The Burchfield family selected sophomore Catherine Shamanski in the College of Psychology to receive a $200 scholarship. Shamanski will serve as a Team Leader in a section of the GT-1000 class, helping incoming first year students to find their footing on campus.

Ms. Goldia was years ahead of her time. During the segregation era, her family moved from rural Mississippi to a larger town where she could pursue her high school education, which she completed in 1958. She wanted to join the military only to discover that women of color were not eligible to serve. She worked as a part-time custodian in a local bank for 35 years, as well as numerous odd jobs to care for her family and her community. She and her husband had several small businesses in their hometown, one of which was “Burchfield Recreation,” aka “The Pool Hall.” The pool hall also served as an ad-hoc after-school care for many families with working parents. Ms. Goldia provided meals, advice, and discipline, sometimes working extra odd jobs to finance those additional expenses. She would also put together care packages with stipends for the young people of her community who were college bound.  If asked what her greatest achievements were, she would say that she was a great mom, provided free meals to many, greeted everyone with a heartfelt smile, and genuinely cared for everyone she encountered.

Donations by check should be made payable to the Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc., with "Goldia Mae Burchfield Memorial Scholarship" noted on the check or in a separate note, and should be mailed to: Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc., 760 Spring Street, NW, Suite 400, Atlanta, GA 30308. 

On-line gifts can be made at https://development.gatech.edu, using the ‘GIVE NOW’ button and following directions provided. In the ‘Other Designation’ box, enter “Goldia Mae Burchfield Memorial Scholarship.” Each donor will be acknowledged by the Georgia Tech Foundation, and a list of all donors will be shared with the Burchfield family.

1. to expand scientific thinking and the understanding of the research process amongst those not (yet) directly involved in scientific research;
2. to bolster the use of the campus as a living laboratory;
3. to give voice to people and communities outside of research that have culturally novel perspectives on problems and their possible solutions, and to create new pathways for partnering with them; and
4. to seed novel ideas and nurture nascent investigators.

 The awardees are:

• Athena Verghis and Rishi Pathak – CEE Undergrads
  "Recognizing and Removing Invasive Plant Species Through Computer Vision and Deep Learning"
• Purna Pratiti Saha - ISyE Undergrad
  "Quantifying the Per-capita Single-use Waste Impact from Food and Beverage in GT Campus"
• Akhil Chavan and Lalith Polepeddi - Research Scientists, Global Change Program
  "Monitoring Biodiversity in the EcoCommons"
• Elliot Hodge - CHEM Undergrad
  "Edible Campus: A Model for Georgia Tech"
• Brooke Rothschild-Mancinelli, Rebecca Guth-Metzler, Katherine Nguyen, Aaron Silva Trenkle, and Michelle Wong – IBB Graduate Students
  "BBUGS Pollinator Garden"

All awardees will present their findings at the first micro-grants research conferenceto be held in the Fall 2021 semester.

The study results were published July 26 in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS). Researchers at Georgia Tech, the University of Georgia, and Emory University conducted the study, which the Ray C. Anderson Foundation funded.

The paper marks the first time the scientific team behind the Drawdown Georgia framework has published a combined analysis of the potential impact of the recommendations. The team’s solutions include proposals to boost solar farms, electric vehicle adoption, retrofitting buildings, implementing nature-based forestry solutions, and reducing food waste.

“This analysis validates the viability of the Drawdown Georgia roadmap and shows how the state, its businesses, and its people can benefit by being trailblazers,” said Brown. “Georgia can show the rest of the country how to scale key regional solutions that reduce carbon footprints in a way that is also friendly to the economy. These solutions also advance the public health, as well as equity in under-resourced communities.”

Synergistic Effects of Climate Change Reduction Efforts

The team’s analysis in PNAS examines the process used to evaluate the 20 solutions adopted by Drawdown Georgia and examines their impact as a synergistic whole, rather than adding up the effects from each solution independently. For instance, using solar power to generate electricity instead of burning coal cuts carbon and also magnifies the carbon-reduction impact of electric vehicles.

According to the analysis, were the 20 solutions implemented at an achievable pace, Georgia’s net greenhouse gas emissions would fall to 79 megatons in 2030 from the estimated 122 megatons emitted in 2020 and the estimated 156.5 megatons emitted in 2005. That is a 50% reduction from the benchmark year chosen by the United States under the Paris Agreement. A megaton is one million metric tons.

“Sustainable food, agriculture, and forestry systems are the backbone of Georgia’s rural economy and can offer a plethora of climate solutions to meet Georgia’s carbon reduction goals,” said Sudhagar Mani, a professor in the School of Chemical, Materials, and Biomedical Engineering at the University of Georgia and a co-author of the study. “The Drawdown Georgia team worked collaboratively with stakeholders to identify solutions, such as composting and conservation agriculture that can rejuvenate Georgia’s soil as carbon sinks.”

The Potential Financial Benefits of a Green Economy

The research team concluded that the financial impact of reducing emissions to 79 megatons could range from possible costs of $148 million to potential savings of $1.3 billion. These estimates do not account for public health benefits, coastal land protection, or equity impacts such as solving food insecurity and energy poverty. They also may not capture all costs, such as “institutional or information barriers that would require significant costs to overcome” in some sectors, such as food waste and recycling, the authors warn.

However, strong financial incentives accompany the climate solutions, according to the paper. Georgia is already beginning to see the economic benefits of the transition to a green economy with the construction of new solar and battery manufacturing plants in the state. Effective policy, finance, and philanthropy will be cornerstones of success moving forward, Brown said.

Scaling all 20 proposed solutions is a big undertaking, but it would provide dramatic results, Brown said.

“If Georgia were to pursue the full technical potential for all 20 solutions, the state could achieve a net-zero carbon footprint in 2030, indeed possibly overshooting carbon neutrality by 11%,” the authors wrote in the paper. “Georgia stakeholders could then hypothetically sell carbon credits into carbon offset markets, helping other states meet their goals and collecting revenues to cover the cost of their drawdown investments.”

Drawdown Georgia: A Model for Other States

The paper also discusses how Drawdown Georgia serves as a framework for other states to create their own carbon footprint reduction plans, reflecting their unique resources, geography, weather, and culture.

“In doing so, we provide a replicable model that documents how subnational actors can evaluate high-potential emission reduction and carbon removal solutions while considering systems of solutions and taking into account social, ecological, and technical issues and priorities,” the authors wrote.

The Drawdown Georgia climate research team has been awarded a second grant focused on three interrelated activities. Co-principal investigator Beril Toktay, Brady Family Chair and faculty director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business in the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business, is leading the development of a Business Compact focused on leveraging the collective impact of the Georgia business community for a just, competitive, and sustainable decarbonization transition. Bill Drummond, associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of City and Regional Planning, is developing software to estimate monthly county-level carbon emissions that will then be packaged in a publicly available, interactive dashboard. Brown is leading an effort to identify effective and equitable policies and financing to foster solution adoption.

In addition to Brown, Georgia Tech co-authors on the paper include Daniel Matisoff, associate professor in the School of Public Policy; Michael Oxman, managing director and professor of the practice in the Center for Sustainable Business; Regents Researcher Michael Rodgers, of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and the School of Public Policy; Richard Simmons, director of the Energy Policy and Innovation Center and fellow in the Strategic Energy Institute; and Research Scientist Lalith Polepeddi of the Global Change Program.

In addition to Mani, Puneet Dwivedi, Jacqueline E. Mohan, and Jeffery D. Mullen of the University of Georgia, and Blair Beasley of Emory University co-authored the paper.

The paper, “A Framework for Localizing Global Climate Solutions and their Carbon Reduction Potential,” was published July 26. It is available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2100008118.

About the Georgia Institute of Technology

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.

The first class of Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems Graduate Research Assistant Scholars are:

• Bettina Arkhurst - Ph.D. student, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Katherine Duchesneau - Ph.D. student, School of Biological Sciences
• Marjorie Hall - Ph.D. student in History of Technology, School of History and Sociology, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Meaghan McSorley - Ph.D. student, School of City and Regional Planning, College of Design
• Udita Ringania - Ph.D. student, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• Ioanna Maria Spyrou - Ph.D. student, School of Economics, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Yilun 'Elon' Zha - Ph.D. student, School of Architecture, College of Design, and Master of Science candidate in statistics, Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, College of Engineering

The Faculty Advisory Board for the BBISS GRA Scholars is composed of the faculty who submitted the students' nominations. Nominations for Classes II and III of the BBISS GRA Scholars program will open in Spring 2022 and Spring 2023. It is expected that 6 to 8 scholars will be selected for each year’s group.

The Faculty Advisory Board for the inaugural class are:

• Saad Bhamla
• Nisha Botchwey
• Shatakshee Dhongde
• Ellen Dunham-Jones
• Katherine Fu
• Joel Kostka
• Steve Usselman

Updates and outcomes will be posted to the BBISS website as the project progresses. Additional information is available at https://sustainable.gatech.edu/bbiss_gra_scholars.

Grant Size: Requests for funding are expected to range between $50 and $500

Proposal Due Date: Email a 2-page proposal by May 31, 2021 to Kamilah Roberts at kamilah.roberts@sustain.gatech.edu; subject line of the email should read "[Your name] - Proposal for Micro Research Grant."

Project Start Date: June 15, 2021

Eligibility: Georgia Tech enrolled students and current faculty and staff. Note: you do not need to be a professional researcher! You do need an interesting question and a plan to figure out how to answer it.

Program Contacts: Shan Arora (Kendeda Building, shan.arora@gatech.edu), Michael Chang (BBISS, chang@gatech.edu), Kim Cobb (EAS, kcobb@gatech.edu), Michael Gamble (ARCH, michael.gamble@design.gatech.edu), and Danny Johnson (Atlanta Regional Commission)

Inspiration: Nobel Laureate Muhammed Yunus and the Grameen Bank, who transformed communities and lives through microcredit - small loans that do not require collateral.

The project, funded in part by the Georgia Tech Student Foundation and Parents Fund, has led to the installation of nearly 100 clean cookstoves in Nuevo Amanecer over the last two years. The stoves use a combustion chamber and chimney that filters and redirects smoke away from the users. This technology has also led to a marked improvement in the community’s air quality.

While the EWB team wanted to be able to visit Nuevo Amanecer in person to help install the stoves, they had to work remotely and find partners that could get the equipment there. In 2019, political instability kept them from being able to travel safely. Instead, they worked with Rayo de Sol, a local NGO; Poleña, a stove manufacturer; and EWB field engineers in Nicaragua to make sure that their project came to fruition. This partnership also helped them throughout 2020, when the Covid-19 pandemic prevented students from visiting the community for a second summer.

Proleña and Rayo de Sol effectively managed the stove installation and surveyed community members to determine their satisfaction and use habits. The EWB field engineers conducted air quality tests in the community to ensure that the new stoves were producing lower smoke emissions than traditional open fires. Back in Atlanta, EWB members at Tech analyzed the air quality data.

Working remotely also caused the EWB team to emphasize community relations. They made YouTube videos about the project, outlining best practices with the stove to share with the Nuevo Amanecer community. They also stayed in contact with members of the community via WhatsApp, checking in to see how the stoves were working and learn about life in Nicaragua.

While EWB’s goal of installing 100 cookstoves has almost been met and their time with the project draws to a close, members of the team still plan on maintaining the connections they made with the people of Nuevo Amanecer. Pending Covid-19 restrictions, a team plans on flying there in August to help monitor and evaluate the status of the stoves.

“It is not only rewarding to be able to apply skills I hope to use in my future career towards something I care so much about, but also being able to see and hear how your efforts are making a positive impact in the community,” said Sophie Zhang, a member of the project’s finance team. “Working on this project has shown me that change is made through passion and drive, and it has been wonderful working with people on campus who share that enthusiasm.”

Learn more about EWB’s Nicaragua project on Instagram (@ewbgtnicaragua) and Facebook.

Drawdown Georgia, the statewide effort powered by research from the Georgia Institute of Technology and other universities to find cost-effective ways to drastically cut the state’s carbon footprint, publicly rolls out its top 20 solutions this week.

Led by noted energy and climate policy expert Marilyn Brown, Regents and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy, the cross-campus research team identified solutions that could, based on existing science, cut the state’s CO₂ emissions by one-third by 2030.

“Our work shows Georgia already has the necessary tools to reduce its carbon emissions by a third in the next ten years, and do it in a way that does not harm the economy,” Brown said. “These proposals actually can pay for themselves and create a healthier, more prosperous state.”

“In fact, adopting these goals can put Georgia on a path to sustainably meeting the climate goals presented by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change and the Paris Accord,” she said.

The findings, and the science behind them, will be the subject of a webinar on Wednesday hosted by the Georgia Institute of Technology. The event is free and open to the campus community.

Brown worked for more than a year alongside faculty members across Georgia Tech, as well as Emory University, the University of Georgia, and Georgia State University to research and develop 20 recommendations in five high-impact areas: electricity, buildings and materials, food and agriculture, transportation, and the land.

Their proposals include increasing solar and electric vehicle capacity, retrofitting buildings to be more energy-efficient, reducing food waste, and growing more forests to soak up carbon emissions.

Each proposal had to meet four criteria. It had to be technologically and market ready for Georgia. The state had to have sufficient local experience and data to implement them. They had to remove at least one megaton of carbon dioxide equivalent from the atmosphere per year. Finally,  they had to be cost-effective.

Many of the proposals will pay for themselves, according to the team’s research. Such recommendations include reducing food waste, boosting rooftop solar, and cogeneration – the simultaneous generation of electricity and thermal energy for heating or cooling.

