Georgia Tech provides housing for more than 8,000 students on campus, but what about the other 12,000? After living on campus for some time, many students seek a greater sense of independence and responsibility by moving off campus.
A common problem for students considering off-campus housing is finding the best place to live. Not everyone has the luxury of choosing from several great neighborhoods, but Tech students do. Regardless of which corner of the city you choose, be sure to weigh all of your options. There are many factors to consider, including roommates, utilities, monthly expenses, commute times, and parking fees.
Different areas will offer different benefits, but here are a few places worth investigating if you’re apartment hunting. Make sure you tour the entire property, and drive around the area at different times to see what it’s like early in the morning and late at night. Don’t settle on a place solely for its price, and make safety and well-being top priorities.
Many apartment complexes close to campus are either partially or specifically for student living. Besides proximity, these places have the benefit of allowing residents to live among other students and sign individual leases while still sharing a space. A few of these options include Square on Fifth (SQ5), The Standard Atlanta, University House Midtown (UHouse), Midtown 100, The Flats at Atlantic Station, Westmar, and Theory West Midtown (opening soon).
Home Park: The closest neighborhood north of campus, Home Park is known for its large student population and affordable living. While it doesn’t offer much in the way of restaurants or shops, one can’t overlook the fact that it is home to Antico Pizza and Sublime Doughnuts, both favorites among students. Furthermore, it is close to Atlantic Station and Howell Mill Road, two vibrant commercial districts. If you’re on campus late, you can also get a ride home from the Stingerette through the Safe Ride Home program.
Highlights: Antico (1093 Hemphill Ave. NW), Sublime Doughnuts (535 10th Street NW), Firehouse Subs (537 10th Street NW), Tannour Grill (398 14th Street NW), proximity to campus.
Website: http://homepark.org/
Downtown and Centennial Place Apartments: Many students choose to live in Centennial Place because of its proximity to campus. Residents can easily walk or bike there, or to the bus stop at North Avenue Apartments, and the North Avenue MARTA station is nearby to get to other places in the city. A little farther south, new apartments are under construction Downtown. Tech students will be in good company with students from Georgia State University, whose campus buildings dot the downtown area. For those who want to take advantage of attractions such as the Georgia Aquarium, the World of Coca-Cola, the Center for Civil and Human Rights, or State Farm Arena, downtown makes it convenient to do so.
Highlights: Georgia Aquarium (225 Baker St NW), World of Coca-Cola (121 Baker Street NW), CNN Center (190 Marietta St NW), Skyview Atlanta (168 Luckie St NW)
Websites: https://www.centennialplaceapartments.com/ http://www.atlantadowntown.com/living
Midtown: Still close by and relatively walkable to campus, Midtown is home to families, young couples, singles, and students alike. If you’re a runner, you’ll benefit from the proximity of Piedmont Park and its abundance of trails, including the BeltLine, which runs right along the park and through Ponce City Market. Midtown is also a good option for those who don’t own a car, since it’s close to MARTA, campus, and options for groceries and the like. Midtown has both apartment complexes (such as 116 Ponce, Biltmore Midtown, and Post Parkside) as well as many apartments rented by smaller landlords (which are generally less expensive) for those not as particular about amenities. If you spend a lot of time in Tech Square, Midtown could be more convenient than living farther west, and apartment complexes on the border between Midtown and Tech Square include SQ5, UHouse, and The Standard Atlanta.
Highlights: Willy’s (1071 Piedmont Ave. NE), Publix (950 W. Peachtree Street NW), Ponce City Market (675 Ponce de Leon Ave NE), Piedmont Park, BeltLine access, MARTA access.
Website: http://midtownatlanta.org/
Westside: Atlanta’s Westside offers a handful of apartment complexes and small homes, both of which are ideal for students. The area is rapidly developing, with new restaurants and niche shops springing up on every corner. Though a boon to residents’ social lives, it also means increasing prices. The commute from Marietta Street is easier than ever on foot and bike, thanks to the Path Parkway completed a few years ago. Some apartment options include Westmar, Alexan Metro West, The Pointe at Collier Hills, and Theory West Midtown, which is opening soon.
Highlights: Ormsby’s (1170 Howell Mill Road), Yeah! Burger (1168 Howell Mill Road), Octane (1009 Marietta St NW), Cookout (1112 Northside Drive NW), proximity to campus.
Website: http://westsidepd.com/
Atlantic Station: Though Atlantic Station can be pricier than other off-campus options, it’s really close to campus and offers other benefits. Residents are within walking distance of the outdoor shopping mall, IKEA, movie festivals, an 18-screen movie theater, weekend sidewalk markets, and restaurants. Stinger buses travel to the south side of Atlantic Station — though not as frequently as they do on campus — providing a solid transportation option in a pinch.
Highlights: Regal Cinemas 18 (261 19th Street NW), Target (375 18th Street), California Pizza Kitchen (265 18th St NW), Which Wich (265 18th Street NW), IKEA (441 16th St NW)
Website: http://www.atlanticstation.com/
Institute Communications
]]>In a bustling laboratory at the Fuller E. Callaway Jr. Manufacturing Research Center, a researcher from the Georgia Tech School of Mechanical Engineering is using novel digital technology to cast complex metal parts directly from computer designs, dramatically reducing both development and manufacturing time.
Nearby, at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, researchers are working with a large U.S. avionics maker to speed new product production using specialized software that automatically generates simulations of the manufacturing process. And across campus in the College of Architecture, a team is working with an international corporation on digital techniques that allow entire concrete walls to be custom-manufactured to architectural specifications.
The Georgia Institute of Technology was founded in 1885 with a mandate to develop manufacturing capabilities in the state of Georgia. Today, researchers whose work directly supports manufacturers can be found throughout Georgia Tech’s academic colleges; in the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which focuses on applied research; and in the Enterprise Innovation Institute, which assists business and industry.
Georgia Tech’s role in supporting industry was highlighted in June 2011 when President Barack Obama named Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson to the steering committee of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP). Georgia Tech joined five other leading universities – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley and the University of Michigan – in the AMP’s $500 million push to guide investment in emerging technologies, increase overall U.S. global competitiveness and boost the supply of high-quality manufacturing jobs.
“We applaud this initiative, and Georgia Tech is honored to collaborate to identify ways to strengthen the manufacturing sector to help create jobs in Georgia and across the United States,” Peterson said. “Many of our challenges can be solved through innovation and fostering an entrepreneurial environment, as well as collaboration between industry, education and government to create a healthy economic environment and an educated workforce.”
Advanced manufacturing involves not only new ways to manufacture existing products, but also the development of new products emerging from advanced technologies, observed Stephen E. Cross, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research.
“Georgia Tech’s mandate has always been to support manufacturing and technology development in the state and in the nation – to conduct research with relevance – so supporting industry comes very naturally to us,” Cross said. “The leading-edge research across the Institute combines thought leadership with a focus on real-world problems and opportunities. Through this we will help lead a renaissance in advanced manufacturing in the United States.”
The university’s research initiatives on behalf of manufacturers are many and varied. These efforts include multiple areas of manufacturing-related research and involve collaboration across a variety of disciplines.
Suman Das, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has developed a technology that could transform how industry creates and produces complex metal parts through “lost wax” investment casting. In an ambitious project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), he has created an all-digital approach that automates how part designs are turned into the real thing.
Currently, such metal parts are devised on computers using computer-aided design (CAD) software. But the next step – creating the ceramic mold with which the part is cast – involves a complex 12-step process that uses hundreds of tooling pieces and extensive manual labor. The result is a lengthy, costly and low-yield process that typically produces many scrap parts along with a few usable ones, said Das, who directs the Direct Digital Manufacturing Laboratory in Georgia Tech’s Manufacturing Research Center (MaRC).
By contrast, the approach used by Das involves building ceramic molds directly from a CAD design. Called large area maskless photopolymerization (LAMP), this high-resolution, direct digital manufacturing technology builds the molds, layer by layer, by projecting patterns of ultraviolet light onto a mixture of photosensitive resins and ceramic particles.
After a mold is formed, it is thermally post-processed at high temperatures to burn away the polymer and sinter the ceramic particles. That process forms a structure into which molten metal can be poured for casting.
“The LAMP process can reduce the time required to turn a CAD design into a test-worthy part from several months to about a week, and it can produce parts of a complexity that designers could only dream of before,” Das said. “It also can reduce costs by 25 percent and the number of unusable waste parts by more than 90 percent, while eliminating 100 percent of the tooling.”
Das is currently working with turbine-engine airfoils – complex parts used in aircraft jet engines – in collaboration with the University of Michigan, PCC Airfoils and Honeywell International Inc. He believes LAMP technology will become pervasive and will be effective in the production of many other types of metal parts.
Das said that LAMP can create not only testable prototypes, but could also be used in the actual manufacturing process, facilitating the mass production of complex metal parts at lower costs in a variety of industries.
A prototype LAMP alpha machine is currently building six typical airfoil molds in six hours. Das predicts that a larger beta machine – currently being built at Georgia Tech and scheduled for installation at a PCC Airfoils facility in Ohio in 2012 – will produce 100 molds in about 24 hours.
“When you can achieve those volumes, you have gone beyond rapid prototyping to true rapid manufacturing,” he said.
Researchers at the College of Architecture are also helping to automate the process of turning CAD designs into manufactured products. A team in the Digital Building Laboratoryis collaborating with Lafarge North America to develop ways to manufacture customized wall structures directly from parametric digital models.
The new process involves custom-molding entire curtain walls from rubber negatives to produce a unitized system called the “Liquid Wall,” constructed with Ductal®, Lafarge’s ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC), and stainless steel. The Liquid Wall, created by Peter Arbour of RFR Consulting Engineers and collaborator Coreslab Structures Inc., won the 2010 AIANY Open Call for Innovative Curtain-Wall Design.
“We don’t want to just pick standardized products out of catalogs anymore,” said Tristan Al-Haddad, an assistant professor in the College of Architecture who is involved in the collaboration with Lafarge, along with assistant professor Minjung Maing and others. “We’re developing the protocols and research to manufacture high-end customized architectural products economically, safely and with environmental responsibility.”
The Liquid Wall approach is challenging, explained professor Charles Eastman, who is director of the Digital Building Laboratory and has a joint appointment in the College of Computing. The process involves creating rubber negatives using wall-form designs created with parametric modeling software, then planning production procedures and mapping out ways to install the completed, full-size walls on actual buildings.
“When you’re creating a completely new process like the Liquid Wall, you’re faced with developing a whole new manufacturing process for this kind of material,” Eastman said.
Industrial designer Kevin Shankwiler, an associate professor in the College of Architecture, creates objects that can be both customized and mass-produced. By utilizing advances in flexible manufacturing technology, Shankwiler and his students develop furniture designs that can be changed to meet individual needs – such as those of persons with disabilities – while being built cost-effectively using mass production methods.
Today’s designers can build responsiveness to individual needs into the computer models used in production, Shankwiler said. Current manufacturing methods – such as computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) and 3-D printing techniques – are capable of creating furniture and other goods that can meet users’ specific requirements without resorting to an institutional look.
“In one research effort, we took a dining room chair in the Craftsman style, and we designed and built a model that could accommodate both wheelchair users of differing abilities and fully ambulatory people,” Shankwiler said. “We have to ask – how should the human need affect the manufactured output and what are the best methods for achieving that?”
J. Rhett Mayor, an associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, is investigating techniques that allow effective machining of metal surfaces at 50 microns – one 2,000ths of an inch – or less. He is also developing unique applications based on advanced micro-machining, such as tiny channels in metal that enhance heat transfer between surfaces.
At present, Mayor explained, the ability to cut micro-features into surfaces is limited to metal sections about 1 centimeter square, a size that offers little cooling capability. Research being conducted by Mayor and his group focuses on scaling up micro-machining capabilities so that micro features can be cut in larger metal sheets.
“We can currently make hundreds of features on a square centimeter,” Mayor said. “What we need are millions of features on a square foot.”
One type of micro-scale feature – micro-channel heat exchangers – could play an important role in cooling factory-floor devices, as well as in the development of closed-loop systems that could generate power using recycled heat. For example, today’s factories typically use large electrical motors that vent their heat inside the plant, wasting energy.
In related work, Mayor and his team are developing optimization routines and thermal models that could enhance electrical machine design through the application of micro-machining and other technologies. The aim is to create machines that are smaller, yet offer high energy outputs thanks to more efficient cooling and to energy recycling.
Another application of large scale micro-machining could involve the development of lightweight electric actuators that would take the place of hydraulics in aircraft. Such electric actuators would need plenty of power to replicate the high torque provided by hydraulics; those power requirements would demand effective cooling strategies.
Henrik Christensen, a professor in the College of Computing, is working with the Boeing Company to advance robotic manufacturing in the aircraft maker’s facilities.
In one project, Christensen and his team are working on an initiative that makes fundamental changes to how pieces are handled on the factory floor. In this approach, robots reverse the standard procedure by moving processing machines to a given part, rather than moving the part through an assembly line.
“Think of a large airplane structure,” Christensen said. “Having a machine move along the body of the aircraft, rather than moving the body itself, could result in much more efficient use of the machine.”
The team is employing a movable platform in the MaRC building that supports a robotic processing machine. Tests have already been performed using mobile painting and drilling capabilities that could lead to similar implementations at Boeing facilities.
Christensen has also developed automation technology that helps Boeing inspect parts and sub-assemblies that arrive from suppliers. The mobile robotic system scans each arriving piece to confirm that it is the correct item and conforms to the stipulated dimensions.
The technology allows Boeing to identify shipping errors almost immediately, before the mistake can delay production. It also saves on labor costs and allows workers to be assigned to less routine tasks.
The Boeing projects are part of the Aerospace Manufacturing Initiative (AMI), which was established in 2008 when Boeing identified Georgia Tech as a strategic university partner and agreed to collaborate on innovative manufacturing technologies for aerospace products. The AMI, which involves multiple research projects across Georgia Tech, is led by Steven Danyluk, who is the Morris M. Bryan Jr. Chair in Mechanical Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing Systems. Since 2008, Siemens USA and CAMotion Inc. have also become AMI participants.
In another project just getting launched with a major French manufacturing company, Christensen is pursuing novel technology that would allow a factory-floor robot to learn tasks via direct human demonstration. Rather than having each robotic operation mapped out laboriously on a control computer, a worker would demonstrate the optimal way to perform a job and the robot would then mimic the human.
This human-model approach to robotic learning could have applications across a number of industries, he added; both Boeing and General Motors have expressed interest in the technology. Other application areas for this technique include health care and biotechnology, where it could help automate both manufacturing procedures and laboratory testing.
Jianjun (Jan) Shi, a professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE), conducts research that addresses system informatics and control. He uses his training in mechanical and electrical engineering to integrate system data – comprising design, manufacturing, automation and performance information – into models that seek to reduce process variability.
In one effort, Shi is working with nGimat Co., a Norcross, Ga.- based company that is currently evaluating ways to mass produce a type of nanopowder used in high-energy, high-density batteries for electric cars. With sponsorship from the Department of Energy (DOE), Shi is supporting nGimat as it works to increase nanopowder output by several orders of magnitude.
“This product has very good characteristics, and the task here is to scale up production while maintaining the quality,” said Shi, who holds the Carolyn J. Stewart Chair in ISyE. “We must identify the parameters – what to monitor, what to control – to reduce any variability, and do so in an environmentally friendly way.”
In work focusing on the steel industry, Shi is pursuing multiple projects including the investigation of sensing technologies used to monitor very high temperature environments in steel manufacturing. With DOE support, he is working with OG Technologies Inc. to develop methods that use optical sensors to provide continuous high-speed images of very hot surfaces – between 1,000 and 1,450 degrees Celsius.
“We want to catch defect formation in the very early stages of manufacturing,” Shi said. “By using imaging data of the product effectively with other process data to eliminate defects, we can help optimize the casting process.”
In another project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Shi is investigating ways to use process measurements and online adjustments to improve quality control in the manufacturing of the silicon wafers used in semiconductors. He is working with several manufacturers to examine the root causes of undesirable geometric defects in wafer surfaces.
Nagi Gebraeel, an associate professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, conducts research in detecting and preventing failure in engineering systems as they degrade over time. The goal is to avoid both expensive downtime and unnecessary maintenance costs.
“We could be talking about a fleet of aircraft, trucks, trains, ships – or a manufacturing system,” Gebraeel said. “In any of these cases, it’s extremely useful for numerous reasons to be able to accurately estimate the remaining useful lifetime of a system or its components.”
With National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, Gebraeel has examined some of the key challenges in accurately predicting failures of complex engineering systems. Specific challenges include the ability to account for the uncertainty associated with degradation processes of these systems and their components, the effects of future environmental/operational conditions, and the dependencies and interactions that exist in multi-component systems.
In one project, Gebraeel and his team worked with Rockwell Collins, a maker of avionics and electronics, to monitor and diagnose the performance of circuit boards that control vital aircraft communications systems.
With equipment funding provided by Georgia Tech, Gebraeel has developed an adaptive prognostics system (APS), a custom research tool that allows him to investigate how quickly components degrade under stresses, using sensor-detected signals such as vibration.
“There’s a real need for information about the remaining life of components, so that users can find the economical middle ground between the cost of scheduled replacements and the cost of failure,” he said.
Three faculty members in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering – Shabbir Ahmed, George Nemhauser and Joel Sokol – recently completed a project supporting a major maker of float glass. The manufacturer was automating a process in which finished glass plates are packed for shipment.
The company was concerned that new machines – which pick up and remove glass from the production line – might fall behind, allowing valuable plates to be damaged. They wanted the capability to carefully schedule production sequences so the machines could function at maximum capacity without wasting plates.
The team tackled development of new software that could minimize production problems. They devised algorithms that allowed the machines to work at their maximum efficiency and enabled them to handle input data with more than 99 percent efficiency.
“The algorithms we delivered can also be used strategically, to determine how many machines of each type should be installed on a production line,” Sokol said.
Sokol, Nemhauser and Ahmed are also collaborating on a project with a large international corporation to support production throughput at a semiconductor manufacturing facility.
The challenge involves the physical movement of semiconductors from one processing station to another throughout the factory. Because the routing of semiconductors between processing machines can differ from item to item, there’s no linear assembly line procedure; instead, hundreds of automated vehicles pick up items from one processing point and move them to the next step.
Due to the facility’s layout, these automated vehicles often encounter congestion that can delay the production schedule, said Nemhauser, who is the A. Russell Chandler lll Chair and Institute professor. The team is developing methods to best route and schedule the vehicles to minimize congestion and to move items between machines in ways that don’t delay production.
Shreyes Melkote, who is the Morris M. Bryan Jr. professor in mechanical engineering, directs the Precision Machining Research Center, one of numerous centers based in MaRC. Melkote researches precision manufacturing issues in several areas, including the production of precision metal parts and photovoltaic substrates.
In a project sponsored by The Timken Company, Melkote is investigating methods for faster and more efficient machining of hardened steel materials using a hybrid process called “Laser Assisted Hard Machining.” Results from successful machining trials have demonstrated that this hybrid process has the potential to reduce machining time as well as cutting tool cost by prolonging tool life.
In a Boeing-sponsored project, Melkote is developing thin-film sensors capable of monitoring high-speed machining operations. The goal is to give operators in-depth feedback for more effective control of high-speed rotating machines used to produce aerospace parts.
Traditional piezoelectric sensors are costly and unreliable, Melkote said, and installing them on a given machine can alter its dynamic characteristics. By contrast, sensors made from low-cost piezoelectric polymer film can be attached to a rotating device without affecting its operation. A patent application is being filed on this sensor technology.
“Thin-film sensors allow us to accurately measure what’s happening between the tool and the work-piece, in terms of forces, vibrations, deflections and other process responses,” he said. “We have demonstrated that the quality of information we are getting from a $200 sensor is as good as from one that costs $30,000.”
Professor Leon McGinnis of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering focuses on model-based systems engineering, an approach that uses computational methods to enable capture and reuse of systems knowledge. McGinnis is pursuing several sponsored projects in this area.
In one effort, McGinnis and his team have been working with Rockwell Collins, a maker of avionics and electronics, to help speed the introduction of new products by automating a process that simulates the requirements of production.
To optimize the resources needed to make products at the required rate, McGinnis explained, Rockwell Collins creates a computerized simulation of the manufacturing processes. Development of these models has traditionally been the province of experts skilled in taking initial system designs and painstakingly translating them into simulations of actual production.
“This is not a trivial task – producing a simulation model requires some 100 to 200 hours per product,” said McGinnis, who is associate director of MaRC. “The company was only able to generate a few production models at a time, which created something of a bottleneck.”
To understand the process of developing simulation models, a team interviewed the Rockwell Collins experts on the methods they used to develop such models. Then the Georgia Tech researchers turned to SysML, a programming language that enables the computerized modeling of complex systems, including multiple related factors such as people, machinery and product flows.
By using SysML to describe the evolution of a given product, the researchers were able to automate its movement from design to simulation. Even more important, the team created a domain-specific version of SysML that was customized to the Rockwell Collins environment. That achievement allowed any of the company’s new products and systems to be plugged into a SysML-based automation process.
This new way of doing things appears to reduce the time required to build simulation models by an order of magnitude, said McGinnis, who leads the Model-Based Systems Engineering Center in MaRC.
In another project, McGinnis and his team are collaborating with the School of Mechanical Engineering and MaRC to develop semantics for manufacturing processes under a DARPA contract. In other work, McGinnis is collaborating with the Tennenbaum Institute – a Georgia Tech organization that supports research for enterprise transformation – to address the challenges of identifying and mitigating risks in global manufacturing enterprise networks.
A research team from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is working with the General Motors Co. to develop novel sensor and computer technologies for manufacturing.
The project, known as the Factory of the Future, seeks to establish a manufacturing model based on approaches and technologies that are largely new to factory design and processes. Among other things, the researchers are investigating the use of biologically inspired software algorithms to help maximize plant floor efficiency.
“The future factory is one with an extremely agile environment, allowing the manufacturing plant to be reconfigured in real time to meet the objectives for production,” said Gisele Bennett, director of the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory at GTRI.
At the heart of this process improvement approach is a robust combination of sensor and intelligent algorithm technologies, said Bennett, who is leading the project. The resulting optimization algorithms would utilize asset visibility of supplies, machines and vehicle-assembly status to optimize the manufacturing process, based on current requirements that could include energy savings, throughput or cost.
The goal is a broad, centralized view of all aspects of the manufacturing process, available in real time. This big-picture capability could lead to greater efficiency and productivity due to improved routing, inventory control and visibility into the health of the manufacturing equipment.
“Among other things, these techniques could support a capability for just-in-time car building,” Bennett said. “A consumer could go into a dealership, choose the car they wanted – and as soon as the car is specified, its assembly would begin remotely.”
A multidisciplinary team of Georgia Tech researchers is taking part in the Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) program. The four-year DARPA program, announced in the first half of 2011, fosters novel approaches to the design, verification and manufacturing of complex defense systems and vehicles. Funding for Georgia Tech’s share of the work is expected to exceed $10 million.
The AVM effort consists of three primary programs: META, Instant Foundry Adaptive through Bits (iFAB) and Fast Adaptable Next-Generation Ground Vehicle (FANG). FANG includes the vehicleforge.mil project and the Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach (MENTOR) effort.
Georgia Tech is collaborating with Vanderbilt University on the META program and the related Component, Context, and Manufacturing Model Library (C2M2L) program. Led by professor Dimitri Mavris, director of the Aerospace Systems Design Lab, and research engineer Johanna Ceisel, Georgia Tech’s META effort focuses on dramatically improving the existing systems engineering, integration and testing processes for defense systems.
Rather than utilizing one particular alternative technique, metric or tool, META aims to develop model-based design methods for cyber-physical systems that are far more complex and heterogeneous than those in use today.
Shreyes Melkote, a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, leads an iFAB team that is developing manufacturing-process capabilities and model libraries to enable automated planning for the design and manufacture of military ground vehicles.
GTRI researchers Nick Bollweg, left, and Jack Zentner, are principal investigators for the VehicleForge collaborative online environment project. (Click image for high-resolution version. Credit: Gary Meek)
A GTRI team led by Vince Camp is also supporting iFAB, providing process guidance for development of the libraries. In addition, researchers from four Georgia Tech units, along with companies InterCAX LLC and Third Wave Systems Inc., are supporting this iFAB effort.
The vehicleforge.mil project, led by GTRI researchers Jack Zentner and Nick Bollweg, is creating a secure central website and other web-based tools capable of supporting collaborative vehicle development. The core website – vehicleforge.mil – would allow individuals and teams to share data, models, tools and ideas to speed and improve the design process.
“The aim here is to fundamentally change the way in which complex systems are taken from concept to reality,” said Zentner, a senior research engineer. “By enabling many designers in varied locations to work together in a distributed manner, we’re confident that vehicles – and eventually other systems – can be developed with greater speed and better results.”
The C2M2L model library is part of the overall effort. C2M2L seeks to develop domain-specific models to enable the design, verification and fabrication of the FANG infantry fighting vehicle using the META, iFAB and vehicleforge.mil infrastructure.
The MENTOR effort will engage high school-age students in a series of collaborative design and distributed manufacturing prize-challenge experiments, with the goal of inspiring America’s manufacturing and technology workforce of tomorrow.
DARPA envisions that the prize challenges will include up to 1,000 high schools in teams distributed across the nation and around the world, using computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) additive manufacturing machines – also known as 3D printers. The goal is help students collaboratively design and build systems of moderate complexity, such as mobile ground and aerial robots and energy systems.
MENTOR is led by professor Daniel Schrage of the School of Aerospace Engineering and director of the Integrated Product Lifecycle Engineering Laboratory, and by professor David Rosen of the School of Mechanical Engineering, who is also director of the Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing Institute in MaRC.
Vinod Singhal, who is the Brady Family Professor of Operations Management in the College of Management, investigates supply chain disruptions and their relation to corporate performance. In one project, he is evaluating recent disruptions at manufacturing companies and other businesses, where he documents the magnitude of drop in stock prices, loss of revenue and increase in costs due to supply chain disruptions.
“Traditional approaches to supply chain management have focused only on efficiency,” Singhal said. “Newer approaches involve avoiding value destruction by instituting a reliable, responsive and robust supply chain.”
Singhal has developed a detailed framework that helps enterprises manage their supply chain risks. His research instructs companies on how to prioritize risks, making supply chain vulnerabilities more visible and ensuring that top management learns to recognize the issue as critical to corporate success.
In the College of Management, Regents’ professor Cheryl Gaimon studies technology management in manufacturing and service enterprises. In one study, Gaimon and former Ph.D. student Alysse Morton analyzed the value of flexibility in high-volume manufacturing of products with short life cycles, such as computer components.
The researchers developed a model showing how companies could link internal manufacturing capabilities with swiftly changing external market forces. They demonstrated how these businesses could exploit manufacturing efficiencies, early market entry and quick shifts between product generations, combined with optimal pricing policies.
“Our results demonstrated that firms need to work closely with their equipment suppliers to achieve more flexible technology, and that even a less-efficient facility can realize a long-term competitive advantage through an earlier market-entry strategy,” Gaimon said.
Assistant Professor Manpreet Hora of the College of Management conducts research in several areas of business and manufacturing, including the recall of products such as automobiles. In a recent study, he looked at the risks that can sometimes be created by today’s lean manufacturing methods.
In studying automotive recalls, Hora discovered that because companies often share components across multiple vehicle lines to maintain lean practices, a potential defect in such components can greatly increase the cost and the magnitude of a recall. He concluded that increased quality checks of shared and critical parts are essential in lowering the impact of quality failures from recalls.
In a project sponsored by EADS North America, a large aerospace and defense company, GTRI researcher Jason Nadler tackled the problem of helping the manufacturer reduce noise produced by commercial and military jet aircraft.
Nadler and his team used innovative materials that make possible a new approach to the physics of noise reduction. They found that honeycomb-like structures composed of many tiny tubes or channels can reduce sound more effectively than conventional methods.
“This approach dissipates acoustic waves by essentially wearing them out,” Nadler said. “It’s a phenomenological shift, fundamentally different from traditional techniques that absorb sound using a more frequency-dependent resonance.”
Nadler’s research involves broadband acoustic absorption, a method of reducing sound that doesn’t depend on frequencies or resonance. Instead of resonating, sound waves plunge into the channels and dissipate through a process called viscous shear.
He has developed what could be the world’s first superalloy micro honeycomb using a nickel-based superalloy. He estimates that this new approach could provide better sound attenuation than any acoustic liner currently available.
The Food Processing Technology Division of GTRI performs a broad spectrum of research for the food industry, including numerous projects that support the state’s nearly $20 billion poultry industry. Research areas include advanced imaging and sensor technologies; robotics and automation systems; environmental and biological systems; food and product safety research; and worker safety research.
In one project, GTRI researchers are employing image processing, statistical modeling, modeling of biomaterials and high-speed force control to bring automated chicken deboning to poultry processors. The Intelligent Deboning System aims to match or exceed the efficiency of the manual process.
Initial tests of the deboning prototype system, including cutting experiments, have shown the system’s ability to recognize bone during a cut and thus avoid bone chips. The work has demonstrated the validity of GTRI’s approach.
“There are some very major factors in play in this project,” said Gary McMurray, chief of the Food Processing Technology Division and project director. “These include food safety – because bone chips are a major hazard for boneless breast fillets – and yield, because every 1 percent loss of breast meat represents about $2.5 million to each of Georgia’s 20 processing plants.”
GTRI has developed a production line system that automatically inspects the quality of sandwich buns exiting the oven and adjusts oven temperatures if it detects unacceptable products.
Working with baking company Flowers Foods and AMF/BakeTech, a baking equipment manufacturer, GTRI researchers Douglas Britton and Colin Usher have tested their industrial-quality prototype system. Made of stainless steel, the system is dust-and-water-resistant, and mounts on existing conveyor belts as wide as 50 inches.
The researchers tested the system in a Flowers Foods bakery.
“We have closed the loop between the quality inspection of buns and the oven controls to meet the specifications required by food service and fast-food customers,” said Britton. “By creating a more accurate, uniform and faster assessment process, we are able to minimize waste and lost product.”
The GTRI Materials Analysis Center (MAC), led by Lisa Detter-Hoskin, supports manufacturers and other groups using advanced analytical tools and methodologies that address materials characterization, failure analysis and corrosion issues for manufacturers and other companies. MAC annually manages research projects and evaluates samples for hundreds of corporations and agencies.
For example, the center supports CE-Tech LLC of Alpharetta, Ga., in numerous areas, including conducting analyses of competitive products and resins. The objective is to lower raw-material costs for CE-Tech clients through the substitution of lower-cost resins.
In another instance, GTRI works with Fairfield, Conn.-based Acme United Corp., a maker of cutting, measuring and safety products, to evaluate the chemistry and structure of new surface coatings. In one project, GTRI personnel tested a proprietary Acme United physical vapor deposition technology used to impart a hard outer shell onto steel blades.
“We frequently need to test,” said Larry Buchtmann, vice president for technology for Acme United. “GTRI has the specialized equipment and trained engineering staff to meet our ongoing needs for these services.”
GTRI’s Electromagnetic Test and Evaluation Facilities (EMTEF) and Electromagnetic Phenomenology Laboratory test facilities provide ongoing research and support for manufacturers. Both commercial customers and the U.S. government use these assets to aid design and manufacture of antennas and antenna-related sensors for wireless systems, cell and base station antennas, aircraft antennas and related applications.
“These multi-purpose ranges allow antenna manufacturers or design engineers to confirm modeling designs, diagnose performance problems, and to confirm performance against advertised specifications,” said GTRI researcher Barry Mitchell.
In one past instance, Mitchell recalls, a maker of aircraft weather radar was encountering problems with false alarms coming from wind-shear detection systems in flight. A GTRI team tested a waveguide antenna array on a planar near-field range belonging to the research institute, and the resulting aperture holograms revealed leakage points from brazed joints on the array. Eventually the problem was traced to a defect in the dip-brazing process during manufacturing, enabling corrective measures.
School of Mechanical Engineering professor Bert Bras, who leads the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM) Program in the MaRC, focuses on reducing the environmental impact of materials, products and manufacturing processes, while increasing their competitiveness.
The SDM group gets a large share of its research funding from industry. Together with MaRC research engineer Tina Guldberg, Bras and his group are currently working with Ford, GM and Boeing on projects related to sustainable manufacturing. Much of their work centers on a better understanding of the overall effect of manufacturing operations, as well as potential unintended consequences of product, process and business decisions over their life cycle.
One technique developed by Bras and his students involves the inclusion of environmental impact measures such as energy and water consumption in activity-based cost models. In this way, a single assessment model can quantify financial and environmental consequences of manufacturing process choices.
With Marc Weissburg, a professor in the School of Biology and co-director of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design, Bras and his team are working on an NSF-funded project focused on the role of biologically inspired design in industrial manufacturing networks.
Bras is also collaborating with professor Nancey Green Leigh of the School of City and Regional Planning and professor Steven French of the College of Architecture on an NSF-funded project that studies methods of boosting product and material recovery in urban areas for use in local manufacturing. Leigh and French are also focusing in this grant on quantifying the amount of carpet and electronic waste generated in a metropolitan area and the economic benefits of diverting it from landfills, thereby creating business and job opportunities.
Jane Ammons, who is the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, collaborates on reverse production systems with Matthew Realff, a professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. For more than 10 years, the team has focused on two important areas: the recovery and reuse of carpet wastes and ways to reduce electronic waste.
Ammons, Realff and their teams have developed a mathematical framework to support the growth of used-carpet collection networks. Such networks could help to recycle much of the 3.4 billion pounds of carpet waste currently produced in the United States annually. Research indicates that successful reuse of that carpet has a potential value of at least $850 million, versus a disposal cost of at least $60 million for simply sending it to landfills.
In other work, the team is studying the problem of e-waste – unwanted electronic components such as televisions, monitors and computer boards and chips. The e-waste stream includes hazardous materials such as lead and other toxins, yet effective management and reuse of e-components can be profitable. Ammons and Realff have devised mathematical models that address the complexities of e-waste processing, with the goal of helping recycling companies stay economically viable.
In a recent project, associate professor Chen Zhou in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, working with professor Leon McGinnis, tackled sustainability issues for a major U.S. manufacturer. The issue involved shipping gearbox components from China to the United States in ways that would minimize not only cost but also greenhouse gas emissions and waste.
It turned out that packaging was at the heart of the issue. The researchers had to configure component packaging so that the maximum number of components could be placed in a cargo container, yet also allow for optimal recycling of the packing materials to avoid waste and unnecessary cost.
“This was definitely a complex problem,” Zhou said. “You must track every piece of packaging from its source to its final resting place, when it either goes into another product or into a landfill.”
The team created a model – a globally sourced auto parts packaging system – that optimized cargo container space. The model also enabled the use of packing materials that were fully reusable; some materials went back to China for use in future shipments, while the rest was recycled into plastics for new vehicles.
Clearly, Georgia Tech’s broad-based involvement in advanced manufacturing research reflects both the talents of its faculty and the determination of U.S. industry to reinvent itself with the help of university-based research.
The United States generates more inventions than the rest of the world combined, and Georgia Tech will continue to work with business and government to help turn the nation’s vast innovative capabilities into an American industrial renaissance.
Abby Robinson also contributed to this article.
Research projects mentioned in this article are supported by sponsors that include the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the principal investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or DARPA
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]]>Effective August 1, Lieuwen will become executive director of Georgia Tech's Strategic Energy Institute. There, he expects to be a "systems integrator," bringing together the many elements of Georgia Tech science, engineering, computing and policy research to address the planet's most pressing energy challenges.
"We want to work on the problems that really matter," he said. "We want to do the fundamental science and be great engineers and great scientists, but we want to address real-world problems that will serve society."
Georgia Tech operates a broad range of energy-related research initiatives, including power generation and distribution, power electronics, fuel production, water management, materials, transportation, sustainability, urban systems and atmospheric sciences. Beyond these interdisciplinary strengths, a key differentiator for Georgia Tech is its ability to collaborate with industry.
"One of the things that industry respects about us is that we not only develop the fundamental science, advancing our mission as an education institution, but we also tackle the tough applied problems that they face today," he said. "We are building strong linkages to leverage our strengths to build on the science and engineering base we already have."
The Strategic Energy Institute is playing a vital national and international leadership role in developing energy solutions and transitioning them to the marketplace, said Steve Cross, Georgia Tech's executive vice president for research.
"Energy cuts across almost everything we do as a society, affecting national security, the economy, our environment and quality of life," Cross said. "Through the Strategic Energy Institute, Georgia Tech is bringing its considerable resources to bear on energy challenges, in collaboration with partners in industry and government."
Lieuwen, who also has a faculty appointment in Georgia Tech's George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, received a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech in 1999. He specializes in low-emissions combustion and energy systems.
"I get to make fire and to make noise for a living, which is a lot of fun," he admitted. "A lot of what I do is to focus on combustion as applied to gas turbine systems, which are important for power generation facilities as well as aircraft engines."
Lieuwen emphasizes that human behavior — as expressed in policy and sustainability issues — is a key part of energy solutions.
"My natural inclination as an engineer is to look for an engineering solution — such as higher efficiency — to an energy problem," he said. "But decisions people make about energy play a key role in affecting issues such as air quality. We need advanced technology for that, but we also need to address the human side of that."
In addition to leading his own research program, Lieuwen has been part of planning Georgia Tech's new Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions (CNES) Building, which will serve as the headquarters for the Strategic Energy Institute when the building opens this fall. Lieuwen has also served on the sustainable energy task force, a strategic initiative that focused on charting a new course for Georgia Tech's energy programs.
Beyond his appreciation for the outdoors, Lieuwen is a self-proclaimed "soccer dad" who has four daughters ranging in age from 18 months to 11 years.
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Writer: John Toon
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]]>Thankfully, a few are willing to share stories of their summers from whatever corner of the world they’ve chosen as home for the next couple months. Their tales may not have all the allure of great summer blockbusters, but will come back regularly with more instead of leaving you after two hours. Also, it’s free.
Looking for more blog activity from the Tech community? See a listing of Tech-related blogs at gatech.edu/blogs.
]]>The award is bestowed annually at the IPPW in recognition of outstanding contributions to the technology, science, and mission planning of atmospheric entry probe missions that advance the knowledge of planets or moons in the solar system, and the mentoring of young engineers and scientists in these fields.
The award citation reads "in recognition of extraordinary and ongoing contributions to the field of planetary entry, descent and landing, including teaching a new generation of EDL system engineers, serving as the first NASA Chief Technologist in over a decade, and leadership and engineering knowledge that have contributed greatly to all NASA Mars surface missions from Pathfinder to MSL."
Dr. Braun joined the Georgia Institute of Technology as the David and Andrew Lewis Associate Professor of Space Technology in 2003. He was promoted to the rank of Professor in 2009. He leads an active research and educational program focused on the design of advanced flight systems and technologies for planetary exploration.
In 2010-2011, he served as the first NASA Chief Technologist in more than a decade. In this capacity, he served as the senior Agency executive for technology and innovation policy and programs. He created and led the initial implementation of a spectrum of broadly applicable technology programs designed to build the capabilities required for our nation’s future space missions.
]]>The Phoenix Awards is GaMPI's signature awards gala and dinner that celebrates the incredible achievements of its members. Winners will be announced on June 28, 2012 at the Cobb Energy Performing Arts Centre. This year’s theme is Le Ball Masque, which is GaMPI’s version of the Academy Awards.
Located in Midtown Atlanta, the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center has earned an international reputation for corporate and professional meeting venues. It hosts over 800 meeting and educational sessions with more than 20,000 attendees on an annual basis. The 32,000-square-foot facility is unlike many hotels and event locations because its mission is to provide a learning-conducive environment for its clients in the form of conferences, meetings, seminars, and classes focused on professional development and education. As part of its all-inclusive, comprehensive meeting and event planning services, clients have the flexibility to choose and schedule events in the Center’s amphitheaters, conference rooms and computer labs that are equipped with advanced state-of-the-art technology.
“We are very humbled to be one of the Venue of the Year finalists,” said Phyllis Harris, CMP, director of operations for Georgia Tech Professional Education. “The Georgia Tech Global Learning Center applies every resource to create a perfect setting for pivotal meetings where corporate employees and professionals can engage in productive learning. This honor is a testament to the dedication and talent of our staff and how they serve our clients.”
Meeting Professionals International (MPI) is the premier organization devoted to the educational and professional needs of people in the meeting industry. With over 20,000 members globally, MPI serves both meeting planners and suppliers to the industry. Throughout the year, GaMPI offers superior educational opportunities including retreats and workshops, coordinates several social outings annually, as well as networking receptions prior to each monthly meeting. For more information, visit: www.gampi.org.
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About Georgia Tech Professional Education
Georgia Tech Professional Education is an academic division of the Georgia Institute of Technology, which consistently ranks as one of the nation’s top 10 public universities by U.S. News & World Report. Professional Education offers professional master's programs, short courses, and certificate programs to meet the needs of working professionals and industry partners. Programs are available worldwide through a variety of face-to-face, blended learning, online and/or distance learning modalities. In addition to professional course offerings, the division administers K-12 outreach and English proficiency programs, and manages a meeting and event facility. Professional Education serves and educates more than 3,100 companies and over 13,000 individuals on an annual basis, and is located at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center in Atlanta and at the Georgia Tech-Savannah campus.
]]>This year *12 of the 17 Yellow Jacket sports teams either improved their multi-year APR or saw its score remain the same, compared to last year's report. (*Up from 10 teams last year.)
Three Tech teams - golf, women's cross country, and men's tennis - posted perfect multi-year scores of 1,000.
The APR numbers released today are based on a multi-year rate that averages scores from the 2007-08, 2008-09, 2009-10 and 2010-11 academic years. APR is calculated by assessing each scholarship student-athlete's retention and eligibility each semester. To receive a perfect score of 1,000 each team's student-athletes must meet the NCAA retention and eligibility guidelines.
"We are pleased to once again see strong scores and improvements in our Academic Progress Rates," athletic director Dan Radakovich said. "It is a testament to the quality and efforts of our student-athletes, our academic support staff, and coaches. Over half of all our teams had a perfect APR year in 2010-11, and all teams exceeded the NCAA benchmark of 930. These scores represent strong progress to the ultimate goal of graduation and earning a Georgia Tech degree. I am proud to work with such a great group of young men and women."
More Georgia Tech related information from Wednesday's release of the APR:
• Men's basketball scored a perfect 2010-11 team single year APR score of 1000. A first for this sport, and a great testament to our basketball players and our academic support staff during that school year and coaching change.
• Bruce Heppler's golf team has produced a perfect score of 1,000 every year since the APR originated in 2003-04.
• The Yellow Jacket women's cross country team earned a perfect multi-year score of 1,000 for the third straight year.
• Kenny Thorne's men's tennis team earned a perfect multi-year score of 1,000 as a result of four consecutive perfect individual yearly scores.
• More than half of Tech's teams had a perfect score of 1,000 for the 2010-11 year.
• The Tech football team produced its highest APR to date with a score of 974. The previous high was 967 from the 2008-09 APR score.
• Three Georgia Tech teams - golf, men's tennis, and women's cross country -- were recognized by the NCAA for producing APR scores that ranked in the top 10 percent nationally within their respective sport.
"I want to congratulate the coaches, academic staff and especially our student-athletes for the outstanding work this year," Radakovich said. "We look forward to continued improvement in the years to come."
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Two men’s varsity teams, one a four-man and one a pair, earned silver medals in competition. The four-man was comprised of Sean Gibel, Matt Watters, Ben England and Adam McKenzie, and the pair Ian McCreadie and Michael Trimberger.
Others were honored for individual efforts as well, including four rowers being named to the 2012 ACRA South All-Region Team: Gibel, Watters, Kaitlin Acra and Lauren Shaughnessy. Team members are selected based on scores from prior races, accomplishments within their teams and coach recommendations. Electrical engineering student Caitlin Teague earned the honor of ACRA First Team Academic All-American for her combination of athletic participation and a GPA of 3.85 or higher.
The rowing club was founded in 1986 and competes against other crew teams on the regional and national level. More than 70 students participate in races year-round at various levels.
]]>The Petit Undergraduate Research Scholars program is a competitive scholarship program that serves to develop the next generation of leading bioengineering and bioscience researchers by providing a comprehensive research experience for a full year. Open to all Atlanta area university students, the program allows undergraduates to conduct independent research in the state-of-the-art laboratories of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience (Petit Institute). Under the mentorship of a graduate student and faculty member, scholars develop their own independent research project.
"This program provides top undergraduate students with the opportunity to experience firsthand the thrill of research discovery and innovation and hopefully encourages them to pursue an advanced degree in medicine or biotechnology," said Bob Guldberg, Executive Director of the Petit Institute. “We are deeply grateful to the Beckman Coulter Foundation and Russ Bell for this significant gift enabling us to expand the Petit Scholars program."
"Every year the number of outstanding undergraduates who apply to the program grows," added Todd McDevitt, program faculty advisor. "Our increasing challenge is to secure enough funding for all of the well-qualified students to work in the Petit Institute investigator’s laboratories."
The Beckman Coulter Foundation felt a real connection between its mission to support healthcare-related science education and the Petit Institute’s innovative undergraduate research scholars program because of the impact it has made thus far. Since its inception in 2000, the program has trained over 186 talented students and created opportunities for them to conduct research in state-of-the-art research facilities.
“This grant not only honors Beckman Coulter founders, Arnold Beckman and Wallace Coulter, two of the most important scientific innovators of the 20th century,” said Russ Bell, President of the Beckman Coulter Foundation, “but also honors their tradition of ‘paying forward.’”
“I was fortunate and blessed to have been asked as a Georgia Tech undergraduate in 1968 to do research in Nancy Walls’ lab, so I am especially happy that the Beckman Coulter Foundation has recognized the excellence of the Petit Undergraduate Research program,” Bell said. “We know that our support will help produce the next generation of scientific leaders that would make Beckman’s Coulter’s Founders proud.”
Petit Scholars receive training that provides a solid foundation for them to pursue advanced degrees in science or engineering with 62% entering a graduate degree program and 15% entering medical school indicating that close to 80% of Petit Scholars go on to obtain advanced degrees. Many are already distinguishing themselves in research, medicine and industry.
Each year, Georgia Tech hosts a fundraising dinner for the Petit Undergraduate Research Scholars program in order to support the next class. This year’s dinner will be held June 23, 2012 at the Piedmont Driving Club and world-class athlete, Scott Rigsby, will be the featured speaker. Over 100 Atlanta-area community members and business leaders will attend. The Beckman Coulter Foundation will be recognized at the dinner as a platinum sponsor for their donation.
The Beckman Coulter Foundation is a separate, private foundation established in 2007 as an important part of Beckman Coulter's charitable giving efforts. The Foundation serves as the philanthropic arm of Beckman Coulter, by funding programs which are focused around science, science education and healthcare-related research that improves patient health and the quality of life.
Since its establishment, the Beckman Coulter Foundation has provided more than 5 million dollars of funding toward grants in the areas of: Clinical Fellowships, Clinical Laboratory Science Programs, President’s Scholars Programs, Science Enrichment and numerous other educational and research-based programs.
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Marci Raudez. Foundation & Community Relations
Beckman Coulter Foundation
With the complexity of modern medical devices, engineers from multiple disciplines (mechanical, biomedical, electrical, software, and human factors engineering, systems analysis and manufacturing) are often required to translate clinical needs into safe and effective commercial products for healthcare. The BioID master’s program will specifically address gaps in the crucial “bedside-to-bench-to-bedside” progression that identifies and connects unmet clinical needs with advances in science, biomaterials, processes and technology.
This program will prepare students from multiple undergraduate disciplines for careers in a wide range of medical specialties. Courses include: engineering design and development; FDA and ISO requirements; medical markets and clinical specialties; clinical practice/protocols, strategy and planning; finance and economics; product costing; justifications; project planning and management; ethics; socio-economic influences; and sustainability.
Georgia Tech BioID students will interact with healthcare industry experts and guest lecturers from areas such as clinical and surgical practices, engineering design and development, regulatory requirements, business planning, and commercialization. The program incorporates experience in healthcare environments, teamwork projects, and professional communications and will culminate in a master’s level clinical/medical team project.
“With an emphasis on cross-disciplinary coursework and relevant clinical experience, this program fills a distinct market demand for broadly educated professionals at the intersection of biomedical device engineering, healthcare, and business development,” said L. Franklin Bost, professor and executive director of the program. Bost’s background in both the medical device industry and biomedical design instruction brings a distinctive professional education and commercialization perspective to the program.
In 2012, U.S. News & World Report ranked Georgia Tech’s B.S. and Ph.D. biomedical engineering programs second in the nation. The BioID master’s program will build upon the strengths and global reputation of these existing programs, said Gilda Barabino, associate chair for graduate studies in the Coulter Department. “The BioID degree is a welcome and integral addition to our graduate programs. It is consistent with our collaborative and interdisciplinary culture for basic and translational research and provides specialized training for students seeking the best preparation to convert discoveries to the clinic to benefit patients,” she said.
Ideal candidates for the BioID master’s program include early-career professionals in medical device or biomedicine-related industries; engineers seeking medical device specialization; and high-performing graduates from engineering disciplines. Graduates of this intensive 12-month master’s program will be exceptionally well prepared to pursue and advance their careers in the dynamic field of biomedical device engineering, technology development and commercialization.
For more information, please contact info@bioid.gatech.edu
]]>That’s what it is like walking into the Georgia Tech Invention Studio, where every surface is filled with equipment or creations from the studio’s participants. From miniature Yoda heads crafted on 3D printers to a miniature wooden bulldozer that would light up the eyes of any toddler, the studio is clearly a hotbed of Georgia Tech students’ creativity and innovation.
Managed by the Makers Club, the Georgia Tech Invention Studio has been around since 2008, when an old mailroom was transformed into a small machine room. Almost four years later, it has expanded into a 1,000-square-foot space with cutting-edge prototyping equipment that students of all disciplines can use to get real-world designing and building skills.
The studio is now comprised of three separate rooms on the second floor of the Manufacturing Related Discipline Complex containing several high-end pieces of equipment, including a water jet and a hot injection mold machine. The studio recently obtained two additional laser cutters to meet growing student demand. One student expanded the functionality of these cutters by writing a code that enables the machine to cut patterns that can then be assembled into 3-D creations.
“The cutting-edge tools we have are due to very generous support from the Institute’s student technology fee and from corporate sponsorship,” said Craig Forest, mechanical engineering professor and faculty advisor for the Invention Studio. “We want to send forward inventors and engineers into society by providing a home for design-build education and culture. The studio is a small step in the right direction.” Hands-on education is also a fundamental aspect of the Institute’s Strategic Plan.
Though originally established to provide mechanical engineering capstone students with a workspace to foster collaboration and efficiency, the Invention Studio welcomes students of all disciplines.
Eric Weinhoffer, a fifth-year mechanical engineering student and outgoing president of the Makers Club, emphasizes the importance of applying theory learned in the classroom. “By leveraging the equipment in the Invention Studio, graduates are more desirable job candidates because of their abilities and skills,” Weinhoffer says.
Approximately 50 undergraduate laboratory instructors, or ULIs, staff the lab each week and are available to teach visitors how to use the space’s equipment and resources. Workshop facilitators also volunteer in the studio, teaching techniques and skills in woodworking, knitting, rocketry and other specialized areas. After experimenting with machines and attending workshops, students are eligible to apply to become a volunteer ULI or workshop facilitator, and also become a member of the Makers Club.
“Knowing how things are designed makes you a better engineer,” added Chris Quintero, a recent alumnus and staff member in the studio. In February, the White House took an interest in how the studio is doing that, interviewing Quintero and Weinhoffer for its Office of Science Technology and Policy blog.
Perhaps the most unusual characteristic is the student ownership of the space. “I left one weekend and returned to find our new sitting blocks had been vinyl-printed with the studio logo,” Quintero said. ULIs are present in the studio at all hours, hosting holiday events, working on academic projects or designing in their free time.
“It’s hard not to get inspired to build something if you hang around there long enough,” said Weinhoffer. Last year, Weinhoffer spearheaded the creation of the Atlanta Mini Makers Faire, a celebration of do-it-yourself projects. This year’s event is tentatively scheduled for Saturday, October 6, on Tech Walk.
Students interested in learning more about the Invention Studio are encouraged to visit the website or drop in to meet the ULIs and experiment with the equipment.
