributions to sustainability.

Hester is a Native Hawaiian whose research centers on sustainable and battery-free technology.

The cohort will gather on O’ahu May 1-3 for Eahou Fest, where they will share stories and solutions from research around the world.

“I’m honored to be selected for the Eahou Global Immersion Cohort and to learn alongside such an inspiring group of resilience leaders who come from around the globe,” Hester said. 

“Participants are selected for their significant leadership over the past decade and their ability to bring what they learn back to their communities and integrate it into ongoing work and partnerships. I’m excited to connect these experiences with my work and bring these lessons back into research and teaching at Georgia Tech.”

Jill Watson Creator Receives AAAI Lecture Award

Professor Ashok Goel received one of the most distinguished awards from the Association for the Advancement of Artificial Intelligence (AAAI).

Goel was selected as the 20th recipient of the AAAI Robert S. Engel Memorial Lecture Award. Established in 2003, the award is given to those who have demonstrated excellence in AI scholarship, outstanding applications of AI, and extraordinary service to AAAI and the AI community.

Goel received the award in January during the AAAI Conference on Artificial Intelligence in Singapore. According to the awards program, Goel was recognized for contributions to biologically inspired design, case-based reasoning, and application of AI in virtual teaching.

Goel is the inventor of Jill Watson, one of the first AI virtual teaching assistants used in higher education classrooms.

AAAI is also the publisher of AI Magazine, which Goel served as editor-in-chief from 2016 to 2021.

“I am both honored and humbled to receive AAAI's Robert Engelmore Award,” Goel said. “Bob was a long-time editor of AAAI's AI Magazine, and many years after he retired, I became the editor of the magazine. This makes the Engelmore Award special to me.”

The Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI) has announced its newest cohort of 12 fellowship projects, an expansion that reflects both growing interest and a broader vision for bioproducts research at Georgia Tech.  

Backed by a four-year, $2.2 million National Institutes of Health Research Project (R01) grant, the project aims to develop a microcatheter that combines high-resolution imaging with precise pressure sensing in a single device.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

The award was announced March 25, 2026 and is one of six Institute Research Awards given by Georgia Tech’s Office of the Executive Vice President for Research. The portfolio of awards honors achievements in research engagement, innovation, faculty advising, and impact. 

Georgia AIM is a statewide coalition led by the Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) and the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) to develop and deploy AI talent and innovation in manufacturing. The Georgia AIM coalition includes dozens of universities, technical colleges, nonprofits, and economic development organizations.

“It is an incredible experience to collaborate with technology and economic development leaders around the state to lead the nation and the world in AI for manufacturing,” said Aaron Stebner, Georgia AIM co-director and the Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. Chair in Manufacturing at Georgia Tech. 

“We are truly honored to receive this recognition from our peers at Georgia Tech,” said Tom Kurfess, GTMI Executive Director and HUSCO/Ramirez Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power and Motion Control. 

Georgia AIM was initiated in 2021 by Stebner, EI2 Vice President David Bridges, Kurfess, Georgia AIM managing director and GTMI deputy director Steven Ferguson, and Georgia Tech executive director for strategic partnerships George White. The coalition received an initial $500,000 planning grant from the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA), which was followed by $65 million in additional grants from EDA and with additional federal, state, and private sector support now totals more than $100 million to enact projects across the state. 

The Georgia AIM coalition counts many achievements on and off campus, including:

• Supporting collaborations for more than thirty-five faculty, fifty research faculty and professionals, ten post docs, eighty graduate research assistants, one hundred and fifty undergraduate research assistants, and dozens of staff at Georgia Tech.
• Transforming the Georgia Tech Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility into a national user facility for research and development to invent, test, derisk, and mature AI manufacturing and materials technologies.
• Building a manufacturing commercialization pipeline that links faculty research, student innovation, startups, and corporate partners to introduce AI manufacturing innovations to regional and national economies.
• Launching workforce development programs that provide new opportunities and career paths thousands of students spanning K-12 engagement, technical apprenticeships and credentials, and professional education.
• Providing STEM experiences including AI coding camps, robotics competitions, and advanced manufacturing competitions to thousands of students across Georgia.
• 21 peer reviewed journal articles, 5 peer reviewed conference proceedings, 5 National Academies workshop presentations, 5 keynote/plenary presentations, more than 200 conference presentations and posters, 13 invention disclosures, 7 provisional patents, 2 full patents filed to date with dozens more in process. 

“Georgia AIM proves that innovation scales when built alongside workforce,” said Ferguson. “We built a seamless pipeline from education to industry, ensuring talent is ready to deploy AI in real manufacturing environments on day one.”

“The impact of Georgia AIM is grounded in collaboration — universities, industry, nonprofits and communities working together to shape the future of advanced manufacturing in Georgia,” said Bridges. “This recognition underscores what a coordinated statewide effort can accomplish.”

Because research covers a range of activities — from research and development to commercialization and public impacts — the annual awards recognize the many facets of work in this area. The peer-driven nomination process emphasizes measurable contributions and leadership across disciplines.

“The strength of Georgia Tech’s research enterprise begins with the talented people who push discovery forward every day,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive vice president for Research. “Congratulations to this year’s honorees, who demonstrate what it means to turn bold ideas into real-world impact, advancing knowledge from fundamental science to commercial and community applications. With these awards, we celebrate their leadership, creativity, and dedication to serving the public good.”

Read more about this year’s Institute Research Award winners. 

The questions surrounding AI may be an unprecedented new challenge, but at Georgia Tech, students are already trying to answer them. The AI Safety Initiative (AISI) is a student group aiming to steer AI research and policy for society’s benefit.

