Ernest “Ernie” Scheller Jr., a 1952 Industrial Management graduate of Georgia Tech, has made a commitment totaling $50 million, a majority of which has been fulfilled. The gift has already begun to dramatically strengthen the College’s faculty, student body, and academic programs. When completed in 2013, it will amount to the single largest cash gift in Institute history.
In all, Scheller’s gift—along with others inspired to participate in a corresponding dollar-for-dollar challenge—will more than double the College’s endowment.
In recognition of and appreciation for the dramatic impact that Scheller’s generosity and leadership have had and will continue to have for many years to come, the College of Management has been renamed the Ernest Scheller Jr. College of Business.
“Ernie Scheller’s generosity has not only had an immediate impact on the College via the dollar-for-dollar challenge, but that impact will also continue far into the future,” said College of Business Dean Steve Salbu. “We’ve used this gift to bring our PhD program up to a truly global standard, and to grow the size and quality of our faculty during a time when our budgets were cut and our competition was retrenching. Adding nine endowed faculty chairs and professorships, 37 undergraduate scholarships and six graduate fellowships is transformational in and of itself as it dramatically enhances the College’s ability to attract top talent.”
An additional component of Scheller’s commitment is a dean’s discretionary endowment, which Salbu says “will give us a real boost when it comes to taking advantage of opportunities as they arise. This endowment will be available for me and for every dean who follows me in perpetuity. This is a transformational gift that will allow the College—which has gone from being a very strong regional player to being a competitor within the big leagues of business schools—to take and firmly keep our place in that competitive arena.”
In addition to supporting facilities and endowment, Scheller’s previous gifts to the College of Business have established a scholarship and a faculty chair focused on innovation, entrepreneurship, and commercialization.
Scheller is chairman emeritus of Pennsylvania-based Silberline Manufacturing Inc., a company his father founded in the 1940s that is today a key global supplier of high-quality pigments—primarily to the automobile industry—that tremendously enhance the visual appeal of coatings, paints, inks, plastics, and textiles.
“Ernie Scheller has a distinguished track record of success in leading and growing one of the top family-owned businesses in the country,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson. “Ernie rightfully takes great pride in building upon his father’s legacy and passing on the fruits of his labors to succeeding generations. While his generosity has had an unprecedented impact on our College of Business, I believe that impact will ultimately inspire the larger Georgia Tech community to continue boldly envisioning a future of globally renowned excellence and quality.”
“Georgia Tech taught me the importance of perseverance and persistence,” said Scheller. “Over the years, I’ve applied those same principles to my support of Georgia Tech and its College of Business. In order to build a College that will rank among the world’s best business programs, you’ve got to have great leadership, a broad-based vision, and a lot of determination. The College has been fortunate these past six years to enjoy such leadership under Dean Steve Salbu. By any barometer you could choose, the College has improved dramatically during Steve’s tenure. I have never been more optimistic about the future of Georgia Tech and its College of Business, and I am eager to see the great things that will happen there in the coming years.”
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The I-Corps program connects NSF-funded scientific research with the technological, entrepreneurial and business communities to help create a stronger innovation ecosystem that couples scientific discovery with technology development and societal needs. Leveraging experience and guidance from established entrepreneurs and a targeted curriculum, I-Corps attendees learn to identify valuable product opportunities that can emerge from academic research.
Beyond Georgia Tech, the NSF will also establish an I-Corps network node at the University of Michigan. By adding these two institutions to its I-Corps program – which began at Stanford University – the NSF will replicate the I-Corps curriculum across the country and begin creating a national network to identify emerging technology concepts that have potential to transition into economically viable products.
“One of Georgia Tech’s strengths is its ability to provide the links needed to help move scientific research quickly from the lab to products coming off the manufacturing floor,” said G. P. “Bud” Peterson, president of Georgia Tech. “We are honored to partner with NSF in expanding I-Corps’ ability to help the entrepreneurial and business communities and boost economic growth.”
With a three-year, $1.5 million grant, Georgia Tech will research, analyze and leverage data from the I-Corps program to develop an understanding of how academic institutions can improve support for innovation ecosystems and how the I-Corps network can enable new collaborations in geographic regions to support commercialization opportunities. Georgia Tech will also teach the I-Corps curriculum to cohorts of NSF-designated teams from around the United States.
“Through our translation-friendly technology transfer policies and our 11-year-old VentureLab program, Georgia Tech has built a repeatable process for successfully generating new companies from research at the university,” said Stephen Fleming, a Georgia Tech vice president and executive director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute. “Now we will be able to share with participants of the NSF I-Corps program our experience and commitment to developing best practices in the science of vetting ideas for their suitability to be successful startups.”