]]>Dr. Craig Forest
Faculty Advisor, Invention Studio
Xo Wang
President, Makers Club
This is the fourth annual tour for Peterson, who will travel through several cities from June 25 to 27. Stops will be made in Columbus, Camilla, Pelham, Bainbridge, Jesup, Valdosta and Savannah.
Peterson and his wife, Georgia Tech First Lady Valerie H. Peterson, initiated the visits three years ago to provide an opportunity to meet face to face with alumni, students, state leaders and other friends to share updates on Georgia Tech and listen to questions and concerns.
Last year’s tour included visits to Dalton, Rome, Carrollton, Peachtree City, Newnan, LaGrange and Gainesville.
Stops for the 2010 tour were Young Harris, Athens, Watkinsville, Greensboro, Perry, Warner Robins, Fort Valley, Lyons, Vidalia and Albany.
Peterson visited Columbus, Macon, Savannah, Brunswick and Augusta in 2009.
]]>The Department of Veterans Affairs (VA) Veterans Health Administration’s (VHA) Innovation Sandbox Cloud and the Georgia Institute of Technology’s Interoperability and Integration Innovation Lab will collaborate to address interoperability issues, accelerate the development of integrated health IT solutions, provide an unbiased environment for testing new products and help train the IT workforce needed to move the industry forward. Georgia Tech is believed to be the first academic organization to connect directly to VHA’s system.
The two organizations have signed a memorandum of understanding that will formally connect innovation facilities and allow researchers from both organizations to collaborate on specific projects. The agreement also facilitates the use of the Veterans Health Information Systems and Technology Architecture (VistA), VHA’s electronic health records system, to test new products and solutions. VistA is already used to help manage care for 7.6 million active U.S. veterans across VHA’s nationwide health care system and is widely considered to be the best electronic health records system in operation.
“We believe that together we can do something really unique and important,” said Steve Rushing, director of Health@EI2, a health care innovation initiative at Georgia Tech. “By connecting our interoperability innovation lab to the VHA’s Sandbox Cloud, we can create joint project teams to work on specific challenges, work together to address industry issues and develop best practices, and test applications designed to run with the VA’s robust electronic health records system.”
VHA and Georgia Tech share many of the same goals and, by working together, the organizations can leverage investments made by VA and other federal agencies, noted Robert Kolodner, M.D., who led development of VistA during his 28-year career at the VA. Kolodner serves as a strategic advisor to Georgia Tech on its health care IT initiatives.
“This collaboration enables decades of health IT advances by VA to be combined with investments by other federal agencies and with resources from both the state and private sectors,” Kolodner said. “Together, they create a robust, diverse education and simulation environment. We can train the health IT workforce necessary to succeed as our national health IT initiatives improve the health and well-being of individuals and communities across the nation.”
Georgia Tech’s Interoperability and Integration Innovation Lab (I3L) was established to stimulate new ideas in health IT by creating a standards-based environment in which resources can be shared, barriers reduced, and new products more rapidly developed and introduced. Beyond addressing existing challenges for the industry, the lab will help participants – including academic and nonprofit organizations, as well as providers of both commercial and open source products – anticipate the trends and opportunities that will drive health IT in the future.
“The I3L will help us understand how to create conformance in interoperable systems and how in the future all of the health and medical devices and systems can be tied together to create a seamless view of what’s happening to the patient,” said Jeff Evans, deputy director of the Information and Communications Laboratory in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “It will take us into the future of what health care is going to be, while also supporting the requirements of today.”
VHA’s Innovation Sandbox Cloud has a mission comparable to that of Georgia Tech’s I3L.
“VHA’s Innovation Sandbox Cloud serves as a virtual space to facilitate health IT innovation through collaboration and the development of new ideas, requirements and products that can become solutions within VistA,” said Craig Luigart, chief officer, VHA Office of Health Information. “Our health data systems interconnection with Georgia Tech’s I3L Sandbox is a landmark in the government’s Health Information Technology Innovation and Development Environments (HITIDE) initiative.” The HITIDE initiative supports the development of interoperable health IT systems by leveraging existing federal agency health IT test bed environments for a cross-agency, virtual, active, innovation ecosystem.
Beyond connecting electronic health records systems and helping them share information, I3L will also link to Gwinnett Technical College’s health IT certificate program to help expand the workforce needed to build and maintain health IT systems. The initiative, funded by the U.S. Employment and Training Administration, connects students – including Veterans – to state-of-the-market training resources.
“Industry is telling us that it needs a health IT work force with a different set of skills than what is now available in the marketplace,” said Marla Gorges, associate director of Georgia Tech’s Health@EI2 program. “Through the Gwinnett Technical College program, I3L will give students access to a wide range of commercial and open source systems.”
Already, Gorges said, the resources of I3L have been used in Georgia Tech courses, helping students learn the real-world issues of health IT and propose solutions for them.
The overall goal for these initiatives is to improve patient care and community health through better exchange of information, Rushing noted.
“Other industries have transitioned to electronic systems, but none of them has faced the complexity of the health care industry,” Rushing said. “As the largest organization paying for health care services, the federal government has been pushing for an integrated health care information system that would allow patient records to be shared by all those caring for a specific patient.”
Georgia Tech’s expertise and experience with interoperability issues in other areas – such as connecting criminal justice information networks in collaboration with the U.S. Department of Justice – provides a foundation for what it expects to do in health care IT. Its connections to designers of medical devices, information security specialists and developers of wireless communications systems at Georgia Tech and elsewhere will also help anticipate the future of health care information systems.
“We are standing up a health care test bed that builds on all our work in the past with how to tie networks together and ensure that they’re set up in such a way that regardless of the network and the information exchange elements, we can still share elements and databases,” Evans said. “We are setting up not only an interoperability lab, but also an environment where we can see how this will work in the future.”
About the I3L: The I3L is a standards-based facility located at the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The lab will test and evaluate cutting-edge health IT (HIT) software innovations originating from industry, researchers, faculty and students, inventors and other sources. The I3L is funded in part by the federal government’s Jobs and Innovation Accelerator Challenge, a tri-agency competition initiated to support the advancement of 20 high-growth, regional industry clusters. The overarching goal is to achieve higher-quality, lower-cost and more patient-centric health care throughout the state of Georgia.
About Enterprise Innovation Institute: The Georgia Tech Enterprise Innovation Institute helps companies, entrepreneurs, economic developers and communities improve their competitiveness through the application of science, technology and innovation. It is one of the most comprehensive university-based programs of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization and economic development in the nation.
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Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Robinson (404-385-3364)(abby@innovate.gatech.edu).
Writer: John Toon
]]>Research News & Publications Office
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]]>"Researcher Guidebook – A Guide for Successful Institutional-Industry Collaborations” is now available online as a resource for active researchers from academia, government labs and industry.
“We think the guidebook will be tremendously useful for faculty, helping them better position research proposals and research work for industry sponsors,” said Jilda Garton, vice resident and general manager of the Georgia Tech Research Corporation and immediate past president of the University-Industry Demonstration Partnerships (UIDP). “For both industry and university collaborators, it’s useful to understand what the other party is going to expect and how it is going to perform.”
This practical manual was prepared by a working group of the UIDP, an organization of universities and companies convened by the National Academies to enhance the environment for university-industry partnerships in the U.S.
Georgia Tech is a founding member of the UIDP, and its participation in the organization supports the Institute’s strategic mission to improve the ecosystem for industry-university collaboration.
The idea for the guidebook was born out of a UIDP meeting hosted by Georgia Tech in March 2010, when a series of presentations about collaboration between research teams at Georgia Tech and Kimberly-Clark pointed out challenges in working together. Once the guidebook project launched, more than 30 UIDP member organizations and institutions contributed to its development.
The guide is divided into two sections – one to address issues specific to university, nonprofit and government researchers and another focused on issues specific to industry researchers. By presenting these two different perspectives, the guidebook identifies key elements for developing more successful collaborations and provides practical advice on a range of topics.
Georgia Tech Research Corporation holds the copyright for the guidebook and is helping the UIDP manage public access.
The guidebook project was led by John McEntire from Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, operated by Battelle for the U.S. Department of Energy, with co-chairs Dudley Sharp, recently retired from Arizona State University, and Rebecca Silverston-Keith from Lexmark International.
About the UIDP
The UIDP exists for industry, academia and other research and innovation organizations, such as national labs, hospitals and nonprofit research labs, to work together to enhance the environment for university-industry partnerships and research collaboration in the United States. UIDP provides a forum for university and industry representatives to meet and discuss contracting and intellectual property policy, publication and technology transfer preferences, and other issues. To learn more, visit www.uidp.org.
About Georgia Tech
The Georgia Institute of Technology is one of the world’s premier research universities. Ranked seventh among U.S. News & World Report’s top public universities, the Institute enrolls 21,000 students within its six colleges. Georgia Tech is the nation’s leading producer of engineers as well as a leading producer of female and minority engineering Ph.D. graduates. Holding more than 780 patents and receiving approximately $570 million in sponsored awards, Georgia Tech ranks among the nation’s top ten universities (without a medical school) in research expenditures. Visit www.gatech.edu for more information.
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There is considerable evidence that the evolution of life passed through an early stage when RNA played a more central role before DNA and coded proteins appeared. During that time, more than 3 billion years ago, the environment lacked oxygen but had an abundance of soluble iron.
In a new study, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology used experiments and numerical calculations to show that iron, in the absence of oxygen, can substitute for magnesium in RNA binding, folding and catalysis. The researchers found that RNA’s shape and folding structure remained the same and its functional activity increased when magnesium was replaced by iron in an oxygen-free environment.
“The primary motivation of this work was to understand RNA in plausible early earth conditions and we found that iron could support an array of RNA structures and catalytic functions more diverse than RNA with magnesium,” said Loren Williams, a professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech.
The results of the study were published online on May 31, 2012 in the journal PLoS ONE. The study was supported by the NASA Astrobiology Institute.
In addition to Williams, Georgia Tech School of Biology postdoctoral fellow Shreyas Athavale, research scientist Anton Petrov, and professors Roger Wartell and Stephen Harvey, and Georgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry postdoctoral fellow Chiaolong Hsiao and professor Nicholas Hud also contributed to this work.
Free oxygen gas was almost nonexistent more than 3 billion years ago in the early earth’s atmosphere. When oxygen began entering the environment as a product of photosynthesis, it turned the earth’s iron to rust, forming massive banded iron formations that are still mined today. The free oxygen produced by advanced organisms caused iron to be toxic, even though it was -- and still is -- a requirement for life.
This environmental transition triggered by the introduction of free oxygen into the atmosphere would have caused a slow, but dramatic, shift in biology that required transformations in biochemical mechanisms and metabolic pathways. The current study provides evidence that this transition may have caused a shift from iron to magnesium for RNA binding, folding and catalysis processes.
The researchers used quantum mechanical calculations, chemical footprinting and two ribozyme assays to determine that in an oxygen-free environment, iron, Fe2+, can be substituted for magnesium, Mg2+, in RNA folding and catalysis.
Quantum mechanical calculations showed that the structure of RNA was nearly identical when it included iron or magnesium. When large RNAs fold into native, stable structures, negatively charged phosphate groups are brought into close proximity. The researchers calculated one small difference between the activity of iron and magnesium structures: more charge was transferred from phosphate to iron than from phosphate to magnesium.
Chemical probing under anaerobic conditions showed that iron could replace magnesium in compacting and folding large RNA structures, thus providing evidence that iron and magnesium could be nearly interchangeable in their interactions with RNA.
Under identical anaerobic conditions, the activity of two enzymes was enhanced in the presence of iron, compared to their activity in the presence of magnesium. The initial activity of the L1 ribozyme ligase, an enzyme that glues together pieces of RNA, was 25 times higher in the presence of iron. Activity of the hammerhead ribozyme, an enzyme that cuts RNA, was three times higher in the presence of iron compared to magnesium.
“The results suggest that iron is a superior substitute for magnesium in these catalytic roles,” said Williams, who is also director of the Center for Ribosomal Origins and Evolution at Georgia Tech. “Our hypothesis is that RNA evolved in the presence of iron and is optimized to work with iron.”
In future studies, the researchers plan to investigate what unique functions RNA can possess with iron that are not possible with magnesium.
This work was supported by NASA (Award No. NNA09DA78A). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of NASA.
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]]>The toys are simple things, set into motion by palm-sized solar cells, and the process of converting sunlight into electricity seems fairly simple, too: Sunlight hits the cells and is absorbed, then separated by a silicon semiconductor into positive and negative charges, creating a batterylike current of electrons that’s shuttled off to power the adjacent contraption. Presto! But Rohatgi, regent’s professor of electrical engineering at Georgia Tech, knows firsthand that the bigger picture of photovoltaic energy is far more complex.
Rohatgi is the director of Georgia Tech’s University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaics Research and Education—the first-ever such center sponsored by the U.S. government—as well as the founder and chief technical officer of Suniva, a manufacturer of solar cells and modules that spun out of his work at the Institute.
These days, his life is defined by photovoltaic research, and he talks about his lab and his students with an affable, fatherly pride. But his career was once on a much different path. After earning his undergraduate degree in electrical engineering from the Indian Institute of Technology, he received a master’s degree in materials engineering from Virginia Polytechnic Institute and then a PhD in metallurgy and materials science from Lehigh University. It wasn’t until he joined the team at the Westinghouse Research and Development Center, where he became a Westinghouse fellow, that his interest in photovoltaic energy surfaced.
“I had the option to work in solar or work in integrated circuits, [but] my heart was in PV because I felt it was just a great technology to work on—if I can do something, I can make a difference,” he says, sitting behind a spacious wooden desk in his Van Leer building office. “I got into that, and I stayed in this field because I firmly believe in it, that this can have a very positive impact on so many things—the lives of the people, the environment, national security.”
The transformative potential of solar energy is massive, but it’s nowhere close to being effectively harnessed. Sunlight is free and present in unlimited quantities all over the globe, and it can’t be sequestered or fought over like so many other natural resources. And its source should be hanging around for another five billion years or so. “It’s as if somebody created a fusion reactor for you in a safe place, which is far away,” Rohatgi says of the sun. “We know solar electricity has no undesirable impact on the environment you just can’t have a better source. It has been designed for us.”
Rohatgi says that if he could develop a magic box to catch all the sunlight that shines down upon our planet over the course of just one hour, that would be enough to power human life on earth for one year. Taking a more realistic approach, he’s set his sights on producing a solar cell capable of hitting 20 percent—that is, converting 20 percent of the sunlight that falls on the cell surface into usable energy. And in working toward this goal, both at Tech and with Suniva, he is motivated by one mantra: “We will not make high-efficiency cells just for the sake of high efficiency.” The aim is to develop photovoltaic cells that are both maximally efficient and maximally cost-effective, never compromising quality for cost or cost for quality. And that issue of cost is crucial: Solar needs to be competitive with fossil fuel, the current and longstanding energy paradigm, in order to gain any traction in the marketplace.
When Rohatgi started at Westinghouse in 1977, solar was still a fledgling industry. Just a few years before, in 1975, PV energy had been 80 times more expensive than fossil fuel. And in 1985, when he joined the faculty at Tech, there was nothing happening on campus in the way of photovoltaic research. So he decided to build a lab from the ground up—plumbing, equipment, furniture, everything. After years in industry R&D, he was primed to move fast and write aggressive proposals; he recruited students, raised funds and maintained the ever-expanding lab as colleagues gawked at his speed. Sometimes he wondered why he poured so much time and energy into the project when he could just teach his classes and head home at the end of the day. “In some ways you’ve created this elephant that you have to keep feeding,” he says of the lab’s early days. “But if it is done through passion, that’s the main thing.”
His passion is real. Growing up in India, Rohatgi witnessed the impact of electricity—or, more specifically, a lack thereof—on a first-hand basis. In villages and urban centers alike, electric power regularly shuts off for hours at a time. Although most people have figured out ways to work around the outages, Rohatgi knows solar energy would be a massive boon. “In many villages, at nighttime, nobody would work. If you could just put one solar panel on the roof they get three, four hours of electricity,” he says. “I’ve seen villages where there was nothing there, and now they have small industry coming up, just because they got a few additional hours of electricity. It is changing the lives of a lot of people.”
Meanwhile, the lab’s research continued on its steady course to 20 percent; it hit 17, then 18. Rohatgi was feeling good about the progress. But he was baffled when, in 2006, he was approached by NEA, a venture capital firm that doesn’t exactly make a habit of approaching anyone. The firm wanted to help him start a solar company, to start commercially producing the cells his lab had been working so hard to perfect.
Rohatgi wasn’t sure—he thought he should get to 20 percent before branching out into a business. But the NEA folks said it was the lowest-risk investment they’d ever make: “They said whenever they make investment in companies, sometimes people have never even made a device,” Rohatgi recalls. With 25 years of experience and the world’s best solar panels under his belt, it was easy for the NEA to put their trust in Rohatgi. They told him, “Yes, granted, you’re not at your goal of 20 percent, but … take our money and get there.”
And so, with NEA’s assistance, Rohatgi set about building the team that would launch Suniva in 2007. First up was John Baumstark, now CEO, who came to the company with two decades’ experience in business development and management. “I had the connections, I had the knowledge, I had the technology, I had the vision, but he had this team and the idea about running a company,” Rohatgi says. “It worked out beautifully. The most unique feature of Suniva, the reason it took off so quickly and so fast, is because of this complement—the business team and the technology.”
These days, Rohatgi splits his time between his lab on Tech’s campus and the Suniva offices in Norcross, Ga., a suburb of Atlanta. The lab and Suniva have separate R&D departments, but they share knowledge and talent—and the company’s close relationship with the Institute isn’t its only distinguishing factor. Suniva has pioneered a number of unique technologies, including ion implantation (long used in making chips, but never before in photovoltaics), which improved the efficiency of their cells by one percent and reduced the total number of steps needed to build a cell by two.
That’s huge, and it reflects Rohatgi’s key approach: to improve the quality and cost of his end-products by improving the process by which they are created. Suniva works with what he calls “the DNA of the whole value chain,” improving the efficiency and function of every element involved in the solar cell, from raw material to manufacturing processes. “If I make more efficient solar cells I need less material, and if I make more efficient solar cells I need fewer panels to install,” Rohatgi says. And when solar panels are smaller and more efficient, it means more of them could potentially be installed—on the roof of a factory, say, or a private home—maximizing the amount of energy produced.
Rohatgi thinks his products will be able to hit 20 percent soon, and he predicts the price of solar energy is about to match that of fossil fuel. That means solar may finally start catching on in the broader consumer market. (In some states, thanks largely to government subsidies, it already has. Lower manufacturing costs—aided by lower wages, made possible in part by more lax labor laws—mean it’s closer to happening in China than anywhere else, though there are a few big markets across Europe.)
Rohatgi says he can now make a cell in the lab that could yield up to 23 percent—but if he’s learned one thing since starting Suniva, it’s a reverence for manufacturing. The most stunning advancements in the lab hardly matter if you don’t have the means to replicate them in the real world in a scalable, cost-effective way.
“You can have the world’s greatest technology, but if you don’t know how to run the business, it would not go anywhere,” he says. “[You need] the full package, from the scientist to the entrepreneur.”
John Baumstark was the first addition to the Suniva team, but the employee roster has since grown to almost 200, including a number of Rohatgi’s former students and other Tech alumni.
Like Rohatgi, Vijay Yelundur, MSE 97, PhD MSE 03, was impressed by the potential of solar energy at a young age. “When I was around 6 years old, we took a trip to Yellowstone National Park, and I saw someone using a solar cooker. And I became fascinated with the idea of using sunlight to cook food or to produce power,” he remembers.
After wrapping up his undergraduate degree, Yelundur was eyeing grad school and picked the one subject he thought could hold his interest: solar energy. His father ran across an article about Rohatgi’s program in a trade journal and mentioned it to his son, who had no idea there was a solar research group in the basement of Tech’s double-E building. Rohatgi became his thesis adviser, and Yelundur was one of Suniva’s earliest hires, joining the company as a senior engineer. He now serves as manager of the Manufacturing Innovation Center.
Before founding Suniva, Rohatgi says, he was largely divorced from the business side of the solar industry. His education had prepared him for a career in research, sealed off in a lab wrangling samples and hypotheses, so he’s had to play some catch-up. Increasingly, though, his students are suffering no such gap, thanks in part to Institute initiatives like the InVenture Prize, the University-Industry Demonstration Partnership and Enterprise to Empower, all of which foster entrepreneurship as a component of academic research.
“When you don’t know about these things it looks so difficult, but once you know [more, it’s] not that difficult. In fact, once I found out about [the process of starting a business], I was like, ‘Oh, seeing how it’s done, it’s not that complicated,’” Rohatgi says. “There’s a lot of talk about this on campus—that you should train the students from the very start, that it is not very difficult to learn things about business, but that you just have to have a different aptitude. It’s a great thing.”
And, unlike in Yelundur’s day when the PV lab was out of sight and out of mind, the center now occupies a more visible space on campus: the ground floor of the Van Leer building, facing the Tech Green. Rohatgi can take a few steps out of his office and see the 86-kilowatt array of Suniva panels installed on the roof of the state-of-the-art Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons. The panels are set to produce up to 120,000 kWh per year, offsetting more than 80 tons of carbon dioxide. In 1996, just before the Olympic games, Rohatgi and his crew installed what was then the world’s largest solar array on the roof of the Olympic natatorium (now the CRC), but that was different—they were someone else’s panels. He becomes giddy describing what it’s like to see his own work out in the world.
“If you get an opportunity to take something you built … out in the real world, there’s nothing more exciting,” he says. “It was a thrill for me to see the panels, the cells from my factory being installed … because if I am doing it [in the lab], that’s nice, but nobody knows. But now when they’re out in the field, it’s a different sense of pride and satisfaction. It’s really, really nice to even have this opportunity that is right in front of my office. It’s very satisfying.”
This story originally appeared in Volume 88, Issue 2, of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine.
]]>“What brings us together is changing the lives of the kids. The children of Georgia and throughout the country deserve the best care we can provide,” said Children’s President and CEO Donna Hyland. “At Children’s, our mission is to make kids better today and healthier tomorrow. We can do so much more with a strong partnership with Georgia Tech. Our $20 million alliance makes it clear just how committed both parties are to helping kids and provides an extraordinary opportunity for others who care about kids to join us.”
Both organizations will operate under guiding principles that include enhancing societal and economic impact by transforming pediatrics, strengthening collaborative partnerships and creating opportunities.
“This initiative also builds on our existing partnerships with other medical education leaders in the state and represents another example of how we are strategically fostering alliances that will help improve the human condition,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “Not only will this collaboration improve the lives of children, it will also create new technologies that will lead to new products, new companies and more jobs for Georgia.”
The enhanced alliance will support current researchers and recruit new researchers who will conduct fundamental and translational research. The problem-solving partnership will be guided by a joint Children’s-Georgia Tech strategic plan designed to define a balanced portfolio of work with near-term impact and “game changing” focus.
Georgia Tech researchers will work in close collaboration with Children’s clinicians to develop the best possible technologies for advancing children’s health and delivering pediatric services in leading-edge research areas from nanomedicine and regenerative medicine to innovative approaches for health care delivery.
The alliance is being initiated by a $10 million investment from Children’s, which will be matched by planned investment from Georgia Tech, culminating in a $20 million commitment to research focusing on pediatric technology and fundamental and translational research. The enhanced collaboration will include participation by existing Children’s research centers and faculty and researchers from academic and research units throughout Georgia Tech.
Since 2007, Georgia Tech and Children’s have collaborated on more than 130 pediatric research projects. These efforts will continue to take place at both Georgia Tech and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta research facilities.
]]>Even though a single raindrop can weigh 50 times more than a mosquito, the insect is still able to fly through a downpour.
Georgia Tech researchers used high-speed videography to determine how this is possible. They found the mosquito’s strong exoskeleton and low mass render it impervious to falling raindrops.
The research team, led by Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Biology David Hu and his doctoral student Andrew Dickerson, found that mosquitoes receive low impact forces from raindrops because the mass of mosquitoes causes raindrops to lose little momentum upon impact. The results of the research will appear in the June 4 issue of the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America.
“The most surprising part of this project was seeing the robustness this small flyer has in the rain,” Dickerson said. “If you were to scale up the impact to human size, we would not survive. It would be like standing in the road and getting hit by a car.”
What the researchers learned about mosquito flight could be used to enhance the design and features of micro-airborne vehicles, which are increasingly being used by law enforcement and the military in surveillance and search-and-rescue operations.
To study how mosquitoes fly in the rain, the research team constructed a flight arena consisting of a small acrylic cage covered with mesh to contain the mosquitoes but permit entry of water drops. They used a water jet to simulate rain stream velocity and observed six mosquitoes flying into the stream. All the mosquitoes survived the collision.
“The collision force must equal the resistance applied by the insect,” Hu said. “Mosquitoes don’t resist at all, but simply go with the flow.”
The team also filmed free-flying mosquitoes that were subjected to rain drops. They found that upon impact the mosquito is adhered to the front of the drop for up to 20 body lengths.
“To survive, the mosquito must eventually separate from the front of the drop,” Hu said. “The mosquito accomplishes this by using its long legs and wings, whose drag forces act to rotate the mosquito off the point of contact. This is necessary, otherwise the mosquito will be thrown into the ground at the speed of a falling raindrop.”
]]>Assistant Professor Eric Gilbert of the School of Interactive Computing examined hundreds of thousands of emails from the former Enron corporation and found that—by the definition of “gossip” as messages that contain information about a person or persons not among the recipients—14.7 percent of the emails qualify as office scuttlebutt. What’s more, Gilbert found that gossip is prevalent at all levels of the corporate hierarchy, though lower levels gossip the most. (Click here to watch a YouTube video about this research.)
“Gossip gets a bad rap,” said Gilbert, an expert in social computing who runs the Comp.Social Lab at Georgia Tech. “When you say ‘gossip,’ most people immediately have a negative interpretation, but it’s actually a very important form of communication. Even tiny bits of information, like ‘Eric said he’d be late for this meeting,’ add up; after just a few of those messages, you start to get an impression that Eric is a late person. Gossip is generally how we know what we know about each other, and for this study we viewed it simply as a means to share social information.”
Still, another finding was that “negative” gossip, characterized through a Natural Language Text Processing analysis, was in fact 2.7 times more prevalent than positive gossip, though a significant portion of the messages were sentiment-neutral. The findings, according to Gilbert and Ph.D. student Tanushree Mitra, represent an important test of anthropological theories about gossip in what can reasonably be called the world’s most popular electronic social medium: email.
“There is a rich literature in anthropology and sociology on the universality and utility of gossip among human social groups,” Mitra said. “A recent survey of that literature summarized gossip as having four main purposes: information, entertainment, intimacy and influence. We found evidence of all those categories in the Enron emails, relating to both business and personal relationships.”
The researchers divided the emails among seven layers of Enron hierarchy, from rank-and-file office employees all the way up to presidents and CEOs, and found gossip emails flowing within and among nearly every level, with the heaviest flow among the rank-and-file. However, the second heaviest flow within a single level occurred among Enron vice presidents and directors, and by a wide margin the strongest upward flow of gossip was from the vice presidents and directors up one level to presidents and CEOs. Vice presidents and directors also gossiped the most down the chain, with the heaviest downward flow originating from their level and ending up at the lowest, rank-and-file level.
Might these findings be unique to Enron? After all, actions leading to the energy-trading company’s 2001 bankruptcy have earned it a notorious place in U.S. corporate history. Could such an environment lead to social behavior that is outside the norm?
“Enron certainly had what could be called a ‘cowboy culture,’ but I suspect the way they behaved internally to each other did not differ significantly from most other U.S. corporations,” Gilbert said. “A lot of the emails we’re looking at were from the rank-and-file, and it was the Enron CEOs—a tiny fraction of its employee population—who initiated and directed the actions that brought the company down. The average employee had no idea what was going on.”
Indeed, the Enron corpus—some 600,000 messages purchased following the company’s bankruptcy and now made freely available for study—represents the world’s largest publicly accessible body of naturally occurring emails, and it has provided grist for numerous scientific and technical advances. For example, Gilbert said, email spam filters took a huge leap forward in efficiency in 2005 due largely to advancements made from analyzing the Enron corpus. And recently, Gilbert himself used Enron emails to discover that certain words and phrases in email strongly predict whether those messages are delivered up or down the corporate hierarchy. Still, he admitted to finding a slightly higher level of workplace gossip flowing around via email than he expected.
“I was a little surprised that it turned out to be almost 15 percent,” Gilbert said. “But then again, gossip is something we all do in every aspect of our lives. I imagine corporate executives will probably take note of this—and then send an email to Jennifer down the hall saying that Bob in purchasing gossips all the time.”
Gilbert’s and Mitra’s findings are summarized in the paper “Have You Heard? How Gossip Flows Through Workplace Email,” which Mitra is presenting today at the 6th International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media (ICWSM ’12), being held at Trinity College in Dublin, Ireland.
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Huntington’s disease causes the progressive breakdown of nerve cells in the brain and affects an individual’s movement, cognition and mental state. Genetically, the disease is associated with a mutation in the Huntingtin gene that causes the huntingtin protein to be produced with an extended region containing the amino acid glutamine.
The mechanisms that control the severity and onset of the disease are poorly understood, as individuals with the same amount of expansion in their huntingtin proteins experience differences in toxicity and onset of the disease.
A new study led by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers suggests that the toxic effects of the huntingtin protein on cells may not be driven exclusively by the length of the protein’s expansion, but also by which other proteins are present in the cell.
The researchers placed human huntingtin protein with an expanded region, called a polyglutamine tract, into yeast cells and found toxicity differences that were based on the other protein aggregates -- called prions -- present in the cells.
“This study clarifies genetic and epigenetic mechanisms that modulate polyglutamine’s toxicity on cells and establishes a new approach for identifying potential therapeutic targets through characterization of pre-existing proteins in the cell,” said Yury Chernoff, a professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech. “While this study was conducted in yeast, it is possible that there are differences in aggregated proteins present in human cells as well, which are causing variation in huntingtin toxicity among individuals.”
The results of the study were published in the April 2012 issue of the journal PLoS Genetics. This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health and the Hereditary Disease Foundation.
Also contributing to this research were former Georgia Tech graduate student He Gong and postdoctoral fellow Nina Romanova, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill School of Medicine research assistant professor Piotr Mieczkowski, and Boston University School of Medicine professor Michael Sherman.
Expanded huntingtin forms clumps in human cells that are typically transported and stored in an internal compartment called an aggresome until they can be removed from the body. While the compartment is thought to protect the contents of the cell from the toxic contents inside the aggresome, the current study shows that huntingtin molecules inside an aggresome can still be toxic to the cell.
In the study, aggresome formation in the cells containing the prion form of the Rnq1 protein reduced the toxicity of the huntingtin protein in Saccharomyces cerevisiae yeast cells, whereas the huntingtin protein’s toxicity remained in the presence of the prion form of translation release factor Sup35.
“It remains uncertain whether the toxicity was primarily driven by sequestration of Sup35 into the aggresome or by its sequestration into the smaller huntingtin protein aggregates that remained in the cytoplasm,” explained Chernoff, who is also director of the Center for Nanobiology of the Macromolecular Assembly Disorders (NanoMAD). “While Sup35 was detected in the aggresome, we don’t know if the functional fraction of Sup35 was sequestered there.”
In a follow-on experiment, the researchers increased the level of another release factor, Sup45, in the presence of Sup35 and found that this combination counteracted the toxicity.
“While the Rnq1 and Sup35 prions did not cause significant toxicity on their own, the results show that prion composition in the cell drove toxicity,” noted Chernoff. “Prions modulated which proteins were sequestered by the aggresome, as proteins associated with the pre-existing prions were more likely to be sequestered, such as Sup45 because of its association with Sup35.”
It remains unknown if polyglutamines can sequester the human versions of the Sup35 and Sup45 release factors, but this study shows the possibility that organisms may differ by the protein composition in their cells, and this in turn may influence their susceptibility to polyglutamine disorders such as Huntington’s disease.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award numbers GM058763, GM093294 and GM086890. The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
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]]>The information provided by the three-year study could help improve health and safety for both passengers and airline flight crews. Researchers from two Atlanta universities, the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, are working together on the project, in collaboration with environmental sustainability personnel from Atlanta-based Delta Air Lines.
“The ultimate goal of this project is to reduce the transmission of infectious diseases on aircraft,” said Howard Weiss, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Mathematics. “We will learn how people move around in aircraft and study the microbes that are there at different times during flights. From that information, we can start modeling the disease transmission and developing intervention strategies.”
Airborne infectious diseases transmitted during commercial air travel are of concern to public health officials. In 2002, 20 people on an international flight were infected by a single SARS patient, which showed how air travel could serve as a conduit for the rapid spread of both emerging infections and pandemics of known diseases.
Researchers know that bacteria and viruses can be transmitted in three ways on aircraft: inhalation of small droplets coughed or sneezed by infected persons and carried significant distances in cabin air; inhalation of larger droplets that tend to fall within a meter of their sources, and transfer of droplets from surfaces into the eyes or noses of susceptible individuals. The latter – which may account for as much as 80 percent of the disease transmission – can occur when passengers touch contaminated surfaces, such as seat tray tables, lavatory door knobs or sink handles.
“By understanding the patterns of how infectious diseases may be transmitted from an infected person to an uninfected person, companies like Boeing may be able to design aircraft that better protect passengers and crew members,” said Vicki Hertzberg, an associate professor in Emory University’s Rollins School of Public Health. “That will put us in a better position from a public health perspective.”
Using radio-frequency identification tags (RFID), Hertzberg has been studying how people interact – and potentially transfer infectious diseases – in medical facilities such as hospital emergency departments. On aircraft, however, the researchers won’t be able to use such technology because of potential interference issues.
However, the researchers will use sophisticated sampling equipment carried aboard the aircraft to gather information about what’s in the cabin air. They will also swipe certain touch surfaces, and both the wipes and air-sampling filters will be analyzed by polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and mass spectrometry equipment to identify the microbes present. To study passenger movements around the aircraft, the researchers plan to use a modern twist on an old-fashioned technique: graduate students watching and recording movement on an iPad.
“They will be actively looking at who’s getting up and down, when they are doing it, and where they are going when they do,” Hertzberg explained. “We will need to do this at a fairly high resolution with respect to time and place."
The researchers plan to put students on eight Delta flights using Boeing 757 aircraft. Filters from the air sampling and wipes from the surfaces will be analyzed in a California laboratory that can detect as many as 1,500 different bugs, among them, 300 different respiratory viruses and 1,200 different bacteria.
Delta has been advising Hertzberg and Weiss as they design the study, and will allow them to use mockups of aircraft cabins to test and practice their research techniques.
“Delta has a long history of collaborating with researchers on safety, health and environmental issues related to passenger aircraft,” said Steve Tochilin, general manager of environmental sustainability for the company. “As examples, we are involved in ongoing partnerships with two FAA-funded university consortia focusing on airliner cabin environments, and noise and emission reductions. We look forward to working with Georgia Tech and Emory University on this research.”
Once data on passenger activity is collected and microbes identified, Weiss and Hertzberg will create a computer model of the social network on an aircraft. That will allow them to study how infections can be transferred in the close quarters of an aircraft cabin.
Only in the last decade have researchers had the tools to determine that human movement differs from that predicted by completely random movement, as documented with dollar bill tracking, mobile telephone calls and sensors that can determine movement among conference attendees and students in elementary and high schools.
“The most interesting part of this from a mathematical standpoint is that this may be a new type of social network,” Weiss said. “For many years, scientists have assumed that people move in a completely random fashion, and this study will provide data on that for the first time.”
The researchers plan to spend the first six months of the project developing their research techniques, hiring students, and training those who will do the research. They expect to begin gathering data sometime next fall – just in time for annual cold and flu season.
Beyond the public health implications, better protecting passengers and aircrews could have a significant economic impact for aircraft manufacturers, airlines, airports and industries that depend on efficient air travel.
“Everyone wins if we can eliminate or reduce the air travel disruptions that could result from a pandemic,” Weiss said.
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]]>Ernest “Ernie” Scheller Jr., a 1952 Industrial Management graduate of Georgia Tech, has made a commitment totaling $50 million, a majority of which has been fulfilled. The gift has already begun to dramatically strengthen the College’s faculty, student body, and academic programs. When completed in 2013, it will amount to the single largest cash gift in Institute history.
In all, Scheller’s gift—along with others inspired to participate in a corresponding dollar-for-dollar challenge—will more than double the College’s endowment.
In recognition of and appreciation for the dramatic impact that Scheller’s generosity and leadership have had and will continue to have for many years to come, the College of Management has been renamed the Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business.
“Ernie Scheller’s generosity has not only had an immediate impact on the College via the dollar-for-dollar challenge, but that impact will also continue far into the future,” said College of Business Dean Steve Salbu. “We’ve used this gift to bring our PhD program up to a truly global standard, and to grow the size and quality of our faculty during a time when our budgets were cut and our competition was retrenching. Adding nine endowed faculty chairs and professorships, 37 undergraduate scholarships and six graduate fellowships is transformational in and of itself as it dramatically enhances the College’s ability to attract top talent.”
An additional component of Scheller’s commitment is a dean’s discretionary endowment, which Salbu says “will give us a real boost when it comes to taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. This endowment will be available for me and for every dean who follows me in perpetuity. This is a transformational gift that will allow the College—which has gone from being a very strong regional player to being a competitor within the big leagues of business schools—to take and firmly keep our place in that competitive arena.”
In addition to supporting facilities and endowment, Scheller’s previous gifts to the College of Business have established a scholarship and a faculty chair focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization.
Scheller is chairman emeritus of Pennsylvania-based Silberline Manufacturing Inc., a company his father founded in the 1940s that is today a key global supplier of high-quality pigments—primarily to the automobile industry—that tremendously enhance the visual appeal of coatings, paints, inks, plastics, and textiles.
“Ernie Scheller has a distinguished track record of success in leading and growing one of the top family-owned businesses in the country,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson. “Ernie rightfully takes great pride in building upon his father’s legacy and passing on the fruits of his labors to succeeding generations. While his generosity has had an unprecedented impact on our College of Business, I believe that impact will ultimately inspire the larger Georgia Tech community to continue boldly envisioning a future of globally renowned excellence and quality.”
“Georgia Tech taught me the importance of perseverance and persistence,” said Scheller. “Over the years, I’ve applied those same principles to my support of Georgia Tech and its College of Business. In order to build a College that will rank among the world’s best business programs, you’ve got to have great leadership, a broad-based vision, and a lot of determination. The College has been fortunate these past six years to enjoy such leadership under Dean Steve Salbu. By any barometer you could choose, the College has improved dramatically during Steve’s tenure. I have never been more optimistic about the future of Georgia Tech and its College of Business, and I am eager to see the great things that will happen there in the coming years.”
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To help companies evaluate baby boomers’ perceptions, use and acceptance of home health and wellness technologies, the Georgia Institute of Technology has launched HomeLab. HomeLab is a statewide network of adults 50 years of age and older recruited to evaluate the in-home usability and effectiveness of consumer products designed for the aging adult population.
HomeLab currently consists of 100 homes distributed throughout the state of Georgia; the network is expected to grow to 150 homes later this year and 550 homes by 2014.
“My wife and I are in generally good health and are interested in assisting homebound citizens by evaluating new innovations for their independent living. We want to be part of the solution for this excellent challenge,” said Ivan Cottrell. Cottrell signed up to be a HomeLab participant with his wife, Judy, who was a home health nurse in Florida and witnessed many seniors struggling to stay in their own homes.
The HomeLab infrastructure lessens the burden for companies that need to find participants 50 years of age and older for extended in-home product testing. Because Georgia Tech collects detailed information about each HomeLab participant’s health and home up front, individuals can be rapidly recruited for targeted short- and long-term product testing.
“HomeLab provides an efficient means for companies to limit the cost of extensive user testing that is required to bring a product to market,” said Brad Fain, director of HomeLab and a principal research scientist in the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). “Evaluation of a pre-market or mature technology by Georgia Tech’s HomeLab will provide a company with documented evidence for marketing, regulatory compliance and product design.”
GTRI has a history of helping companies evaluate and improve the design of consumer products and currently serves as the independent product testing organization for the U.S. Arthritis Foundation, the Arthritis Society of Canada and Arthritis Australia. If a product passes GTRI’s rigorous ease-of-use testing, the company that created the product can use the arthritis organization’s logo in its advertisements and on its packaging.
For this work, GTRI recruits users to test a variety of consumer products -- medicine bottles, beverage containers, office supplies, medical devices, vehicles and cell phones -- in its Accessibility Evaluation Facility for at most a few hours.
With the launch of HomeLab, GTRI will expand its product testing program to include extended in-home product evaluations, which will range from one month to one year in duration and involve 25 to 125 participants who are compensated for their time. HomeLab will provide companies with product design support, early product testing, and formal usability and effectiveness evaluations.
“It is important that companies obtain consumer feedback on products as early as possible in the design process and HomeLab can facilitate an early connection with target populations to evaluate design concepts or early prototypes,” noted Fain.
If your company has a health-related product it would like to test using the HomeLab network, or if you’re 50 years or older, live in the Atlanta area or surrounding communities, and are interested in participating in this program, please visit http://homelab.gtri.gatech.edu.
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]]>“The mission of the Integrated Cancer Research Center is to facilitate integration of the diversity of technological, computational, scientific and medical expertise at Georgia Tech and partner institutions in a coordinated effort to develop improved cancer diagnostics and therapeutics,” McDonald explained.
For years, the study of cancer has been concentrated at major medical research institutions and cancer research has been traditionally viewed as falling exclusively within the bailiwick of the biological sciences. This is now changing for the better, according to McDonald.
“We are at a truly exciting crossroads in the history of cancer research where molecular biology, the computational sciences, engineering and nanotechnology are joining together in a unified effort to develop more effective cancer diagnostics and therapeutics,” added McDonald.
New high-throughput methods to molecularly characterize cancer cells have, in recent years, lead to tremendous strides in the development of novel diagnostics and the identification of new molecular targets for therapeutic intervention.
On the computational side, recently developed algorithms customized for the analysis of genomic, proteomic and other high volume datasets are providing a level of insight into cellular complexities never before imagined. The number of new technologies and devices arising from the fields of biomedical engineering and nanotechnology that have potential application to the area of cancer biology has tremendous promise.
McDonald’s enthusiasm for the new cancer center is shared by Robert Guldberg, PhD, executive director of the Parker H. Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience.
“Georgia Tech, particularly researchers throughout the IBB community, have been leaders in the development of collaborative approaches to both cancer diagnostics and therapeutics,” Guldberg explained. “This new center will bring together researchers from a wide-variety of backgrounds to tackle complex research problems in new and exciting ways.”
Visit the new Integrated Cancer Research Center website.
]]>To address this problem, a startup company based on technology developed at the Georgia Institute of Technology is creating an efficient, safe and repeatable delivery method that protects cells from death and migration from the treatment site. Using microbead technology developed in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, SpherIngenics is producing protective capsules for the delivery of cell-based therapies.
Supported by a broad range of Georgia Tech initiatives, the company recently received a two-year $730,000 Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant from the U.S. Department of Defense to continue development of the technology.
“When damaged tissue is being repaired by a cell-based therapy, our microbead technology ensures that cells travel to and remain in the targeted area while maintaining continued viability,” said SpherIngenics CEO Franklin Bost, who is also a professor in the Coulter Department. “This technology has the potential to reduce the cost of treatment by eliminating the need for multiple therapeutic procedures.”
Bost and Coulter Department Professors Barbara Boyan and Zvi Schwartz founded the company in 2007. They worked with the Georgia Tech Research Corporation to license five patents from Boyan’s lab for technology originally developed in the Georgia Tech/Emory Center for the Engineering of Living Tissue (GTEC), which was funded by a grant from the National Science Foundation. Then they secured $450,000, which included a Phase I SBIR grant from the U.S. Department of Defense and grants from the Georgia Research Alliance and the Coulter Foundation.
During Phase I of the SBIR grant, the researchers confirmed that as many as 250 human adult stem cells could remain viable in culture if they were encapsulated in a 200-micron-diameter bead made of natural algae materials and that they could release factors that enhance tissue regeneration.
“For the Phase II SBIR grant, we’re going to examine whether delivering microbeads full of stem cells can enhance cartilage repair and regeneration of craniofacial defects in an animal model,” said Boyan, who is the company’s chief scientific officer. Boyan is also the associate dean for research and innovation in the Georgia Tech College of Engineering, the Price Gilbert, Jr. Chair in Tissue Engineering at Georgia Tech, and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar.
The company will perform this research in its laboratory space located in the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) biosciences incubator.
The company’s ultimate goal is to commercialize the microbead technology for use in hospitals and by cell therapy companies. To help reach this goal, a group of students wrote a business plan for SpherIngenics last year through the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business Technological Innovation: Generating Economic Results (TI:GER) program.
The team -- which included Coulter Department doctoral student Christopher Lee, Georgia Tech MBA students Chris Palazzola and Eric Diersen, and Emory University law students Bryan Stewart and Natalie Dana -- won third place in the 2011 Georgia Tech Business Plan Competition. The competition, while largely an education experience, provided students an opportunity to develop their venture ideas and present them to a panel of highly experienced judges in the venture capital, technology transfer and legal fields.
“The TI:GER team’s business plan helped us learn about where the market for our technology is right now and where it is going in the future, which is extremely valuable knowledge as we work toward determining the most promising pathway to market,” said Bost.
Additional members of the company include Anthony Nicolini, the principal investigator on the Phase II SBIR grant, and Joseph Williams, clinical director of craniofacial plastic surgery at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta at Scottish Rite and clinical assistant professor in the Department of Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery at Emory University.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the U.S. Army Medical Research and Materiel Command under award numbers W81XWH-07-1-0219 and W81XWH-11-C-0071. The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the U.S. Government.
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]]>Lam is an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, and the Division of Hematology/Oncology within Emory’s Department of Pediatrics. He sees patients at the Aflac Cancer and Blood Disorders Center at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.
Anticoagulants, or blood thinners, are prescribed to millions to reduce the risk of heart attack or stroke. Lam’s research focuses on platelet biophysics and how platelets contract at the single cell level. This could lead to new categories of platelet diagnostics and help scientists identify new types of blood thinning drugs, which would modify how stiff platelets are or how they contract. A better understanding of platelets’ properties could also inform treatment of other diseases such as inflammatory disorders, sickle cell anemia, and infections.
Lam has developed a technology allowing measurement of the forces generated by individual platelets as they contract. In a paper published in the journal Nature Materials, he and colleagues isolated single platelets, which were made fluorescent with dye, in a customized atomic force microscope. With the CAREER award, he plans to refine the technology to permit the examination of thousands of platelets at once on a microchip using technology adapted from the computer chip industry.
“What’s exciting about this area of research is that it could open up a whole new category of potential diagnostics and therapies,” Lam says. “A blood clot is ultimately a physical entity, in that the platelets have to stitch a wound together and stop blood from flowing. We were able to show that platelets contract, acting somewhat like muscle cells, when they come into contact with a developing clot, and that they are able to ‘sense’ the local physical properties of the clot to adjust their force of contraction functioning like a finely tuned ‘nanomachine’.”
NSF CAREER awards go to investigators in the early stages of their careers as they work on transformative ideas in their fields while also striving to educate the next generation of scientists. As part of his project and as a pediatrician who cares for children with cancer and chronic blood diseases, Lam plans to develop a K-12 science outreach program for hospitalized children, in which the children’s own diseases are used as springboards for learning about science. The program will enable undergraduate, graduate and medical students to develop age-appropriate biology, physics, chemistry and mathematics modules centered around chronic diseases for which children at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta are hospitalized.
“Children who have chronic illnesses often miss large amounts of school, and they have concrete educational disadvantages as a result,” Lam says. “We want to use their natural interest in their own bodies as a way to introduce basic scientific and mathematic concepts that will hopefully inspire them to learn more and to actually use their diseases to their advantage.”
Written by Quinn Eastman, Emory Health Sciences Communications
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Two dozen students from Georgia Tech, Mercer University, Georgia State University and Emory University heard lectures from Atlanta-based medical professionals, researchers, and pharmaceutical company leaders – and worked in teams to develop plans for how a drug company might convert a promising molecule into a real product. To demonstrate the interdisciplinary nature of the drug development process, each team included pharmacists, bio-scientists, chemists and engineers.
“Each team was given information from the scientific literature on a drug in early stage development by a pharmaceutical company, and was asked to put together and justify a detailed plan for bringing that molecule forward into a drug product useful in clinical medicine,” said Mark Prausnitz, the course’s leader and a Regents’ professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering.
Speakers from the Atlanta pharmaceutical community talked to the students on such topics as drug discovery and design, drug manufacturing, formulation, pre-clinical studies, design of clinical trials, marketing, project teamwork and R&D reports. In addition to Prausnitz, other instructors included:
Students were pleased with the opportunity to see the entire drug development process and to work closely with peers from other universities. “Working in an interdisciplinary team allowed us to connect the dots between all of the medical, scientific and business aspects of bringing a drug to the market,” said Meera Gujjar, a graduate student in pharmaceutical sciences at Mercer University.
Chris Quinto, a Ph.D. student from Georgia Tech, found students from other backgrounds helpful in sharing their expertise in the complex drug development process.
“The Mercer students in my group were a great resource in helping explain and make sense of the data and terminology in the papers that we read,” Quinto said. “What I found most interesting in this class was how the drug development research teams consist of many different specialties, each of which is vital to the final outcome of the drug development process.”
The course is expected to be offered once every two years. “This shows how Atlanta universities are working together and with local pharmaceutical companies to build a stronger pharmaceutical research and education community here,” Prausnitz added.
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]]>To address these challenges, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) developed a prototype automated pavement crack detection and sealing system with funding from the Georgia Department of Transportation. In road tests, the system was able to detect cracks smaller than one-eighth-inch wide and efficiently fill cracks from a vehicle moving at a speed of three miles per hour.
“Our prototype system has proved in many ways that a commercial-scale automated crack sealing system is viable,” said Jonathan Holmes, the GTRI research engineer currently leading the project, which began in 2003. “We demonstrated solutions to technical challenges -- including the high-speed firing of nozzles, automated crack detection and navigation -- in a real-time, limited-scale system.”
An automated crack sealing system would increase the level of safety for the workers involved, require fewer personnel and increase the amount of roadway covered per day. In addition, the system could save transportation departments money because sealing cracks extends the time before a roadway needs to be completely repaved.
The prototype system, which was mounted on a trailer, consists of a stereo camera, light-emitting diodes (LEDs) of two different colors, and an assembly to provide a continuous supply of sealant to longitudinal and transverse sealant distribution systems. The operation required only one worker to drive the vehicle pulling the trailer.
As the system traveled along a road lane, the LEDs illuminated the road in two directions -- parallel and perpendicular to the road -- and the stereo camera took two pictures of the road simultaneously, which were analyzed using thresholding and filtering algorithms. Within 100 milliseconds of taking the images, the computer onboard the trailer generated a “crack map” specifying the location and shape of any cracks shown in the images.
Based on the cracks found in the image, the master controller instructed the sealant applicator valves when to fire. To fill longitudinal cracks, a single dispensing nozzle capable of continuous operation was attached to a linear servo axis. The transverse sealant distribution system consisted of 12 nozzles spaced evenly across one foot. The transverse and diagonal distribution prototype was intended to represent one module that could be replicated and joined together to service a full-width roadway lane.
In multiple road tests, the prototype system proved to be a successful proof-of-concept for the automation of crack sealing operations.
Before a full-scale system can be successfully implemented by transportation departments, several issues must be addressed, according to Holmes. First, the crack detection algorithm will need to be improved. The researchers tested their crack detection algorithm on more than 100,000 images they collected of cracks on state roads and found the program correctly identified more than 83 percent of the cracks.
“Our crack detection algorithm was limited because we used a vision-based system, which was confounded by regions of high contrast caused by features other than pavement cracks, including dark stains in the pavement, lane stripes, raised-pavement markers, crack sealant and debris,” said Holmes. “A full-scale system may require a fusion of multiple imaging sensors, such as a 3-D laser scanning system.”
Holmes also suggested changes will be necessary in the way the sealant was supplied to the longitudinal and transverse distribution systems before a full-scale system can be realized.
David Jared, acting chief of research & development at the Georgia Department of Transportation Office of Materials and Research, and GTRI principal research engineers Wayne Daley and Wiley Holcombe, research scientist Colin Usher, and research engineers Sergio Grullon and Steven Robertson also worked on this project.