“AI introduces new kinds of challenges into our legal and societal frameworks,” said Rocio Perales Valdes, AISI co-director and second-year computer science student. “Its capabilities emerge fast and on a jagged, hard-to-predict edge, which leaves AI governance like chasing a moving target. The work ahead is building the governance and technical tools we need to evaluate these systems, set direction, and enforce them without hindering innovation.”

AISI focuses on developing and deploying AI responsibly, rather than avoiding it. The group offers guest talks from AI researchers, fellowships that immerse students in the latest safety research through reading and discussion groups, and independent projects that contribute directly to the field. Past projects from AISI include demonstrating large language model security risks on Capitol Hill, responding to U.S. Federal Requests for Information, and running a war game for GTRI faculty. Part lab and part learning community, AISI prepares students to become the next generation of AI safety researchers and practitioners. They have placed alumni at leading organizations such as Anthropic, RAND, Model Evaluations and Threat Research, the UK AI Security Institute, and the Horizon Institute for Public Service.

“AI safety is an urgent problem because there is a rapidly growing gap between what AI systems can do and what we understand about them; yet mitigating AI risks is systematically neglected by current market incentives,” said Yixiong Hao, third‑year computer science student and co‑director of AISI. “I think the set of things I can do to directly move the needle is quite limited in the next three to five years, and that’s why I run this group. I have higher leverage in convincing smart people to work on neglected problems in AI safety.”

Founded in 2022 by Gaurav Sett, who is now a Ph.D. student at the RAND School of Public Policy and a fellow at the Institute for Progress, AISI has grown quickly. Its 10‑member executive board supports a broad base of student involvement, with more than 70 students participating in the fellowship program each semester. Over the past two years, members have also published 13 papers at top conferences such as the International Conference on Learning Representations, with projects spanning AI security and algorithmic transparency. 

From Discussion to Discovery

As a first‑year computer science student, Ishan Khire joined AISI looking for a deeper way to engage with AI safety and quickly found a pathway into research. After attending one general meeting, Khire enrolled in the group’s six‑week fellowship program, where students meet weekly to discuss current technical and policy challenges shaping the field.

“Finding a community that cares about AI safety was a big part of joining the fellowship,” Khire said. “Because AI safety is a broad subject, it was helpful to have an accountability group to discuss current issues.”

Thanks to the connections he made at AISI, Khire began conducting AI research with computing faculty member Giri Krishnan to predict the 3D structure of proteins. 

“AI is going to be really transformative in the next five to 10 years, and we want to make that transformation go well,” Khire said. “AISI tries to upskill people and connect them to technical and policy research that helps them find impactful work.”

Student Advantage

AISI is entirely student‑run, with a small group of faculty advisors. That structure lends itself to uncertain research that can be difficult to fund through traditional academic labs, and faculty support has followed.

“Any cursory look at the news today will show there is significant angst about AI and whether it is being developed responsibly and with sufficient guardrails in place,” said Tom Conte, the College of Computing associate dean for Research. “AISI has Georgia Tech at the forefront of that conversation.”

AISI member and computer science Ph.D. student Glenn Matlin has recruited many undergraduate researchers from the group for his own projects.

“I consider AISI like a third lab,” he said. “I use it as a great place for recruiting students. I’m constantly sharing my own research, and it helps me stay up to date with what other researchers are talking about.”

Matlin also credits AISI with advancing his own work in AI safety. Through the fellowship, he synthesized research that helped him apply for opportunities such as the prestigious AI safety mentorship at the MATS Program, which has connected him to additional research funding.

In a future increasingly shaped by algorithms, AISI’s students are betting that the most important safeguards won’t come from code alone, but from the people guiding how that code is built, deployed, and governed.

“AI safety matters to everyone,” Matlin said. “AI is going to disrupt not just technology, but also politics and business — and its risks are creating urgent opportunities to make it safer.”

It was the beginning of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The world needed a vaccine that didn’t exist, and there was no clear timeline for one. No one knew how long the vaccine development process would take — or whether it would work at all.

Then, less than a year later, Pfizer and BioNTech set a record for how fast a drug moved from clinical trials to federal authorization — and to people waiting as the virus surged worldwide.  That speed depended on more than scientific discovery. It hinged on trials, regulatory approval, and manufacturing at scale.

Experience Made the Difference

Startup BioNTech, a small biotech firm, had spent years developing mRNA technology. Pfizer, a huge pharmaceutical company, brought deep experience running large clinical trials, working with regulators, and manufacturing at scale. The two companies had worked together before, which meant they did not have to build trust, decision-making structures, or workflows in the middle of a crisis. Trials moved quickly. They knew what regulators required and how to meet those demands.

According to Georgia Tech research, that kind of business alignment is far from common — and can explain why many promising drugs never reach patients.

Manpreet Hora, senior associate dean for programs and professor of operations management in Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business, studies what happens after a drug leaves the lab. In a study published in Production and Operations Management, he and his coauthors analyzed nearly 300 biotech–pharma partnerships to understand why some drugs make it through and others stall.

“If you are a patient, this process is out of your control,” Hora said. “In some cases, it can cost lives.”

Where It Breaks Down

Drug development often depends on handoffs. Small biotech firms typically generate early discoveries. Larger pharmaceutical companies step in to run trials, work with regulators, and bring products to market.

But complications can arise when companies that lack similar experience levels try to develop the drug together.

Decision-making slows down. Roles become unclear. The process starts to erode.

"That's why partner choice matters," Hora said, comparing the process to a popular TV show. "It's like going on Shark Tank — just because someone is offering money doesn't mean they're the right partner."