One of two seven-week summer 2012 I-Corps classes began July 9 at Georgia Tech and the fall class will begin at Georgia Tech on Oct. 1, 2012. Spanning a broad range of potential products and research areas, the 27 teams in the summer class are participating in a specially designed training curriculum, obtaining guidance and mentoring from private- and public-sector experts – including technology developers, business leaders and venture capitalists. They have received $50,000 grants to begin assessing the commercial readiness of their technology concepts.
Beth Mynatt, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Interactive Computing, and Ioannis Brilakis, an assistant professor in the Georgia Tech School of Building Construction and the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, have previously participated as principal investigators in the I-Corps program.
“The I-Corps program provides a critical missing piece for a university committed to translating research insights into commercial innovations,” said Mynatt. “Working in three-person teams that included research expertise, entrepreneurial focus and business mentorship provided us with a focus on identifying commercial value. The method to the madness is testing ‘hypotheses’ of possible value instead of trying to build a fictitious business model. The best teams ‘pivot’ rapidly by testing these hypotheses and focusing on specific opportunities.”
Mynatt led a team developing “SmartMenu,” an online tool for helping diners choose the best meals for their specific needs. “We honed our product ideas and made numerous discoveries along the way,” she added. “Access to business mentors in the program was invaluable and resulted in a number of important introductions.”
The Georgia Tech I-Corps network node will expand the NSF’s cadre of innovation experts that are mentoring on effective practices for leveraging outcomes of basic research.
“Academic researchers already have many skills valuable for success in business, such as critical thinking, teamwork and an ability to move in a new direction and learn when a hypothesis proves false,” says Errol Arkilic, NSF program director for I-Corps. “The NSF I-Corps builds upon that expertise, introducing researchers to the business community and teaching them to seek, and speak to, the needs of potential customers.”
Nearly 50 teams – composed of academic researchers, student entrepreneurs (undergraduates, graduate students and post-docs), and business mentors – have participated so far in the six-month I-Corps program. The curriculum is a hypothesis-based approach to assessing technological readiness that combines two site-based short courses, extensive online coaching, and hands-on outreach to potential customers. I-Corps merges the structured coursework with guidance from NSF program officers and leading entrepreneurs who have committed their time to the program.
The Innovation Corps is supported by the National Science Foundation, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the Deshpande Foundation. For more information, see: www.nsf.gov/i-corps.
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]]>Born in Canada to African parents and having lived in Ghana, Barcelona, Memphis and Atlanta, Buolamwini truly considers herself a global citizen. Next year, she’ll take her talents to the U.K. where she’ll study Global Governance and Diplomacy and African Studies at the University of Oxford as a 2013 Rhodes Scholar. The Rhodes Scholarship is recognized as the oldest and most celebrated international fellowship award in the world. The Rhodes Scholarship Trust bestows its honor on just 32 U.S. students a year, and each is given the opportunity to pursue a secondary degree at the University of Oxford.
Rhodes is not the first prestigious fellowship program to recognize Buolamwini’s enterprising spirit. She’s also a 2013 Fulbright scholar and will use her grant to improve access to education in Zambia. Her past experience developing web and mobile applications for Atlanta’s Teach for America schools will inform Buolamwini’s efforts with the Zambian Institute for Sustainable Development to create a program that gives students a foundation in information technology, mobile software development and entrepreneurship.
Life at Tech
Coming to Tech as a computer science major and Stamps President’s Scholar in 2008, Buolamwini spent the past four years growing her skills and flourishing in finding ways to employ them. She interned at Yahoo, worked at the Carter Center, founded multiple startup companies and earned numerous competitive scholarships, including the Google Anita Borg Scholarship and the Astronaut Scholarship.
“Having people around Georgia Tech who were affiliated with the startup community really inspired me,” she said. Her first innovative venture at Tech was with the Institute’s InVenture Prize, where Buolamwini was the youngest finalist in 2009. “The most valuable thing was the confidence I gained and realizing I could put something out in the world and make it become a reality. Everything became an opportunity after that.”
"Everything" is the operative word: Buolamwini has researched human-robot interaction to support early diagnosis of autism, been a guest writer for Newsweek and won countless awards for her computing prowess. The former pole vaulter stayed active in student activities, once scoring five touchdowns in a Homecoming powderpuff football game. Ultimately, her various pursuits have been in the name of serving others with technology, motivated by the idea of “compassion through computation.”
