He also serves as the chief technology officer at the National Center for Manufacturing Sciences. He served as the chief manufacturing officer and founding director for the manufacturing science division at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2019 to 2021. He served as the assistant director for advanced manufacturing at the Office of Science and Technology Policy in the Executive Office of the President of the United States of America in 2012 and 2013, coordinating advanced manufacturing research and development.

American Society of Mechanical Engineers (news release) >>

The DoN S&T Board is a discretionary federal advisory committee that provides independent recommendations on matters relating to the Department of the Navy's scientific, technical, manufacturing, acquisition, logistics, medicine, and business management functions. These matters include, but are not limited to, the pressing and complex scientific and technological problems facing the Department of Defense in such areas as research, engineering, organizational structure and process, business and functional concepts, and manufacturing. The board will help to identify new technologies and new applications of technology in those areas to strengthen national security. Membership on the board consists of private and public leaders, with a diversity of background, experience, and thought in support of the DoN S&T Board mission.

Kurfess’ appointment to the board was confirmed by the secretary of defense in August.

That’s why faculty at Georgia Institute of Technology are partnering with the Technical College System of Georgia to provide TCSG students with experience and training in cutting-edge manufacturing technologies. The collaboration between the institutions will bring students to Georgia Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility for internships and apprenticeships that prepare them for careers using advanced manufacturing technologies such as robotics, AI and metals 3-D printers.

With this experience, students will help pave the way for advancing Georgia’s manufacturing economy.

“We are establishing workforce training programs that are at the frontier of technology. Students will train on the latest equipment and software and then be ready to enter companies as these new technologies are adopted instead of the traditional mode of waiting for the technology to arrive, and then training the workforce,” said Aaron Stebner, the Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. Chair in Manufacturing.

Stebner initiated the workforce program through the Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia-AIM) project, a collection of $65 million in federal grants aimed at enhancing Georgia’s AI manufacturing technology and workforce. “These jobs are coming, and we want the workforce to be ready at the same time the need arises.”

Faculty and students from Georgia Tech and TCSG recently met to discuss details and next steps for the program. This included discussing formats that would work for students, and how the opportunities at the Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility dovetailed with training students receive from their technical college programs.

The larger goal, said Stebner, is to leverage the developing technologies at the manufacturing facility to give TCSG students in-depth experience with a new technology before starting their own careers. For example, technical college students often have access to tooling and cutting machines as part of their training. But at Georgia Tech’s manufacturing facility, these machines are augmented with robotics or “digital twins”—advanced computer models that can be used to increase performance efficiencies and maintenance schedules of the machines.

By gaining experience with these new technologies, students can enter the workforce better prepared to take on advanced manufacturing solutions. This also translates to a higher-skilled workforce and better-paying jobs, added Stebner.

To drive this message home, the meeting also included several representatives from manufacturers who expressed a need for this kind of training. “We’re always looking for people who are willing to work with their hands,” said Chuck Boyles, president of Factory Automation Systems, a Georgia-based robotics company. “We’re always looking for good technical talent.”

The program can help bridge a “middle ground” between technical college training and the research and development taking place at Georgia Tech, said Steven Sheffield, senior assistant director of research at the Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility.

“We have a lot of applications for these skills, like machine operators. But we want to advance that to, for example, robotic operators,” said Sheffield, who spoke with the 25 students in attendance about what they would like to get out of the program. “So, they would be more qualified to do other things as well and have a deeper understanding. And when we have employers who say they are interested in a latest technology, we can partner with them to provide that training.”

The students were receptive, noticing the robotics and artificial intelligence-infused technology during a tour of the facility. “I’ve seen a lot of equipment out there that I’ve never seen before,” said Javaski Dewberry, a Georgia Northwest Technical College student studying machining who also works at a manufacturing facility. “It would be a real good experience for me to see how it works.”

Other students were studying mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, robotics and industrial systems. These programs and more could find a place in the program, said Scott McWhorter, interim executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium. The consortium, which is based at the manufacturing facility, works to connect industry, academia and government to advance manufacturing technologies.

The next steps, he added, include ironing out opportunities that work with students’ schedules and training for TCSG faculty on the emerging technologies.

“We’re spending the next few months getting the program outlined, getting things formalized and working with instructors,” he said. “So, we’re working right now to collect a little more feedback to right-size the program and move forward from there.”

Story by: Kristen Morales, Georgia Tech

Members of the Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM) team from the Georgia Institute of Technology met with local partners, manufacturers, and business leaders in Thomasville last week to discuss how investments from the $65 million statewide federal grant can accelerate the transition to automation in manufacturing in South Georgia. The meeting was held at Southern Regional Technical College (SRTC), one of the Georgia AIM partners. 

SME is a nonprofit association committed to advancing widespread adoption of manufacturing technologies and developing North America’s talent and capabilities. He was among seven 2023 SME International Honor Award winners are recognized for their significant contributions to manufacturing in the areas of manufacturing technologies, processes, technical writing, education, research and management, and service to SME. The 2023 SME International Awards Gala was held on June 5 at the Royal Park Hotel in Rochester, Michigan.

Melkote also serves as executive director of the Novelis Innovation Hub at Georgia Tech and as associate director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute. Melkote’s research focuses on the science and technology of manufacturing processes, industrial robotics for manufacturing, and data-driven methods for cyber manufacturing.

For over six decades, SME’s International Honor Awards have identified professionals whose bodies of work have led to critical breakthroughs and advancements in manufacturing technologies, processes, and education as well as honored members for their volunteerism.

“These seven professionals are among the most accomplished thought leaders in manufacturing, and I’m proud to acknowledge they also hold membership in SME,” said Bob Willig, executive director and CEO of SME. “Though their backgrounds are varied, all share a penchant for continuous improvement where status quo just doesn’t cut it.”

Melkote has published over 280 technical papers on these topics, has one U.S. patent and has successfully transitioned technology to industry. Melkote is a recipient of the SME Outstanding Young Manufacturing Engineer Award, the ASME Blackall Machine Tool and Gage Award and several best paper awards. He served as president of SME's North American Manufacturing Research Institution (NAMRI) from 2014-15, and as ASME Swanson fellow and assistant director for Technology at the Advanced Manufacturing National Program Office at NIST from 2015-16. Melkote is a fellow of SME, ASME and CIRP and has been a SME member since 1994.

SME 2023 International Honor Award Recipients:

• SME Gold Medal — Shreyes N. Melkote, Ph.D., FSME, Morris M. Bryan, Jr. Professor of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
• Eli Whitney Productivity Award — Lonnie Love, Ph.D., FSME, Fellow, National Security Programs, Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, New Mexico
• Joseph A. Siegel Service Award — Sandra Bouckley, FSME, P.Eng., Executive Director & CEO (retired), 2017 President, SME, Southfield, Michigan
• Donald C. Burnham Manufacturing Management Award — Vaughn M. Hall Jr., International Vice President and General Manager, Corning Precision Materials, Corning Inc., Asan, South Korea
• SME Frederick W. Taylor Research Medal — Shaochen Chen, Ph.D., Chair and Zable Endowed Chair Professor, NanoEngineering Department, University of California, San Diego, San Diego
• SME Albert M. Sargent Progress Award – Subir Chowdhury, FSME, Chairman and CEO, ASI Consulting Group, Bingham Farms, Michigan
• SME Education Award — Laine Mears, Ph.D., FSME, CMfgE, PE, BMW SmartState Endowed Chair of Automotive Manufacturing, University Centennial Professor and Department Chair, Automotive Engineering Department, Clemson University, Clemson, South Carolina

Industrial innovation policy can be defined as involving governmental interventions at the post-research stages (including development, prototyping, testing, demonstration, pilot production, production, and market creation) to enable scale-up and implementation of new technologies.

Meetings such as this one held at Georgia Tech attempt to develop an understanding of emerging U.S. and global industrial innovation policies and identify remaining gaps. Thomas Kurfess, executive director of GTMI and the HUSCO/Ramirez Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power and Motion Control, are helping to strategize future manufacturing policies in the U.S.

“The Babbage team was enthusiastic to learn about all that we have happening in the U.S., Georgia and the Metro-Atlanta area,” said Kurfess. “Over the past several decades, we have been growing our manufacturing capabilities here and creating a substantial amount of high paying and high tech manufacturing jobs for a broad spectrum of our population. This has not only been wonderful for the State of Georgia, but also our efforts and successes have helped to boost the national economy and support national security.”

Forum participants examined regional industrial capabilities with a secondary focus on national industrial capabilities addressing both the innovation and industrial scale-up issues. Processes for moving from policy objective to implementation were reviewed including opportunities for experimentation, evaluation, and policy learning. Organizational structures across academia, government and think tanks as well as ecosystems and small-to-medium-sized enterprise engagement were analyzed. The group conducted an analysis of successful (and unsuccessful) industrial innovation policy interventions to identify effective practices and mechanisms in the southeast, Georgia, and the Atlanta area that ensure opportunities for a diverse set of workers, while fully engaging local communities. Such practices result in sustainable and equitable opportunities throughout the region.

“There's some pretty dramatic changes going on, in technology, in society, and indeed geopolitically,” said Sir Michael Gregory who attended the GTMI meeting. “And whereas a few years ago, industrial innovation policy was seen by some people not to be very relevant, now almost everybody thinks it matters.”

The yearly event is led by Andrew Dugenske, director of the Factory Information Systems (FIS) Center and principal research engineer at Georgia Tech. Dugenske’s FIS Center focuses on advances in factory architectures, machine communication, cloud computing, edge devices, machine learning, artificial intelligence, overall equipment effectiveness, and cybersecurity. Over the past 25 years, the FIS Center has undertaken projects with dozens of companies on a wide array of technological topics.

This year, the symposium event featured 17 industry leaders as presenters. Presenters included: GTMI, Renishaw, AT&T, Siemens, Stephanini Group, Cirrus Link Solutions, Teradyne, Hive MQ and Mr. IIOT. Expert industry consultants also made presentations such as from Russ Waddell, who gave an entertaining, educational, and eye-opening presentation titled “The Six-figure Work from Home Machinist.”

Comments from 2023 IoTfM symposium attendees:

“This has been a fantastic event,” said Chris Bentivegna, principal architect (advanced wireless) with AT&T. “I really appreciate the opportunity to come in, talk about 5G with Georgia Tech, and look forward to AT&T and Georgia Tech partnering on some new technologies and advancing manufacturing. It’s been a joy to be here.”

“We are an MQTT platform. What that means is that we help provide the platform on which machines can talk to each other, and also plug into enterprise IT systems on a global level,” said Gaurav Suman, director of product marketing for HiveMQ. “Here at the symposium, I'm finding it great that I'm getting an understanding of where challenges and solutions to those challenges are born. I can see us and many other technology providers coming together to talk about those issues, how they're adopted across industries. It's quite fantastic to be here.”

“It's been great to present my research and show industry attendees some of our capabilities and some of the machines we have and what they can do,” said Robert Caraway, doctoral student in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “What I'm doing is making metal powders out of nickel titanium alloys, trying to do some recycling and other things. I'm currently working with my lab team members on creating new metal alloys.”

“It's great to be at Georgia Tech sharing insights into manufacturing with a lot of industry professionals and some really great graduate students,” said Dan Skulan, general manager of industrial metrology for Renishaw Inc. “We're talking about creating good, traceable processes and using the power of the internet and computing to make really good advancements in the efficiency of manufacturing, reduction in manpower, and sustainable practices.”

It's very exciting to be here today with the amazing audience that we have here,” said Dago Mata, head of business development Americas for the Stefanini Group.  “It's my fourth time participating, and we have great ideas to share for the manufacturing industry.”

“I think this is one of the best events at Georgia Tech connecting academia and industry,” said Kaveh Berenji, a postdoctoral fellow at GTMI. “This event fills the gap between what academia needs in terms of support from industry, and what industry needs in terms of scientific support from academia.”

Missed the symposium? You can download and view all presentations by visiting the 2023 IoTfM symposium webpage.

The event was sponsored by the state of Georgia’s innovation and manufacturing group, the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute, the Georgia Tech Factory Information Systems Center, and America Makes.

To learn more or to join next year’s invitation list, contact Andrew Dugenske at dugenske@gatech.edu.

Several thousand engineers, technical professionals, sales, marketing and business development experts from all corners of the world took advantage of the CAMX expo and conference programming to increase their manufacturing and process knowledge, meet their supply chain, build new networks and collaborate on sustainable industry solutions in the aerospace, automotive, wind power and other markets.

As part of the event, the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) hosted an onsite tour of its Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility (AMPF) to a select group of industry expo attendees.

AMPF is a 20,000 square foot research and development high bay manufacturing facility located on the Georgia Tech campus supporting industrial, academic, and government stakeholders related to manufacturing research and also serves as a teaching laboratory to train the next generation of engineers, scientists and manufacturing experts. Made possible by a $3 million gift from the Delta Air Lines Foundation, this facility enables manufacturing innovation projects of almost all shapes from additive/hybrid manufacturing to composites, digital manufacturing, Industry 4.0, industrial robotics, and artificial intelligence.

Recently, Georgia Tech and the AMPF facility are supporting a statewide initiative that combines artificial intelligence and manufacturing innovations with transformational workforce and outreach programs.