Hora said the Pfizer–BioNTech partnership worked because both companies approached the work the same way, despite the difference in their size. Pfizer is one of the largest pharmaceutical companies in the world. BioNTech was a much smaller firm.

What Decides the Outcome

As of September 2025, 5 billion doses of the Pfizer–BioNTech Covid vaccine have been distributed globally.

Pfizer’s chairman and CEO, Albert Bourla, attributes the unprecedented success to a “world class collaboration” with BioNTech. He said, "I think it was because both companies had developed very similar cultures…We were both really very purpose-driven.”

Hora's research comes to the same conclusion: In an industry where drugs can take a decade to reach patients, the wrong partner can mean they never arrive at all. 

Working with collaborators at University College London (UCL), Georgia Tech researchers used computer models to reveal how, during early development, forces generated by cells physically pull the neural tube closed — like a drawstring. This discovery offers new insight into a critical process that, when disrupted, can result in severe birth defects such as spina bifida.

“Understanding a complex developmental process like neural tube closure requires a highly interdisciplinary approach,” said Shiladitya Banerjee, an associate professor in the School of Physics. “By combining advanced biological imaging with theoretical physics, we were able to uncover the mechanical rules that drive cells to close the tube. My lab builds computational models to uncover the physical rules of living systems. The neural tube is an ideal focus because its formation requires incredible mechanical coordination.”

The researchers presented their findings in Current Biology. 

Closing the Gap

The UCL team studied mouse embryos, which develop similarly to humans, and Georgia Tech researchers used that data to construct their models. From the data, they identified the fundamental physics mechanism that enables neural tube closure in part of the brain. This mechanism, called a “purse string,” is made of actin, a pivotal protein that forms a cell’s skeletal structure. As the purse strings tighten, the tube closes.

“These actin molecules are very important because they give rigidity and shape to cells,” Banerjee said.

“During neural tube closure, actin filaments form a ring around the opening and engage molecular motors — proteins that generate forces inside cells,” he said. “As these motors pull on the actin, they generate tension that tightens the ring and draws the tube closed.”

Stretching to Fit

As the actin ring tightens, cells stretch and elongate, causing them to align and move together in a synchronized pattern, like a school of fish. This coordination allows the cells to move faster and more efficiently, increasing tension and driving a feedback loop that helps seal the neural tube.

The team built a computer model to show how this feedback loop leads to successful neural tube formation. Further research using the model could help explain why the neural tube fails to close.

“Physics-based modeling of cell and tissue mechanics allows us to connect the dots between developmental stages in a way that is both robust and quantitative, simulating experiments that are impossible in biological tissues,” said Gabriel Galea, the study co-author and UCL group leader. “In this case, it allowed us to explain how a cell’s mechanical experience impacts its current and future shapes during a critical step of brain development.”

Beyond neural tube development, the findings highlight the power of physics-based modeling to explain complex biological processes that can’t be observed directly. The researchers say this approach could be applied to other stages of human development where forces, motion, and timing are just as critical.

The computational research at Banerjee Lab is funded by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences

Fernanda Pérez-Verdugo, Eirini Maniou, Gabriel L. Galea, Shiladitya Banerjee, “Mechanosensitive feedback organizes cell shape and motion during hindbrain neuropore morphogenesis,” Current Biology, 2026.

DOI: 10.1016/j.cub.2026.02.068 

The paper, The Borderlands of Foldability: Lessons from Simplified Proteins, is a meta-analysis of six decades of protein research and reveals that ancient proteins may have been far more complicated and dynamic than previously thought. 

Recently published in the journal Trends in Chemistry, the study includes Georgia Tech researchers Lynn Kamerlin, professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and Georgia Research Alliance Vasser-Woolley Chair in Molecular Design, and Quantitative Biosciences Ph.D. candidate Alfie-Louise Brownless.

Co-authors also include Institute of Science Tokyo graduate student Koh Seya and Liam M. Longo, who serves as a specially appointed associate professor at Science Tokyo and as an affiliate research scientist at the Blue Marble Space Institute of Science.

The research has implications ranging from the origins of life and the search for life in the universe to cutting-edge medical innovation. “One of the biggest unanswered questions in science is how life first began,” says Kamerlin, who is a corresponding author of the study. “Understanding how the first protein-like molecules formed and what the earliest proteins may have been like is a key part of that puzzle.”

“Proteins power our bodies — and all life on Earth,” she adds. “Simply put, the evolution of proteins is the reason that we’re able to have this conversation at all.”

A Protein Folding Paradox

If proteins are the scaffolding of life, amino acids are the components that make up that scaffolding. “Today, an average protein is constructed from a chain of about 300 amino acids, involving 20 different types of amino acids,” Kamerlin shares. Proteins fold when these chains twist into a specific 3-dimensional shape, creating structures critical for biology.

However, while these folds are essential, exactly how a protein knows which way to fold remains a mystery. “We know that proteins didn’t just fold randomly,” Kamerlin shares, “because randomly trying all possible configurations would take a protein longer than the age of the universe.”

It’s a cornerstone problem in biological science called “Levinthal’s Paradox,” and highlights a fundamental mystery: Proteins fold incredibly quickly into very specific combinations — but like a sheet of paper spontaneously folding into an origami swan, researchers don’t know how proteins “choose” the folds they make.

“We can predict what a protein will look like, but can’t tell you how it got there,” Kamerlin adds. “That’s what we’re interested in exploring: how small early proteins developed into the complex proteins that support every living thing on today’s Earth.”

Simple Letters, Sophisticated Structures

Early proteins likely had access to just half of today’s amino acids. “About 10-12 amino acids were likely available on early Earth,” Kamerlin says. Like writing a story with just the letters “A” through “L,” researchers assumed that the ‘vocabulary’ proteins could build from such a limited amino acid alphabet would also be constrained.