But, to those who know her, what makes Buolamwini different is the character behind the laundry list of accomplishments and accolades.
“She has an integrity to herself that is really unusual,” said Merrick Furst, distinguished professor and founder of Flashpoint, Georgia Tech’s startup incubator from which one of Buolamwini’s companies graduated. “It’s not that Joy does one thing well, it’s that her talent is a well, coupled with a remarkable boundless generative energy.”
From Atlanta to Africa
As a technical consultant at the Carter Center, Buolamwini created a mobile surveying solution to digitize a paper-based health assessment system used for working with trachoma in Ethiopia. In just 10 weeks, her team developed the necessary technology and she traveled to Ethiopia to pilot the system against its paper predecessor.
"Assumptions I made while developing the software in the U.S. were often invalidated, leading to changes made under my mosquito net as dawn approached," she said. “I realize[d] I cannot remain in a cultural cocoon centered on technology alone. No initiative can reach maximum impact without understanding the needs of all stakeholders and mechanisms.” The work led to the successful implementation of a survey to 40,000 people that could ultimately serve 17 million in the effort to eradicate trachoma in the region.
“I want to use mobile technology to address grand challenges in education and health while uplifting African nations,” she said. “I also want to encourage more women and underrepresented groups in computer science to not just be consumers of technology, but full participants in its creation.”
As an Alumna
Since graduating from Tech in May, Buolamwini, along with three other Tech alumnae, founded a hair technology company called Techturized. The company creates personalized recommendations, a market need Buolamwini observed through her own experience of “going natural” with her hair. Techturized also highlights the role that hair plays in women’s lives.
“Joy has a unique skill set in understanding the technology as well as the people,” said Randy McDow, executive director of the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation, and director of the President’s Scholarship Program at the time Buolamwini was named a Stamps scholar. True to the name of her freelance web development company, Jovial Designs, “She’s fun to talk to and doesn’t offer a tired or boring view of the world. She really wants to make positive changes and makes you want to be a part of that. She embodies her name so well.”
If it seems as though Buolamwini’s accomplishments never stop, it’s because neither does she.
“I can get exhausted just thinking about what Joy accomplishes, and, for her, she’s just being Joy and the world is getting better,” Furst said.
Buolamwini’s philosophy is that success never happens in isolation. “At Tech, I have been surrounded by so many people who cared to nurture me as a student, an entrepreneur and a leader, while reminding me that reaching out to help others is the greatest achievement one can have.”
Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson connected Buolamwini’s story and the Rhodes Scholarship with Tech’s overarching purpose. “Our goal at Georgia Tech is to prepare innovators and leaders who will use their academic experience to change the world,” he said. “Through the Rhodes Scholarship, Joy will be able to do just that, and we at Georgia Tech are tremendously proud of her accomplishments and potential.”
As she departs for Zambia early next year, Buolamwini will take on an advisory role at Techturized. She will return from Zambia just in time for Sailing Weekend, a tradition among Rhodes Scholars to coordinate their September travel to Oxford. After an initial gathering of winners and past Rhodes Scholars over the weekend, Buolamwini is excited about embracing her new community.
“They’re successful, smart, capable people. They make you feel like the world is going to be OK.”
]]>Tzegaegbe is Georgia Tech's 10th Marshall Scholar and the only Tech student to receive the scholarship this year.
Tzegaegbe plans to use the scholarship to pursue his doctorate in civil engineering at University College London beginning next October. The scholarship will pay for all education-related expenses during his two years in London.
“The topic for my doctorate is undecided at this point but will likely focus on evaluating best practices in context-sensitive design for major transportation infrastructure projects in developing countries,” he said. “My hope is to work with professors in the Bartlett School of Planning to learn more about how to plan infrastructure in developing countries.”
Tzegaegbe earned a bachelor’s degree in civil engineering in 2011 and is currently a second-year graduate student in Civil and Environmental Engineering’s Infrastructure Research Group. He is currently working on a dissertation entitled “Regulating the Informal Transit Sector in Post-BRT African Cities.” This work is a continuation of the research he began as an undergraduate through the President’s Undergraduate Research Award (PURA).
Born to a Nigerian father and Israeli mother, Tzegaegbe is the first in his family to attend college. He was decidedly humbled by the award, which was announced this week.
“My parents might be the only people more excited than I about the news,” he said. “Both of my parents immigrated to America just before I was born, so their sacrifices and hard work have always been, and continue to be, a major motivation for me. I know that coming to Georgia Tech, and now pursuing my doctorate with this scholarship, would not have been possible without their support, encouragement and sacrifices.”