The AMPF tour was led by Kyle Saleeby, research engineer in GTMI, who tailored the tour to feature manufacturing technologies related to metal composites and advanced manufacturing capabilities for 3D printed metals. This included additive, subtractive, and hybrid manufacturing technologies along with metal powder/alloy making capabilities that AMPF utilizes.

“CAMX is grateful to Kyle for presenting an informative tour of the impressive AMPF facility, said Raj Manchanda, chief technology officer of the Society for the Advancement of Material and Process Engineering (SAMPE®). “Nearly 25 CAMX attendees who participated in the tour provided positive feedback not only on the state-of-the-art hybrid manufacturing equipment that AMPF houses from leading OEMs, but also the capability of the Georgia Tech AMPF faculty and brilliant graduate students who are developing adaptable manufacturing solutions integrating proven machining technologies with advances in robotics, artificial intelligence, machine learning, additive manufacturing, and more.”

At the expo, GTMI was invited to host and lead a panel discussion of current digital manufacturing trends on day two of the CAMX show. Three industry experts from GTMI’s partner network participated in a discussion moderated by Kyle Saleeby. The panelists were Elaine Winchester from Plyable, Andre Wegner from Authentise and Rodney Elmore from Microsoft.

“At the advanced manufacturing pilot facility, we are always proud host so many great organizations, institutions and industry colleagues to share our advanced manufacturing research,” said Saleeby.

Developing vehicles capable of traveling at over a mile per second — speeds that cause vehicle surface temperatures to heat up to 2,200 degrees Celsius — presents daunting engineering challenges for hypersonics materials and systems.

To address these hurdles and enhance U.S. hypersonics capabilities, the University Consortium for Applied Hypersonics (UCAH) has tapped the Georgia Institute of Technology and key academic partners for four grants valued at $6 million over the next three years. The awards draw on Georgia Tech and the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) expertise across advanced, high-temperature materials science and aerospace and mechanical engineering research — areas critical for future advances of these vehicles.

“Hypersonics research is a big area of focus for Georgia Tech. It’s an area where the College of Engineering and GTRI can really collaborate and build upon GTRI’s strong foundation to be a real force in hypersonics,” said Devesh Ranjan, Ring Family Chair and associate chair for Research in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, who also serves as co-director of UCAH.

Building a Future Workforce

Ranjan, who also co-chairs the Hypersonics Taskforce at Georgia Tech, considers the UCAH grants a huge win for Georgia Tech on three fronts:

• Helping build the future workforce of highly skilled researchers in hypersonics.
• Enabling technology transfer of key research into industry.
• Applying high-temperature material advances in new fields, whether it be better power plant materials, higher efficiency sensors, or new propulsion systems that could enable commercial planes to fly from Los Angeles to New York City in only 15 minutes.

Georgia Tech expects to engage a broad community of undergraduate, master’s, and Ph.D. students to tackle these projects. The continuity of a three-year research program opens the door for both GTRI and the engineering schools to co-advise graduate students.

“The UCAH workforce development goal to attract the next generation of scientists and engineers is important and a high priority for us,” said Kenneth Allen, chief scientist for GTRI’s Advanced Concepts Laboratory.

“Workforce development is one of the key reasons we are doing this consortium,” noted Gillian Bussey, director of the Department of Defense’s Joint Hypersonics Transition Office (JHTO), which funded the awards.

JHTO’s mission includes engaging with the Science & Technology (S&T) community to develop hypersonics technologies and transition them to operational capabilities.

“We’re focused on applied hypersonics, which is why we ask proposers to team with industry or national labs to help make their proposed projects more relevant and transitionable,” Bussey said, noting that a key challenge with S&T is connecting the university research community to warfighter needs. “Our goal for this consortium is not only more relevant S&T that can be better inserted into our programs, but also a university ecosystem that better understands our problems.”

According to Bussey, Georgia Tech researchers excelled at showing they understood the applied research questions posed by UCAH, which restricted the number of white papers from universities to three in the initial phase.

“Georgia Tech’s three papers got picked for the project proposal phase, and then for three proposal projects. So, they batted a thousand. No one else did that and I think it's a testament to the legacy and experience that Georgia Tech has, particularly with GTRI, in working in the applied area,” Bussey said. 

The awarded grants address several emerging areas of hypersonics, from testing advanced control system strategies to materials and composites capable of withstanding extreme temperatures.

Contrasting Hypersonics Versus Conventional Systems

Hypersonic vehicles differ dramatically from conventional vehicles, according to Allen. To illustrate, he pointed out that intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) travel at roughly 15,000 miles an hour, or over Mach 15, but follow a parabolic trajectory with 80% of their flight time spent in space.

“Hypersonic vehicles, on the other hand, do not have simple parabolic trajectories and they navigate within the atmosphere. Both facts introduce a host of interesting research problems,” he said.

The first problem ― maneuverable low-altitude flight ― introduces challenges in tracking for ground-based systems since the Earth’s curvature can block the line of sight. Allen said this maneuverability also eliminates the ability to predict simple trajectories.

The second problem concerns vehicle velocities beyond Mach 5 within the atmosphere, which  Allen explained causes “a violently disruptive process for the vehicle.”

“Imagine at speeds on the order of one mile per second, these vehicles must be able to withstand ripping through this sea of gases, which are disruptive enough to tear away electrons and break apart molecules. This has adverse effects on the materials, such as the disintegration of the materials exposed to the vehicle’s hottest surfaces,” he said.

Planning Better Vehicle Simulation Paths

One of the UCAH grants will optimize and validate multimodal control strategies for future vehicles. A key challenge facing these aircraft is that they nominally fly on the border of where they are structurally sound, explained Jonathan Rogers, principal investigator for the grant.

“While most aircraft have buffers designed into the system to handle unexpected loads or heating, hypersonic vehicles have little margin against heating or other aerodynamic loads,” he said. Rogers serves as the Lockheed Martin Associate Professor of Avionics Integration in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. “It's hard to design margin into the system when we don't know a lot about what the system will experience.”

To combat that uncertainty, Rogers’ research team will design trajectory models so that vehicle operators can plan the path the vehicle will take. These paths will be used in simulations to “make sure the vehicle actually flies them.”

Rogers and his co-PIs Anirban Mazumdar and Mark Costello will build on previous research collaborations with Sandia National Labs Autonomy for Hypersonic Program, as well as collaborate with researchers at Texas A&M University.

What most excites Rogers is the prospect of Georgia Tech’s research being applied and adopted by the hypersonics community. He points to the historical challenge of academic research getting published but not adopted.

“With the funding agency being JHTO, there’s definitely an emphasis on transitioning the technology to use,” he said.

Building a Thermal-Tolerant Window Prototype

Another grant involves work with three other universities to validate a prototype window design that can tolerate thermal strains, or be able to withstand the full Mach 5 – 10 service temperature cycle and remain joined and sealed to the frame of the vehicle.

Aaron Stebner, associate professor in the Woodruff School, is working closely with researchers at Ohio State University, Texas A&M, and North Carolina A&T State University, as well as aerospace designers and fabricators at Spirit AeroSystems.

According to Stebner, high-temperature alloys and ceramic coatings used on hypersonic vehicles prevent the electronics from communicating through them. “The metals interfere with the electronics communications,” he explained.

To overcome this problem, hypersonic vehicle builders install a small communications window made from a single crystal version of alumina with low enough density to not interfere with the electronics. However, when the window along with the rest of the vehicle heats up to 900 degrees Celsius, “in a couple seconds, the airframe metal expands much more than the ceramic,” Stebner explained, adding that the phenomenon, called thermal expansion, either causes the ceramic to crack at a cooler temperature or a gap to form between the ceramic and the metal at Mach 5 and above.

“Our project is about making sealing and joining technologies that are sufficient for solving this problem,” he said.

Testing New Radome and Window Materials

A third UCAH grant brings together experts from GTRI and Professors Ellen Yi Chen Mazumdar and Surya Kalidindi from the Woodruff School to test new high-temperature radio frequency (RF) radomes and develop infrared (IR) window materials.

Many current hypersonic vehicles lack onboard RF and IR sensors because of the lack of high- temperature window and radome materials. Windows and radomes need to simultaneously be transparent to RF or IR wavelengths and handle similar forces and temperatures as the vehicle surface. To make sensors a reality, new methods for developing and characterizing materials is needed. Innovations in these areas will enable next-generation vehicle designs, which “will help the vehicles achieve active decision-making in flight,” said Ellen Yi Chen Mazumdar, the principal investigator and assistant professor in mechanical engineering and aerospace engineering.

“To enable either radar or optical sensing in hypersonic vehicles, we need to study and develop radome and window materials. Temperature handling is always a challenge, so we are pushing the boundaries of what we can do with existing materials,” she said.  

Part of this research includes developing infrared materials that can self-calibrate. Mazumdar explained that as these vehicles heat up, so will the window. An unfortunate effect is that the window itself will start to heat up and begin to emit brighter in the infrared than the objects the vehicle is looking at. “To eliminate that effect, you have to calibrate out the window emission and wavefront distortion contributions,” she said.

Another big focus of the project is testing smaller radome samples at higher temperatures. Developing new materials is expensive and building smaller, 1- to 4-inch-diameter samples instead of 12-inch samples could lead to smaller test facilities that are easier and less expensive to build. This can create faster material development cycles. By subjecting the material samples to extremely high temperatures, investigators will recreate, as closely as possible, the conditions that would be experienced during flight.

GTRI’s Allen said their work on the radome and window materials “is an extension of our existing core competencies in sensors and systems engineering, including materials science for high-temperature composites, material measurements with relevant temperature profiles, sensor development integration, modeling, simulation, and analysis of hypersonics systems.”

Using Ultrasound to Identify Defects in Hypersonics Materials

Stebner is driving a fourth UCAH grant that will leverage machine-learning-enhanced ultrasound inspection to better characterize manufacturing defects in hypersonics materials. He said that this research will find application in many industries beyond national defense, from nuclear energy to aerospace.

He noted that companies that process nuclear fuels need the same high-temperature materials used in hypersonics to contain the fuels while they are being processed.

“We have proposed a big NASA program manufacturing high-temperature materials for  nuclear engines,” Stebner said. “We also have active projects through the Boeing Georgia Tech Alliance on the manufacturing of these materials. In all cases, across many industries, non-destructive evaluation of internal manufacturing defects is critical to achieve qualification. I really see these UCAH projects not only solving the short-term critical research needs of the government in this particular domain, but also seeding a broader field of study for decades.”

*Editors note: All photos and video for this story were taken in July, 2021, prior to updated mask guidance issued by Georgia Tech. 

The coordinator of this education and work force development (EWD) program is Billyde Brown, Ph.D., a senior research faculty and EWD director at GTMI. Brown's role is to create strong partnerships among industry, government, and academia in manufacturing research, development, and deployment, while acquiring and managing sponsored research programs.  

Current and past students have performed fundamental research projects in advanced manufacturing topic areas such as additive and hybrid manufacturing, composite joining and repair, cell therapy manufacturing, robotic machining, integrated computational materials engineering, Internet of Things (IoT) sensors, and data analytics for adaptive manufacturing, and nanoscale 3D printing.

REVAMP’s major program activities include a seminar series on a broad array of manufacturing-related topics by Georgia Tech faculty and graduate students, external manufacturing plant tours (e.g. Kia Motors, Hyundai Mobis, Lockheed Martin, Textron Specialized Vehicles), experiential learning classes on the fundamentals of evidence-based entrepreneurship provided by Georgia Tech’s VentureLab and Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), a panel discussion from successful minority business enterprise clients of the Minority Business Development Agency (MBDA) Center in Atlanta, and three oral presentations delivered by students to demonstrate their research progress.

A new program element started in 2019 that offered a student veteran orientation, panel discussions, luncheon events, and tours of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) facilities both on the main campus and Marietta locations that were facilitated together with GTRI veteran faculty and the Georgia Tech Veterans Resource Center director. REVAMP is one of the premier REU programs in the nation for advanced manufacturing research and entrepreneurship training for undergraduate student veterans.

This year’s REVAMP-REU 10-week summer program was held from May 18 – July 24 at GTMI located on the Georgia Tech main campus. Students worked under the supervision of different faculty mentors to complete a research project centered on cutting-edge manufacturing science and technology. They also received entrepreneurship training by conducting customer discovery interviews to support a hypothetical product related to their research. As a bonus, eligible students received on-campus housing, $500 towards travel, and a $5,000 stipend.