The contents of this publication reflect the views of the principal investigators who are responsible for the facts and accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official view or policies of the Department of Transportation, State of Georgia or the Federal Highway Administration. This publication does not constitute a standard, specification or regulation.
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]]>Known as Titan, the system will be at the center of a security community that will help create safety in numbers as companies large and small add their threat data to a knowledge base that will be shared with all participants. Operated by security specialists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the system builds on a threat analysis foundation – including a malware repository that analyzes and classifies an average of 100,000 pieces of malicious code each day.
“As a university, Georgia Tech is uniquely positioned to take this white hat role in between industry and government,” said Andrew Howard, a GTRI research scientist who is part of the Titan project. “We want to bring communities together to break down the walls between industry and government to provide a trusted, sharing platform.”
Members contributing information will do so anonymously so other members won’t know which specific organizations have been attacked. GTRI will independently verify information provided to Titan and carefully vet the members of the community before they are allowed to participate.
“People tend to think that if an organization gets hit, it was because they had poor security measures,” said Christopher Smoak, a GTRI research scientist who heads up the Titan project. “That’s not necessarily true, because a variety of factors contribute to intrusions. But until we get to the point that there’s no longer a stigma attached to having an infiltration, people are going to want anonymity to participate.”
In addition to receiving information about attacks and responses at other organizations, members will receive quick reports on malware samples they submit. Based on what they have learned from the malware repository and by reverse-engineering malicious code, GTRI researchers will be able to provide information on the potential harm from an attack, the likely source, the best remedy for it and the risks to the organization.
“We hope to provide information about the trends that organizations can expect to see, and help them prioritize what they should do to address the risks,” said Howard. “We have a significant system behind the scenes to facilitate the exchange of information.”
Titan will be especially valuable to smaller organizations that lack the resources to operate their own security evaluation labs, though all members will benefit from sharing information. GTRI information security researchers collaborate with the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), which expands the depth of knowledge.
“GTRI will maintain the shared resources that companies can use to help solve their own problems,” Smoak noted. “We’ll have many organizations contributing to this community, and everyone getting information out; it will really benefit everyone.”
Companies today have two primary concerns about malicious software, Howard said. The first is for the loss of intellectual property, such as plans for a new product or bidding documents for a major project. The second is a compromise of the web infrastructure that many companies rely on to do business.
Titan will also help companies educate their computer users about such risks as spear-phishing, which uses email that appears to be from a trusted colleague or friend to trick users into taking a risky action, such a opening an infected attachment. The system will alert companies to the newest threat trends so they can warn their users, and identify the IP addresses that malicious software is communicating with.
“Spear-phishing is very difficult to defend against, because all it takes is one person clicking on something that lets malware into the network,” Smoak said. “It’s difficult to train a large workforce with varying skill sets to identify the very small nuances that indicate these emails are malicious.”
GTRI has been analyzing the malware attacking Windows-based computers for years. Now the analysts are seeing an increase in malicious code designed for Android-based devices – and for Macintosh computers, which previously hadn’t been high-priority targets.
“We see Android malware in its infancy right now,” said Smoak. “We see what it is doing and how it is working, and we can draw parallels to what we saw earlier with the Windows-based malware. We can probably expect to see the Android and Mac malware follow a similar path.”
The danger may be especially great for the users of computer systems that previously had not worried much about malware.
“For Macintosh systems, the threats are starting to get scarier,” Howard said. “When more malware authors shift their focus to this platform, a lot of people who thought they were safe by not using the Windows OS will be caught off-guard.”
Titan now includes half a dozen Fortune 500 members, along with other government and nonprofit organizations. Smoak and Howard have been getting feedback from those members as they’ve built the system, which will be formally launched in a few months.
“We are looking for additional industry partners to help us use the tool and help refine the system,” said Howard. “We believe that members of this community will come together to help each other strengthen defenses.”
A determined hacker will probably succeed in compromising most corporate computer networks, but the researchers believe Titan can help companies make that as difficult as possible.
“You may not be able to completely prevent an attack, but you can have a higher wall and stronger defense,” Howard said. “Hackers tend to go after the low-hanging fruit, so they will attack the companies that are the easiest to attack. We believe that our community can help all the members strengthen their defenses.”
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]]>Congratulations to Keir Gonyea, Amit Mandalia and Grant Rossman from Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering and Peter Song from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
The students will receive graduate student fellowships from NASA’s Office of the Chief Technologist to pursue master’s or doctoral degrees in relevant space technology disciplines at their respective institutions.
“As the premiere graduate student opportunity offered by NASA, the Space Technology Research Fellowship program focuses some of our nation's best young minds on cutting-edge technology challenges of relevance to NASA’s future science and exploration missions,” said Bobby Braun, the David and Andrew Lewis Professor of Space Technology at Georgia Tech.
The program is highly selective and makes awards comparable in value and prestige to a NSF Fellowship. NASA Space Technology Fellows will perform innovative research while building the skills necessary to become future technological leaders.
The fellowship program is part of a renewed emphasis on technology at NASA, designed to inspire the nation and contribute to an innovation-driven economy.
"By investing in the intellectual capacity of America's best and brightest minds today, we're guaranteeing not only a great future for NASA, but also for the nation," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said. "These NASA Fellows will bolster America's competitiveness in a knowledge-based, global economy while enabling our space exploration goals."
]]>One of the Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee (BIIC)’s summer projects is to install a rack in the center of campus that provides equipment for cyclists to make quick repairs. The group already received funding from the Student Government Association (SGA) and has purchased the equipment with plans to install on the northwest side of the Skiles Building.
An off-campus project that will enhance the experience of those cycling on campus from east of Tech Square is the planned change at the intersection of Fifth and West Peachtree Streets. Parking and Transportation Services, whose office also happens to be located at that intersection, is coordinating with the Midtown Alliance and Atlanta Bicycle Coalition on construction.
“It’s a very small but novel implementation for the city of Atlanta,” said Johann Weber, chair of the BIIC and a graduate student in public policy. “The volume of cyclists there makes it important even though it’s small.” At present, cyclists headed west on Fifth Street who would like to continue over West Peachtree must take a right, then immediately cross four lanes of traffic and take a left back onto Fifth Street to continue their course. The new intersection will enable a “Copenhagen left” that lets cyclists complete the same turn but in a way that is safer for cyclists, drivers and pedestrians (similar to that seen in this video).
To enhance law enforcement of bicycles across campus, the BIIC worked with the Georgia Tech Police Department during the spring to hold a bicycle safety class for its officers, refreshing them on Georgia bike-related laws.
“Some laws had changed last year, and some officers were not as comfortable as they wanted to be with state laws pertaining to cyclists, particularly with tricky infrastructure you might find on campus,” Weber said. All of the department’s officers took the class, reviewing state cycling laws that are enforced on campus; city ordinances do not apply on campus because GTPD law enforcement powers come from the state.
Looking to the fall, BIIC members are considering what could improve traffic at both Techwood Drive and Fowler Street as they cross Ferst Drive. Long-term, the group plans work with nearby neighborhoods to consider improvements in routes frequently used to and from campus.
“We got a lot of feedback from our Bicycle Friendly University application,” said Weber, referring to the award the committee earned this spring that named the Institute a Silver Bicycle Friendly University. “We're going to dig through that and produce a sort of guiding document for the committee that hopefully translates into the backbone for a master plan for the university.” Parking and Transportation Services also will conduct its next commuter survey this fall, which will give the BIIC new data to work with as it tackles future projects.
]]>Johann Weber
Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee
The Radiation Science and Engineering Lab will provide hands-on training to students in Georgia Tech’s Medical Physics and Nuclear and Radiological Engineering Programs, as well as continuing education for medical physicists currently practicing in the field and research opportunities for faculty.
Georgia Tech’s lab includes top-of-the-line technology for delivering image guided radiotherapy and radiosurgery, including a brand new medical linear accelerator with beam shaping and imaging accessories.
“What’s unique about this laboratory is that this is the only one in the country at a university where the laboratory is completely dedicated to research and education,” said Farzad Rahnema, chair of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Programs at Georgia Tech.
Medical physicists are experts who assist oncologists with the safe and effective delivery of radiation therapy in which high-energy radiation is used to shrink tumors and kill cancer cells. Nearly half of all cancer patients receive radiation therapy during the course of their treatment. A linear accelerator uses microwaves to accelerate a stream of electrons to relativistic velocities to create high-energy radiation to treat cancer.
Georgia Tech graduate students studying to become medical physicists will have unprecedented access to the machine so they can master calibration, beam data commissioning, linear accelerator service troubleshooting and other techniques before they graduate.
In other programs, students typically have to wait until after therapy hours at a hospital or clinic to have access to radiotherapy equipment for labs. Even then, they aren’t able to adjust settings and master the machine since the machines are monitored and maintained for patient treatment.
“Here we have the freedom not available in the clinical environment to change the settings and push the machine to the limits,” said Eric Elder, assistant professor and associate director of Medical Physics at Emory University Department of Radiation Oncology, and adjunct assistant professor of Medical Physics and the director of the new lab at Georgia Tech. “This allows students to get hands-on experience and get more individualized attention. This is extremely beneficial.”
The lab also has sophisticated treatment planning software and an oncology information system so students can learn how to manage cancer treatments using real-world techniques.
Professionals in the southeast will also have the opportunity to get additional training on the linear accelerator, which will advance treatment in the field, experts say.
“Radiation oncology medical physics is a field that can change rapidly and professionals don’t always have the opportunity to learn new techniques,” Elder said. “With this lab, we can reach out to practicing medical physicists – regionally, nationally and internationally – and offer training on the latest and greatest technology.”
Georgia Tech faculty and Emory faculty who are adjunct at Georgia Tech will also use the machine for research on diagnosis and treatment of cancer, including improving image-guided radiation to provide real-time imaging of the tumor target and low dose calculations to reduce radiation exposure in non-targeted parts of the body.
The radiotherapy equipment was given to Georgia Tech by an anonymous donor. The lab is located in the Boggs Building, home of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Programs in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. The new lab includes a clinical linear accelerator and a control room, housed in the new Radiological Science and Engineering Laboratory in the basement of the Boggs Building; and a computational treatment planning laboratory with 10 FDA approved workstations on the 3rd floor of the Boggs Building.
]]>The Intelligent Cutting and Deboning System employs a 3-D vision system that determines where to cut a particular bird. The device automatically performs precision cuts that optimize yield, while also greatly reducing the risk of bone fragments in the finished product.
“Each bird is unique in its size and shape," said Gary McMurray, chief of GTRI's Food Processing Technology Division. "So we have developed the sensing and actuation needed to allow an automated deboning system to adapt to the individual bird, as opposed to forcing the bird to conform to the machine.”
Poultry is Georgia's top agricultural product, with an estimated annual economic impact of nearly $20 billion statewide. Helping the poultry industry maximize its return on every flock can translate to important dividends. The research is funded by the state of Georgia through the Agricultural Technology Research Program at GTRI.
Under the Intelligent Cutting and Deboning System, a bird is positioned in front of the vision system prior to making a cut, explained GTRI research engineer Michael Matthews. The vision system works by making 3-D measurements of various location points on the outside of the bird. Then, using these points as inputs, custom algorithms define a proper cut by estimating the positions of internal structures such as bones and ligaments.
"Our statistics research shows that our external measurements correlate very well to the internal structure of the birds, and therefore will transition to ideal cutting paths," Matthews said. "In our prototype device, everything is registered to calibrated reference frames, allowing us to handle all cut geometries and to precisely align the bird and the cutting robot. Being able to test all possible cut geometries should enable us to design a smaller and more simplified final system."
The prototype uses a fixed two-degree-of-freedom cutting robot for making simple planar cuts. The bird is mounted on a six-degree-of-freedom robot arm that allows alignment of the bird and cutting robot to any desired position. The robot arm places the bird under the vision system, and then it moves the bird with respect to the cutting robot.
The system employs a force-feedback algorithm that can detect the transition from meat to bone, said research engineer Ai-Ping Hu. That detection capability allows the cutting knife to move along the surface of the bone while maintaining a constant force.
Since ligaments are attached to bone, maintaining contact with the bone allows the knife to cut all the ligaments around the shoulder joint without cutting into the bone itself. A similar approach can be used for other parts of the bird where meat must be separated from bone.
Hu explained that the force-feedback algorithm uses a force sensor affixed to the knife handle. During a cutting operation, the sensor enables the robot to detect imminent contact with a bone. Then, instead of cutting straight through the bone, the system directs the cutting tool to take an appropriate detour around the bone.
"Fine tuning is needed to adjust the force thresholds, to be able to tell the difference between meat, tendon, ligaments and bone, each of which have different material properties,” Hu said.
McMurray said he expects the Intelligent Deboning System to match or exceed the efficiency of the manual process. Testing of the deboning prototype system, including cutting experiments, has confirmed the system’s ability to recognize bone during a cut and to avoid bone chips – thus demonstrating the validity of GTRI’s approach.
“There are some very major factors in play in this project,” McMurray said. “Our automated deboning technology can promote food safety, since bone chips are a hazard in boneless breast fillets. But it can also increase yield, which is significant because every 1 percent loss of breast meat represents about $2.5 million to each of Georgia’s 20 poultry processing plants.”
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]]>Researchers now believe that such avian expressiveness may be more than idle chatter. A collaborative project being conducted by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of Georgia is investigating whether the birds’ volubility can provide clues to how healthy and comfortable they are.
And that could be valuable information. Economically, chickens rule the roost in Georgia, where poultry is the top agricultural product with an estimated annual impact of nearly $20 billion statewide. There is industry concern about the welfare of the animals they raise; anything that helps growers reap a maximum return on every flock – while maintaining an environment conducive to their well-being – can translate to important dividends for the state’s economy.
“Many poultry professionals swear they can walk into a grow-out house and tell whether a flock is happy or stressed just by listening to the birds vocalize,” said Wayne Daley, a Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) principal research scientist who is leading the research. “The trouble is, it has proved hard for these pros to pinpoint for us exactly what it is that they're hearing.”
Nevertheless, scientists are convinced that poultry farmers are detecting something real. Recent research at the University of Connecticut’s Department of Animal Science indicates that it is indeed possible to differentiate how the birds react to various conditions based on their vocalizations.
“The behavior of chickens is one of the best and most immediate indicators of their well-being,” said Bruce Webster, a University of Georgia poultry science professor who is working on the project. “Chickens are vocal creatures and produce different types of vocalizations at different rates and loudness depending on their circumstances.”
So the Georgia Tech/University of Georgia team is working to identify and extract specific vocalization features that will bear out both the anecdotal observations and the previous scientific work. The researchers are performing stress-related experiments on small flocks, recording the birds’ reactions on audio and video and analyzing the results.
GTRI is providing expertise in control-systems development and image processing, while Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering is contributing audio signal-processing technology and the University of Georgia is providing research facilities as well as guidance in experimental design as they relate to animal behavior and welfare issues.
“If what experienced farmers hear and sense can be defined and quantified, sensors to detect cues from the birds themselves could really make a difference in providing real-time information on house environment, bird health, and comfort,” said Michael Lacy, head of the Department of Poultry Science at the University of Georgia.
The work is funded by the Agricultural Technology Research Program, a state-supported effort to benefit the poultry and food-processing industries.
Naturally, said Daley, the poultry industry already has well-established guidelines covering optimal temperature, air quality and stocking density. Nevertheless, costly problems can still crop up – control systems can malfunction, or presumably ideal levels can turn out to be problematic.
“That’s where being able to judge the flock’s behavior can be so important,” Daley said. “Your temperature sensors might say that things are fine, but the birds could be telling you that they think it's a bit too warm or other changes have occurred to make the conditions less than ideal.”
From a poultry professional’s viewpoint, the flock’s opinion is probably the definitive one. Chickens take only six weeks to go from hatching to finished weight; stressful conditions can retard their growth, reducing their value when they go to market.
“Contract poultry producers are paid by the pound of birds sent to market. Improving the overall health and productivity of the birds will help to improve the bottom line for individual producers,” said Casey Ritz, a University of Georgia associate professor of poultry science who is involved in the research.
The research team has conducted several experiments in which they have exposed flocks to mildly stressful environmental changes. For example, temperature or ammonia levels might be increased from their initial settings for a few hours, then returned to the original level.
The researchers have recorded the flocks’ vocal reactions to the experiments, with video also collected in many instances. To date, more than four terabytes of bird-vocalization audio has been gathered.
Almost at once, the researchers encountered a knotty problem as they recorded bird sounds. They discovered that the large fans necessary for air circulation in a grow-out house can be considerably louder than the chickens, making it difficult to capture bird vocalizations effectively.
David Anderson, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, has been working on the best methods for harvesting useable bird sounds from the noisy environment. It’s a classic audio signal-processing problem, he said, in which the signal of interest must separated from the noise that surrounds it.
“We have several approaches for extracting poultry voicing from the others noises, and we've been pretty successful in achieving that,” he said. “What makes this different from most other bird-song research is that we're not listening to individuals, we’re listening to sounds in the aggregate. It’s like trying to understand what people are saying in a restaurant, when all you hear are the murmurings of a hundred diners.”
To decode mass poultry vocalizing, Anderson is extracting particular features of the sound, such as speed, volume, pitch and other qualities. Then he’s utilizing machine learning – in which computers recognize complex patterns in data and make decisions based on those patterns – to analyze the extracted features and determine which characteristics may convey specific meanings.
“These are initial experiments, and we're going to have to test under a variety of conditions, but we’ve had considerable success already,” Anderson said. “By listening to the flock we can accurately tell when the birds are experiencing particular kinds of stress, such as significant temperature changes.”
In addition to ensuring high yield flocks, bird-vocalization analysis could save poultry growers money in equipment costs as well, Anderson suggested. For instance, he said, currently available ammonia sensors are both expensive and short-lived. If a system consisting of a few microphones and the right computer algorithms could take over ammonia-detection tasks, it would help reduce costs for the entire industry.
To date, video of the flocks hasn’t produced results as useful as the sound recordings, said GTRI’s Daley. But image processing of flock-reaction video continues, and could yield significant data down the road.
“This multi-disciplinary, multi-institution project highlights the different skills necessary to tackle current problems,” Daley said. “This approach will be valuable in years to come as we tackle a variety of problems to help the industry continue to be profitable and sustainable.”
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]]>The decision results from the findings of separate investigations concerning violations of the Institute’s Student Code of Conduct and the General Fraternity’s rules and policies. Individual members are also subject to possible disciplinary action related to violations of Georgia Tech's Student Code of Conduct ranging from expulsion to dismissal of charges.
As part of the Office of the Dean of Students, the Office of Student Integrity is responsible for adjudicating violations of the Code of Conduct and the Honor Code. Any organization ordered to disband loses rights and privileges associated with being a chartered student organization at Georgia Tech, including space reservation, event sponsorship and membership activities, among others.
]]>The winning team, comprised of James Barazesh, Mitchell Blenden, Tyler Folse and Mary Shoemaker, used contacts at British Petroleum (BP) in Houston to have the company alter its building’s lighting schedule by just 30 minutes, accounting for two-thirds of the team’s total CO2 reductions. The other third came from personal asks of friends and family to either not drive to work or telework one day per week.
While this year’s winning team gained much of its savings from its work with BP, most teams found ways to reduce emissions here on campus; the 2008 Carbon Reduction Challenge did so with alterations to the lighting schedule in Bobby Dodd Stadium.
“The cool thing about this challenge is that many of the changes implemented will be permanently changed at Georgia Tech, targeting efficiencies for campus,” said Kim Cobb, associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who taught the course. “The remarkable thing is the size of the reductions achieved.” An average car in the U.S. emits 11,500 pounds of CO2 per year; the challenge cumulatively saved 200,000 pounds in just over eight weeks — the equivalent of taking 17 cars off the road for one year.
Teams were required to document their savings and provide evidence that the reductions would not have happened without their intervention. The winning team traveled to Washington, D.C., last week to meet with state policymakers and present their findings from the semester.
“Each representative responded differently … but each made a point of addressing the aspects of our interests that converged with theirs,” said Shoemaker, a public policy student.
“This is the first time I can say that I have ever presented the results of a project to congressional officials and legislative aides,” said Folse, a nuclear and radiological engineering major whose experience in the course this semester has him considering a minor in energy systems.
Students taking the course were members of the Georgia Tech Honors Program and came from departments and colleges across campus outside of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. Cobb holds the challenge each time she teaches this course, and has seen an expansion from one class to the next in terms of size of reductions; this year’s winning team achieved more reductions than the entire last class combined.
]]>Kim Cobb
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
Suman Das, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has developed an all-digital approach that allows a part to be made directly from its computer-aided design (CAD). The project, sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), has received $4.65 million in funding.
“We have developed a proof-of-concept system which is already turning out complex metal parts, and which fundamentally transforms the way that very high-value castings are made,” said Das, who directs the Direct Digital Manufacturing Laboratory in Georgia Tech’s Manufacturing Research Center (MaRC). “We're confident that our approach can lower costs by at least 25 percent and reduce the number of unusable waste parts by more than 90 percent, while eliminating 100 percent of the tooling.”
The approach being utilized by Das and his team focuses on a technique called investment casting, also known as lost-wax casting. In this process, which dates back thousands of years, molten metal is poured into an expendable ceramic mold to form a part.
The mold is made by creating a wax replica of the part to be cast, surrounding or "investing" the replica with a ceramic slurry, and then drying the slurry and hardening it to form the mold. The wax is then melted out – or lost – to form a mold cavity into which metal can be poured and solidified to produce the casting.
Investment casting is used to create precision parts across diverse industries including aerospace, energy, biomedical and electronics. Das’s current efforts are focused on parts used in aircraft engines. He is working with turbine-engine airfoils – complex parts used in jet engines – in collaboration with the University of Michigan and PCC Airfoils.
Today, Das explained, most precision metal castings are designed on computers, using computer-aided design software. But the next step – creating the ceramic mold with which the part is cast – currently involves a sequence of six major operations requiring expensive precision-machined dies and hundreds of tooling pieces.
"The result is a costly process that typically produces many defective molds and waste parts before a useable prototype is achieved," Das said. "This trial-and-error development phase often requires many months to cast a part that is accurate enough to enter the next stage, which involves testing and evaluation."
By contrast, Das’s approach involves a device that builds ceramic molds directly from a CAD design, completing the task much faster and producing far fewer unusable parts. Called Large Area Maskless Photopolymerization (LAMP), this high-resolution digital process accretes the mold layer by layer by projecting bitmaps of ultraviolet light onto a mixture of photosensitive resin and ceramic particles, and then selectively curing the mixture to a solid.
The technique places one 100-micron layer on top of another until the structure is complete. After the mold is formed, the cured resin is removed through binder burnout and the remaining ceramic is sintered in a furnace. The result is a fully ceramic structure into which molten metal – such as nickel-based superalloys or titanium-based alloys – are poured, producing a highly accurate casting.
“The LAMP process lowers the time required to turn a CAD design into a test-worthy part from a year to about a week,” Das said. “We eliminate the scrap and the tooling, and each digitally manufactured mold is identical to the others.”
A prototype LAMP alpha machine is currently building six typical turbine-engine airfoil molds in six hours. Das predicts that a larger beta machine – currently being built at Georgia Tech and scheduled for installation at a PCC Airfoils facility in Ohio in 2012 – will produce 100 molds at a time in about 24 hours.
Although the current work focuses on turbine-engine airfoils, Das believes the LAMP technique will be effective in the production of many types of intricate metal parts. He envisions a scenario in which companies could send out part designs to digital foundries and receive test castings within a short time, much as integrated-circuit designers send CAD plans to chip foundries today.
Moreover, he said, direct digital manufacturing enabled by LAMP should allow designers to create increasingly sophisticated pieces capable of achieving greater efficiency in jet engines and other systems.
“This process can produce parts of a complexity that designers could only dream of before,” he said. “The digital technique takes advantage of high-resolution optics and precision motion systems to achieve extremely sharp, small features – on the order of 100 microns.”
Das also noted that the new process not only creates testable prototypes but could also be used in the actual manufacturing process. That would allow more rapid production of complex metal parts, in both low and high volumes, at lower costs in a variety of industries.
“When you can produce desired volumes in a short period without tooling,” he said, “you have gone beyond rapid prototyping to true rapid manufacturing.”
The project depicted in this article is sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency; the content of this article does not necessarily reflect the position or the policy of the government, and no official endorsement should be inferred.
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]]>As chair, Thadhani will oversee a school that is ranked in the top 10 in both undergraduate and graduate programs and is among the largest of its kind in the nation.
“Naresh brings with him a great set of teaching, research and outreach skills to the position of school chair. He will provide excellent vision and leadership to ensure the success of the faculty, staff and students,” said Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering. “Naresh will use his exceptional knowledge and experience to continue to advance the school and build on its successes.”
Thadhani, who is currently a professor and associate chair of the school, said he is honored to have the opportunity to serve as chair of the School of Materials Science and Engineering.
“I look forward to partnering with the outstanding faculty, staff, students and alumni in taking MSE to the next level of excellence and recognition,” he said.
Thadhani’s research focuses on studies of shock-induced physical, chemical and mechanical changes for the processing of novel materials and for proving the deformation and fracture response of metals, ceramics, polymers and composites subjected to high-rate impact loading conditions.
He earned his Ph.D. in metallurgical engineering from the New Mexico Institute of Mining and Technology. He joined the faculty of the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech in September 1992.
Since joining Georgia Tech, Thadhani has advised 15 visiting scientists and post-doctoral fellows; graduated 15 Ph.D. and 18 master’s degree students; mentored 49 undergraduate research assistants; attracted total research funding of $15 million from federal agencies as well as from several national laboratories and industries; co-edited 12 books and proceedings; published more than 140 papers in refereed journals and another 140 papers in conference proceedings; and established a high-strain-rate laboratory with state-of-the-art dynamic high pressure generation equipment, time-resolved diagnostics and computational capabilities.
Thadhani has been recognized as a Fellow of ASM International based on his contributions in “materials effects of shock compression” and of the American Physical Society based on his contributions in “shock physics of materials.”
]]>Rouzati, a fourth-year business administration major, is co-founder and creative director of Sweet Lemon Magazine, an online women's lifestyle magazine covering fashion, finance, travel and other topics of interest to women in their 20s.
“We are targeting the ‘every girl,’ not the ‘it girl,’” said Rouzati. The magazine’s tagline states that Sweet Lemon is “written by, and written for, the Jane of all trades.” The publication has been building an audience since its premiere in October 2011, attracting more than 2,000 Twitter followers and more than 500 applications from interested writers, photographers, editors and interns.
Rouzati envisions Sweet Lemon as not just a magazine, but also an arena in which women can connect with each other, build confidence and showcase their talents in writing, art, business and culture.
“In order to be successful, we have learned to adapt quickly, be persistent, think ahead, network and leverage social media,” said Rouzati of how she applies classroom knowledge to her career pursuits. “We are constantly working on how to keep improving. Our Twitter followers have played a huge role in our success through their active tweets and excitement.”
Paris is also aided in the fruition of The Campus Style, a fashion blog that has expanded from Georgia City (covering Georgia Tech and Georgia State University) to more than 35 campuses internationally. Rouzati currently serves as president, and several of her female peers at Tech contribute to the blog and magazine as models, writers and editors.
“I was so impressed that the publication was written and produced by young women all over America,” said Vett Vandiver, a fourth-year science, technology and culture major who has worked with Sweet Lemon as a writer and intern. “The magazine has been a great and fun addition to my Tech extra curriculars because I have networked with women and companies outside of the Institute and been able to get and give advice from and to young women.”
Sweet Lemon Magazine released its fourth issue on May 15, and is published on the 15th day of every other month at sweetlemonmag.com.
Rouzati, Vandiver and other Tech women working on Sweet Lemon are examples of the entrepreneurial spirit fostered among women at Tech, who will be celebrated this year as the Institute recognizes 60 years of women at Georgia Tech.
]]>The study also found that after the material is produced, its structural and chemical properties continue to evolve for more than a month as a result of continuing chemical reactions with hydrogen.
Understanding the properties of graphene oxide – and how to control them – is important to realizing potential applications for the material. To make it useful for nano-electronics, for instance, researchers must induce both an electronic band gap and structural order in the material. Controlling the amount of hydrogen in graphene oxide may be the key to manipulating the material properties.
“Graphene oxide is a very interesting material because its mechanical, optical and electronic properties can be controlled using thermal or chemical treatments to alter its structure,” said Elisa Riedo, an associate professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “But before we can get the properties we want, we need to understand the factors that control the material’s structure. This study provides information about the role of hydrogen in the reduction of graphene oxide at room temperature.”
The research, which studied graphene oxide produced from epitaxial graphene, was reported on May 6 in the journal Nature Materials. The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation, the Materials Research Science and Engineering Center (MRSEC) at Georgia Tech, and by the U.S. Department of Energy.
Graphene oxide is formed through the use of chemical and thermal processes that mainly add two oxygen-containing functional groups to the lattice of carbon atoms that make up graphene: epoxide and hydroxyl species. The Georgia Tech researchers began their studies with multilayer expitaxial graphene grown atop a silicon carbide wafer, a technique pioneered by Walt de Heer and his research group at Georgia Tech. Their samples included an average of ten layers of graphene.
After oxidizing the thin films of graphene using the established Hummers method, the researchers examined their samples using X-ray photo-emission spectroscopy (XPS). Over about 35 days, they noticed the number of epoxide functional groups declining while the number of hydroxyl groups increased slightly. After about three months, the ratio of the two groups finally reached equilibrium.
“We found that the material changed by itself at room temperature without any external stimulation,” said Suenne Kim, a postdoctoral fellow in Riedo’s laboratory. “The degree to which it was unstable at room temperature was surprising.”
Curious about what might be causing the changes, Riedo and Kim took their measurements to Angelo Bongiorno, an assistant professor who studies computational materials chemistry in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Bongiorno and graduate student Si Zhou studied the changes using density functional theory, which suggested that hydrogen could be combining with oxygen in the functional groups to form water. That would favor a reduction in the epoxide groups, which is what Riedo and Kim were seeing experimentally.
“Elisa’s group was doing experimental measurements, while we were doing theoretical calculations,” Bongiorno said. “We combined our information to come up with the idea that maybe there was hydrogen involved.”
The suspicions were confirmed experimentally, both by the Georgia Tech group and by a research team at the University of Texas at Dallas. This information about the role of hydrogen in determining the structure of graphene oxide suggests a new way to control its properties, Bongiorno noted.
“During synthesis of the material, we could potentially use this as a tool to change the structure,” he said. “By understanding how to use hydrogen, we could add it or take it out, allowing us to adjust the relative distribution and concentration of the epoxide and hydroxyl species which control the properties of the material.”
Riedo and Bongiorno acknowledge that their material – based on epitaxial graphene – may be different from the oxide produced from exfoliated graphene. Producing graphene oxide from flakes of the material involves additional processing, including dissolving in an aqueous solution and then filtering and depositing the material onto a substrate. But they believe hydrogen plays a similar role in determining the properties of exfoliated graphene oxide.
“We probably have a new new form of graphene oxide, one that may be more useful commercially, although the same processes should also be happening within the other form of graphene oxide,” said Bongiorno.
The next steps are to understand how to control the amount of hydrogen in epitaxial graphene oxide, and what conditions may be necessary to affect reactions with the two functional groups. Ultimately, that may provide a way to open an electronic band gap and simultaneously obtain a graphene-based material with electron transport characteristics comparable to those of pristine graphene.
“By controlling the properties of graphene oxide through this chemical and thermal reduction, we may arrive at a material that remains close enough to graphene in structure to maintain the order necessary for the excellent electronic properties, while having the band gap needed to create transistors,” Riedo said. “It could be that graphene oxide is the way to arrive at that type of material.”
Beyond those already mentioned, the paper’s authors included Yike Hu, Claire Berger and Walt de Heer from the School of Physics at Georgia Tech, and Muge Acik and Yves Chabal from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas.
This research was supported by the National Science Foundation under grants CMMI-1100290, DMR-0820382 and DMR-0706031, and by the U.S. Department of Energy’s Office of Basic Energy Sciences under grants DE-FG02-06ER46293 and DE-SC001951. The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the National Science Foundation or the Department of Energy.
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]]>Part of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute, ATDC is a startup accelerator that helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful technology companies. Each year, member companies that have met rigorous growth milestones are selected to graduate.
Calling ATDC “the flagship” of the institute’s economic development programs, Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson praised the level of support the center offers emerging firms. “Success is seldom a one-man enterprise,” he said. “These companies can now go on to be tremendously successful.”
Stephen Fleming, a Georgia Tech vice president and executive director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute, outlined ATDC’s history and noted the recent expansion of the entrepreneur-in-residence program, which gives member companies access to CEOs and others who have successfully created their own startup firms.
“We are making use of a lot of the resources from our community,” Fleming said.
Bill Cronin, vice president of economic development for Invest Atlanta, told the graduating firms they and other companies like them are a vital part of the city’s business culture. “Last year, the companies that were incubated at Georgia Tech directly represented $84 million annually to our local economy,” Cronin said.
“This is only a start, as these companies ripen and mature, they will make money and hopefully reinvest in their businesses and our economy,” Cronin added. “They will cross-pollinate and create new strains of technology, industry hybrids and innovative business ideas.”
State Senate Majority Leader Chip Rogers (R-Woodstock), a 1991 graduate of Georgia Tech, said the eight firms are “a microcosm of what America is all about: innovation, free markets and entrepreneurship.”
Nina Sawczuk, general manager of the ATDC, mentioned the two new community catalysts – Jennifer Bonnett and Chip Schooler – and detailed results of a new survey of ATDC member companies that indicated 98 percent of members would recommend the program to other startups.
The 2012 ATDC graduates included:
On the Floor
Graduation wasn’t the only component of the 2012 Startup Showcase. After the formal ceremony, event attendees moved to an exhibit hall featuring 45 ATDC member companies and Georgia Tech researchers displaying their products and technologies.
Steve Dickerson, founder and CEO of exhibitor SoftWear Automation, which produces technology that automates the sewing of garments, said his booth was experiencing a healthy amount of traffic.
He also had praise for ATDC, from which two of his other startup companies have graduated. “It’s the whole level of support [ATDC gives] you,” Dickerson said. “I’ve leaned on ATDC to come up with everything from ideas on investors to company names. I’m pretty darn pleased.”
A half dozen Georgia Tech researchers also showed the technologies they were developing:
About ATDC: The Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) serves as the hub for technology entrepreneurship in Georgia. Founded in 1980, ATDC helps Georgia entrepreneurs launch and build successful technology companies by providing coaching, connections, and community. Through business incubation and acceleration services, ATDC has supported the creation of hundreds of technology companies that together have raised more than a billion dollars in outside financing. Headquartered in Atlanta’s Technology Square, ATDC members benefit from a close proximity to Georgia Tech and connections with other Georgia research universities. ATDC was named one of the “10 technology incubators that are changing the world” by Forbes Magazine in 2010.
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]]>Georgia Tech was one of 100 academic institutions to receive awards from the Defense University Research Instrumentation Program, which is designed to augment university capabilities to conduct research and educate scientists in areas important to national defense.
Georgia Tech’s winning proposals for acquisition of research equipment include:
The Defense University Research Instrumentation Program meets a critical need by enabling university researchers to purchase scientific equipment costing $50,000 or more. This equipment accelerates research progress and ensures world-class research training for the next generation of scientists and engineers in defense-critical fields.
In total, the defense program awarded $54.7 million on May 8 to 100 universities across the nation for research in surface chemistry and physics, computing and networks, electronics and electro optics, neuroscience, fluid dynamics and propulsion, robotics and autonomous systems, and ocean, environmental and biological science and engineering.
]]>“I see the iPad as the future of computing, and I think a couple years down the road it will be the only thing most people own,” said Hooper, who earned a bachelor’s degree in computational media from the Institute in May. “Because of that I feel a lot of things need to get better — particularly for me, editing text.”
The so-called “Hooper Selection” uses the keyboard to select, copy and paste text, rather than having the user highlight on the text itself. Hooper demonstrates the method in a YouTube video that has garnered more than 600,000 views and drawn attention from media outlets such as Business Insider, Gizmodo and Engadget. As for the name, Hooper himself can’t take credit.
“Another developer emailed me saying they had made a Wikipedia page,” he said. “He was concerned so many people were copying the work that I wouldn’t be remembered as the creator. The name is kind of dorky and still sounds weird to me, but it works.”
Hooper, who himself is an iPad and iPhone owner, has been working on iOS development since his freshman year at Tech. Last fall he created a game called Percepto, and Hooper Selection emerged as a project for his digital humanities course last spring.
“It’s sort of a bland thing, text editing, but it’s so key to everything you do. Regardless of the app, you’re probably typing at some point.”
Regardless of whether Apple implements the idea, Hooper hopes it inspires all companies to put more time and research into this aspect of the tablet user experience. He’s already seen some third-party developers use it in their applications.
“I put the video out there hoping people would think it was cool and, at the very least, make them unhappy with the current state even if this isn’t the solution. I enjoyed using my prototype so much that I thought, other people probably want this, but it’s something Apple would have to do since it’s kind of a system-level thing.” A modified version of Hooper’s idea by another developer has been made available to those willing to jailbreak their phones, but nothing from Apple has been implemented at this time.
Hooper’s interest in programming stemmed from early days of assembling LEGO MINDSTORMS robotics kits, growing into an interest in video games and eventually user experience design at Tech. He soon departs for a multi-week, post-graduation Eurotrip, but, for the tablet’s safety, will likely leave his iPad behind.
]]>Jonathan Colton, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Industrial Design at Georgia Tech, will pursue an innovative global health and development research project focused on designing a net-zero energy warehousing and distribution system for vaccines and drugs in developing countries. Net-zero energy describes a building with no net energy consumption and no carbon emissions measured on an annual basis.
In addition to Colton, immunization logistics consultant John Lloyd, architect Andrew Garnett and Solar Electric Light Fund project manager Steve McCarney will also contribute to the project.
The project was one of more than 100 Grand Challenges Explorations grants announced May 9, 2012.
“Grand Challenges Explorations encourages individuals worldwide to expand the pipeline of ideas where creative, unorthodox thinking is most urgently needed,” said Chris Wilson, director of Global Health Discovery and Translational Sciences at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. “We’re excited to provide additional funding for select grantees so that they can continue to advance their idea towards global impact.”
The goal of the Georgia Tech project is to develop the design and engineering specifications for a new, energy-optimized warehousing and distribution system for vaccines and drugs. In low- and middle-income countries, vaccines and drugs are often stored in older buildings that are inefficiently laid out and wasteful of energy. In these countries, warehousing and distribution costs can amount to 20 percent of drug and vaccine supply costs.
“We plan to demonstrate that energy-efficient, state-of-the-art warehousing systems can eliminate or greatly reduce the operational energy costs for storage and distribution of vaccines and drugs in developing countries with challenging climates,” said Colton.
According to Colton, to be successful the new warehousing system will need to:
“Once we create the design and engineering specifications for this new warehousing and storage system, we plan to select an industry partner to build and test the system in a developing country such as Tunisia,” added Colton.
About Grand Challenges Explorations: Grand Challenges Explorations is a $100 million initiative funded by the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Launched in 2008, more than 600 people in 45 countries have received Grand Challenges Explorations grants. The grant program is open to anyone from any discipline and from any organization. The initiative uses an agile, accelerated grant-making process with short two-page online applications and no preliminary data required. Initial grants of $100,000 are awarded two times a year. Successful projects have the opportunity to receive a follow-on grant of up to $1 million.
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]]>A member of the provost’s leadership team, the vice provost for International Initiatives and Steven A. Denning Chair in Global Engagement is responsible for Georgia Tech’s global strategy, international educational activities and engagement in research, education and economic development.
Offices and programs currently assigned to the vice provost include the Office of International Education, GT Lorraine, GT Global, and planned and emerging global platforms. Once named, the vice provost will review and refine this unit in accordance with the priorities outlined by the organizational study during the next phase of the provost’s organization transformation.
While applications and nominations will be received until the vice provost is selected, interested parties are encouraged to submit their materials no later than June 15, 2012 to assure optimal consideration.
To view the position description and application information, visit http://www.provost.gatech.edu.
]]>Daniel Poneman, U.S. Deputy Secretary of Energy, said $3.1 million will go to three research projects at Georgia Tech focused on developing new and advanced nuclear reactor designs and technologies, while addressing their cost, safety and security.
The money will also fund research examining new fuel and core designs as well as two undergraduate scholarships and three graduate student fellowships. With the support of this program, students will receive financial support to pursue a degree in the nuclear field and gain the skills and experiences they need to succeed in a nuclear science and engineering career.
"This funding will help Georgia Tech and the country to enhance the quality of nuclear education and research in order to support the development of the next generation of nuclear workforce, technology and research," said Farzad Rahnema, chair of the Nuclear and Radiological Engineering and Medical Physics Programs at Georgia Tech.
Undergraduate students will receive a $5,000 scholarship, while fellowship winners will receive $50,000 annually over the next three years in addition to a summer internship at a National Laboratory. The selected students will study a breadth of critical nuclear energy issues, from fuel cycle sustainability to reactor efficiency and design.
The three research projects in the College of Engineering that were funded include: "Uncertainty Quantification and Management for Multiscale Nuclear Materials Modeling," David McDowell, PI; "Nonlinear Ultrasonic Techniques to Monitor Radiation damage in RPV and Internal Components," Lawrence Jacobs, PI; and "Fuel and Core Design Options to Overcome the Heavy Metal Loading Limit,and Improve Performance and Safety of Liquid Salt Cooled Reactors," Bojan Petrovic, PI.
]]>404-385-7358
]]>Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University found that chromatin compaction is required for proper embryonic stem cell differentiation to occur. Chromatin, which is composed of histone proteins and DNA, packages DNA into a smaller volume so that it fits inside a cell.
A study published on May 10, 2012 in the journal PLoS Genetics found that embryonic stem cells lacking several histone H1 subtypes and exhibiting reduced chromatin compaction suffered from impaired differentiation under multiple scenarios and demonstrated inefficiency in silencing genes that must be suppressed to induce differentiation.
“While researchers have observed that embryonic stem cells exhibit a relaxed, open chromatin structure and differentiated cells exhibit a compact chromatin structure, our study is the first to show that this compaction is not a mere consequence of the differentiation process but is instead a necessity for differentiation to proceed normally,” said Yuhong Fan, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Biology.
Fan and Todd McDevitt, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, led the study with assistance from Georgia Tech graduate students Yunzhe Zhang and Kaixiang Cao, research technician Marissa Cooke, and postdoctoral fellow Shiraj Panjwani.
The work was supported by the National Institutes of Health’s National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), the National Science Foundation, a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Scholar Award, and a Johnson & Johnson/Georgia Tech Healthcare Innovation Award.
To investigate the impact of linker histones and chromatin folding on stem cell differentiation, the researchers used embryonic stem cells that lacked three subtypes of linker histone H1 -- H1c, H1d and H1e -- which is the structural protein that facilitates the folding of chromatin into a higher-order structure. They found that the expression levels of these H1 subtypes increased during embryonic stem cell differentiation, and embryonic stem cells lacking these H1s resisted spontaneous differentiation for a prolonged time, showed impairment during embryoid body differentiation and were unsuccessful in forming a high-quality network of neural cells.
“This study has uncovered a new, regulatory function for histone H1, a protein known mostly for its role as a structural component of chromosomes,” said Anthony Carter, who oversees epigenetics grants at NIGMS. “By showing that H1 plays a part in controlling genes that direct embryonic stem cell differentiation, the study expands our understanding of H1’s function and offers valuable new insights into the cellular processes that induce stem cells to change into specific cell types.”
During spontaneous differentiation, the majority of the H1 triple-knockout embryonic stem cells studied by the researchers retained a tightly packed colony structure typical of undifferentiated cells and expressed high levels of Oct4 for a prolonged time. Oct4 is a pluripotency gene that maintains an embryonic stem cell’s ability to self-renew and must be suppressed to induce differentiation.
“H1 depletion impaired the suppression of the Oct4 and Nanog pluripotency genes, suggesting a novel mechanistic link by which H1 and chromatin compaction may mediate pluripotent stem cell differentiation by contributing to the epigenetic silencing of pluripotency genes,” explained Fan. “While a significant reduction in H1 levels does not interfere with embryonic stem cell self-renewal, it appears to impair differentiation.”
The researchers also used a rotary suspension culture method developed by McDevitt to produce with high efficiency homogonous 3D clumps of embryonic stem cells called embryoid bodies. Embryoid bodies typically contain cell types from all three germ layers -- the ectoderm, mesoderm and endoderm -- that give rise to the various types of tissues and structures in the body. However, the majority of the H1 triple-knockout embryoid bodies formed in rotary suspension culture lacked differentiated structures and displayed gene expression signatures characteristic of undifferentiated stem cells.
“H1 triple-knockout embryoid bodies displayed a reduced level of activation of many developmental genes and markers in rotary culture, suggesting that differentiation to all three germ layers was affected.” noted McDevitt.
The embryoid bodies also lacked the epigentic changes at the pluripotency genes necessary for differentiation, according to Fan.
“When we added one of the deleted H1 subtypes to the embryoid bodies, Oct4 was suppressed normally and embryoid body differentiation continued,” explained Fan. “The epigenetic regulation of Oct4 expression by H1 was also evident in mouse embryos.”
In another experiment, the researchers provided an environment that would encourage embryonic stem cells to differentiate into neural cells. However, the H1 triple-knockout cells were defective in forming neuronal and glial cells and a neural network, which is essential for nervous system development. Only 10 percent of the H1 triple-knockout embryoid bodies formed neurites and they produced on average eight neurites each. In contrast, half of the normal embryoid bodies produced, on average, 18 neurites.
In future work, the researchers plan to investigate whether controlling H1 histone levels can be used to influence the reprogramming of adult cells to obtain induced pluripotent stem cells, which are capable of differentiating into tissues in a way similar to embryonic stem cells.
Research reported in this publication was supported by the National Institute of General Medical Sciences of the National Institutes of Health (NIH) under award number GM085261 and the National Science Foundation under award number CBET-0939511. The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH or NSF.
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]]>“We are extremely pleased that a scholar, administrator, and teacher of Dr. Laband’s stature is joining the college.” said Jacqueline J. Royster, Dean of Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. “The appointment marks a new decade of leadership for the School of Economics, and I am confident that he will continue the outstanding momentum of the school's undergraduate, Master's, and Ph.D. programs."
David Laband earned an M.S. and Ph.D. in Economics from Virginia Polytechnic Institute. He currently serves as Professor and Director of Graduate Programs for the economics department at Auburn University, where he has focused on building the Ph.D. program and is heading the department’s capital campaign. Previously, he chaired the economics department at Salisbury State University, Maryland.
An applied micro-economist, Professor Laband is well-known in the field of economics. His research, widely cited, includes substantial work in several of the school's strategic areas, particularly environmental economics, labor economics, and micro-economic analysis. He is a popular teacher who has been repeatedly recognized for teaching excellence.
The author of five books and editor of four collections, Dr. Laband has had published over one hundred and thirty articles in prestigious journals including the Quarterly Journal of Economics, Journal of Political Economy, Review of Economics and Statistics, Journal of Labor Economies, and the Journal of Human Resources.
“I am delighted to be joining the faculty of Georgia Tech and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts,” Laband said. “I look forward to working across the university community to enhance the contributions of the School of Economics and help develop an internationally prominent program.”
]]>Professor Khapaeva is an international scholar and administrator with a track record of institution and community building and significant leadership of fundraising and research programs. Currently a researcher at Helsinki Collegium at the University of Helsinki, Khapaeva was the inaugural Director for International Relations and Research at the Smolny College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, a joint program between St. Petersburg State University and Bard College that was Russia’s first “American-style” liberal arts college, and was the founding Director of Smolny Collegium, an institute for advanced studies.
“Our modern languages program is one of the most successful programs in the country," said Jacqueline J. Royster, Dean of Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. “Dr. Khapaeva has the administrative and scholarly expertise to continue the pace of innovations in the applied language and intercultural studies that have been the hallmark of this very distinctive program."
Khapaeva received a Ph.D. in History from St. Petersburg State University, St. Petersburg, Russia. She specializes in Russian literature and culture and so will strengthen the school's study track in Russian - one of the critical languages identified by the U.S. Department of State, as well as other languages. Dr. Khapaeva’s scholarly publications include four books and one translation from French; four chapters in collective volumes; more than 25 peer-reviewed articles with several in top tier peer-reviewed international journals published in Russian, English, and French.
She anticipates focusing on further development and expansion of the school’s nine modern language tracks and the internationalization and cultural adaptability of students.
]]>An experienced administrator, Dr. Utz recently completed a four-year term as Chair of the Department of English at Western Michigan University. During his career in Europe and the United States he has served in a wide variety of leadership positions in the areas of Graduate Study, Tenure and Promotion, Assessment, Scholarly Communication, and Strategic Planning.
Dr. Utz is an established interdisciplinary scholar of medieval culture and its reception in postmedieval times. His work spans literature, philology, philosophy and the history of humanistic inquiry.
"Dr. Utz's is noted for distinguished accomplishments in the types of intellectual cross-fertilizations that are the cornerstone of our School of Literature, Communication, and Culture, with his expertise in the cultural construction of knowledge in science and technology bringing a particular strength to our programs," said Jacqueline J. Royster, Dean of Ivan Allen College.
“I see my new position in LCC as a unique opportunity to bridge the allegedly sempiternal chasm between science and technology on the one hand and humanistic inquiry on the other,” said Dr. Utz. “My goal as a scholar, teacher, and administrator is to further innovate interdisciplinary collaboration among specialists from traditionally separate disciplines, which in my view, is the only promising way to solve the complex social and cultural problems of the future. GT, IAC, and LCC’s strategic mission to support such creative collaborative work is what attracted me to join this distinguished institution.”
Dr. Utz has published widely in English and German. He has authored two books, co-edited 17 essay collections, and published 27 journal articles, 21 book chapters, nine articles in conference proceedings, and 50 scholarly reviews. He also serves on editorial advisory boards for journals and book series in Australia, Denmark, Great Britain, Germany, and the United States.
Dr. Utz earned an M.A. and a Ph.D. from University of Regensburg, Germany. He has broad teaching experience in literature and the humanities at undergraduate and graduate levels, has been recognized at the college, university, and state level for excellence in scholarship and teaching, and currently serves as the President of the International Society for the Study of Medievalism.
]]>Georgia Tech had 21 teams enter this year’s national competition, earning nominations for various awards in the overall competition, as well as Best Drama, Best Comedy, and Best Picture among the national submissions. The three winners are announced at a red carpet showcase at each campus, and are flown to Los Angeles – with a potential Wild Card winner – to attend Campus MovieFest Hollywood in the summer, where the overall winners are shown and announced.
Cody Turner, a second-year computational media major, always had an interest in film and was skilled in editing, but never had much experience acting. Cody held the lead male role in his team’s film, “Take Care,” which won Best Drama for Georgia Tech.
“I was the only one [on our team] who had any real experience working on movies, and it meant nothing,” Turner said. “We created something that we were proud of simply because we worked hard at it.” Turner advised future groups to build a big team, be organized and care about the movie.
“Winning was unbelievable. Walking down to the stage and realizing that now what we made was going to be screened in Hollywood in front of dozens of actors, directors and producers was overwhelming.”
The Wild Card winner is determined by online viewer votes. Each participating campus has the opportunity to nominate a film not in its top three based on the number of YouTube views it receives, and the most popular films nationwide compete in a judged Wild Card bracket for a spot in Los Angeles.
The world’s largest student film and musical festival, Campus MovieFest was founded by four students at Emory University in 2001. Today, Campus MovieFest engages more than 500,000 college students around the globe, providing participants with laptops, camcorders, training and a week to create a five-minute film at no cost.
Past movies are available on campusmoviefest.com, and are also shown on Virgin America flights, on mobile phones, and at the Short Film Corner at the prestigious Cannes Film Festival. Campus MovieFest Hollywood will be June 21-23, where Georgia Tech’s top films will be up for awards.
]]>Campus Best Comedy
“Paper Airplane”
Joseph Adams
Karmelia Elliott
Ildar Musin
Campus Best Drama
“Take Care”
Gregg Andriano
Kelly Chen
Scott Cummins
Zehua Guo
Andrea Kukleynik
Anand Nallathambi
Patrick Stoica
Cody Turner
Jonathan Walker
Andrew Willis
Campus “Wild Card”
“How the Hell Do I Get a Date?”