Tzegaegbe is no stranger at Tech where his athletic abilities, community activism and intellectual prowess have earned him a reputation as a model student. Named Mr. Georgia Tech at the 2011 Homecoming Game, Tzegaegbe has won numerous awards for leadership, including the 2011 National Society for Black Engineers Distinguished Engineer of the Year, the 2011 Omicron Delta Kappa National Leader of the Year and the 2011 Alpha Phi Alpha Regional Leader of the Year. He has been named an Academic All-American Diver and was a two-year letterman on Tech’s Division I Swimming and Diving Team. Prior to winning the Marshall Scholarship, Tzegaegbe received a National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowship and was a finalist for the Rhodes Scholarship.
“We are proud, but we cannot be surprised by this honor,” said his mentor, Dr. Reginald DesRoches, the Karen and John Huff Chair of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “Even among the very brightest students who come to Georgia Tech, Jacob is a stand-out. He is academically focused and driven, and is quite aware of the larger implications of his work. Moreover, he is committed to serving the Georgia Tech and Atlanta communities through his numerous service activities.”
With more than two years of additional studies ahead of him, Tzegaegbe has some time to settle on a specific career path. He has a good idea of what he’d like to pursue, however.
“In my time at Georgia Tech, I have developed a deep appreciation for the impact that infrastructure can have on improving the quality of life of citizens. This scholarship will allow me to further my understanding of how to develop cities that can sustainably transport people and goods while providing a foundation for economic development.”
As Tzegaegbe works to further understand these issues, he'll carry on part of the Institute's mission through his studies.
“At Georgia Tech, we believe we are designing the future every day, and Jacob will be doing just that as he pursues civil engineering and urban development as a Marshall Scholar,” said President G. P. "Bud" Peterson.
Named in honor of the late U.S. Secretary of State George C. Marshall, the Marshall Scholarships were established by an Act of Parliament in 1953 to commemorate the humane ideals of the Marshall Plan. Tzegaegbe is one of 34 Marshall Scholars for 2013, and the only one from a Georgia college or university.
Kathleen Moore, communications manager, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, contributed to this story.
]]>The Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI) creates a campus-wide community of investigators and thought leaders capable of using innovation in manufacturing to create more high-value jobs in the U.S., ensure the nation’s global competitiveness and advance economic and environmental sustainability.
“Manufacturing is important to the development of a variety of products, from medical devices to alternative energy solutions to cars, on the large and nano scale,” said Ben Wang, Georgia Tech’s chief manufacturing officer and executive director of the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute. “It’s critical to the economic viability and competitiveness of our nation to efficiently move leading-edge research from the lab to the real world.”
Since Georgia Tech was founded in 1888, manufacturing has been ingrained in the curriculum. Also for the last 20 years, the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Research Center has been focusing on developing next-generation technologies.
Under this new initiative, the Manufacturing Research Center has been renamed the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute and has expanded to engage researchers from all of Georgia Tech’s colleges, the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI²) and the Georgia Tech Research Institute. The researchers have joined forces with industry and government experts to help define and solve some of the greatest challenges facing the manufacturing industry today, such as the importance of translational research.
“We aspire to be known globally as the collaborative hub for manufacturing technologies and as the recognized leader in crossing the ‘valley of death,’” Wang said. “By that, we mean to transform the research results by faculty and students into competitive products and services to be made in the U.S. Our success is defined by how fast we can translate these discoveries and innovations into products for our stakeholders, accelerating our readiness and providing translational leadership.”
GTMI will focus on the complete innovation value chain – from raw and recycled resources to prototypes and finished products. It will develop materials, systems, processes, educational offerings and policies that impact manufacturers’ performance in the marketplace.
“GTMI is industry-focused and customer-centric, amplifying Georgia Tech’s reputation globally as the world’s leader in innovation-driven manufacturing,” Wang said.
With roughly 400,000 square feet of space and state-of-the art core facilities for manufacturing research, GTMI will target specific industry needs in manufacturing by forming “collaboratories” – co-located pilot plants or prototype shops where Georgia Tech scientists and engineers work side-by-side with their counterparts from industry, government and other universities.
“By implementing best practices to develop outward-facing, collaboration-based programs of the highest impact, we are focusing on understanding and achieving the value propositions of all stakeholders to better define and deliver offerings to companies, government, other universities and colleges, and non-profits,” Wang said. “By doing so, we will maximize U.S. global competitiveness through accelerated innovation and technology deployment.”