Congratulations to these student graduates (in bold text) of the summer 2021 REVAMP-REU program and their faculty mentors:

Elizabeth Spahn         
Faculty mentor: Tequila Harris, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering        
Project: “Formation of Gradient Thin Film using Scalable Coating Method”

Jabari Acre     
Faculty mentor: Sourabh Saha, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering                     
Project: “Two Photon Additive Manufacturing”

Anthony Whylie        
Faculty mentor: Aaron Stebner, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering       
Project: “Optimization of Process Parameters for Additively Manufacturing Nickel Titanium (NiTi)”

Pedro Alcolea
Faculty mentor: Krishnendu Roy, professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering                
Project: “Advanced Mesenchymal Stromal Cell Manufacturing

Allison Jung   
Faculty mentor: Yan Wang, professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering                  
Project: “Optimization of 3D Printing Head

Jacob Totri     
Faculty mentors: Keat Ghee Ong & Bob Guldberg, professors at the University of Oregon
Project 1: “Magnetoelastic Sensors for Real-Time Tracking of Cell Growth”

Faculty mentor: Chuck Zhang, professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
Project 2: “Printed Sensors for In-situ Structural Health Monitoring of Composite Aircraft Structures”

Nathan Janda
Faculty mentor: Shreyes Melkote, professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering       
Project: “Robotics and Hybrid Manufacturing”

Devon Phelps
Faculty mentor: Raghu Pucha, Ph.D., principal lecturer in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering  
Project: “Modeling of Hybrid Composites with Nanofillers

More information about the Research Experience for Student Veterans in Advanced Manufacturing and Entrepreneurship (REVAMP) summer program can be found here.

Fellows represent expertise in a variety of areas of CPSS, which addresses risks where cyber and physical worlds intersect. That includes the Internet of Things (IoT), industrial systems, smart grids, medical devices, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and more.

“As devices, systems, and the world continue to become more connected, cyber-related threats that were traditionally limited to the digital domain have made their way to physical systems,” said Raheem Beyah, dean of the College, Southern Company Chair, and a cybersecurity expert. “The College of Engineering has world-renowned cybersecurity and artificial intelligence researchers. This new cohort will continue to expand the College’s breadth of expertise and leadership in CPSS.”

The three-year fellowship was made possible by a gift from Kyle Seymour, a 1982 mechanical engineering graduate who retired as president and CEO of S&C Electric Company in 2020. Seymour wanted to help increase cybersecurity-related research and instruction within the College.

School chairs nominated potential fellows, who were evaluated and selected by a committee of senior cybersecurity researchers and College leaders. 

Five faculty members will help grow the College of Engineering’s work in high-impact cyber-physical systems security (CPSS) as new Cybersecurity Fellows.

Fellows represent expertise in a variety of areas of CPSS, which addresses risks where cyber and physical worlds intersect. That includes the Internet of Things (IoT), industrial systems, smart grids, medical devices, autonomous vehicles, robotics, and more.

“As devices, systems, and the world continue to become more connected, cyber-related threats that were traditionally limited to the digital domain have made their way to physical systems,” said Raheem Beyah, dean of the College, Southern Company Chair, and a cybersecurity expert. “The College of Engineering has world-renowned cybersecurity and artificial intelligence researchers. This new cohort will continue to expand the College’s breadth of expertise and leadership in CPSS.”

The three-year fellowship was made possible by a gift from Kyle Seymour, a 1982 mechanical engineering graduate who retired as president and CEO of S&C Electric Company in 2020. Seymour wanted to help increase cybersecurity-related research and instruction within the College.

School chairs nominated potential fellows, who were evaluated and selected by a committee of senior cybersecurity researchers and College leaders. 

View the new Cybersecurity Fellows >>

As Melkote assumes his appointment, Georgia Tech commends George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Regents Professor Surya Kalidindi’s service as the inaugural interim executive director during the Novelis Innovation Hub’s first two years.

Since its establishment in 2019, the Novelis Innovation Hub has set a bold vision to foster world-class partnerships and collaborated with the Institute on battery research, electronics, robotics, high-throughput research, and additive manufacturing.

Advancing Mobility and Sustainability Goals

With additional investment and a permanent leadership appointment to guide the Innovation Hub, Novelis hopes to further advance its position in the aluminum industry through innovation in new technology and application domains, including sustainable mobility, electronics, advanced manufacturing, and supply chain.

“Sustainability is an important element of what Novelis wants to accomplish,” said Melkote, noting Novelis’s target to reduce its carbon footprint by 30% by 2026 and to be net carbon neutral by 2050. “Georgia Tech is focused on a lot of basic science, technologies, and business practices relevant to enabling a more sustainable enterprise.”

Melkote is uniquely qualified for the role, having led the Georgia Tech-Boeing Strategic University Partnership for the last eight years while serving as associate director of Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI). He facilitated the establishment of the Boeing Manufacturing Development Center, an on-campus lab where students and faculty regularly collaborate with a resident Boeing engineer.

“I see this as an opportunity to leverage my experience and knowledge from the Boeing partnership and to expand it. Novelis is engaged in the entire lifecycle of innovation, from early-stage basic research, to applied research and commercialization that will impact society at large,” said Melkote, who also holds the Morris M. Bryan, Jr. Professorship in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. He will work closely with Dr. Raj Gopalaswamy, Novelis’ global technology director for new domains, who will lead Novelis’ engagement with Georgia Tech.

“To keep advancing the aluminum industry toward the circular economy, we must increase the pace of innovation and develop new solutions that demonstrate aluminum’s superior sustainability benefits,” said Gopalaswamy.  “Through research partnerships with world-leading institutions like Georgia Tech, we can fulfill the growing needs for aluminum applications that help our customers meet their sustainability goals faster and more efficiently.”

Melkote agreed, adding, “What’s exciting is that  Novelis wants to look at the cutting edge of research and see how they can leverage that knowledge to innovate and develop new products.”

“We’re thrilled to have Professor Melkote take on this leadership position in our growing collaboration with Novelis,” said Julia Kubanek, vice president for Interdisciplinary Research at Georgia Tech. “He brings substantial experience to this new role, having built Georgia Tech’s partnership with Boeing and served as associate director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute for several years.”

Kubanek added that Melkote is well positioned to help Novelis broaden its relationship with Georgia Tech faculty and students, while engaging in key research areas to accelerate Novelis’s product innovation. Additionally, the Innovation Hub intends to not only fund research, but also establish a Scholars Program to fund research fellowships for Georgia Tech graduate and undergraduate students.

“Novelis’s philanthropy commitment allows us to innovate on the educational front, where we can make investments that benefit both Georgia Tech and our educational mission,” said Melkote. “In doing so, we help train the next generation of engineers who will go on to work for companies like Novelis that are committed to sustainability.”

***

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 40,000 students representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

Housed in the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI), the Center incorporates three university research teams from Georgia Tech, Oakland University (Detroit, Mich., U.S.) and University of Tennessee, Knoxville (UT). Each research and development partner are said to bring decades of composite and hybrid materials research focus in specific industries: Georgia Tech in aerospace, Oakland University in automotive composite systems and UT in infrastructure and medical devices.

“The study of the interface between composite, metallic and other electronic materials is really the future of manufacturing,” says Ben Wang, executive director of GTMI. “The Center amplifies the thought leadership of Georgia Tech advancement in composites. It also puts us in the nexus of three areas: advanced manufacturing, innovative materials and data analytics.”

Center director Chuck Zhang, Harold E. Smalley Professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), will drive CHMI’s vision to transform the current labor-intensive, experience-based joining and repair practice into fast, automated and reliable processes.

“Using advanced computation, experimental, data analytics and digital techniques and tools, we hope to reduce by 50% the overall cost, cycle time and variation of these processes in the next 10 years,” Zhang says.

Read the full article in CompositesWorld, August 2021.

Complete article also posted at Georgia Tech - written by Anne Sargent

The panel’s topic: “Can the Biden Administration Improve the Manufacturing Sector?”

Other panelists included: David Cicilline, member of the U.S. House of Representatives; Monica Gorman, deputy assistant secretary, manufacturing industry & analysis, U.S. Department of Commerce; Elisabeth Reynolds, special assistant to the President for manufacturing and economic development, National Economic Council, the White House; Darrell West, vice president and director governance studies, the Brookings Institution; and John Hazen White, Jr., executive chairman, Taco Family of Companies Trustee, the Brookings Institution.

During the panel’s second session, Wang emphasized, “advanced manufacturing is foundational to our [nation’s] economic prosperity, resilience and the national security.” He was previously involved with President Obama administration’s advanced manufacturing partnership from 2011 to 2013.

“Building a strong manufacturing base in the U.S. is a national imperative,” said Wang. “We know that technology-based innovation is the dominant driver of economic growth in the 21st century. Our national security, standard of living, and rebuilding the middle class in our society all depends on a strong globally competitive manufacturing base.”

Wang stressed the need to have a vibrant innovation value chain tightly coupled with a strong manufacturing ecosystem. “We cannot separate innovation from manufacturing,” said Wang.
“Some policymakers believed that we could continue to innovate and leave manufacturing to other nations. As it turned out, not only did we lose our ability to produce high tech products, we began to lose our ability to innovate.”

“If we want to compete well globally, we must maintain both the technological innovation leadership and advance manufacturing leadership [in the United States],” said Wang.

The need was also stressed to support small and medium-sized manufacturers who contribute to the nation’s supply chain and overall GDP in a significant way, but lack resources to evaluate and adopt new, state of the art manufacturing technologies.

National and state Manufacturing Extension Partnerships (MEP) can play a critical role in helping these smaller entities with technology adoption.

According to Wang, regional ecosystem actors must work together to identify common manufacturing challenges and common opportunities. And then co-innovate around those common challenges and opportunities. This type of regional approach will push local companies to rethink how they should interact with one another and help ensure that benefits are shared by all.

Ben Wang’s entire presentation and the full panel discussion which was sponsored and moderated by the Brookings Institution can be found here.

White is the Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics, and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech​.

“When demand is smooth and supply is balanced with demand, supply chains run well and inexpensively,” said White.

However, covid has caused dramatic drops and increases in demand, thus adding to supply disruptions. A rapid recovery in the United States has helped spike that dramatic increase.

In addition to dramatic demand flucuation, the supply side of this was also interrupted with shipping workers in China contracting covid, reducing the capacity to move goods out of major Chinese ports. With the dramatic rise in demand, congestion has been causing further delays even though the supply chains have plenty of capacity according to White.

White says some of this lack of smooth supply and demand is self-inflicted, “container ships have gotten much bigger, naturally causing surges all over the freight transportation system – ocean carriers, rail, and trucks. The tariffs kicking in caused ‘front loading,’ which we’re seeing now to ensure shelves will be stocked during the holidays at the end of the calendar year.”

“We’re finding out that the global freight transportation system is less resilient than originally thought,” said White. “My prediction for 2021 is there will be toys on the shelves for the Christmas holidays, but perhaps not as many toys and their prices may be higher.”

Chelsea White, along with other experts, were recently interviewed by CBS News in Atlanta, Georgia. You can view White’s interview and learn more about the supply chain crisis topic here: CBS46 News, Supply Chain Crisis Forcing Shoppers to Buy Early.

Yet, an undergraduate in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University has been working on a project that could make it easier to experiment with putter characteristics. The project’s goal is to allow golfers to adjust parts of their club to find a better stroke, rather than having to buy a new club. It also could help equipment manufacturers reimagine their prototyping and design process.

For the last year and a half, Caroline Means has been designing a putter using an advanced metal-depositing 3D printer that is usually used to make aircraft parts. Working with Jud Ready, principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the idea was to be able to adjust the putter’s key characteristics, toe hang and loft, and explore new kinds of face materials.

“We wanted to design a club that was able to be customized to a golfer in those three areas without having to get a new club or go to a professional and have them bend your club, and without significantly and permanently altering the structure or composition of the club,” said Means, a fourth-year student who has pursued the idea as part of a President’s Undergraduate Research Award at Tech. “There hasn't been as much innovation in the area of putter heads, and so, we decided to take on that challenge.”

The team’s prototype putter is made from stainless steel (eventually they’ll explore a multi-material composition), with an innovative shaft attachment method that allows for continuous adjustment of the toe hang. Its face inserts are made of either metal or a polymer created by Carbon, a California-based 3D-printing company. The inserts come in a variety of angles to adjust the club’s loft. They can be combined or stacked and easily removed via a unique attachment system Means and Ready created.

“The 3D printing in collaboration with mechanical engineering associate professor Chris Saldana gives us an advantage to create structures that could not be machined through traditional methods,” Means said. “That means that after it's been manufactured, a golfer can pick what face surface material they want for the putter. They can decide how many degrees of loft is best for the green conditions that day. As their swing changes and improves, they are able to adjust the toe hang of the golf club.”

Perhaps it’s worth pausing for a quick putter primer: Toe hang is a measure of the center of gravity of the putter, which affects how the clubhead moves during a stroke. The idea is to hit the ball with the putter’s face squared up, but every golfer’s stroke is different, and most rotate the face during their swing. Changing the toe hang can help the putter and the golfer’s swing work together for improved directional control of the ball.

Loft is the angle of the putter face when it rests on the green — usually just a degree or two. Too little loft, and the ball is pushed into the green when the putter hits it, slowing it down; too much, and the ball may hop at contact instead of rolling. All of that affects whether the ball reaches its intended target: the bottom of the cup.

To create their patent-pending design, Means and Ready contacted the golf pros at Atlanta’s historic Bobby Jones Golf Course. They also enlisted a pretty famous Georgia Tech alumnus who knows a thing or two about golf clubs.

“I come from a unique perspective on things like product development and innovation,” said Stewart Cink, a former Tech golfer and eight-time winner on the PGA Tour, including two wins in 2021. “I've got the on-course experience and knowledge, and I've been through a lot of product innovation with companies that I've worked with in the past. Jud had no way of knowing that it would be something that I would like really like, but this is part of my job that I really enjoy doing.”