The research team will further refine the 20 solutions to a list of five high-priority action items. Those will be featured in a statewide campaign by Drawdown Georgia to encourage businesses, private sector groups, and residents to work together to put the state on the path to a zero-emissions economy by 2040.

Meanwhile, the Georgia Tech team’s work is not done. Brown has already begun planning a dashboard that will help each of Georgia’s 159 counties, and their residents, to track progress on key parameters. An early version of the dashboard could be available by next summer, Brown said.

Also, the Scheller College of Business will take the lead in creating the “Georgia Carbon Club,” an effort to bring business on board to support the goals, according to Brown.

This week’s rollout features a series of events, from an opening night celebration on Saturday to a series of civic dinners. The campaign plans to engage Georgia residents in citizen science and action on climate change.

Drawdown Georgia is based on Project Drawdown, founded by environmentalist and author Paul Hawken. That project seeks to reach “drawdown,” the point at which levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere start to decline, as quickly, safely, and equitably as possible.

The Georgia effort is the first in the country to adopt the Project Drawdown model. The Ray C. Anderson Foundation is funding the project, including the research at Georgia Tech and other universities.

In addition to Brown, other Georgia Tech researchers involved in the work include Daniel Matisoff from the School of Public Policy, Kim Cobb of the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Michael Oxman and Beril Toktay in the Scheller College of Business, Mike Rodgers from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Rich Simmons in Mechanical Engineering and the Strategic Energy Institute, and Laura Taylor, chair and professor in the School of Economics.

To view the full list of solutions, visit the Drawdown Georgia website at https://www.drawdownga.org/

Ms. Burchfield, lived a life of service to those in her community, with a particular emphasis on education. During the segregation era, her family moved from rural Mississippi to a larger town where she could pursue her high school education, which she completed in 1958. She worked as a part-time custodian in a local bank for 35 years, as well as numerous odd jobs to care for her family and her community. Ms. Burchfield would put together care packages with stipends for the young people of her community who were college bound. She also self-funded an after-school meal and care program to help support families so that kids could stay in school, and parents could remain employed. If asked what her greatest achievements were, she would say that she was a great mom, provided free meals to many, greeted everyone with a heartfelt smile, and genuinely cared for everyone she encountered.

Donations by check should be made payable to the Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc., with "Goldia Mae Burchfield Memorial Scholarship" noted on the check or in a separate note, and should be mailed to: Georgia Tech Foundation, Inc., 760 Spring Street, NW, Suite 400, Atlanta, GA 30308. 

On-line gifts can be made at https://development.gatech.edu, using the ‘GIVE NOW’ button and following directions provided. In the ‘Other Designation’ box, enter “Goldia Mae Burchfield Memorial Scholarship.” Each donor will be acknowledged by the Georgia Tech Foundation, and a list of all donors will be shared with the Burchfield family.

Application and award selection criteria have not yet been decided upon for this scholarship, since it was so recently established. However, the Burchfield family, in conjunction with the Georgia Tech Foundation, will arrange these details soon.

Pilot studies with eAOPs have been performed in commercial production facilities with favorable results. The major benefits of the latest generation of eAOPs over biological methods include major reduction in treatment time, complete elimination of the treatment and disposal of biological sludge, reduced energy usage and cost, reduced monitoring and management costs, reduced maintenance cost and complexity, and greater overall reductions in contaminant levels. Based on the data gained from pilot studies in certain wastewater treatment contexts, eAOP systems could offer benefits significant enough to warrant complete conversion to the new technology.

Researching technologies and techniques that can provide cleaner water for everyone is a primary research area for the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems. Clean water is also goal number 6 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. It states: "Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all." As fresh water supplies become contaminated with a larger variety of novel substances, like agricultural chemicals, petrochemical wastewaters, and pharmaceuticals, new water treatment technologies will be an important area of research to help our society meet our sustainability goals.

Researching technologies and techniques that can provide cleaner water for everyone is a primary research area for the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems.  Clean water is also goal number 6 of the 17 Sustainable Development Goals established by the United Nations General Assembly in 2015. It states: "Ensure availability and sustainable management of water and sanitation for all."  As fresh water supplies become contaminated with a larger variety of novel substances, like agricultural chemicals and pharmaceuticals, new water treatment technologies will be an important area of research to help our society meet our sustainability goals.

Marilyn Brown is one of the nation’s top analysts of clean energy policy; Randall Engle is a leader in understanding individual differences in memory and attention; and Arkadi Nemirovski has helped shape the field of continuous optimization.

Each now joins an elite group of the nation’s foremost scientists in a historic moment for the Institute: It’s the first time three scientists from Tech have been elected to the Academy in a single year.

“The election of Georgia Tech faculty members from across multiple disciplines into the National Academy of Sciences is extraordinary,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost, executive vice president for Academic Affairs, and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “We are incredibly proud and congratulate Professors Brown, Engle, and Nemirovski on this well-deserved honor. This distinction is a testament to their significant contributions and an honor that recognizes that critical research happens at the intersection of disciplines.”

Election to the National Academy of Sciences is among the highest honors a scientist can receive, recognizing “distinguished and continuing achievements in original research,” as the Academy puts it. It has been reserved for just 2,403 people in the United States. Nominations for new members can come only from current Academy members.

“In the hierarchy of scientific acknowledgment, the only things higher are the Presidential Medal of Freedom and the Nobel Prize,” said Engle, professor in the School of Psychology. “In my wildest dreams, I never imagined it for myself.”

Engle studies the nature of working memory and its relationship to attention control. At its most basic, his work focuses on how people differ in their ability to concentrate on a single task. Understanding these differences helps us understand why individuals’ cognitive performance varies.

Engle came to Georgia Tech in 1995 to lead the School of Psychology. After 13 years, he stepped down to create the Georgia State University/Georgia Tech Center for Advanced Brain Imaging. His work has been influential in social and developmental psychology, emotion, and psychopathology, among other areas. He is a fellow of the American Psychological Association and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

“I don’t know of any successful scientists who do what we do for the glory. We are driven by questions and are so fortunate to have jobs where people actually pay us to spend our lives looking through the metaphorical microscope,” Engle said. “At the same time, we all love having our work acknowledged and respected by our scientific heroes. That is what this feels like: People who I have read about in my field since I was an undergraduate are saying that my work has value.”

Like Engle, Nemirovski expressed surprise at his election to the Academy, despite more than five decades of contributions to optimization theory and algorithms.

“While I respect my professional achievements, I do not value them as matching the honor,” said Nemirovski, who came to Georgia Tech in 2005 and is the John Hunter Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Yet he is credited with several significant achievements in the field of convex optimization — the Ellipsoid algorithm (with D. Yudin), mirror descent, interior point methods for nonlinear convex problems (with Y. Nesterov), and robust optimization (with A. Ben-Tal) — and in non-parametric statistics (with A. Juditsky).

In fact, Nemirovski credited his collaborators with helping him build an impactful career.

“The excellent professional training I got under supervision of Professor Eugene Shilov at the Department of Mechanics and Mathematics of Moscow State University, and the honor and privilege to communicate and, in many cases, to collaborate with outstanding colleagues — Boris Polyak, Rafail Khasminskii, Yuri Nesterov, Aharon Ben-Tal, Anatoli Iouditski, Alexander Shapiro, David Donoho, Stephen Boyd — their influence made me what I am as a professional,” he said.

Nemirovski also is a fellow of the National Academy of Engineering and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences.

Brown has established herself as an international leader in the analysis of clean energy policies. She’s a pioneer in incorporating behavioral and social science principles into complex energy-engineering models that are used to evaluate policy proposals and to assess opportunities such as the size of the energy-efficiency gap in the United States.

She developed an approach as a regulator of the Tennessee Valley Authority that characterizes energy efficiency in terms of a power plant — in essence, the size, cost, and reliability of the plant that would not have to be built if companies took steps to conserve energy. She also developed carbon accounting methods at Georgia Tech that were applied to the first carbon footprint assessments of the nation’s largest 100 metropolitan areas.

“Being elected to the National Academy of Sciences is a great honor,” said Brown, Regents Professor and Brook Byers Professor in Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy. “It is also a great testament to the outstanding faculty and students across Georgia Tech, who are fostering the kind of sustainable energy systems and policies that will help the world step back from the brink of climate disaster.”

Brown arrived at Georgia Tech in 2006 after establishing herself at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory as a national leader in the analysis and interpretation of energy futures in the United States. A year later, she and her co-authors won the Nobel Peace Prize for their work on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III Assessment Report on Mitigation of Climate Change.

Earlier this year, Brown also was elected to the National Academy of Engineering.

“Colleagues like Professors Brown, Engle, and Nemirovski are what makes Georgia Tech such a special place,” Bras said. “They are true scholars and dedicated teachers, and they are examples to their students, their friends, and colleagues. We all rejoice with them.”

The students were able to interact with fifteen members of the Georgia Tech faculty from nine different disciplines, all with a focus on sustainable technologies. Students also had the opportunity to visit several sites off campus for their relevance to sustainability and the unique culture of the Southeastern U. S. The tour included visits to the Southface Energy Institute, High Museum of Art, Clayton County constructed wetland, World of Coke, Georgia Aquarium, John’s Creek membrane water treatment facility, and the Atlanta office of the green architecture firm Perkins + Will. The students also travelled to Orlando, Florida for a few days to visit the attractions.

Last year, in July of 2011, seven students from the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems travelled to China for a 3 week journey that took them to Tsinghua University in Beijing, Shanghai, and Chongming Island.  BBISS students had the opportunity to visit many of the rich cultural sites in Beijing.

The academic aspects of both trips were organized in a similar way.  Students were grouped by research interest and paired with a faculty advisor.  The groups developed a short project over the course of several days.  Final presentations were given in which the students showed what new insights they acquired into their chosen topics.  In both instances, the students gained an appreciation for the cultural differences in arriving at sustainable solutions to urban problems.  The students from both countries have also significantly expanded their circles of colleagues as they pursue their professional careers in sustainability and urban infrastructure.

Monday - Sustainable Entertainment, check out our lists of films, Instagram accounts, and more to get the spirit of Earth Day going!

Tuesday - Sustainable Cooking, our collection of plant-based and vegetarian recipes from members of the GT community, including President Cabrera!

Wednesday - Zero Waste Instagram Takeover, head over to @Sustainatgatech on Instagram to hear from a Tech student on ways to add zero-waste options to your lifestyle

Thursday - Materials Diversion Class Showcase, see the work of Architecture students as they explored repurposing materials to create building structures and keep items out of the landfill

Friday - Kendeda Building Virtual Tour, join Director Shan Arora through a web-based tour of our Living Building. Register for free here!

Election of new NAE members, the culmination of a yearlong process, recognizes individuals who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature" and to "the pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."  

“It’s the honor of a lifetime to be recognized by the National Academy of Engineering for the impact we’ve have on understanding lung injuries in the critical care unit and traumatic brain injuries in children,” said Margulies, chair of the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University and, with Brown, one of just three women on the Georgia Tech faculty accorded NAE membership – one of the highest professional distinctions an engineer can receive.

“Our work is deeply collaborative, and I am grateful to the engineers, scientists, physicians, and patients who are partners in our journey,” Margulies added.

Margulies, a researcher in the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at Tech and a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Injury Biomechanics at Emory, was elected, “for elaborating the traumatic injury thresholds of brain and lung in terms of structure-function mechanisms,” according to the NAE announcement.

Using an integrated biomechanics approach, Margulies’ research program spans the micro-to-macro scales in two distinct areas, traumatic brain injury and ventilator-induced lung injury. Her work has generated new knowledge about the structural and functional responses of the brain and lungs to their mechanical environment. Margulies came to Georgia Tech in 2017 from the University of Pennsylvania, where she’d been a professor of bioengineering, and had earned her Master of Science in Engineering and Ph.D. in Bioengineering.

Brown, a Regents and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy, was co-recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize in 2007 (for co-authorship of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Working Group III Assessment Report on Mitigation of Climate Change, Chapter 6). 

She joined Georgia Tech in 2006 after a career at the U.S. Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory, where she led several national climate change mitigation studies and became a leader in the analysis and interpretation of energy futures in the United States. Her research at Tech focuses on the design and impact of policies aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of sustainable energy technologies, emphasizing the electric utility industry. She was elected to NAE “for bridging engineering, social and behavioral sciences, and policy studies to achieve cleaner electric energy.” 
 
Brown, who earned her Ph.D. at the Ohio State University, co-founded and chaired the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance, served two terms as a presidential appointee on the board of the Tennessee Valley Authority – the nation’s largest public power provider – and also served two terms on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee, where she led the Smart Grid Subcommittee. 

“The most rewarding feature of my career has been working toward solutions with colleagues across disciplines,” Brown said.

Shapiro is the Russell Chandler III Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, where his research is focused on stochastic programming, risk analysis, simulation-based optimization, and multivariate statistical analysis.

In 2013, he was awarded the INFORMS Khachiyan Prize for lifetime achievements in optimization. He received the 2018 Dantzig Prize from the Mathematical Optimization Society and the Society for Industrial and Applied Mathematics.

Since earning his Ph.D. in applied mathematics-statistics from Israel’s Ben-Gurion University of the Negev in 1981, Shapiro has made substantial contributions to the fields of optimization and large-scale, stochastic programming, and he was elected to NAE “for contributions to the theory, computation, and application of stochastic programming.” 

Kurfess is professor and HUSCO/Ramirez Distinguished Chair in Fluid Power and Motion Control in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, where he has helped guide the evolution of technology as a pioneer in the digital transformation of manufacturing. 