“There is a language to protein folding,” Kamerlin explains. “That language is hidden in their structures. Our research is in trying to understand the rules — the grammar and vocabulary that dictate a protein fold.” 

The grammar they discovered was surprising: with a combination of creative techniques and environmental support, complex structures can arise from limited amino acid alphabets. 

“We found that it is possible to develop complex folds with very simple tools — and certain environments, like salty ones, can help support that,” Kamerlin shares. “Early proteins could also cross-link and associate, interacting like LEGO blocks to create more complex structures.”

Pioneering Proteins

Now, the team is conducting research in environments that could mimic conditions on early Earth — aiming to discover more about how these regions could have given rise to today’s complex proteins. “This aspect of our research also ties into the amazing space research happening at Georgia Tech,” Kamerlin says. “While we’re interested in understanding early life on Earth, our work could help inform where best to look for evidence of life beyond our planet.”

Kamerlin specializes in creating computer models that simulate possible scenarios – creating an opportunity to quickly and efficiently test many theories. The most compelling of these can then be tested by her collaborator and co-author at Science Tokyo, Liam Longo, in lab experiments. 

Protein folding is also at the forefront of medical innovation, ranging from diagnostic tools to cancer treatments and neurodegenerative diseases. “In the broader scope, we’re interested in discovering what we can design, what we can stress test, and what we can reconstruct with AI and other computational tools,” Kamerlin says. “Because if you can understand how proteins fold, you gain the ability to design them.”

Funding: NASA, the Human Frontier Science Program, and the Knut and Alice Wallenberg Foundation

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.trechm.2026.03.001

That’s one of the main findings from a study by AI Caring on what older adults expect from explainable AI (XAI).

AI Caring is one of three AI Institutions led by Georgia Tech and funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The institution supports AI research that benefits older adults and their caregivers.

Niharika Mathur, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Interactive Computing, was the lead author of a paper based on the study. The paper will be presented in April at the 2026 ACM Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI) in Barcelona.

Mathur worked with the Cognitive Empowerment Program at Emory University to interview 23 older adults who live alone and use voice-activated AI assistants like Amazon’s Alexa and Google Home.

Many of them told her they feel excluded from the design of these products.

“The assumption is that all people want interactions the same way and across all kinds of situations, but that isn’t true,” Mathur said. “How older people use AI and what they want from it are different from what younger people prefer.”

One example she gave is that young people tend to be informal when talking with AI. Older people, on the other hand, talk to the agent like they would a person.

“If Older adults are talking to their family members about Alexa, they usually refer to Alexa as ‘she’ instead of ‘it,’” Mathur said. “They tend to humanize these systems a lot more than young people.”

Good Explanations

The study evaluated AI explanations that drew information from four sources of data:

• User history (past conversations with the agent)
• Environmental data (indoor temperature or the weather forecast)
• Activity data (how much time a user spends in different areas of the home)
• Internal reasoning (mathematical probabilities and likely outcomes)

Mathur said older users trust the agent more when it bases its explanations on data from the first three sources. However, internal reasoning creates skepticism.

Internal reasoning means the AI doesn’t have enough data from the other sources to give an explanation. It provides a percentage to reflect its confidence based on what it knows.

“The overwhelming response was negative toward confidence scores,” Mathur said. “If the AI says it’s 92% confident, older adults want to know what that’s based on.”

This is another example that Mathur said points to generational preferences.

“There’s a lot of explainable AI research that shows younger people like to see numbers in explanations, and they also tend to rely too much on explanations that contain numerical confidence. Older adults are the opposite. It makes them trust it less.”

Knowing the Context

Mathur said that AI agents interacting with older adults should serve a dual purpose. They should provide users with companionship and support independence while reducing the caretaking burden often placed on family members. 

Some studies have shown that engineers have tended to favor caretakers in the design of these tools. They prioritize daily tasks and routines, leaving some older adults to feel like they are merely a box to be checked.

She discovered that in urgent situations, older users prefer the AI to be straightforward, while in casual settings, they desire more conversation.

“How people interact with technological systems is grounded in what the stakes of the situation are,” she said. “If it had anything to do with their immediate sense of safety, they did not want conversational elaboration. They want the AI to be very direct and factual.”

Not Just Checking Boxes

Mathur said AI agents that interact with older adults are ideally constructed with a dual purpose. They should provide companionship and autonomy for the users while alleviating the burden of caretaking that is often placed on their family members. 

Some studies have shown that engineers have strayed toward favoring caretakers in the design of these tools. They prioritize daily tasks and routines, leaving some older adults to feel like they are a box to be checked.

“They’re not being thought of as consumers,” Mathur said. “A lot of products are being made for them but not with them.”

She also said psychological well-being is one of the most important outcomes these tools should produce. 

Showing older adults that they are listened to can significantly help in gaining their trust. Some interviewees told Mathur they want agents who are deliberate about understanding their preferences and don’t dismiss their questions.

Meeting these needs reduces the likelihood of protesting and creating conflict with family members.

“It highlights just how important well-designed explanations are,” she said. “We must go beyond a transparency checklist.”

Georgia Tech researchers are making AI easier to understand through their work on Transformer Explainer. The free, online tool shows non-experts how ChatGPT, Claude, and other large language models (LLMs) process language. 

Transformer Explainer is easy to use and runs on any web browser. It quickly went viral after its debut, reaching 150,000 users in its first three months. More than 563,000 people worldwide have used the tool so far.