After many months of design and a nearly day-long printing operation with the help of Saldana’s graduate students Elliott Jost and Jaime Berez in Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility, Cink and his son Reagan tested the putter this summer at Bobby Jones Golf Course. The Cinks were hooked up to a system that collects mountains of data to help the pros at the course teach golfers about their stroke and where they can improve.

Cink said the adjustable putter could help golfers explore new putter configurations that might help their game without breaking the bond they have with their club.

“One of the biggest challenges with the pros and their putters is how to go from something that's really cozy and warm and comfortable to something that has a little bit different specs,” Cink said. “What their putter does is, it gives you the chance to take the old baby and change a little bit about it at a time. If you decide you want to go back to the other way, just change it back.”

So how does a biomedical engineering student end up elbows-deep in golf putter design?

Means met Ready when she took two of his courses, including Materials Science and Engineering of Sports.

“Caroline was a stand-out student,” said Ready, who also leads innovation initiatives at the Georgia Tech Institute for Materials. “She asked great questions, got good grades, had wonderful oral presentation and organizational skills — so I offered her a job after the semester was over.”

In the class, Ready’s class visited Georgia Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility, where they learned about Saldana’s 3D printer that uses metal powder and lasers to build metal objects. Before long, Ready and Means were thinking about golf clubs and how they might be able to innovate while exploring the potential of the machine.

“My background in biomedical engineering really came in strong. We spend a lot a lot of time focused on learning how to put users at the center of the design process,” Means said. “I talked to professionals at Bobby Jones Golf Course to learn what makes a person come back to a putter. Our team wanted to know what kind of things they have to account for when they're fitting a club to someone, and how we can make this something that is unique and that people will want to use.”

This spring, Means and Ready were joined by Brittan Pero, a second-year student in mechanical engineering and an avid golfer who played for Oglethorpe University before transferring to Georgia Tech. He’s been helping with the testing, and he has secured his own President’s Undergraduate Research Award to continue the project.

“I've always wanted to design golf clubs, and I saw that Dr. Ready taught a class on engineering of sports equipment, so I figured I'd email him see if there was an internship or maybe undergrad research somewhere in the field,” Pero said. “It turned out that he had the exact field that I wanted to be in — putter design — which is crazy.”

While Pero works on refining the putter head to get it closer to a market-ready design, Means is off doing an internship this summer in pursuit of a career in medical device design. She said she hopes their testing data will show the idea is viable and they can create a small startup or even use some of their collaborators’ connections to club-makers to interest them in the concepts.

“Caroline will be back in the fall, and I expect the two of them to make even greater advancements as a team,” Ready said. “I can’t wait for Caroline’s patent to get fully prosecuted, and for Britt to file his own.”

“We help companies overcome barriers by applying researched technology and Georgia Tech's expertise to the problem,” said Andrew Dugenske, director of the Factory Information Systems Center and principal research engineer at GTMI. He just completed a major effort with Steelcase, a century-plus-old company that designs workspaces around the people who use them.

“We like to say we are students of the workplace,” said Paul Noll, senior researcher at Steelcase. “We watch how people work. We study their behaviors. We study the activity. We learn, and then we build our products and services to support what we see.”

Steelcase approached GTMI, Noll said, not only because of the Institute’s superior reputation in manufacturing but also because they’ve found everyone at Tech has a natural curiosity for both the task and the culture of their partners.

“It was very much the professional work environment at Tech as well as the expertise,” added Edward Vander Bilt, who leads the partnership at Steelcase.

Merging Expertise with Technology

Fundamental to their relationship is the Industrial Internet of Things, a term for using the information from the various sensors, computers, and robotic devices a company uses in manufacturing, to refine, even redefine the way the assembly line operates.

GTMI worked with Steelcase on an array of projects designed to improve the intelligence, responsiveness, and adaptability of their manufacturing lines. In one endeavor, they improved assembly lines by embedding them with Georgia Tech’s digital architecture. The digital systems move information from the lines into the cloud, where it can be processed. Then Steelcase uses the data to decide how to alter manufacturing processes.

“One of the big challenges of manufacturing is that some companies have legacy equipment, so it can't easily transfer the information about its activities into the cloud," said GTMI’s Dugenske. “We have developed a method to retrofit these lines so companies can use the Industrial Internet of Things to their advantage.”

Now the company has expanded this capability to all its lines throughout North America.

“We’ve been using our digital architecture with several companies, and it’s worked really well for them,” added Dugenske.

Collaboration is the Name of the Game

Helping a firm improve elements as indelible as production processes isn’t something that can be accomplished after just a few high-level meetings. It’s a mission that requires understanding the wisdom of employees working on the lines.

“It was extremely collaborative,” said Vander Bilt. “Andrew Dugenske visited all of our factories in North America, observing and talking with the plant managers and leaders in a whole variety of disciplines to better understand how we operate as a company.”

And when it came time to implement the findings, Dugenske headed back on the road to help put those recommendations into practice.

“It was quite intense,” added Vander Bilt, who said that one of the most valuable elements came from working with the graduate and undergraduate students.

Students built and installed prototypes in the factories and worked with Steelcase’s engineers to adjust to the conditions of each location. Vander Bilt said this gave the company high confidence that the solutions were the right ones.

Working at the Intersection of People and Technology

Steelcase and Georgia Tech have been working together since 2005 on projects around working environments and merging the physical and digital worlds.

“From the beginning of our relationship, they've described themselves as designing the future of how people interact with each other,” said Beth Mynatt, executive director of Tech’s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT).

Now, at the tail end of the COVID-19 pandemic, that future looks a little different than it did at the start of 2020, and remote working looks like it will be part of everyday life, added Mynatt.

Siva Jayaraman, IPaT’s strategic partnerships director, introduced Steelcase to GTMI. He has been working with the company for years on combining the physical and digital worlds through projects like telemedicine booths and spaces fostering collaboration and anonymity to help workers avoid the sometimes stultifying norms of business hierarchies.

“They’re trying to understand the evolving needs of workers and the new modalities, whether that’s remote, in the office, or both," said Jayaraman. “Nobody knows clearly what that is going to look like, but we are helping them to understand it.”

Noll said he values the opportunity to explore the emerging thinking around human-centered technology that happens at GTMI, IPaT, and elsewhere at the Institute.

“Technology is integral to the work, but at the end of the day, we're still human, and we want to be sure the decisions we make about bringing technology into our work are smart, responsible, and human-centered,” said Noll. “That’s why we like working with Tech.”

And when Noll says he likes working with Tech, he means it. Steelcase is also collaborating with the Scheller School of Business, the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute, the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines, the School of Materials Science and Engineering, and the School of Aerospace Engineering, to name a few.

It may be the Institute’s exceptional reputation that brings some companies to engage. Still, in the end, it's the quality of the people that solidifies those relationships for years to come.

“We’ve found the more we invest in our relationships, the collaboration, the cooperation, the energy, expertise, and engagement, the more we value that partnership,” said Vander Bilt.

In this case, Steelcase had a hunch their manufacturing lines held information that would help them become more agile and efficient. And from their history working with Georgia Tech, they had a hunch that GTMI had the best people to do it. They were right.

Writer: David Terraso
 

Media Contact:
Walter Rich
Research Communications, Georgia Tech
walter.rich@research.gatech.edu

“I am very pleased to announce Julia Kubanek as the next vice president for Interdisciplinary Research,” said Chaouki T. Abdallah, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech. “In her long and lauded career at Tech, she has proven herself an exemplary educator and leader who is committed to excellence in scholarship, and to building partnerships that grow collaborative research across the Institute.”

Kubanek joined Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in the School of Biology and the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry in 2001. She was named an associate professor in 2006, and professor in 2011. In that time, she also served as the associate chair of the School of Biology from 2009 to 2011. Kubanek has served as the associate dean for Research in the College of Sciences since 2014.

In her role as associate dean for Research, Kubanek was part of the leadership team that helped shepherd substantial research growth in the College of Sciences, including the enhancement of research opportunities and infrastructure for faculty and students. Kubanek supported the collaborative interests of faculty and students by organizing and hosting cross-disciplinary workshops, including with the Oak Ridge National Lab. Her work also included career development workshops for early career academic and research faculty; guidance to faculty looking to launch new collaborative projects; and one-on-one mentoring of faculty, postdoctoral researchers, and graduate students.

“With 20 years at Tech, I know this institution is filled with faculty, staff, and students who want to drive life-changing research in ways they cannot achieve alone,” Kubanek said. “In a supportive, collaborative, and interdisciplinary environment, I believe the creative, promising research visions of our Georgia Tech researchers can grow to international prominence and improve people’s lives and the health of our planet.”

The VPIR is responsible for ensuring the effective and strategic administration of interdisciplinary research and activities, including the Interdisciplinary Research Institutes, the Interdisciplinary Research Centers, the Pediatric Technology Center, the Georgia Center for Medical Innovation, and the Novelis Innovation Hub. The role has been filled on an interim basis since February by Devesh Ranjan, associate chair for Research, Ring Family Chair, and professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

“I’d like to extend my heartfelt thanks to Devesh Ranjan, who has expertly served in the role of interim VPIR and will continue to do so until June 30, providing critical continuity and leadership,” Abdallah said. “Thank you, too, to our search chair Rob Butera, professor of electrical and computer engineering and biomedical engineering, and vice president for Research Development and Operations, and the search committee who reviewed an exceptional field of candidates.”

Kubanek’s publications and grants have been supported by the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health, industry, and national labs, as well as state agencies and foundations. Her educational and scientific contributions have seen her recognized for teaching excellence and mentoring by her students and colleagues, as well as accolades from national boards and associations. She is an elected fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and a recipient of the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers, as well as the National Science Foundation CAREER award, among many others.

Kubanek’s research focus has included aquatic chemical ecology, chemical signaling, chemical communication, chemoreception, chemical biology, marine natural products chemistry, secondary metabolism, drug discovery, and metabolomics. She has mentored and advised more than 90 students and postdocs and has published more than 100 papers in journals and conferences. Kubanek received a B.Sc. in chemistry from Queen's University and a Ph.D. in organic chemistry from the University of British Columbia.

The melt-infiltration technology developed by materials science researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology uses electrolyte materials that can be infiltrated into porous yet densely packed, thermally stable electrodes. The one-step process produces high-density composites based on pressure-less, capillary-driven infiltration of a molten solid electrolyte into porous bodies, including multilayered electrode-separator stacks.

“While the melting point of traditional solid state electrolytes can range from 700 degrees Celsius to over 1,000 degrees Celsius, we operate at a much lower temperature range, depending on the electrolyte composition, roughly from 200 to 300 degrees Celsius,” explained Gleb Yushin, a professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech. “At these lower temperatures, fabrication is much faster and easier. Materials at low temperatures don’t react. The standard electrode assemblies, including the polymer binder or glue, can be stable in these conditions.”

The new technique, to be reported March 8 in the journal Nature Materials, could allow large automotive Li-ion batteries to be made safer with 100% solid-state nonflammable ceramic rather than liquid electrolytes using the same manufacturing processes of conventional liquid electrolyte battery production. The patent-pending manufacturing technology mimics low-cost fabrication of commercial Li-ion cells with liquid electrolytes, but instead uses solid state electrolytes with low melting points that are melted and infiltrated into dense electrodes. As a result, high-quality multi-layered cells of any size or shape could be rapidly manufactured at scale using proven tools and processes developed and optimized over the last 30 years for Li-ion.

“Melt-infiltration technology is the key advance. The cycle life and stability of Li-ion batteries depend strongly on the operating conditions, particularly temperature,” Georgia Tech graduate student Yiran Xiao explained. “If batteries are overheated for a prolonged period, they commonly begin to degrade prematurely, and overheated batteries may catch on fire. That has prompted nearly all electric vehicles (EV) to include sophisticated and rather expensive cooling systems.” In contrast, solid-state batteries may only require heaters, which are significantly less expensive than cooling systems. 

Yushin and Xiao are encouraged by the potential of this manufacturing process to enable battery makers to produce lighter, safer, and more energy-dense batteries. 

“The developed melt-infiltration technology is compatible with a broad range of material chemistries, including so-called conversion-type electrodes. Such materials have been demonstrated to increase automotive cell energy density by over 20% now and by more than 100% in the future,” said co-author and Georgia Tech research scientist Kostiantyn Turcheniuk, noting that higher density cells support longer driving ranges. The cells need high-capacity electrodes for that performance leap. 

Georgia Tech’s technique is not yet commercially ready, but Yushin predicts that if a significant portion of the future EV market embraces solid-state batteries, “This would probably be the only way to go,” since it will allow manufacturers to use their existing production facilities and infrastructure.

“That’s why we focused on this project – it was one of the most commercially viable areas of innovation for our lab to pursue,” he said. 

Battery cell prices hit $100 per kilowatt hour for the first time in 2020. According to Yushin, they will need to drop below $70 per kilowatt hour before the consumer EV market can fully open. Battery innovation is critical to that occurring.

The Materials Science lab team currently is focused on developing other electrolytes that will have lower melting points and higher conductivities using the same technique proven in the lab. 