Palmer Booth
Bill Clark
Hilary Degenkolb
Murielle Smith
Communications and Marketing
]]>To support the nation’s nuclear-surveillance capabilities, researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) are developing ways to enhance the radiation-detection devices used at ports, border crossings, airports and elsewhere. The aim is to create technologies that will increase the effectiveness and reliability of detectors in the field, while also reducing cost. The work is co-sponsored by the Domestic Nuclear Defense Office of the Department of Homeland Security and by the National Science Foundation.
“U.S. security personnel have to be on guard against two types of nuclear attack – true nuclear bombs, and devices that seek to harm people by dispersing radioactive material,” said Bernd Kahn, a researcher who is principal investigator on the project. “Both of these threats can be successfully detected by the right technology.”
The GTRI team, led by co-principal investigator Brent Wagner, is utilizing novel materials and nanotechnology techniques to produce improved radiation detection. The researchers have developed the Nano-photonic Composite Scintillation Detector, a prototype that combines rare-earth elements and other materials at the nanoscale for improved sensitivity, accuracy and robustness.
Details of the research were presented April 23, 2012 at the SPIE Defense, Security, and Sensing Conference held in Baltimore, MD.
Scintillation detectors and solid-state detectors are two common types of radiation detectors, Wagner explained. A scintillation detector commonly employs a single crystal of sodium iodide or a similar material, while a solid-state detector is based on semiconducting materials such as germanium.
Both technologies are able to detect gamma rays and subatomic particles emitted by nuclear material. When gamma rays or particles strike a scintillation detector, they create light flashes that are converted to electrical pulses to help identify the radiation at hand. In a solid-state detector, incoming gamma rays or particles register directly as electrical pulses.
“Each reaction to a gamma ray takes a very short time – a fraction of a microsecond,” Wagner said. “By looking at the number and the intensity of the pulses, along with other factors, we can make informed judgments about the type of radioactive material we're dealing with.”
But both approaches have drawbacks. A scintillation detector requires a large crystal grown from sodium iodide or other materials. Such crystals are typically fragile, cumbersome, difficult to produce and extremely vulnerable to humidity.
A germanium-based solid-state detector offers better identification of different kinds of nuclear materials. But high-purity single-crystal germanium is difficult to make in a large volume; the result is less-sensitive devices with reduced ability to detect radiation at a distance. Moreover, germanium must be kept extremely cold – 200 degrees below zero Celsius -- to function properly, which poses problems for use in the field.
The Nanoscale Advantage
To address these problems, the GTRI team has been investigating a wide variety of alternative materials and methodologies. After selecting the scintillation approach over solid-state, the researchers developed a composite material -- composed of nanoparticles of rare-earth elements, halides and oxides -- capable of creating light.
“A nanopowder can be much easier to make, because you don’t have to worry about producing a single large crystal that has zero imperfections,” Wagner said.
A scintillator crystal must be transparent to light, he explained, a quality that’s key to its ability to detect radiation. A perfect crystal uniformly converts incoming energy from gamma rays to flashes of light. A photo-multiplier then amplifies these flashes of light so they can be accurately measured to provide information about radioactivity.
However, when a transparent material – such as crystal or glass -- is ground into smaller pieces, its transparency disappears. As a result, a mixture of particles in a transparent glass would scatter the luminescence created by incoming gamma rays. That scattered light can’t reach the photo-multiplier in a uniform manner, and the resulting readings are badly skewed.
To overcome this issue, the GTRI team reduced the particles to the nanoscale. When a nanopowder reaches particle sizes of 20 nanometers or less, scattering effects fade because the particles are now significantly smaller than the wavelength of incoming gamma rays.
“Think of it as a big ocean wave coming in,” Wagner said. “That wave would definitely interact with a large boat, but something the size of a beach ball doesn’t affect it.”
Rare Earths and Silica
At first the team worked on dispersing radiation-sensitive crystalline nanoparticles in a plastic matrix. But they encountered problems with distributing the nanopowder uniformly enough in the matrix to achieve sufficiently accurate radiation readings.
More recently, the researchers have investigated a parallel path using glass rather than plastic as a matrix material, combining gadolinium and cerium bromide with silica and alumina.
Kahn explained that gadolinium or a similar material is essential to scintillation-type particle detection because of its role as an absorber. But in this case, when an incoming gamma ray is absorbed in gadolinium, the energy is not efficiently emitted in the form of luminescence.
Instead, the light emission role here falls to a second component – cerium. The gadolinium absorbs energy from an incoming gamma ray and transfers that energy to the cerium atom, which then acts as an efficient light emitter.
The researchers found that by heating gadolinium, cerium, silica and alumina and then cooling them from a molten mix to a solid monolith, they could successfully distribute the gadolinium and cerium in silica-based glasses. As the material cools, gadolinium and cerium precipitate out of the aluminosilicate solution and are distributed throughout the glass in a uniform manner. The resulting composite gives dependable readings when exposed to incoming gamma rays.
“We're optimistic that we've identified a productive methodology for creating a material that could be effective in the field,” Wagner said. “We’re continuing to work on issues involving purity, uniformity and scaling, with the aim of producing a material that can be successfully tested and deployed.”
This material is based upon work supported by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security under Grant Award Number 2008-DN-077-ARI001-02. The views and conclusions contained in this document are those of the authors and should not be interpreted as necessarily representing the official policies, either expressed or implied, of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.
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]]>
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]]>“Under President Adams’ leadership the University of Georgia has continued to grow in both size and stature,” said Peterson. “Georgia Tech and UGA collaborate in a number of areas, and I look forward to continuing to work with President Adams over the course of the next year to better serve the state and the nation, through our outstanding research, education and economic development programs.”
]]>
But that could soon change: Researchers at MIT and the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a way to automate the process of finding and recording information from neurons in the living brain. The researchers have shown that a robotic arm guided by a cell-detecting computer algorithm can identify and record from neurons in the living mouse brain with better accuracy and speed than a human experimenter.
The new automated process eliminates the need for months of training and provides long-sought information about living cells’ activities. Using this technique, scientists could classify the thousands of different types of cells in the brain, map how they connect to each other, and figure out how diseased cells differ from normal cells.
The project is a collaboration between the labs of Ed Boyden, associate professor of biological engineering and brain and cognitive sciences at MIT, and Craig Forest, an assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech.
“Our team has been interdisciplinary from the beginning, and this has enabled us to bring the principles of precision machine design to bear upon the study of the living brain,” Forest says. His graduate student, Suhasa Kodandaramaiah, spent the past two years as a visiting student at MIT, and is the lead author of the study, which appears in the May 6 issue of Nature Methods.
The method could be particularly useful in studying brain disorders such as schizophrenia, Parkinson’s disease, autism and epilepsy, Boyden says. “In all these cases, a molecular description of a cell that is integrated with [its] electrical and circuit properties … has remained elusive,” says Boyden, who is a member of MIT’s Media Lab and McGovern Institute for Brain Research. “If we could really describe how diseases change molecules in specific cells within the living brain, it might enable better drug targets to be found.”
Automation
Kodandaramaiah, Boyden and Forest set out to automate a 30-year-old technique known as whole-cell patch clamping, which involves bringing a tiny hollow glass pipette in contact with the cell membrane of a neuron, then opening up a small pore in the membrane to record the electrical activity within the cell. This skill usually takes a graduate student or postdoc several months to learn.
Kodandaramaiah spent about four months learning the manual patch-clamp technique, giving him an appreciation for its difficulty. “When I got reasonably good at it, I could sense that even though it is an art form, it can be reduced to a set of stereotyped tasks and decisions that could be executed by a robot,” he says.
To that end, Kodandaramaiah and his colleagues built a robotic arm that lowers a glass pipette into the brain of an anesthetized mouse with micrometer accuracy. As it moves, the pipette monitors a property called electrical impedance — a measure of how difficult it is for electricity to flow out of the pipette. If there are no cells around, electricity flows and impedance is low. When the tip hits a cell, electricity can’t flow as well and impedance goes up.
The pipette takes two-micrometer steps, measuring impedance 10 times per second. Once it detects a cell, it can stop instantly, preventing it from poking through the membrane. “This is something a robot can do that a human can’t,” Boyden says.
Once the pipette finds a cell, it applies suction to form a seal with the cell’s membrane. Then, the electrode can break through the membrane to record the cell’s internal electrical activity. The robotic system can detect cells with 90 percent accuracy, and establish a connection with the detected cells about 40 percent of the time.
The researchers also showed that their method can be used to determine the shape of the cell by injecting a dye; they are now working on extracting a cell’s contents to read its genetic profile.
Development of the new technology was funded primarily by the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation and the MIT Media Lab.
New era for robotics
The researchers recently created a startup company, Neuromatic Devices, to commercialize the device.
The researchers are now working on scaling up the number of electrodes so they can record from multiple neurons at a time, potentially allowing them to determine how different parts of the brain are connected.
They are also working with collaborators to start classifying the thousands of types of neurons found in the brain. This “parts list” for the brain would identify neurons not only by their shape — which is the most common means of classification — but also by their electrical activity and genetic profile.
“If you really want to know what a neuron is, you can look at the shape, and you can look at how it fires. Then, if you pull out the genetic information, you can really know what’s going on,” Forest says. “Now you know everything. That’s the whole picture.”
Boyden says he believes this is just the beginning of using robotics in neuroscience to study living animals. A robot like this could potentially be used to infuse drugs at targeted points in the brain, or to deliver gene therapy vectors. He hopes it will also inspire neuroscientists to pursue other kinds of robotic automation — such as in optogenetics, the use of light to perturb targeted neural circuits and determine the causal role that neurons play in brain functions.
Neuroscience is one of the few areas of biology in which robots have yet to make a big impact, Boyden says. “The genome project was done by humans and a giant set of robots that would do all the genome sequencing. In directed evolution or in synthetic biology, robots do a lot of the molecular biology,” he says. “In other parts of biology, robots are essential.”
Other co-authors include MIT grad student Giovanni Talei Franzesi and MIT postdoc Brian Y. Chow.
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Writer: Anne Trafton, MIT News
]]>Home users, the study found, typically manage their capped broadband access against three uncertainties—invisible balances, mysterious processes and multiple users—and these uncertainties have predictable impacts on household Internet use and can force difficult choices on users. Given the undeniable trend in both Internet norms (such as cloud-based applications) and home-entertainment delivery toward greater broadband requirements, the study seeks to create awareness and empathy among designers and researchers about the experience of Internet use under bandwidth caps.
Marshini Chetty, a postdoctoral researcher in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing, interviewed 12 households in South Africa, a country in which broadband caps were universal until February 2010. Typically, the caps set by South African ISPs are severe with some plans only offering 1 GB of data per month. At the time of the study, the caps ranged up to 9GB of data, far lower than the 150GB-250GB caps set by U.S. providers.
What Chetty and her collaborators found were coping mechanisms built into South Africans’ daily lives in order to manage their online activities under the caps. For example, some would routinely “top up” their accounts (pay additional fees for incremental cap increases), while others would visit family members to use their Internet accounts, or switch from desktop connectivity to smartphones. And with few (if any) ways for customers to monitor Internet usage throughout the month, their access often would be cut off in the middle of performing an online activity.
“People’s behavior does change when limits are placed on Internet access—just like we’ve seen happen in the smartphone market—and many complain about usage-based billing, but no one has really studied the effects it has on consumer activity,” said Chetty, who earned her Ph.D. in computer science from Georgia Tech in 2011. “We would also hear about people ‘saving’ bandwidth all month and then binge downloading toward the end of their billing period.”
“Mysterious processes” refers to customers’ inability to determine which applications are eating up their bandwidth, ranging from being unaware that streaming video or downloading songs consumes much more data than normal web browsing, to not knowing that many background applications (such as automatic software updates) count against the monthly cap.
“We were surprised to learn that many of the households we studied chose not to perform regular software updates in order to manage their cap,” Chetty said. “This activity can be benign for some applications, inadvisable for others and downright dangerous in certain cases. For example, not installing security patches on your system can leave you vulnerable to viruses and other sorts of cyber attacks.” Chetty suggested that the frequency of such risky behaviors among the broader population of metered/capped Internet users should be assessed via follow-up scientifically representative surveys.
Finally, in households with multiple Internet users, it can be difficult for the heads of the household to manage overall activity when they are not fully aware of each member’s Internet use. As with other consumable resources in a household, from milk to hot water, the apportionment of "fair" amounts of bandwidth reflects family practices and requires a fair bit of nuance, varying by family style and composition.
“As ISPs move more toward usage-based pricing, we need to keep in mind the reactive behaviors that consumers adopt and the consequences of those behaviors. Because when you have broadband caps, you will use the Internet differently,” Chetty said. “This study was performed in South Africa, and although the caps are higher in the United States, there are still instances where people are hitting them. So if you’re going to have caps, you should empathize with your users and offer ways for customers to see how their data are being used and who is using them.” More tools are becoming available, from ISPs, within operating systems and from third parties; but this is one of the first academic studies that systematically reveals why there is a demand for such tools, and why they are important to users.
The study’s findings are summarized in the paper, “’You’re Capped!’ Understanding the Effects of Bandwidth Caps on Broadband Use in the Home,” which Chetty will present on May 10 at the 2012 ACM SIGCHI Conference on Human Factors in Computing Systems (CHI 2012), being held May 5-10 in Austin, Texas. Chetty’s coauthors include Beki Grinter, professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing, and Richard Banks, A.J. Bernheim Brush and Jonathan Donner from Microsoft Research. The paper is one of nine Georgia Tech entries in the main program of CHI 2012.
]]>After months of preparation and construction, a HAWK (High-intensity Activated crossWalK) beacon was activated on North Avenue outside the Alumni House in April. The new pedestrian-activated signal responds to the push of a button by those needing to cross the street. Unlike most crosswalks, the HAWK responds instantaneously and begins a series of light signal changes that lead drivers to a stop and pedestrians safely across the street.
“Over the last several years we’ve had quite a few pedestrian/vehicle accidents there,” said Georgia Tech Police Department Captain Regina Rogers. “The decision was made to put in a high-tech crosswalk for pedestrian safety for the people in the surrounding buildings and those who park in the area to help them travel safely.”
When activated, the HAWK first flashes yellow to vehicular traffic, then goes solid yellow, then solid red to provide a safe window for crossing. After 15 seconds, the solid red begins to flash; at this point, cars may proceed if the sidewalk is clear and they have come to a stop as they would at a stop sign. The standard red hand and white walker images are used to signal to pedestrians when they should cross.
After allowing 30 days for education and adjustment, officers will soon begin citing those who do not obey the signal, both on foot and in vehicles. Officers have been stationed in the area giving warnings to pedestrians and drivers alike in an effort to inform frequent travelers that they may need to change their behavior.
“[A ticket is] not cheap, so we want to educate people,” Rogers said. “Georgia Tech doesn’t make money off citations. It goes to a state general fund, and none of it comes back to the Institute.” Drivers are liable to receive a citation for failure to obey a traffic control device or failure to yield to a pedestrian at a crosswalk; pedestrians may be cited for obedience to traffic-control devices and traffic regulations. All citations cost around or more than $200. Pedestrians are advised to activate the signal at all instances of crossing the street, even during times of lighter traffic.
The North Avenue HAWK is among the first in the metro Atlanta area, with others on roads such as Donald Lee Hollowell Parkway and Peachtree Industrial Boulevard.
]]>Mechanical engineering, biomedical engineering, electrical engineering and industrial design students showcased their work at the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons on April 26 at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering’s Capstone Design Expo. The end-of-semester event has students present the culmination of their work immediately prior to graduation each semester, awarding thousands of dollars for the most innovative student work.
Teams are either sponsored by industry experts or use a combination of imagination, experience and foundational knowledge to research problems and report solutions, designing prototypes and showcasing them to spectators and judges.
“MDAP,” the first place team – comprised of John Bryan, Matthew Chambers, Patrick Chung, Caitlin Henegar, Amanda Swanson and Spencer Vore – received $1,500 for its design of a microfluidic cell sorter that aids in the detection of malaria. No current products exist that can be used for population screening at the desired sensitivity of buyers such as non-governmental organizations, while being both portable and non-electric.
“We invented a device for the diagnosis of malaria under field conditions in third world countries and fabricated two prototypes,” said Chambers. “Our project is different because it is a purely mechanical solution to a medical problem.”
The second place prize of $1,000 comically went to “Team #1,” for its prototype of a rooftop solar panel mounting system. The method decreases the standard 170-part, 11-hour installation process to a 44-part, 5-hour installation process. The proposed solution allows a higher number of installations per day at a lower cost. The team included students Steven Beardsell, Kim Giroux, Lukas Haferkamp, Parul Kapur, Matt Ray and John Tarman.
Third place, and $500, was awarded to “Look Ma, No Hands!” developed by Joe Fulton, Ryan Kennedy, Maureen McMeekin, Matt Peterka and Rick Scheff. The team created an automated baby stroller, for active parents, that maintains a safe distance between the parent and stroller when jogging. If the jogger comes to a sudden stop, the battery charged device recognizes the inactivity and stops as well.
The People’s Choice award, earned by the team with the highest number of spectator votes at the event, went to Jon Agee, Eric Chang, Jason Lee, Arjun Menon and Disi A, Tapan Shah and for an automatic electric vehicle charging system called EZ Charge. The team earned $500 for its work.
]]>Guzdial, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing, received the society’s 2012 Computer Science and Engineering Undergraduate Teaching Award “for outstanding and sustained excellence in computing education through innovative teaching, mentoring, inventive course development, and knowledge dissemination.” Guzdial is the inventor of Georgia Tech’s Media Computation approach to teaching introductory computing, and is a recognized national advocate for using contextualized computing education to attract and retain students to this growing discipline.
Liu, an associate professor in the School of Computer Science, was one of five prominent technologists to be honored with the IEEE Computer Society’s 2012 Technical Achievement Award. Liu, whose research specialization includes database systems, distributed computing, and Internet data management and data mining, was recognized “for pioneering contributions to novel Internet data management and decentralized trust management.”
The IEEE Computer Society is the one of computer science’s most renowned membership organizations.
]]>Georgia Tech is a proud sponsor of the event that aims to get the nation’s youth interested and excited about science, technology, engineering and mathematics (STEM). The free event will be held from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. on April 28 and from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. on April 29 at the Walter E. Washington Convention Center, located at 801 Mount Vernon Place NW.
Faculty and staff from Georgia Tech will be showcasing the Institute’s cutting-edge research to thousands of children through interactive and entertaining activities. At Georgia Tech’s expo booth, the activities include:
Representatives from the Georgia Tech’s Office of Undergraduate Admission will be at a booth in the Career Pavilion spreading the good word about Tech’s academics and campus life – to recruit the next generation of engineers and innovators. Tech alumni from the D.C. chapter will be at the booth volunteering and sharing their experiences. And, Georgia Tech’s beloved mascot, Buzz, is making the trip to D.C. for the expo.
The fun doesn’t stop there. Comedian Pete Ludovice, who is also a chemical and biomedical engineering professor at Georgia Tech, will be providing the lighter side of science in the festival expo’s “Night of Comedy” along with several other humorous scientists.
Ludovice will be doing three shows:
Tech’s booths will be among more than 3,000 fun and interactive exhibits, 100 stage shows and 33 author presentations at the expo.
]]>And that’s just how the Georgia Tech Police Department would like it, as its new plain-clothes officer unit is not one that’s meant to be seen. But for the past three months, seven days a week, teams of five have operated in plain clothes to try and head off crime at the pass, particularly the most common types of incidents on campus.
“We’ve made several arrests and made contact with people who have been wanted outside Georgia Tech that were committing crimes here,” said Sergeant Ian Mayberry, who oversees the plain-clothes unit.
One arrest in the Clough Commons was a criminal who had several warrants out for his arrest in Fulton County, and who was suspected in other thefts on campus from camera footage. A second arrest in the College of Management involved a planted dummy laptop. Officers left the laptop in an area of the building where theft had been an issue, and within 30 minutes a regular campus offender took the bait.
“It’s a great tool for us,” Mayberry said — although, in a few instances, good citizens have either called in the “abandoned” laptop to police or intervened themselves when it appeared someone was considering taking it as his own. As much as possible, plain-clothes officers call for uniformed patrol to make arrests, but do take the opportunity to initiate a conversation when they see behavior that leaves one vulnerable to crime.
“If [officers] find valuables unattended, they take up a position somewhere they can watch and see what’s happening, then discretely go over [to the owner] and identify themselves as an officer, let them know they’ve seen thefts in the area, that it’s something to be aware of, and give basic prevention information,” Mayberry said. “It’s generally very well-accepted.”
Plain-clothes teams deploy based on crime trends present on campus. Officers undergo additional training with the Atlanta Police Department’s undercover detail before being assigned to plain-clothes duty.
“We have a lot of different tactics we’re able to use that you just can’t employ when in uniform or a patrol car,” Mayberry said.
]]>A team of Georgia Tech researchers, together with colleagues at Microsoft Research Asia and University of California-Davis, looked at more than 600,000 tweets for answers. By analyzing tweets sent during a two-hour time frame beginning just minutes before the first rumor, they found that opinion leaders and celebrities played key roles. Their data also shows that the Twitterverse was overwhelmingly convinced the news of bin Laden’s death was true, even before it was confirmed on television.
The study confirms the widely held belief that Keith Urbahn (@keithurbahn), an aide to former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, was indeed the first person to break the news on Twitter. His tweet was sent at 10:24 p.m. Eight minutes later, a CBS producer (@jacksonjk) tweeted her own confirmation. When a reporter with The New York Times (@brianstelter) retweeted both reports, the news began to spread more widely.
“Rumors spreading on Twitter is one thing,” said Mengdie Hu, a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Interactive Computing who led the study. “Determining if they are true is another, especially in this era of social media and the rush to break news.”
To make a determination, Hu and her team used machine-learning methods to examine more than 400,000 English tweets in the sample. If the message mentioned the death as a fact or in very confident terms, it was classified as “certain.” If any hesitation or rumors were mentioned, the tweet was sorted as “uncertain.” Within minutes of Urbahn’s post, 50 percent of tweets were certain. By the time TV networks broke into programming 21 minutes later, nearly 80 percent were already sure that bin Laden was dead. The number peaked to just over 80 percent after TV made it official.
“We believe Twitter was so quick to trust the rumors because of who sent the first few tweets,” said Hu. “They came from reputable sources. It’s unlikely that a CBS News producer or New York Times reporter would spread rumors of something so important and risk jeopardizing their reputation. Twitter saw their credentials and quickly believed the news was true.”
Also, although nearly everyone on Twitter was talking about the news, a group of 100 “elite users” was actually driving the discussion. Nearly 20 percent of all tweets mentioned one of these elite users. Unsurprisingly, media outlets such as CNN, CNN Espanol and the New York Times led the way, especially in the minutes before and after the TV announcement. But within a half hour of the TV reports, celebrities surpassed media mentions and carried the discussion throughout the night. They included comedian Steve Martin and reality stars Kim Kardashian and Paul “DJ Pauly D” DelVecchio of the “Jersey Shore.”
“The celebrities weren’t the first people to arrive at the party,” said John Stasko, Hu’s advisor and professor in the School of Interactive Computing. “But they stayed the longest and brought the most guests.”
The findings surprised the researchers, especially because the topic was political and the majority of the celebrities had nothing to do with politics.
Hu and Stasko are using the analysis to develop software that can measure moods and influential people on social media. Marketing companies could use the tools while unveiling new products or searching for celebrity endorsers.
Hu will present the findings in Austin, Texas, at the Association for Computing Machinery’s (ACM) Special Interest Group on Computer Human Interaction (SIGCHI) conference in May.
For more Georgia Tech papers and research that will be presented at CHI, click here.
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]]>“The position involves advocacy for three groups I have been committed to for a long time: faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral scholars,” Cozzens said. “The special opportunity at this time is to create a new vision for graduate education, which is the projected growth area for the Institute.”
Cozzens comes from the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, where she is associate dean for research and faculty development, a professor in the School of Public Policy and director of the Technology Policy Assessment Center. She previously served as chair of the School of Public Policy, in various roles at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute and as director of the National Science Foundation’s Office of Policy Support.
"Susan has been a strong advocate for faculty and graduate students throughout her career, and understands the issues, policies and opportunities related our students, faculty and postdoctoral researchers," said Rafael Bras, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. "This experience will be invaluable in developing a focused approach that enables us to make the appropriate investments in these groups."
Cozzens will exit her role as associate dean and reduce her teaching workload but maintain advisement of doctoral students and current research involvement, including an NSF-supported endeavor focused on women in U.S. science policy.
“I am particularly looking forward to working with the great team in the Office of the Provost, who are full of vision and energy and are leading us towards a whole new Georgia Tech for the 21st century,” she said.
Among Cozzens’ new duties will be overseeing and coordinating faculty hiring and career progression, postdoc initiatives and career planning, and graduate student admission processes and policies — all with the goal of attracting and retaining the best faculty, graduate students and postdoctoral fellows.
Ray Vito, vice provost for graduate and undergraduate studies, has served as interim in the graduate education and faculty affairs role since December. Cozzens will officially take over June 1.
]]>In the new position, which originated out of the Office of the Provost's recent leadership reorganization, Potts will oversee the offices and programs affecting undergraduate education, including the Division of Professional Practice, Honors Program, Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program, Office of Undergraduate Studies, Athletics Academic Support and the Center for Academic Success.
“When I teach large, interdisciplinary classes, which I enjoy, I can have some effect on undergraduate education across campus,” Potts said. “It's now going to be possible for me to help not just 150-200 [students] in a classroom, but 15,000 across campus. That's very exciting.”
As an associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing, Potts has been involved with various initiatives outside of his regular teaching. He has traveled with study abroad programs in Barcelona and Oxford, led a ThinkBig living learning community and participated in the development of the X-Degree and TechArts, both projects to emerge from the Institute’s 25-year strategic plan. Earlier this month, he received the 2012 Eichholz Faculty Teaching Award, in recognition of his contribution to introductory undergraduate education at Tech.
“Colin’s enthusiasm for undergraduate education and programming is evident in his demonstrated commitment to enhancing student learning and the student experience, both of which are foremost priorities in our strategic plan” said Rafael Bras, provost and vice president for academic affairs.
Enhanced student-faculty interaction is another tenet of the Institute’s strategic plan, one that Potts hopes to address by making students “feel that they are members of the same community as faculty.” He’s also passionate about more seamlessly integrating the arts into students’ lives.
“Our students are very creative, and they need and deserve sustainable outlets for their expressive talents, including ways for these talents to intersect with technology and science,” Potts said. “It’s treated recreationally right now.”
Anderson Smith, senior vice provost for academic affairs, has served as interim in the undergraduate education role since December. Potts will assume his new role August 1, but plans for plenty of assessment before action.
“I want to walk around and listen to people. I’ve seen people come in like that, with ideas but also wanting to listen to others and see what makes them tick, and I’ve seen others who come in like a bull in a china shop — those people don’t tend to last. I’d like to last.”
]]>During a suspension, a chapter ceases any organizational activities, including any planned social functions at its campus residence. The investigation, assigned to the Dean of Students’ Office of Student Integrity, is ongoing.
]]>Georgia Tech was one of 16 organizations to receive a Boeing Supplier of the Year Award. The Institute was selected from a pool of more than 17,500 Boeing suppliers in more than 50 countries.
Georgia Tech was honored in the category of Academia, which recognizes outstanding performance as a strategic university. As one of Boeing's eight strategic universities, Georgia Tech provides increased knowledge and understanding of fluid flow, advanced manufacturing technology, design and aircraft technology through basic and applied research, which is based in Georgia Tech's Manufacturing Research Center (MaRC).
The Boeing award recognizes multidisciplinary research by Georgia Tech Mechanical Engineering Professors Steve Danyluk and Ari Glezer, Industrial & Systems Engineering Professor Leon McGinnis, Aerospace Engineering Professor Dimitri Mavris and College of Computing Professor Henrik Christensen.
Boeing supports various research activities at Georgia Tech related to manufacturing technologies, such as control and control systems on cranes, mobile platforms and robotics for moving parts in a factory environment and active flow control for wing tips, said Danyluk, professor and Morris M. Bryan Jr. Chair in Mechanical Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing Systems.
“I am very pleased that Boeing has expressed their confidence and support in Georgia Tech by providing the resources to conduct research and development on manufacturing problems of critical significance to their business,” said Danyluk, former director of MaRC. “Our faculty are excited and energized by the Supplier of the Year Award, and we'll continue to excel in developing the tools and processes that will keep the U.S. in a lead position in manufacturing sciences."
Other professors and research engineers from across campus who help support Georgia Tech's work for Boeing include Bert Bras, Jon Colton, Bill Singhose, Rick Cowan, Shreyes Melkote, Russell Peak, Chris Paredis, Tina Guldberg, Marc Goetschalckx, Joshua Vaughn, Frank Mess and Andrew Dugenske.
The Boeing global supply chain is among the most geographically dispersed in manufacturing. The company annually purchases more than $50 billion in goods and services from approximately 28,000 suppliers that employ more than 1.2 million people around the world.
“In today’s challenging business environment, an agile supply chain that continuously delivers excellent performance is critical,” said Jack House, vice president of Supplier Management for Boeing Defense, Space and Security and the leader of Boeing’s companywide Supplier Management program. “The supplier partners receiving 2011 Supplier of the Year Awards have demonstrated outstanding commitment to providing our customers with the best-value, highest-quality products and services, while meeting the customers’ requirements and anticipating their needs for the future.”
]]>The technique takes advantage of the unique properties of atoms that have one or more electrons excited to a condition of near-ionization known as the Rydberg state. Atoms in this highly excited state – with a principal quantum number greater than 70 – have exaggerated electromagnetic properties and interact strongly with one another. That allows one Rydberg atom to block the formation of additional excited atoms within an area of 10 to 20 microns.
That single Rydberg atom can then be converted to a photon, ensuring that – on average – only one photon is produced from a rubidium cloud containing hundreds of densely-packed atoms. Reliably producing a single photon with well known properties is important to several research areas, including quantum information systems.
The new technique was reported April 19 in Science Express, the rapid online publication of the journal Science. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF), and by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR).
“We are able to convert Rydberg excitations to single photons with very substantial efficiency, which allows us to prepare the state we want every time,” explained Alex Kuzmich, a professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “This new system offers a fertile area for investigating entangled states of atoms, spin waves and photons. We hope this will be a first step toward doing a lot more with this system.”
Kuzmich and co-author Yaroslav Dudin, a graduate research assistant, have been studying quantum information systems that rely on mapping information from atoms onto entangled pairs of photons. But the Raman scattering technique they have been using to create the photons was inefficient and unable to provide the number of entangled photons needed for complex systems.
“This new photon source is about a thousand times faster than existing systems,” Dudin said. “The numbers are very good for our first experimental implementation.”
To create a Rydberg atom, the researchers used lasers to illuminate a dense ensemble of several hundred rubidium 87 atoms that had been laser-cooled and confined in an optical lattice. The illumination boosted a single atom from the entire cloud into the Rydberg state. Atoms excited to the Rydberg state strongly interact with other Rydberg atoms, and under suitable conditions, modify the atomic level energies and prevent more than one atom from being transferred into this state – a phenomenon known as the Rydberg blockade.
Rydberg atoms show this strong interaction within a range of 10 to 20 microns. By limiting their starting ensemble of rubidium atoms to approximately that distance, Kuzmich and Dudin were able to ensure that no more than one such atom could form.
“The excited Rydberg atom needs space around it and doesn’t allow any other Rydberg atoms to come nearby,” Dudin explained. “Our ensemble has a limited volume, so we couldn’t fit more than one of these atoms into the space available.”
Kuzmich and Dudin have been using Rydberg atoms with a principal quantum number of approximately 100. These excited atoms are much larger – as much as a half-micron in diameter – than ground state rubidium atoms, which have a quantum number of 5 and a diameter of a few Angstroms.
Once a highly excited atom was created, the researchers used an additional laser field to convert the excitation into a quantum light field that has the same statistical properties as the excitation. Because the field was produced by a single Rydberg atom, it contained just one photon, which can be used in a variety of protocols.
For the Georgia Tech group, the next goal may be development of a quantum gate between light fields. The quantum gating of photons has been proposed and pursued by many research groups, so far unsuccessfully.
“If this can be realized, such quantum gates would allow us to deterministically create complex entangled states of atoms and light, which would add valuable capabilities to the fields of quantum networks and computing,” Kuzmich said. “Our works points in this direction.”
Beyond quantum information systems, the new single-photon system could also help scientists investigating other areas of physics.
“Our results also hold promise for studies of dynamics and disorder in many-body systems with tunable interactions,” Kuzmich explained. “In particular, translational symmetry breaking, phase transitions and non-equilibrium many-body physics could be investigated in the future using strongly-coupled Rydberg excitations of an atomic gas.”
The single-photon work complements research being done in the Kuzmich lab on long-lived quantum memories. A new Air Force Office of Scientific Research Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) was recently awarded to a consortium of seven U.S. universities that will work together to determine the best approach for generating quantum memories based on interaction between light and matter. Georgia Tech leads the MURI.
“With this new work, we have demonstrated a new, deterministic source of single photons,” Kuzmich said. “In its first experimental realization, it already out-performs other types of single photons that have been pursued during the past decade around the world, including in our group. With further increases in efficiency and generation rate – and integration with long-lived quantum memories being developed in related work – such a single-photon source may make possible optical quantum information processing.”
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]]>Tuesday, May 1, is the priority application deadline for fall financial aid packages; for those who apply by this date, they’ll receive notice of their award by mid-June. Unlike applying for acceptance to the Institute, students must apply for aid every year.
“Doing it earlier gives students more time to ensure it’s complete, and makes sure we can review all their options,” said Marie Mons, director of the Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid (OSFA). Mons said some funds require early application; for others, students simply have a better shot if they apply early and give OSFA more time to evaluate their options.
Last year, Financial Aid saw an increase in filings of the Free Application for Federal Student Aid, or FAFSA, and Mons expects applications will be at the same level or higher for 2012-13. A new federal rule this year requires that some applicants also submit a tax transcript, which they must obtain from the IRS, to verify certain financial information. Students required to submit this document will be notified via email and directed to BuzzPort for more information.
Procrastination can put one at a disadvantage: later submissions are often drawing on a smaller pool of aid. Many students may still rely on assistance from parents for finances, but, because of Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) regulations on what information may be divulged to parents, the student is the primary contact for financial aid purposes.
“Our goal is to deliver, and to have a financial aid path planned out for students,” Mons said. Last year, OSFA delivered more than $187 million for Tech students.
Mons encourages all students to apply for aid, even if they don’t anticipate needing it for a certain term. If unforeseen circumstances arise and a student finds that aid is needed, their application will be in a stack among others that arrived late in the cycle.
“Applying as early as possible makes us better equipped to help when things change,” Mons said. Those who receive a financial aid package do not necessarily have to accept the award.
A financial aid application requires the FAFSA and a brief Georgia Tech application telling what type of aid a student wants and, with many students co-oping or being intermittently off campus for other endeavors, when they will be on campus. Both forms are available on the OSFA website.
To apply for financial aid for fall 2012, visit finaid.gatech.edu. Students with questions or who need assistance may contact their financial advisor.
]]>Marie Mons
Office of Scholarships and Financial Aid
McLaughlin is currently the vice provost for International Initiatives and Steven A. Denning Chair in Global Engagement and Ken Byers Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech.
“Steve’s background, experiences and outstanding reputation in fields critical to the school make him ideally suited and well-prepared to lead ECE during the next era,” said Dr. Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering. “He is an ideal match for the school’s high aspirations both nationally and internationally. Steve is a thoughtful academic administrator, an accomplished researcher who understands the needs of industry and a person of deep integrity.”
McLaughlin succeeds May, who became dean of the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech in July 2011. Dr. Douglas B. Williams has been serving as interim chair for the school.
As the new chair, McLaughlin will oversee a school that is consistently ranked as one of the nation's most prominent programs of its kind in both graduate and undergraduate education. The school is the largest producer of electrical engineers and computer engineers in the United States, with more than 2,400 undergraduate and graduate students and 112 faculty members. In FY2011, ECE faculty members acquired an impressive $56,853,439 in research grants and contracts from government and industrial sources.
“It’s a huge honor to be selected as the next chair of the School of ECE. The opportunity to work with so many exceptional faculty, students, staff and alumni to make our School even more prominent is thrilling,” said McLaughlin. “In ECE I firmly believe we are at the right place at the right time in terms of education, research and economic development impact in Georgia, the nation and around the globe.”
McLaughlin earned his Ph.D. in electrical and computer engineering from the University of Michigan. He joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech in September 1996. As vice provost for the past five years, he has been responsible for Georgia Tech's global engagement and is the point person for international initiatives in research, education and economic development.
McLaughlin is also president of GT Global Inc. a not-for-profit corporation recently created to manage select Georgia Tech international initiatives. He is a co-founder of Whisper Communications, a physical-layer security company established in 2009 to commercialize technologies developed in his research group. McLaughlin was previously deputy director of Georgia Tech-Lorraine, the European campus of Georgia Tech located in Metz, France, from 2006-2007. In 2005, he was president of the IEEE Information Theory Society. He has held positions at Booz, Allen and Hamilton, AT&T Bell Labs and Eastman Kodak. From 1992-1996, he was on the electrical engineering faculty at the Rochester Institute of Technology. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.
His research group has published in the general areas of communications and information theory, particularly in the areas of error control coding, and constrained codes for magnetic and optical recording; forward error correction and equalization for wireless and optical networks; quantum key distribution, wireless and RFID security. His group has published more than 240 papers in journals and conferences and holds 30 U.S. patents. McLaughlin has served as the research and thesis advisor to more than 50 students at the bachelor’s, master’s, doctoral and post doctoral levels.
The College of Engineering at Georgia Tech is the largest of its kind in the country with more than 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled. The college ranks in the top five in undergraduate and graduate engineering education by U.S. News and World Report.
]]>Despite many achievements in the field of super-resolution microscopy in the past few years with spatial resolution advances, live-cell imaging has remained a challenge because of the need for high temporal resolution.
Now, Lei Zhu, assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and Bo Huang, assistant professor in UCSF’s Department of Pharmaceutical Chemistry and Department of Biochemistry and Biophysics, have developed an advanced approach using super-resolution microscopy to resolve cellular features an order of magnitude smaller than what could be seen before. This allows the researchers to tap previously inaccessible information and answer new biological questions.
The research was published April 22, 2012 in the journal Nature Methods. The research is funded by the National Institutes of Health, UCSF Program for Breakthrough Biomedical Research, Searle Scholarship and Packard Fellowship for Science and Engineering.
The previous technology using the single-molecule-switching approach for super-resolution microscopy depends on spreading single molecule images sparsely into many, often thousands of, camera frames. It is extremely limited in its temporal resolution and does not provide the ability to follow dynamic processes in live cells.
“We can now use our discovery using super-resolution microscopy with seconds or even sub-second temporal resolution for a large field of view to follow many more dynamic cellular processes,” said Zhu. “Much of our knowledge of the life of a cell comes from our ability to see the small structures within it.”
Huang noted, “One application, for example, is to investigate how mitochondria, the power house of the cell, interact with other organelles and the cytoskeleton to reshape the structure during the life cycle of the cell.”
Currently, light microscopy, especially in the modern form of fluorescence microscopy, is still used frequently by many biologists. However, the authors say, conventional light microscopy has one major limitation: the inability to resolve two objects closer than half the wavelength of the light because of the phenomenon called diffraction. With diffraction, the images look blurry and overlapped no matter how high the magnification that is used.
“The diffraction limit has long been regarded as one of the fundamental constraints for light microscopy until the recent inventions of super-resolution fluorescence microscopy techniques,” said Zhu. Super-resolution microscopy methods, such as stochastic optical reconstruction microscopy (STORM) or photoactivated localization microscopy (PALM), rely on the ability to record light emission from a single molecule in the sample.
Using probe molecules that can be switched between a visible and an invisible state, STORM/PALM determines the position of each molecule of interest. These positions ultimately define a structure.
The new finding is significant, said Zhu and Huang, because they have shown that the technology allows for following the dynamics of a microtubule cytoskeleton with a three-second time resolution, which would allow researchers to study the active transports of vesicles and other cargos inside the cell.
Using the same optical system and detector as in conventional light microscopy, super-resolution microscopy naturally requires longer acquisition time to obtain more spatial information, leading to a trade-off between its spatial and temporal resolution. In super-resolution microscopy methods based on STORM/PALM, each camera image samples a very sparse subset of probe molecules in the sample.
An alternative approach is to increase the density of activated fluorophores so that each camera frame samples more molecules. However, this high density of fluorescent spots causes them to overlap, invalidating the widely used single-molecule localization method.
The authors said that a number of methods have been reported recently that can efficiently retrieve single-molecule positions even when the single fluorophore signals overlap. These methods are based on fitting clusters of overlapped spots with a variable number of point-spread functions (PSFs) with either maximum likelihood estimation or Bayesian statistics. The Bayesian method has also been applied to the whole image set.
As a result of new research, Zhu and Huang present a new approach based on global optimization using compressed sensing, which does not involve estimating or assuming the number of molecules in the image. They show that compressed sensing can work with much higher molecule densities compared to other technologies and demonstrate live cell imaging of fluorescent protein-labeled microtubules with three-second temporal resolution.
The STORM experiment used by the authors, with immunostained microtubules in Drosophila melanogaster S2 cells, demonstrated that nearby microtubules can be resolved by compressed sensing using as few as 100 camera frames, whereas they were not discernible by the single-molecule fitting method. They have also performed live STORM on S2 cells stably expressing tubulin fused to mEos2.
At the commonly used camera frame rate of 56.4 Hertz, a super-resolution movie was constructed with a time resolution of three seconds (169 frames) and a Nyquist resolution of 60 nanometers, much faster than previously reported, said Zhu and Huang. These results have proven that compressed sensing can enable STORM to monitor live cellular processes with second-scale time resolution, or even sub-second-scale resolution if a faster camera can be used.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu)(404-894-6986) or Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu)( 404-385-3364).
Writer: Sarah E. Goodwin
]]>Research News & Publications Office
(404) 894-6986
]]>As of Wednesday, May 16, the 12-gate addition will separate out travelers with final destinations out of the country from those who are destined for domestic locales. The opening of the terminal brings a “new front door” that should offer a more streamlined travel experience, and passengers should expect changes from their experience in the past.
“The [current] baggage re-check process is very unpopular and can take as long as 90 minutes,” said Al Snedeker, public relations manager for the airport. “That’s going away for international passengers who are coming and staying in Atlanta.”
Those driving to the airport should pay attention to signage on I-75/85 southbound, as the international terminal is accessed via a new exit off I-75 rather than the airport’s current I-85 exit. Regardless of connections, if the final destination on a ticket is international, travelers should plan to split to I-75 and check in at the international terminal. New parking accompanies the terminal for those leaving a car behind.
If taking MARTA, passengers will still to take the train southbound to the Airport station. There, a 24-hour complimentary shuttle will take them from ground transportation at the domestic side of the airport to the front door of the international terminal. This shuttle will also transport from the international to domestic terminal, for those arriving in Atlanta from international flights and wanting to take MARTA home. Travelers should budget an additional 30 minutes of travel time if using the shuttle.
Concessions at Concourse F, home to the new international gates, will include many local Atlanta destinations such as Sweet Auburn Market Cafe, The Varsity, El Taco and The Pecan. The terminal will also offer a common use club and sleeping accommodations for short-term rentals.
“People will be pleased when they see it’s a world-class facility,” Snedeker said. The terminal even houses an art program with several pieces throughout the space, whose installations “inform the building and create a sense of place.”
The terminal is built to LEED silver specifications and will apply for certification once open. For more about the terminal and to inform travel plans, visit the airport’s website.
]]>Each spring the Institute honors many of its outstanding students at the Student Honors Luncheon. On April 16, the following students were recognized for their achievements throughout the past academic year.
If you or a student you know has recently been honored, please send the student name, award name and awarding organization to kristen.shaw@comm.gatech.edu.
]]>During physiological processes, fibronectin fibers are believed to experience mechanical forces that strain the fibers and cause dramatic structural modifications that change their biological activity. While understanding the role of fibronectin strain events in development and disease progression is becoming increasingly important, detecting and interrogating these events is difficult.
In a new study, researchers identified molecular probes capable of selectively attaching to fibronectin fibers under different strain states, enabling the detection and examination of fibronectin strain events in both culture and living tissues.
“The mechano-sensitive molecular probes we identified allow us to dynamically examine the relevance of mechanical strain events within the natural cellular microenvironment and correlate these events with specific alterations in fibronectin associated with the progression of disease,” said Thomas Barker, an assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
The study was published on April 23, 2012 in the online early edition of the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences. Barker worked on the study with Georgia Tech graduate student Lizhi Cao and Harry Bermudez, an assistant professor in the University of Massachusetts Amherst Department of Polymer Science and Engineering. The research was supported by the National Institutes of Health.
Researchers have hypothesized that mechanical forces emanating from cells may partially unfold fibronectin and regulate what proteins bind to it. While simulation and tissue culture experiments support this hypothesis, direct evidence that such molecular events occur in living organisms has not yet been presented, according to Barker.
A technique called intramolecular fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) has been used to detect molecular strain events in fibronectin fibers, but the technique has limitations because it cannot be used on living tissues and requires the fibronectin to be chemically labeled.
“The molecular probes we identified can be used to map molecular strain events in native extracellular matrix and living lung tissues,” explained Barker. “The probes can also be used to study the mechanism by which cells control the mechanical forces that alter fibronectin’s conformation, control the exposure of its binding sites and regulate cell signaling.”
The researchers used a controlled fibronectin fiber deposition and extension technique to apply tension to the fibers and stretch them to 2.6 times their original length without significant breakage. Then they used a technique called phage display to identify peptides capable of discriminating fibronectin fibers under relaxed and strained conditions. The molecular probes displaying peptide sequences LNLPHG and RFSAFY showed the greatest binding affinity to fibronectin fibers and the greatest efficiency in discriminating between relaxed and strained fibers.
For proof-of-concept demonstrations, the researchers used the probes to discriminate fibronectin fibers within native extracellular matrix and mouse lung slices. LNLPHG preferentially attached to relaxed fibronectin fibers, whereas RFSAFY bound to strained fibers. The probes never attached to the same fiber, which confirmed their ability to selectively discriminate regions within a fibronectin fiber network.
“This study strongly suggests that fibronectin fibers under strain display markedly different biochemical signatures that can be used for the molecular-level detection of fibronectin fiber strain,” explained Barker. “The data also show the potential for living tissue to be interrogated for mechano-chemical alterations that lead to physiological and pathological progression.”
In the future, the researchers hope to use these fibronectin strain-sensitive probes to target therapeutics to fibronectin fibers based on their mechanical signature.
This work was supported in part by training grants from the National Institutes of Health (NIH) (Award Nos. T32-GM008433 and T32-EB006343). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NIH.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu; 404-385-3364) or John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu; 404-894-6986)
Writer: Abby Robinson
]]>From April 9–13, the Honor Advisory Council (HAC) will host Honor Week, educating students on what the group does, how it can assist them and some of the intricacies of the Academic Honor Code.
HAC works with students and the Office of Student Integrity (OSI) to educate those who are cited for violations related to the honor code, as well as those who just have general questions about what is and is not permissible.
“Students don’t always know their rights and can come into the OSI process unprepared,” said Anna Skipper, chair of the HAC. Skipper and the rest of the council serve around 70 students a semester as peer advisors, answering queries from students submitted to honor@gatech.edu and holding ethics seminars as part of the integrity process for those facing sanctions. However, not all students who face a violation will receive sanctions.
Students can learn more about HAC at a panel discussion on Wednesday, April 11, at 4:30 p.m. in the Clough Commons Lounge (Room 205) featuring Anderson Smith, senior vice provost for academic affairs; Dana Hartley, director of undergraduate studies; and Cara Appel-Silbaugh, associate dean of students and interim director of OSI. Students can ask questions about the honor code, the OSI process and other academic-related concerns.
“We want to promote the community of care that exists at Tech, and how the honor code ties in,” Skipper said. HAC will also be tabling on Tech Walk during the week. To learn more about HAC, attend the panel on April 11 or visit honor.gatech.edu. Or, contact a student honor advisor at honor@gatech.edu.
]]>Kristen Shaw
Communications and Marketing
“Without a doubt, Reggie is the very best person to lead civil and environmental engineering into the future,” said Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering. “He is an active researcher and highly regarded educator. Reggie has the vision, scholarship, experience, temperament and outstanding reputation in fields critical to the school that make him ideally suited and prepared to lead.”
As the new chair, DesRoches will oversee a school that is consistently ranked as one of the nation's most prominent programs of its kind in both graduate and undergraduate education. The school was originally established in 1898, and it has become the second largest civil and environmental engineering program in the country with more than 1,250 students and 60 faculty members.
“I am honored to be chosen as the next school chair, and I look forward to working with an outstanding group of students, faculty, staff and alumni,” said DesRoches. “This is an exciting time for the civil & environmental engineering profession, and I believe that our program is well positioned to lead in educating and empowering our students to solve future global challenges.”
DesRoches earned his Ph.D. in structural engineering from the University of California at Berkeley. His primary research interests are design of buildings and critical infrastructure subjected to extreme loads, seismic risk assessment of transportation systems, and application of smart materials in seismic-resistant design and retrofit. He has a particular interest in mitigating the impacts of earthquakes in the Caribbean and Central America. He has published more than 200 articles in the general area of earthquake engineering and seismic risk assessment and has given more than 100 presentations in 30 countries.
He is currently the director of the Caribbean Hazards Assessment, Mitigation and Preparedness (CHAMP) Project, which is focused on managing the risks from natural hazards in the Caribbean. DesRoches has served as chair of the ASCE Seismic Effects Committee (2006-2010), chair of the executive committee of the Technical Council on Lifeline Earthquake Engineering (2010), and is a past board member of the Earthquake Engineering Research Institute (EERI). He is currently a member of the executive committee of the National Academy of Sciences Disasters Roundtable, and is on the advisory board for the Natural Disasters, Coastal Infrastructure and Emergency Management Research Center (DIEM).
DesRoches has received numerous awards, including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers (PECASE) in 2002, the 2007 ASCE Walter L. Huber Civil Engineering Research Prize, the Georgia Tech Outstanding Doctoral Thesis Advisor Award (2010), the Georgia Engineer of the Year in Education Award (2012) and the Georgia Tech ANAK Award (2008). The ANAK award is considered among the highest honors that the undergraduate student body can bestow on a Georgia Tech faculty member. He is a three-time invitee to the National Academy of Engineering Frontiers of Engineering program (2002, 2004, 2009).
The College of Engineering at Georgia Tech is the largest of its kind in the country with more than 12,000 undergraduate and graduate students enrolled. The college ranks in the top five in undergraduate and graduate engineering education by U.S. News and World Report.
]]>GT For the Kids (GT FTK) is the student-run organization that plans Georgia Tech’s Dance Marathon. The group’s mission is to spread awareness while fundraising for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta, a Children’s Miracle Network subisdiary.
Dance Marathon is the culminating event of GT For the Kids. Members raise founds throughout the year by selling koozies and holding frozen yogurt nights, but Dance Marathon event sponsors and donors contribute most to fundraising. This year, GT FTK kicked off a new corporate sponsorship program, allowing them to partner with companies and showcase them at the event. This addition will assist in aiming closer to the group’s fundraising goal of $50,000. Last year, Dance Marathon raised $36,114.71.
Rachel Doctor, a fourth-year business administration major and GT FTK internal vice president, stated that her favorite part of Dance Marathon has been meeting the families touched by Children’s Miracle Network.
“It is so inspiring to hear all that they have gone through and makes you just want to give everything that you can to help out these families and others like them,” Doctor said.
Dance Marathon is not the only opportunity for the organization to interact with these families and see the benefits of their hardwork and fundraising.
“Being in Atlanta, we have three children's hospitals very close to us,” said Steven LaBrecque, a fourth-year industrial engineering major and GT FTK executive director. “This gives us the unique opportunity to see the results of our efforts in action. We try to plan multiple hospital visits every year to allow people to see how much their hard work has helped children.”
Each participant receives a t-shirt, blanket, cup, free food and raffle tickets for prizes. Prizes include gift cards and items from Victoria’s Secret, Southern Tide and Figo, as well as a football signed by Georgia Tech Football Coach Paul Johnson. Students are invited to visit the website and register to celebrate “For the Kids!”