Improving manufacturing technology is a pursuit that has roots in his childhood. “I grew up in my father’s machine shop,” said Kurfess, who has a special fondness for mom-and-pop operations. He was elected by the NAE “for development and implementation of innovative digital manufacturing technologies and system architectures.”

“I’m proud that the work we do has a positive impact on small and medium-sized enterprises, which are about 99% of the manufacturing operations, as well as large operations,” said Kurfess, who earned all of his degrees at MIT. “Our work targets people who are implementing the digital thread in manufacturing, and what the digital thread will do is make sure those smaller enterprises, those mom and pops, can have access to the latest and greatest technologies.”

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

Writer: Jerry Grillo

Prof. Crittenden received the Walter L. Huber Research Prize from the ASCE in 1991 for his research contributions on the removal of organics from water. He was elected as an ASCE Fellow in 2016.  The American Society of Civil Engineers has more than 150,000 members around the world.  The Society works to advance the civil engineering profession through many professional- and public-focused programs, publications, conferences, and awards.

Faculty, staff, and students affiliated with the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business at Scheller College of Business (“Center”) contributed to Georgia Tech’s inaugural Sustainability Showcase. The public event, which was organized by the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (“BBISS”), occurred over three full days, from October 28 through 30. It was held at the recently opened Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, the most environmentally advanced education and research building ever constructed in the Southeast.

Sustainability has increasingly become a characteristic that defines much of the work being done by the Georgia Tech community. In 2018, it was the topic of no fewer than 160 courses and nearly 25% of the Institute’s research programs (not including those funded by the U.S. Department of Defense). Michael Chang, deputy director of BBISS, who spearheaded the event, said, “Keeping track of who is doing what has become more and more difficult. We at BBISS envisioned the Showcase as a vehicle for increasing awareness of sustainability-related work across all six colleges, GTRI, and the Interdisciplinary Research Institutes, as well as for fostering more collaborative relationships among them.”

Over 150 members of the Georgia Tech community shared their current work in sustainability research and education. The hallmark of the event was the “lightning talk,” which allowed a large number of presenters the opportunity to summarize and spark interest in their work in just a few minutes. Filling out the schedule were poster presentations, tours of the Kendeda Building, and keynote addresses by John Brock (former chairman and chief executive officer of Coca-Cola Enterprises Inc.), G. Wayne Clough (president emeritus of Georgia Tech and former secretary of the Smithsonian Institution), and John Lanier (executive director of the Ray C. Anderson Foundation).

Presentations affiliated with the Center included:

• Incentives for Workplace Safety (Ravi Subramanian, faculty)
• Optimal Service Portfolio for Non-Profit Organizations Serving Distressed Individuals (Karthik Ramachandran, faculty)
• Environmental Externalities and Cost of Capital (Sudheer Chava, faculty)
• Supply Chain Transparency as a Mechanism to Promote Social & Environmental Responsibility (Basak Kalkanci, faculty)
• Product Recalls and Corporate Social Responsibility (Manpreet Hora, faculty)
• Advancing the UN SDGs and Education for Sustainable Development at Georgia Tech and Across the Greater Atlanta Region (David Eady, industry engagement manager of the Center)
• Beyond Carbon Considerations in Georgia Drawdown (Michael Oxman, managing director of the Center)
• Energy Affordability in Atlanta (Beril Toktay, faculty director of the Center)
• Sustainable Undergraduate Research Fellow Poster Presentation (William Abdallah, undergraduate sustainability ambassador)

Center Faculty Director Beril Toktay remarked, “Sustainability is truly interwoven throughout the fabric of Georgia Tech. The Sustainability Showcase—with participation from so many colleagues from across campus—made this fact even more apparent. I was especially proud to see the high level of involvement from Scheller College faculty. By producing innovative research and infusing sustainability throughout the curriculum, they are influencing responsible business practices and inspiring the next generation of business leaders.”

Sponsors for the Sustainability Showcase included the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, BBISS, the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research, the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design, and the Sustainable Design & Manufacturing Lab.

• • Association of Environmental Engineers and Scientists - AEES is a student-run organization, traditionally a graduate student group, we now involve many undergraduate students in our professional and social events. Our organization’s main goal is to improve the overall educational experience  of the students in our department. We aim to provide a professional and social network to environmental engineering students  at Georgia Tech. We provide professional development services to our students, act as a communication channel between students and faculty, provide assistance to students attending conferences, and work to maintain a high quality of student life. AEES also provides a link between students and their potential employers.

• • Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee - The GT BIIC was formed in late 2010 by SGA, to bring together graduate and undergraduate students with staff members of the Georgia Tech offices of Capital Planning and Space Management, Parking and Transportation, Facilities, etc. Together they are tasked with improving bicycle infrastructure on campus through the evaluation of existing facilities, the creation of events and programs, securing funding for facility improvements, and other related endeavors. They represent a commitment of students and staff to sustainability, mobility, safety, healthy living, and a choice of travel modes.

• • Cooks for Heritage, Education, Fellowship, and Service - Cooks for Heritage, Education, Fellowship, and Service, also known as CHEFS, is the cooking club on campus. We strive to provide our members with fun, interesting activities that both expand their cooking knowledge and help the community around them.

• • Circle K - Circle K is a service and leadership development organization for college students sponsored by Kiwanis International. We participate in volunteer projects around the community, such as at the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Project Open Hand, Boys and Girls Club, and more. We have many leadership opportunities, including committee chair positions, and also promote fellowship among club members  by having various social events. There are also opportunities for awards and scholarships. Overall, we provide club members with as many chances to volunteer as possible and have fun at the same time.

• • Earth Day Planning Committee - Georgia Tech's Earth Day celebration is among the largest in the Southeastern US. This is possible because of dedicated people who work to bring this annual event into being. The Earth Day Planning Committee welcomes students into the process. If you are interested, conact Cindy Jackson.

• • Energy Club - The purpose of  the Energy Club is to educate students on the unique challenges and opportunities that are impacting the global energy industry. We bring together students, alumni, faculty and industry professionals in a forum that allows for interaction, discussion, exchange of innovative ideas and networking. We also develop student leadership specifically in the area of energy.

• • Engineers for a Sustainable World - Engineers for a Sustainable World at Georgia Tech promotes engineering that fosters environmental, social, and economic sustainability and focuses the combined resources of Georgia Tech students, faculty, and alumni to develop sustainable solutions for local, regional and national problems.

• • Engineers Without Borders - Georgia Tech - EWB-GT is a student chapter of a national non-profit organization called Engineers Without Borders-USA. We serve as a resource for connecting Georgia Tech students with opportunities for personal development and a stronger understanding of global health concerns and humanitarian engineering. Our student members design and implement solutions for health and infrastructure needs in developing communities.

• • Georgia Tech Model UN - GTMUN is a two day conference for high school students that takes place on Georgia Tech’s campus. Established in 1998, this conference has worked to bring international affairs to the high schools of the Southeast. The conference has grown in size over the years and now attracts schools from the entire Southeast and beyond. Run by Georgia Tech students from a variety of majors, GTMUN offers a range of committees and issues for high school students to enjoy. We strive to educate and enlighten high school students on a number of international issues. We also help develop the public speaking, writing, and leadership skills of the high schools students and our staff.

• • HyTech Racing - HyTech Racing is a student team at the Georgia Institute of Technology that formed with the intent of competing at the Formula Hybrid International Competition. The annual Formula Hybrid International Competition is an offshoot from the prestigious Formula SAE Competition. Hosted by Dartmouth College, it has been held five times starting in 2007 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. From late April to early May, teams from educational institutions around the world bring plug-in hybrid-electric, open-wheeled vehicles to perform in a variety of design and performance challenges. Design, Endurance, Autocross, and Acceleration events emphasize the importance of a balance between performance and efficiency

• • Ideas 2 Serve - I2S is a business  plan competition for current Georgia Tech students and recent alumni who have early stage product/service ideas or venture concepts that are geared towards creating a better world. Entries might focus on reducing poverty, alleviating hunger, promoting health and wellness, improving air and water quality, reducing of the rate of depletion of natural resources, or developing alternate sources of energy just to name a few!

• • The Maker's Club - The Makers Club is a collective of students who believe in the value of a hands on education. Our Mission is twofold: To provide students the resources they need to design and fabricate in a collaborative environment; and to educate the Georgia Tech community on fabrication with open, student taught classes and events.

• • Net Impact - Net Impact inspires a new generation to use their careers to tackle the world's toughest social and environmental problems. We empower student and professional leaders to act locally though our vibrant chapter network and connect globally online and through our flagship conference. By 2020, we will mobilize a million new leaders to drive positive change in the workplace and the world.

• • (ORGT) Outdoor Recreation Georgia Tech - We offer a number of programs throughout the year from caving and rock climbing to whitewater rafting and sea kayaking. Rent equipment at the Wilderness Outpost for your own camping excursion or join us on an organized outing. ORGT employs staff and students and accepts volunteers.

• • Society for BioDiversity - The Society for BioDiversity aims to encourage and facilitate student involvement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) initiatives to promote and increase the retention of underrepresented and underserved minorities in STEM careers. Many of our initiatives are bidirectional in order to impact students on-campus as well as students in local K-12 schools. Through facilitating professional development, community outreach, networking among peers, peer mentorship, we hope to help to impact the diversity and growth in the biology world.

• • (SEED) Society of Engineers for Environmental Development - Interested in organizing the biggest imagination and ideation party ever? SEED focuses on fabricating, encouraging the process of ideation, and problem solving with application to real world problems in the fields of alternate energy systems, global warming, sustainable energy, healthcare, communication, human interaction and much more.

• • Solar Jackets - The Georgia Tech Solar Jackets is a student organization dedicated to the design and construction of competitive solar racing vehicles. We seek to develop teamwork, leadership, and innovative engineering skills by providing training and hands-on experience in solving real-world engineering problems. We are a student-run organization, built on the dedication and ambition of our members. The solar race car project promotes cross-disciplinary learning and interaction, and it necessitates engineering excellence, leadership, and teamwork from all students involved.

• • Starter Bikes - Starter Bikes began as a collaborative project between Georgia Tech’s Students Organizing for Sustainability and the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Volunteers refurbish abandoned and donated bikes into low-cost, entry level bicycles for students and community members in need of inexpensive but reliable transportation. The program is also available for people who would like to try a bike, but don’t want to make a large up-front investment until they have more experience. Starter Bikes also provides free access to tools, so you can fix your bike yourself. Volunteers are available to provide mechanical expertise.

• • Student Government Association Sustainability Committee - The purpose of the Campus Sustainability Committee is to facilitate cooperation between faculty, staff and student sustainability movements and present a united front for Georgia Tech Sustainability efforts in our interactions with the City of Atlanta and larger global community, and further to be direct advocates for students' sustainability concerns in SGA.

• • (SOS) Students Organizing for Sustainability - Students Organizing for Sustainability is a student-run organization at the Georgia Institute of Technology dedicated to promoting the awareness and implementation of environmentally and economically sustainable practices on our campus and in the local Atlanta community.

• • The Sustainable Dining Committee - The Sustainable Dining Committee came together in late 2007. A few students, passionate about campus and food sustainability, initiated the meetings with GT Dining in order to express their views about current dining practices and work to decrease the environmental impact of student dining at Georgia Tech. This group meets monthly at dinner meetings to discuss action oriented ways to improve the sustainability of campus dining at Georgia Tech. The mutual respect demonstrated by both students and GT Dining management has created an environment where creative problem solving and big ideas are always encouraged. Anyone is welcome at the meetings.

• • Tech Beautification Day - Tech Beautification Day is an opportunity for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to volunteer to work on campus beautification and landscaping projects.
  • Trailblazers - The purpose of GT Trailblazers is to increase student and faculty appreciation for the outdoors through trail adventure and exploration. Throughout the fall and spring semesters, GT Trailblazers also leads a variety of environmental service projects in the Atlanta metropolitan area. These projects are open to both and students and faculty, and include but are not limited to trail-building and maintenance projects on hiking and biking trails, invasive species removal, and other conservation-related projects.

Read more BBISS Big Ideas stories.

Toward that end, a delegation from Georgia Tech recently participated in “The China-US Workshop on Environmental Protection and Urban Sustainable Development” in Tianjin.  It was co-organized by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation and the U.S. NationalScience Foundation and co-hosted by TianjinUniversity and Georgia Institute of Technology.  The U.S. delegation of investigators are part of an NSF funded project from the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation - Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructures (EFRI-RESIN) program called, “Sustainable Infrastructures for Energy and Water Supply (SINEWS).”   The Chinese delegation is affiliated with the ResearchCenter for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) at Tianjin University.

The workshop focused on the current status of the urban environment, its challenges, its future, and sustainable development strategies.  There were three technical areas of focus for this networking workshop:

•  water/energy nexus
• land use
• ecosystem services

The goal of the workshop was to establish in-depth discussions and garner lessons from an international community of scholars about some of the key issues impacting the urban environment.  Consideration was also given to how the delegations could provide support for each other’s research and how government decision making could play a role in advancing the state of the art. This workshop will not only help to advance the sustainability of the eco-cities in China, but also offers examples of innovations that are applicable to other cities.  Serving as a backdrop to this event, participants toured the new eco-city development in the Bei Hi district which is south of Tianjin.  This eco-city is a joint effort between the governments of China and Singapore and will have 350,000 residents.

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74. Inventory management with advance demand information and flexible delivery; Wang T, Toktay BL; MANAGEMENT SCIENCE; V54 No. 4; pp. 716-732; APR 2008.
     