Yushin envisions this research team’s manufacturing advance opening the floodgates to more innovation in this area.

“So many incredibly smart scientists are focused on solving very challenging scientific problems, while completely ignoring economic and technical practicality. They are studying and optimizing very high-temperature electrolytes that are not only dramatically more expensive to use in cells but are also up to five times heavier compared with liquid electrolytes,” he explained. “My goal is to push the research community to look outside that chemical box.”

In addition to Yushin, Xiao and Turcheniuk, co-authors included Aashray Narla, Ah-Young Song, Alexandre Magasinski, Ayush Jain, Sheirley Huang, and Haewon Lee from Georgia Tech, and Xiaolei Re from both Georgia Tech and Chongqing Technology and Business University in China.

This work was mostly supported by Sila Nanotechnologies Inc., a Georgia Tech startup, with characterization performed at the Materials Characterization Center at Georgia Tech. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring organization.

Gleb Yushin is co-founder, CTO, and a stockholder of Sila. Yushin is entitled to royalties derived from Sila’s sale of products related to the research described in this paper. This study could affect his personal financial status. The terms of this arrangement have been reviewed and approved by Georgia Tech in accordance with its conflict of interest policies. 

CITATION: Y. Xiao, et al., “Electrolyte Melt-Infiltration for Scalable Manufacturing of Inorganic All-Solid-State Lithium-Ion Batteries.” (Nature Materials, 2021)  https://dx.doi.org/10.1038/s41563-021-00943-2. 
 

In a study published this week in Advanced Materials, engineers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and the University of California, Irvine (UCI) describe the creation of a new class of mechanical metamaterials that delocalize deformations to prevent failure.

The team turned to tensegrity, a century-old design principle in which isolated rigid bars are integrated into a flexible mesh of tethers to produce very lightweight, self-tensioning truss structures.

Professor Julian Rimoli, faculty member in the School fo Aerospace Enginering and the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute, and his team were developing structural configurations for planetary landers when they discovered that tensegrity-based vehicles could withstand severe deformation – or buckling – of its individual components without collapsing, something never observed in other structural solutions.

“This gave us the idea of creating metamaterials that exploit the same principle, which led us to the discovery of the first-ever 3D tensegrity metamaterial,” explained Rimoli, aerospace engineering professor and co-author of the study.

Starting with 950 nanometer-diameter members, the team used a sophisticated direct laser writing technique to generate elementary cells sized between 10 and 20 microns. These were built up into eight-unit supercells that could be assembled with others to make a continuous structure.

The researchers then conducted computational modeling and laboratory experiments and observed that the constructs exhibited uniquely homogenous deformation behavior free from localized overstress or underuse.

The team showed that the new metamaterials feature a 25-fold enhancement in deformability and an orders-of-magnitude increase in energy absorption over state-of-the-art lattice arrangements.

“Tensegrity structures have been studied for decades, particularly in the context of architectural design, and they have recently been found in a number of biological systems,” said senior co-author Lorenzo Valdevit, a UCI professor of materials science and engineering who directs the Architected Materials Group.

“Proper periodic tensegrity lattices were theoretically conceptualized only a few years ago by our co-author Julian Rimoli, but through this project we have achieved the first physical implementation and performance demonstration of these metamaterials.”

Made possible by novel additive manufacturing techniques, extremely lightweight yet strong and rigid conventional structures based on micrometer-scale trusses and lattices have been of keen interest to engineers for their potential to replace heavier, solid substances in aircraft, wind turbine blades and a host of other applications.

Though possessing many desirable qualities, these advanced materials can – like any load-bearing structure – still be susceptible to catastrophic destruction if overloaded.

“In familiar nano-architected materials, failure usually starts with a highly localized deformation,” said first author Jens Bauer, a UCI research scientist in mechanical and aerospace engineering. “Shear bands, surface cracks, and buckling of walls and struts in one area can cause a chain reaction leading to the collapse of an entire structure.”

He explained that truss lattices begin to collapse when compressive members buckle, since those in tension cannot. Typically, these parts are interconnected at common nodes, meaning that once one fails, damage can quickly spread throughout the entire structure.

In contrast, the compressive members of tensegrity architectures form closed loops, isolated from one another and only connected by tensile members. Therefore, instability of compressive members can only propagate through tensile load paths, which – provided they do not rupture – cannot experience instability. Push down on a tensegrity system and the whole structure compresses uniformly, preventing localized damage that would otherwise cause catastrophic failure.

Tensegrity Metamaterial

According to Valdevit, who’s also a professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at UCI, tensegrity metamaterials demonstrate an unprecedented combination of failure resistance, extreme energy absorption, deformability and strength, outperforming all other types of state-of-the-art lightweight architectures.

“This study provides important groundwork for design of superior engineering systems, from reusable impact protection systems to adaptive load-bearing structures,” he said.

This research was made possible by funding from NASA and the National Science Foundation, as well as research conducted by Georgia Tech aerospace engineering graduate student, Julie Kraus and Cameron Crook, a UCI graduate student in materials science and engineering.

Water separation by evaporators is effective but uses large amounts of energy. That’s significant given that the United States currently is the world’s second-largest producer of paper and paperboard. The country’s approximately 100 paper mills are estimated to use about 0.2 quads (a quad is a quadrillion BTUs) of energy per year for water recycling, making it one of the most energy-intensive chemical processes. All industrial energy consumption in the United States in 2019 totaled 26.4 quads, according to Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory. 

An alternative is to deploy energy-efficient filtration membranes to recycle pulping wastewater. But conventional polymer membranes — commercially available for the past several decades — cannot withstand operation in the harsh conditions and high chemical concentrations found in pulping wastewater and many other industrial applications. 

Georgia Institute of Technology researchers have found a method to engineer membranes made from graphene oxide (GO), a chemically resistant material based on carbon, so they can work effectively in industrial applications. 

“GO has remarkable characteristics that allow water to get through it much faster than through conventional membranes,” said Sankar Nair, professor, Simmons Faculty Fellow, and associate chair for Industry Outreach in the Georgia Tech School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “But a longstanding question has been how to make GO membranes work in realistic conditions with high chemical concentrations so that they could become industrially relevant.” 

Using new fabrication techniques, the researchers can control the microstructure of GO membranes in a way that allows them to continue filtering out water effectively even at higher chemical concentrations.

The research, supported by the U.S. Department of Energy-RAPID Institute, an industrial consortium of forest product companies, and Georgia Tech’s Renewable Bioproducts Institute, was reported recently in the journal Nature Sustainability. Many industries that use large amounts of water in their production processes may stand to benefit from using these GO nanofiltration membranes.

Nair, his colleagues Meisha Shofner and Scott Sinquefield, and their research team began this work five years ago. They knew that GO membranes had long been recognized for their great potential in desalination, but only in a lab setting. “No one had credibly demonstrated that these membranes can perform in realistic industrial water streams and operating conditions,” Nair said. “New types of GO structures were needed that displayed high filtration performance and mechanical stability while retaining the excellent chemical stability associated with GO materials.”

To create such new structures, the team conceived the idea of sandwiching large aromatic dye molecules in between GO sheets. Researchers Zhongzhen Wang, Chen Ma, and Chunyan Xu found that these molecules strongly bound themselves to the GO sheets in multiple ways, including stacking one molecule on another. The result was the creation of “gallery” spaces between the GO sheets, with the dye molecules acting as “pillars.” Water molecules easily filter through the narrow spaces between the pillars, while chemicals present in the water are selectively blocked based on their size and shape. The researchers could tune the membrane microstructure vertically and laterally, allowing them to control both the height of the gallery and the amount of space between the pillars.

The team then tested the GO nanofiltration membranes with multiple water streams containing dissolved chemicals and showed the capability of the membranes to reject chemicals by size and shape, even at high concentrations. Ultimately, they scaled up their new GO membranes to sheets that are up to 4 feet in length and demonstrated their operation for more than 750 hours in a real feed stream derived from a paper mill.

Nair expressed excitement for the potential of GO membrane nanofiltration to generate cost savings in paper mill energy usage, which could improve the industry’s sustainability. “These membranes can save the paper industry more than 30% in energy costs of water separation,” he said.

Georgia Tech continues to work with its industrial partners to apply the GO membrane technology for pulp and paper applications. 

This work is supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Rapid Advancement in Process Intensification Deployment (RAPID) Institute (#DE-EE007888-5-5), an industrial consortium comprising Georgia-Pacific, International Paper, SAPPI, and WestRock, and the Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsoring organizations.

CITATION: Zhongzhen Wang, et al., “Graphene Oxide Nanofiltration Membranes for Desalination under Realistic Conditions.” (Nature Sustainability, 2021)  https://doi.org/10.1038/s41893-020-00674-3.

The people behind the mics at the Georgia Tech Sci Fi Lab are deep in discussion. It’s Two-Minute Madness time on the WREK radio show. The hosts and special guests speed-talk through mentions of Dr. Who, iPhones, Lance Armstrong, Luke Skywalker, Neanderthals, the Six Million Dollar Man, Star Trek, Terminator and zombies — all in the quest of determining, what, specifically, makes something a cyborg.

“We can say that this week's topic is ‘cyborgs,’ for example, but that can mean different things to different people: from Darth Vader, to Google Glass, to Daft Punk,” said Adam Le Doux, program manager and a host of the show. When not on the air, he’s a computational media major, a joint studies program between the College of Computing and the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) in Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. LMC is one of the coordinators of Sci Fi Lab along with the Georgia Tech Library and WREK 91.1 FM.

Since 2006, Sci Fi Lab has taken to the radio waves to discuss all things science fiction. Every Thursday at 7 p.m. a group of culture studies researchers and computer thinkers gather to discuss the spectrum of science fiction. The show has been picking up traction with the science fiction community, both locally and nationally.

"Six years into the program, we find that now we're approached by authors and artists who want to appear on the show, and we've even been studied in the University of Liverpool's grad program in Science Fiction Studies as an example of living science fiction," said Lisa Yaszek, a professor in LMC and a behind-the-scenes Sci Fi Lab organizer.

October’s guests included players from the Atlanta Radio Theater Co., the director of an independent zombie apocalypse film, Georgia Tech computing professors and actor Frank Langella from “Robot and Frank.”

“We try to cover the best in current and popular science fiction from all media — literature, film, television — and we try to tie that in with the real science and research that occurs on campus every day,” said Justin Ellis, who shares hosting duties with Le Doux.

Ellis serves as associate producer for the show and works at the Georgia Tech Library. His time on the development committee for the science fiction collection connected him with Yaszek. She thought there was a strong role for the library to provide academic foundations for the show, so Ellis signed on.

“I think the fact that we try and tackle both the ‘pop’ side — literature and entertainment — and the real science, research side is one way to bridge the gap between the sciences and the liberal arts,” said Ellis. “Many of the topics discussed in Sci-Fi literature and media are extrapolated from, or have some root in, real science.”

At the start of two-minute madness during the cyborg hour, Ellis shares his enthusiasm for wearable computing. He muses that he would be game for a cybernetic implant in his arm.

Le Doux quickly counters that that could be problematic in a light saber battle.

It’s a discussion that underscores how Le Doux describes the show, as “a living laboratory for the intersection of liberal arts and science.” It’s a concept with which he identifies personally.

“My studies are evenly split between computer science and the liberal arts — communication, culture, design — so this kind of cross-pollination is something I'm into,” said Le Doux.

It’s also something that’s unique to Georgia Tech and its students. Sci Fi Lab is one way to expand that intersection beyond the campus and into the greater community.

“In the wider culture we tend to have a gap between the arts and the sciences, but both sides would gain a lot if they worked more closely together, and I like to think there is an increasing awareness of this,” said Le Doux. “I think what makes the Sci Fi Lab unique are the combined perspectives of the participants.”

During the cyborg hour, Ellis interviewed Georgia Tech faculty about their work. In a telling demonstration, Thad Starner, associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing, challenged Clint Zeagler, a research scientist in the College of Architecture, to a picture race. Starner tapped his Google Glasses and secured a photo nearly instantaneously. Zeagler was forced to wait for his phone to turn on before launching a photo app.

Then they talked about getting inspiration from fashion design and Terminator movies. The intersection of arts and science is unavoidable. Sci Fi Lab serves as the petri dish for deeper investigation.

Sci Fi Lab airs weekly on Thursdays at 7 p.m., WREK 91.1 FM. Archived shows can be found at www.wrek.org/scifilab. Photos courtesy Jason Ellis.

David Bridges, director of EI2’s Economic Development Lab (EDL), will assume the interim vice president role effective Jan. 1, 2021.

EI2 is the largest and most comprehensive university-based program of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization, and economic development in the United States. 

Prior to leading EI2, Fite ran the unit’s Business & Industry Services group of programs, comprised of the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), EI2’s largest economic development offering. The group also includes the Safety, Health, and Environmental Services (SHES), Atlanta MBDA Centers, Contracting Education Academy, Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC), and the Southeastern Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (SETAAC) programs.

Before taking on that role, Fite was GaMEP director.

“Over the years at Georgia Tech, I have been privileged to serve in a wide variety of capacities — assisting companies with government procurement, their implementation of quality management systems and Lean Manufacturing protocols, the launch of a Lean Healthcare initiative, creating community economic development research and strategic plans, and directing the GaMEP,” Fite said.