Performances include:
Rachel Doctor, VP of Internal Events
]]>“Those of us who work on the Blueprint staff don't do it because we want awards or recognition, so when it happens, it is icing on the cake,” said Grace Stephens, managing editor and former editor-in-chief for the 2011 book. The Blueprint also recently earned 11 other awards from the CSPA, highlighting student work in photography, writing and design.
“As the 2011 Blueprint editor-in-chief, I could not be more proud of the 2011 staff and all that they have accomplished. The Blueprint as an organization has only grown in reputation, both on campus and now at a national scale, because of their efforts,” Stephens said.
Staff members accepted the award in a ceremony at Columbia University during spring break, during which they also attended a student media conference with peers from the Technique.
“This once again proves that Georgia Tech students can excel in any task they take on,” said Mac Pitts, assistant dean of students and director of student publications. “Being honored by the CSPA with a Crown Award is the highest achievement a print publication can receive in the field of student media. The Blueprint staff of the 2011 book should be very proud of their accomplishments, as should the Institute and its students.”
Visit the Blueprint website to learn more about the yearbook or request a copy of a book.
]]>The Catherine M. and James E. Allchin Early Career Professorship reflects the College of Computing’s mission to challenge and prepare the next generation of information technology leaders to expand the worldwide footprint of computing. Allchin professors will be selected by the dean of the College of Computing and will serve for a term of two to five years.
“Support of computing faculty early in their careers lays the groundwork for producing truly great scholar-teachers,” said Zvi Galil, dean and John P. Imlay Jr. Chair in the College of Computing. “By endowing the College’s first early-career professorship, Jim and Catherine Allchin will enable us to provide the level of support needed to attract and retain great faculty and create world-class leaders in computing research and education. We appreciate the Allchins’ generosity and their vision.”
Allchin’s distinguished career includes key leadership positions at Microsoft Corp., where he managed the development of Windows NT, Windows XP, and all the Windows Server products. Prior to joining Microsoft, he held technology leadership positions with Banyan Systems and Texas Instruments. Allchin received his doctorate in Information and Computer Science (ICS) from Georgia Tech in 1983, building upon a master’s degree in computer science from Stanford University and a bachelor’s degree in computer science from the University of Florida.
“A great faculty is clearly the key to producing great computing graduates, and I attribute much of my professional success to the high caliber of instruction I received over the course of my education,” said Allchin. “Catherine and I want to play a part in strengthening the exceptional faculty at Georgia Tech’s College of Computing. Georgia Tech already has tremendously skilled and highly renowned scholars on its faculty, and our hope is that the Allchin Professorship will plant the seeds for many more great academic teachers and researchers in the coming years.”
Allchin is a former member of the College of Computing’s advisory board. A lifelong musician, Allchin currently devotes his time to his passion for modern blues and rock.
To inquire about making a gift in support of the College of Computing, contact Senior Director of Development Mary Alice Isele at 404.894.8383 or mary.isele@cc.gatech.edu.
###
About the Georgia Tech College of Computing
The Georgia Tech College of Computing is a national leader in the creation of real-world computing breakthroughs that drive social and scientific progress. With its graduate program ranked 10th nationally by U.S. News and World Report, the College’s unconventional approach to education is defining the new face of computing by expanding the horizons of traditional computer science students through interdisciplinary collaboration and a focus on human-centered solutions. For more information about the Georgia Tech College of Computing, its academic divisions and research centers, please visit http://www.cc.gatech.edu.
Contacts
Brendan Streich
Director of Communications
College of Computing at Georgia Tech
404-894-7253
Director of Communications
]]>The fixtureless and noncontact technique, known as the magnetically actuated peel test (MAPT), could help ensure the long-term reliability of electronic devices, and assist designers in improving resistance to thermal and mechanical stresses.
“Devices are becoming smaller and smaller, and we are driving them to higher and higher performance,” said Suresh Sitaraman, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “This technique would help manufacturers know that their products will meet reliability requirements, and provide designers with the information they need to choose the right materials to meet future design specifications over the lifetimes of devices.”
The research has been supported by the National Science Foundation, and was reported in the March 30, 2012 issue of the journal Thin Solid Films.
Modern microelectronic chips are fabricated from layers of different materials – insulators and conductors – applied on top of one another. Thermal stress can be created when heat generated during the operation of the devices causes the materials of adjacent layers to expand, which occurs at different rates in different materials. The stress can cause the layers to separate, a process known as delamination or de-bonding, which is a major cause of microelectronics failure.
“We need to find out if these layers will separate over time as they are used and subjected to thermal and other stresses,” Sitaraman explained. “These systems are used in a wide range of applications from cell phones and computers to automobiles, aircraft and medical equipment. They must be reliable over the course of their expected lifetimes.”
Sitaraman and doctoral student Gregory Ostrowicki have used their technique to measure the adhesion strength between layers of copper conductor and silicon dioxide insulator. They also plan to use it to study fatigue cycling failure, which occurs over time as the interface between layers is repeatedly placed under stress. The technique may also be used to study adhesion between layers in photovoltaic systems and in MEMS devices.
The Georgia Tech researchers first used standard microelectronic fabrication techniques to grow layers of thin films that they want to evaluate on a silicon wafer. At the center of each sample, they bonded a tiny permanent magnet made of nickel-plated neodymium (NdFeB), connected to three ribbons of thin-film copper grown atop silicon dioxide on a silicon wafer.
The sample was then placed into a test station that consists of an electromagnet below the sample and an optical profiler above it. Voltage supplied to the electromagnet was increased over time, creating a repulsive force between the like magnetic poles. Pulled upward by the repulsive force on the permanent magnet, the copper ribbons stretched until they finally delaminated.
With data from the optical profiler and knowledge of the magnetic field strength, the researchers can provide an accurate measure of the force required to delaminate the sample. The magnetic actuation has the advantage of providing easily controlled force consistently perpendicular to the silicon wafer.
Because many samples can be made at the same time on the same wafer, the technique can be used to generate a large volume of adhesion data in a timely fashion.
But device failure often occurs gradually over time as the layers are subjected to the stresses of repeated heating and cooling cycles. To study this fatigue failure, Sitaraman and Ostrowicki plan to cycle the electromagnet’s voltage on and off.
“A lot of times, layers do not delaminate in one shot,” Sitaraman said. “We can test the interface over hundreds or thousands of cycles to see how long it will take to delaminate and for that delamination damage to grow.”
The test station is small enough to fit into an environmental chamber, allowing the researchers to evaluate the effects of high temperature and/or high humidity on the strength of the thin film adhesion. This is particularly useful for electronics intended for harsh conditions, such as automobile engine control systems or aircraft avionics, Sitaraman said.
“We can see how the adhesion strength changes or the interfacial fracture toughness varies with temperature and humidity for a wide range of materials,” he explained.
So far, Sitaraman and Ostrowicki have studied thin film layers about one micron in thickness, but say their technique will work on layers that are of sub-micron thickness. Because their test layers are made using standard microelectronic fabrication techniques in Georgia Tech’s clean rooms, Sitaraman believes they accurately represent the conditions of real devices.
“To get meaningful results, you need to have representative processes and representative materials and representative interfaces so that what is measured is what a real application would face,” he said. “We mimic the processing conditions and techniques that are used in actual microelectronics fabrication.”
As device sizes continue to decline, Sitaraman says the interfacial issues will grow more important.
“As we continue to scale down the transistor sizes in microelectronics, the layers will get thinner and thinner,” he said. “Getting to the nitty-gritty detail of adhesion strength for these layers is where the challenge is. This technique opens up new avenues.”
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Robinson (404-894-6986)(abby@innovate.gatech.edu).
Writer: John Toon
Research News & Publications Office
(404) 894-6986
]]>Binbin Chen, a junior majoring in biomedical engineering, is focusing on cancer research. As a freshman, he joined the Platt Lab in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, where he worked “shoulder-to-shoulder” with Assistant Professor Manu Platt on a cancer project.
“Both of my grandfathers died of cancer, so I always hoped to contribute to the battlefield of cancer research,” he said. “The Goldwater Scholarship is not only a recognition for me but also for my supportive parents, mentors and friends.”
A sophomore majoring in computer science, Ramya Ramakrishnan plans to carry on research in the field of human-computer interaction.
“This scholarship and recognition inspires me to pursue goals that I am passionate about,” she said. “I hope to make a difference in people’s lives.”
Venkat Goli, a junior majoring in chemical and biomolecular engineering, also received an honorable mention.
The Goldwater Scholars were selected on the basis of academic merit from a field of 1,123 mathematics, science and engineering students who were nominated by the faculties of colleges and universities nationwide. Awarded to 282 sophomores and juniors for the 2012–2013 academic year, the one- and two-year scholarships cover the cost of tuition, fees, books and room and board up to a maximum of $7,500 per year
]]>On March 29-30, Georgia Tech students met with senior policymakers in the Obama Administration and in Congress, and discussed aspects of aerospace science and technology policy that they have been studying.
The trip was part of Braun’s undergraduate honors course – Aerospace Science and Technology Policy: The Role of NASA in the 21st Century – that addresses the importance of technology innovation and the integration of technical, budgetary and policy issues in the framing of the U.S. civilian aerospace economy.
The course covers the challenges and fundamental physics of aerospace engineering, the historical development of aerospace capabilities, and budgetary and policy aspects of this sector. The course has utilized the rollout and subsequent debate of the Obama administration 2011 NASA space policy as a case study.
The group met with Congressman Chaka Fattah; Doug Babcock, legislative staff for Senator Sherrod Brown; Charlie Harman, chief of staff for Senator Saxy Chambliss; Ed Feddeman, professional staff of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology; Alex Saltman, executive director of the Commercial Spaceflight Federation; Lori Garver, NASA deputy administrator and Beth Robinson, NASA chief financial office.
]]>A Mix of Prestigious Award Winners:
National Science Foundation (NSF) Grant Recipients:
In addition, Dr. Phelps provides clinical input into safety and regulatory interactions and assists with the development of global collaborations that integrate broad medical, scientific, and commercial concepts into the program. These efforts are designed to shepherd the transition of viable ideas into useable products across and between the fields of medicine, technology and science.
“We are excited to have someone of Dr. Phelps’ broad clinical expertise as part of our leadership team” said Barbara Boyan, Executive Director of TRIBES and the Price Gilbert, Jr. Chair in Tissue Engineering in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory and Associate Dean for Research and Innovation for Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering.
In addition to his role as TRIBES Medical Director, Dr. Phelps serves as the Director of Health Systems Technology Research and Development at the Georgia Tech Research Institute where he manages and facilitates health-related technological synergies internally and externally.
Dr. Phelps retired in March 2011 from the U. S. Army with over 30 years of total active federal service. He started in the military as a Special Forces Senior Non-Commissioned Officer. Following his commission, he completed medical school and residency and retired as a Lieutenant Colonel in the Medical Corps. His duties included planning, supporting, and/or directing numerous Department of Defense research and development projects totaling over $150 million.
Widely regarded as an expert on a variety of special operations/operational medicine, injury biomechanics and wilderness medicine topics, he currently focuses on research into the cause, prevention, and development of applied solutions to human injury. He is certified as both a Senior U.S. Army and U.S. Navy Flight Surgeon/Aerospace Medicine physician, and is a distinguished Fellow of the American Academy of Family Physicians.
The Translational Research Institute for Biomedical Engineering and Science (TRIBES) links biomedical research and educational activities at Georgia Tech with key medical institutions and organizations for the benefit of diagnosis and treatment of patients in the healthcare system. TRIBES provides critical capabilities to pre-commercial engineering development activities for the license and transition of technology into industry.
TRIBES is part of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University and includes three centers directed by Boyan – the Center for Advanced Bioengineering for Soldier Survivability, the Center for Pediatric Healthcare Technology Innovation and the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium.
]]>Students last week elected Eran Mordel and Amit Khanduri as undergraduate president and executive vice president, and Michael Kirka and Gareth Guvanasen as graduate president and executive vice president. Undergraduate representatives from various departments across campus were also elected for next year, with their graduate counterparts being elected in the fall.
SGA is comprised of two houses: the Undergraduate House of Representatives and the Graduate Student Senate. Together, the houses affect many facets of student life.
“SGA is critical for influencing Institute policy and reflecting students' views to the administration, facilitating student organizations' funding and promoting collaboration, but, most importantly, being the advocate of the student body in both urgent and long-term strategic plans,” said Mordel, a fourth-year industrial systems and engineering major.
Khanduri, a fourth-year business administration major, adds that Georgia Tech’s SGA is in a unique position with an approximately $5 million budget to allocate to student groups and campus departments.
“This, along with the committees we serve on, makes GT SGA one of the most autonomous among [its] peer institutions,” Khanduri said. “It's all about the students' potential and responsibility that the administration has entrusted us with.”
Guvanasen, a doctoral candidate in electrical and computer engineering, said he ran for the position of executive vice president because he wanted to improve events that foster collaboration across research fields, such as the Graduate Career Symposium and the Georgia Tech Research and Innovation Conference, as well as make progress towards currently existing projects.
“Our Graduate Student Government has made great progress towards acquiring a new health insurance plan for its graduate students that should provide greater benefits at lower cost,” said Guvanasen. “I look forward to working with others to see this project through to completion.”
Executive cabinet positions will be filled through an application and interview process conducted by the newly elected president and executive vice president in each house.
]]>Undergraduate Executive Ticket
Eran Mordel (President)
Amit Khanduri (Executive Vice President)
Graduate Executive Ticket
Michael Kirka (President)
Gareth Guvanasen (Executive Vice President)
Undergraduate House of Representatives
Sophomore Representatives
Alex Bandes (Class President)
Kelliann Morrisey
Dillon Roseen
Gillen Heisler
Junior Representatives
Nicholas Picon (Class President)
Kris Surapaneni
Patrick Nadeau
Brandon Owens
Senior Representatives
Vett Vandiver (Class President)
Gregory Jones
Aerospace Engineering
Kyle Yawn
Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
Daniel Uchiyama
Chemistry
Kabir Dhada
Civil Engineering
Evan Boyce
Co-op
Joshua Sandler
College of Computing
Reeves Broussard
Sharif Mahfouz
Economics
Kristopher Bryant
Electrical and Computer Engineering
Rahul Castelino
Nicholas Buehler
Matt VerSteeg
History, Technology, and Society
Lauren Burtz
Industrial Design
Eric Chiu
Industrial and Systems Engineering
Daniel Forrest
Macie Whatley
Andrew Frazelle
Literature, Communication, and Culture
Kevin Guebert
Management
Katarina Rose Jenkins
Sam Meyer
Materials Science and Engineering
Curtis Lemieux
Modern Languages
T.J. Kaplan
Public Policy
Merry Hunter-Hipp
Graduate Student Senate
Elections for the Graduate Student Senate will be held in Fall 2012.
Communications and Marketing
]]>Fortunately, researchers and students at the Georgia Institute of Technology have developed a possible solution for bus bunching that provides better service to riders, simplifies the job of drivers and reduces work for management.
Industrial & Systems Engineering Professor John Bartholdi and Georgia Tech alumnus Don Eisenstein (MS IE 1983, PhD IE 1992), a colleague from the University of Chicago, have devised a way of computing the delays so gaps between buses “self-equalize.”
Now an interdisciplinary team of Georgia Tech students, together with Tech Parking and Transportation Services, have built a system of tablet computers to control the trolleys on Tech’s main campus route, which carries more than 5,000 passengers a day.
“Because of its simplicity, our scheme is easy to implement and easy to adapt,” said Bartholdi, who is also the Manhattan Associates Chair of Supply Chain Management. “We expect it to be useful for other transportation systems with short headways, such as subway trains or airport shuttles.”
The first step toward reliable bus service, Bartholdi says, is to abandon the fixed schedule and have drivers go with the flow of traffic.
Under the scheme, each bus is equipped with a GPS and cellphone. The GPS constantly reports the bus’s position to a central server. When the server recognizes the bus has reached a stop, it sends a message via cellphone telling the driver how long to wait and when to proceed.
That departure time is calculated through a “self-equalizing” equation, which changes the headway of each newly arrived bus to an average of its former headway and the headway of the trailing bus. For example, if its former headway was larger, its new headway becomes smaller. Using the equation, gaps between buses will equalize even if a bus is added or removed, or if the bus route changes.
“The equation computes a wait time for each bus arriving at a control point in such a way that gaps between buses tend to equalize,” Bartholdi said. “Exactly how that happens is the magic of the mathematics.”
When the research team tested the system on Tech’s bus line earlier this semester, the researchers received positive results and favorable reviews from bus riders and drivers.
This is a Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) at Georgia Tech, which combines students from across disciplines to solve a real-world project. The research outcomes will be published in Transportation Research Part B in May.
]]>Cosmic rays are electrically charged particles, such as protons, that strike Earth from all directions, with energies up to one hundred million times higher than those created in man-made accelerators. The intense conditions needed to generate such energetic particles have focused physicists’ interest on two potential sources: the massive black holes at the centers of active galaxies, and the exploding fireballs observed by astronomers as gamma ray bursts (GRBs).
IceCube is using neutrinos, which are believed to accompany cosmic ray production, to explore these theories. In a paper published in the April 19 issue of the journal Nature, the IceCube collaboration – which includes a Georgia Institute of Technology scientist -- describes a search for neutrinos emitted from 300 gamma ray bursts observed, most recently in coincidence with the SWIFT and Fermi satellites, between May 2008 and April 2010. Surprisingly, they found none - a result that contradicts 15 years of predictions and challenges one of the two leading theories for the origin of the highest energy cosmic rays.
“The result of this neutrino search is significant because for the first time we have an instrument with sufficient sensitivity to open a new window on cosmic ray production and the interior processes of GRBs,” said IceCube spokesperson and University of Maryland physics professor Greg Sullivan. “The unexpected absence of neutrinos from GRBs has forced a re-evaluation of the theory for production of cosmic rays and neutrinos in a GRB fireball and possibly the theory that high energy cosmic rays are generated in fireballs.”
IceCube is a high energy neutrino telescope at the geographical South Pole in Antarctica, operated by a collaboration of 250 physicists and engineers from the United States, Germany, Sweden, Belgium, Switzerland, Japan, Canada, New Zealand, Australia and Barbados. The IceCube Neutrino Observatory was built under a National Science Foundation (NSF) Major Research Equipment and Facilities Construction grant, with assistance from partner funding agencies around the world. The NSF Office of Polar Programs continues to support the project with a maintenance and operations grant. Construction was finished in December 2010.
“One of the main objectives of IceCube is to search for the sources of the highest energy cosmic rays,” explained Ignacio Taboada, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Physics who has been involved in IceCube since its planning stages. “Gamma ray bursts have always been high on the list of potential sources for cosmic rays. Though not completely ruled out, the mechanisms by which GRBs could produce these cosmic rays are now significantly constrained by these results. We will keep looking for the sources, and our chances of finding them will increase as we accumulate more data to improve our sensitivity.”
IceCube observes neutrinos by detecting the faint blue light produced in neutrino interactions in ice. Neutrinos are of a ghostly nature; they can easily travel through people, walls, or the planet Earth. To compensate for the antisocial nature of neutrinos and detect their rare interactions, IceCube is built on an enormous scale. One cubic kilometer of glacial ice, enough to fit the great pyramid of Giza 400 times, is instrumented with 5,160 optical sensors embedded up to 2.5 kilometers deep in the ice.
GRBs, the universe’s most powerful explosions, are usually first observed by satellites using X-rays and/or gamma rays. GRBs are seen about once per day, and are so bright that they can be seen from half way across the visible universe. The explosions usually last only a few seconds, and during this brief time they can outshine everything else in the universe.
“Although we have not discovered where cosmic rays come from, we have taken a major step towards ruling out one of the leading predictions,” said IceCube principal investigator and University of Wisconsin - Madison physics professor Francis Halzen.
Improved theoretical understanding and more data from the compete IceCube detector will help scientists better understand the mystery of cosmic ray production. IceCube is currently collecting more data with the finalized, better calibrated, and better understood detector.
For more information about IceCube, visit www.icecube.wisc.edu.
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]]>Thanks to a grant from the National Science Foundation, Gilda Barabino, professor of biomedical engineering at Georgia Tech, organized the workshop to bring together distinguished, talented and innovative engineering professionals to address this challenge, which is related to enhanced global competiveness and an improved national economy.
The workshop attracted more than 70 engineering faculty and innovators from Harvard, Stanford, North Carolina A &T State University and other leading institutions. Researchers who attended gained insight, resources and knowledge toward activities that support innovation, entrepreneurial endeavors and ultimately, the economic status of our nation, Barabino said.
As an internationally recognized researcher and educator and the newly elected president of the Biomedical Engineering Society, Barabino has committed herself to her technical career and to impacting the future by developing opportunities for innovation and career success among minority faculty.
“By providing opportunities for professional development linked to a better understanding of research innovation and translation, the [workshop] contributes to the development and retention of a well equipped faculty cadre,” Barabino said. “It broadens the talent pool for translational research that drives company formation, job creation, a healthy economy and global competitiveness.”
Georgia Tech Dean of Engineering Gary May, who was one of the conference sponsors, said the workshop is a positive step toward increasing underrepresented faculty in the STEM fields.
“Faculty are the intellectual life blood of universities, so faculty development is a critical issue,” May said. “This is particularly true for underrepresented faculty in STEM fields, as there are too few of us to allow any to be unsuccessful. I applaud the Minority Faculty Development Workshop for seeking solutions which will contribute to successful, enriched, and fulfilling careers for its participants.”
National Science Foundation Program Director Omnia El-Hakim stressed the importance of attracting more women to engineering.
“Women constitute 50 percent of the U.S. Population, but are not represented fully in the engineering disciplines nor in entrepreneurship,” El-Hakim said. “The NSF believes in broadening participation through these types of programs because diversification in these realms brings important perspectives in solving challenges of national concern while maintaining excellence.”
The NSF Minority Faculty Development Workshop: Engineering Enterprise and Innovation was the sixth in a series that began in 2001 with funding under the NSF Engineering Directorate. The workshop addressed strategic goals of the National Science Foundation and critical needs of the nation related to enhanced global competiveness and an improved national economy.
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The Office of International Education and Culture Tech have long collaborated to organize Culture Fest, celebrating the culture and diversity of campus. This year’s weeklong event, from April 2–9, will continue to do just that, with world food, movie screenings and other activities open to students, faculty and staff.
The week begins with a Food Fest and Language Café on Monday, April 2, where more than 20 different global dishes will be served for a $5 ticket price. The Language Café will let participants practice basic greetings and phrases in numerous languages with speakers from the Language Institute.
“This event is unique in that it bridges a connection between typical Georgia Tech students and the international students of the Language Institute,” said Courtney Widjaja, publicity co-chair for Culture Tech and a first-year biology student. “Modern language students especially should look forward to practicing their speaking skills with these foreign native speakers.”
The week continues with a karaoke night, movie night and coffee hour, as well as opportunities to learn or watch international dance with GT Salsa’s Ritmo Latino and India Club at GT’s annual Holi Show. Ritmo Latino attendees will learn basic salsa, meringue, mambo and cumbia steps, as well as see these dances performed by professionals. The Holi Show features performances by students from universities around the Southeast, and proceeds from the event will benefit an India Club service project.
“For both [International Karaoke Night and Ritmo Latino], we invite attendees to actively contribute their own singing and dancing skills to the stage of Culture Fest,” Widjaja said. Contribute your own talents or enjoy those of others by joining in the cultural celebration all week.
]]>Courtney Widjaja
Culture Tech
A freshwater zooplankton species known as Daphnia dentifera endures periodic epidemics of a virulent yeast parasite that can infect more than 60 percent of the Daphnia population. During these epidemics, the Daphnia population evolves quickly, balancing infection resistance and reproduction.
A new study led by Georgia Institute of Technology researchers reveals that the number of vertebrate predators in the water and the amount of food available for Daphnia to eat influence the size of the epidemics and how these “water fleas” evolve during epidemics to survive.
The study shows that lakes with high nutrient concentrations and lower predation levels exhibit large epidemics and Daphnia that become more resistant to infection by the yeast Metschnikowia bicuspidata. However, in lakes with fewer resources and high predation, epidemics remain small and Daphnia evolve increased susceptibility to the parasite.
“It’s counterintuitive to think that hosts would ever evolve greater susceptibility to virulent parasites during an epidemic, but we found that ecological factors determine whether it is better for them to evolve enhanced resistance or susceptibility to infection,” said the study’s lead author Meghan Duffy, an assistant professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech. “There is a trade-off between resistance and reproduction because any resources an animal devotes to defense are not available for reproduction. When ecological factors favor small epidemics, it is better for hosts to invest in reproduction rather than defense.”
This study was published in the March 30, 2012 issue of the journal Science. The research was supported by the National Science Foundation and the James S. McDonnell Foundation.
In addition to Duffy, also contributing to this study were Indiana University Department of Biology associate professor Spencer Hall and graduate student David Civitello; Christopher Klausmeier, an associate professor in the Department of Plant Biology and W.K. Kellogg Biological Station at Michigan State University; and Georgia Tech research technician Jessica Housley Ochs and graduate student Rachel Penczykowski.
For the study, the researchers monitored the levels of nutritional resources, predation and parasitic infection in seven Indiana lakes on a weekly basis for a period of four months. They calculated infection prevalence visually on live hosts using established survey methods, estimated resources by measuring the levels of phosphorus and nitrogen in the water, and assessed predation by measuring the size of uninfected adult Daphnia.
The researchers also conducted infection assays in the laboratory on Daphnia collected from each of the seven lake populations at two time points: in late July before epidemics began and in mid-November as epidemics waned. The assays measured the zooplankton’s uptake of Metschnikowia bicuspidata and infectivity of the yeast once consumed.
The infection assays showed a significant evolutionary response of Daphnia to epidemics in six of the seven lake populations. The Daphnia population became significantly more resistant to infection in three lakes and significantly more susceptible to infection in three other lakes. The hosts in the seventh lake did not show a significant change in susceptibility, but trended toward increased resistance. In the six lake populations that showed a significant evolutionary response, epidemics were larger when lakes had lower predation and higher levels of total nitrogen.
“Daphnia became more susceptible to the yeast in lakes with fewer resources and higher vertebrate predation, but evolved toward increased resistance in lakes with increased resources and lower predation,” noted Duffy.
The study’s combination of observations, experiments and mathematical modeling support the researchers’ theoretical prediction that when hosts face a resistance-reproduction tradeoff, they evolve increased resistance to infection during larger epidemics and increased susceptibility during smaller ones. Ultimately, ecological gradients, through their effects on epidemic size, influence evolutionary outcomes of hosts during epidemics.
“While the occurrence and magnitude of disease outbreaks can strongly influence host evolution, this study suggests that altering predation pressure on hosts and productivity of ecosystems may also influence this evolution,” added Duffy.
The team plans to repeat the study this summer in the same Indiana lakes to examine whether the relationships between ecological factors, epidemic size and host evolution they found in this study can be corroborated.
This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Award Nos. DEB-0841679, DEB-0841817, DEB-0845825 and OCE-171 0928819). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
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]]>Specifically, the Leadership Education and Development (LEAD) Program within the Division of Student Affairs has helped create new opportunities in Tech’s residential, academic and extracurricular environments.
For its newest initiative, LEAD is working with admissions, faculty, residence life and academic affairs to invite select incoming freshmen to join the first Grand Challenges Living Learning Community: a group of students who will populate the entirety of Howell Hall to focus on the global “grand challenges” of food, energy, water and health over the course of an academic year.
“We’re going across all colleges for candidates — it takes a multidisciplinary perspective to address these challenges,” said LEAD Director Wes Wynens. Students will take related courses in the fall and spring, with faculty from disparate disciplines advising teams throughout the year in preparing for a culminating project in the spring. Robert Butera, a professor jointly appointed in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, will serve as faculty director for the program.
“I’m sold on the approach of getting kids together from a variety of backgrounds where they’re learning how to learn, working in teams and tackling unresolved questions,” Butera said. Using that model is part of what drew Butera to Grand Challenges, but was complemented by his desire to support Tech’s continued pursuit of enhancing student and faculty interaction.
“I’ve always felt strongly that there is a serious level of need at Georgia Tech to improve engagement between students and faculty,” said Butera, who earned his undergraduate degree from the Institute. Seeing the residential college system modeled while a graduate student at Rice University led to his involvement — first with the ThinkBig housing communities and now with Grand Challenges. Butera has recruited faculty associates from other colleges to participate in the program, who will have lunch with residents on a regular basis and work with them on Grand Challenges projects.
“If you really want to improve interactions between students and faculty, you actually have to create an environment where informal, spontaneous activity happens,” he said.
In the classroom, students seeking the new minor in leadership studies opt to take 15 credit hours of topic-related coursework. The first cohort of 25 students began completing the minor last fall.
“The minor is designed to complement a variety of Georgia Tech degree programs and will give students practical, real-world experience in leadership and leadership development,” Wynens said. The minor will be expanded next academic year to include more courses, as well as a new track that combines public policy and international leadership.
A third student opportunity will be through a Leadership Academy, where participants will develop skills in seven core competencies during their time at Tech. With this option, students will express competency in these areas through various campus activities to demonstrate their leadership skills, being intentional about improving leadership ability.
“We want to meet students where they are in leadership development,” Wynens said. “Student organizations, community outreach and service are great places to do that.” A small group of upperclassmen will serve as leaders among leaders in the role of Leadership Fellows.
Students can learn more about these various options for growth at leadership.gatech.edu. In addition to enhancing student-faculty interaction, preparing students for global leadership is one of Tech’s institutional initiatives in its 25-year strategic plan.
]]>The collaboration, called Learning by Innovative Neuro Collaborations Research, or LINCR, will link research groups in two different buildings on campus and compete for one of four LINCR fellowships for the summer. Students need not have performed research in related areas before, but must still be undergraduates as of this summer to qualify. Funding for the program was provided to link the many different neuro-related research on campus.
Selected students will research full time for 13 weeks during the summer, being compensated at $10 per hour. Each of two Principal Investigators (PIs) who oversee projects will receive $2,000 for equipment and supplies. Summer projects could potentially continue into the 2012-13 school year or after.
Interested students should visit gtneuro.net for more information on the program’s requirements and application. Deadline to apply is Monday, April 9. Students should be notified by Friday, April 20. GTNeuro and The Tower Undergraduate Research Journal will assist in making selections.
What LINCR Fellows will get out of program:
Expectations of Fellows:
Ethan Craig
GT Neuro
The purpose of the blog is to position Tech's experts -- elevating their value and exposure -- by demonstrating the breadth, depth and quality in a public forum facilitated by the institute. The primary goals of this initiative are to:
A companion Twitter feed strategically targeting journalists has also been created to highlight new posts and other Georgia Tech news.
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“By being part of the SDAV team, the Georgia Tech researchers and the software artifacts we have been producing can more widely affect research around the nation,” said Schwan, director of CERCS. “More importantly, our work can enable scientists to carry out their science mission more effectively."
The Georgia Tech team is also part of one of the CoDesign projects being undertaken by DOE researchers that will work to improve the combustion processes used in internal combustion engines.
President Obama announced the $200 million Big Data Research and Development Initiative on Thursday, March 29. Visit here to learn more about the announcement.
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All this month, DramaTech is performing the rock musical “Rent,” winner of the 1996 Tony Award for Best Musical but perhaps more familiar to students through its reincarnation as a motion picture in 2005. The script is based on Puccini’s “La Bohème” and follows a year in the life of eight friends in the late 1980s. The characters are faced with social issues while struggling to make a living in New York City and follow the tagline “No day but today.”
The culture of this student-run organization can be described as nothing short of unique, according to Melinda Ellington, a fifth-year international affairs major and president of DramaTech.
“Our theater is different than other colleges and universities,” Ellington said. “Even outsiders who experience DramaTech can sense its quality. We don’t have a theater major here at Tech — everyone who participates is eager to learn, has a passion for theater and is in it for pure fun.”
DramaTech currently consists of approximately 125 active members, who produce three larger productions each year (one per semester); they also operate an improv group, musical theater group and instructional classes throughout each semester. Students interested in learning more about theater are invited to knock on DramaTech’s door and join in the festivities.
“People come in and help with lighting for one show, and that’s OK,” adds Ellington. “We are for the students, by the students, and we want to share our love for theater with a campus full of science and engineering students. There is always someone hanging out at DramaTech working on homework or playing card games — it is a fun place to be.”
DramaTech has a handful of rituals for each performance, one being “the toaster.” Members consider the toaster a symbol of club culture and incorporate it into all of the company’s performances. The toaster is not necessarily in the spotlight, but can often be seen as a background prop, transformed into a purse or hung from the ceiling.
Those interested in getting involved are encouraged to visit dramatech.org or simply stop by the theater. To attend a performance, information about tickets and upcoming shows can be found here.
]]>For standard general admission seating, click here.
For stadium style seating, for handicapped persons or those who cannot sit for prolonged periods of time, click here.
“Rent” will be performed the following dates, with all shows beginning at 8 p.m.:
Friday, March 30
Saturday, March 31
Wednesday, April 4
Thursday, April 5
Friday, April 6
Saturday, April 7
Wednesday, April 11
Thursday, April 12
Friday, April 13
Saturday, April 14
Wednesday, April 18
Thursday, April 19
Friday, April 20
Saturday, April 21
DramaTech President
]]>If mimicked by artificial systems, this photocatalytic process could provide abundant new supplies of oxygen and, possibly hydrogen, as a by-product of producing electricity. However, despite its importance to the survival of the planet, scientists don’t fully understand the complex process plants use to harness the sun’s energy.
A paper published April 2 in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences moves scientists closer to that understanding by showing the importance of a hydrogen bonding water network in that portion of the photosynthetic machinery known as photosystem II. Using Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR) on photosystem II extracted from ordinary spinach, researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology tested the idea that a network of hydrogen-bonded water molecules plays a catalytic role in the process that produces oxygen.
“By substituting ammonia, an analog of the water molecule that has a similar structure, we were able to show that the network of hydrogen-bonded water molecules is important to the catalytic process,” said Bridgette Barry, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences. “Substituting ammonia for water inhibited the activity of the photosystem and disrupted the network. The network could be reestablished by addition of a simple sugar, trehalose.”
The research was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and published in the Early Edition of the journal.
In the chloroplasts of green plants, algae and cyanobacteria, oxygen is produced by the accumulation of photo-induced oxidizing equivalents in a structure known as the oxygen-evolving complex (OEC). The OEC contains manganese and calcium ions. Illumination causes oxidation of manganese ions in the OEC. Short laser flashes can be used to step through the reaction cycle, which involves four sequential light-induced oxidation reactions. Oxygen is produced on the fourth step, and then is released from the OEC.
This so-called S state cycle resets with the binding of the substrate, water. Scientists have proposed that a hydrogen bond network, which includes multiple water molecules bound to manganese ions, calcium ions, and protein amide carbonyl (C=O) groups, forms an electrostatic network surrounding the OEC. In this scenario, the extensive hydrogen-bond network would then serve as a component of the catalyst, which splits off oxygen.
To study the process, Barry and graduate student Brandon Polander used precision FT-IR spectroscopy to describe how the network reacts to a short laser flash. The second harmonic of a pulsed Nd-Yag laser was used as the light source. This illumination causes the OEC to undergo one step in its catalytic cycle, the so-called S1 to S2 transition. An infrared spectrum was recorded before and after a laser flash to the photosystem sample, which was isolated from supermarket spinach.
The exquisite sensitivity of FT-IR spectroscopy allowed them to measure changes in the bond strength of the protein C=O groups. The energies of these C=O groups were used as markers of hydrogen bond strength. The brief laser flash oxidized a manganese ion and caused a change in the strength of the C=O bond, which reported an increase in hydrogen bonding to water molecules. When ammonia was added as an inhibitor, a decrease in C=O hydrogen bonding was observed instead. Addition of trehalose, which is known to change the ordering of water molecules at the surface of proteins, blocked this effect of ammonia.
The study describes the coordinated changes that must occur in the protein to facilitate the reaction and shows that the strength of the hydrogen-bonded network is important.
“This research helps to clarify how ammonia inhibits the photosystem, which is something that researchers have been wondering about for many years,” Barry explained. “Our work suggests that ammonia can inhibit the reaction by disrupting this network of hydrogen bonds.”
The research also suggests that in design of artificial devices that carry out this reaction, sustaining a similar hydrogen-bonding network may be important. The stabilizing effect of trehalose discovered by Polander and Barry may also be important.
Beyond the importance of understanding the photosynthetic process, the work could lead to new techniques for producing hydrogen and oxygen using sunlight. One possibility would be to add a biomimetic photocatalytic process to a photovoltaic system producing electricity from the sun.
“In terms of providing new sources of energy, we still have lessons to learn from plants about how they carry out these critical processes,” Barry said. “It would be a great advance for the planet to have new, sustainable, and inexpensive processes to carry out this reaction.”
Ultimately, she hopes the full water oxidizing cycle can be explored and potentially harnessed or imitated for oxygen and energy production.
“We are only looking at a single part of the overall reaction now, but we would like to study the entire cycle, in which oxygen is produced, to see how the interactions in the water network change and how the interactions with the protein change,” Barry said. “The work is another step in understanding how plants carry out this amazing series of photosynthetic reactions.”
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]]>SGA is divided into an undergraduate House of Representatives and a Graduate Student Senate; together, in addition to other initiatives, the two houses manage the Student Activity Fee that students pay during any term they are enrolled at Tech. Funds are allocated through a bill and voting process to organizations such as the Campus Recreation Center and Student Center, but also support the efforts of many chartered student organizations on campus.
This week, SGA looks for new leadership in all of its roles, including president and executive vice president at both the undergraduate and graduate levels. Elections open Friday, April 6, at 1 p.m. at elections.gatech.edu and close Wednesday, April 11, at 4 p.m.
Undergraduate candidates for these positions include:
And graduate candidates include:
"It's important to have strong leaders in the executive president and vice president roles because those people play a key role in how engaged SGA is with the student body as a whole," said Vett Vandiver, vice president for communications for the undergraduate SGA. "I have definitely been encouraging my fellow students to become informed on what each candidate stands for, participate in the campaigning events and vote!"
In addition to these leadership positions, each academic department has a seat for a representative and a senator, and elections for these posts will also be held at elections.gatech.edu during the same time frame. To find out who currently serves for your area of study, visit sga.gatech.edu.
During the same time, SGA will celebrate I <3 GT week, a weeklong series of events celebrating students’ love for the Institute from April 9–13. The week will include a traditions tour, baseball game, cultural events and other spirit celebrations; see the full schedule of events online at sga.gatech.edu/iheartgt.
]]>During her visit in February, Boyan met with several congressmen, urging them to reauthorize “The Pediatric Medical Device Safety and Improvement Act." The law provides grants to fund non-profit pediatric device consortia, such as the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium. The grants connect scientists and innovators with device manufacturers, providing them financial resources and regulatory guidance needed to advance the development of devices for children.
“The funding from the FDA has opened many doors and some of our small companies have been able to secure venture capital funding to pursue these devices,” Boyan said.
One of three FDA-sponsored consortia awarded last year, the Atlanta Pediatric Device Consortium is a partnership between Georgia Tech, Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Emory University.
The Atlanta Pediatric Consortium provides assistance with engineering design, prototype development, pre-clinical and clinical studies and commercialization for novel pediatric medical devices. It is currently composed of nine projects, three main projects and six pilot projects, which were incorporated from the first Pediatric Device Competition.
“This consortium has brought excitement to the Atlanta Community and strengthened our research partnerships to develop the future of pediatric medical devices,” Boyan said.
Passed in 2007, “The Pediatric Medical Device Safety and Improvement Act" includes important incentives that promote the development of medical devices for children, which currently lags five to 10 years behind those for adults. Significant barriers to pediatric device development exist, including physiological differences in pediatric patients and challenges with recruiting pediatric participants for clinical trial. The law helps to support the creation of more pediatric devices, with 107 device projects developed during the program’s first two years, according to a report by the General Accounting Office.
Boyan was accompanied to D.C. by consortium co-directors Kevin Maher, MD, a cardiologist and researcher specializing in pediatrics with appointments at the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Sibley Heart Center and Emory University and Wilbur Lam, MD, PhD, a pediatric hematologist/oncologist and bioengineer with appointments at Emory, the Aflac Cancer Center of Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Georgia Tech.
]]>Georgia Institute of Technology researchers Philip Shapira and Jan Youtie helped answer that question through research presented March 27th at the International Symposium on Assessing the Economic Impact of Nanotechnology held in Washington, D.C. The researchers highlighted the importance of full lifecycle assessments to understand the impacts of nanotechnologies on green economic development in such areas as energy, the environment and safe drinking water.
“Nanotechnology promises to foster green and sustainable growth in many product and process areas,” said Shapira, a professor with Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy and the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research at the Manchester Business School in the United Kingdom. “Although nanotechnology commercialization is still in its early phases, we need now to get a better sense of what markets will grow and how new nanotechnology products will impact sustainability. This includes balancing gains in efficiency and performance against the net energy, environmental, carbon and other costs associated with the production, use and end-of-life disposal or recycling of nanotechnology products.”
But because nanotechnology underlies many different industries, assessing and forecasting its impact won’t be easy. “Compared to information technology and biotechnology, for example, nanotechnology has more of the characteristics of a general technology such as the development of electric power,” said Youtie, director of policy research services at Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute. “That makes it difficult to analyze the value of products and processes that are enabled by the technology. We hope that our paper will provide background information and help frame the discussion about making those assessments.”
The symposium is sponsored by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and by the U.S. National Nanotechnology Initiative. Support for Georgia Tech research into the societal impacts of nanotechnology has come from the National Science Foundation through the Center for Nanotechnology in Society based at Arizona State University.
For their paper, co-authors Shapira and Youtie examined a subset of green nanotechnologies that aim to enable sustainable energy, improve environmental quality, and provide healthy drinking water for areas of the world that now lack it. They argue that the lifecycle of nanotechnology products must be included in the assessment.
“In examining the economic impact of these green nanotechnologies, we have to consider the lifecycle, which includes such issues as environmental health and safety, as well as the amount of energy required to produce materials such as carbon nanotubes,” said Shapira.
Environmental concerns have been raised about what happens to nanomaterials when they get into water supplies, he noted. In addition, some nanostructures use toxic elements such as cadmium. Energy required for producing nano-enabled products is also an important consideration, though it may be balanced against the energy saved – and pollution reduced – through the use of such products, Shapira said.
Research into these societal issues, which is being conducted in parallel with the research and development of nanotechnology – may allow the resulting nano-enabled products to avoid the kinds of the controversies that have hindered earlier technologies.
“Scientists, policy-makers and other observers have found that some of the promise of prior rounds of technology was limited by not anticipating and considering societal concerns prior to the introduction of new products,” Youtie said. “For nanotechnology, it is vital that these issues are being considered even during the research and development stage, before products hit the market in significant quantities.”
The nanotechnology industry began with large companies that had the resources to invest in research and development. But that is now changing, Youtie said.
"A lot of small companies are involved in novel nanomaterials development,” she said. “Large companies often focus on integrating those nanomaterials into existing products or processes.”
Among the goals of the OECD symposium are development of methodologies and approaches for estimating the impacts of green nanotechnology on jobs and new product sales. Existing forecasts have come largely from proprietary models used by private-sector firms.
“While these private forecasts have high visibility, their information and methods are often proprietary,” Shapira noted. “We also need to develop open and peer-reviewed models in which approaches are transparent and everyone can see the methods and assumptions used.”
In their paper, Youtie and Shapira cite several examples of green nanotechnology, discuss the potential impacts of the technology, and review forecasts that have been made. Examples of green nanotechnology they cite include:
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]]>Opportunities include serving the community, as well as seeing students sing, dance or be immersed in mud. All students, faculty and staff are encouraged to enjoy the following open events that will be part of the week:
Greek Week Overall Co-Chairs
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Nearby, at the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, researchers are working with a large U.S. avionics maker to speed new product production using specialized software that automatically generates simulations of the manufacturing process. And across campus in the College of Architecture, a team is working with an international corporation on digital techniques that allow entire concrete walls to be custom-manufactured to architectural specifications.
The Georgia Institute of Technology was founded in 1885 with a mandate to develop manufacturing capabilities in the state of Georgia. Today, researchers whose work directly supports manufacturers can be found throughout Georgia Tech’s academic colleges; in the Georgia Tech Research Institute, which focuses on applied research; and in the Enterprise Innovation Institute, which assists business and industry.
Georgia Tech’s role in supporting industry was highlighted in June 2011 when President Barack Obama named Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson to the steering committee of the Advanced Manufacturing Partnership (AMP). Georgia Tech joined five other leading universities – the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Carnegie Mellon University, Stanford University, the University of California Berkeley and the University of Michigan – in the AMP’s $500 million push to guide investment in emerging technologies, increase overall U.S. global competitiveness and boost the supply of high-quality manufacturing jobs.
“We applaud this initiative, and Georgia Tech is honored to collaborate to identify ways to strengthen the manufacturing sector to help create jobs in Georgia and across the United States,” Peterson said. “Many of our challenges can be solved through innovation and fostering an entrepreneurial environment, as well as collaboration between industry, education and government to create a healthy economic environment and an educated workforce.”
Advanced manufacturing involves not only new ways to manufacture existing products, but also the development of new products emerging from advanced technologies, observed Stephen E. Cross, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research.
“Georgia Tech’s mandate has always been to support manufacturing and technology development in the state and in the nation – to conduct research with relevance – so supporting industry comes very naturally to us,” Cross said. “The leading-edge research across the Institute combines thought leadership with a focus on real-world problems and opportunities. Through this we will help lead a renaissance in advanced manufacturing in the United States.”
The university’s research initiatives on behalf of manufacturers are many and varied. These efforts include multiple areas of manufacturing-related research and involve collaboration across a variety of disciplines.
Developing Novel Manufacturing Technologies
Advancing Digital Manufacturing -- Suman Das, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has developed a technology that could transform how industry creates and produces complex metal parts through “lost wax” investment casting. In an ambitious project sponsored by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), he has created an all-digital approach that automates how part designs are turned into the real thing.
Currently, such metal parts are devised on computers using computer-aided design (CAD) software. But the next step – creating the ceramic mold with which the part is cast – involves a complex 12-step process that uses hundreds of tooling pieces and extensive manual labor. The result is a lengthy, costly and low-yield process that typically produces many scrap parts along with a few usable ones, said Das, who directs the Direct Digital Manufacturing Laboratory in Georgia Tech’s Manufacturing Research Center (MaRC).
By contrast, the approach used by Das involves building ceramic molds directly from a CAD design. Called large area maskless photopolymerization (LAMP), this high-resolution, direct digital manufacturing technology builds the molds, layer by layer, by projecting patterns of ultraviolet light onto a mixture of photosensitive resins and ceramic particles.
After a mold is formed, it is thermally post-processed at high temperatures to burn away the polymer and sinter the ceramic particles. That process forms a structure into which molten metal can be poured for casting.
“The LAMP process can reduce the time required to turn a CAD design into a test-worthy part from several months to about a week, and it can produce parts of a complexity that designers could only dream of before,” Das said. “It also can reduce costs by 25 percent and the number of unusable waste parts by more than 90 percent, while eliminating 100 percent of the tooling.”
Das is currently working with turbine-engine airfoils – complex parts used in aircraft jet engines – in collaboration with the University of Michigan, PCC Airfoils and Honeywell International Inc. He believes LAMP technology will become pervasive and will be effective in the production of many other types of metal parts.
Das said that LAMP can create not only testable prototypes, but could also be used in the actual manufacturing process, facilitating the mass production of complex metal parts at lower costs in a variety of industries.
A prototype LAMP alpha machine is currently building six typical airfoil molds in six hours. Das predicts that a larger beta machine – currently being built at Georgia Tech and scheduled for installation at a PCC Airfoils facility in Ohio in 2012 – will produce 100 molds in about 24 hours.
“When you can achieve those volumes, you have gone beyond rapid prototyping to true rapid manufacturing,” he said.
Customizing Building Components -- Researchers at the College of Architecture are also helping to automate the process of turning CAD designs into manufactured products. A team in the Digital Building Laboratory is collaborating with Lafarge North America to develop ways to manufacture customized wall structures directly from parametric digital models.
The new process involves custom-molding entire curtain walls from rubber negatives to produce a unitized system called the “Liquid Wall,” constructed with Ductal®, Lafarge’s ultra-high-performance concrete (UHPC), and stainless steel. The Liquid Wall, created by Peter Arbour of RFR Consulting Engineers and collaborator Coreslab Structures Inc., won the 2010 AIANY Open Call for Innovative Curtain-Wall Design.
“We don’t want to just pick standardized products out of catalogs anymore,” said Tristan Al-Haddad, an assistant professor in the College of Architecture who is involved in the collaboration with Lafarge, along with assistant professor Minjung Maing and others. “We’re developing the protocols and research to manufacture high-end customized architectural products economically, safely and with environmental responsibility.”
The Liquid Wall approach is challenging, explained professor Charles Eastman, who is director of the Digital Building Laboratory and has a joint appointment in the College of Computing. The process involves creating rubber negatives using wall-form designs created with parametric modeling software, then planning production procedures and mapping out ways to install the completed, full-size walls on actual buildings.
“When you’re creating a completely new process like the Liquid Wall, you’re faced with developing a whole new manufacturing process for this kind of material,” Eastman said.
Individualizing Mass Production -- Industrial designer Kevin Shankwiler, an associate professor in the College of Architecture, creates objects that can be both customized and mass-produced. By utilizing advances in flexible manufacturing technology, Shankwiler and his students develop furniture designs that can be changed to meet individual needs – such as those of persons with disabilities – while being built cost-effectively using mass production methods.
Today’s designers can build responsiveness to individual needs into the computer models used in production, Shankwiler said. Current manufacturing methods – such as computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) and 3-D printing techniques – are capable of creating furniture and other goods that can meet users’ specific requirements without resorting to an institutional look.
“In one research effort, we took a dining room chair in the Craftsman style, and we designed and built a model that could accommodate both wheelchair users of differing abilities and fully ambulatory people,” Shankwiler said. “We have to ask – how should the human need affect the manufactured output and what are the best methods for achieving that?”
Pursuing Micro-scale Machining -- J. Rhett Mayor, an associate professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, is investigating techniques that allow effective machining of metal surfaces at 50 microns – one 2,000ths of an inch – or less. He is also developing unique applications based on advanced micro-machining, such as tiny channels in metal that enhance heat transfer between surfaces.
At present, Mayor explained, the ability to cut micro-features into surfaces is limited to metal sections about 1 centimeter square, a size that offers little cooling capability. Research being conducted by Mayor and his group focuses on scaling up micro-machining capabilities so that micro features can be cut in larger metal sheets.
“We can currently make hundreds of features on a square centimeter,” Mayor said. “What we need are millions of features on a square foot.”
One type of micro-scale feature – micro-channel heat exchangers – could play an important role in cooling factory-floor devices, as well as in the development of closed-loop systems that could generate power using recycled heat. For example, today’s factories typically use large electrical motors that vent their heat inside the plant, wasting energy.
In related work, Mayor and his team are developing optimization routines and thermal models that could enhance electrical machine design through the application of micro-machining and other technologies. The aim is to create machines that are smaller, yet offer high energy outputs thanks to more efficient cooling and to energy recycling.
Another application of large scale micro-machining could involve the development of lightweight electric actuators that would take the place of hydraulics in aircraft. Such electric actuators would need plenty of power to replicate the high torque provided by hydraulics; those power requirements would demand effective cooling strategies.
Tackling Issues on the Factory Floor
Promoting Factory Robotics -- Henrik Christensen, a professor in the College of Computing, is working with the Boeing Company to advance robotic manufacturing in the aircraft maker’s facilities.
In one project, Christensen and his team are working on an initiative that makes fundamental changes to how pieces are handled on the factory floor. In this approach, robots reverse the standard procedure by moving processing machines to a given part, rather than moving the part through an assembly line.
“Think of a large airplane structure,” Christensen said. “Having a machine move along the body of the aircraft, rather than moving the body itself, could result in much more efficient use of the machine.”
The team is employing a movable platform in the MaRC building that supports a robotic processing machine. Tests have already been performed using mobile painting and drilling capabilities that could lead to similar implementations at Boeing facilities.
Christensen has also developed automation technology that helps Boeing inspect parts and sub-assemblies that arrive from suppliers. The mobile robotic system scans each arriving piece to confirm that it is the correct item and conforms to the stipulated dimensions.
The technology allows Boeing to identify shipping errors almost immediately, before the mistake can delay production. It also saves on labor costs and allows workers to be assigned to less routine tasks.