Global interest in Transformer Explainer continues when the team presents the tool at the 2026 Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2026). CHI, the world’s most prestigious conference on human-computer interaction, will take place in Barcelona, April 13-17.

[Related: GT @ CHI 2026]

“There are moments when LLMs can seem almost like a person with their own will and personality, and that misperception has real consequences. For example, there have been cases where teenagers have made poor decisions based on conversations with LLMs,” said Ph.D. student Aeree Cho.

“Understanding that an LLM is fundamentally a model that predicts the probability distribution of the next token helps users avoid taking its outputs as absolute. What you put in shapes what comes out, and that understanding helps people engage with AI more carefully and critically.”

A transformer is a neural network architecture that changes data input sequence into an output. Text, audio, and images are forms of processed data, which is why transformers are common in generative AI models. They do this by learning context and tracking mathematical relationships between sequence components.

Transformer Explainer demystifies how transformers work. The platform uses visualization and interaction to show, step by step, how text flows through a model and produces predictions.

Using this approach, Transformer Explainer impacts the AI landscape in four main ways:

• It counters hype and misconceptions surrounding AI by showing how transformers work.
• It improves AI literacy among users by removing technical barriers and lowering the entry for learning about AI.
• It expands AI education by helping instructors teach AI mechanisms without extensive setup or computing resources.
• It influences future development of AI tools and educational techniques by providing a blueprint for interpretable AI systems.

“When I first learned about transformers, I felt overwhelmed. A transformer model has many parts, each with its own complex math. Existing resources typically present all this information at once, making it difficult to see how everything fits together,” said Grace Kim, a dual B.S./M.S. computer science student. 

“By leveraging interactive visualization, we use levels of abstraction to first show the big picture of the entire model. Then users click into individual parts to reveal the underlying details and math. This way, Transformer Explainer makes learning far less intimidating.”

Many users don’t know what transformers are or how they work. The Georgia Tech team found that people often misunderstand AI. Some label AI with human-like characteristics, such as creativity. Others even describe it as working like magic.

Furthermore, barriers make it hard for students interested in transformers to start learning. Tutorials tend to be too technical and overwhelm beginners with math and code. While visualization tools exist, these often target more advanced AI experts.

Transformer Explainer overcomes these obstacles through its interactive, user-focused platform. It runs a familiar GPT model directly in any web browser, requiring no installation or special hardware. 

Users can enter their own text and watch the model predict the next word in real time. Sankey-style diagrams show how information moves through embeddings, attention heads, and transformer blocks.

The platform also lets users switch between high-level concepts and detailed math. By adjusting temperature settings, users can see how randomness affects predictions. This reveals how probabilities drive AI outputs, rather than creativity.

“Millions of people around the world interact with transformer-driven AI. We believe that it is crucial to bridge the gap between day-to-day user experience and the models' technical reality, ensuring these tools are not misinterpreted as human-like or seen as sentient,” said Ph.D. student Alex Karpekov. 

“Explaining the architecture helps users recognize that language generated by models is a product of computation, leading to a more grounded engagement with the technology.” 

Cho, Karpekov, and Kim led the development of Transformer Explainer. Ph.D. students Alec Helbling, Seongmin Lee, Ben Hoover, and alumni Zijie (Jay) Wang (Ph.D. ML-CSE 2024) and Minsuk Kahng (Ph.D. CS-CSE 2019) assisted on the project. 

Professor Polo Chau supervised the group and their work. His lab focuses on data science, human-centered AI, and visualization for social good.

Acceptance at CHI 2026 stems from the team winning the best poster award at the 2024 IEEE Visualization Conference. This recognition from one of the top venues in visualization research highlights Transformer Explainer’s effectiveness in teaching how transformers work.

“Transformer Explainer has reached over half a million learners worldwide,” said Chau, a faculty member in the School of Computational Science and Engineering. 

“I'm thrilled to see it extend Georgia Tech's mission of expanding access to higher education, now to anyone with a web browser.”

Now, the team is working with the Linux Foundation and the Open Source Security Foundation (OpenSSF) to ensure that its breakthrough doesn’t remain confined to a competition environment. The team’s new initiative, OSS-CRS, aims to standardize and operationalize cyber reasoning systems (CRSs) for real-world use.

“The AI Cyber Challenge pushed the boundaries of autonomous software security, with seven teams developing systems capable of finding and remediating vulnerabilities at scale,” said Andrew Chin, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student and lead on the OSS-CRS program. 

“However, after the competition’s conclusion, it has been difficult to apply these advancements to the open-source community due to infrastructure incompatibilities and the lack of long-term maintenance for the open-sourced CRS implementations.”

To address this gap, Georgia Tech’s Systems Software Lab (SSLab), directed by Professor Taesoo Kim, is leading the development of OSS-CRS, which provides both a common framework for CRS development and the infrastructure needed to deploy these systems seamlessly across open-source projects.

As part of this effort, the team has ported its competition-winning system, Atlantis, into the OSS-CRS framework. The move makes it compatible with laptops and other everyday machines with flexible resource and budget configurations.

Interoperability is also central to the framework’s design. Atlantis can be combined with other CRSs to improve performance, including systems developed by fellow AIxCC finalists and newer agentic, command-line-based tools. This modular approach reflects a key lesson the team learned from the competition: collaboration between systems can outperform any single solution.

OSS-CRS has been accepted as a sandbox project within OpenSSF’s AI/ML Security Working Group, a milestone that brings added technical guidance and community support to the project. This includes:

• Access to mentorship
• Dedicated working group meetings
• Broader visibility through industry events, publications, and outreach efforts

The collaboration will also foster stronger connections with open-source maintainers, helping streamline vulnerability disclosure and remediation workflows.