“As interim vice president, I have had the opportunity to interact with virtually every EI2 employee. Working with such a talented group of employees of EI2 has been an honor because across the board they are passionate about their work, dedicated to Georgia Tech’s mission of progress and service by serving clients, and continually looking to innovate, improve, and expand our services to help create long lasting and meaningful impact not only in Georgia and across the country, but around the world.”

Chaouki T. Abdallah, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research said Fite was a valued member of his leadership team.

“She has been a very effective and engaging leader,” Abdallah said. “She’s brought me solutions, given me critical feedback and has been an invaluable partner. Georgia Tech is lucky to have had her contributions for so long.”

Fite has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Miami and a bachelor’s in health systems from Georgia Tech. In 2018, she achieved the faculty rank of principal extension professional, Georgia Tech’s highest professional extension faculty rank.

“We are fortunate to have someone of David Bridges’ caliber who can not only build on Karen’s legacy but also brings a wealth of experience and economic development successes,” Abdallah said.

Bridges, who joined EI2 in 1994, authored, co-authored or contributed to more than 100 economic development grants totaling more than $40 million. He assisted in the formation of the two proof-of-concept units — the Global Center for Medical Innovation, a Tech affiliate in the medical device space, and I3L, a health information technology innovation hub.

Beyond Georgia, Bridges helped catalyze the development of the Soft Landings program to bring companies from overseas to the United States. He also helped to establish the I-Corps Puerto Rico program as the National Science Foundation’s first I-Corps program ever offered to teams from that community.

He also supported the expansion of technology extension programs in Chile and Colombia, built a new program in professional development around innovation and technology commercialization, and expanded Georgia Tech’s presence by helping to build startup ecosystems around the Institute’s international campuses and in Latin America.

Bridges and his EDL team have also implemented ecosystem building projects for numerous countries including Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Argentina, Guatemala, South Africa, China, Korea, and Japan.

- Péralte Paul 

Adolfo’s dissertation research involved a large-scale package express service network design in collaboration with one of the largest courier companies in China. The objective of the project was to support the growth and evolution of the intercity logistics network (expanding coverage, offering tighter service levels, and improving efficiency). The challenge was to build flat network models given large problem size, time requirements for package movement, and consideration for relevant operational constraints. The first phase of the project focused on a detailed intracity scheduling service network design problem for megacities and developing a simple rated-based model to design shuttle and commodity paths. The next project phase focused on linehaul consolidation planning, and specifically, determining the most cost-effective hubs for cross-docking activities through developing decomposition greedy approaches that employ smaller tractable integer programming problems. In the final project phase, the focus was on a freight flow plan that conforms generalized in-tree structure and which basically generalize the in-tree concept. A main goal of the project was to build a large-scale plan when hub selection is not a concern, time requirements are relevant, and conformity and enforcement of a generalized in-tree structure that enhances operational realism is accomplished. 

When asked why Rocco was interested in this specific research area, he commented, "I am passionate about employing operations research techniques to solve challenging real-world problems. I strongly believe that city logistics plays a major role in the economy because of the growth in world population and e-commerce in past years. City logistics directly impacts the lives of people and, if not addressed correctly, can have a negative impact on quality of life. Advances in scientific methodologies and computer capabilities permit us to employ enabling cutting-edge technology to tackle these challenges appropriately. This is an exciting field that I yearn more people get involved with."
 
Before being accepted into the PhD program, Adolfo worked for five years at an operations research consulting firm in Chile building optimization models for a Workforce Management technology system. In the summer of 2019 he interned at Delta, developing an approach to increase revenue through routing optimization. In the summer of 2020, Rocco interned with the worldwide capacity planning operations research group at Amazon, enhancing scheduling models for customer service agents. After earning his PhD, Adolfo will join Amazon as a Research Scientist working with the team he previously interned with. 

Chen won the Best Student Paper Award in the Quality, Statistics, and Reliability track for “Adaptive Design for Gaussian Process Regression under Censoring.” This paper presented an experimental design and modeling method for censored physical experiments. Censoring is commonly encountered in experimentation due to the limits in a measurement device, safety considerations of the experimenter, and a fixed experimental time budget. To tackle this, he proposed a novel adaptive design method, which first estimates the possibility of censoring and then adaptively chooses design points to minimize predictive uncertainty under censoring. He demonstrates the effectiveness of the proposed method in two real-world applications on surgical planning and wafer manufacturing.

Chen received the Best Student Paper Runner-up Award in the Data Mining track for “APIK: A Physics-Informed Kriging Model with Partial Differential Equations.” This paper presented a learning framework that combines limited data and the auxiliary partial differential equations. One of the key challenges in applying state-of-the-art machine learning methods in real-world engineering applications is that the available measurement data is scarce. In this work, he proposed to incorporate the auxiliary partial differential equations in the learning model and therefore improve the predive performance. The proposed APIK model can leverage linear and nonlinear PDEs and enjoy simple and closed-form prediction and uncertainty quantification. He applied the proposed method to two real-world applications on flow dynamics and thermal processes.

Chen’s advisors for both papers are A. Russell Chandler III Professor Roshan Joseph and Harold E. Smalley Professor Chuck Zhang.

“I’m honored to have won best student paper award in the quality, statistics, and reliability track at INFORMS 2020, and to have another paper win second place in the data mining track,” said Chen. “My research focuses on engineering-driven learning methodologies, and data-driven modeling for complex engineering and manufacturing systems. The two awards are a great encouragement for me and inspire me to accomplish more in-depth and impactful works in the future. I would like to express my highest gratitude to my supervisors, professors Chuck Zhang and Roshan Joseph. I would also like to thank the support and assistance from GTMI, which helped to make the two projects possible.”

The SIReN Lab is an associate international laboratory, the result of a partnership between SCL’s Physical Internet Center and IMT Mines Albi, part of the Mines-Telecom Institute in France. The two organizations have historically collaborated on research surrounding artificial intelligence and its interface with these immersive technologies. The SIReN Lab is an extension and formalization of that relationship.

The U.S. arm of the lab is housed in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) and is directed by Benoit Montreuil, Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and professor in ISyE. Montreuil is also co-director
of SCL and director of the Physical Internet Center. The French lab is led by Frederick Benaben, head of the Interoperability of Organizations research team at IMT Mines Albi. Because of the virtual nature of the work, it is possible to have researchers from both labs working on the same experiment, in the same environment, at the same time.

SIReN Lab research is centered around four main types of response networks — demand, health, humanitarian, and crisis — and the human response to them. A demand response network focuses on how the supply network responds to demand and how to prepare for this response, rather than the other way around. The health and humanitarian response networks, which have become increasingly visible due to the Covid-19 pandemic, relate to issues like disaster recovery and various healthcare supply chains.

The French lab has a significant emphasis on crisis response networks, in which a group of people work together to respond to a crisis in a smart, fair, and efficient manner.
“We currently have a crisis management project where 10 people in France and a few in the U.S. are working together at the same time in a digital twin environment,” said Benaben. “For example, we can have everyone in a building where they can fight a fire, but we can also have some of them in a virtual control room exchanging ideas and making decisions. The options are limitless.”

Researchers are using tools such as dashboards, simulations, games, and in some cases virtual or augmented reality to allow participants to see — and in some cases experience — a vivid picture of a situation with other players in the network.

“In augmented reality, we reinforce what participants see with facts, maps, graphs, and other information that enhance what they are experiencing,” explained Montreuil. “In virtual reality, we project the user into a virtual world, which can be a very vivid representa-tion of the current world, or it can be an abstract world. It can be a very powerful tool.”
“When we put someone in an environ-ment where they can touch, learn, train, experiment, and ultimately decide, it changes the way they approach the problem,” added Benaben. 
The French lab launched on Nov. 15, 2019. While the spring 2020 launch of the U.S. lab was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the team already has several projects underway and is fully operational. Eventually, they would like to see additional SIReN labs join the network to further scale the work being conducted.

“We want to become a global leader in making response networks become more sentient and immersive,” said Montreuil. “This is an exciting new approach that we are bringing to ISyE and to the domain.”

Hundreds of millions of doses will have to distributed nationwide and kept cold until healthcare professionals can administer not one, but two doses to each person. And enough skeptical members of the population will have to be persuaded to receive the vaccine to slow virus transmission.

Beyond those challenges, the distribution effort will have to adapt to unexpected and uneven demand; accommodate recipients who may not return on time for a second dose; train hundreds of thousands of staff from clinics, pharmacies, doctor’s offices, and hospitals; prioritize serving high-risk groups first while encouraging others to wait — all while under tremendous pressure to get the much-anticipated vaccines into use as case counts and the death toll continue rising.

“Time is of the essence because the virus is already so widespread,” said Pinar Keskinocak, the William W. George Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) and director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “With the pressure on our timeline, knowledge of how quickly the disease is spreading, and the broad U.S. and global need, I can’t think of a comparable public health initiative that has ever been undertaken.”

Shipping and Keeping Hundreds of Millions of Doses Cold

Three vaccines, produced by Moderna, Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and Oxford-AstraZeneca, are expected to be available first. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will need to be kept ultra-cold — minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit — on its journey to individual Americans. The Moderna drug won’t have such demanding conditions, but both it and the Pfizer vaccine will tax the existing “cold chain” that keeps vaccines and other temperature-sensitive products in a narrow range of conditions during transport and storage. 

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will have much less stringent requirements and faster ramp-up in capacity, though early testing suggests its efficacy may be lower than the others. That will create tradeoffs between efficacy versus access and speed in distribution.

Plans already exist to get the vaccines from manufacturers to the states, each of which has developed its own distribution plan. Keskinocak worries mostly about “last mile” plans — getting the vaccines to where they will be injected — and getting individuals to those locations.

“Access is going to be a challenge,” she said. “You may be able to get it to locations where it can be distributed, but you have to make sure the people who really need the vaccine can easily access those locations.”

Cold chain transportation, tracking, tracing, and storage already exist in most areas, but refrigeration could be challenging for rural areas that may be at the end of the chain, especially for the vaccine requiring very cold temperatures beyond the capability of freezers found in most doctor’s offices and clinics. And cold can sometimes be too cold, Keskinocak said.

“We often think about keeping it cold, but sometimes it may be too cold, which is not good. It’s not just whether the temperature exceeded the required level, but also whether it went below that. It is important to keep the vaccine exactly at the required temperature level.”

Pfizer has developed a shipping container that includes a temperature tracking device — and 50 pounds of dry ice to maintain the right temperature during transit. Because it is contained in small vials and the liquid vaccine is diluted for use, the overall volume being shipped will be relatively small, limiting the number of packages that will be moved and stored, Keskinocak noted.

Ultimately, the cold chain may play a significant role in vaccine effectiveness. Currently, the vaccines being produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are reported to have a higher efficacy than the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine — but only if they can be maintained at the proper temperatures. The timing, magnitude, and duration of temperature fluctuations during transport and before administration could affect that in ways that may be difficult to assess.

“Our current modeling shows that a vaccine that is less effective but that can be distributed more quickly and more widely might work better in some settings than a more effective vaccine, thereby reducing the total number of infections in the population,” Keskinocak said.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Expectations are that the nation is hungry for a vaccine to escape the horrors of Covid-19. But a recent Gallup survey shows that only 58% of respondents said they planned to receive the vaccine when it becomes available. Boosting that percentage will require a massive communications effort to overcome vaccine reluctance and concerns fueled by the uneven nature of the U.S. pandemic response.

“If we can get the vaccine to locations where people can access it, and we have the necessary syringes, supplies, and PPE, as well as the healthcare staff to administer the injections, it’s not clear that people will come to receive it in large enough numbers,” Keskinocak said. “That’s one major component missing from a lot of the plans that I see at the state level.”

The communications program will have to run in parallel to the vaccine distribution, and they have to be coordinated so that supply meets demand.

“Public health communication and dissemination of information at the right time and in the right language is going to be at least as important and challenging as the logistics of distributing the vaccine,” Keskinocak said. “Communication is going to shape demand to a large extent. If one is more effective than the other, we will have a mismatch between demand and supply.”

Different demographic populations have different levels of trust for medicine in general and vaccines in particular, she said, so communications campaigns will have to focus on issues of concern to those groups. Unexpected variations in vaccine demand caused by these concerns could also create logistical uncertainties.

“We can try to forecast demand, and ship supplies to those locations,” she said. “But historically, we have seen that demand can exceed supply in one location while inventory builds up in another location. We need to avoid this situation of unmet demand and unused vaccine.”

Another issue will be the two doses necessary for the vaccine. The second dose must be received within a narrow range of time for the two-dose vaccine to be effective. Should a second dose be reserved for every person receiving a first dose, or should the goal be to get as many doses out as possible?

“Some people may never show up to be vaccinated, while others will receive the first dose, but may not come back for the second dose,” she said. 

Getting the Program Started

The first available doses will likely go to healthcare workers and first responders who are on the front lines of battling Covid-19. That is expected to be the easier part of vaccination logistics, and the lessons learned there should help with the much more massive vaccination campaign for high-risk individuals and the general public.

As vaccine production and distribution capacity ramp up, other groups will be next in line. While distributing small batches as manufacturers produce it can create some supply challenges, that also allows the system to more easily adjust to unexpected demand.