Education is also a priority of the new manufacturing research institute. With top-quality researchers, facilities and technological equipment, GTMI aims to educate and train the workforce of the future to investigate, collaborate and compete successfully through both its on-site programs and via collaborative, manufacturing-based instructional programs in technical colleges. In addition to providing real-world research opportunities to undergraduate and graduate students, GTMI offers a manufacturing certificate program, manufacturing scholarships and student assistantships, and it conducts Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) outreach activities.
GTMI brings together many of Georgia Tech’s world-class innovation activities including:
The launch of GTMI compliments Georgia Tech’s presence in the national discussion on manufacturing. Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson is a member of the White House’s Advanced Manufacturing Partnership steering committee and is a member of the Secretary of Commerce’s National Advisory Council on Innovation and Entrepreneurship.
The Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute is one of several interdisciplinary research institutes at Georgia Tech that bring together a mix of researchers – spanning colleges, departments and individual labs – around a single core research area.
]]>Scientists at the Georgia Institute of Technology have found evidence that these “mutualistic” fish respond to chemical signals from the coral like a 911 emergency call – in a matter of minutes. The inch-long fish – known as gobies – spend their entire lives in the crevices of specific corals, receiving protection from their own predators while removing threats to the corals.
This symbiotic relationship between the fish and the coral on which they live is the first known example of one species chemically signaling a consumer species to remove competitors. It is similar to the symbiotic relationship between Acacia trees and mutualist ants in which the ants receive food and shelter while protecting the trees from both competitors and consumers.
“This species of coral is recruiting inch-long bodyguards,” said Mark Hay, a professor in the School of Biology at Georgia Tech. “There is a careful and nuanced dance of the odors that makes all this happen. The fish have evolved to cue on the odor released into the water by the coral, and they very quickly take care of the problem.”
The research, supported the National Science Foundation, the National Institutes of Health and the Teasley Endowment at Georgia Tech, was reported November 8 in the journal Science. The research was done as part of a long-term study of chemical signaling on Fiji Island coral reefs aimed at understanding these threatened ecosystems and discovering chemicals that may be useful as pharmaceuticals.
Because they control the growth of seaweeds that damage coral, the importance of large herbivorous fish to maintaining the health of coral reefs has been known for some time. But Georgia Tech postdoctoral fellow Danielle Dixson suspected that the role of the gobies might be more complicated. To study that relationship, she and Hay set up a series of experiments to observe how the fish would respond when the coral that shelters them was threatened.
They studied Acropora nasuta, a species in a genus of coral important to reef ecosystems because it grows rapidly and provides much of the structure for reefs. To threaten the coral, the researchers moved filaments of Chlorodesmis fastigiata, a species of seaweed that is particularly chemically toxic to corals, into contact with the coral. Within a few minutes of the seaweed contacting the coral, two species of gobies – Gobidon histrio and Paragobidon enchinocephalus – moved toward the site of contact and began neatly trimming away the offending seaweed.
“These little fish would come out and mow the seaweed off so it didn’t touch the coral,” said Hay, who holds the Harry and Linda Teasley Chair in Environmental Biology at Georgia Tech. “This takes place very rapidly, which means it must be very important to both the coral and the fish. The coral releases a chemical and the fish respond right away.”
In corals occupied by the gobies, the amount of offending seaweed declined 30 percent over a three-day period, and the amount of damage to the coral declined by 70 to 80 percent. Control corals that had no gobies living with them had no change in the amount of toxic seaweed and were badly damaged by the seaweed.
To determine what was attracting the fish, Dixson and Hay collected samples of water from locations (1) near the seaweed by itself, (2) where the seaweed was contacting the coral, and (3) from coral that had been in contact with the seaweed – 20 minutes after the seaweed had been removed. They released the samples near other corals that hosted gobies, which were attracted to the samples taken from the seaweed-coral contact area and the damaged coral – but not the seaweed by itself.
“We demonstrated that the coral is emitting some signal or cue that attracts the fish to remove the encroaching seaweed,” Hay said. “The fish are not responding to the seaweed itself.”
Similar waters collected from a different species of coral placed in contact with the seaweed did not attract the fish, suggesting they were only interested in removing seaweed from their host coral.
Finally, the researchers obtained the chemical extract of the toxic seaweed and placed it onto nylon filaments designed to stimulate the mechanical effects of seaweed. They also created simulated seaweed samples without the toxic extract. When placed in contact with the coral, the fish were attracted to areas in which the chemical-containing mimic contacted the coral, but not to the area contacting the mimic without the chemical.