The Boeing projects are part of the Aerospace Manufacturing Initiative (AMI), which was established in 2008 when Boeing identified Georgia Tech as a strategic university partner and agreed to collaborate on innovative manufacturing technologies for aerospace products. The AMI, which involves multiple research projects across Georgia Tech, is led by Steven Danyluk, who is the Morris M. Bryan Jr. Chair in Mechanical Engineering for Advanced Manufacturing Systems. Since 2008, Siemens USA and CAMotion Inc. have also become AMI participants.
In another project just getting launched with a major French manufacturing company, Christensen is pursuing novel technology that would allow a factory-floor robot to learn tasks via direct human demonstration. Rather than having each robotic operation mapped out laboriously on a control computer, a worker would demonstrate the optimal way to perform a job and the robot would then mimic the human.
This human-model approach to robotic learning could have applications across a number of industries, he added; both Boeing and General Motors have expressed interest in the technology. Other application areas for this technique include health care and biotechnology, where it could help automate both manufacturing procedures and laboratory testing.
Improving Online Production -- Jianjun (Jan) Shi, a professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISYE), conducts research that addresses system informatics and control. He uses his training in mechanical and electrical engineering to integrate system data – comprising design, manufacturing, automation and performance information – into models that seek to reduce process variability.
In one effort, Shi is working with nGimat Co., a Norcross, Ga.- based company that is currently evaluating ways to mass produce a type of nanopowder used in high-energy, high-density batteries for electric cars. With sponsorship from the Department of Energy (DOE), Shi is supporting nGimat as it works to increase nanopowder output by several orders of magnitude.
“This product has very good characteristics, and the task here is to scale up production while maintaining the quality,” said Shi, who holds the Carolyn J. Stewart Chair in ISyE. “We must identify the parameters – what to monitor, what to control – to reduce any variability, and do so in an environmentally friendly way.”
In work focusing on the steel industry, Shi is pursuing multiple projects including the investigation of sensing technologies used to monitor very high temperature environments in steel manufacturing. With DOE support, he is working with OG Technologies Inc. to develop methods that use optical sensors to provide continuous high-speed images of very hot surfaces – between 1,000 and 1,450 degrees Celsius.
“We want to catch defect formation in the very early stages of manufacturing,” Shi said. “By using imaging data of the product effectively with other process data to eliminate defects, we can help optimize the casting process.”
In another project, sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), Shi is investigating ways to use process measurements and online adjustments to improve quality control in the manufacturing of the silicon wafers used in semiconductors. He is working with several manufacturers to examine the root causes of undesirable geometric defects in wafer surfaces.
Anticipating System Failure -- Nagi Gebraeel, an associate professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, conducts research in detecting and preventing failure in engineering systems as they degrade over time. The goal is to avoid both expensive downtime and unnecessary maintenance costs.
“We could be talking about a fleet of aircraft, trucks, trains, ships – or a manufacturing system,” Gebraeel said. “In any of these cases, it’s extremely useful for numerous reasons to be able to accurately estimate the remaining useful lifetime of a system or its components.”
With National Science Foundation (NSF) funding, Gebraeel has examined some of the key challenges in accurately predicting failures of complex engineering systems. Specific challenges include the ability to account for the uncertainty associated with degradation processes of these systems and their components, the effects of future environmental/operational conditions, and the dependencies and interactions that exist in multi-component systems.
In one project, Gebraeel and his team worked with Rockwell Collins, a maker of avionics and electronics, to monitor and diagnose the performance of circuit boards that control vital aircraft communications systems.
With equipment funding provided by Georgia Tech, Gebraeel has developed an adaptive prognostics system (APS), a custom research tool that allows him to investigate how quickly components degrade under stresses, using sensor-detected signals such as vibration.
“There’s a real need for information about the remaining life of components, so that users can find the economical middle ground between the cost of scheduled replacements and the cost of failure,” he said.
Maximizing Throughput with Software -- Three faculty members in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering – Shabbir Ahmed, George Nemhauser and Joel Sokol – recently completed a project supporting a major maker of float glass. The manufacturer was automating a process in which finished glass plates are packed for shipment.
The company was concerned that new machines – which pick up and remove glass from the production line – might fall behind, allowing valuable plates to be damaged. They wanted the capability to carefully schedule production sequences so the machines could function at maximum capacity without wasting plates.
The team tackled development of new software that could minimize production problems. They devised algorithms that allowed the machines to work at their maximum efficiency and enabled them to handle input data with more than 99 percent efficiency.
“The algorithms we delivered can also be used strategically, to determine how many machines of each type should be installed on a production line,” Sokol said.
Sokol, Nemhauser and Ahmed are also collaborating on a project with a large international corporation to support production throughput at a semiconductor manufacturing facility.
The challenge involves the physical movement of semiconductors from one processing station to another throughout the factory. Because the routing of semiconductors between processing machines can differ from item to item, there’s no linear assembly line procedure; instead, hundreds of automated vehicles pick up items from one processing point and move them to the next step.
Due to the facility’s layout, these automated vehicles often encounter congestion that can delay the production schedule, said Nemhauser, who is the A. Russell Chandler lll Chair and Institute professor. The team is developing methods to best route and schedule the vehicles to minimize congestion and to move items between machines in ways that don’t delay production.
Increasing Manufacturing Precision -- Shreyes Melkote, who is the Morris M. Bryan Jr. professor in mechanical engineering, directs the Precision Machining Research Center, one of numerous centers based in MaRC. Melkote researches precision manufacturing issues in several areas, including the production of precision metal parts and photovoltaic substrates.
In a project sponsored by The Timken Company, Melkote is investigating methods for faster and more efficient machining of hardened steel materials using a hybrid process called “Laser Assisted Hard Machining.” Results from successful machining trials have demonstrated that this hybrid process has the potential to reduce machining time as well as cutting tool cost by prolonging tool life.
In a Boeing-sponsored project, Melkote is developing thin-film sensors capable of monitoring high-speed machining operations. The goal is to give operators in-depth feedback for more effective control of high-speed rotating machines used to produce aerospace parts.
Traditional piezoelectric sensors are costly and unreliable, Melkote said, and installing them on a given machine can alter its dynamic characteristics. By contrast, sensors made from low-cost piezoelectric polymer film can be attached to a rotating device without affecting its operation. A patent application is being filed on this sensor technology.
“Thin-film sensors allow us to accurately measure what’s happening between the tool and the work-piece, in terms of forces, vibrations, deflections and other process responses,” he said. “We have demonstrated that the quality of information we are getting from a $200 sensor is as good as from one that costs $30,000.”
Innovations in Manufacturing Systems and Processes
Automating Manufacturing Simulations -- Professor Leon McGinnis of the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering focuses on model-based systems engineering, an approach that uses computational methods to enable capture and reuse of systems knowledge. McGinnis is pursuing several sponsored projects in this area.
In one effort, McGinnis and his team have been working with Rockwell Collins, a maker of avionics and electronics, to help speed the introduction of new products by automating a process that simulates the requirements of production.
To optimize the resources needed to make products at the required rate, McGinnis explained, Rockwell Collins creates a computerized simulation of the manufacturing processes. Development of these models has traditionally been the province of experts skilled in taking initial system designs and painstakingly translating them into simulations of actual production.
“This is not a trivial task – producing a simulation model requires some 100 to 200 hours per product,” said McGinnis, who is associate director of MaRC. “The company was only able to generate a few production models at a time, which created something of a bottleneck.”
To understand the process of developing simulation models, a team interviewed the Rockwell Collins experts on the methods they used to develop such models. Then the Georgia Tech researchers turned to SysML, a programming language that enables the computerized modeling of complex systems, including multiple related factors such as people, machinery and product flows.
By using SysML to describe the evolution of a given product, the researchers were able to automate its movement from design to simulation. Even more important, the team created a domain-specific version of SysML that was customized to the Rockwell Collins environment. That achievement allowed any of the company’s new products and systems to be plugged into a SysML-based automation process.
This new way of doing things appears to reduce the time required to build simulation models by an order of magnitude, said McGinnis, who leads the Model-Based Systems Engineering Center in MaRC.
In another project, McGinnis and his team are collaborating with the School of Mechanical Engineering and MaRC to develop semantics for manufacturing processes under a DARPA contract. In other work, McGinnis is collaborating with the Tennenbaum Institute – a Georgia Tech organization that supports research for enterprise transformation – to address the challenges of identifying and mitigating risks in global manufacturing enterprise networks.
Developing Future Factories -- A research team from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is working with the General Motors Co. to develop novel sensor and computer technologies for manufacturing.
The project, known as the Factory of the Future, seeks to establish a manufacturing model based on approaches and technologies that are largely new to factory design and processes. Among other things, the researchers are investigating the use of biologically inspired software algorithms to help maximize plant floor efficiency.
“The future factory is one with an extremely agile environment, allowing the manufacturing plant to be reconfigured in real time to meet the objectives for production,” said Gisele Bennett, director of the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory at GTRI.
At the heart of this process improvement approach is a robust combination of sensor and intelligent algorithm technologies, said Bennett, who is leading the project. The resulting optimization algorithms would utilize asset visibility of supplies, machines and vehicle-assembly status to optimize the manufacturing process, based on current requirements that could include energy savings, throughput or cost.
The goal is a broad, centralized view of all aspects of the manufacturing process, available in real time. This big-picture capability could lead to greater efficiency and productivity due to improved routing, inventory control and visibility into the health of the manufacturing equipment.
“Among other things, these techniques could support a capability for just-in-time car building,” Bennett said. “A consumer could go into a dealership, choose the car they wanted – and as soon as the car is specified, its assembly would begin remotely.”
Advancing the Adaptive Process -- A multidisciplinary team of Georgia Tech researchers is taking part in the Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) program. The four-year DARPA program, announced in the first half of 2011, fosters novel approaches to the design, verification and manufacturing of complex defense systems and vehicles. Funding for Georgia Tech’s share of the work is expected to exceed $10 million.
The AVM effort consists of three primary programs: META, Instant Foundry Adaptive through Bits (iFAB) and Fast Adaptable Next-Generation Ground Vehicle (FANG). FANG includes the vehicleforge.mil project and the Manufacturing Experimentation and Outreach (MENTOR) effort.
Georgia Tech is collaborating with Vanderbilt University on the META program and the related Component, Context, and Manufacturing Model Library (C2M2L) program. Led by professor Dimitri Mavris, director of the Aerospace Systems Design Lab, and research engineer Johanna Ceisel, Georgia Tech’s META effort focuses on dramatically improving the existing systems engineering, integration and testing processes for defense systems.
Rather than utilizing one particular alternative technique, metric or tool, META aims to develop model-based design methods for cyber-physical systems that are far more complex and heterogeneous than those in use today.
Shreyes Melkote, a professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, leads an iFAB team that is developing manufacturing-process capabilities and model libraries to enable automated planning for the design and manufacture of military ground vehicles.
A GTRI team led by Vince Camp is also supporting iFAB, providing process guidance for development of the libraries. In addition, researchers from four Georgia Tech units, along with companies InterCAX LLC and Third Wave Systems Inc., are supporting this iFAB effort.
The vehicleforge.mil project, led by GTRI researchers Jack Zentner and Nick Bollweg, is creating a secure central website and other web-based tools capable of supporting collaborative vehicle development. The core website – vehicleforge.mil – would allow individuals and teams to share data, models, tools and ideas to speed and improve the design process.
“The aim here is to fundamentally change the way in which complex systems are taken from concept to reality,” said Zentner, a senior research engineer. “By enabling many designers in varied locations to work together in a distributed manner, we’re confident that vehicles – and eventually other systems – can be developed with greater speed and better results.”
The C2M2L model library is part of the overall effort. C2M2L seeks to develop domain-specific models to enable the design, verification and fabrication of the FANG infantry fighting vehicle using the META, iFAB and vehicleforge.mil infrastructure.
The MENTOR effort will engage high school-age students in a series of collaborative design and distributed manufacturing prize-challenge experiments, with the goal of inspiring America’s manufacturing and technology workforce of tomorrow.
DARPA envisions that the prize challenges will include up to 1,000 high schools in teams distributed across the nation and around the world, using computer-numerically-controlled (CNC) additive manufacturing machines – also known as 3D printers. The goal is help students collaboratively design and build systems of moderate complexity, such as mobile ground and aerial robots and energy systems.
MENTOR is led by professor Daniel Schrage of the School of Aerospace Engineering and director of the Integrated Product Lifecycle Engineering Laboratory, and by professor David Rosen of the School of Mechanical Engineering, who is also director of the Rapid Prototyping & Manufacturing Institute in MaRC.
Strengthening Supply Chains -- Vinod Singhal, who is the Brady Family Professor of Operations Management in the College of Management, investigates supply chain disruptions and their relation to corporate performance. In one project, he is evaluating recent disruptions at manufacturing companies and other businesses, where he documents the magnitude of drop in stock prices, loss of revenue and increase in costs due to supply chain disruptions.
“Traditional approaches to supply chain management have focused only on efficiency,” Singhal said. “Newer approaches involve avoiding value destruction by instituting a reliable, responsive and robust supply chain.”
Singhal has developed a detailed framework that helps enterprises manage their supply chain risks. His research instructs companies on how to prioritize risks, making supply chain vulnerabilities more visible and ensuring that top management learns to recognize the issue as critical to corporate success.
Modeling Flexibility -- In the College of Management, Regents’ professor Cheryl Gaimon studies technology management in manufacturing and service enterprises. In one study, Gaimon and former Ph.D. student Alysse Morton analyzed the value of flexibility in high-volume manufacturing of products with short life cycles, such as computer components.
The researchers developed a model showing how companies could link internal manufacturing capabilities with swiftly changing external market forces. They demonstrated how these businesses could exploit manufacturing efficiencies, early market entry and quick shifts between product generations, combined with optimal pricing policies.
“Our results demonstrated that firms need to work closely with their equipment suppliers to achieve more flexible technology, and that even a less-efficient facility can realize a long-term competitive advantage through an earlier market-entry strategy,” Gaimon said.
Lowering Quality-Failure Impact -- Assistant Professor Manpreet Hora of the College of Management conducts research in several areas of business and manufacturing, including the recall of products such as automobiles. In a recent study, he looked at the risks that can sometimes be created by today’s lean manufacturing methods.
In studying automotive recalls, Hora discovered that because companies often share components across multiple vehicle lines to maintain lean practices, a potential defect in such components can greatly increase the cost and the magnitude of a recall. He concluded that increased quality checks of shared and critical parts are essential in lowering the impact of quality failures from recalls.
Helping Manufacturers Improve Products
Reducing Engine Noise -- In a project sponsored by EADS North America, a large aerospace and defense company, GTRI researcher Jason Nadler tackled the problem of helping the manufacturer reduce noise produced by commercial and military jet aircraft.
Nadler and his team used innovative materials that make possible a new approach to the physics of noise reduction. They found that honeycomb-like structures composed of many tiny tubes or channels can reduce sound more effectively than conventional methods.
“This approach dissipates acoustic waves by essentially wearing them out,” Nadler said. “It’s a phenomenological shift, fundamentally different from traditional techniques that absorb sound using a more frequency-dependent resonance.”
Nadler’s research involves broadband acoustic absorption, a method of reducing sound that doesn’t depend on frequencies or resonance. Instead of resonating, sound waves plunge into the channels and dissipate through a process called viscous shear.
He has developed what could be the world’s first superalloy micro honeycomb using a nickel-based superalloy. He estimates that this new approach could provide better sound attenuation than any acoustic liner currently available.
Improving Poultry Production -- The Food Processing Technology Division of GTRI performs a broad spectrum of research for the food industry, including numerous projects that support the state’s nearly $20 billion poultry industry. Research areas include advanced imaging and sensor technologies; robotics and automation systems; environmental and biological systems; food and product safety research; and worker safety research.
In one project, GTRI researchers are employing image processing, statistical modeling, modeling of biomaterials and high-speed force control to bring automated chicken deboning to poultry processors. The Intelligent Deboning System aims to match or exceed the efficiency of the manual process.
Initial tests of the deboning prototype system, including cutting experiments, have shown the system’s ability to recognize bone during a cut and thus avoid bone chips. The work has demonstrated the validity of GTRI’s approach.
“There are some very major factors in play in this project,” said Gary McMurray, chief of the Food Processing Technology Division and project director. “These include food safety – because bone chips are a major hazard for boneless breast fillets – and yield, because every 1 percent loss of breast meat represents about $2.5 million to each of Georgia’s 20 processing plants.”
Controlling Baking Systems -- GTRI has developed a production line system that automatically inspects the quality of sandwich buns exiting the oven and adjusts oven temperatures if it detects unacceptable products.
Working with baking company Flowers Foods and AMF/BakeTech, a baking equipment manufacturer, GTRI researchers Douglas Britton and Colin Usher have tested their industrial-quality prototype system. Made of stainless steel, the system is dust-and-water-resistant, and mounts on existing conveyor belts as wide as 50 inches.
The researchers tested the system in a Flowers Foods bakery.
“We have closed the loop between the quality inspection of buns and the oven controls to meet the specifications required by food service and fast-food customers,” said Britton. “By creating a more accurate, uniform and faster assessment process, we are able to minimize waste and lost product.”
Testing Manufacturing Materials -- The GTRI Materials Analysis Center (MAC), led by Lisa Detter-Hoskin, supports manufacturers and other groups using advanced analytical tools and methodologies that address materials characterization, failure analysis and corrosion issues for manufacturers and other companies. MAC annually manages research projects and evaluates samples for hundreds of corporations and agencies.
For example, the center supports CE-Tech LLC of Alpharetta, Ga., in numerous areas, including conducting analyses of competitive products and resins. The objective is to lower raw-material costs for CE-Tech clients through the substitution of lower-cost resins.
In another instance, GTRI works with Fairfield, Conn.-based Acme United Corp., a maker of cutting, measuring and safety products, to evaluate the chemistry and structure of new surface coatings. In one project, GTRI personnel tested a proprietary Acme United physical vapor deposition technology used to impart a hard outer shell onto steel blades.
“We frequently need to test,” said Larry Buchtmann, vice president for technology for Acme United. “GTRI has the specialized equipment and trained engineering staff to meet our ongoing needs for these services.”
Assessing Advanced Electronics -- GTRI’s Electromagnetic Test and Evaluation Facilities (EMTEF) and Electromagnetic Phenomenology Laboratory test facilities provide ongoing research and support for manufacturers. Both commercial customers and the U.S. government use these assets to aid design and manufacture of antennas and antenna-related sensors for wireless systems, cell and base station antennas, aircraft antennas and related applications.
“These multi-purpose ranges allow antenna manufacturers or design engineers to confirm modeling designs, diagnose performance problems, and to confirm performance against advertised specifications,” said GTRI researcher Barry Mitchell.
In one past instance, Mitchell recalls, a maker of aircraft weather radar was encountering problems with false alarms coming from wind-shear detection systems in flight. A GTRI team tested a waveguide antenna array on a planar near-field range belonging to the research institute, and the resulting aperture holograms revealed leakage points from brazed joints on the array. Eventually the problem was traced to a defect in the dip-brazing process during manufacturing, enabling corrective measures.
Making Manufacturing More Sustainable
Supporting Sustainable Manufacturing -- School of Mechanical Engineering professor Bert Bras, who leads the Sustainable Design and Manufacturing (SDM) Program in the MaRC, focuses on reducing the environmental impact of materials, products and manufacturing processes, while increasing their competitiveness.
The SDM group gets a large share of its research funding from industry. Together with MaRC research engineer Tina Guldberg, Bras and his group are currently working with Ford, GM and Boeing on projects related to sustainable manufacturing. Much of their work centers on a better understanding of the overall effect of manufacturing operations, as well as potential unintended consequences of product, process and business decisions over their life cycle.
One technique developed by Bras and his students involves the inclusion of environmental impact measures such as energy and water consumption in activity-based cost models. In this way, a single assessment model can quantify financial and environmental consequences of manufacturing process choices.
With Marc Weissburg, a professor in the School of Biology and co-director of the Center for Bio-Inspired Design, Bras and his team are working on an NSF-funded project focused on the role of biologically inspired design in industrial manufacturing networks.
Bras is also collaborating with professor Nancey Green Leigh of the School of City and Regional Planning and professor Steven French of the College of Architecture on an NSF-funded project that studies methods of boosting product and material recovery in urban areas for use in local manufacturing. Leigh and French are also focusing in this grant on quantifying the amount of carpet and electronic waste generated in a metropolitan area and the economic benefits of diverting it from landfills, thereby creating business and job opportunities.
Recovering and Reusing Waste -- Jane Ammons, who is the H. Milton and Carolyn J. Stewart School Chair in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, collaborates on reverse production systems with Matthew Realff, a professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering. For more than 10 years, the team has focused on two important areas: the recovery and reuse of carpet wastes and ways to reduce electronic waste.
Ammons, Realff and their teams have developed a mathematical framework to support the growth of used-carpet collection networks. Such networks could help to recycle much of the 3.4 billion pounds of carpet waste currently produced in the United States annually. Research indicates that successful reuse of that carpet has a potential value of at least $850 million, versus a disposal cost of at least $60 million for simply sending it to landfills.
In other work, the team is studying the problem of e-waste – unwanted electronic components such as televisions, monitors and computer boards and chips. The e-waste stream includes hazardous materials such as lead and other toxins, yet effective management and reuse of e-components can be profitable. Ammons and Realff have devised mathematical models that address the complexities of e-waste processing, with the goal of helping recycling companies stay economically viable.
Promoting Manufacturing Sustainability -- In a recent project, associate professor Chen Zhou in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, working with professor Leon McGinnis, tackled sustainability issues for a major U.S. manufacturer. The issue involved shipping gearbox components from China to the United States in ways that would minimize not only cost but also greenhouse gas emissions and waste.
It turned out that packaging was at the heart of the issue. The researchers had to configure component packaging so that the maximum number of components could be placed in a cargo container, yet also allow for optimal recycling of the packing materials to avoid waste and unnecessary cost.
“This was definitely a complex problem,” Zhou said. “You must track every piece of packaging from its source to its final resting place, when it either goes into another product or into a landfill.”
The team created a model – a globally sourced auto parts packaging system – that optimized cargo container space. The model also enabled the use of packing materials that were fully reusable; some materials went back to China for use in future shipments, while the rest was recycled into plastics for new vehicles.
Clearly, Georgia Tech’s broad-based involvement in advanced manufacturing research reflects both the talents of its faculty and the determination of U.S. industry to reinvent itself with the help of university-based research.
The United States generates more inventions than the rest of the world combined, and Georgia Tech will continue to work with business and government to help turn the nation’s vast innovative capabilities into an American industrial renaissance.
This article originally appeared in the Winter 2012 issue of Research Horizons magazine. Abby Robinson also contributed to this article.
Research projects mentioned in this article are supported by sponsors that include the National Science Foundation (NSF) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the principal investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the NSF or DARPA.
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]]>To address this challenge, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University have designed a new treatment approach that appears to halt the spread of cancer cells into normal brain tissue in animal models. The researchers treated animals possessing an invasive tumor with a vesicle carrying a molecule called imipramine blue, followed by conventional doxorubicin chemotherapy. The tumors ceased their invasion of healthy tissue and the animals survived longer than animals treated with chemotherapy alone.
“Our results show that imipramine blue stops tumor invasion into healthy tissue and enhances the efficacy of chemotherapy, which suggests that chemotherapy may be more effective when the target is stationary,” said Ravi Bellamkonda, a professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University. “These results reveal a new strategy for treating brain cancer that could improve clinical outcomes.”
The results of this work were published on March 28, 2012 in the journal Science Translational Medicine. The research was supported primarily by the Ian’s Friends Foundation and partially by the Georgia Cancer Coalition, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation and a National Science Foundation graduate research fellowship.
In addition to Bellamkonda, collaborators on the project include Jack Arbiser, a professor in the Emory University Department of Dermatology; Daniel Brat, a professor in the Emory University Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine; and the paper’s lead author, Jennifer Munson, a former Fulbright Scholar who was a bioengineering graduate student in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering when the research was conducted.
Arbiser designed the novel imipramine blue compound, which is an organic triphenylmethane dye. After in vitro experiments showed that imipramine blue effectively inhibited movement of several cancer cell lines, the researchers tested the compound in an animal model of aggressive cancer that exhibited attributes similar to a human brain tumor called glioblastoma.
“There were many reasons why we chose to use the RT2 astrocytoma rat model for these experiments,” said Brat. “The tumor exhibited properties of aggressive growth, invasiveness, angiogenesis and necrosis that are similar to human glioblastoma; the model utilized an intact immune system, which is seen in the human disease; and the model enabled increased visualization by MRI because it was a rat model, rather than a mouse.”
Because imipramine blue is hydrophobic and doxorubicin is cytotoxic, the researchers encapsulated each compound in an artificially-prepared vesicle called a liposome so that the drugs would reach the brain. The liposomal drug delivery vehicle also ensured that the drugs would not be released into tissue until they passed through leaky blood vessel walls, which are only present where a tumor is growing.
Animals received one of the following four treatments: liposomes filled with saline, liposomes filled with imipramine blue, liposomes filled with doxorubicin chemotherapy, or liposomes filled with imipramine blue followed by liposomes filled with doxorubicin chemotherapy.
All of the animals that received the sequential treatment of imipramine blue followed by doxorubicin chemotherapy survived for 200 days -- more than 6 months -- with no observable tumor mass. Of the animals treated with doxorubicin chemotherapy alone, 33 percent were alive after 200 days with a median survival time of 44 days. Animals that received capsules filled with saline or imipramine blue – but no chemotherapy -- did not survive more than 19 days.
“Our results show that the increased effectiveness of the chemotherapy treatment is not because of a synergistic toxicity between imipramine blue and doxorubicin. Imipramine blue is not making the doxorubicin more toxic, it’s simply stopping the movement of the cancer cells and containing the cancer so that the chemotherapy can do a better job,” explained Bellamkonda, who is also the Carol Ann and David D. Flanagan Chair in Biomedical Engineering and a Georgia Cancer Coalition Distinguished Cancer Scholar.
MRI results showed a reduction and compaction of the tumor in animals treated with imipramine blue followed by doxorubicin chemotherapy, while animals treated with chemotherapy alone presented with abnormal tissue and glioma cells. MRI also indicated that the blood-brain barrier breach often seen during tumor growth was present in the animals treated with chemotherapy alone, but not the group treated with chemotherapy and imipramine blue.
According to the researchers, imipramine blue appears to improve the outcome of brain cancer treatment by altering the regulation of actin, a protein found in all eukaryotic cells. Actin mediates a variety of essential biological functions, including the production of reactive oxygen species. Most cancer cells exhibit overproduction of reactive oxygen species, which are thought to stimulate cancer cells to invade healthy tissue. The dye’s reorganization of the actin cytoskeleton is thought to inhibit production of enzymes that produce reactive oxygen species.
“I formulated the imipramine blue compound as a triphenylmethane dye because I knew that another triphenylmethane dye, gentian violet, exhibited anti-cancer properties, and I decided to use imipramine -- a drug used to treat depression -- as the starting material because I knew it could get into the brain,” said Arbiser.
For future studies, the researchers are planning to test imipramine blue’s effect on animal models with invasive brain tumors, metastatic tumors, and other types of cancer such as prostate and breast.
“While we need to conduct future studies to determine if the effect of imipramine blue is the same for different types of cancer diagnosed at different stages, this initial study shows the possibility that imipramine blue may be useful as soon as any tumor is diagnosed, before anti-cancer treatment begins, to create a more treatable tumor and enhance clinical outcome,” noted Bellamkonda.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu; 404-385-3364) or John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu; 404-894-6986)
Writer: Abby Robinson
]]>Then consider the predictions made by Georgia Tech’sLogistic Regression Markov Chain (LRMC) method, a computer ranking system thathas historically been more accurate than the NCAA’s own Ratings PercentageIndex.
LRMC predicts this year’s NCAA Final Four matchups will mostlikely be Kentucky vs. Michigan St. and Ohio St. vs. Kansas, with Kentuckybeating Ohio St. for the championship.
Other predictions by the system include:
“Kentucky is the likely champion because they've won almostall their games,” said Joel Sokol, operations research professor at GeorgiaTech who developed LRMC along with colleagues. “They've won by convincingmargins at home and on the road against very good teams, and they've done itall against a strong schedule, including Kansas, North Carolina, Indiana andFlorida.”
Since the 2003 season, LRMC has correctly predicted theoutcomes of more NCAA tournament games than competing ranking systems and majorpolls.
In 2010, for example, LRMC correctly predicted the winnersof 51 out of 64 NCAA games—beating out more than 50 of the top-ranking sites.In 2008, the system predicted the Final Four, final two and the eventualvictor, as well as several upsets in earlier rounds.
Georgia Tech Operations Research Professors Sokol and GeorgeNemhauser and Statistics Professor Paul Kvam developed the LRMC method, along withMath Professor Mark Brown of the City College of New York.
The system looks at the results of all the college basketballgames played during the season. Specifically, it examines which team wins, whichteam loses, where the game was played and the team’s margin of victory. Theresearchers then run that data through several mathematical models—empirical Bayes,logistic regression and Markov Chain—to determine the ranking of teams.
Yet even with the best formula, it’s impossible to predict aperfect bracket, Sokol said.
About one-quarter of all tournament games are affected byupsets, injuries or last-second, buzzer-beating baskets. Such was the case lastyear when only one top seed made it to the regional finals. This human factoris where the LRMC predictions can falter.
Still, LRMC’s odds aren’t bad.
According to a study of historical data just completed bythe research team, LRMC is significantly better at predicting NCAA Tournamentgames than almost all of the other ranking systems, such as Sagarin’spredictor, Pomeroy’s ranking, Las Vegas Favorite and the NCAA’s RPI.
Sokol, Nemhauser and Kvam are professors in the H. MiltonStewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering in Georgia Tech’sCollege of Engineering.
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“It was amazing,” said Re-Hand team member Daphne Vincent, who graduated in December of 2011 with a degree in biomedical engineering. “We are so excited. We now have our first investment and we will be able to get our invention into the hands of the people that really need it.”
As the winner, Re-Hand received a cash prize of $15,000, a free U.S. patent filing by Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing (valued at approximately $20,000) and automatic acceptance to the 2012 class of Flashpoint, a Georgia Tech startup accelerator program.
Vincent’s team included three other biomedical engineering majors: Alkindi Kibria, Elizabeth LeMar and Kunal Dean MacDonald.
“The competition was nerve-racking, exhilarating and thrilling,” said Vincent “We worked really hard over the last year and especially over the past two months. We have had so many crazy times and late nights, but it finally paid off.”
Matthew Stoddard, an industrial design major, and Christopher Vollo, an electrical engineering major, finished in second place with their invention Stylii, an extraordinarily precise and pressure-sensitive capacitive stylus designed for use on the iPad.
Second place also receives a free U.S. patent filing by Georgia Tech, and automatic acceptance into Flashpoint, along with a $10,000 cash prize.
“The patent will help us out so much and we’re excited about anything that will help us get this to market,” said Stoddard. “With the right connections and the right progress, it (the Stylii) will be on market by Christmas.”
CardiacTech, a chest retractor for bypass surgery, won the People’s Choice award, which comes with a $5,000 cash prize.
Mechanical engineering students Benji Hoover and Josh DeVane and biomedical engineering students Kevin Parsons, Matthew Lee and Priya Patil made up the CardiacTech team.
“Overall, we’re pretty happy with the People’s Choice Award,” said Hoover. “We would have loved to get a patent, but we are going to continue to work on getting our FDA clearance so we can get this thing into surgery.”
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The Community Service Council (CSC), active from 2007-09, hasre-launched with a new group of students and a greater focus on serving theentire Tech community. The group aims to help student service organizationsoperate better and to make service opportunities easier to access.
“We did outreach to organizations that we’ll support to seewhat their challenges or barriers to service are right now, and how we can help,”said Bones, chair of the CSC. “We also want to integrate more with faculty,staff and the administration.” The CSC has already developed an online servicecalendar that aggregates the volunteer opportunities organized by variousgroups. The Council is also in the process of developing a database that willenable users to search for service opportunities based on interest or group.
Working with the Office of Community Service in the Divisionof Student Affairs, the CSC hopes to further integrate service — the secondhalf of the Institute’s “progress and service” motto — into all aspects ofGeorgia Tech.
“There’s been a big push on service learning and it’ssomething students really want,” Bones said. Sarah Perkins, community service coordinator in theOffice of Community Service, works with faculty members interested inincorporating service into their curriculum, helping them design courses inline with their goals.
Bones also hopes that faculty and staff will participate inthe many service projects offered by student organizations.
“Students always say they would love faculty to join them.We hope they’ll join students, bring their families out and increase that interaction,”Bones said.
The Council builds on an already strong legacy of service atTech, which was named to the 2012 President’s Higher Education CommunityService Honor Roll.
Though half of the spring semester has passed, there arestill many opportunities for student, faculty and staff involvement before theterm comes to a close, including TechBeautification Day and Relay For Lifeon Saturday, March 31, and DanceMarathon on Friday, April 13. The CSC will also host a service forum on Thursday, April 19, at 6 p.m. in the Piedmont Room of the Student Center, open to all of campus.
]]>Kristen Shaw
Communications and Marketing
GT 1000 isa one-hour course offered to all students in their freshman year. Courseinstructors come from all over campus and volunteer to help students assimilateinto the Georgia Tech community. Two to four upperclassmen students, known asTeam Leaders, pair up with an instructor to assist in teaching and mentoringfreshmen. Team Leaders shape the first few months freshmen spend on campus,introducing them to Georgia Tech traditions, academic support, co-curricularactivities and the city of Atlanta.
“Serving as a Team Leader, or TL, enablesupperclassmen to give back to younger Yellow Jacket generations,” saidStephanie Savitz, a fourth-year business administration major and member of theTeam Leader Advisory Board. Savitz added that through her experience serving asa TL and on the advisory board, she has developed leadership skills that helpher more effectively communicate to faculty and staff, enhance her timemanagement and public speaking skills and find opportunities outside of GT1000.
Studentsinterested being Team Leaders should apply by Thursday, March 29, and areencouraged to attend an information session on Tuesday, March 27, at 7p.m. in room O17 (Chem Annex) of the College of Computing.
“I have had so many GT1000 students come back and tell me that GT 1000 has been their favorite class,even after a couple years at Georgia Tech,” said Savitz. “Another great thingthat comes from GT 1000 is being able to truly form friendships with those inthe class.”
Applicantqualifications include:
Such a clock could be useful for certain forms of secure communication -- and perhaps of greater interest -- for studying the fundamental theories of physics. A nuclear clock could be as much as one hundred times more accurate than current atomic clocks, which now serve as the basis for the global positioning system (GPS) and a broad range of important measurements.
"If you give people a better clock, they will use it," said Alex Kuzmich, a professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology and one of the paper's co-authors. "For most applications, the atomic clocks we have are precise enough. But there are other applications where having a better clock would provide a real advantage."
In addition to the Georgia Tech physicists, researchers in the School of Physics at the University of New South Wales in Australia and at the Department of Physics at the University of Nevada also contributed to the study. The research has been supported by the Office of Naval Research, the National Science Foundation and the Gordon Godfrey fellowship.
Early clocks used a swinging pendulum to provide the oscillations needed to track time. In modern clocks, quartz crystals provide high-frequency oscillations that act like a tuning fork, replacing the old-fashioned pendulum. Atomic clocks derive their accuracy from laser-induced oscillations of electrons in atoms. However, these electrons can be affected by magnetic and electrical fields, allowing atomic clocks to drift ever so slightly -- about four seconds in the lifetime of the universe.
Because neutrons are much heavier than electrons and densely packed into the atomic nucleus, they are less susceptible to these perturbations than the electrons. A nuclear clock should therefore be less affected by environmental factors than its atomic cousin.
"In our paper, we show that by using lasers to orient the electrons in a very specific way, we can use the neutron of an atomic nucleus as the clock pendulum," said Corey Campbell, a research scientist in the Kuzmich laboratory and the paper's first author. "Because the neutron is held so tightly to the nucleus, its oscillation rate is almost completely unaffected by any external perturbations."
To create the oscillations, the researchers plan to use a laser operating at petahertz frequencies -- 10 (15) oscillations per second -- to boost the nucleus of a thorium 229 ion into a higher energy state. Tuning a laser to create these higher energy states would allow scientists to set its frequency very precisely, and that frequency would be used to keep time instead of the tick of a clock or the swing of a pendulum.
The nuclear clock ion will need to be maintained at a very low temperature -- tens of microkelvins -- to keep it still. To produce and maintain such temperatures, physicists normally use laser cooling. But for this system, that would pose a problem because laser light is also used to create the timekeeping oscillations.
To solve that problem, the researchers include a single thorium 232 ion with the thorium 229 ion that will be used for timekeeping. The heavier ion is affected by a different wavelength than the thorium 229. The researchers can then cool the heavier ion, which lowers the temperature of the clock ion without affecting the oscillations.
"The cooling ion acts as a refrigerator, keeping the clock ion very still," said Alexander Radnaev, a graduate research assistant in the Kuzmich lab. "This is necessary to interrogate the clock ion for very long and to make a very accurate clock that will provide the next level of performance."
Calculations suggest that a nuclear clock could be accurate to 10 (-19), compared to 10 (-17) for the best atomic clock.
Because they operate in slightly different ways, atomic clocks and nuclear clocks could one day be used together to examine differences in physical constants. "Some laws of physics may not be constant in time," Kuzmich said. "Developing better clocks is a good way to study this."
Though the research team believes it has now demonstrated the potential to make a nuclear clock -- which was first proposed in 2003 -- it will still be a while before they can produce a working one.
The major challenge ahead is that the exact frequency of laser emissions needed to excite the thorium nucleus hasn't yet been determined, despite the efforts of many different research groups.
"People have been looking for this for 30 years," Campbell said. "It's worse than looking for a needle in a haystack. It's more like looking for a needle in a million haystacks."
But Kuzmich believes that problem will be solved, allowing physicists to move to the next generation of phenomenally accurate timekeepers.
"Our research shows that building a nuclear clock in this way is both worthwhile and feasible," he said. "We now have the tools and plans needed to move forward in realizing this system."
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Robinson (404-385-3364)(abby@innovate.gatech.edu).
Writer: John Toon
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404-894-6986
]]>Team MAID is composed of seniors Alex Cooper, Elizabeth Flanagan, Shawna Hagen and Jacob Thompson. Their plan and presentation won first place in the Undergraduate Competition, 1st Place in the Overall Competition, Most Commercializable Plan and the Alumni Award in the poster session for total winnings of $42,500.
Their win represents the first time a team of undergraduates has won the overall competition, which draws undergraduate and graduate students from across Georgia Tech. The Business Plan Competition is organized annually by Georgia Tech’s College of Management.
MAID is a simplified approach to intubation that utilizes magnets to guide the endotracheal tube into the airway of a patient easily and quickly, with less risk and without the need for visualization. MAID has two components: the single-use magnetic stylet and the reusable guide magnet. The external guide magnet is placed above the cricoid cartilage of the patient. When the endotracheal tube with the magnetic stylet is inserted into the patient’s mouth, it is pulled directly into the airway by the guide magnet, resulting in near effortless intubation.
Last year the team MAID also won second place in Georgia Tech’s InVenture Prize competition, winning $10,000 cash and a patent application by the Office of Technology Licensing. In summer 2011, the Translational Research Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Science awarded the team a seed grant of $25,000 to for further prototype development of the device.
The Saint Joseph Translation Research Institute has tested their functioning prototype on multiple human cadavers with considerable success. The Office of Technology Licensing filed a full non-provisional patent in March 2012. Currently, additional design work is being conducted to improve manufacturability and reliability. The MAID design concept to improve the safety and effectiveness of the intubation procedure began as a team design project in BMED 2300, Projects in Biomedical Engineering. Franklin Bost, Professor of the Practice in biomedical engineering, and Leanne West at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, continue to advise the MAID team.
Kevin Lewis, another biomedical engineering student, whose plan for “Cold Crate” came in third in the Undergraduate Track of the Business Plan competition. Graduate student Melissa Li was a finalist for her team’s CARDIAM device and the winner of a $10,000 services package for Most Innovative Technology. The CARDIAM Team was also a co-winner in the Elevator Pitch Competition.
Written by Adrianne Proeller, Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering.
]]>Though the national month is recognized in May, the AsianAmerican Student Association (AASA) has organized two weeks of events fromMarch 26 through April 9 to honor the culture ofAsian Americans on campus.
“The whole month is really a progressive event,” said GarYeung, president of the AASA and a fourth-year environmental engineering major.The celebration begins with a film series onMarch 26 and 30, culminating with a closing dinnerApril 9.
Highlighting the two weeks of events is a visit from Sachi Koto,veteran of CNN, on Thursday, March 29. Koto will talk about American historyfrom an Asian American perspective, building on her work as a CNN anchor,writer and producer, as well as work in Tokyo’s television market.
“We’re hoping Sachi is the first of many Asian Americanspeakers we bring to campus to talk not just about history, but also currentissues,” Yeung said.
On Wednesday, March 28, AASA will screen “A VillageCalled Versailles,” a documentary about the struggles of VietnameseAmericans after Hurricane Katrina. Catholic priest Father Vien, who is featuredin the film, will also attend the screening. A student paneldiscussion on Saturday, March 31, will convene students from other Georgiauniversities, as well as Duke University and the University of North Carolina-ChapelHill, to discuss political engagement, activism and initiatives that the AsianAmerican community hopes to achieve, specifically in the Southeast. A community paneldiscussion the next day will complement this event.
All events during the celebration are free and open to allof campus, but an online RSVP is requested for the dinner on April 9.
AASA has been active since 2010, helping smaller Asian-intereststudent organizations be successful in their endeavors and holding large-scaleevents for the campus community.
Other Asian American Awareness Month events:
This Sunday night, MOVE (MobilizingOpportunities for Volunteer Experience) launches its annual Hunger andHomelessness Awareness Week. Events will take place March 4–8 and, this year,MOVE leadership is implementing new events in order to amplify awareness amongthe student body.
The week begins with one of the newestand most visible events, Shantytown: A Closer Look at Homelessness. From Sundayto Wednesday nights, the interactive exhibit allows student advocates toexperience displacement by camping out around the Campanile in tents, sleepingbags and cardboard boxes, while engaging in discussion facilitated by MOVEcommittee members.
“The goal of these events is to raiseawareness of homelessness, and by doing so, to break down negative stereotypesand misconceptions that students have about the homeless we encounter inAtlanta,” said Lisa Thornsberry, a fourth-year Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering undergraduate and MOVE president.“It’s a call to see these people as real human beings — with feelings and lifeexperiences — and to learn to address the issue by abolishing ignorance.”
Other events include a Hunger Banquet,co-hosted by Oxfam at GT, in which participants will experience firsthand howsocioeconomic status affects hunger; a panel consisting of individuals who havepreviously experienced homelessness; a viewing of award-winning documentary“The Human Experience;” and volunteering opportunities with Café 458 and the AtlantaCommunity Food Bank.
Students are encouraged to participate inthe week’s events by visiting the MOVE website for more details andregistration.
Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week Events
Hunger and Homelessness Awareness Week Chair, MOVE
]]>Thebook is in the running for the CSPA’s Crown award, which will be presented atColumbia University in New York later this month. Gold and Silver Crown awardsare given, and the Blueprint knows it will be getting one of the two.
“Thewhole book, against every other yearbook, made the short list, which is hugefor us,” said Grace Stephens, a fourth-year building construction major andeditor in chief for the 2011 Blueprint. “We haven’t done that in 12 years soI’m pretty proud of that.” Stephens, now managing editor, has seen the yearbook staff grow fromapproximately 10 to 40 students during her four years at Tech and noted her pride in their success in this year's awards.
"When Grace Stephens was elected editor in 2009, she brought a new passion to the book that had been lacking," said Mac Pitts, director of student publications and media in the Division of Student Affairs. "Winning 22 Gold Circle awards with her 2010 book in her first year as editor was just the confirmation that she needed to make her 2011 book a CSPA Crown finalist."
TheBlueprint excels during a time of transition for all print publications, whenmany are learning how to merge an online presence with the traditional printmedium.
“Whenyou think about a yearbook you want it to be accessible in 40 years,” Stephenssaid. “I use the analogy that if I gave you an 8-track from 1969, you can’t doanything with it, but you can do something with the 1969 Blueprint.” However,the Blueprint does publish each book online.
Inrecognition, Blueprint staff members will spend four days in New York to attenda student conference with the College Media Association, joined by members of the Technique, and accept their awards. They will find out if thebook earned a Gold or Silver Crown at an awards ceremony on March 18.
Studentsin their third year or later are eligible to receive a Blueprint free eachyear; books will be handed out in the Clough Commons the week before springbreak. First- and second-year students can order books for $50 online.
The Blueprint earned the following CSPA awards:
Each week on Sunday evening, the Student Alumni Association(SAA) coordinates Dinner Jackets, a dinner hosted by a faculty member oralumnus. Hosts welcome students into their homes for an evening of hospitalityand casual conversation.
“By hosting dinners, faculty members seem more approachable,not just who they are when lecturing in front of a white board,” said Gary May, dean of the College ofEngineering and a Georgia Tech alumnus, who has hosted two dinners with hiswife, also a Tech graduate. “Those students can learn about our interestsoutside of the classroom, like the fact that I love to collect comic books.”
The program was coined "Dinner Jackets" in 2011, and initially began as a way for alumni to giveback to current students and reminisce about their time at Georgia Tech andlove for its traditions; in turn, students gain professional advice from pastYellow Jacket generations. The events are now open to all faculty membersinterested in hosting, regardless of their alma mater. Faculty have enjoyedenhancing faculty-student interaction, in line with Georgia Tech’s StrategicPlan, by exposing students to diverse environments outside the classroom.
Previous dinners have been hosted by esteemed members of theGeorgia Tech community, such as Rafael Bras,provost and executive vice president of Academic Affairs, and Tom Fanning, CEO and chairman of SouthernCompany.
“Dinner Jackets is a great way to allow for studentcommunication in a more intimate setting,” said Greg Jones, current SAA DinnerJackets chair and a third-year mechanical engineering undergraduate. “It’s rareto be given the opportunity to be served dinner by the CEO of Southern Companyand his wife.”
Upcoming dinners with available seating include Rich DeAugustinis, vice president withThe Coca-Cola Company on March 11 and CatherineMurray-Rust, vice provost of learning excellence and dean of libraries, onApril 15.
Interested students can attend a future Dinner Jackets eventby joining SAA online. Memberscan view additional upcoming hosts, read their biographies and registerfor free on the DinnerJackets website. Students are limited to attending one dinner per semester.
]]>Dinner Jackets Chair, Student Alumni Association
]]>Georgia Tech Associate Professor Hermann Fritz and his researchteam are studying the impact of the tsunami on the Sanriku coast. Usingeyewitness video and terrestrial laser scanners from atop the highest buildingsthat survived the tsunami, Fritz has mapped the tsunami’s height and flood zoneto learn more about the flow of the devastating currents.
Fritz’s measurements and observations could produce floodingforecasts that influence future evacuation plans and building designs, preventingloss of life and property damage in Japan and in other areas of the worldsusceptible to tsunamis.
“The ultimate goal is to save lives,” Fritz said. “In orderto do so, we have to have a better understanding of what worked and didn’twork. This is the first time we’ve been able to look at the structuralinfrastructure designed to protect coastal towns from tsunamis and examine whyit didn’t work. There’s a lot to learn in terms of surviving tsunamis andprotecting, evacuating and ultimately saving lives.”
Fritz led a reconnaissance team surveying the impact of thetsunami on a fishing town in Kesennuma Bay, where 1,500 people perished. Thebay has been hit by historic tsunamis in 1896, 1933, 1960 and 2010—making itthe most vulnerable in Japan to both near- and far-field tsunamis. The coastalstructures and other mitigation measures on the coast were designed based onconservative, historic high-water marks, rather than probable maximum tsunamis.
From two atop vertical evacuation buildings where eyewitnessesgathered during the tsunami, Fritz and his team used lasers to scan the portand bay entrance, creating a three-dimensional, topographic model of the floodzone.
Using this data, they reconstructed eyewitness videos todetermine the varying heights and flow velocities of the tsunami. Theydetermined that the tsunami reached a maximum height of 9 meters, followed byoutflow currents of 11 meters per second less than 10 minutes later – a speedwhich Fritz says is impossible to survive or navigate by vessels.
“What we can learn from the hydrograph is confirmation thatthe water goes out first, drawing down to more than negative 3 meters on thelandward side of the trench, which can make vessels hit ground inside harbors,”Fritz said. “During the subsequent arrival of the main tsunami wave, the waterrushing back in changed the water level by 40 feet, engulfing the entire cityin 12 minutes.”
Understanding tsunami impacts will help prepare for futuredisasters—whether its designing buildings high enough to serve as verticalevacuation points or sea walls and breakwaters strong enough to control theflow of water.
Along with such mitigation measures, Fritz says educatingpeople about tsunamis is key.
“Japan was probably the best prepared for a tsunami,” Fritzsaid. “Indonesia, on the other hand, had no knowledge of tsunamis and it caughtpeople by surprise in 2004. The outcomes of the tsunamis were verydifferent—200,000 killed versus 20,000 killed. That shows educational awarenessand preparedness and civil defense mechanisms can work to reduce the deathtoll. People need to be tsunami-aware.”
Fritz worked with researchers from the University ofSouthern California and Japanese researchers from the University of Tokyo, theTokyo University of Marine Science and Technology, and the Port and AirportResearch Institute, in coordination with the UNESCO-organized InternationalTsunami Survey Team and the Tohoku University in Sendai.
This project was supported in part by the National ScienceFoundation (NSF) (Award No. 1135768). The content is solely the responsibilityof the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the officialviews of the NSF.
For more on the anniversary of the Japan disaster, visit www.gatech.edu/experts/japan-anniversary.
]]>Hosted by the Georgia Engineering Alliance, the Georgia’s Engineer of the Year competition recognizes deserving and dedicated engineers who have made valuable contributions to their profession and who have impacted our engineering community.
The following Georgia Tech engineers were honored:
Thomas Gambino, Georgia Tech alumnus (CE 179) and president of Prime Engineering Inc., was named overall Engineer of the Year.
Thomas Furlow, Georgia Tech alumnus (CE 1969, MS sanitary engineering 1974) and former senior project manager at Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., was honored with the Lifetime Achievement Award.
Reginald DesRoches, professor and associate chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech, was named Engineer of the Year for Education.
Jim Drinkard, Georgia Tech alumnus (CE 1975) and assistant general manager at Hartsfield-Jackson Atlanta International Airport was named the Engineer of the Year for Government.
Gregory Hebeler, Georgia Tech alumnus (MS CE 2001, PhD CE 2005) and geotechnical engineer at Golder Associates Inc., was named Young Engineer of the Year.
Charles “Chuck” Huling, executive in residence at Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute, was selected Engineer of the Year for Industry.
The competition is open to all professional engineers throughout Georgia and to students enrolled in a Georgia ABET credited engineering or engineering technology school.
For more information, visit http://www.engineersweek.com/awards.htm
For a complete article on the winners, visit http://www.ce.gatech.edu/media/news/5950
]]>Last fall, Georgia Techappealed the Committee on Infractions’ finding of Failure to Meet theConditions and Obligations of Membership for not withholding a student athletefrom competing in the 2009 Atlantic Coast Conference (ACC) footballchampionship. It also appealed the sanction that it must vacate the 2009 ACCfootball championship. The committee ruled last year that Georgia Tech violatedNCAA policy by playing an ineligible player in the game. The committee also handed down otherinfractions, but the vacated championship was the only sanction that Techappealed.
“We are disappointed with theruling of the NCAA appeals committee, but respect the process and the NCAA’sdecision,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “We felt we owed itto the Georgia Tech community and to our student athletes to exercise theappeals process provided by the NCAA in order to defend the integrity ofGeorgia Tech and to reaffirm our commitment to the principles and obligationsof the NCAA.”
Peterson emphasized that GeorgiaTech fully supports the NCAA’s core values which also include maintaining thehighest levels of integrity and sportsmanship while pursuing excellence in bothacademics and athletics.
Georgia Tech notified theNCAA of its intent to appeal the committee’s decision in July 2011. The ruling wasissued today and is the final decision in the NCAA appeal process.
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Among the awards earned included the Academic Achievement andScholarship Programming Award, credited to the work of scholarship chairs fromeach chapter throughout the year.
“By the end of 2011, every chapter oncampus had a scholarship plan in place versus the two-thirds that did at thestart of the year,” said Mason Elledge, a third-year business administrationmajor and vice president of communications for IFC.