75. Conceptual study of distributed CO2 capture and the sustainable carbon economy; Damm DL, Fedorov AG; ENERGY CONVERSION AND MANAGEMENT; V49 No. 6; pp. 1674-1683; JUN 2008.
     
76. CHED 15-Infusing sustainability across the curriculum using our green chemistry project as a model; Collard DM, Smith JC, Kaplan LJ; ABSTRACTS OF PAPERS OF THE AMERICAN CHEMICAL SOCIETY; V234; AUG 19 2007.
     
77. Modeling of data center airflow and heat transfer: State of the art and future trends; Rambo J, Joshi Y; DISTRIBUTED AND PARALLEL DATABASES; V21 No. 2-3; pp. 193-225; JUN 2007.
     
78. Characterization of fuel gas products from the treatment of solid waste streams with a plasma arc torch; Vaidyanathan A, Mulholland J, Ryu J, et al.; JOURNAL OF ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT; V82 No. 1; pp. 77-82; JAN 2007.
     
79. Transportation planning and infrastructure delivery in major cities and megacities; Amekudzi AA, Thomas-Mobley L, Ross C; TRANSPORTATION RESEARCH RECORD No. 1997; pp. 17-23; 2007.
     
80. Urban and rural temperature trends in proximity to large US cities: 1951-2000; Stone B; INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF CLIMATOLOGY; V27 No. 13; pp. 1801-1807; NOV 15 2007.
     
81. Impacts of global climate change and emissions on regional ozone and fine particulate matter concentrations over the United States; Tagaris E, Manomaiphiboon K, Liao KJ, et al.; JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES; V112 No. D14 Article Number: D14312; JUL 31 2007.
     
82. A study of secondary organic aerosol formation in the anthropogenic-influenced southeastern United States; Weber RJ, Sullivan AP, Peltier RE, et al.; JOURNAL OF GEOPHYSICAL RESEARCH-ATMOSPHERES; V112 No. D13 Article Number: D13302; JUL 6 2007.
     
83. Understanding "urban planning in China"; Yang JW; JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION; V73 No. 2; pp. 238-238; SPR 2007.
     
84. The role of bathhouses and sex clubs in HIV transmission - Findings from a mathematic model; Faissol DM, Swann JL, Kolodziejski B, et al.; JAIDS-JOURNAL OF ACQUIRED IMMUNE DEFICIENCY SYNDROMES; V44 No. 4; pp. 386-394; APR 1 2007.
     
85. Finding an impact of preservation policies: Price effects of historic landmarks on attached homes in Chicago, 1990-1999; Noonan DS; ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT QUARTERLY; V21 No. 1; pp. 17-33; FEB 2007.
     
86. From honeybees to Internet servers: biomimicry for distributed management of Internet hosting centers; Nakrani S, Tovey C; BIOINSPIRATION & BIOMIMETICS; V2 No. 4; pp. S182-S197; DEC 2007.
     
87. GREEN BUILDING POLICY OPTIONS FOR THE PUBLIC SECTOR; Pearce AR, DuBose JR, Bosch SJ; JOURNAL OF GREEN BUILDING; V2 No. 1; pp. 156-174; WIN 2007.
     
88. Tunable solvents for fine chemicals from the biorefinery; Eckert C, Liotta C, Ragauskas A, et al.; GREEN CHEMISTRY; V9 No. 6; pp. 545-548; JUN 2007.
     
89. Developing an 'energy sustainability index' to evaluate energy policy; Brown MA, Sovacool BK; INTERDISCIPLINARY SCIENCE REVIEWS; V32 No. 4; pp. 335-349; DEC 2007.
     
90. Stakeholder perceptions of scientists: Lake Tahoe environmental policy from 1984 to 2001; Weible CM; ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT; V40 No. 6; pp. 853-865; DEC 2007.
     
91. Transportation system Sustainability issues in high-, middle-, and low-income economies: Case studies from Georgia (US), South Korea, Colombia, and Ghana; Jeon CM, Amekudzi AA, Vanegas J; JOURNAL OF URBAN PLANNING AND DEVELOPMENT-ASCE; V132 No. 3; pp 172-186; SEP 2006.
     
92. Deconstructing to redevelop - A sustainable alternative to mechanical demolition; Leigh NG, Patterson LM; JOURNAL OF THE AMERICAN PLANNING ASSOCIATION; V72 No. 2; pp 217-225; SPR 2006.
     
93. Advanced technologies for earthquake risk inventories; French SP, Muthukumar S; JOURNAL OF EARTHQUAKE ENGINEERING; V10 No. 2; pp. 207-236; MAR 2006.
     
94. Modeling study of air pollution due to the manufacture of export goods in China's Pearl River Delta; Streets DG, Yu C, Bergin MH, et al.; ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCE & TECHNOLOGY; V40 No. 7; pp. 2099-2107; APR 1 2006.
     
95. The influence of aerosols on crop production: A study using the CERES crop model; Greenwald R, Bergin MH, Xu J, et al.; AGRICULTURAL SYSTEMS; V89 No. 2-3; pp. 390-413; SEP 2006.
     
96. Urban form and watershed management: how zoning influences residential stormwater volumes; Stone B, Bullen JL; ENVIRONMENT AND PLANNING B-PLANNING & DESIGN; V33 No. 1; pp. 21-37; JAN 2006.
     
97. Numerical studies of the effects of active and passive circulation enhancement concepts on wind turbine performance; Tongchitpakdee C, Benjanirat S, Sankar LN; JOURNAL OF SOLAR ENERGY ENGINEERING-TRANSACTIONS OF THE ASME; V128 No. 4; pp. 432-444; NOV 2006.
     
98. Mixing politics and science in testing the hypothesis that greenhouse warming is causing a global increase in hurricane intensity; Curry JA, Webster PJ, Holland GJ; BULLETIN OF THE AMERICAN METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY; V87 No. 8; pp. 1025-+; AUG 2006.
     
99. Joint life-cycle dynamics of new and remanufactured products; Debo LG, Toktay LB, Van Wassenhove LN; PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT; V15 No. 4; pp. 498-513; WIN 2006.
     
100. The effect of competition on recovery strategies; Ferguson ME, Toktay LB; PRODUCTION AND OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT; V15 No. 3; pp. 351-368; FAL 2006.

• • Association of Environmental Engineers and Scientists - AEES is a student-run organization, traditionally a graduate student group, we now involve many undergraduate students in our professional and social events. Our organization’s main goal is to improve the overall educational experience  of the students in our department. We aim to provide a professional and social network to environmental engineering students  at Georgia Tech. We provide professional development services to our students, act as a communication channel between students and faculty, provide assistance to students attending conferences, and work to maintain a high quality of student life. AEES also provides a link between students and their potential employers.
  • Alternative Service Break - ASB creates programs that provides high-quality service trips over school holidays to members of the Georgia Tech student body. ASB works in partnership with the Office of Leadership and Civic Engagement to meet this goal. Since the time of ASB’s first program in 2011, ASB's footprint has expanded from a single service trip to now collectively offering thirteen different service opportunities to Georgia Tech students. ASB’s reach extends from Jacksonville, Florida, to Tom’s River, New Jersey; and we will offer our first international trip in the spring. Most importantly, ASB strives to produce programs that bring together students on our campus, engages our alumni network, and to serve the communities that our students engage with. We are proud to be building an outlet through which Georgia Tech students serve our world.

• • Bicycle Infrastructure Improvement Committee - The GT BIIC was formed in late 2010 by SGA, to bring together graduate and undergraduate students with staff members of the Georgia Tech offices of Capital Planning and Space Management, Parking and Transportation, Facilities, etc. Together they are tasked with improving bicycle infrastructure on campus through the evaluation of existing facilities, the creation of events and programs, securing funding for facility improvements, and other related endeavors. They represent a commitment of students and staff to sustainability, mobility, safety, healthy living, and a choice of travel modes.

• • Cooks for Heritage, Education, Fellowship, and Service - Cooks for Heritage, Education, Fellowship, and Service, also known as CHEFS, is the cooking club on campus. We strive to provide our members with fun, interesting activities that both expand their cooking knowledge and help the community around them.

• • Circle K - Circle K is a service and leadership development organization for college students sponsored by Kiwanis International. We participate in volunteer projects around the community, such as at the Atlanta Community Food Bank, Project Open Hand, Boys and Girls Club, and more. We have many leadership opportunities, including committee chair positions, and also promote fellowship among club members  by having various social events. There are also opportunities for awards and scholarships. Overall, we provide club members with as many chances to volunteer as possible and have fun at the same time.

• • Earth Day Planning Committee - Georgia Tech's Earth Day celebration is among the largest in the Southeastern US. This is possible because of dedicated people who work to bring this annual event into being. The Earth Day Planning Committee welcomes students into the process. If you are interested, conact Cindy Jackson.

• • Energy Club - The purpose of  the Energy Club is to educate students on the unique challenges and opportunities that are impacting the global energy industry. We bring together students, alumni, faculty and industry professionals in a forum that allows for interaction, discussion, exchange of innovative ideas and networking. We also develop student leadership specifically in the area of energy.

• • Engineers for a Sustainable World - Engineers for a Sustainable World at Georgia Tech promotes engineering that fosters environmental, social, and economic sustainability and focuses the combined resources of Georgia Tech students, faculty, and alumni to develop sustainable solutions for local, regional and national problems.

• • Engineers Without Borders - Georgia Tech - EWB-GT is a student chapter of a national non-profit organization called Engineers Without Borders-USA. We serve as a resource for connecting Georgia Tech students with opportunities for personal development and a stronger understanding of global health concerns and humanitarian engineering. Our student members design and implement solutions for health and infrastructure needs in developing communities.
  • Enterprise to Empower - Enterprise to Empower (En2Em, also serves as the undergraduate chapter of Net Impact) is a Georgia Tech student organization that seeks to educate, enable, and engage students in social entrepreneurship, helping them discover how their skills and talents in any field -- from business to engineering -- can be applied to the social problems of the world today. More than just enabling students to start new enterprises and organizations, En2Em sees the need to equip all those in our generation with the skills of leadership, creativity, and empathy for others so that they may become positive change-agents in their communities and workplaces.
  • Georgia Tech Model UN - GTMUN is a two day conference for high school students that takes place on Georgia Tech’s campus. Established in 1998, this conference has worked to bring international affairs to the high schools of the Southeast. The conference has grown in size over the years and now attracts schools from the entire Southeast and beyond. Run by Georgia Tech students from a variety of majors, GTMUN offers a range of committees and issues for high school students to enjoy. We strive to educate and enlighten high school students on a number of international issues. We also help develop the public speaking, writing, and leadership skills of the high schools students and our staff.

• • HyTech Racing - HyTech Racing is a student team at the Georgia Institute of Technology that formed with the intent of competing at the Formula Hybrid International Competition. The annual Formula Hybrid International Competition is an offshoot from the prestigious Formula SAE Competition. Hosted by Dartmouth College, it has been held five times starting in 2007 at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway. From late April to early May, teams from educational institutions around the world bring plug-in hybrid-electric, open-wheeled vehicles to perform in a variety of design and performance challenges. Design, Endurance, Autocross, and Acceleration events emphasize the importance of a balance between performance and efficiency.

• • Ideas 2 Serve - I2S is a business  plan competition for current Georgia Tech students and recent alumni who have early stage product/service ideas or venture concepts that are geared towards creating a better world. Entries might focus on reducing poverty, alleviating hunger, promoting health and wellness, improving air and water quality, reducing of the rate of depletion of natural resources, or developing alternate sources of energy just to name a few!

• • The Maker's Club - The Makers Club is a collective of students who believe in the value of a hands on education. Our Mission is twofold: To provide students the resources they need to design and fabricate in a collaborative environment; and to educate the Georgia Tech community on fabrication with open, student taught classes and events.

• • Net Impact - Net Impact inspires a new generation to use their careers to tackle the world's toughest social and environmental problems. We empower student and professional leaders to act locally though our vibrant chapter network and connect globally online and through our flagship conference. By 2020, we will mobilize a million new leaders to drive positive change in the workplace and the world.

• • (ORGT) Outdoor Recreation Georgia Tech - We offer a number of programs throughout the year from caving and rock climbing to whitewater rafting and sea kayaking. Rent equipment at the Wilderness Outpost for your own camping excursion or join us on an organized outing. ORGT employs staff and students and accepts volunteers.

• • Society for BioDiversity - The Society for BioDiversity aims to encourage and facilitate student involvement in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math (STEM) initiatives to promote and increase the retention of underrepresented and underserved minorities in STEM careers. Many of our initiatives are bidirectional in order to impact students on-campus as well as students in local K-12 schools. Through facilitating professional development, community outreach, networking among peers, peer mentorship, we hope to help to impact the diversity and growth in the biology world.

• • (SEED) Society of Engineers for Environmental Development - Interested in organizing the biggest imagination and ideation party ever? SEED focuses on fabricating, encouraging the process of ideation, and problem solving with application to real world problems in the fields of alternate energy systems, global warming, sustainable energy, healthcare, communication, human interaction and much more.

• • Solar Jackets - The Georgia Tech Solar Jackets is a student organization dedicated to the design and construction of competitive solar racing vehicles. We seek to develop teamwork, leadership, and innovative engineering skills by providing training and hands-on experience in solving real-world engineering problems. We are a student-run organization, built on the dedication and ambition of our members. The solar race car project promotes cross-disciplinary learning and interaction, and it necessitates engineering excellence, leadership, and teamwork from all students involved.