They would normally get this in their natural habitats while foraging for food and staying alert to predators that might target calves.

However, the four elephants reside at Zoo Atlanta, so they don’t have to worry about these things.

That’s why zoo caretakers are always on the lookout for better ways to help their elephants exercise their brains.

The caretakers at Zoo Atlanta found one when they met Arianna Mastali, a Ph.D. student in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. Mastali designed an audio enrichment wall to help stimulate Zoo Atlanta’s elephants.

Many zoos build concrete enrichment walls to foster elephant problem-solving and critical thinking. The walls usually have holes for the elephants to reach through with their trunks as they search for food, treats, or playful objects on the other side.

Mastali enhanced Zoo Atlanta’s enrichment wall by adding an interactive audio component. A nearby speaker system emits distinctive low-frequency tones when an elephant sticks its trunk into a hole.

“They’re intelligent creatures that require a lot of complexity in their habitat,” Mastali said. “We wanted to add to that complexity while giving them more control.”

Experimenting in the Wild

Mastali’s system uses cameras and computer vision to detect when an elephant’s trunk is inside a hole and then sends a signal to the speakers to play a sound.

Mastali is a member of the Georgia Tech Animal Lab, directed by School of IC professor Melody Jackson. The lab often uses sensing technology to enhance animal wellness.

Mastali said she tried incorporating sensing devices into her project several times. She constructed an insert made of PVC pipe and attached a sensor to its base that used infrared beams to detect the elephant’s trunk.

However, she said it was difficult to account for the elephants’ strength. Their trunks would break the insert after a day or two. 

She pivoted toward computer vision to remove the risk of damage and keep the enrichment wall as close to natural as possible. 

“A big lesson we learned was that using existing materials the elephants are already familiar with was the best way to do things, and it simplified our design process,” she said.

Shane Rosse, a student in Georgia Tech’s Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) program, assisted Mastali with the computer vision component.

Enhancing Environmental Enrichment

Mastali observed the elephants’ behavior at the wall seven days before and seven days after the installation of the audio enrichment system.

The number of times the elephants approached the wall after installation increased by 176%, and time spent at the wall increased by 71%

“We weren’t sure at first if they would care that much, so it was great to see how much time they spent at the wall, especially our less dominant females,” said Kirby Miller, senior elephant caretaker at Zoo Atlanta. “They seem to like it the most.”

Miller said the elephants used to only approach the wall when they knew there was food behind it. That started to change after the audio enrichment system was installed.

“We would be off somewhere else, and we’d hear the speaker playing the sounds, and we knew there wasn’t any food back there,” Miller said. “Tara had her trunk in one of the holes, just listening to the sound. That let us know they do like it, and they’re very curious about it.”

Miller said because elephants have sharp memories and acute senses of hearing and smell, their habitats must be designed with that in mind.

Zoo Atlanta’s African Savanna elephant habitat was redesigned in 2019. In addition to the enrichment wall, it includes a bathing pond, two waterfalls, and swing boom devices that hold hay for elephants to eat as they would in the wild.

Miller said elephants sheltered at any zoo or conservation would benefit from enrichment devices enhanced by technology.

“I think anything they can participate in that gives them choice and control is great for all zoo elephants,” she said. “It depends on the elephants, but with our elephants, they can hear much higher frequencies than we can. That noise isn’t that loud for us, but for them, they’re feeling that noise, and they can hear much more, which makes it more stimulating for them.”

Prausnitz, a Regents’ Professor, Regents’ Entrepreneur, and J. Erskine Love Jr. Chair in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is this year’s recipient of the Class of 1934 Distinguished Professor Award. 

“While I may be the focal point, it’s not a recognition of me as an individual. It’s a recognition of everything the team has done,” Prausnitz said. “I know how to do some things, but there are many things I don’t know how to do. That’s why working with others matters. You bring people together, fill in the gaps, and solve the whole problem.” 

The “some things” Prausnitz knows how to do have led to revolutionary medical innovation over a 30-year career at Georgia Tech, where he has led transformative work in microneedle drug delivery, launching 10 companies in the process. 

During that time, Prausnitz published hundreds of peer-reviewed papers, was granted dozens of patents, and advanced his work from early laboratory studies into more than 20 human clinical trials. His research has produced multiple FDA‑approved or clinically tested technologies. 

Understanding Prausnitz’s success starts with his approach to engineering in practice. Science may begin with discovery, but engineering, as he describes it, focuses on taking something uncertain and making it work. 

“One of the things that really distinguishes engineering from science is the work of problem-solving to reach an answer,” he said. “You start with something diffuse and figure out how to put all the pieces together. That to me is a hallmark of engineering.” 

That way of thinking took shape early in his life. 

Read the full story.

A 2025 AI in Education trend report found that 90% of college students use AI in their coursework, with nearly half using it during the drafting process. As AI becomes embedded in everyday writing, traditional tools like Grammarly or Turnitin for evaluating student learning fall short. If AI is to be expected in most student writing, then merely detecting its presence isn’t enough. 

DraftMarks, a new open‑source tool developed by Georgia Tech and Stanford researchers, makes the writing process itself visible. Instead of trying to assess how much of a finished document was written by AI, DraftMarks shows where a student iterated with AI prompts, what is fully AI, and how a piece evolved — illuminating the often-invisible collaboration between human writers and AI.

Functioning as an augmented reading tool, DraftMarks layers visual cues directly onto a document to indicate different kinds of AI involvement. Eraser crumbs mark heavily revised passages. Smudges signal AI-generated changes in the strength of the argument rather than content changes. Masking tape highlights passages initially generated by AI. Glue residue shows where AI‑generated text was later removed. Ghost text indicates when a writer prompted AI but chose not to use the output. Different fonts distinguish between human‑written and AI‑generated passages.