Other honors bestowed upon Tech’s IFCincluded an Educational Programming Award, Outstanding Education Program Award,Campus and Community Relations Award, Community Service Award, OutstandingPhilanthropy Award and an honorable mention for the Risk Management andJudicial Procedures Award.
IFC earned the Outstanding EducationalProgram Award for its development of the Greeks Advocating for the MatureManagement of Alcohol group, or GAMMA. The Campus and Community Relations Awardcame in part from IFC’s collaborative efforts with other student organizationsfor “I <3 GT Week” and “Keep the T in Tech,” as well as its collaborationwith the Georgia Tech Police Department to form a Police Liaison Program.
“To me, the mostnotable awards recognized new initiatives that were created by IFC,” said TannerMarcantel, assistant dean of students and director of Greek affairs. “ThePolice Liaison program, a partnership with GTPD, assists with communicationsbetween the officers and fraternities. The liaisons also serve aseducational resources for fraternity leaders.”
IFC’s serviceefforts include spearheading events such as Run ‘n’ Hide, which gives localelementary children a safe place to trick or treat, and raising more than$65,000 for childhood cancer research.
“We were proud to represent ourinstitution and to show the entire Southeast the implementation of GeorgiaTech's motto, ‘Progress and Service,’ in our Greek community,” Elledge said.
Members offraternity councils from across the Southeast, including all ACC and SECinstitutions as well as many other private universities, attend SEIFC to learntechniques and services that will improve their respective councils.
“It's great to know that the IFC at Tech isexcelling programmatically, and surpassing their peers in the region,”Marcantel said.
]]>Enjoy popcorn, Chick-fil-A and Waffle House coupons as rewards for participating in beer goggles obstacle courses, where you'll feel a simulation of what it's like to have a blood alcohol content (BAC) level of .25.
Monday, March 12
Tuesday, March 13
Wednesday, March 14
Thursday, March 15
Friday, March 16
Spring Break Safety Tips (pdf) are available from the Georgia Tech Police Department. Crusin' to a Safe Sting Break is sponsored by Stamps Health Services, GTPD and the Office of Greek Affairs.
]]>Launched by the President’s Council on Jobs andCompetitiveness, STAY WITH IT™ is the first student outreach campaignfocused on connecting engineering students to a community of their peers andexperienced engineers, role models and influencers to encourage them to staywith the field of study and graduate with an engineering degree.
The Day of Engineering is a national celebration designed topromote and build enthusiasm for this new community of resources available tostudents on their journey to an engineering degree. At Georgia Tech, manyevents are planned on March 14, including a Facebook Live discussion thatincludes a panel of prominent engineers such as NASA Administrator CharlesBolden and Intel CEO Paul Otellini, as well as free food, giveaways and more.
Nationally, only 14 percent of all U.S. undergraduatestudents are enrolled in science, technology, engineering and mathematicsprograms and there is a 40 percent attrition rate of those enrolled in thesedisciplines after the first year.
Georgia Tech, however, is the gold standard for the retentionand graduation of engineers, which is why the Institute was selected to hostthis campaign launch.
Using a mix of strategies and tactics, Georgia Tech holds onto 94 percent of freshmen after their first year, and the Institute succeeds ingraduating eight out of every 10 of our students within six years.
“We are changing the way engineers learn with new approachesto the undergraduate curriculum,” said Gary May, Georgia Tech’s dean of theCollege of Engineering. “Rather than focus on traditional means to delivercontent, we give students complex, multifaceted and realistic problems to helpthem develop effective problem solving skills and participate in self-directedlearning. The professor becomes more of a facilitator supporting the student’slearning process.”
The Day of Engineering is just one activity at Georgia Techthat enhances the undergraduate learning experience. The College of Engineeringhas been successful in graduating engineers by putting an emphasis on peermentor programs, vertically integrated projects, problem-based learning and afocus on student innovation through activities like the InVenture Prize.
In the InVenture Prize, students work independently or inteams on inventions that are presented to and judged by a panel of experts.This year’s final round of the annual competition will be held at 7 p.m. onMarch 13 in the Ferst Center.
Matthew Stoddard and Christopher Vollo are finalists in thecompetition for their device, “Stylii,” an extraordinarily precise,press-sensitive and capacitive stylus.
“Being a finalist is really exciting,” Stoddard said. “Itmakes me feel like what I’ve learned at Georgia Tech is working. That keeps me motivated to continue and workeven harder on the projects I have going through the end of semester until Igraduate and to be able to represent Georgia Tech afterwards.”
These initiatives, along with activities such as the MakersClub in the Georgia Tech Invention Studio and academic programs such as theco-op program, allow students to express their creativity as engineers and gethands-on experience.
“We are trying to change the culture here and the InVenturePrize is just one small step—one chip on that tree we’re trying to chop down—totry to make the students more entrepreneurial and inventive,” said CraigForest, co-founder of the InVenture Prize and professor of mechanicalengineering. “We have to change the conversation about engineering so it issomething we celebrate.”
The Facebook Live event is open to pre-credentialed media.Those unable to attend the event can watch the livestream at www.facebook.com/Engineering and click Tech Talk Live.
Colleges andUniversities around the country will be hosting viewing parties, includingCalifornia State University at Sacramento, Cornell University, Duke University,New York Institute of Technology - Manhattan and Old Westbury Campuses, NorthCarolina State University, Santa Clara University, University of California atBerkeley, University of Florida, University of Hawaii, University of Kentucky,University of Maryland, University of Nevada, Reno and Virginia Tech.
]]>Residence Halls
Campus Recreation Center
Transporation
Parking
GT Dining Halls
Student Center Dining
Tech Square Dining
Barnes & Noble and Starbucks
Stamps Health Services
To address that need, systems engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are using computer models to help resource-poor nations improve supply chain decisions related to the distribution of breast milk and non-pharmaceutical interventions for malaria. They are also forecasting what health care services would be available in the event of natural disasters in Caribbean nations.
“We are using mathematical models implemented in user-friendly tools like Microsoft Excel to improve the allocation of limited resources across a network, especially in resource-poor settings,” said Julie Swann, an associate professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech.
Swann reported on three global health case studies designed to improve the allocation of limited health care resources on Feb. 19, 2012 at the annual meeting of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) in Vancouver, Canada.
For the first project, Swann and a group of graduate students created models to strategically determine how a nongovernmental organization (NGO) in South Africa should expand its breast milk donation and distribution network to the whole country. In the network, healthy mothers donate breast milk, which is stored in a local repository, transferred to a milk bank to be processed and then distributed to neonatal units where mothers cannot provide it themselves because of disease status or physical inability.
“We wanted to determine how we could provide breast milk to the most people while also being geographically equitable in terms of access,” explained Swann, who holds the Harold R. and Mary Ann Nash chair at Georgia Tech. “We looked at the cost of equity and how that changed the distribution design.”
To determine where the organization should expand its network and the best way to do so, the team used operations research to examine the existing and proposed locations in the network as well as what type of transportation would work best to cover the increased geographic area. The model recognized that breast milk supply increases with higher income and education levels and low HIV prevalence, while breast milk demand increases with lower income and education levels and high HIV prevalence.
The researchers recently recommended locations for expansion to the NGO and advised the organization to pay a courier service to carry the milk to the neonatal units, in order to balance cost and reliability and improve efficiency. Volunteers, who are inherently less reliable, were driving the milk from one location to another.
In another project, done in collaboration with the World Health Organization, Swann and a team of undergraduate and graduate students used models to optimize the distribution of non-pharmaceutical interventions for malaria, such as nets or sprays, with pilot data from a country in Africa called Swaziland.
Their models provided a time-based deployment plan for the country, including details on what geographic zones to target for spraying, when to deploy in each zone, how many people can be protected in each zone, what resources should be located at the distribution centers, and the opening and closing dates of the distribution centers.
The researchers showed that using a systems approach to examine allocation decisions could increase the number of people covered with the same amount of funding by more than 25 percent. The team worked with Pinar Keskinocak, a professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, to develop a teaching game based on the work. The game has been used worldwide in classes of humanitarian students.
For the third project, Swann and a team of graduate students are using technology to estimate the performance of disaster preparedness plans in advance of an event. The project is part of the Caribbean Hazard Assessment Mitigation and Preparedness (CHAMP) initiative, which is supported by a Georgia Tech alumnus and led by Reginald DesRoches, a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech.
In Puerto Rico, Swann’s team evaluated the existing hospital networks and other health care provider locations described in the island’s emergency preparedness plans.
“To forecast the country’s ability to provide health services following an earthquake, we took population data and overlaid it with projections of earthquake locations and severity to estimate the capacities and amount of congestion that would result at health care facilities,” said Swann.
The researchers recently presented the initial results of their study to the Puerto Rico Department of Health and made recommendations for health care resources and hospital capacities based on predicted bottlenecks in the system. They are currently examining Belize’s hurricane evacuation plans. Keskinocak and Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering associate professor Ozlem Ergun and visiting assistant professor Pelin Pekgun-Cakmak are also contributing to the CHAMP initiative.
“We have found that technology innovations like mathematical models can help to solve problems in global and public health, such as the allocation of limited health care resources,” noted Swann.
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]]>The Technique placed in numerous categories, including firstin general excellence, best review and best campus community service (sports).It also earned second place in best review, as well as in best photograph(sports), best editorial or editorial series, best website and best communityservice (features). It earned third in layout and design, best campus communityservice (editorial) and best campus community service (news). The first placeawards all were earned in categories where the Technique did not win last year.
“I’m really proud of the whole staff for doing as well asthey did. We got more individual awards this year, which is really impressiveand a testament to the talent we have,” said Editor-in-Chief Vijai Narayanan. “Thisisn’t something you can do if it doesn’t resonate with you — it’s too much forjust for your resume.”
Since assuming the leadership role last year, Narayanan andhis staff have worked to keep readers top of mind and be in tune with those whothey serve, aiming to strike a balance between content people find interestingand what’s relevant or important to students but not necessarily as enticing.Many sections have been revamped, including the Focus and Sports sections.
“Sports was one we had wanted to win for a long time,”Narayanan said of the GCPA honors. “I’m really proud of Alex [Sohani] … he’sreally geared the section to the average sports fan.”
In Other News...
Aside from earning the GCPA recognitions this year, Narayananhas started a business team to sell advertising and is analyzing distributionto make sure the right amount of copies of the newspaper are in the rightplaces on campus — in addition to leading a staff in putting out a paper eachweek.
“We’re very fortunate that most students come [to theTechnique] wanting to write, and we want them to feel like they’re improving,”Narayanan said. “Not just their style, but also as reporters — it’s animportant skill to have. It helped me come out of my shell, be moreinquisitive, be better at gathering information from people — it’s very useful,not just in stories.” In addition to writing, the Technique also providescreative outlets for its design and photography teams and business experience forits sales team.
Of course, staff members are not the only ones whose wordsappear in the Technique. Students submit hundreds of slivers each week hopingto get a few words in the next issue. The Technique lifted the idea for sliversfrom the Atlanta Journal-Constitution in the early 2000s, and it began as aslim box along the bottom of each page with random musings by editors. A fewyears later, sliver submissions opened to all students on nique.net. The curator of these anonymous messagesmaintains his or her own anonymity in compiling them each week.
“What goes in is really at the discretion of the person whoputs them in the paper,” said Narayanan. “The things I love are the ones that,if you read it, you know it’s about you but no one else would.” Slivers areadded to the paper each Wednesday night during the Technique’s production.
The Technique’s weekly Tuesday night staff meetings — whichinclude free pizza — are open to all students interested in any aspect of thepaper’s operation.
“Everything we do is a smaller version of what gets done inthe real world,” Narayanan said. “We have a physical product at the end of theevery week and something to show for what we’ve done. That’s immensely gratifying.”
]]>Grigoriy Blekherman, Prasad Raghavendra and Frank Stewart were among the 126outstanding researchers selected from across the country and were the onlyrecipients from the University System of Georgia. The fellowships, givenannually since 1955, honor early-career scientists and scholars whoseachievements and potential identify them as the next generation of scientificleaders.
Blekherman and Stewart are both assistant professors in the College of Sciences.
In the School of Mathematics, Blekherman works in the area of convex algebraicgeometry, which has applications in both engineering and computer science. His primaryresearch focuses on understanding systems of inequality, and effective ways toexplain the lack of solutions in those systems.
An assistantprofessor in the School of Biology, Stewart’s research is focused on understandinghow a lack of oxygen affects the biological diversity and ecological functionof marine ecosystems. He studies regions of the ocean that are, for the mostpart, permanently devoid of oxygen, also known as oxygen minimum zones. Thisaward will help him to better understand the genomic diversity, evolution andmetabolism of the unique bacteria residing in these oxygen minimum zones thatuse sulfur for energy in the way other organisms use carbon or nitrogen.
Beforejoining the College of Computing faculty in 2010, Raghavendra spent a yeardoing postdoctoral work for Microsoft Research New England. Also a 2012recipient of an NSF CAREER Award, his research is focused on designing efficientapproximation algorithms and understanding their limits.
Administered and funded by the Sloan Foundation, the fellowships are awardedin close cooperation with the scientific community. Potential fellows must benominated for recognition by their peers and are subsequently selected by anindependent panel of senior scholars.
The $50,000 fellowships are historically awarded in chemistry, computerscience, economics, mathematics, evolutionary and computational molecularbiology, neuroscience and physics. The fellowships were expanded this year toinclude awards for eight young researchers working in ocean sciences.
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For scientists working in quantum physics, the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle says that measurements of properties such as the momentum of an object and its exact position cannot be simultaneously specified with arbitrary accuracy. As a result, there must be some uncertainty in either the exact position of the object, or its exact momentum. The amount of uncertainty can be determined, and is often represented graphically by a circle showing the area within which the measurement actually lies.
Over the past few decades, scientists have learned to cheat a bit on the Uncertainty Principle through a process called “squeezing,” which has the effect of changing how the uncertainty is shown graphically. Changing the circle to an ellipse and ultimately to almost a line allows one component of the complementary measurements – the momentum or the position, in the case of an object – to be specified more precisely than would otherwise be possible. The actual area of uncertainty remains unchanged, but is represented by a different shape that serves to improve accuracy in measuring one property.
This squeezing has been done in measuring properties of photons and atoms, and can be important to certain high-precision measurements needed by atomic clocks and the magnetometers used to create magnetic resonance imaging views of structures deep inside the body. For the military, squeezing more accuracy could improve the detection of enemy submarines attempting to hide underwater or improve the accuracy of atom-based inertial guidance instruments.
Now physicists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have added another measurement to the list of those that can be squeezed. In a paper appearing online February 26 in the journal Nature Physics, they report squeezing a property called the nematic tensor, which is used to describe the rubidium atoms in Bose-Einstein Condensates, a unique form of matter in which all atoms have the same quantum state. The research was sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF).
“What is new about our work is that we have probably achieved the highest level of atom squeezing reported so far, and the more squeezing you get, the better,” said Michael Chapman, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Physics. “We are also squeezing something other than what people have squeezed before.”
Scientists have been squeezing the spin states of atoms for 15 years, but only for atoms that have just two relevant quantum states – known as spin ½ systems. In collections of those atoms, the spin states of the individual atoms can be added together to get a collective angular momentum that describes the entire system of atoms.
In the Bose-Einstein condensate atoms being studied by Chapman’s group, the atoms have three quantum states, and their collective spin totals zero – not very helpful for describing systems. So Chapman and graduate students Chris Hamley, Corey Gerving, Thai Hoang and Eva Bookjans learned to squeeze a more complex measure that describes their system of spin 1 atoms: nematic tensor, also known as quadrupole.
Nematicity is a measure of alignment that is important in describing liquid crystals, exotic magnetic materials and some high temperature superconductors.
“We don’t have a spin vector pointing in a particular direction, but there is still some residual information in where this collection of atoms is pointing,” Chapman explained. “That next higher-order description is the quadrupole, or nematic tensor. Squeezing this actually works quite well, and we get a large degree of improvement, so we think it is relatively promising.”
Experimentally, the squeezing is created by entangling some of the atoms, which takes away their independence. Chapman’s group accomplishes this by colliding atoms in their ensemble of some 40,000 rubidium atoms.
“After they collide, the state of one atom is connected to that of the other atom, so they have been entangled in that way,” he said. “This entanglement creates the squeezing.”
Reducing uncertainty in measuring atoms could have important implications for precise magnetic measurements. The next step will be to determine experimentally if the technique can improve the measurement of magnetic field, which could have important applications.
“In principle, this should be a straightforward experiment, but it turns out that the biggest challenge is that magnetic fields in the laboratory fluctuate due to environmental factors such as the effects of devices such as computer monitors,” Chapman said. “If we had a noiseless laboratory, we could measure the magnetic field both with and without squeezed states to demonstrate the enhanced precision. But in our current lab environment, our measurements would be affected by outside noise, not the limitations of the atomic sensors we are using.”
The new squeezed property could also have application to quantum information systems, which can store information in the spin of atoms and their nematic tensor.
“There are a lot of things you can do with quantum entanglement, and improving the accuracy of measurements is one of them,” Chapman added. “We still have to obey Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle, but we do have the ability to manipulate it.”
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]]>Top U.S. industry, academic, labor and government leaders will convene in Atlanta for a two-day manufacturing forum starting on Tuesday, February 28. Hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology and the Council on Competitiveness, the forum will address how supply chain, advanced logistics and infrastructure improvements can enhance the nation's manufacturing base.
Part of the U.S. Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative’s dialogue series, the "Next Generation Supply Networks and Logistics" discussion will cover an array of supply chain challenges, from efficient freight rail systems to just-in-time air deliveries.
Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson will give opening remarks.
“Our challenge is to not only get back to ‘made in America' but also 'invented in America," Peterson said. “The same spirit of innovation and collaboration that once gave us preeminence in manufacturing can help us regain our competitiveness, thereby creating jobs, increasing exports and serving as a catalyst for a healthy economy.”
The Council on Competitiveness Senior Vice President Jack McDougle will follow with updates about the council's Manufacturing Competitiveness Initiative and its recently released report, MAKE: An American Manufacturing Movement.
“Companies must have access to highly integrated supply networks and logistics capabilities to compete in today’s global economy,” said Deborah L. Wince-Smith, the council's president and CEO.
The dialogue, she adds, "galvanizes recognized supply chain leaders to address some of the most pressing challenges facing American manufacturers. We must ensure that our manufacturers have the tools and resources needed to compete. Only through tight integration across the supply chain will our companies, and our country, adapt to new challenges and opportunities in markets around the world.”
Among the attendees are CEO Helmuth Ludwig, Ph.D., of Siemens Industry Sector, North America; President and CEO Doug Stotlar of Con-Way Inc.; President and CEO Chris Lofgren of Schneider National Inc.; Commissioner Chris Cummiskey of the Georgia Department of Economic Development and President Paul Yarossi of HNTB.
The meeting will convene at Georgia Tech’s Global Learning Center. “We are delighted to be partnering with the Council on Competitiveness to address how the supply chain and logistics industry can help to provide a competitive advantage for U.S. manufacturing and, in doing so, help to strengthen the U.S. economy,” says Chip White III, conference chair and Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics at Georgia Tech. Georgia Tech’s Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering has extensive expertise in advanced manufacturing and supply chain engineering.
A joint Georgia Tech-Council on Competitiveness report will detail the forum's findings, which will contribute to the council's National Manufacturing Strategy.
For more information, please visit www.usmci.gatech.edu.
]]>Since the level of Arctic sea ice set a new record low in2007, significantly above-normal winter snow cover has been seen in large partsof the northern United States, northwestern and central Europe, and northernand central China. During the winters of 2009-2010 and 2010-2011, the NorthernHemisphere measured its second and third largest snow cover levels on record.
“Our study demonstrates that the decrease in Arctic sea icearea is linked to changes in the winter Northern Hemisphere atmosphericcirculation,” said Judith Curry, chair of the School of Earth and AtmosphericSciences at Georgia Tech. “The circulation changes result in more frequentepisodes of atmospheric blocking patterns, which lead to increased cold surges andsnow over large parts of the northern continents.”
The study was published on Feb. 27, 2012 in the online earlyedition of the journal Proceedings of theNational Academy of Sciences. The research was supported by NASA and theNational Science Foundation.
In this study, scientists from Georgia Tech, the ChineseAcademy of Sciences and Columbia University expanded on previous research bycombining observational data and model simulations to explore the link between unusuallylarge snowfall amounts in the Northern Hemisphere in recent winters anddiminishing Arctic sea ice.
The researchers analyzed observational data collectedbetween 1979 and 2010 and found that a decrease in autumn Arctic sea ice of 1million square kilometers -- the size of the surface area of Egypt -- correspondedto significantly above-normal winter snow cover in large parts of the northernUnited States, northwestern and central Europe, and northern and central China.
The analysis revealed two major factors that could becontributing to the unusually large snowfall in recent winters -- changes inatmospheric circulation and changes in atmospheric water vapor content -- whichare both linked to diminishing Arctic sea ice. Strong warming in the Arcticthrough the late summer and autumn appears to be enhancing the melting of seaice.
“We think the recent snowy winters could be caused by theretreating Arctic ice alteringatmospheric circulation patterns by weakening westerly winds, increasing the amplitude of the jet streamand increasing the amount of moisture in the atmosphere,” explainedJiping Liu, a senior research scientist in the School of Earth and AtmosphericSciences at Georgia Tech. “These pattern changes enhance blocking patterns thatfavor more frequent movement of cold air masses to middle and lower latitudes, leading to increased heavy snowfallin Europe and the Northeast and Midwest regions of the United States.”
DiminishingArctic sea ice can cause changes in atmospheric circulation that lead to a circulationpattern that is different than the“negative phase” of the Arctic Oscillation.
In addition to analyzing observational data, the researchersalso assessed the impact of the diminishing Arctic sea ice on atmosphericcirculation by comparing the results of model simulations run with different seaice distribution. They ran one experiment that assumed seasonally varyingArctic sea ice and utilized sea ice concentration data collected between 1979and 2010. Another simulation incorporated prescribed sea ice loss in autumn and winter based on satellite-derivedArctic sea ice concentrations.
Thesimulations showed that diminishing Arctic sea ice induced a significant surfacewarming in the Arctic Ocean and Greenland/northeastern Canada, and cooling overnorthern North America, Europe, Siberia and eastern Asia. The models alsoshowed above-normal winter snowfall in large parts of the northern UnitedStates, central Europe, and northern and central China.
The consistent relationships seen in the model simulationsand observational data illustrate that the rapid loss of sea ice in summer anddelayed recovery of sea ice in autumn modulates snow cover, winter temperature andthe frequency of cold air outbreaks in northern mid-latitudes.
Huijun Wang and Mirong Song of the Chinese Academy ofSciences Institute of Atmospheric Physics and Radley Horton from the Columbia University Center for ClimateSystems Research also contributed to this work.
This project wassupported by the NASA Energy and Water Cycle Study and the National ScienceFoundation (NSF) (Award No. ANT-0838920). The content is solely theresponsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarilyrepresent the official views of NASA or the NSF.
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]]>Mynatt, who also serves as the executive director of theInstitute for People and Technology (IPaT), was a member of a forward-lookingpanel that addressed the roles of government, academia, industry and theresearch community in finding and funding the next "Big Ideas."Thomas Kalil, the deputy director for Policy for the White House Office ofScience and Technology Policy, moderated the panel that also included CorporateVice President Peter Lee of Microsoft Research, President Charles Vest of the NationalAcademy of Engineering and Computer Science and Engineering Professor StefanSavage from the University of California, San Diego.
The symposium was organized by the Computing CommunityConsortium, in collaboration with the National Coordination Office (NCO) forNITRD.
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The team will consider three different approaches for creating entangled quantum memories that could facilitate the long-distance transmission of secure information. The five-year Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) will be led by the Georgia Institute of Technology and include scientists from Columbia University, Harvard University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the University of Michigan, Stanford University and the University of Wisconsin.
“We want to develop a set of novel and powerful approaches to quantum networking,” said Alex Kuzmich, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Physics and the MURI’s principal investigator. “The three basic capabilities will be (1) storing quantum information for longer periods of time, on the order of seconds, (2) converting the information to light, and (3) transmitting the information over long distances. We aim to create large-scale systems that use entanglement for quantum communication and potentially also quantum computing.”
The MURI scientists will study three different physical platforms for designing the matter-light interaction used to generate the entangled photons. These include neutral atom memories with electronically-excited Rydberg-level interactions, nitrogen-vacancy (NV) defect centers in diamonds, and charged quantum dots.
“A large body of work has been initiated in this area over the past 15 years by our team members and their research groups,” Kuzmich noted. “The physical approaches are different, but the goals are closely related, so there are significant opportunities for synergistic activities. Through this MURI, we will be able to interact more closely, communicate more quickly and provide new opportunities for our students and postdoctoral fellows.”
Overall, the MURI has four major goals:
Quantum memories generated from the interaction of neutral atoms and light now have maximum lifetimes of approximately 200 milliseconds. But improvements beyond memory lifetime will be needed before practical systems can be created.
“We aim to be able to combine systems, so that instead of just one memory entangled with one photon, perhaps we could have four of them,” Kuzmich added. “This may look like a straightforward thing to do, but this is not easy in the laboratory. The improvements must be made at every level, so the difficulty is significant.”
Among the challenges ahead are maintaining separation between the different memory systems, and minimizing loss of light as signals propagate through the optical fiber systems that would be used to transmit entangled photons.
“Light is easily lost, and there’s not much that can be done about that from a fundamental physics standpoint,” said Kuzmich. “The rates of these protocols go down rapidly as you try to scale up the systems.”
Kuzmich and his Georgia Tech research team have been developing quantum memory based on the interaction of light with neutral atoms such as rubidium. They have made substantial progress over the past decade, but he says it’s not clear which approach will ultimately be used to create large-scale quantum communication system.
The most immediate applications for the quantum memory are in secure communications, in which the entanglement of photons with matter would provide a new form of encryption.
“The immediate focus is on communication, including memories and distributed systems, which is important for sharing and transmitting information,” Kuzmich explained. “It also has implications for quantum computation because similar techniques are often used.”
In addition to Kuzmich, collaborators in the MURI include:
“If we are successful with this over the next five years, long-distance quantum communications may become promising for real-world implementation,” Kuzmich added. “Integrating these advances with existing infrastructure – optical fiber that’s in the ground – will continue to be an important engineering challenge.”
This material is based upon work conducted under contract FA9550-12-1-0025. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed are those of the researchers and do not necessarily reflect the views of the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.
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]]>The newest prototype of the system allows users to wear aninconspicuous dental retainer embedded with sensors to control the system. Thesensors track the location of a tiny magnet attached to the tongues of users.In earlier versions of the Tongue Drive System, the sensors that track themovement of the magnet on the tongue were mounted on a headset worn by theuser.
“By moving the sensors inside the mouth, we have created a TongueDrive System with increased mechanical stability and comfort that is nearlyunnoticeable,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, an associate professor in the School ofElectrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.
The new intraoral Tongue Drive System was presented and demonstratedon Feb. 20, 2012 at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference inSan Francisco. Development of the system is supported by the NationalInstitutes of Health, National Science Foundation, and Christopher and DanaReeve Foundation.
The new dental appliance contains magnetic field sensors mountedon its four corners that detect movement of a tiny magnet attached to thetongue. It also includes a rechargeable lithium-ion battery and an inductioncoil to charge the battery. The circuitry fits in the space available on theretainer, which sits against the roof of the mouth and is covered with aninsulating, water-resistant material and vacuum-molded inside standard dentalacrylic.
“One of the problems we encountered with the earlier headsetwas that it could shift on a user’s head and the system would need to berecalibrated,” explained Ghovanloo. “Because the dental appliance is worninside the mouth and molded from dental impressions to fit tightly around anindividual’s teeth with clasps, it is protected from these types ofdisturbances.”
When in use, the output signals from the sensors arewirelessly transmitted to an iPod or iPhone. Software installed on the iPodinterprets the user’s tongue commands by determining the relative position ofthe magnet with respect to the array of sensors in real-time. This informationis used to control the movements of a cursor on the computer screen or tosubstitute for the joystick function in a powered wheelchair.
Ghovanloo and his team have also created a universalinterface for the intraoral Tongue Drive System that attaches directly to a standardelectric wheelchair. The interface boasts multiple functions: it not only holdsthe iPod, but also wirelessly receives the sensor data and delivers it to theiPod, connects the iPod to the wheelchair, charges the iPod, and includes acontainer where the dental retainer can be placed at night for charging.
In preliminary tests, the intraoral device exhibited anincreased signal-to-noise ratio, even when a smaller magnet was placed on thetongue. That improved sensitivity could allow additional commands to beprogrammed into the system. The existing Tongue Drive System that uses a headsetinterprets commands from seven different tongue movements.
The ability to train the system with additional commands –as many commands as an individual can comfortably remember – and having all ofthe commands available to the user at the same time are significant advantagesover the common sip-n-puff device that acts as a simple switch controlled bysucking or blowing through a straw.
The researchers plan to begin testing the usability of the intraoralTongue Drive System by able-bodied individuals soon and then move onto clinicaltrials to test its usability by people with high-level spinal cord injuries.
In recent months, Ghovanloo and his team have recruited 11 individualswith high-level spinal cord injuries to test the headset version of the systemat the Atlanta-based Shepherd Center and the Rehabilitation Institute ofChicago. Trial participants received a clinical tongue piercing and tongue studthat contained a tiny magnet embedded in the upper ball. They repeated two testsessions per week during a six-week period that assessed their ability to usethe Tongue Drive System to operate a computer and navigate an electricwheelchair through an obstacle course.
“During the trials, users have been able to learn to use thesystem, move the computer cursor quicker and with more accuracy, and maneuverthrough the obstacle course faster and with fewer collisions,” said Ghovanloo.“We expect even better results in the future when trial participants begin to usethe intraoral Tongue Drive System on a daily basis.”
Georgia Tech graduate students Abner Ayala-Acevedo, XueliangHuo, Jeonghee Kim, Hangue Park and Xueli Xiao, and former postdoctoral fellowBenoit Gosselin also contributed to this work.
This project wassupported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (Award Nos.CBET-0828882, IIS-0953107 and IIS-0803184) and the National Institutes ofHealth (NIH) (Award No. RC1 EB010915-01). The content is solely theresponsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarilyrepresent the official views of the NSF or NIH.
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]]>The resulting structures, which are 100 to 200 nanometers in outer diameter with thickness ranging from 5 to 25 nanometers, show a piezoelectric response comparable to that of PZT thin films of much larger dimensions. The technique could ultimately lead to production of actively-tunable photonic and phononic crystals, terahertz emitters, energy harvesters, micromotors, micropumps and nanoelectromechanical sensors, actuators and transducers – all made from the PZT material.
Using a novel characterization technique developed at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the researchers for the first time made high-accuracy in-situ measurements of the nanoscale piezoelectric properties of the structures.
“We are using a new nano-manufacturing method for creating three-dimensional nanostructures with high aspect ratios in ferroelectric materials that have attractive piezoelectric properties,” said Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “We also leveraged a new characterization method available through Oak Ridge to study the piezoelectric response of these nanostructures on the substrate where they were produced.”
The research was published online on Jan. 26, 2012, and is scheduled for publication in the print edition (Vol. 24, Issue 9) of the journal Advanced Materials. The research was supported by Georgia Tech new faculty startup funds.
Ferroelectric materials at the nanometer scale are promising for a wide range of applications, but processing them into useful devices has proven challenging – despite success at producing such devices at the micrometer scale. Top-down manufacturing techniques, such as focused ion beam milling, allow accurate definition of devices at the nanometer scale, but the process can induce surface damage that degrades the ferroelectric and piezoelectric properties that make the material interesting.
Until now, bottom-up fabrication techniques have been unable to produce structures with both high aspect ratios and precise control over location. The technique reported by the Georgia Tech researchers allows production of nanotubes made from PZT (PbZr0.52Ti0.48O3) with aspect ratios of up to 5 to 1.
“This technique gives us a degree of control over the three-dimensional process that we’ve not had before,” said Bassiri-Gharb. “When we did the characterization, we saw a size effect that until now had been observed only in thin films of this material at much larger size scales.”
The ferroelectric nanotubes are especially interesting because their properties – including size, shape, optical responses and dielectric characteristics – can be controlled by external forces even after they are fabricated.
“These are truly smart materials, which means they respond to external stimuli such as applied electric fields, thermal fields or stress fields,” said Bassiri-Gharb. “You can tune them to behave differently. Devices made from these materials could be fine tuned to respond to a different wavelength or to emit at a different wavelength during operation.”
For example, the piezoelectric effect could permit fabrication of “nano-muscle” tubes that would act as tiny pumps when an electric field is applied to them. The fields could also be used to tune the properties of photonic crystals, or to create structures whose size can be altered slightly to absorb electromagnetic energy of different wavelengths.
In fabricating the nanotubes, Bassiri-Gharb and graduate student Ashley Bernal (currently an assistant professor at the Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) began with a silicon substrate and spin-coated a negative electron-beam resist material onto it. A template was created using electron-beam lithography, and a thin layer of aluminum oxide was added on top of that using atomic layer deposition.
Next, the template was immersed under vacuum into an ultrasound bath containing a chemical precursor solution for PZT. The structures were pyrolyzed at 300 degrees Celsius, then annealed in a two-step heat treating process at 600 and 800 degrees Celsius to crystallize the material and decompose the polymer substrate. The process produced free-standing PZT nanotubes connected by a thin layer of the original aluminum oxide. Increasing the amount of chemical infiltration allows production of solid nanorods or nanowires instead of hollow nanotubes.
Though the researchers used electron beam lithography to create the template on which the structures were grown, in principle, many other chemical, optical or mechanical patterning techniques could be used for create the templates, Bassiri-Gharb noted.
In studies done in collaboration with researchers Sergei Kalinin and Alexander Tselev of the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, the devices produced by the soft template process were analyzed with band-excitation piezoresponse force microscopy (BPFM). The technique allowed researchers to isolate properties of the AFM tip from those of the PZT sample, allowing analysis in sufficient detail to detect the size-scale piezoelectric effects.
“One of our most important observations is that these piezoelectric nanomaterials allow us to generate a factor of four to six increase in the extrinsic piezoelectric response compared to the use of thin films,” said Baassiri-Gharb. “This would be a huge advantage in terms of manufacturing because it means we could get the same response from much smaller structures than we would have had to otherwise use.”
The Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences is one of the five Department of Energy (DOE) Nanoscale Science Research Centers, premier national user facilities for interdisciplinary research at the nanoscale that are supported by the DOE Office of Science. Together, the NSRCs comprise a suite of complementary facilities that provide researchers with state-of-the-art capabilities to fabricate, process, characterize and model nanoscale materials, and constitute the largest infrastructure investment of the National Nanotechnology Initiative. The NSRCs are located at DOE’s Argonne, Brookhaven, Lawrence Berkeley, Oak Ridge, Sandia and Los Alamos National Laboratories. For more information about the DOE NSRCs, please visit http://science.energy.gov/bes/suf/user-facilities/nanoscale-science-research-centers/.
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]]>The Alvin M. Ferst Leadership and Entrepreneur Award for 2012 will be presented at the Student Honors Luncheon on April 19.
The ideal candidate would be:
Interested students should submit their application with two to three supporting letters of reference from Faculty, Staff and/or Employers. Applications can be found online at the Division of Student Affairs website.
Deadline for submitting applications is noon on Monday, Feb. 27. Supporting letters of reference are to be pasted on the same page as your application at the time you submit your application. Please be sure letters of reference have contact information included on the document.
]]>Xia is the Brock Family Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Nanomedicine in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, with a joint appointment in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research focuses on nanocrystals -- a novel class of materials with features smaller than 100 nm -- as well as the development of innovative technologies enabled by nanocrystals. These technologies span the fields of molecular imaging, early cancer diagnosis, targeted drug delivery, biomaterials, regenerative medicine and catalysis.
“The possible applications of nanotechnology in medicine have only begun to be explored, said Michael Cassidy, President and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance. “Dr. Xia’s expertise and collaborative vision will lead to vital new scientific discoveries that can be transformed into new tools to help people live healthier lives.”
Xia received his Ph.D. in physical chemistry from Harvard University in 1996, his M.S. in inorganic chemistry from University of Pennsylvania (with the late Professor Alan G. MacDiarmid, a Nobel Laureate in Chemistry, 2000) in 1993. He has received a number of prestigious awards, including AIMBE Fellow (2011), MRS Fellow (2009), NIH Director's Pioneer Award (2006), Leo Hendrik Baekeland Award (2005), Camille Dreyfus Teacher Scholar (2002), David and Lucile Packard Fellowship in Science and Engineering (2000), Alfred P. Sloan Research Fellow (2000), NSF Early Career Development Award (2000) and the ACS Victor K. LaMer Award (1999).
“Dr. Xia is a world-renowned teacher and leader at the forefront of nanomedicine and materials science,” said Larry McIntire, the Wallace H. Coulter Chair of Biomedical Engineering. “His reputation and innovative research in these areas will clearly strengthen our expanding efforts in nanomedicine and biomaterials. We are honored to welcome him to the department and to the Institute.”
]]>Adrianne Proeller
Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University
404-894-2357
]]>On Saturday, Feb. 11, the crowd on the rowing machines atthe Campus Recreation Center may look a little more serious than usual as the GeorgiaTech Crew Team hosts its annual Atlanta Erg Sprints indoor rowing competition. Eachyear prior to the spring season, rowers convene at the CRC from around the Southeastto race against the clock at Tech’s nationally recognized athletic facility.
“It’s a good chance to see where you’re at for the season,”said Corey Drozdowski, former president of GT Crew and a mechanical engineering major.The event is run by GT Crew alumni, and rowers from Emory,Vanderbilt, Berry and other Southeast schools will travel to Atlanta toparticipate.
In the land-locked city of Atlanta, it may seem far-fetchedthat the Institute could have water sports teams. Even more surprising may bethat GT Crew has thrived since 1985.
In 2011, the men’s novice and varsity teams placed first invarious races at the Southern Intercollegiate Rowing Association (SIRA)championship, along with the women’s varsity team. The men also had teams placefirst at the 2011 Dad Vail, the equivalent of a club rowing nationalchampionship, with women’s teams placing second. This spring, about 50 studentswill spend several hours on the water each week, taking to the CRC to continuehoning skills in the off-season.
“Practicing in the dark in the winter is hard,” said NickRussell, GT Crew public relations and recruiting officer and an aerospaceengineering major. “If a coach can’t see you to correct errors on the water,it’s not worth being there — reinforcing bad habits on the water makes thingshard to fix.”
The team employs five coaches through membership dues, withequipment largely funded by the Student Government Association. Drozdowski isquick to acknowledge support the team has received over the years, including crewalumni, current advisor Rich Steele and former advisor Rosalind Myers. In fact,the team even has a boat named in Myers’ honor.
Outside of campus, GT Crew partnered with Panama City Beach last year to encourage tourism in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon oil spill. PCBwelcomes the team for spring break each year for a week of three-a-daystraining, marking the beginning of its requirement to remain sober until afterthe last race of the season.
“They like us coming because we’re not just going down thereto party,” Drozdowski said. However, the team doesn’t lack in having its ownfun. Members are prone to shave abnormal facial hair patterns and rack upwinnings in shirt bets, a tradition among crew clubs where the winning teamreceives a shirt from each losing team at national competitions.
“We have a lot of shirts,” said Alyssa McKay, a GT Crew publicrelations officer and architecture major. The hope is to grow that collectioneach year, as well as to earn medals at Dad Vails and bring more pride and spirit to the team.
“Our goals as a team are to bring home as many medals aspossible from major regattas, while also helping improve our community by beingrespectful, productive people,” Russell said. “Coach Rob [Canavan] activelyencourages us to have acts of community service that can range from helping anold lady cross the street to serving in a soup kitchen.”
]]>Kristen Shaw
Communications and Marketing
The accuracy of the field mills’ readings of electrostatic charge -- a critical measure of lightning potential -- was comparable.
"If we could put 25 of these low-cost field mills on high schools around Georgia, the resulting array would let us measure charge buildup in storm clouds and help answer important questions involving lightning activity," said John Trostel, a senior research scientist who is director of GTRI's Severe Storms Research Center. "We'd also be offering a unique educational opportunity to Georgia science students -- the chance to build a precision scientific instrument and then see it in operation."
Building an accurate field mill, Trostel explained, is not a trivial task. The present device is the result of several semesters of work by four students from Kennesaw Mountain High School in Kennesaw, Ga., and another student from The Walker School in Marietta, Ga.
Under the guidance of Georgia Tech personnel, each student worked a semester during his senior year as a research intern in the Severe Storms Research Center at GTRI's Cobb County Research Facility. For the Kennesaw Mountain students, the work at GTRI represented a capstone project completing four years in that school's Academy of Math and Science Magnet Program.
"We've been fortunate to have students working at GTRI for six years now," said Kelly Ingle, a science teacher who supervises the Magnet Research and Internship Program at the high school. "It's a real win-win situation, because the students are gaining experience that will help launch them on their college and professional careers, and they're also doing something beneficial for the mentoring facility."
A Team Effort
The five students -- David Brinkmann, Matthew Bond, Alex Hale and Andrew Brinkmann from Kennesaw Mountain and Stephen Pfohl from The Walker School -- each tackled part of the research and design effort required to build a working field mill, explained Tom Perry, a GTRI electrical engineer who played a major supervising role.
Starting in 2008, David Brinkmann spent a semester researching and building a prototype. His task was to demonstrate that it was indeed possible for high school students to build an inexpensive but accurate field mill.
David Brinkmann -- now a student at the U.S. Coast Guard Academy -- considered several options before choosing a field-mill concept from a German website. He developed a cylinder-shaped device, consisting of handmade circuit boards held together by nuts and bolts that fit snugly into a coffee can. The total cost was about $90.
In 2009, Bond spent his spring semester improving David Brinkmann's model by adding electrical components, including a data-logging function for detecting voltages and a voltage regulator that ensures uniform performance of a rotating blade that spins above the sensing elements, inducing alternating positive and negative charges.
He then tackled the challenge of calibrating the field mill, which involves correlating voltage readings with field strengths in the atmosphere.
"I built a 10 foot by 10 foot structure -- basically a capacitor -- out of wood and aluminum foil," recalled Bond, now a student in mechanical engineering at Mississippi State University. The mill was then inserted into the gap between the two capacitor plates. "We ran different field strengths across the capacitor and then did a regression on the data. That gave us the equation we needed to translate the voltages we were seeing to actual field strengths, which are the useful data that we wanted."
In 2010, Hale used CAD design software to develop a final circuit-board design that could be fabricated commercially. Now at the University of Alabama, Hale also built a field-mill mockup to demonstrate that fabricated boards would fit correctly, and he improved the device's electrical characteristics.
"We used several professional-level computer programs to improve the layout and develop a final design that could be sent to a fabricator," Perry said. "Alex did all the CAD work that went into the final board design. At each step I showed him partially how to do it. Then I would erase my work, and he would go on to complete it."
The field mill currently being tested by GTRI employs a commercially fabricated circuit board that was made using Hale's design. The robustness of the $200 field mill is still under study. Device accuracy is excellent, but issues include long-term calibration consistency and materials lifespan.
"Before we actually distribute any field mills to schools, we're calibrating several of them and comparing their operation with commercial field mills over time," Trostel said.
Continuing the project, during the summer of 2011 Pfohl was tasked with constructing five copies of this successful design to be used in comparison and for stability testing. Andrew Brinkmann, David’s younger brother, then spent the fall semester of 2011 testing and comparing the outputs of the five devices. This testing led to numerous improvements in the mill design that should make them both more reliable and more robust.
Field Mill Kits
Trostel explained that with commercial circuit boards and other parts now easily available, it may soon be possible to take the next step: distribution of low-cost, standardized field mill kits and operational procedures to leading Georgia high schools. That step would allow students around the state to investigate local electric field effects. Mounted on the school's roof, the device would send lightning data via a wired connection to a computer in the school.
Having 25 or so field mills around the state would allow Georgia schools to participate in an extensive field-mill array capable of making large-scale electric field measurements. Such an array could make a real contribution to lightning research by supporting investigation into such research problems as the initiation and cessation of lightning during a storm.
"An array of field mills over an extensive area would give us more insight into when lightning first begins during a storm, and when it ends," Trostel said. "When we know more about when these points are reached, it will help us establish dependable guidelines on lightning dangers."
Also under study are the best methods for supplying power to the device. Solar power shows promise, and its use would make the student field mill more portable than commercial models, which require connection to power lines. But a solar panel adds to the overall cost, and researchers must still solve the problem of storing enough solar energy to outlast sunless periods in winter.
Many U.S. high schools are already part of existing weather networks that integrate weather data into classroom learning, Trostel said. The GTRI team wants to work cooperatively with such a network, enabling a Georgia field-mill array to connect to an existing Internet-based system.
"It would be really valuable to have high school students be part of this kind of cutting-edge, real-world experiment," Trostel said. "It would help get them excited about science."
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]]>“Shape-memory alloys exhibit unique characteristics that youwould want for earthquake-resistant building and bridge design and retrofitapplications: they have the ability to dissipate significant energy withoutsignificant degradation or permanent deformation,” said Reginald DesRoches, a professorin the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech.
Georgia Tech researchers have developed a model thatcombines thermodynamics and mechanical equations to assess what happens whenshape-memory alloys are subjected to loading from strong motion. The researchersare using the model to analyze how shape-memory alloys in a variety ofcomponents -- cables, bars, plates and helical springs -- respond to different loadingconditions. From that information, they can determine the optimalcharacteristics of the material for earthquake applications.
The model was developed by DesRoches, School of MechanicalEngineering graduate student Reza Mirzaeifar, School of Civil and EnvironmentalEngineering associate professor Arash Yavari, and School of Mechanical Engineeringand School of Materials Science and Engineering professor Ken Gall.
A paper describing the thermo-mechanical model was publishedonline Feb. 3 in the InternationalJournal of Non-Linear Mechanics. This research was supported by theTransportation Research Board IDEA program.
To improve the performance of structures during earthquakes,researchers around the world have been investigating the use of “smart”materials, such as shape-memory alloys, which can bounce back afterexperiencing large loads. The most common shape-memory alloys are made of metalmixtures containing copper-zinc-aluminum-nickel, copper-aluminum-nickel ornickel-titanium. Potential applications of shape-memory alloys in bridge andbuilding structures include their use in bearings, columns and beams, orconnecting elements between beams and columns. But before this class ofmaterials can be used, the effect of extreme and repetitive loads on thesematerials must be thoroughly examined.
“For standard civil engineering materials, you can usemechanics to look at force and displacement to measure stress and strain, butfor this class of shape-memory alloys that changes properties when it undergoesloading and unloading, you have to consider thermodynamics and mechanics,” explainedYavari.
The Georgia Tech team found that the generation andabsorption of heat during loading and unloading caused a temperature gradientin shape-memory alloys, which caused a non-uniform stress distribution in thematerial even when the strain was uniform.
“Shape-memory alloys previously examined in detail werereally thin wires, which can exchange heat with the ambient environment rapidlyand no temperature change is seen,” said Mirzaeifar. “When you start to examinealloys in components large enough to be used in civil engineering applications,the internal temperature is no longer uniform and needs to be taken intoaccount.”
To predict the internal temperature distribution ofshape-memory alloys under loading-unloading cycles, which could then be used todetermine the stress distribution, the researchers developed a model that usedthe surface thermal boundary conditions, diameter and loading rate of the alloyas inputs.
The team included ambient conditions in the model becauseshape-memory alloys for seismic applications could operate in a variety ofenvironments -- such as water if used in bridge structures or air if used inbuilding structures -- which would produce different rates of heat transfer. Theresearchers used a thermal camera to record the variation in surfacetemperature of shape-memory alloys experiencing loading and unloading.
Using their model, the researchers were able to accuratelypredict internal temperature and stress distributions for shape-memory alloys. Themodel results were verified with experimental tests. In one test, they foundthat a shape-memory alloy loaded at a very slow rate had time to exchange theheat created with the ambient environment and exhibited uniform stress. If it wasloaded very rapidly, it did not have enough time to exchange the heat, leadingto a non-uniform stress distribution.
“Our analytical solutions are exact, fast and capable of simulatingthe complicated coupled thermo-mechanical response of shape-memory alloysconsidering temperature changes and loading rate dependency,” said Mirzaeifar.
In future work, the researchers plan to examine morecomplicated shapes and the effects of combination loading -- tension, bendingand torsion -- to optimize shape-memory alloys for earthquake applications.
This project issupported by the Transportation Research Board of the National Academies (AwardNo. NCHRP-147). The National Academies has rights to the data and the contentis solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does notnecessarily represent the official views of the National Academies.
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]]>“Engineeringis a profession of great wonder and rich reward,” May said at the event hostedby the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness to celebrate engineeringdeans for their excellence and commitment to educating and graduating moreengineers.
“Incommunicating the appeal of our profession, we must tap into what young peoplevalue most in their life’s work—flexibility, connectivity, visibility and aboveall else, the chance to use technology to make a real impact on our nation andworld and to change our society for the better,” May added.
May toutedthe strategies used by Georgia Tech to retain 94 percent of freshmen aftertheir first year and graduate eight out of every 10 students within six years.
“Even moreso, we are attracting women and minorities to engineering in large numbers and,I am proud to say, graduating them, making Georgia Tech the nation’s largestand most diverse college of engineering,” said May, who chairs the Dean’sAdvisory Committee for the High Technology Education Working Group, which is partof the White House Council on Jobs and Competitiveness.
Georgia Techwas one of 50 engineering colleges recognized at the event for its excellenceand commitment to engineering education. During the ceremony, the council alsoannounced a partnership with the American Society for Engineering Education todevelop metrics to formally recognize engineering schools that meet particulargraduation and retention levels.
U.S. PresidentBarack Obama has a goal of graduating 10,000 additional new engineers each yearthrough private sector incentives and efforts in engineering schools to attractand retain top talent. The council is comprised of leaders from companies thatrely on a quality STEM (science, technology, engineering and math) workforceand who have a particular interest in the production of more engineers.
Along withMay, other featured speakers at the ceremony included: Valerie Jarrett, senioradvisor to the President; Paul Otellini, president and CEO of Intel; StevenChu, U.S. Secretary of Energy; Arne Duncan, U.S. Secretary of Education; and DonGiddens, president of the American Society for Engineering Education and formerdean of engineering at Georgia Tech.
]]>Georgia Tech researchers are developing new ways to diagnose and treat heart problems -- from advanced imaging techniques and guidance for drug therapies to sophisticated surgical procedures. Georgia Tech’s emphasis on translational research accelerates the pace at which new heart-related discoveries are put to use in patient care.
Improving Heart Surgery
To advance the goal of minimally invasive cardiac surgery, researchers have developed a technology that simplifies and standardizes the technique for opening and closing the beating heart during surgery.
Apica Cardiovascular, a Georgia Tech and Emory University medical device startup, licensed the technology from the two institutions. The firm recently received a $5.5 million investment to further develop the system, which will make the transapical access and closure procedure required for delivering therapeutic devices to the heart more routine for cardiac surgeons. The goal is to expand the use of surgery techniques that are less invasive and do not require stopping the heart.
With research and development support from the Coulter Foundation Translational Research Program and the Georgia Research Alliance, the company has already completed a series of pre-clinical studies to test the functionality of the device and its biocompatibility. James Greene currently serves as the CEO of the company, which has offices in Galway, Ireland, and in Atlanta.
For more information on this work, visit http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/apica-cardiovascular/.
Diagnosing Heart Disease
Levent Degertekin is designing tiny devices micromachined from silicon that may make diagnosing and treating coronary artery diseases easier.
Degertekin, the George W. Woodruff Chair in Mechanical Systems, and Paul Hasler, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, micromachined intravascular ultrasound imaging arrays with integrated electronics. Placed on catheters inserted into the body, the devices image the arteries of the heart in three dimensions at high resolution using high-frequency ultrasound waves.
The system boasts a more compact design and three-dimensional imaging capability for guiding cardiologists during interventions, such as those for completely blocked arteries. The technology also offers higher resolution than current intravascular ultrasound systems, which help diagnose vulnerable plaque, a leading cause of heart attacks.
Funding for this research currently is provided by the National Institutes of Health. To commercialize the technology, the researchers have formed a startup company called SIBUS Medical, which is receiving assistance from VentureLab, a unit of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute that nurtures faculty startup companies.