• • Starter Bikes - Starter Bikes began as a collaborative project between Georgia Tech’s Students Organizing for Sustainability and the Atlanta Bicycle Coalition. Volunteers refurbish abandoned and donated bikes into low-cost, entry level bicycles for students and community members in need of inexpensive but reliable transportation. The program is also available for people who would like to try a bike, but don’t want to make a large up-front investment until they have more experience. Starter Bikes also provides free access to tools, so you can fix your bike yourself. Volunteers are available to provide mechanical expertise.

• • Student Government Association Sustainability Committee - The purpose of the Campus Sustainability Committee is to facilitate cooperation between faculty, staff and student sustainability movements and present a united front for Georgia Tech Sustainability efforts in our interactions with the City of Atlanta and larger global community, and further to be direct advocates for students' sustainability concerns in SGA.

• • (SOS) Students Organizing for Sustainability - Students Organizing for Sustainability is a student-run organization at the Georgia Institute of Technology dedicated to promoting the awareness and implementation of environmentally and economically sustainable practices on our campus and in the local Atlanta community. Our current main effort is the operation and enhancement of the Georgia Tech Community Garden, located at the southeast corner of the Instructional Center building.

• • Tech Beautification Day - Tech Beautification Day is an opportunity for students, faculty, staff, and alumni to volunteer to work on campus beautification and landscaping projects.
  • Trailblazers - The purpose of GT Trailblazers is to increase student and faculty appreciation for the outdoors through trail adventure and exploration. Throughout the fall and spring semesters, GT Trailblazers also leads a variety of environmental service projects in the Atlanta metropolitan area. These projects are open to both students and faculty, and include but are not limited to trail-building and maintenance projects on hiking and biking trails, invasive species removal, and other conservation-related projects.

Read more BBISS Big Ideas stories.

Professor Hu Wenping, Vice President of Tianjin University, Prof. Yves Berthelot, Georgia Institute of Technology Vice Provost of International Initiatives, Ms. Liu Jiachen, Deputy Secretary-General of Shenzhen Municipal People's Government attended the launch ceremony.  Professor Crittenden, Chinese Academy of Engineering Professor Liu Wenqing and other experts, scholars, and business representatives were also in attendance.  The launch ceremony was chaired by Prof. Chen Guanyi, Dean of the School of Environmental Science and Engineering of Tianjin University.

The new research center is the first initiative of an educational collaboration amongst Georgia Tech, the city of Shenzhen, China, and Tianjin University that was set into motion in December of 2016.  Once built, the new building will house the Georgia Tech satellite campus, as well as the new research center.  Degree programs on offer through the new campus will include electrical and computer engineering, computer science, industrial design, environmental engineering, and data analytics.  Georgia Tech will coordinate the graduate programs at the specialized institute.  Tianjin University, China’s oldest university, will coordinate the undergraduate programs.  The agreement that established the Georgia Tech Tianjin University Shenzhen Institute provides for the future establishment of additional research centers in signal processing and data analytics, wearable technologies, printed electronics, and advanced telecommunications.

In his remarks, Professor Hu Wenping said that the expertise represented by the partner institutions will lay a solid foundation for training the next generation of professionals to properly design for the coming economic, social, and ecological challenges ahead.  Preparations for the construction of the new center represent an important milestone in the scientific research into green buildings and sponge cities performed thus far, not only by experts in China, but also by experts from the United States.  Once built, the new center will embody the state of the art in the subjects.  It will not only serve as an exemplar that will address the future development needs of the city of Shenzhen, but can also serve as a global example of how sustainable development can be accomplished.

Georgia Tech Vice Provost Yves Berthelot said that, “The new facility in China is an important part of Georgia Tech’s international strategy.  It is an exciting opportunity for Georgia Tech to have a presence in one of the fastest-growing technological centers in China.  That, combined with the partnership with Tianjin University, will result in a great benefit to all the students and faculty involved.”  Areas of expertise that Georgia Tech will bring to bear to the Research Center for Green Buildings and Sponge Cities will be green buildings and environmental engineering; signal processing and data analytics; and wearable, printable electronics and advanced telecommunications.

After the opening ceremony, Professor John Crittenden, a member of both the American and Chinese Academies of Engineering, proposed a research agenda for the new center.  Two corporate partners, Shenzhen Architecture Scientific Research Institute Co., Ltd., and Dongjiang Environmental Protection Co., Ltd., along with other business representatives provided their enterprise outlook and offered their support and cooperation in the endeavor.  The event concluded with a visit to the site of the new facility.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a member of this multi-institutional public-private team, led by the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory. Total federal funding for this five-year research center is expected to reach $100 million. NAWI is a research network with more than 35 members, including Georgia Tech, and more than 180 organizations that will collaborate with the National Energy Technology Laboratory, National Renewable Energy Laboratory, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory.

Georgia Tech has researchers with expertise in specialties that will prove vital to the success of this effort, such as water treatment systems analysis (John Crittenden, director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems), and advanced manufacturing (Chris Saldana and Thomas Kurfess, professors in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering). Marta Hatzell, professor in the School of Mechanical Engineering, and Rich Simmons, senior research engineer at the Strategic Energy Institute, were technical liaisons during the two-year proposal development process, offering expertise in water research related to electric power generation and thermal systems.  

Following the negotiation of the final award, the NAWI team and DOE will work together to develop a research roadmap. It is expected that Georgia Tech researchers in additional disciplines such as thermal systems, materials separation and cooling for electric power generation will be called on to contribute as well. 

“Working with the NAWI team, we will enable a secure set of next-generation water treatment technologies, ensuring a safe and plentiful supply of water for the United States,” Kurfess said. “The work will also have implications on legacy systems providing a path toward modernization. With this team in place, the future of this critical resource is in great shape.”

"This initiative is a great opportunity for our team to leverage new distributed sensing and analytics methods, as well as rapidly maturing manufacturing capabilities based on additive and hybrid manufacturing, to address major challenges in scalable and effective water treatment,” Saldana said.

The overarching goal for NAWI is to develop a range of novel technologies within 10 years to treat the vast majority of non-traditional water resources, such as brackish water, seawater, and water that comes from oil drilling operations — known as “produced waters” — at a cost that is competitive with conventional water treatment. 

“Current technologies for desalination are among the most energy intensive methods for water purification that we employ,” Crittenden said. “Innovating desalination technologies for greater energy efficiency and smaller scale will drastically improve the sustainability of water resources, not only in the U.S., but globally as well.”

Achieving this goal will also transform water treatment from a linear economic and use model to a circular model. Water treatment is usually thought of in the context of drinking water, but treating non-traditional water sources can yield resources that are safe and suitable for a variety of non-potable uses, such as agriculture, industry, energy utilities, oil and gas production, and others. 

NAWI plans to reach its goal by focusing on technologies and manufacturing processes that apply to small-scale, affordable, decentralized, energy-efficient, and purpose-specific desalination systems. Placing purification systems where water is used will make it possible to use the same water resource multiple times, or even indefinitely, in a cost-effective manner, thus reducing the burden on potable water infrastructure. 

In keeping with the philosophy of similar DOE hub-scale initiatives, NAWI will pursue a comprehensive research agenda that spans fundamental to applied research and development, through demonstration and initial scale up. As such, the Hub’s strategy includes a focus on early-stage and enabling research, which is often costly or complex for established manufacturers and suppliers of desalination systems. Likewise, the Hub will emphasize research that addresses manufacturing challenges and emerging capabilities to accelerate the transition of technology from the lab to the marketplace.  

Lack of fresh water presents enormous implications on quality of life, including wellness and economic development in the U.S. and beyond. The award for the Energy-Water Desalination Hub to the National Alliance for Water Innovation represents a major effort by the U.S. public and private sectors to support major innovations that will lead to long-term water security. 

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

Writers: Brent Verrill and Alyson Powell Key

Chinese Vice Premier Liu He addressed the recipients thanking them for their contributions to the continued development and prosperity of China.  Liu also said that the Chinese government would continue to encourage collaborations between Chinese and foreign academics and experts.  He added that there will continue to be a role for foreign experts and professionals to work and live in China.

Professor Crittenden has been active in China for many years, in both an academic and professional role.  He lectures widely at Chinese universities and serves on several editorial boards of academic publications that are based in China.  He has been involved in close academic exchanges and cooperative efforts with several Chinese universities, and hosts visiting scholars and students in the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems. 

The title of this group’s proposed ERC is “Engineering Research Center for Urban Agricultural Infrastructure Systems.” The Center will investigate novel ways to integrate the functions of the cluster of urban infrastructure systems known as NEWT (nutrient, energy, water, and transportation). Integrating and optimizing these infrastructure systems will diversify, decentralize, localize, and democratize food production, processing, and distribution in urban areas where most people will live and where NEWT, and labor, resources are readily available and often wasted.

The team hypothesizes that some commodity food products can be locally grown using readily available NEWT resources in urban areas using high-tech and high productivity Controlled Environmental Agriculture (CEA) systems. Further, they think that the resulting food products will have higher nutritional value, greater freshness, longer shelf life, greater availability, and greatly reduced environmental footprint. For this vision to be realized at commodity scale, however, a host of converging challenges must be overcome in the fields of civil and environmental engineering, CEA technology, urban planning, food safety, health and nutritional science, supply chain management, and consumer science. An Engineering Research Center will enable researchers to study how to resolve the social, political, technological, and logistical challenges involved with bringing CEA systems to market viability. This will be especially important in impoverished urban communities where food and nutritional security are compromised.

Professor Chen received a $5 million grant (link) in 2018 from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), the largest USDA award to Georgia Tech ever. Chen and his team are to develop and operate a hydroponic growing system using domestic wastewater extracted from the Georgia Tech campus sewer system. This wastewater will be treated with an anaerobic membrane biological treatment process that will transform organic contaminants and pathogens into biogas while preserving the nutrients that plants use such as, nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium. The proposed Engineering Research Center that will come from this planning process will build from this work towards commercial viability.

Prof. Yongsheng Chen is a Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Civil and Environmental Engineering where he studies urban sustainability, water/energy use efficiency, sustainable biofuels with a focus on algae, and nanotechnology. Prof. John Crittenden is the Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Hightower Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Sustainable Systems, and a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering where he studies sustainable engineering, water treatment processes, and advanced Oxidation Processes (AOP’s).

The title of this group’s proposed ERC is “Biologically Inspired Realizable Design for Building Energy Eco-Systems (BIRDBEES).” The Center’s focus will be to develop self-sustaining, carbon-neutral building energy systems. The BIRDBEES investigators aim to accomplish this by looking to nature for inspiration in a systematic and scientific way. From this perspective, buildings are framed as living, breathing organisms with coupled fluid flow, heat and mass transfer, water and moisture transfer, complex control systems, etc. This approach is known as Biologically-Inspired Design.

Biologically-Inspired Design (BID) is an innovation method that seeks sustainable solutions by emulating nature's time-tested patterns and strategies with the goal of creating products, processes, and policies—new ways of living—that are well-adapted to life on Earth over the long haul. BID employs life's principles, such as build from the bottom up, self-assembly, optimize rather than maximize, use free energy, cross-pollinate, embrace diversity, adapt and evolve, use life-friendly materials and processes, engage in symbiotic relationships, and enhance the biosphere.

Areas of research that the BIRDBEES team sees as promising are: fundamental energy systems technology components (such as heat exchangers, pumps, insulation, building skins, and energy storage); new building systems that integrate the various components with biologically inspired controls; leveraging the clustering of buildings as ecosystems that provide even larger energy reductions through interaction of mutually beneficial bio-inspired energy systems. The ultimate goal for the BIRDBEES ERC is to show the efficacy of such an approach with real test-beds at the building and community levels. It is then hoped that such validation will lead to the commercialization of BIRDBEES technologies.

Prof. Bert Bras has held various organizational leadership positions, including interim school chair and director of an interdisciplinary research center. Prof. Marc Weissburg is a world renowned biologically inspired design expert and co-director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Biologically-Inspired Design (CBID). Prof. J. Scott Turner studies heat flow and thermal management in species like alligators, black desert beetles, termite mounds, etc. Prof. Garimella holds a Hightower Chair in Engineering and is a leading expert in building energy systems and heat transfer.

The idea of using nature’s examples to develop products and designs that benefit society is the cornerstone of a new project at Georgia Tech that aims to get more high school students interested in engineering.

Funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF), the $3 million effort will put high school engineering teachers in research labs at Georgia Tech for five weeks. The teachers will be embedded with engineers and scientists, working at the forefront of what’s called biologically inspired design, and creating a curriculum for the teachers to use in their classrooms.

“Lots of people think animals and what they do is insanely cool  — and the internet agrees — which means we can engage interest in engineering by making a link to biology as a way to solve engineering challenges,” said Marc Weissburg, project leader and professor in the School of Biological Sciences. “The act of trying to see how an animal might help find a solution to a problem is a very creative process. It challenges the notion that engineering is boring. High school engineering experiences vary widely, but they generally do not include the most cutting-edge topics, like bio-inspired design, which gets people really excited,” he said.

For the next four years, Weissburg will collaborate with researchers Meltem Alemdar, Michael Helms, Roxanne Moore and Michael Ryan at Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and Computing. They’ll create and assess units for 10th, 11th and 12th graders that explore bio-inspired design in the context of problems that are relatable to teenagers.

In particular, the researchers see their approach as a way to reach girls, who may not have considered engineering as a potential career. Weissburg pointed to data from the Center for Digital Education that showed 24% of male high school students expressed interest in engineering. For young women, the number was just 11%.

“Too often, engineering is depicted as applied math and science, which completely neglects how human-centered engineering is,” said Weissburg, who also co-directs the Center for Biologically Inspired Design at Georgia Tech and is a Brook Byers Professor.

