During a special "Top Innovators" Awards Luncheon on July 12, Atlanta Woman Magazine named two Georgia Tech professors to its annual list of Top 10 Innovators.

Barbara D. Boyan, the Price Gilbert Jr. Chair in Tissue Engineering in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, deputy director of research for the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissues and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar, was selected as a Top Innovator in science.

Boyan joined the faculty of the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering in 2002 as the Price Gilbert Jr. Chair in Tissue Engineering and is an adjunct professor in the Department of Orthopedics at Emory University. She is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and deputy director of research at the Georgia Tech-Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissue. She is the founder of the Biomedical Development Corp. and OsteoBiologics, Inc.

A recognized authority on bone mineralization, Boyan is among the leading researchers working in the area of bone and cartilage cell biology in the field of orthopedic and oral health. Boyan's research interests involve the mechanism of action of hormones and growth factors in chondrocytes, which form cartilage, and osteoblasts, which are bone-forming cells; normal and pathologic calcification; tissue engineering; and response of cells to biomaterials.

Elizabeth D. Mynatt, associate professor in the College of Computing and director of the Graphics, Visualization and Usability (GVU) Center at Georgia Tech, has been named the Top Innovator in technology by Atlanta Woman Magazine.

Mynatt is an internationally recognized expert in the areas of ubiquitous computing and assistive technologies - examining the social and design implications of having computer technology continuously present in many aspects of everyday life. As one of the principal researchers in the Aware Home Research Initiative, she investigates the design of future home technologies, especially those that enable older adults to continue living independently as opposed to moving to an institutional care setting. Mynatt has also played a pivotal role in creating the new Ph.D. program in Human-Centered Computing (HCC) - the first program of its kind that brings together studies in human-computer interaction (HCI), learning sciences and technology, cognitive science, artificial intelligence, robotics, software engineering, and information security.

Mynatt was recently appointed director of the Georgia Tech Graphics, Visualization and Usability Center, a campus-wide research center dedicated to creating computer technologies that naturally enhance the abilities of people and enable new human endeavors. She is also responsible for graduate educational programs that merge studies of human needs and capabilities with emerging computing technologies, including a highly regarded HCI Master's Degree Program that bridges computing, psychology, design and communication and the new Ph.D. Program in Human-Centered Computing.

"Beth Mynatt started a technology revolution, says College of Computing Dean Rich DeMillo. Over the last decade a lot of people have studied ways to make information technology more 'user friendly,' but Beth was the first to ask how technology would change if we started with the needs, desires and limitations of human users. You can see her influence everywhere as she has had a transformational effect on the field."

Mynatt is a Sloan Research Fellow and her research is supported by multiple grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) including a five-year NSF CAREER award. She has chaired multiple conferences on computer interface technologies and auditory displays, and published numerous articles as an active leader in her field.

Mynatt and Boyan are two of ten metro Atlanta women featured as "Top Innovators" in the July/August 2005 issue of Atlanta Woman Magazine. "We considered women from a broad cross-section of the 20 counties that make up our readership," said editor in chief Echo Garrett. "Ultimately, we chose the inventors, agents of change and innovative women who have had major breakthroughs in their respective fields including: Technology, Medicine, Science, Law, Arts and Entertainment, Education, Government, Manufacturing and Finance."