Even though distributing and administering vaccines is something the U.S. healthcare system does routinely, the size and timeline of this project are unprecedented, Keskinocak noted.

Beyond the logistical and communications needs, the vaccination program will also have a strong information technology component. Administration will likely be by appointment, and each injection will have to be reported to a vaccine registry to provide a record of which vaccines people have received and when.

Vaccinating People Who May Already Be Immune

It’s estimated that the number of reported Covid-19 cases may be just 10% of the actual number of infections in the U.S. Assuming recovery from the virus confers immunity for some period of time means there may be quite a few people who don’t actually need the vaccine right away to be protected. But there are currently no plans to determine whether recipients are already immune before they receive the vaccine.

“There are a lot of people out there who have some level of immunity to the coronavirus,” Keskinocak said. “The plans I’ve seen don’t include the serological testing that would be needed to identify people with some level of immunity, which could be around 30% of the population by the time the vaccine gets out to the general public.”

Testing for immune antibodies could be done ahead of the vaccination program, but that would create an extra step in a process that is already quite complicated. Healthcare systems such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or certain private insurance plans could include that step, especially if vaccine supplies lag behind demand.

“The big complexity is timing,” she said. “Once vaccines become available, you’ll want to deliver them as quickly as possible to as many people as possible in a very short time frame.”

Annual vaccination campaigns for the seasonal flu set ambitious goals for the population levels they want to reach, but the time challenges will be much greater for the coronavirus vaccine.

“The seasonal flu vaccine becomes available months before the virus spreads broadly, so we have quite a bit of time to administer it before we get into the peak of the flu season,” she said. “We have been in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic for several months now. We are really late in the game, so we don’t have the luxury of time.”

Keskinocak is cautiously optimistic that the challenges will ultimately be addressed.

“There are certainly still lots of unknowns,” she said. “But the state plans I have seen look reasonable from a supply chain standpoint. Some of the decisions will be made once the states receive the vaccine, and exactly how they do it will be somewhat up to the local jurisdictions. There are still many things that need to be decided to make this unprecedented initiative live up to its goals.”

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Created by the Engineering Biology Research Consortium, BioMADE will collaborate with public and private entities to advance sustainable and reliable bioindustrial manufacturing technologies. Headquartered at the University of Minnesota in St. Paul, BioMADE includes some of the largest bioindustrial manufacturing employers in the U.S. working in conjunction with some of the top educators in the world.

In support of this collaboration, the $87 million in DoD funding will be combined with more than $187 million in non-federal cost-share from 31 companies, 57 colleges and universities, six nonprofits, and two venture capital groups across 31 states. 

Pamela Peralta-Yahya, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, is Tech’s representative to BioMADE’s Leadership Council, which will set the organization’s funding priorities.

Peralta-Yahya says, “An incredible cross section of Georgia Tech faculty contributed to the BioMADE proposal; over 30 faculty members, spanning five Schools across the College of Science, College of Engineering, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.”

She notes: “Georgia Tech’s involvement in BioMADE is poised to catalyze interdisciplinary collaborations across the university, from data science and downstream processing to supply chain logistics and the policy, legal, and biosafety implications of bioindustrial applications. The projects funded by BioMADE will give undergraduates and graduate students a springboard to the emerging biomanufacturing and related areas.”

Mark Styczynski, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular who is Tech’s representative to the BioMADE Technical Committee, says: “Georgia Tech will be a member of BioMADE at the governing level, the highest level of engagement for academic institutions. We are excited about the resulting opportunities for Georgia Tech to bring to bear its manufacturing, chemical, and biochemical expertise on new applications and focus areas in the biomanufacturing space.”

He adds: “Our involvement in this area is a great complement to other biomanufacturing efforts at Georgia Tech and will contribute to a rapidly growing bioeconomy in Georgia.”

Through a close relationship with DoD and the Military Services, BioMADE will work to establish long-term and dependable bioindustrial manufacturing capabilities for a wide array of products. Anticipated bioindustrial manufacturing applications include the following products: chemicals, solvents, detergents, reagents, plastics, electronic films, fabrics, polymers, agricultural products (e.g. feedstock), crop protection solutions, food additives, fragrances, and flavors.  

BioMADE’s efforts will examine and advance industry-wide standards, tools, and measurements; mature foundational technologies; foster a resilient bioindustrial manufacturing ecosystem; advance education and workforce development; and support the establishment and growth of supply chain intermediaries that are essential for a robust U.S. bioeconomy. Other important focus areas include challenges related to biosafety and security and ethical, legal, and societal considerations.

Stefan France, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry is Tech’s representative to BioMADE’s Education and Workforce Committee, which will help craft and implement the organization’s strategic plan.

France explains that this committee “will concentrate its efforts in three major areas: curriculum and training for the bioindustrial workforce, promoting awareness of career opportunities, and coordination across the STEM community, the biomanufacturing ecosystem, and the training pipeline—everything from K-12 to community and technical colleges to four-year colleges, graduate programs, and post-graduate training.”

Shi’s work focuses primarily on the development and application of data-enabled manufacturing. His methodologies integrate system informatics, advanced statistics, and control theory for the design and operational improvements of manufacturing and service systems by fusing engineering systems models with data science methods. The technologies developed in Shi’s research group have been widely implemented in various production systems with significant economic impacts. Additionally, he is the founding chair of the Quality, Statistics and Reliability Division at the Institute for Operations Research and Management Science (INFORMS). 

“Congratulations to Jan on winning this prestigious award,” said ISyE School Chair Edwin Romeijn. “His unmatched work in the development and application of data-enabled manufacturing and quality control have made him a true leader in this field. We are proud to have him as a longstanding member of our faculty.”

The Shewhart Medal is the latest in a long line of honors Shi has received for his research. These include the ASQ Brumbaugh Award (2019); the Horace Pops Medal from Wire Association International (2018); and the IISE David F. Baker Distinguished Research Award (2016). In 2018, he was elected to the National Academy of Engineering for "development of data fusion-based quality methods and their implementation in multistage manufacturing systems.”

“I feel extremely honored and humbled to receive the 2021 Walter Shewhart Medal,” said Shi. “The development and implementation of IPQI requires a team effort. I would like to take this opportunity to express my appreciation to my current and former students, collaborators, and sponsors, as well as many people’s efforts to implement the IPQI methodologies in industrial systems.”

Shi has been a faculty member of ISyE since 2008. Prior to his arrival at Georgia Tech, he was the G. Lawton and Louise G. Johnson Professor of Engineering at the University of Michigan.

For a full activity report please see: https://cdait.gatech.edu/Activities/Industrial_Internet_of_Things

Billyde Brown, the project's principal investigator, explained, “we are addressing this challenge by working with BioFabUSA, our partners at the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering, the Marcus Center for Therapeutic Cell Characterization and Manufacturing, as well as Rockwell Automation, to develop a fully integrated, wireless, 3D-printed sensor ‘capsule’ to be used for in-situ multiplexed monitoring of critical quality attributes (CQAs). The targeted CQAs include pH, glucose, lactate, and select secreted biomarker concentrations from human mesenchymal stem cells – one of the most common cell types used in tissue engineering.”

In both biopharmaceutical and regenerative medicine industries, an urgent need remains for in-line sensor technology for quantitative real-time bioprocess monitoring and control. Unfortunately, many key CQAs are still monitored off-line or at-line using destructive testing or technologies of significant complexity and cost. In at-line measurement, the sample is typically withdrawn from a single location in the bioreactor and analyzed in close proximity to the process stream, whereas in off-line measurements, the sample is taken to a laboratory and the results are usually not returned in a timely manner for process control.

The Georgia Tech team has previously developed potentiometric sensors based on an extended gate field-effect-transistor (FET) topology whereby a separate gold electrode surface is functionalized with an analyte-specific layer that selectively reacts or binds with the chemical or biomolecule of interest. The charge associated with the attached analyte results in a potential change of the gold electrode. These sensors have previously been used to detect chemicals such as pH and lactate, as well as specific proteins/antibodies in a laboratory environment with accuracy and dynamic range equivalent to Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) and Enzyme-Linked Immunosorbent Assay (ELISA). One of the unique aspects of this system is that each sensor surface can be individually functionalized permitting multiplexed (simultaneous) detection of almost any number of different chemicals/biomolecules of interest.

In this project, the Georgia Tech team will integrate these sensors into a “capsule” device smaller than the size of a golf-ball and packaged in a 3D-printed waterproof and biocompatible polymer. The capsule will contain a multiplexed sensor chip, with sealed opening to facilitate interaction between the sensor chip and tissue culture environment, Li-polymer battery, and electronics for micro-control, data acquisition and wireless transmission of sensor data to the smartphone of a technician in charge of monitoring the bioreactor process. In addition, Georgia Tech will work with Rockwell to develop an IoT platform such that other permitted internet-connected devices can securely access the data via a cloud server. Another unique aspect of this technology is that multiple “capsules” could be deployed within a stirred tank bioreactor during high volume production of medical products with the ability to move efficiently throughout the bioreactor due to the mechanical forces of the impellors. This would allow for unprecedented simultaneous measurements at various points within the bioreactor, giving accurate representations of the homogeneity of key parameters over time thus achieving in-situ monitoring of CQAs with high spatial and temporal resolution.

Georgia Tech project leads include Billyde Brown, Ph.D., Kan Wang, Ph.D., and Eric Vogel, Ph.D. Brown is research faculty and director of manufacturing education programs at the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI). Wang is lead researcher of additive manufacturing in the Bio-Engineering Research Laboratory at GTMI. Vogel is a professor at the School of Materials Science and Engineering and deputy director for the Institute of Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech. The Georgia Tech project leads will also receive support and assistance from Carolyn Yeago, Ph.D., and Krishnendu Roy, Ph.D. whom are directors of the Marcus Center for Therapeutic Cell Characterization and Manufacturing (MC3M). Leading the project for Rockwell Automation is Wayne Charest, who also serves as a liaison between Rockwell and BioFabUSA.

“Being able to obtain real-time data on relevant biomarkers will be critical in advancing the field of tissue engineering,” said Stephanie Robichaud, technical project manager with the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute. “Getting this important information and being able to react to it quickly will result in more consistent manufacturing of a final product that meets its critical quality attributes.”

About the Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech, is one of the nation’s leading research universities — a university that embraces change while continually Creating the Next. The next generation of leaders. The next breakthrough startup company. The next lifesaving medical treatment.

Georgia Tech provides a focused, technologically based education to more than 36,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The Institute has many nationally recognized programs, all top-ranked by peers and publications alike, and is ranked among the nation’s top five public universities by U.S. News & World Report. It offers degrees through the Colleges of Computing, Design, Engineering, Sciences, the Scheller College of Business, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech has more than 100 centers focused on interdisciplinary research that consistently contribute vital research and innovation to American government, industry, and business. https://www.gatech.edu/

About Rockwell Automation

Rockwell Automation is the largest company in the world that is dedicated to industrial automation and information and is committed to enabling the next generation of smart manufacturing.  Rockwell’s mission is to improve the quality of life by making the world more productive and sustainable.

https://www.rockwellautomation.com

About BioFabUSA

BioFabUSA is a DOD-funded Manufacturing USA Innovation Institute (MII) sustained by the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI), a non-profit organization located in Manchester, New Hampshire.  ARMI's mission is make practical the scalable, consistent, cost-effective manufacturing of tissue engineered medical products and tissue-related technologies, to benefit existing industries and grow new ones.  https://www.armiusa.org/

Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute
813 Ferst Drive, NW
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Media Relations Contact: Walter Rich (walter.rich@research.gatech.edu)

The project aims to create the first simulation-based supply chain model for the rapidly evolving and future facing TEMPs industry, to minimize manufacturing and logistics costs and risks, incorporate Department of Defense (DOD) and other stakeholders’ perspectives into supply chain modeling, inform standards development, and support workforce development. 

“Having a supply chain model will be instrumental in helping new and existing companies plan for the most efficient process flows, resource usage, and cost savings,” said Stephanie Robichaud, technical project manager with the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute. “Many startup companies do not realize some of the intricacies in managing their supply chain and many established companies realize the importance of it after experiencing inefficiencies. Having a model that these companies can use will help advance the field of tissue engineering as they plan for scale-up.”

According to Ben Wang, executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) and professor in the Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, “hundreds if not thousands of patients are waiting for tissues and organs in order to have a normal healthy life. Our project is a bold initiative to democratize distribution of replacement tissues and organs by streamlining national supply chains. This project will develop simulation-based tools to enhance the efficiency and resilience of the TEMPs supply chain, making these personalized medicines more affordable and more accessible.”

The growth of the TEMP industry is going to change the supply chain of medical tissues disruptively. To embrace this change, a system-level decision support tool is essential for adopting more cost-effective manufacturing processes and making better investment decisions. To ensure successful commercialization and adoption of this new supply chain decision support tool, the project team will engage multiple stakeholders including DOD, government, regulatory bodies, standards setting organizations, patients, industry, academia, policy experts, education and workforce development experts.