The project will generate a curriculum with design and build exercises, background materials for teachers, examples to spark discussion, tests, and other resources that can be used by teachers across the country. Researchers will examine how well the curriculum engages students, particularly those from groups underrepresented in engineering.

“States have different standards, and teacher goals and classes have to be responsive to their unique student audience,” Weissburg said. “Our series of resources, all of which will be online, will allow teachers to easily slot in material that fits for them. It will allow them to talk to us and each other about best practices.”

The research team has partnered with Gwinnett County Public Schools to identify the first group of teachers they’ll invite to participate. Weissburg said that will happen in late Spring 2020.

“Bio-inspired engineering is a unique way of thinking, and so we have to help the teachers understand how to encourage this in their students.”

This paper is a review of the current literature on energy costs in low-income households in the U.S.  The review reveals that socio-economic factors of the energy landscape put an onerous burden on poor households.  Programs meant to alleviate the burdens of energy insecurity are not particularly effective.  The authors draw four general conclusions:

• Energy burden is highest among low-income households.
• Low-income energy burden is worsening despite programs and funds tasked to help.
• Low-income households cannot take advantage of many of the policies and programs that promote energy efficiency and renewable energy technologies.
• Low-income utility customers receive a disproportionately small share of the funding targeted to improve residential energy efficiency.

The authors point out that the most common models for policy interventions into energy poverty were begun in the 1970’s.  Few innovations or adjustments have been made to them despite a changing energy environment.   Currently, short term solutions, like financial assistance with utility bills, vastly outweigh programs with longer term effects such as weatherization or appliance replacement programs.  The focus on the short-term financial needs of low-income rate payers tends to perpetuate energy insecurity, rather than offering efficiency investments, which have proven to be a more durable solution.

Many other policy solutions are suggested in the paper including inter-agency coordination, targeting low-income multi-family housing, implementing technology solutions such as smart thermostats, and innovations in the financing of energy upgrades.  The authors also emphasize that some programs result in additional benefits which aren’t usually accounted for.  For example, members of households that undergo a weatherization process have better overall health than those that receive other energy help.  Weatherization results in improved indoor air quality, which is thought to lead to better overall health.  This, in turn, results in multiplying the financial benefits due to reduced sick days and lower healthcare costs. 

Insights, like the one outlined above, prompted the authors to suggest more holistic and scalable approaches to addressing energy poverty in conjunction with other health and poverty related issues.  Professor Brown and her collaborators conclude that the transition to a sustainable energy future need not leave behind those at the low end of the income spectrum.

Closing out its 13th competition year, Formula Hybrid brings together students from around the world each May at the New Hampshire Motor Speedway to identify the best-engineered and best-performing electric and hybrid open-wheel Formula racing-style vehicles conforming to the competition rules. Before testing the dynamic performance of the vehicle, each team must pass through a rigorous scrutineering process. Engineers, many from the automotive industry, inspect each vehicle to ensure that it meets competition rules and can be safely operated.

The competition also measures the engineering behind each team’s vehicle. Georgia Tech’s team defended the design methodologies behind its new vehicle, where significant engineering effort was put into reducing the weight of components compared to the team’s vehicles from previous years. “There's an old adage in racing that goes 'more power makes you faster in the straights, losing weight makes you faster everywhere',” said Sam Gilmer, Chief Engineer of HyTech Racing. “Being light means your tires are more efficient and you have less momentum and accelerate more quickly.” After building a 413 lb vehicle last year, the team worked towards a goal of building a 380 lb vehicle in 2019, exceeding this goal with an official vehicle weight of 368 lb.

While the team won the design portion of the competition, it also defended its project management strategy, placing second in the category. “Working with over 60 students to engineer such a complex vehicle takes a significant amount of planning and oversight,” said Nathan Cheek, Team President. “We focused this year on making a very lightweight and tightly packaged vehicle, so facilitating communication between subteams was critical for ensuring that everything would fit together and work together.”

Vehicle performance is measured through a number of dynamic events. First, each vehicle’s acceleration capabilities are measured at the 75 meter Acceleration track. Second, vehicle handling is put to the test on the Autocross course. Finally, the ability of each vehicle to run reliably is tested through the 44 km Endurance event. HyTech placed second in the Acceleration event with a 5.28 second time and won the Autocross event with a 44.092 second run. On the Endurance course, the team beat out Princeton University, The University of Vermont, and Tufts University, completing more than twice the number of laps than the second-place team. As the only team to finish all 44 km of the Endurance event this year, Georgia Tech’s team set a new track time record of 01:15:56, beating the previous record of 01:25:15 held by The University of Vermont and cementing themselves as the second fully electric team to ever finish the 44 km course.

HyTech Racing finished the Formula Hybrid competition with a 262 point lead, taking home 899 points out of 1,000. “Next year we are going to focus on making the car even lighter and better-performing using data we gathered from this year's success,” said Yvonne Yeh, incoming Team President for the 2020 school year. The team plans to work iteratively, building a new vehicle with updates only to the systems that will most improve the car’s performance. “It’s important to update these vehicles methodically year-to-year,” said Nathan Cheek. “Making calculated engineering updates to specific vehicle subsystems is the best way to ensure we have plenty of testing time on our new vehicle before taking it to a competition.”

The U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is a collegiate competition that tasks student teams with designing and building highly efficient and innovative buildings powered by renewable energy. This year, the Department of Energy combined two student building design competitions to create the new Solar Decathlon competition.

The Solar Decathlon Design Challenge Weekend took place April 12-14, 2019. Throughout the weekend, student design teams presented their work to a jury of industry experts, attended presentations by collegiate peers and leaders in the energy profession, and engaged with a variety of energy-focused organizations.

The Georgia Tech team was led by Tyler Pilet, Ph.D. in Architecture student with a focus area in high performance building (HPB).

“Our team designed a community-driven, low cost, net-zero home in Grove Park,” said Pilet. “We partnered with the Grove Park Foundation and Atlanta Habitat for Humanity to make the design’s construction a reality in the future. The competition was a great experience that taught us how to design every part and system of a building, from conceptual massing to HVAC and community solar power design.”

In addition to Pilet, the interdisciplinary team consisted of Warren Alexius Campbell (Master of Science (M.S.) in Architecture, HPB), Wen Yi (Vincent) Chang (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Yuran Kong (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Yuhang Li (Master of Architecture), Dan Lu (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Jingxin Xu (Master of Science in Urban Design), Raj Sanjaybhai Shah (M.S. in Building Construction), Raunak Tibrewala (M.S. in Architecture, HPB), Xinyi Zhang (M.S. in Civil Engineering).

Jason Brown, full-time lecturer for high performance buildings in the School of Architecture, served as the team’s advisor. Fried Augenbroe, professor and director of the High Performance Building Lab, and Tarek Rakha, assistant professor for high performance buildings, also helped by reviewing the students’ work. Acme Panel and YKK served as industry partners. Additional outside partners that contributed to the final project included Grove Park Foundation, Grove Park Neighborhood Association, Atlanta Habitat for Humanity, Perkins+Will, Southface, Pursuit Engineering, the Atlanta Regional Commission and the Mayor’s Office of Resilience.

Read more about the U.S. Department of Energy Solar Decathlon.

The highly technical, science-based, and interdisciplinary program — approved by the Board of Regents on Feb. 12, 2019 — will prepare students to deliver fact-based policy expertise through robust analytical techniques and a deep understanding of energy and environmental issues and sustainability practices.

“This professionally focused degree will allow Georgia Tech to educate the next generation of sustainability leaders in corporate, government, and non-governmental organizations,” said Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs and K. Harrison Brown Family Chair. “Georgia Tech is proud to deliver innovative, affordable, and top-quality education in high-demand areas such as sustainability to meet the needs of our evolving workforce."

When the program begins in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts' School of Public Policy in August 2019, MSEEM students will study topics such as sustainable energy and voluntary environmental commitments, cost-benefit analysis, utility regulation and policy, Earth systems, economics of environmental policy, big data and policy analytics, climate policy, and environmental management.

They also will learn analytical techniques used to estimate and evaluate sustainability metrics, be able to expertly assess the context of energy and environmental problems, and understand environmental ethics and its implications for sustainability practice.

The program will combine professional instruction from the nationally-ranked School of Public Policy with Georgia Tech’s top-notch engineering, business, and planning faculties to educate professionals who can lead organizations toward policies consistent with a sustainable future.

“This unique interdisciplinary program takes an innovative and integrative approach to sustainability that epitomizes the commitment of the School of Public Policy to collaborate across disciplines to educate future policy analysts and leaders and turn ideas into solutions to public problems,” said Kaye Husbands Fealing, professor and chair of the school.

Faculty will be drawn from across the Georgia Tech campus, including from the School of Public Policy, the Scheller College of Business, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and the School of City and Regional Planning.

Guest lecturers from Atlanta’s corporate community, government agencies, NGOs and research organizations also will participate — helping connect MSEEM students to the state of the practice and to job opportunities.

MSEEM students also will have access to Georgia Tech’s summer Program on Sustainable Development and Climate Change in Venice, Italy. The 5-week, 6-credit program features courses in climate policy and sustainable development and provides a multi-disciplinary learning experience that combines classroom lectures, guest speakers and instructional field trips.

 “The world’s energy economy is undergoing transformational change, and as the public and private sectors strengthen their commitment to green practices, the need will increase for well-trained policy experts able to design, implement, and manage responses to sustainability issues. This program will provide such leaders,” said Marilyn A. Brown, Regents’ Professor and Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy.

The MSEEM program is designed to serve a broad range of students interested in sustainability issues. Students can complete the degree on campus or online as a full-time student. Students also have the option to enroll part-time and complete their degree online. The program is designed to serve working professionals and others who want to participate part-time and earn their degree over several years.

In addition to the master’s degree, Georgia Tech is also offering a Certificate in Sustainable Energy and Environmental Management. This 12-credit hour SEEM Certificate can be completed in one or two semesters and can be earned on its own or in combination with the master’s degree.

Applications are being accepted through June 15 for the inaugural class of MSEEM students, who will begin study in August 2019.

A generous philanthropic gift has enabled Georgia Tech to offer five fully funded MSEEM fellowships to the program each year for the first three years of the program.

For more information on these programs, visit https://cepl.gatech.edu/mseem, or https://cepl.gatech.edu/cseem.

But what happens to all of those solar panels in a couple of decades when they reach the end of their useful life? And what about electronic devices with even shorter life spans?

Those questions are at the heart of new research released by a team at Georgia Institute of Technology, where researchers looked into the impact of government policies put in place to reduce the amount of electronics waste filling up landfills.

“There is a lot of concern in sustainability circles that manufacturers are making things with shorter and shorter life spans, and products are perhaps even intentionally made to become obsolete to induce replacement purchases,” said Beril Toktay, a professor at Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business.

The study, which was published April 4 in the journal Management Science, focused on government policies used to encourage electronics makers to put more thought into what happens at the end of the product life cycle. Those programs, which are called extended producer responsibility (EPR) laws and are already in use in some states, have two common objectives: to have producers design their products to be easier to recycle or to boost their durability for increased device life span.

However, the researchers reported that those goals are often at odds.

“What we have found is that sometimes when you design for recyclability, you give up on durability, and when durability is the goal, recyclability is sacrificed,” Toktay said.

In theory, a product that is both easy to recycle and more durable would be the pinnacle of environmentally responsible product design. The researchers pointed to automobiles with thicker metal frames that last longer and also have more recyclable materials. In such a scenario, EPR policies emphasizing durability and recyclability work hand in hand.

“Sometimes simple choices that product designers make, such as using glue or fasteners to put together a device, really impact recyclability at the end of life,” said Natalie Huang, a former graduate student at Georgia Tech and now an assistant professor at the University of Minnesota.

More often than not, however, there is no such synergy. In the case of photovoltaic panels, the researchers highlighted how thin-film panels are much more cost effective to recycle than other panels because they contain precious metals. Meanwhile, crystalline silicon panels, which aren’t as cost effective to recycle, have much longer life spans because their components degrade much more slowly.

“These kinds of trade-offs are common, and so from a policy-making perspective, there’s not a one-size-fits-all approach that will work,” said Atalay Atasu, a professor at the Scheller College of Business. “You really have to distinguish between different product categories to consider the recyclability and the durability implications and make sure that your policy isn’t conflicting with the objective.”

The researchers said that in some cases, EPR policies could actually lead to increased waste generation if product designers make products more recyclable but less durable, or lead to increased greenhouse gas emissions if products are made more durable but less recyclable.

To help determine how government policies could impact individual products, the researchers built a mathematical model to help predict the impact those policies would have on products based on their materials and design characteristics. Among the factors the model takes into account are the base production cost of the product, the degree of difficulty in increasing recyclability and durability, the degree of interaction between recyclability and durability in the product design, and the recycling properties of the product.

“Ultimately what we’re after is to find a way to do scenario analyses to determine what would be the best policy for different product categories,” Toktay said. “Fifteen to 20 years from now, a lot of panels are going to be coming off of roofs. Are they being designed with the end of life in mind and with consideration of what’s the best way to reduce the impact of producing those panels?”

CITATION: Ximin (Natalie) Huang, Atalay Atasu and L. Beril Toktay, “Design Implications of Extended Producer Responsibility for Durable Products,” (Management Science, April 2019). http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2018.3072

Fujimoto’s research is concerned with discrete-event simulation programs on parallel and distributed computing platforms. Because his work spans several application areas, Fujimoto’s work is highly interdisciplinary.  Some of the topics he has worked on include transportation systems, telecommunication networks, multi-processor, and defense systems. He is a frequent collaborator in the work of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, serving as a co-principle investigator on several research grants as well as co-authoring several papers and presentations for conference proceedings with other BBISS affiliated faculty.   