Together, the marks don’t just reveal AI’s presence. They tell a story about the writer’s process.

“By making the invisible parts of the process tangible, it forces writers to confront whether they are truly engaging with AI or just passively accepting it,” said Momin Siddiqui, a master’s student in the College of Computing and lead author on the project. “Ultimately, it helps writers make more intentional judgment calls about how they want to collaborate with AI in the future.”

The researchers debuted DraftMarks at the Association for Computing Machinery’s Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems in Barcelona in April.

Designing for Educators

Rather than starting with detection algorithms, the researchers began with educators. In an initial 21-person study, they observed how instructors reviewed student writing and what cues they looked for when assessing learning, revision, and originality. Those insights informed the design of DraftMarks’ visual language, which deliberately mimics physical artifacts of writing — eraser debris, tape, smudges — to reflect processes instructors already recognize.

“These marks are meant to emulate the writing process in ways we’re already familiar with,” said Adam Coscia, a computing Ph.D. student. “They help students and teachers see the effort behind the writing, and whether students actually met the learning objective.”

Behind the scenes, DraftMarks tracks a document’s draft history and classifies different types of edits and AI interactions as they happen, allowing the visual cues to appear almost in real time. 

Reading DraftMarks

To evaluate how the tool functions beyond the lab, the team conducted a follow‑up study with 70 participants, including students, teachers, journalists, and general readers. Their reactions to reviewing a DraftMarks-annotated document varied in revealing ways.

Instructors were most interested in seeing the writing process unfold: how ideas developed, how heavily AI was used, and where students exercised judgment. General readers, meanwhile, used the marks to assess something less measurable but equally important — trust. For them, DraftMarks offered cues about authorial intent and authenticity, helping readers decide how much confidence to place in a piece of writing. 

A Shift From Detection to Reflection

Unlike AI detectors that merely offer a percentage, DraftMarks is designed to prompt reflection from writers and readers. 

“DraftMarks completely changed how I think about my own writing,” Coscia said. “I was surprised by how much I cared about authorial intent once I could actually see how AI affected my tone. It made me realize small AI choices can subtly reshape what I’m trying to say.”

As AI continues to reshape how writing happens, the research team hopes DraftMarks will help shift the conversation toward transparency. Tools like this could offer educators and students a clearer window into how learning happens when humans and AI write together.

This work is funded through the AI Research Institutes program by the National Science Foundation and the Institute of Education Sciences, U.S. Department of Education.

CITATION: Momin N. Siddiqui, Nikki Nasseri, Adam J. Coscia, Roy Pea, and Hari Subramonyam. 2026. DraftMarks: Enhancing Transparency in Human-AI Co-Writing Through Interactive Skeuomorphic Process Traces. In Proceedings of the 2026 CHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI '26). Association for Computing Machinery, New York, NY, USA, Article 862, 1–22. 

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1145/3772318.3791109

Presentations and lab demonstrations from nearly 50 faculty, graduate, and undergraduate students at Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, as well as partners from the University of Washington and the University of Texas at Austin, spotlighted new research and technologies to improve tower crane safety.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

It’s not glamorous. It’s not trendy. In fact, it’s downright grubby. But the work that a Georgia Tech researcher and his students are doing is improving campus sustainability, one pound of food waste at a time. 

The Academy recognizes leaders across fields of study who have addressed humanity’s greatest challenges while also gathering knowledge to advance learning and the public good. This year’s class of 252 honorees was elected in academia, the arts, industry, journalism, philanthropy, policy, research, and science.  

García is one of nine honorees in the “Engineering and Technology” division. His research — both in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering where he serves as Regents’ Professor and in the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience where he is the executive director — aligns with the Academy’s service-minded mission.  

“I am inspired to find engineering solutions to serious health conditions to help people,” he said. “As a kid, I developed a musculoskeletal condition that required biomaterial devices to treat. Although imperfect, this treatment allowed me to lead a normal life.” 

Moved by his personal experience, García’s research centers on cellular and tissue engineering, which integrate biological and engineering principles to restore organ function lost to injury or disease. By studying how cells interact with the materials around them, he and his team have engineered biomaterials for the controlled delivery of therapeutic proteins and cells that enhance tissue regeneration, which could speed the healing process for patients.  

His future work will integrate biomaterials with lab‑grown replicas of human organs, known as organoids, that can be used to identify new therapies for a variety of human diseases. These organoids, though smaller and simpler than true organs, can mimic key functions that may help García and his team to find better ways to repair damaged tissues. 

García has spent the past 27 years at Georgia Tech and carries on the legacy of another Academy member — the Petit Institute’s founding executive director Robert Nerem, who was inducted in 1998. García credits his success to the support of his loved ones and the Yellow Jacket community.  

“I am deeply honored and humbled,” he said. “This award is only possible by the unending love and support of family, friends and mentors, my phenomenal past and present trainees, fantastic collaborators, and awesome ecosystem at Georgia Tech.” 

The Academy was chartered in 1780 during the American Revolution by a group that included John Adams and John Hancock. It was established to recognize accomplished individuals and engage them in addressing the greatest challenges facing the young republic. 

Membership has broadened over the years to celebrate excellence in a variety of fields. Honorees have included poet Robert Frost, musician John Legend, and chef José Andrés, who was given this year’s Ivan Allen Jr. Prize for Social Courage.  

García and the rest of this year’s class, which includes actor Jodie Foster, will be inducted in October.  