Georgia Tech project leads include Ben Wang, Ph.D., Chelsea C. White III, Ph.D, and Kan Wang, Ph.D. Ben Wang is Gwaltney Chair in Manufacturing Systems, professor in the Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering and School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech. In addition, he serves as executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI). Chelsea C. White III is the Schneider National Chair in Transportation and Logistics and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech​. Kan Wang is lead researcher of additive manufacturing in the Bio-Engineering Research Laboratory at GTMI.

Leading the project for Akron Biotech is Ezequiel Zylberberg, Ph.D, who is vice president of product development and planning. According to Ezequiel, “the future of regenerative medicine depends on more than our ability to address the scientific challenges of generating the next generation of advanced therapies. Advancing these novel treatments in a way that is scalable will require significant advances in manufacturing innovation. We are eager to collaborate with our colleagues at Georgia Tech, at BioFab USA, and throughout the regenerative medicine industry to confront the challenge of scalability and supply chain resilience through this modelling effort.”  

About the Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, also known as Georgia Tech, is one of the nation’s leading research universities — a university that embraces change while continually Creating the Next. The next generation of leaders. The next breakthrough startup company. The next lifesaving medical treatment.

Georgia Tech provides a focused, technologically based education to more than 36,000 undergraduate and graduate students. The Institute has many nationally recognized programs, all top-ranked by peers and publications alike, and is ranked among the nation’s top five public universities by U.S. News & World Report. It offers degrees through the Colleges of Computing, Design, Engineering, Sciences, the Scheller College of Business, and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech has more than 100 centers focused on interdisciplinary research that consistently contribute vital research and innovation to American government, industry, and business. https://www.gatech.edu/

About Akron Biotech

Akron is a leading materials manufacturer and services provider to the regenerative medicine industry, accelerating the development and commercialization of advanced therapies. Founded in 2006, Akron is an ISO 13485-certified company that operates in line with cGMPs and international standards, enabling advanced therapy developers to de-risk their supply chains and facilitate regulatory approval. The company's unique business model emphasizes knowledge, flexibility and unparalleled service—from development through to commercialization. For more information, please visit www.akronbiotech.com.

About BioFabUSA

BioFabUSA, is a DOD-funded Manufacturing USA Innovation Institute (MII) sustained by the Advanced Regenerative Manufacturing Institute (ARMI) is a non-profit organization located in Manchester, New Hampshire. ARMI's mission is to make practical the scalable, consistent, cost-effective manufacturing of tissue engineered medical products and tissue-related technologies, to benefit existing industries and grow new ones.  https://www.armiusa.org/

Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute
813 Ferst Drive, NW
Atlanta, GA 30332 USA

Media Relations Contact: Walter Rich (walter.rich@research.gatech.edu)

The modular Georgia Tech mask combines a barrier filtration material with a stretchable fabric to hold it in place. Prototypes made for testing use hook and eye fasteners on the back of the head to keep the masks on, and include a pocket for an optional filter to increase protection. After 20 washings, the prototypes have not shrunk or lost their shape.

“If we want to reopen the economy and ask people to go back to work, we need a mask that is both comfortable and effective,” said Sundaresan Jayaraman, the Kolon Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering. “We have taken a science-based approach to designing a better mask, and we are very passionate about getting this out so people can use it to help protect themselves and others from harm.”

The fundamental flaw in existing reusable cloth masks is that they — unlike N95 respirators, which are fitted for individual users — leak air around the edges, bypassing their filtration mechanism. That potentially allows virus particles, both large droplets and smaller aerosols, to enter the air breathed in by users, and allows particles from infected persons to exit the mask. 

The leakage problem shows up in complaints about eyeglasses fogging up as exhaled breath leaks around the nose, making people less likely to wear them. The fit problem can also be seen in constant adjustments made by wearers, who could potentially contaminate themselves whenever they touch the masks after touching other surfaces.

To address the leakage challenge, Jayaraman and principal research scientist Sungmee Park created a two-part mask that fastens behind the head like many N95 respirators. The front part — the barrier component — contains the filtration material and is contoured to fit tightly while allowing space ahead of the nose and mouth to avoid breathing restrictions and permit unrestricted speech. Made from the kind of moisture-wicking material used in athletic clothing, it includes a pocket into which a filter can be inserted to increase the filtration efficiency and thereby increase protection. The washable fabric filter is made of a blend of Spandex and polyester. 

The second part of the mask is fashioned from stretchable material. The stretchable part, which has holes for the ears to help position the mask, holds the front portion in place and fastens with conventional hook and eyelet hardware, a mechanism that has been used in clothing for centuries.

“We want people to be able to get the mask in the right place every time,” Jayaraman said. “If you don’t position it correctly and easily, you are going to have to keep fiddling with it. We see that all the time on television with people adjusting their masks and letting them drop below their noses.”

Beyond controlling air leakage, designing a better mask involves a tradeoff between filtration effectiveness and how well users can breathe. If a mask makes breathing too difficult, users will simply not use it, reducing compliance with masking requirements.

Many existing mask designs attempt to increase filtration effectiveness by boosting the number of layers, but that may not be as helpful as it might seem, Park said. “We tested 16 layers of handkerchief material, and as we increased the layers, we measured increased breathing resistance,” she said. “While the breathing resistance went up, the filtration did not improve as much as we would have expected.”

“Good filtration efficiency is not enough by itself,” said Jayaraman. “The combination of fit, filtration efficiency, and staying in the right place make for a good mask.”

The stretchable part of the mask is made from knitted fabric — a Spandex/Lyocell blend — to allow for stretching around the head and under the chin. The researchers used a woven elastic band sewn with pleats to cover the top of the nose. 

The researchers made their mask prototypes from synthetic materials instead of cotton. Though cotton is a natural material, it absorbs moisture and holds it on the face, reducing breathability, and potentially creating a “petri dish” for the growth of microbes. 

“Masks have become an essential accessory in our wardrobe and add a social dimension to how we feel about wearing them,” Park said. So, the materials chosen for the mask come in a variety of colors and designs. “Integrating form and function is key to having a mask that protects individuals while making them look good and feel less self-conscious,” Jayaraman said. 

The work of Jayaraman and Park didn’t begin with the Covid-19 pandemic. They received funding 10 years ago from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention to study face masks during the avian influenza outbreak. Since then Jayaraman has been part of several National Academy of Medicine initiatives to develop recommendations for improved respiratory protection.

Covid-19 dramatically increased the importance of using face masks because of the role played by asymptomatic and pre-symptomatic exposure from persons who don’t know they are infected, Jayaraman said. While the proportion of aerosol contributions to transmission is still under study, they likely increase the importance of formfitting masks that don’t leak.

Jayaraman and Park have published their recommendations in The Journal of The Textile Institute, and will make the specifications and patterns for their mask available to individuals and manufacturers. The necessary materials can be obtained from retail fabric stores, and the instructions describe how to measure for customizing the masks. 

“There is so much misinformation about what face masks can do and cannot do,” Jayaraman said. “Being scientists and engineers, we want to put out information backed by science that can help our community reduce the harm from SARS-CoV-2.”

Link to plans, patterns and specifications for this mask

CITATION: Sungmee Park and Sundaresan Jayaraman, “From containment to harm reduction from SARS-CoV-2: a fabric mask for enhanced effectiveness, comfort, and compliance.” (The Journal of The Textile Institute, 2020) https://doi.org/10.1080/00405000.2020.1805971 

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu).

Writer: John Toon

Meeting a 2035 deadline for decarbonizing U.S. electricity production, as proposed by the incoming U.S. presidential administration, would eliminate just 15% of the capacity-years left in plants powered by fossil fuels, says the article by Emily Grubert, a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher. Plant retirements are already underway, with 126 gigawatts of fossil generator capacity taken out of production between 2009 and 2018, including 33 gigawatts in 2017 and 2018 alone.

“Creating an electricity system that does not contribute to climate change is actually two processes — building carbon-free infrastructure like solar plants, and closing carbon-based infrastructure like coal plants,” said Grubert, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “My work shows that because a lot of U.S. fossil fuel plants are already pretty old, the target of decarbonization by 2035 would not require us to shut most of these plants down earlier than their typical lifespans.”

Of U.S. fossil fuel-fired generation capacity, 73% (630 out of 840 gigawatts) will reach the end of its typical lifespan by 2035; that percentage would reach 96% by 2050, she says in the Policy Forum article published in Science. About 13% of U.S. fossil fuel-fired generation capacity (110 gigawatts) operating in 2018 had already exceeded its typical lifespan. 

Because typical lifespans are averages, some generators operate for longer than expected. Allowing facilities to run until they retire is thus likely insufficient for a 2035 decarbonization deadline, the article notes. Closure deadlines that strand assets relative to reasonable lifespan expectations, however, could create financial liability for debts and other costs. The research found that a 2035 deadline for completely retiring fossil fuel-based electricity generators would only strand about 15% (1,700 gigawatt-years) of capacity life, along with about 20% (380,000 job-years) of direct power plant and fuel extraction jobs that existed in 2018. 

In 2018, fossil fuel facilities operated in 1,248 of 3,141 counties, directly employing about 157,000 people at generators and fuel extraction facilities. Plant closure deadlines can improve outcomes for workers and host communities — providing additional certainty, for example, by enabling specific advance planning for things like remediation, retraining for displaced workers, and revenue replacements.

“Closing large industrial facilities like power plants can be really disruptive for the people who work there and live in the surrounding communities,” Grubert said. “We don't want to repeat the damage we saw with the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s, where people lost jobs, pensions, and stability without warning. We already know where the plants are, and who might be affected. Using the 2035 decarbonization deadline to guide explicit, community grounded planning for what to do next can help, even without a lot of financial support.”

Planning ahead will also help avoid creating new capital investment that may not be needed long-term. “We shouldn't build new fossil fuel power plants that would still be young in 2035, and we need to have explicit plans for closures both to ensure the system keeps working and to limit disruption for host communities,” she said. 

Underlying policies governing the retirement of fossil fuel-powered facilities is the concept of a “just transition” that ensures material well-being and distributional justice for individuals and communities affected by a transition from fossil to non-fossil electricity systems. Determining which assets are “stranded,” or required to close earlier than expected, is vital for managing compensation for remaining debt or lost revenue, Grubert said in the article.

CITATION: Emily Grubert, “Fossil electricity retirement deadlines for a just transition” (Science, 2020). https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6521/1171

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
177 North Avenue
Atlanta, Georgia  30332-0181  USA

Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu)

Writer: John Toon

           On Wednesday, September 16, the Office of Undergraduate Education (OUE) hosted the kick-off session for the 13th Annual InVenture Prize. With over $35,000 in prizes, the competition is the holy grail of college entrepreneurship. Although the InVenture Prize officially starts in January 2021, students have already begun their preparations and idea declarations.

Unlike previous years, the kick-off was hosted online through Gatherly, a virtual event platform recently built by none other than Georgia Tech students. Despite this, attendees did not miss a beat. The kick-off marked a return to normalcy for the Georgia Tech innovation community from learning key information about the competition to directly speaking with past winners.

           After a welcome from interim Assistant Director of Student Innovation, Recha Reid, students were given an overview of some upcoming InVenture Prize events, including the ongoing Pitch Your Idea and IdeaBuzz sessions. Students were given an overview of OUE’s customer discovery, financial forecasting, marketing, and patent/copyright workshops. From there, the floor was turned over to Dr. Chris Reaves, executive director of the office for Academic Enrichment Programs.

           “At its core, the InVenture Prize is an invention startup competition, but we work together — even the teams work with each other — to help one another. We achieve more, grow more, and develop our companies better when we’re helping each other, and that’s a big part of what we’re doing,” Reaves explained.

           Later, students were given the opportunity to speak with representatives from Queues and Aerodyme, the respective first- and second-place winners of the 2020 InVenture Prize. Students learned firsthand what it takes to succeed on the InVenture Prize stage; the teams later offered advice on the invention process, their lessons learned, and the visibility benefits of participating in the competition.

           “If you’re on the edge right now about doing InVenture Prize, definitely do it. We actually had that same thought before we did it, and we’re just so glad that we did. It’s a lot of work, and you’re going to step outside of your comfort zone, but it’s so worth it”, said Joy Bullington of team Aerodyme Technologies. 

           Queues team member Sam Porta similarly had some words of encouragement for those looking into the 2021 InVenture Prize. 

           “The difference between an entrepreneur and someone who’s just engineering something is persistence, and the InVenture Prize is a great opportunity to test this. If you think you’ve come up with something great that has a lot of value, then, by all means, do it,” Porta emphasized.

           Towards the end of the session, students were invited to visit virtual “booths” dedicated to areas of health, retail, fintech, transportation, education tools, gaming, and networking.

           “InVenture is honestly one of the reasons I chose to come to Tech, and I’m just so excited to come into with something that I’m really confident about,” an attendee said.

           “The most interesting thing about tonight was hearing from the past winners and having them talk about their experiences. Definitely super excited to apply, and hopefully we do really well,” another stated.

           Registration for the 2021 InVenture Prize will remain open until January. Student innovators are invited to check out OUE’s information and development sessions to be held throughout the Fall semester. All dates and related topics can be found at innovation.gatech.edu and inventureprize.gatech.edu.

FIND OUT MORE ABOUT THE 2021 INVENTURE PRIZE BY CLICKING HERE

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