Fujimoto was the founding chair of the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE) and served in that role from 2005 to 2014. During this period, he grew the school to 13 tenure track faculty and established the school’s administrative staff. He led the creation of interdisciplinary M.S. and Ph.D. degree programs in Computational Science and Engineering as well as the College of Computing’s first on-line distance learning degree program, the MS program in CSE. At the undergraduate level, he led the Computational-X initiative that resulted in the creation of two new undergraduate minors – Scientific and Engineering Computing and Computational Data Analysis. He also played a leadership role in creating the CRUISE (Computing Research Undergraduate Intern Summer Experience) program which emphasizes outreach to women and minority students. He co-led the initial development of Georgia Tech’s professional Masters Program in Analytics with faculty in the College of Business and School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. Under his leadership, the School of Computational Science and Engineering was formally established as an academic unit within Georgia Tech in 2010.

Fujimoto’s publications include seven award winning papers. He is author or co-author of three books. He led the definition of the time management services for the High Level Architecture for modeling and simulation that is now part of IEEE standard 1516. Fujimoto has served as Co-Editor-in-chief of the journal Simulation: Transactions of the Society for Modeling and Simulation International. He was a founding area editor for ACM Transactions on Modeling and Computer Simulation and has served on the organizing committees for several leading conferences in the parallel and distributed simulation field. He received the ACM Distinguished Contributions in Modeling and Simulation Award in 2013.

• Leo Chen (returning), Computer Science
• Kian Halim (returning), Computational Media
• Gigi Pavur (returning), Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• William Abdallah, Industrial Engineering
• Joseph Buehler, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• Anielle Duritza, Environmental Engineering
• Kyte Harvey, Mechanical Engineering
• Connor Hawley, Electrical Engineering and Computer Science
• Chloe Kiernicki, Architecture
• Elizabeth Krakovski, Public Policy
• Matthew Lim, Computer Engineering
• Micah Landwermeyer, Materials Science and Engineering
• Farouk Marhaba, Computer Science
• Kat Matthews, Business
• Kathryn McCarthy, Biology
• Shivan Mittal, Physics
• Christi Nakajima, Public Policy
• Leah Claire Nofsinger, Materials Science and Engineering
• Ashlyn Sasser, Industrial Design
• Alexandra Schultz, Chemical Engineering
• Ranal Apeksha Tudawe, Mechanical Engineering
• Jeniveve Vaia, Material Science and Engineering
• Eliya Olivia Wagner, Environmental Engineering

The paid research fellows are developing prototypes of interactive building monitoring systems that convey the unique elements, qualities, and performance of the Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design (under construction) and the behaviors that it engenders among its occupants and visitors. Through SURF, the students will learn about sustainability, systems thinking, and how to apply these principles to the Georgia Tech Living Building. Their work is facilitated by Dr. Michael Chang, Deputy Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems.

Made possible by a gift from Shawn and Brook Byers, a 1968 Georgia Tech alumnus in Electrical Engineering, the Brook Byers Professorships provide resources to enable and enhance cross-disciplinary, collaborative research and education in sustainability, energy, and water.  The three recipients were recommended by their peers, chosen by the Provost, and approved by the Board of Regents.  The Brook Byers Professorship is the highest title bestowed at Georgia Tech for those engaged in sustainability related research and education.

Michael Chang, Deputy Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, said in his opening comments how remarkable it was for three people to be appointed to such a title at once.  He went on to express his hopes for how Bras, Brown and Reichmanis would realize the opportunities for collaboration and synergy that were possible with a cluster appointment such as this that might not be possible individually.

The discussion ranged from the sustainability issues that are foremost in the minds of those in the corporate world, to how higher education can prepare graduates to both succeed professionally and bring about a more sustainable world.
 

All those in attendance were treated to a copy of Diana Rivenburgh’s new book, The New Corporate Facts of Life: Rethink Your Business to Transform Today’s Challenges into Tomorrow’s Profits, courtesy of Novelis.

A video of the event is on our YouTube channel (1:20)

A summary of points made during the discussion follows:

Steve Leffin:  Compressed natural gas, propane, and liquefied natural gas are viable alternative fuels for package trucks that achieve a more sustainable balance than liquid petroleum fuels.  UPS has been and will continue to phase in these vehicles.

Bruce Karras:  Water is a fundamental issue for Coca Cola’s business.  It is not only in every product, but it is critical to every production process.  Closing loops for water is a major sustainability initiative for Coca Cola.  Another is how the millennial demographic group uses social media with regards to the sustainability attributes of Coca Cola products.

John Gardner:  Novelis is working towards becoming a supplier of 100% recycled content products.  This is possible because aluminum is infinitely recyclable with no degradation in quality.

Diana Rivenburgh:  What opportunities and challenges are on the horizon that require attention and investment in order to be addressed effectively?

Leffin:  UPS uses scenario planning to help prepare for the future.  One such scenario looked at what might happen if oil prices reached $200 a barrel.  Other factors that will have an impact are water scarcity, technological innovation, personal mobility, changing regulatory frameworks, expansion and upward mobility of those people at the base of the pyramid, ubiquitous use of mobile devices, and the rapid expansion of urban spaces such that people may not have an “address.”  The world is likely to be very different over the next two decades.  Capital investments will need to be made with great care to anticipate the coming changes.

Gardner:  Companies need to look beyond the boundaries of their business operations.  Life Cycle Assessment is a trend that enables companies to do this.  Novelis is working on using its products in the light-weighting of cars and trucks to increase fuel efficiency.  Currently about 33% of its feed stock comes from recycled materials. Novelis is moving towards sourcing 80% of its feed stock from recycled materials which would halve Novelis’ carbon footprint, meanwhile doubling their business.

Karas:  A supply chain-wide view of sustainability is beginning to emerge.  Life cycle assessment is a big part of that.  Designing with the proper end-of-use in mind is critical.  Currently, everything is designed for landfill.  Coca Cola has been working on the development of plant based PET resin for its containers as a way to move away from its reliance on petroleum based materials.

Brown: There are already lots of good sustainable technologies available, but what we lack is a good policy environment to allow them to flourish.  There are policies that in place or coming on-line soon that are helpful in bringing about sustainability such as: more stringent CAFE standards, upcoming Clean Air Act revisions may include regulations to limit water consumption in thermal electricity generation, and the trend towards real-time pricing of energy to encourage usage during off-peak times.

There are major sustainability issues for which there are no definitive policies in place such as: allowing the free export of LNG globally could double or triple the cost, the approval of the Keystone XL pipeline may buffer an increase in oil prices but at what environmental cost, the denial of the pipeline might slow the development of the resource but might have worse environmental consequences if the oil is transported by other modes such as rail, putting a price on greenhouse gas emissions will lead to better market viability for carbon efficient and renewable technologies.

Bras: Corporations are broadening their perspectives by partnering with companies in different, seemingly unrelated markets. Ford’s MyEnergi Lifestyle is a project that partners the auto maker with an appliance company and solar panel manufacturer to investigate what synergies might be possible amongst these product categories.  Companies are also beginning to think of their business models in terms of services to the consumer rather than product offerings.

Karas: Where Good Ideas Come From by Steve Johnson is a helpful resource for companies looking to broaden their perspective and engage in partnerships with other companies in adjacent market niches.

Elsa Reichmanis:  Research in sustainability for chemistry and biomolecular engineering tend to be on longer time horizons.  They are focused on some of the major challenges facing humanity such as water, energy and food supply.  Science and engineering can’t solve these problems without involvement from other disciplines including public policy and business.  Higher education is preparing graduates with these ideas in mind.

Crittenden: BBISS works primarily in the area of sustainable urban infrastructure systems.  Cities can be likened to the largest machines humanity has ever built. There has been a lot of attention on sustainable technologies and materials at the product scale, but not so at the urban scale.  Today’s decisions about urban infrastructure remain for a long time and the majority of environmental impacts occur throughout the day to day use.  Lots of infrastructure is going to be built in the coming decades, especially in rapidly urbanizing countries like China.  BBISS advocates a shift in thinking about infrastructure from the current paradigm of discrete systems or elements to one of “Infrastructure Ecology.”  This paradigm considers multiple infrastructure layers, systems and elements and their interactions and emergent properties as critical to maximizing the function of infrastructure as providing comfort and wealth in a durable and resilient way.

Leffin: Measurements of ecological impact are currently leveled at the business and product level.  It may make more sense to begin to measure at the economic sector or systems level.  It is possible that some sectors or systems may have bigger discrete footprints but will eliminate the necessity of smaller or more highly differentiated businesses that, in total, add up to much greater impact.  For example, expanding public transportation results in greater impacts for the public transportation sector, but has the potential to displace much greater impacts in the personal transportation sector.  So, under some proposals, the individual public transportation systems would be penalized for their increased local impacts even while they serve to reduce impact on a global scale.

Brown:  Measuring impacts at the national level doesn’t reveal things like the U.S. selling coal to Europe or the offshoring of energy intensive manufacturing processes. The greenhouse gas emissions for the U.S. might go down, but some of that reduction is actually embodied in products that are manufactured in China but consumed in the U.S.  It is important that students understand these nuances.

Leffin:  The World Resources Institute (WRI) and the World Business Council for Sustainable Development (WBCSD) understand these nuances and are working to incorporate these issues into their work with the business community.

Reichmanis:  Higher education will also need to take a more holistic approach to educating students.  Most disciplines are still mostly stove-piped.  Moving to a multi-disciplinary education model will produce graduates today that will accelerate our progress toward sustainability in the private sector tomorrow.

Gardner: Corporations working with institutions like Georgia Tech are vital to keep the personnel pipeline filled with people who understand sustainability and can innovate.  Novelis built a global R+D center in Kennesaw yet it struggles to find the right people to hire.

Bras: On the other hand, most companies still hire graduates based on their depth of knowledge in their discipline rather than their breadth of multidisciplinary knowledge.  Georgia Tech mechanical engineering students are now given 15 credit hours of free electives so that they can broaden their perspectives.

Leffin:  One way the UPS encourages more holistic thinking among its employees is to get them involved in volunteer forestry projects.  It’s very important for students to seek out similar experiences where they get exposure to natural systems as a way shift their perspective towards thinking holistically.

Brown:   Public policy has an important role to play.  Policy makers need operate from the facts in the world and a deep understanding of science and technology.  The failure of ethanol policy in the U.S. is an excellent example of decision makers listening to influences other than the experts in the energy policy realm.

Karas:  Water efficiency is a critical factor for Coca-Cola.  Currently most of the thinking is how to use water more efficiently one time versus using that same water multiple times before treatment and discharge.  Students ought to understand better how newer, more efficient technologies integrate better with existing systems that are less efficient.  We can’t get there overnight.  There has to be a transition.

Reichmanis:  We have to balance a holistic approach to educating engineers with the in-depth material that engineers need to effectively practice their profession.  Life-cycle assessment can be a way to achieve this balance.  Another way is to understand that an engineering graduate will be required to continue learning after graduation day.  Teaching students to collaborate with other people from different disciplines to solve problems is a something that higher education can do better to fill this gap.

Brown:  Integrating the supply side with the demand side is becoming more important.  We often educate for the optimization of one or the other in isolation.

Crittenden: Transportation is access to function. Reductionism in engineering is not enough – it’s not enough to only look at how individual products can be made more efficiently or to be more efficient. There’s a limit to the amount of efficiency that can be achieved and there’s a limit to the number of efficient products that can exist sustainably.  We will need to take radical approaches to fulfilling the underlying needs that our products and systems fulfill.

Bras: User behavior can be just as important as efficiency technologies in achieving efficiency goals.  Proper training for efficient use is often cheaper than the technology.  If you make the most efficient product, it won’t perform as intended if it’s not used as intended.  A litmus test for whether a new efficiency technology will integrate well into a given setting is to ask the question, “Would my (wife, husband, grandmother, stubborn co-worker, etc.) use that?”

Leffin:  Transparency enabled by the internet is a major factor in the sustainability conversation.

Rivenburgh:  How do we teach the students of today to solve the problems of tomorrow given that the ones we know about are really difficult and that there will be many problems that we can’t know about today?

Brown:  Engaging everyone in discussions surrounding the problems.  Georgia Tech is leading the way in the diversity of students.

Crittenden: “We want to change the face of engineering through sustainability.  But, we also want to change the faces of engineers as well.”

Reichmanis:  The world is getting smaller.  Solutions that are acceptable to us may not be somewhere else in the world.

Bras:  Preparing students for problems that aren’t known yet has to combine the fundamentals of science and engineering with an understanding of the global context in which we must now make decisions.  Being immersed in a diverse setting is one way to achieve that.

Crittenden: There is strong relationship between population growth and childhood mortality.  Sustainable technologies in much of the developing world amounts to proper sanitation so that children don’t get sick and die.  This is a knowable and soluble problem that we can deal with now.

Rivenburgh:  Education of girls is also a big factor in population.

Karas:  We have to think carefully about the lens through which we view problems.  Solutions for the developed world are not necessarily viable in the developing world.

(Question from the audience)
Dennis Creech (Southface Energy Institute):  How do we bridge the gap between the skills, knowledge, and wisdom in the academic and business communities with the policies and decisions we see in our local, regional and state governments?

Brown:  Masters students at Georgia Tech in public policy have to fulfill and internship.  Most do so at the state and federal level.  There is probably a bit of reverse education happening from the student to the decision makers about the science and engineering involved in sustainability decisions.