Students, faculty, and researchers from Georgia Tech and Kennesaw State University gathered on April 8 for a joint workshop between Georgia Tech's NSF Sustainable Development of Smart Medical Devices (SUSMED) program and KSU's Mobility for Everyone (MOVE) Center. The full-day event explored how sustainable design, mobility science, and health technologies are converging to shape the next generation of medical devices.  

Georgia Tech researchers have created a new AI model for decision-focused learning (DFL), called Diffusion-DFL. Recent tests showed it makes more accurate decisions than current approaches.

Along with optimizing industrial output, Diffusion-DFL lowers costs and reduces risk. Experiments also showed it performs across different fields. 

Diffusion-DFL doesn’t just surpass current methods; it also predicts more accurately as problem sizes grow. The model requires less computing power despite these high-performance marks, making it more accessible to smaller enterprises.

Diffusion-DFL runs on diffusion models, the same technology that powers DALL-E and other AI image generators. It is the first DFL framework based on diffusion models.

“Anyone who makes high-stakes decisions under uncertainty, including supply chain managers, energy operators, and financial planners, benefits from Diffusion-DFL,” said Zihao Zhao, a Georgia Tech Ph.D. student who led the project. 

“Instead of optimizing around a single forecast, the model evaluates many possible scenarios, so decisions account for real-world risk and become more robust.”

[Related: GT @ ICLR 2026]

To test Diffusion-DFL, the team ran experiments based on real-world settings, including:

• Factory manufacturing to meet product demand
• Power grid scheduling to meet energy demand
• Stock market portfolio optimization

In each case, Diffusion-DFL made more accurate decisions than current methods. It also performed better as problems became larger and more complex. These results confirm the model’s ability to make important decisions in real-world scenarios with noisy data and uncertainty.

The experiments also show that Diffusion-DFL is practical, not just accurate. Training diffusion models is expensive, so the team developed a way to reduce memory use. This cut training costs by more than 99.7%. As a result, Diffusion-DFL can reach more researchers and practitioners.

“Our score-function estimator cuts GPU memory from over 60 gigabytes to 0.13 with almost no loss in decision quality, reducing the requirement for massive computing resources,” Zhao said. “I hope this expands Diffusion-DFL into other domains, like healthcare, where decisions must be made quickly under complex uncertainty."

Beyond decision-making applications, Diffusion-DFL marks a shift in DFL techniques and in the broader use of generative AI models. 

In supply chain management, planners estimate future demand before deciding how much product to stock. In this DFL problem, engineers align ML models with predetermined decision objectives, like minimizing risk or reducing costs. 

One flaw of DFL methods is that they optimize around a single, deterministic prediction in an uncertain future.

Diffusion-DFL takes a different approach. Instead of making a single guess, it determines a range of possible outcomes. This leads to decisions based on many likely scenarios, rather than on a single assumed future.

To do this, the framework uses diffusion models. These generative AI models create high-quality data from images, text, and audio. 

The forward diffusion process involves adding noise to data until it becomes pure noise. Models trained via forward diffusion can reverse diffusion. This means they can start with noisy data and then produce meaningful insights from training examples. 

Real-world data is often noisy and uncertain. Traditional DFL methods struggle in these conditions, but diffusion models are designed to handle them.

Because of this, Diffusion-DFL can explore many possible outcomes and choose better actions. Like image-generation AI, the model works well with complex data from different sources. This enables its use across different industries.

“Diffusion models have achieved significant success in generative AI and image synthesis, but our work shows their potential extends far beyond that,” said Kai Wang, an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE).

“What makes Diffusion-DFL unique is that the specific downstream application guides how the model learns to handle uncertainty.

“Whether we are scheduling energy for power grids, balancing risk in financial portfolios, or developing early warning systems in healthcare, we can explicitly train these highly expressive models to navigate the unique complexities of each domain.”

Zhao and Wang collaborated with Caltech Ph.D. candidate Christopher Yeh and Harvard University postdoctoral fellow Lingkai Kong on Diffusion-DFL. Kong earned his Ph.D. in CSE from Georgia Tech in 2024.

Wang will present Diffusion-DFL on behalf of the group at the upcoming International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR 2026). Occurring April 23-27 in Rio de Janeiro, ICLR is one of the world’s most prestigious conferences dedicated to artificial intelligence research.

“ICLR is the perfect stage for Diffusion-DFL because it brings together the exact community that needs to see the bridge between generative modeling and high-stakes decision-making for real-world applications,” Wang said.

“Presenting Diffusion-DFL allows us to challenge the traditional training framework of diffusion models. It’s about sparking a broader conversation on how we can align the training objectives of generative AI directly with actual, downstream decision-making needs.”

In a new research article, “Help or Hindrance? The Role of Familiarity in Product Development Teams,” Ramachandran and his co-authors Necati Tereyagoglu and Murat Unal, show the crucial role familiarity plays in team dynamics.

“Every creative organization deals with a fundamental tension,” Ramachandran said. “People love working with teammates they know well, but innovation often depends on fresh perspectives.”

There is a lot to be said about familiarity. Famously, it breeds contempt. Previous studies have shown that repeat collaboration helps teams execute smoothly. But smooth operations don’t always translate to commercial success. Ramachandran’s research shows that it can breed a different kind of trouble — an environment free from friction, debate, and novelty. Those conditions may be comfortable, but they don’t help creativity thrive. Video game development, it turns out, provides the perfect setting for productive tension.

“Video games require both bold creative ideas and flawless execution,” Ramachandran shared. “They blend art, engineering, storytelling, and software into a single product. We were curious about how familiarity impacts team dynamics within this industry. When does it help and when does it quietly get in the way?”

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