By studying the contents of the fish digestive systems, the researchers learned that one species – Gobidon histrio – actually eats the noxious seaweed, while the other fish apparently bites it off without eating it. In the former, consuming the toxic seaweed makes the fish less attractive to predators.
The two species of fish also eat mucus from the coral, as well as algae from the coral base and zooplankton from the water column. By defending the corals, the gobies are thus defending the home in which they shelter and feed.
“The fish are getting protection in a safe place to live and food from the coral,” Hay noted. “The coral gets a bodyguard in exchange for a small amount of food. It’s kind of like paying taxes in exchange for police protection.”
As a next step, Hay and Dixson would like to determine if other species of coral and fish have similar symbiotic relationships. And they’d like to understand more about how the chemical signaling and symbiotic relationship came into being.
“These kinds of positive interactions needs to be better understood because they tell us something about the pressures that have gone on through time on these corals,” said Hay. “If they have evolved to signal these gobies when a competitor shows up, then competition has been important throughout evolutionary time.”
CITATION: Danielle L. Dixson and Mark E. Hay, Corals chemically signal mutualistic fishes to remove competing seaweeds, Science (2012).
This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant OCE-0929119 and by the National Institutes of Health under grant U01-TW007401. The content of this article is solely the responsibility of the authors and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF or the NIH.
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]]>According to the survey results compiled by Payscale.com, Georgia Tech graduates receive, on average, a 14.9 percent return on their tuition investment over a 30-year period.
Georgia Tech was one of 24 schools whose graduates earned a net ROI in excess of $1 million over 30 years for their tuition investment. Among this group are CalTech, MIT, Stanford, Harvard and Duke. Tech is on the $1 million net ROI list twice, once for in-state tuition and once for out-of-state tuition.
The return on investment was calculated for more than 850 schools. According to the methodology, the PayScale salary data is self-reported by individuals who use its online pay tools. For each school in the ranking, PayScale collected, on average, about 1,000 pay reports from alumni who graduated with a bachelor’s degree from 1982 to 2011.
]]>For the past century, the thousands of students who have excelled during their co-op assignments and in their careers have served as a testament to the program’s impact. A prime example is Sarah Rieger, a 2010 Aerospace Engineering graduate.
“While working in the Orbit Flight Dynamics group at Johnson Space Center in Houston, I had the opportunity to train for a supporting position in Mission Control,” said Rieger, who now works with NASA. “I also was able to complete the certification of a program that is now used by the flight dynamics officer. After I came back to school, I saw the benefits of the skills that I learned in Houston. I noticed that organization and time management came much more easily to me than they did before co-oping. I also had an even stronger motivation to do well in my classes.”
This year marks the 100th anniversary of the founding of Tech’s Co-op Program, the largest totally optional program and fourth oldest program of its kind in the nation. The program is consistently included in U.S. News & World Report’s “Best Colleges Internships/Co-ops” list. Co-op is a part of Tech’s Division of Professional Practice (DOPP), which also includes the Graduate Co-op, Internship and Work Abroad programs.
“I believe in learning with a purpose,” said Patrick R. Antony, executive director of DOPP. “To apply knowledge to practical solutions that make the world a better place is the cornerstone of what Georgia Tech does. Many successful alumni owe their professional and personal success to the program, as they would not have been able to afford their education at Tech without it. We look forward to the entire Georgia Tech community participating in the celebration of a century of cooperative education, which is just a tremendous milestone.”
The 100th anniversary celebration — which will begin in fall 2012 — will consist of a yearlong series of events, kicking off with a 100th Birthday Bash on Sept. 18 from 11 a.m. to noon at Clough Commons. The year of celebratory events is being planned and managed by Thomas M. Akins, who retired in 2010 as DOPP executive director following a Georgia Tech career of more than three decades.
“I am looking forward to coordinating this significant event in Georgia Tech’s history,” Akins said. “As part of the effort, there will be a strong campaign to create endowment funds for the continued successful operation of Co-op and the other programs within the Division of Professional Practice. The goal is to raise over $5 million to ensure that students will be able to take full advantage of all types of experiential education, thus better preparing them for life after graduation from Tech. With state funds shrinking and the cost of attending college rising at an alarming rate, there is a critical need to assist students in a meaningful way.”