Detecting and Treating Atherosclerosis
With a five-year $14.6 million contract from the National Institutes of Health (NIH), Georgia Tech and Emory University researchers are developing nanotechnology and biomolecular engineering tools and methodologies for detecting and treating atherosclerosis. The award supports the interdisciplinary Center for Translational Cardiovascular Nanomedicine, which is led by Gang Bao, the Robert A. Milton Chair in Biomedical Engineering in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.
Atherosclerosis typically occurs in branched or curved regions of arteries where plaques form because of cholesterol build-up. Inflammation can alter the structure of plaques so they become more likely to rupture, potentially causing a blood vessel blockage and leading to heart attack or stroke.
The researchers are working to accomplish four goals:
Additional researchers from the Coulter Department and from Emory University are also contributing to the project. For more information on this work, visit http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/cardiovascular-nanomedicine-center/.
Improving Drug Dosing Following a Heart Attack
A research team led by Georgia Tech mechanical engineering assistant professor Craig Forest is designing a device to quickly and accurately personalize a patient’s drug dosage to prevent blood clots that can cause heart attacks.
When someone experiencing heart attack symptoms arrives at an emergency room, he or she typically receives a standard dose of aspirin and/or clopidogrel to prevent further blood clotting. But that standard dose may not be the best dose for a given individual.
With Forest’s device, a small blood sample is sent through a microchip containing a network of microfabricated capillaries that mimic the branching coronary arteries around the human heart. Because the branches contain flow restrictions of different sizes, the failure of blood to flow through the branches with smaller restrictions indicates that a higher drug dose may be required.
Determining the necessary dose of anti-clotting drugs can be difficult. Too much of the drug may cause the patient to experience gastrointestinal bleeding. Too little drug may allow additional clot formation and set the stage for another heart attack. Forest’s device should help determine the right dosage for each patient.
Emory University Department of Emergency Medicine assistant professor Jeremy Ackerman and Georgia Tech Regents’ professor of mechanical engineering David Ku are working with Forest on this project, which is supported by the American Heart Association.
Examining Heart Valve Leakage
An estimated 1.6 million Americans suffer moderate to severe leakage through their tricuspid valve, a complex structure that closes off the heart’s right ventricle from the right atrium. If left untreated, severe leakage can affect an individual’s quality of life and can even lead to death.
Research teams led by Ajit Yoganathan, Georgia Tech Regents’ professor and Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair in Biomedical Engineering, have discovered causes for the tricuspid valve’s leakage and ways to predict the severity of leakage in the valve. These study results could lead to improved diagnosis and treatment of the condition.
A study published in the journal Circulation found that either dilating the tricuspid valve opening or displacing the papillary muscles that control its operation can cause the valve to leak. A combination of the two actions can increase the severity of the leakage, which is called tricuspid regurgitation.
Standard clinical procedures that detail when and how tricuspid valve repairs should be performed need to be developed and this study suggests several items that should be considered in developing those protocols, according to the researchers.
In another study published in the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging, researchers found that the anatomy of the heart’s tricuspid valve can be used to predict the severity of leakage in the valve. Using 3-D echocardiograms from 64 individuals who exhibited assorted grades of tricuspid leakage, the researchers found that pulmonary arterial pressure, the size of the valve opening and papillary muscle position measurements could be used to predict the severity of an individual’s tricuspid regurgitation.
The study will change the focus and direction of future surgical therapies for tricuspid regurgitation to make them better and more durable, the researchers said.
Researchers from the Coulter Department, Emory University, Children’s Hospital Boston and Mount Sinai Medical Center contributed to these two studies.
For more information on this work, visit http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/tricuspid-valve-leakage/ and http://gtresearchnews.gatech.edu/tricuspid-regurgitation/.
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Writer: Abby Robinson
]]>ESW-GT earned $2,340 for its proposal for a solar café orkiosk used to raise funds for the chapter; Tech’s chapter chose to focus onbeverages, either hot or chilled.
“This will not only raise money for our group, but willpromote sustainable energy sources and pique the engineering interest ofstudents around campus,” said Zac Hoffman, president of ESW-GT. The group hopesto use the cart on campus during large events, such as football games, andplans to debut it at this year’s Earth Day celebration on Friday, April 20, toshowcase ESW-GT to students and generate excitement about renewable energy.Hoffman said the team is finishing its final design and will soon beginconstruction.
Funding will be used to purchase materials to build the cartand for travel expenses to showcase the final product at the ESW nationalconference this fall. SunEdison will provide on-board solar cells that will beused in beverage preparation.
]]>The Georgia Tech Research Partnership Network allowsregistered users to create a personal profile specific to their research. Thenetwork serves as a virtual space where researchers from Georgia Tech andHistorically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Institutions(MIs) can 1) share their research information; 2) effectively communicate andidentify potential research partners; and 3) access a robust database ofresearchers from across the country that is searchable by keywords pertainingto research interest, field, degree, institute name and location.
Georgia Tech launched the HBCU/MI Outreach InitiativeProgram to encourage and facilitate research partnerships and interactions withHBCUs and MIs. The program identifies research expertise at HBCUs and MIsthroughout the country and involves faculty from these institutions in researchand proposal development efforts. The program’s vision for HBCU/MI outreachincludes leveraging and strengthening previous experience with minority-servinginstitutions, establishing new partnerships, and generating additional supportfor innovative research.
To join the Georgia Tech Research PartnershipNetwork, please visit: http://hbcumi.gatech.edu.
]]>Barbara Boyan, the Price Gilbert, Jr. Chair in Tissue Engineering in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, is one of 66 new members and ten foreign associates elected to the academy.
Boyan is known widely for her work in bone and cartilage biology in the fields of orthopaedics, plastic and reconstructive surgery and oral health, with specific emphasis on the role of sex in determining how cells respond to steroid hormones and to biomaterials used in medical devices. She is also an entrepreneur and has seen her inventions move from the design stage to use in patients with musculoskeletal pathologies.
“Barbara’s election to the NAE is a recognition of her scientific knowledge, her pioneering work in translational research and the high esteem in which she is held by her peers,” said Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering. “This is a significant recognition for one of our distinguished faculty members and is a testament to the talented faculty we have at Georgia Tech.”
Boyan is associate dean for research and innovation in the Georgia Tech College of Engineering and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar. In addition, she serves as executive director of the Translational Research Institute for Biomedical Engineering & Science. Boyan is the director of the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Laboratory for Craniofacial Plastic Surgery Research, the Center for Advanced Bioengineering for Soldier Survivability and the Center for Pediatric Healthcare Technology Innovation.
Boyan is also a Fellow of the International Team for Implantology, a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a Fellow of the American Institute for Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering, as well as past president of the American Association for Dental Research, past secretary/treasurer of the Orthopaedic Research Society and founder of several bio-related companies.
William (Bill) George, who earned his bachelor’s degree in industrial engineering in 1964, joins Boyan as a new NAE member. George was recognized by NAE for applying engineering principles to manufacturing to advance healthcare. Currently, George is a professor of management practice at Harvard Business School, where he has taught leadership courses since 2004. He is the author of four best-selling books. George is the former chairman and chief executive officer of Medtronic.
“We are also delighted that Georgia Tech alumnus, Bill George, former chairman and CEO of Medtronic, was also recognized for inclusion in the NAE,” said May. “Bill transformed the healthcare industry while at Medtronic. He continues now through his philanthropy at Tech and scholarships to help educate the next generation of engineering leaders.”
According to NAE, membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to “engineering research, practice or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature,” and to the “pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education.”
]]>McLaughlin’s presentation will be part of the inauguralFrench-American Parliamentary meetings symposium that will focus on strengthening community,educational and university cooperation between the two countries. He willparticipate on a panel that will provide insight on existing French-Americanacademic exchanges and how to strengthen these programs and develop newopportunities.
Georgia Tech-Lorraine, the Institute's first internationalcampus, was established in Metz, France, 21 years ago. Since that time, more than2,500 students representing 25 nationalities have participated in the program.
Last year, McLaughlin, who previously served as the deputydirector of Georgia Tech-Lorraine, wasawarded the honor of Knight of the French National Order of Merit, the second-highestcivilian award given by the Republic of France.
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Thescientists showed for the first time how the virus called “Lambda” evolved tofind a new way to attack host cells, an innovation that took four mutations toaccomplish. This virus infects bacteria, in particular the common E. coli bacterium. Lambda isn’tdangerous to humans, but this research demonstrated how viruses evolve complexand potentially deadly new traits, said Justin Meyer, MSU graduate student, whoco-authored the paper with Richard Lenski, MSU Hannah Distinguished Professorof Microbiology and Molecular Genetics.
“Wewere surprised at first to see Lambda evolve this new function, this ability toattack and enter the cell through a new receptor – and it happened so fast,”Meyer said. “But when we re-ran the evolution experiment, we saw the same thinghappen over and over.”
Thispaper comes on the heels of news that scientists in the U.S. and theNetherlands produced a deadly version of bird flu. Even though bird flu is amere five mutations away from becoming transmissible between humans, it’shighly unlikely the virus could naturally obtain all of the beneficialmutations all at once. However, it might evolve sequentially, gaining benefitsone-by-one, if conditions are favorable at each step, he added.
Throughresearch conducted at BEACON, MSU’s National Science Foundation Center for theStudy of Evolution in Action, Meyer and his colleagues’ ability to duplicatethe results implied that adaptation by natural selection, or survival of thefittest, had an important role in the virus’ evolution.
Whenthe genomes of the adaptable virus were sequenced, they always had fourmutations in common.
“Theparallelism shown in the evolutionary history of adaptable viruses was strikingand was far beyond what is expected by chance,” noted paper co-author Joshua Weitz, anassistant professor in the School ofBiology at Georgia Tech.
Incontrast, the viruses that didn’t evolve the new way of entering cells had someof the four mutations but never all four together, said Meyer, who holds theBarnett Rosenberg Fellowship in MSU’s College of Natural Science.
“Inother words, natural selection promoted the virus’ evolution because themutations helped them use both their old and new attacks,” Meyer said. “Thefinding raises questions of whether the five bird flu mutations may also havemultiple functions, and could they evolve naturally?”
Additionalauthors of the paper include Devin Dobias, former MSU undergraduate (now agraduate student at Washington University in St. Louis); Ryan Quick, MSUundergraduate; and Jeff Barrick, a former Lenski lab researcher now on thefaculty at the University of Texas at Austin.
Fundingfor the research was provided in part by the National Science Foundation,Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, James S. McDonnell Foundation andBurroughs Wellcome Fund.
This research was supported in part bythe Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) (Award No.HR0011-09-1-0055) and the National Science Foundation (NSF). The content issolely the responsibility of the principal investigator and does notnecessarily represent the official views of DARPA or NSF.
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]]>“We want individuals to walk away with a clear understandingof how they can work more effectively as part of a group,” said David Knobbe,assistant director for the campus recreation at Georgia Tech. “The experienceswe provide challenge individuals to evaluate their own behavior andcontributions to the group. Our goal is to help them to use insights gleanedfrom the experience as a base for planning more effective behavior in the rolesthey play at work and in every aspect of their lives.”
The complex is open to Georgia Tech, community and corporategroups for half-day (four hours) and full-day (eight hour) sessions.Participants climb cargo nets, walk a tight rope and hop from suspendedplatforms. The course ends with either a zip-line ride or leaping off the40-foot-high structure (while harnessed).
It’s not as easy as it sounds though. Course facilitatorscreate complex challenges for group interaction. For example, an instructor mayrequire that all team members must be on the small platform before anyone canmove to the next one. Or all team members must be within an arm’s reach whilewalking the tightropes.
Georgia Tech staff members and students supervise the courseand teach the leadership skills.
“Those skills have been invaluable for me while working at theGeorgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI),” explained Austin Ward, an ElectricalEngineer undergraduate student who has served as a course facilitator since2010. “I’m better able to read the personalities of my co-workers and thedynamics of our GTRI groups because of the principles I’ve learned and taughtat the complex. Working as a facilitator has made me a more effective leaderoverall.”
Groups of all sizes can reserve a session by contacting theGeorgia Tech Leadership Course at 404.585.1585 or by completingthe onlineregistration form. To learn more, visit the Leadership Challenge Complex website.
]]>The VehicleForge project’s goal is to create a secure central website and other web-based tools and methods that would facilitate such collaborative development. The work is sponsored by the Tactical Technology Office of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA).
“The aim here is to fundamentally change the way in which complex systems are taken from concept to reality,” said Jack Zentner, a senior research engineer who is leading the project for GTRI, along with research scientist Nick Bollweg. “By enabling many designers in varied locations to work together in a distributed manner, we’re confident that vehicles – and eventually other systems – can be developed with greater speed and better results.”
The core website, to be called vehicleforge.mil, would enable individuals and teams to share data, models, tools and ideas to speed and improve the design process. As part of supporting designer collaboration, the VehicleForge approach would allow participants to reuse the models, tools and other elements present on the site.
Two companies, Red Hat Inc. and RadiantBlue Technologies Inc., are collaborating with GTRI on VehicleForge. They will help GTRI address several issues, including the development of intellectual property information and governance models for designers using the vehicleforge.mil site.
The VehicleForge effort will draw on technology already being used at GTRI to develop open source software online. GTRI is involved in open-source software development through the five-year Homeland Open Security Technology (HOST) program, which is sponsored by the Department of Homeland Security.
VehicleForge would expand cooperation among diverse groups that traditionally have not been able to collaborate easily. Vehicle designers from large corporations with significant tool investments will be able to share ideas with small innovative teams that possess diverse skill sets, experience levels and tools. Student teams could also participate at all levels, which would inject youthful creativity into the process and support the education of future professionals.
To enable collaboration on a large scale, VehicleForge is utilizing several key components to help create a secure collaborative environment.
“The framework that is being built into VehicleForge will provide designers with tremendous flexibility, yet security and version control can still be tightly managed,” Zentner said. “The process will be very open – many different designers will qualify to access the website – but the distributed version-control system will require that any change to an existing element be thoroughly examined and tested before it’s incorporated into the overall design.”
VehicleForge is part of the Adaptive Vehicle Make (AVM) program, a $10 million, four-year DARPA program announced in the first half of 2011. AVM’s goal is to foster novel approaches to the design, verification and manufacturing of complex defense systems and vehicles.
The GTRI VehicleForge team will include seven scientists and engineers, Zentner said. The current contract, which covers one year of development, could be extended for additional years.
Zentner expects that VehicleForge will contribute significantly to the expanding open-hardware movement. A team from GTRI, RadiantBlue and Red Hat has met to discuss this goal with representatives from CERN, the European Organization for Nuclear Research, which has an open-hardware initiative underway. The team is also meeting with Facebook, which is pursuing a project called Open Compute.
The talks have focused on how VehicleForge could serve as a major open-hardware design repository, much as websites such as github.com and sourceforge.net do for open-source software development.
Open-source software development techniques will also be critical to the VehicleForge environment. Open-source programs make their computer code available to communities of qualified programmers, speeding development, increasing security and flexibility, and potentially lowering costs.
“Some open-source websites already allow developers to work together on software, and the technologies used by those sites can be very valuable to VehicleForge,” said Joshua Davis, a research scientist who is principal investigator for the HOST program at GTRI. “But the challenges of online collaboration for physical systems like vehicles are greater than for software collaboration, because designers of physical systems typically use a wide variety of modeling languages and data formats.”
Two other research groups – one at General Electric and one at Vanderbilt University – have also received DARPA contracts to produce alternative versions of the VehicleForge concept. The three VehicleForge teams expect to meet periodically to discuss their work.
“By the end of the first year, we expect to have a fully functional version of vehicleforge.mil up and running and open to a limited number of users,” Zentner said. “And we hope it won’t be long after that when many different designers and teams will be working together on the site.”
This research is supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) through contact HR0011-C-0099. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of DARPA.
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]]>A new study finds that the anatomy of the heart’s tricuspidvalve can be used to predict the severity of leakage in the valve, which is acondition called tricuspid regurgitation. The study, conducted by researchersfrom the Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University, found that pulmonaryarterial pressure, the size of the valve opening and papillary muscle position measurementscould be used to predict the severity of an individual’s tricuspidregurgitation.
“By being able to identify and measure an individual’sparticular tricuspid valve anatomical features that we have shown arecorrelated with increased leakage, clinicians should be able to better target their repair efforts and create moredurable repairs,” said Ajit Yoganathan, Regents’ professor in theWallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech andEmory University.
The study was published in the January issue of the journal Circulation: Cardiovascular Imaging. Funding for this work wasprovided by the American Heart Association and a donation from Tom and ShirleyGurley.
Yoganathan and recent Coulter Department doctoral graduate ErinSpinner teamed with Stamatios Lerakis, a professor of medicine (cardiology), radiologyand imaging sciences at Emory University, to non-invasively collect 3-Dechocardiograms from 64 individuals who exhibited assorted grades of tricuspid leakage.Subjects included 20 individuals with “trace,” 13 with “mild,” 17 with “moderate”and 14 with “severe” tricuspid regurgitation. The subjects with “mild” to“severe” leakage exhibited a mix of isolated right, isolated left, and bothright and left ventricle dilation.
From the 3-D echocardiography images of the heart theycollected, the researchers measured (1) the area of the annulus, which is thefibrous ring that surrounds the tricuspid valve opening; (2) the distancebetween the annulus and the three right ventricle papillary muscles, which keepthe valve shut when the ventricle contracts; and (3) the position of the papillarymuscles with respect to the center of the annulus. The clinicians also measuredpulmonary arterial pressure using standard clinical methods and assessed thegrade of tricuspid regurgitation from “trace” to “severe” with color Dopplerimaging.
In collaboration with Emir Veledar, an assistant professorand statistician in the Rollins School of Public Health at Emory University, theresearchers found statistical differences between individuals with ventricular dilationand the control subjects in the parameters of pulmonary arterial pressure,annulus area and papillary muscle displacement. They also found that all three factors were correlated with the gradeof tricuspid regurgitation.
“This study’s use ofadvanced cardiovascular imaging, and more specifically 3-D echocardiography, providednew insight into the pathophysiology of tricuspid regurgitation and a goodunderstanding as to why current surgical treatments for tricuspid regurgitationare not good enough,” explained Lerakis. “I believe this study will change thefocus and direction of future surgical therapies for tricuspid regurgitationonly to make them better and more durable.”
Based on the findings of this study, said Lerakis, future surgical therapiesshould not only be focused on the tricuspid annulus, but on the entiretricuspid valve apparatus, including the tricuspid valve papillary muscles andtheir three-dimensional location within the apparatus.
Individuals in the study with left ventricle dilation exhibitedsignificant displacement of one of the papillary muscles and patients with both ventricles dilated hadsignificant displacement of two papillary muscles. Subjects with rightventricle dilation showed significant displacement of all three papillarymuscles.
The researchers also found that patients with a dilated rightventricle were more likely to have a dilated annulus and exhibited the highestpulmonary arterial pressures and highest levels of tricuspid regurgitation. However,not all patients with a dilated right ventricle had significant increases inannulus area, providing evidence that the right ventricle may become dilatedwithout the annulus being affected.
“We think an increase in pulmonary arterial pressure causedgeometric changes in the ventricle, which resulted in alterations to theannulus and papillary muscles,” explainedYoganathan. “The combination of displacement of all three papillarymuscles and annular dilatation may account for the patients with isolated rightventricle dilatation having the largest percentage of severe tricuspid regurgitation.”
Knowing which parameters are responsible for significant tricuspidregurgitation and having a non-invasive imaging technique to measure theseparameters should help clinicians target repairs to the specific cause of an individual’stricuspid leakage, according to Yoganathan.
In future studies, the researchers plan to study papillarymuscle displacements in individuals with specific diseases to see if differentdisease manifestations exhibit different characteristics.
“Although it has long been accepted that pulmonaryhypertension may result in tricuspid regurgitation, this study is one of thefirst to provide a clinical correlation between the two,” said Yoganathan, whois also the Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Faculty Chair in BiomedicalEngineering. “We want to know whether treating an individual’s pulmonary hypertension,and thus decreasing one’s pulmonary arterial pressure, can reverse thegeometric changes that are causing tricuspid regurgitation and return the annulusand papillary muscles to their original positions.”
Emory University sonographers Jason Higginson, Maria Pernetzand Sharon Howell also contributed to the study.
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]]>Fundedby a $3.5 million federal grant andan additional $3.5 million in matching funds from various state transportationdepartments, the Woodruff Foundation and others for the first two years, theUTC will bring together a consortium of universities in Georgia, Florida andAlabama including the University of Georgia, Georgia State University, GeorgiaSouthern University, Southern Polytechnic State University, Clark AtlantaUniversity, Spelman College, University of Alabama at Birmingham, FloridaInternational University and University of Central Florida. Known as theNational Center for Transportation System Productivity and Management, theGeorgia Tech UTC will focus on transportation issues of importance to thenation, state and metropolitan areas.
In a related program, Georgia Tech hasalso been named as a collaborator in the US DOT’s Regional UTC led by theUniversity of Florida. The University of Florida and Georgia Tech will bejoined by Auburn University, Florida International University, University ofNorth Carolina, North Carolina State University, University of Alabama at Birminghamand Mississippi State University to form a regional consortium that will focuson transportation issues impacting the Southeast. Georgia DOT will also providesome matching funds for this effort.
“Georgia Tech is uniquely qualified tolead the University Transportation Center. It is home to one of the largest andmost accomplished transportation and logistics research programs in the U.S.and is responsible for many of the strategic improvements that have beenmade to Georgia’s infrastructure,” said Gov. Nathan Deal. “I applaud theefforts of all of those who were involved in this important project.”
Accordingto Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson, the UTC designation providesnational recognition of Georgia Tech’s capabilities and expertise in contributingto transportation solutions for the nation, state and metropolitan area.
“Weare pleased to take a leading role in working with our industry, government anduniversity partners to devise solutions for our state and regionaltransportation challenges,” he said. “I want to thank the US Department ofTransportation, Governor Deal, Georgia Department of Transportation, Woodruff Foundation and the Georgia congressionaldelegation for their support of this important work."
Fundingfrom the Robert W. Woodruff Foundation supported the initial proposal led by ateam from Georgia Tech including Michael Meyer, director of the GeorgiaTransportation Institute and Civil Engineering professor; Catherine Ross,director of the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development; and KenStewart, senior advisor for industry. An advisory board including industry,government and university representatives from throughout Georgia, Florida andAlabama also provided direction for the grant submission and will continue toprovide advice and counsel to the UTC.
Additionalfunding for the UTC will come from the Georgia DOT, the Woodruff Foundation anduniversity partners. Future support will come through government, private andcorporate resources.
Thepurpose of the UTC is to advance U.S. technology and expertise in the manydisciplines comprising transportation through research, education andtechnology transfer as well as provide a critical transportation knowledge baseoutside the US DOT and address vital workforce needs for the next generation oftransportation leaders.
]]>Cross was invitedto present testimony at the hearing entitled, “Doing Business with the DOD:Getting Innovative Solutions from Concept to the Hands of the Warfighter.” Thepanel asked for insight on the role that universities, research institutionsand laboratories play in developing innovative technologies for the Departmentof Defense, particularly in the effort to transition research from academicconcept into production.
As part ofhis testimony, Cross highlighted Georgia Tech’s FY 2011 $643 million in researchexpenditures and how the institute supports and translates defense researchthrough technology transition and innovation programs.
“Defenseresearch and associated technology transition and innovation programs are vitalfor ensuring the United States retains a competitive advantage in its nationalsecurity posture,” Cross said. “As shown time and time again, the fruits ofdefense research seed economic development helping accelerate new technologies tomarket.”
According toCross, such technologies are available for use in defense systems at a fractionof what they would otherwise cost and in a much reduced time frame.
Representatives from the Stanford Research Institute and theMITRE Corporation joined Cross in presenting testimony. A copy of his testimonycan be found at the link below.
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Tech earned an overall score of 80 percent, achievinghighest marks in the Education and Research category where it earned 98.75percent. The STARS rating also breaks down Tech’s sustainability achievementsin the categories of Operations; Planning, Administration and Engagement; andInnovation. Each category is further segmented to show what services andinitiatives Georgia Tech offers and rates each on a point scale.
Of the 161 STARSregistrants that submitted reports, only 28 have been ranked gold. STARSratings are valid for three years, but institutions may submit annually toupdate information. Information from the STARS ratings may be used in rankingsystems managed by other organizations such as the Princeton Review, SierraMagazine and the Sustainable Endowments Institute.
]]>The seven-year-old company, which makes custom orthotics -- shoe inserts -- for athletes, diabetics and others, is now poised for additional growth.
"We would not have been able to grow at the rate we have grown if we were still making our product the way we did before Derek helped us," said Dr. Ric Hollstrom, the company's owner. "Derek helped us change the complete flow of our process to make it smoother."
Orthotics are by their nature custom products. Physicians make molds or take three-dimensional measurements of patients' feet, then send the casts or data to OrthoCare. The company's first production step is to carve a wooden replica of each patient's feet using a precision router. From a variety of orthotic-grade polymer sheets, the devices are then vacuum-formed around the replica feet, finished and packaged for shipping.
Prior to the move, Dr. Hollstrom's five staff members produced the orthotics in a departmental-type flow, in which one person was responsible for each aspect of the production, and would pass the products on to the next department in batches. This batch process created the potential for quality issues, and sometimes order confusion, because hundreds of individual products had to be kept separate.
"One of the issues was consistency of our product," said Dr. Hollstrom. "Maintaining consistency when each product was custom-made was difficult. It was also difficult to judge if the required consistency was there every time."
Woodham, who is part of Georgia Tech's Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), visited the company's old facility to learn the production process and talk with the staff. He listened to Dr. Hollstrom's concerns and heard his interest in adopting lean processes, which systematically reduce wasted time and resources. And Woodham understood the company's potential for growth.
What he recommended was a complete change in the organization of the manufacturing process. Instead of producing the orthotics departmentally and in batches, Woodham recommended creating flow cells in which a small team works together to complete products in one continuous operation.
Because a pair of orthotics could be made by the same group of workers in a continuous process, quality issues could be identified and addressed immediately. Having fewer products in process reduced the potential for mix-ups. In the new system, most orders were completed and shipped in a single day, besting the old process, which could take a week or more.
"The flow cell creates a better communications path from the beginning to the end," explained Woodham. "It's easier to keep up with custom orders because you don't have a large number of products waiting to be completed."
For a fast-growing company, switching to manufacturing cells also had an important benefit: production could be ramped up simply by adding cells following the plan Woodham designed.
"The company felt an urgency to get this right before they moved into their new facility," he explained. "Our work was a matter of understanding their processing steps and developing what would be the best layout for the equipment and the best way for the staff to work together."
Dr. Hollstrom said the flow cells allowed the company to expand production from approximately 80 sets of orthotics per day to 250 -- a more than 200 percent increase. The improved product quality reduced the number of products returned by the doctors ordering them, and faster turnaround time increased customer satisfaction.
The improvements also caught the attention of a company that sells footwear for people who have diabetes. That customer has already sent some business to the company, and is discussing the possibility of expanding its orders. If that happens, OrthoCare's sales could again grow dramatically, putting as many as 25 more people to work.
Dr. Hollstrom believes that growth can be accommodated without changing the processes Woodham established. He'll just add more workers and cells.
Not surprisingly, he is pleased with the work done by Georgia Tech and Derek Woodham.
"We added more than a million dollars worth of business to the company as a result of Derek's work," Dr. Hollstrom said. "Derek always told me what I needed to know, even though I didn't always want to hear it. For instance, I thought batching was better than the cell process, but he timed it and convinced me otherwise. What we are doing right now works very well."
About GaMEP: The Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP) is a program of Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute and is a member of the national MEP network supported by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST). The GaMEP, with offices in nine regions across the state, has been serving Georgia manufacturers since 1960. With a broad range of industrial expertise, the GaMEP helps manufacturing companies across Georgia grow and stay competitive. It offers a solution-based approach through technical assistance, coaching, education, and connections to Georgia Tech, industry and state resources designed to increase top line growth and reduce bottom line cost.
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The Atlanta-based startup, Clearside Biomedical, plans to develop microinjection technology that will use hollow microneedles to precisely target therapeutics within the eye. If the technique proves successful in clinical trials and wins regulatory approval, it could provide an improved method for treating diseases that affect the back of the eye, including age-related macular degeneration.
The technology was developed in collaboration between the research groups of Mark Prausnitz, a Regents' professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and Henry Edelhauser, a professor in the Department of Ophthalmology at Emory School of Medicine. Research leading to development of the technology was sponsored by the National Institutes of Health (NIH).
"We expect that targeting drug delivery within the eye will be helpful because we should be able to concentrate drugs at the disease sites where they need to act, and keep them away from other locations," said Prausnitz. "This could reduce side effects and possibly also decrease the dose required."
Prior to this development, drugs could be delivered to the retinal tissues at the back of the eye in three indirect ways: (1) injection by hypodermic needle into the eye's vitreous humor, the gelatinous material that fills the eyeball, (2) eye drops, which are limited in their ability to reach the back of the eye, and (3) pills taken by mouth that expose the whole body to the drug.
The technology developed by Georgia Tech and Emory uses a hollow micron-scale needle to inject therapeutics into the suprachoroidal space located between the outer surface of the eye -- known as the sclera -- and the choroid -- a deeper layer that provides nutrients to the rest of the eye. Preclinical research has demonstrated that fluid can flow between the two layers, where it can spread out to the entire eye, including structures such as the retina that are now difficult to reach.
By targeting this suprachoroidal space using microscopic needles, the researchers believe they can reduce trauma to the eye, make drugs more effective and reduce complications. The new delivery method could help advance a new series of drugs being developed to target the retina, choroid and other structures in the back of the eye.
"This is a significant advance in the field of ophthalmology," said Edelhauser. "Until now, it has been difficult to target drug delivery to specific locations within the eye. This new microneedle technology enables precise drug targeting to the suprachoroidal space and other locations within the eye."
In research reported in the January 2011 issue of the journal Pharmaceutical Research, the Georgia Tech-Emory team demonstrated for the first time that this technique can be used to deliver nanoparticles and microparticles to specific parts of the eye. In later research, they also showed that microneedle injections into the suprachoroidal space rapidly resulted in concentrations of drugs and particles that could be maintained for several months.
Between two and three million eye injections are made each year, many of them to treat age-related macular degeneration (AMD). The researchers believe that the microneedle-based technique could be useful for treating both AMD and glaucoma, as well as other ocular conditions related to diabetes.
The $4 million in funding for Clearside Biomedical will come from Hatteras Venture Partners, a venture capital firm based in Research Triangle Park, N.C. Hatteras focuses on seed and early-stage investments in companies developing products in biopharmaceutical, medical device, diagnostic and related human health areas.
"Clearside Biomedical represents an ideal fit for Hatteras Discovery as the platform technology is highly innovative, based on elegant science and the lead product is expected to be in clinical trials in the United States in less than 18 months," said Christy Shaffer, Ph.D., venture partner and managing director of the Hatteras Discovery Fund.
So far, the technique has been tested only in animals. The Hatteras funding will allow the company to conduct additional efficacy and safety testing needed to seek regulatory approval. The company's first product is expected to address macular edema and retinal vein occlusion.
Clearside was formed with the assistance of Georgia Tech's VentureLab program, which helped obtain early-stage seed funding from the Georgia Research Alliance. Georgia Tech VentureLab also helped the founders connect with the company's president and CEO, Daniel White, a veteran ophthalmic entrepreneur. Before joining Clearside, White was a co-founder of Alimera Sciences, an Atlanta company that is developing ophthalmic pharmaceuticals.
Two researchers from the Prausnitz lab who have been involved in development of the ocular drug delivery technique will also join the company. They are Samirkumar Patel, a postdoctoral researcher and Vladimir Zarnitsyn, a research scientist.
Research leading to the development of the technology has been supported by the National Institutes of Health (NIH). The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official view of the NIH.
Henry Edelhauser, Samirkumar Patel, Mark Prausnitz, Vladimir Zarnitsyn, Emory University and Georgia Tech have financial interests in Clearside Biomedical and its ocular platform. Edelhauser, Patel, Prausnitz and Zarnitsyn own equity in Clearside and the terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by Emory University or Georgia Tech in accordance with their conflict of interest policies.
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: Georgia Tech -- John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Robinson (404-385-3364)(abby@innovate.gatech.edu); Emory University -- Holly Korschun (404-727-3990)(hkorsch@emory.edu).
Writer: John Toon
]]>viaCycle, a startup created by Tech alumni, began testing its program on campus this summer and officially launched its fleet of 10 bicycles in November. The system is the first of its kind in the southeast and is designed to make bikes available for communal use. A viaCycle bike can be locked at any bike rack while the user has it checked out, and then can be returned and checked in at a number of specified racks on campus. Since the launch, viaCycle has doubled its fleet to 20 bicycles, garnered more than 200 users and plans to add an additional 1–2 pick-up and drop-off stations on campus due to demand.
Anyone with a valid BuzzCard can begin using the system by first signing up at gt.viacycle.com, then using a cell phone to unlock any bike not currently in use. Users are not required to have a smart phone, as a text message or phone call unlocks and locks the bicycles.
Jonathan Murphy, a graduate student in aerospace engineering and mechanical chair for Starter Bikes, tested viaCycle during its trial period. Murphy used a bike for a trip to Kroger on Ponce de Leon Avenue, with the whole trip taking him just under an hour.
“I see a lot of people coming to Starter Bikes who could definitely use the system — international students who are only here briefly, or people interested in buying a bike but wanting to try it out first,” Murphy said. “I’m happy to see [viaCycle] here and see the program running.” viaCycle bikes have a wide seat and give the passenger an upright position – one Murphy felt made for a comfortable ride.
viaCycle worked with Georgia Tech Parking and Transportation Services and the City of Atlanta’s Office of Sustainability in preparing for its debut; Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson and Atlanta City Council members Keisha Bottoms and Aaron Watson spoke at the launch event in November.
viaCycle is free to join and, for a limited time, is giving new users $20 in credit when they sign up. The cost of each use is based on the amount of time a bike is checked out. For those new to city cycling, viaCycle provides a number of resources on its website, including safety tips, bike route maps and how to inspect a bike upon checkout.
]]>Kristen Shaw
Communications and Marketing
Quickly and accurately detecting infections caused by S. aureus is critical because the pathogenicbacterium causes a broad spectrum of infections, ranging from acute to chronicdisease, which need to be treated in a prompt manner with the correctantibiotic.
The test uses mass spectrometry to quantify the number of S. aureus organisms in a large number ofsamples in just a few hours, compared to a day or two for culturing techniquestypically used to detect this bacterium.
“Our method for detecting staph infections using massspectrometry will be valuable in a variety of situations, but will be crucial whena large number of people need to be tested very quickly, which will ultimatelyimprove treatment,” said Facundo Fernández, an associate professor in theGeorgia Tech School of Chemistry and Biochemistry.
Details of the new staph infection detection method werepublished in the January issue of the journal Molecular and Cellular Proteomics. Partial funding for thisresearch was provided by 3M and the CDC/Georgia Tech seed award program.
Fernández together with Carrie Pierce, Jon Rees and JohnBarr from the CDC’s Division of Laboratory Sciences created this test.
“The simplicity of samplepreparation, the low cost of required reagents and the increased availabilityof mass spectrometers in clinical laboratories make this new method a cost-effectiveway to rapidly and effectively detect staph infections, which must be treatedquickly to prevent spread of the disease,” explained Pierce, a researchchemist at the CDC who also worked on the project as a graduate student at GeorgiaTech.
To run their test, the researchers first inject a knownamount of bacteriophage labeled with nitrogen-15 into a sample. The phages --which are viruses that infect bacteria -- infect only live S. aureus cells, which then multiply and amplify the phage signal. Followinga two-hour incubation, the researchers break up proteins from the phage shellinto component peptides using a trypsin digest technique.
Then they analyze the sample using liquid chromatography withtandem mass spectrometric detection. By detecting peptides from the proteinshell of the phage, the researchers can measure the concentration of S. aureus in the sample.
“The strength of this technique is coupling awell-characterized method for identifying bacteria with a modern detectiondevice, such as a mass spectrometer,” said Barr, biological mass spectrometry leadin the CDC’s Division of Laboratory Sciences. “By labeling input phage withheavy nitrogen isotopes, we were able to use mass spectrometry to effectivelydistinguish between the parent and progeny phage, thus enhancing theselectivity of the method.”
This prototype mass spectrometry-based technique has beenoptimized to detect low concentrations of bacteria that should allow cliniciansto diagnose staph infections without the need for a significant culture period.Coupled with standard laboratory robotics, the test will reduce manual laborand subjective interpretation of results inherent in traditional techniques.
“An exciting aspect of this phage method is that with smallmodifications to the procedures, resistance and susceptibility to a number ofdifferent antibiotics can be determined in addition to bacterialidentification,” said Rees. “This additional piece of information may be thekey to wide acceptance of the method.”
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media RelationsContacts: Abby Robinson (abby@innovate.gatech.edu; 404-385-3364) or JohnToon (jtoon@gatech.edu; 404-894-6986)
Writer: AbbyRobinson
]]>The team of students and alumni making up Tubing Operationsfor Humanitarian Logistics (TOHL) will relocate to the South American countryfor six months as part of a program initiated by the Chilean government toencourage entrepreneurial activity in its country.
TOHL makes use of coil tubing typically used in oil fields andemploys a helicopter to drop and arrange tubing from above, creating a way forwater to reach remote places following a disaster. The tubing, measuring aboutan inch in diameter, stays above ground and the process can result in gettingwater to a community within 48 hours. It’s durable enough to be used for up to100 years with oil, though this application shortens its life span. Using ahelicopter to unspool the tubing removes the obstacle of roads or paths thatmay be blocked, washed out or destroyed.
Tech alumnus Benjamin Cohen will be the first team member tohead to Chile in March, with fellow alumnus Apoorv Sinha and students MelissaMcCoy and Travis Horsley joining in May.
“Chile is the perfect place for us [to test TOHL],” saidMcCoy, a fourth-year chemical and biomolecular engineering major. The country’srecent earthquakes and forest fires provide the team with an opportunity totest its system in a place that has experienced the disasters that TOHL aims toaddress.
“Right now we want to show that it works, and from that tryto partner with [non-governmental organizations] and have the pipe get water toa community that needs it,” McCoy said. They hope to complete a pilot test byApril or May and be able to sign on the company’s first customers while inChile.
TOHL is not the first global health initiative by Techstudents to participate in Startup Chile; last June, Tech students and alumni,in conjunction with students from Emory University, were chosen toparticipate in the program for their solar sanitation endeavor, Sanivation.
The TOHL team will convene with more than 200 otherentrepreneurs from around the globe during the third round of the incubationprogram.
]]>Georgia Tech’s Fellowships Office will select one student to apply toparticipate in the yearlong program that provides an opportunity for 75students to study the U.S. presidency and public policy-making process.Participants will attend leadership conferences in the fall and spring inWashington, D.C., discuss national issues with presidential scholars and meet with public policy experts and seniorgovernment officials.
Fellowsundertake an original research project on an aspect of the modern presidency orCongress and write a paper that will be eligible for awards and publication.
Applicants needstrong academic credentials and an interest in the institutions of thepresidency and Congress, international affairs or public policy. All majors andlevels of study may be nominated.
Nominationmaterials include a resume, 300-word statement of interest, transcripts andcontact information. Faculty may nominate a student or students may nominatethemselves. Nominations should be submitted by Friday, Feb. 24, to Kathryn Meehanin the Georgia Tech Fellowships Office.
]]>A startup company based on technology developed at Georgia Tech offers a solution to that challenge, and is quickly gaining traction from investors, financial services companies and the security industry. Using “acoustic fingerprint” detection techniques developed in the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), Pindrop Security says it can restore trust to the telephone network and help stem the tide of phone fraud.
Supported by a broad range of Georgia Tech initiatives, the company is currently raising a round of funding that includes California venture capital firm Andreessen Horowitz – which has also backed Facebook, Groupon and Twitter. It has also been chosen as a top ten “most innovative company” at one of the most prestigious information security events, the RSA Conference.
“We provide a way to detect, mitigate and stop phone fraud by identifying the characteristics of any phone call based on the device making it or the path the call takes,” said Vijay Balasubramaniyan, Pindrop’s CEO, who helped develop the technology as a Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech College of Computing. “This information is useful in providing both forensic information about the call – whether it is from a landline, cell phone or voice-over-IP device – and the geography of the origin.”
Financial services companies depend on caller ID and other services to be sure callers making transactions such as activating credit cards are who they claim to be. But the advent of simple technologies for spoofing caller ID has raised major security concerns.
In the fall of 2010, Balasubramaniyan, GTISC director Mustaque Ahamad and School of Computer Science assistant professor Patrick Traynor raised the visibility of telephony security issues – and their proposed solutions – in a paper presented at a top security conference: the ACM Conference on Computer and Communication Security.
“The research project was to understand the security challenges of this new environment in which telephony, voice-over-IP, cellular and wireless technologies all come together,” explained Ahamad. “We all know about the security problems of the Internet. Telephony is increasingly going the way of the Internet and using many of the same protocols that we use for everything else.”
The paper sparked international media coverage, and after the conference, Balasubramaniyan, Ahamad and Traynor began getting phone calls from companies that were experiencing precisely the problems the researchers described. Because Pindrop’s solution doesn’t require changes to existing telephone networks, the technology was especially attractive.
“The fact that so many companies were asking about it suggested there was a definite need for this,” said Balasubramaniyan. “The banks reached out to us with their own specific issues. That showed us that they were already looking at various embodiments of the product.”
Convinced that they had something the commercial world needed, the researchers worked with the Georgia Tech Research Corporation (GTRC) to protect the intellectual property with patents.
In the spring of 2010, Keith McGreggor, director of the Georgia Tech VentureLab program, read the invention disclosures on the research, and reached out to Balasubramaniyan. VentureLab evaluates technology developed at Georgia Tech and helps faculty and research staff launch startups that are based on technology developed in the research program.
The researchers also had lunch with Stephen Fleming, a Georgia Tech vice president and executive director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), which houses Georgia Tech services for startup companies – including VentureLab. Fleming, a Georgia Tech graduate and former venture capitalist, began his career in the telecom industry and quickly understood both the technical issue and the potential startup opportunity.
With VentureLab staff connecting the fledgling company to relevant resources at Georgia Tech and elsewhere in the Atlanta community, Balasubramaniyan began what is often most the daunting challenge: raising money. Pindrop sought a grant from the National Science Foundation’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, and received help in developing the application from the SBIR Assistance Program that is part of the Enterprise Innovation Institute. The company received $150,000, and was among approximately 10 percent of the submitted proposals to be funded by NSF.
VentureLab also connected Pindrop to additional early-stage funding from the Georgia Research Alliance (GRA), and supported it in winning the startup competition operated by the GRA and Technology Association of Georgia (TAG). Beyond the additional $50,000 in funding from the competition, the GRA/TAG competition introduced Pindrop to the Atlanta community and provided important visibility with investors.
The company also obtained office space in the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC) incubator in Technology Square. The space allowed it to hold down costs while expanding staff to six full-time and three part-time people.
In spring 2011, Pindrop was accepted into the inaugural class for Flashpoint, a new Georgia Tech accelerator that offers early-stage technology companies educational programs and mentoring from experienced entrepreneurs. That led to advice on a broad range issues that the founders were seeking to address.
“When we ran into an issue, such as how to create a marketing campaign with very little money, a person introduced to us by Flashpoint helped us with that,” recalled Balasubramaniyan, who has adeptly made the transition from researcher to entrepreneur. “The collective wisdom of that group of entrepreneurs has been a significant help.”
The company was also connected to its new chairman, Paul Judge, a Georgia Tech alumnus and entrepreneur with experience in security companies. And the connections made during the startup process brought Pindrop to the attention of Andreessen Horowitz, leading to the California firm’s first investment in the Atlanta technology community. To allow use of the acoustic fingerprint technology, Pindrop received a license from the Georgia Tech Research Corporation.
“Pindrop is a textbook example of how all the components of Georgia Tech’s commercialization infrastructure can work together to support researchers developing technology that has commercial applications,” said Fleming. “The founders of Pindrop have worked very hard to build the company. They took advantage of all of Georgia Tech’s entrepreneur services and used each one to build momentum.”
Pindrop’s accomplishments, including opening the door to Andreessen Horowitz, should provide encouragement to other Atlanta technology entrepreneurs, McGreggor said.
“Beyond helping Pindrop, this rare early investment from this prestigious Silicon Valley firm will offer others in the community a hopeful reminder that they could potentially also get this kind of investment,” he suggested. “Not every company has the potential to do that, but the community needs to see a local startup based on Georgia Tech research get this kind of a hit.”
Pindrop is the second company arising from the Georgia Tech Information Security Center to attract venture capital funding. The first, Damballa, is a network security company launched in 2006 by College of Computing professors Wenke Lee and Merrick Furst.
“We are in a space where the problems are real and the solutions we can produce offer a path to real impact, solving real problems,” said GTISC’s Ahamad. “We can produce innovations that go beyond writing papers for our peers.”
Atlanta has become a center for cyber-security companies, led by the success of Internet Security Systems, which was purchased by IBM for $1.3 billion.
“Pindrop is right in Atlanta’s sweet spot, building on the strengths of not only Georgia Tech, but also the city,” said Ahamad, who serves as the company’s chief scientist. “Atlanta is a great place to launch a security company.”
Research News & Publications Office
Georgia Institute of Technology
75 Fifth Street, N.W., Suite 314
Atlanta, Georgia 30308 USA
Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986)(jtoon@gatech.edu) or Abby Robinson (404-385-3364)(abby@innovate.gatech.edu).
Writer: John Toon
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Don’t be discouraged – the “Please Keep off the Grass” signs are coming down soon, and there are still plenty of ideal locations for a game of Frisbee, sunbathing, reading and soaking up good conversation and sunlight with friends.
Couch Park
Formerly known as the Burger Bowl, this space re-opened on Friday, March 23, just in time for students returning from Spring Break. Though officially owned by the City of Atlanta, Georgia Tech Facilities maintains the area and the Campus Recreation Center (CRC) handles its space management and reservations.
“Couch Park is first and foremost for use by the student body and is not open to anyone else with exception to other schools during official games and matches,” said Jonathan Hart, assistant director of Facilities for the CRC. He continues to promote recreation and encourages students to use the field whenever available. Many students may not realize the grass on both sides of the sidewalk is available for play; Hart advises students to maximize use so multiple groups can occupy the fields simultaneously without disruption.
A new hybrid grass has been planted on the field called TifSport, which is highly durable grass used for athletics, similar to turf. The new grass makes Couch Park one of the few areas on campus that can endure heavy sports, such as rugby and soccer. Golf clubs, though, are still prohibited.
Reservations can be made on the CRC website, and schedules will be posted on the centrally located message board. Beside the message board, a new flagpole has also been installed. The thirty-foot-tall flagpole centered on the field contains a siren in case of a thunderstorm and will display a flag to identify availability at all times, instructing students that “Red Means No, Green Means Go.”
For full rules and regulations of usage for Couch Park, please contact Jonathan Hart.
Harrison Lawn
Harrison Lawn is located on Cherry Street, where the infamous steam engine is located, adjacent to Harrison Square. This area also contains fescue grass: not great for a game of rugby, but ideal for studying or eating lunch. Harrison Lawn is currently open for use.
Tech Lawn
Tech Lawn, also known as “Flagpole,” is the grassy area in front of Tech Tower. Tech Lawn is reserved for large-scale Institute events planned by the Alumni Association, such as Ramblin’ On for graduating students. No student group is allowed to reserve the space or use the field for sporting activities that may harm the landscape. Though restricted, Tech Lawn welcomes students to take a break on East Campus by sitting on the lawn, pulling out a good book to read or hanging out with a few friends. This space is scheduled to reopen in early May.
Fifth Street Bridge
The green spaces located on both ends of the bridge leading up to Technology Square are commonly used for sunbathing, tailgating during football season, Homecoming and Greek Week events, and the Flicks on Fifth summer movie series sponsored by the Student Center Programs Council. This area does not support sporting activities, unless it requires little weight and traction, such as cornhole. The area is currently closed due to sodding, but is scheduled to reopen April 15.
Skiles Triangle Lawn
Skiles Triangle Lawn, as its name reflects, is the triangular-shaped area, surrounded on its three sides by the Student Center, Tech Walk and Skiles Classroom Building. This area is also still restricted until the grass is completely rooted. The grass in this triangle is fescue, so it cannot withstand heavy traffic. However, it is open to students for picnicking or studying outside. Skiles Triangle Lawn is expected to be open in June.
Tech Green
Formerly known as Yellow Jacket Park, Tech Green is the area near the Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons that is surrounded by the four sidewalks that compose Tech Walk (formerly known as Skiles Walkway). Though the Clough Commons opened for the fall 2011 semester, the grass remained under contract and is not completely developed. The grass used on the newly renovated space, called zoysia, not only repels weeds, but also is less prone to insect and fungus damage and helps maintain sustainable irrigation and sewage during rainy seasons. The grass has not fully rooted yet, but the space is likely to be open by August.
]]>Jonathan Hart
Assistant Director of Campus Recreation - Facilities and Operations
Campus Recreation Center
Hyacinth Ide
Associate Director - Land Services and Vehicle Management
Facilities
Beverly Peace
Campus Space Manager
Capital Planning & Space Management
The historic tsunami following the 9.0-magnitudeearthquake destroyed the reactors’ connection to the power grid, causing themto overheat. Hundreds of people were exposed to increased levels of radiation.Thousands more were evacuated. Although Japanese officials have since declaredthe plant stable, the cleanup will be expensive and is expected to takedecades.
A year later, however, the United States is movingforward with nuclear power. For the first time since 1978, the National RegulatoryCommission has approved two new plants. The $14 billion facilities will bebuilt just outside Augusta and operated by Atlanta-based Southern Company.They’re scheduled to be up and running by 2016 and 2017 and should produceabout 10 percent of Georgia’s power.
“It’s smart to continue generating nuclear power in theUnited States,” said Marilyn Brown, professor in Georgia Tech’s School ofPublic Policy. “It is a reliable, cost-competitive option that doesn’tcontribute to air pollution or contribute to greenhouse gas emissions.” Brown helpsshape the nation’s energy policies as a board member of the Tennessee ValleyAuthority (TVA) and chair of the company’s Nuclear Oversight Committee.
Brown said that nuclear power plants are expensive tobuild, compared to natural gas facilities.
“But they are clearly worth the investment,” she said. “Anuclear plant produces no carbon dioxide emissions and four times the power of atypical natural gas facility. Fourteen billion is a big number, but the plantsshould stay online for 50 to 70 years.”
Despite the benefits, critics will always point to therisk of a nuclear catastrophe. Theseare the nation’s first approved nuclear facilities since Pennsylvania’s ThreeMile Island accident in 1979. Experts contend that modern plant designs aremuch safer than those built previously.
“The new plant designs are passively safe, so there are farfewer issues to worry about, like those that occurred with the older plants atFukushima with the loss of off-site power,” said Glenn Sjoden, Georgia Tech professorof nuclear and radiological engineering. “With the new plants, you have aconvection cooling loop that uses gravity and runs by itself for days in theevent of lost power. There would be no active pumping required. . . . The more moderndesigns and precautions taken make nuclear the best option to satisfy ourenergy needs.”
Since last year’s incident, the Nuclear RegulatoryCommission has been reviewing existing U.S. plants to ensure that they canwithstand earthquakes, floods and other natural disasters and making retrofitupgrades when necessary, Sjoden said.
Critics point to nuclear waste as another challenge withnuclear power. Each of the nation’s 104 plants store the radioactive waste on-sitein steel casks protected by concrete and other safety systems. These are safetoo, Brown said, because of careful construction and maintenance.
Nuclear waste would be a nonissue if the U.S. reprocessedits spent fuel like other nations such as France, Sjoden said.
“Like most nations, they recycle their used fuel, since 95percent of the fuel can be recycled back into the reactor and used again, makingnuclear power the most ‘green’ energy source out there,” Sjoden said. “Buryingthe waste, as we do in the United States, is completely wasteful.”
The United States generates almost 20 percent of itsenergy from nuclear plants, the same amount as natural gas. Coal supplies 50percent. The remainder is generated from hydropower and other natural sources.
“We must develop more renewables sources, such as wind,solar and biopower,” says Brown. “Industry leaders, business and the generalpublic must also become more energy efficient. That is the key to our future.”
For more on the anniversary of the Japan disaster, visit www.gatech.edu/experts/japan-anniversary.
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