]]>Set preparations for the movie will begin this week, with production scheduled to wrap up on Aug. 24. Filming will take place at the following locations: Campus Recreation Center, Ford Environmental Science and Technology Building, G. Wayne Clough Undergraduate Learning Commons, Klaus Advanced Computing Building, Leadership Challenge Course, Noonan Courtyard and the Marcus Nanotechnology Building.
“Georgia Tech is one of the most unique and dynamic campuses I have ever seen,” said the director of “The Internship,” Shawn Levy. “The architecture and space is as forward-thinking as its curriculum and student body; we thought it was the perfect setting for our story.”
In addition to set preparation and production activities, there will be numerous trailers and tents on campus to accommodate equipment and the many extras appearing in the film. The greenhouse area of the Student Center food court will be used as the dining area for the crew.
Georgia Tech’s Office of Capital Planning and Space Management has worked closely with 20th Century Fox to ensure minimal disruption during production. There may be times when access to buildings and other areas is rerouted or restricted, but students, faculty and staff will continue to have access to their offices, classrooms and labs.
There also may be isolated situations where popular locations are impacted. For example, the Clough Commons Starbucks location is projected to be closed Aug. 7-9 with controlled access possible Aug. 3-19.
“The Internship” is scheduled for release in 2013.
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This plethora of information is allowing scientists to share their findings in unique ways. Zhigang Peng, associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, has converted the earthquake’s seismic waves into audio files. The results allow experts and general audiences to “hear” what the quake sounded like as it moved through the earth and around the globe.
“We’re able to bring earthquake data to life by combining seismic auditory and visual information,” said Peng, whose research appears in the March/April edition of Seismological Research Letters. “People are able to hear pitch and amplitude changes while watching seismic frequency changes. Audiences can relate the earthquake signals to familiar sounds such as thunder, popcorn popping and fireworks.”
The different sounds can help explain various aspects of the earthquake sequence, including the mainshock and nearby aftershocks. For example, this measurement was taken near the coastline of Japan between Fukushima (the nuclear reactor site) and Tokyo. The initial blast of sound is the 9.0 mainshock. As the earth’s plates slipped dozens of meters into new positions, aftershocks occured. They are indicated by “pop” noises immediately following the mainshock sound. These plate adjustments will likely continue for years.
As the waves from the earthquake moved through the earth, they also triggered new earthquakes thousands of miles away. In this example, taken from measurements in California, the quake created subtle movements deep in the San Andreas Fault. The initial noise, which sounds like distant thunder, corresponds with the Japanese mainshock. Afterwards, a continuous high-pitch sound, similar to rainfall that turns on and off, represents induced tremor activity at the fault. This animation not only help scientists explain the concept of distant triggering to general audiences, but also provides a useful tool for researchers to better identify and understand such seismic signals in other regions.
The human ear is able to hear sounds for frequencies between 20 Hz and 20 kHz, a range on the high end for earthquake signals recorded by seismometers. Peng, graduate student Chastity Aiken and other collaborators in the U.S. and Japan simply played the data faster than true speed to increase the frequency to audible levels. The process also allows audiences to hear data recorded over minutes or hours in a matter of seconds.
The research is published in the March/April edition of Seismological Research Letters.
For more on the anniversary of the Japan disaster, visit www.gatech.edu/experts/japan-anniversary.
This project was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (CAREER Award No. EAR-0956051). The content is solely the responsibility of the principal investigators and does not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.
]]>“We submitted an extensive application, which was reviewed by the League of American Bicyclists, as well as local judges who are familiar with Tech, Atlanta and peer institutions,” said Johann Weber, a graduate student in public policy who compiled and submitted the application as chair of the Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee (BIIC). “The criteria vary, but are focused on ‘the five E's’ — education, enforcement, engineering, encouragement and evaluation.”
The BIIC convened in January 2011 to tackle large-scale enhancements related to cycling on campus. The group of students and staff has helped make visible cycling improvements to campus in its year and a half of operation, including additional bike lanes and sharrows, as well as working with companies such as viaCycle to grow the campus cycling community.
“Biking not only enhances mobility, but also has positive environmental and health benefits for our campus community,” said Institute President G. P. “Bud” Peterson. “I want to commend our student leadership and members of the Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee that have worked so diligently in making Georgia Tech an official ‘bike friendly’ campus.”
The designation as a Bicycle Friendly University will last four years before Tech must reapply to maintain or improve its status.
“We'll receive a feedback document soon that will tell us specifically what we have done well and where we need to improve,” Weber said. “I think the combination of Starter Bikes, which is student operated and has a history of great work; the new viaCycle bike share program, which is innovative and also operated by [Tech] graduates; and the BIIC, demonstrated that Georgia Tech is a school that supports its students’ efforts to be bike-friendly.”
As for future plans, the BIIC will move forward on the installation of a campus bike repair station, enabling cyclists to make minor repairs free of charge. The group is also working with the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition to improve cycling conditions at the intersection of 5th and West Peachtree Streets; improvements will be made through a $10,000 grant from Bikes Belong.
]]>Johann Weber
Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee
Known as Titan, the system will be at the center of a security community that will help create safety in numbers as companies large and small add their threat data to a knowledge base that will be shared with all participants. Operated by security specialists at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the system builds on a threat analysis foundation – including a malware repository that analyzes and classifies an average of 100,000 pieces of malicious code each day.
“As a university, Georgia Tech is uniquely positioned to take this white hat role in between industry and government,” said Andrew Howard, a GTRI research scientist who is part of the Titan project. “We want to bring communities together to break down the walls between industry and government to provide a trusted, sharing platform.”
Members contributing information will do so anonymously so other members won’t know which specific organizations have been attacked. GTRI will independently verify information provided to Titan and carefully vet the members of the community before they are allowed to participate.
“People tend to think that if an organization gets hit, it was because they had poor security measures,” said Christopher Smoak, a GTRI research scientist who heads up the Titan project. “That’s not necessarily true, because a variety of factors contribute to intrusions. But until we get to the point that there’s no longer a stigma attached to having an infiltration, people are going to want anonymity to participate.”
In addition to receiving information about attacks and responses at other organizations, members will receive quick reports on malware samples they submit. Based on what they have learned from the malware repository and by reverse-engineering malicious code, GTRI researchers will be able to provide information on the potential harm from an attack, the likely source, the best remedy for it and the risks to the organization.
“We hope to provide information about the trends that organizations can expect to see, and help them prioritize what they should do to address the risks,” said Howard. “We have a significant system behind the scenes to facilitate the exchange of information.”
Titan will be especially valuable to smaller organizations that lack the resources to operate their own security evaluation labs, though all members will benefit from sharing information. GTRI information security researchers collaborate with the Georgia Tech Information Security Center (GTISC), which expands the depth of knowledge.
“GTRI will maintain the shared resources that companies can use to help solve their own problems,” Smoak noted. “We’ll have many organizations contributing to this community, and everyone getting information out; it will really benefit everyone.”
Companies today have two primary concerns about malicious software, Howard said. The first is for the loss of intellectual property, such as plans for a new product or bidding documents for a major project. The second is a compromise of the web infrastructure that many companies rely on to do business.
Titan will also help companies educate their computer users about such risks as spear-phishing, which uses email that appears to be from a trusted colleague or friend to trick users into taking a risky action, such a opening an infected attachment. The system will alert companies to the newest threat trends so they can warn their users, and identify the IP addresses that malicious software is communicating with.
“Spear-phishing is very difficult to defend against, because all it takes is one person clicking on something that lets malware into the network,” Smoak said. “It’s difficult to train a large workforce with varying skill sets to identify the very small nuances that indicate these emails are malicious.”
GTRI has been analyzing the malware attacking Windows-based computers for years. Now the analysts are seeing an increase in malicious code designed for Android-based devices – and for Macintosh computers, which previously hadn’t been high-priority targets.
“We see Android malware in its infancy right now,” said Smoak. “We see what it is doing and how it is working, and we can draw parallels to what we saw earlier with the Windows-based malware. We can probably expect to see the Android and Mac malware follow a similar path.”
The danger may be especially great for the users of computer systems that previously had not worried much about malware.
“For Macintosh systems, the threats are starting to get scarier,” Howard said. “When more malware authors shift their focus to this platform, a lot of people who thought they were safe by not using the Windows OS will be caught off-guard.”
Titan now includes half a dozen Fortune 500 members, along with other government and nonprofit organizations. Smoak and Howard have been getting feedback from those members as they’ve built the system, which will be formally launched in a few months.
“We are looking for additional industry partners to help us use the tool and help refine the system,” said Howard. “We believe that members of this community will come together to help each other strengthen defenses.”
A determined hacker will probably succeed in compromising most corporate computer networks, but the researchers believe Titan can help companies make that as difficult as possible.
“You may not be able to completely prevent an attack, but you can have a higher wall and stronger defense,” Howard said. “Hackers tend to go after the low-hanging fruit, so they will attack the companies that are the easiest to attack. We believe that our community can help all the members strengthen their defenses.”
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Writer: John Toon
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