Reichmanis:  Those who choose science and engineering as a career don’t tend to become involved in the political side of their professional expertise.  People currently in academia could become more involved in communicating with the public and with decision makers as well as teach their students to more effectively do the same.

Read more BBISS Big Ideas stories.

• Every Thursday (Except March 22^nd) in Tech Walkway 11 AM – 2 PM - Georgia Tech Farmers Market.
• Now until March 30^th - Donate items for the Earth Day Office Supply Exchange.
• Now Until March 30th & at Earth Day on April 20th – E-Waste Recycling. Georgia Tech's Earth Day Planning Committee is once again working with Atlanta Recycling Solutions to host the 7th annual Electronics Recycling Drive during Earth Day 2012.
• March 28th - Building Your Clean Tech Company in the South - Paul Quinlan, Managing Director, North Carolina Sustainable Energy Association.
• Monday April 2nd, 4:30 pm - 5:30 pm, LeCraw Auditorium, College of Management, or watch the free live webcast - IMPACT Speaker Series - Blake Canterbury, the Founder and CEO of beremedy. Beremedy is an organization that uses social media to connect those in need with those who can help.
• Monday April 2nd, 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm, College of Management Atrium – Ideas to Serve Competition - Poster Showcase and Reception. Join us for an evening of ideas, inspiration, and social innovation.
• Wednesday April 4th, 4:30 pm - 6:00 pm, LeCraw Auditorium , College of Management - Final Round of the Ideas to Serve Competition.

• Monday April 16^th – Water Symposium Day.
• Tuesday April 17^th – Go Outside Day!
• Wednesday April 18^th , 3PM to 7PM– Movie and Documentary Day at the Student Center Theater. Movies: Grow! and Tapped
• Thursday April18th – Bike Day
• April 20^th, 10AM - 3PM, Tech Walkway - 2012 Georgia Tech Earth Day Celebration -
  Come celebrate Earth Day at one of the largest such events in the southeast. The event is free, open to the public and features 70 exhibitors, eco-friendly giveaways, recycling opportunities, a clothing swap, an office supply exchange, live music, organic popcorn, and much more. Also, keep an eye out for the Georgia Tech Engineers for a Sustainable World solar beverage cart.

Read more BBISS Big Ideas stories.

Workshop participants are encouraged to not only apply what they learned in the workshop to their curriculum, but to share their curriculum as modules for anyone to use through the CSE’s Electronic Database. Modules are peer reviewed in a similar fashion to an academic journal article. This ensures that just as the variety of topics covered expands, the credibility of the content is maintained at a very high standard.  Among the reviewers are former participants in the workshops.

The workshop also serves as a catalyst for building a community of sustainable engineering teachers and practitioners.  It is hoped that as participants implement the principles and concepts of sustainable engineering in their classrooms, they will share their experiences with their colleagues, and through their curriculum modules, with the wider community of engineering educators.

Read more BBISS Big Ideas Stories.

Brook Byers Institute of Sustainable Systems Fellow Bistra Dilkina advised one of the four student teams, with her team conducting two of the five projects in this latest round of the program. Dilkina is a Georgia Tech School of Computational Science and Engineering Assistant Professor and DSSG co-director, along with Ellen Zegura, who is the Stephen Fleming Chair of Telecommunications in the Georgia Tech School of Computer Science, and Christopher Le Dantec, who is an Assistant Professor in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication. Dilkina says of the program, “DSSG connects the classroom with real problems of deep community relevance. We hope this will inspire students to pursue their technical education further and to be engaged global citizens that use their education for societal impact.”

In the first project, Dilkina’s team of four students partnered with Georgia Tech Facilities Management to determine some useful predictors of energy usage beyond historical energy usage and performance modelling, such as class schedules and climatic variables. Facilities Management hopes to better model energy usage, inform operational planning, and identify upgrades and renovations that might not be commonly recommended, but will be most impactful. The second project Dilkina advised, entitled “Predicting and Alleviating Road Flooding in Senegal,” sought to learn which regions and roadways would be most affected by flooding, and where mitigations would best preserve capacity and access to all parts of the country. Coastal countries like Senegal are at increased risk of flooding as weather patterns become more erratic and sea levels rise. Students partnered with the United Nations Global Pulse, a big data humanitarian and development group inside the UN.

The other Data Science for Social Good projects for the 2017 round were:

Food for Thought: Analyzing Public Opinion on the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program
Cycle Atlanta: Seeing Like a Bike
Atlanta Housing Justice: The Anti-Displacement Tax Fund

In past years, Dilkina has led DSSG student teams working on diverse projects. In 2016, she partnered with local nonprofit New American Pathways to design a data-driven way to identify potential places for refugee resettlement in metro Atlanta. In 2015, she worked with the  Atlanta Fire Rescue Department to build a predictive platform to help target commercial fire inspections, as well as with Trees Atlanta to efficiently identify tree planting locations and areas for forest preservation. In 2014, she led a team working with the City of Atlanta Emergency 911 Dispatch to inform new strategies for improving dispatchers’ workloads and overall response times to 911 calls.

The Atlanta chapter is part of a broader community of Data Science for Social Good programs that began at the University of Chicago in 2013. DSSG now has chapters at the University of Washington, the University of Massachusetts Amherst, and most recently at the IBM T.J. Watson Research Center. The emerging field of the data sciences is experiencing several growing pains, which the DSSG program serves to address: serving urgent communitty needs, developing the data science workforce by providing opportunities for students to gain experience, and helping students communicate effectively by working with real-world clients in a multi-disciplinary team structure. Students also learn critical skills such as stakeholder engagement, data acquisition and processing, data analysis and visualization, machine learning for predictive modeling, writing, and communicating results to nontechnical audiences.

Learn more about Design Science for Social Good here.

Current economic models that aim to understand how energy use and efficiency interact within a regional economy are geared towards a broad scale. They also don't account well for an unintended consequence that crops up when energy efficiency is in play, known as the "rebound effect." For example, energy use for lighting, as a percentage of total energy use, tends to increase as lighting technology becomes more efficient. This project will develop a model that introduces adjustments to comprehensively evaluate the economic impact of the rebound effect, as well as tailoring the model to a more regional scale. Understanding energy use and efficiency at a smaller scale will reveal how both energy efficiency and supply shocks effect a region's economic and energy resilience.

Elsa Reichmanis is a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering.  Her work in understanding the molecular structure and function of materials for microelectronics manufacturing has had notable impact on the field.  In 1995, she was elected to the National Academy of Engineering, as well as becoming an AT&T Bell Laboratories Fellow.  Reichmanis was named a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science in 1997.  In 2003, she served as president of the American Chemical Society.  With the Reichmanis Research Group at Georgia Tech, she explores her research interests in the chemistry, properties, and applications of materials technologies for electronic and photonic applications.  In particular, her group’s research can be applied to the modeling and manufacturing of new materials, and their application in new battery technologies, liquid crystals, and biomaterials, all of which have significant potential applications in various sustainability and energy technologies.

Marilyn Brown is a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy.  Before coming to Georgia Tech, Brown had a distinguished career at Oak Ridge National Laboratory.  She has served on eight different National Academies of Sciences committees, and is currently serving on the NAS Geosciences Committee.  Brown served on the Board of Directors of the Tennessee Valley Authority by presidential appointment from 2010 – 2017.  She also co-founded the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance.  She is currently serving her second term on the U.S. Department of Energy’s Electricity Advisory Committee.  In 2013, she established, and continues to direct, the Climate and Energy Policy Lab.  Her research focuses on the design and impact of policies aimed at accelerating the development and deployment of sustainable energy technologies, with an emphasis on the electric utility industry, the integration of energy efficiency, demand response, and solar resources, and ways of improving resiliency to disruptions.

In January 2014, Marilyn Brown and Elsa Reichmanis were named Brook Byers Professors, along with Bert Bras (Mechanical Engineering). Made possible by a gift from Shawn and Brook Byers, a 1968 Georgia Tech alumnus in Electrical Engineering, the Brook Byers Professorships provide resources to enable and enhance cross-disciplinary, collaborative research and education in sustainability, energy, and water. Recommended by their peers, the three recipients were chosen by the Provost and approved by the Board of Regents. The appointments recognize superior scholarly achievement and the potential for further progress. The Brook Byers Professorship is the highest title bestowed at Georgia Tech for those specifically engaged in sustainability related research and education.

The Roadmap is designed to help policymakers, researchers, and citizens to better understand how climate change is likely to unfold in Georgia, and what can be done to address these issues.  It consists of a list of 40 key research questions grouped across themes such as water, coastal Georgia, agriculture, health, and energy.  “We have taken an important first step towards ensuring the continued prosperity and well-being of all Georgians in the face of climate change,” said Kim Cobb.  Several of the questions also consider issues related to equity and at-risk communities.  The Roadmap, published in the journal Environmental Management, is an initiative of the Georgia Climate Project.

The Roadmap was developed by a team of 41 co-authors from academia, government, non-governmental organizations, and industry.  The team sorted through a list of 180 questions that were submitted by experts across the state through an online solicitation process. "To our knowledge, we are the first to use this novel research prioritization methodology on such a complex cross-cutting issue at the state level," said Marilyn Brown.

The Georgia Climate Research Roadmap does not end with the publication of the 40 questions.  The initiative and website will serve as the basis for a climate information portal that will provide easy access to information on climate impacts and solutions in Georgia as more research and work is performed.  “Getting researchers and practitioners to converge on a set of policy and research priorities is a huge accomplishment and is great for our state. I hope that the Roadmap seeds a variety of collaborative research and policy efforts that can build on our momentum,” said Daniel Matisoff.

The Georgia Climate Project is a multi-year effort to improve understanding of climate impacts and solutions in Georgia, and lay the groundwork for the state and its residents to take effective, science-based climate action.  The state-wide consortium was founded by Emory University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, and the University of Georgia.  The Georgia Climate Research Roadmap is a non-partisan initiative which aims to foster discussion about how climate change affects Georgia and what can be done about it.

The multidisciplinary US-China team will focus on developing innovative systems-based solutions for increasing the environmental sustainability of the Chinese steel industry.  China is by far the largest producer of crude steel, producing more than half of the global supply.  Such enormous production levels are driven by both domestic and foreign demand.  Steel production has significant environmental impacts, accounting for 6.7% of the total world CO2 emissions, and considerable use of, and toxic discharge to fresh water sources.  In comparison, due to efficiency measures undertaken in the past 3 decades, U.S. metal production is two thirds less energy intensive compared to that of Chinese industries.  The team will have cutting-edge access to the Chinese steel industry as well as eco-industrial parks, in which China is leading the world.  The team expects that many unique insights will be gained.

Focusing on the steel industry will provide immediate benefit to China’s Eco-Industrial Parks (EIPs) and industries associated with steel production.  This project can help develop methods and approaches useful in many applications in both the U.S. and China.  The team will capitalize on the unique opportunity for collaboration between two different countries with different cultures, as well as different steel manufacturing technologies.

Read more BBISS Big Ideas Stories.

The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems is Georgia Tech's umbrella organization to promote comprehensive and innovative systems-based approaches to address the challenges and opportunities inherent in achieving a sustainable and prosperous future.  The BBISS enhances Georgia Tech’s research, education, and service missions, and campus operations through leadership, communications, development, and decision making inspired and defined by the principles of sustainability. Programs and projects initiated or supported by the BBISS lie at the intersections of these themes.

The Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) is the national academy for the natural sciences of the People's Republic of China. It is headquartered in Beijing, with branch institutes all over mainland China.

Northeastern University (NEU) is a public university founded in 1923 in the city of Shenyang, Liaoning Province, China.

From Georgia Tech:

Bert Bras – Professor, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, Director, Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Program, Brook Byers Professor.

John Crittenden - Professor, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Hightower Chair, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Sustainable Systems, member of the U.S. and Chinese National Academies of Engineering.

Marc Weissburg – Professor, School of Biology, Co-Director, Center for Biologically Inspired Design.

Hongbin Cao – Professor, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Xin Xiao – Professor, Institute of Process Engineering, Chinese Academy of Sciences.

Jiuju Cai – Professor, State Environmental Protection Key Laboratory of Eco-Industry, Institute of Thermal and Environmental Engineering, Northeastern University.

Environmental engineers have historically been tasked with managing pollution either once it has been released into the environment, or, more recently, at its source before release. The recommendations in this report are meant to show the necessity for the profession to evolve in a more holistic direction. Professor Crittenden says of the report, “The field of environmental engineering has made remarkable strides in the last five decades. But, we are rapidly approaching constraints and tipping points that our profession is ill equipped to deal with. The vision of the future for environmental engineering laid out in this report will help guide today’s educators and academics in fostering the next generation of environmental engineers that will build a world where we can create knowledge and technology to improve the human condition and the environment. This is a world where people and ecosystems can symbiotically benefit each other.”

Input was gathered from the Association of Environmental Engineering and Science Professors, the broader scientific community, nongovernmental organizations, and the public at large. The five grand challenges discussed in this report were distilled from over 450 submitted ideas. “I believe this is a seminal report because it is ambitious and game changing. While it respects the history of the environmental engineering profession, it recognizes that going forward new directions are required in education, research, and practice. To my knowledge, it is the first document of its type to embed climate change and sustainability within its goals for the future. It was a pleasure to serve on the committee with so many outstanding colleagues, including our own John Crittenden,” says Dr. Clough.

Founded in 1863 as a result of an Act of Congress that was approved by Abraham Lincoln, the National Academy of Sciences, which includes the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine, is charged with "providing independent, objective advice to the nation on matters related to science and technology. … to provide scientific advice to the government 'whenever called upon' by any government department."

Professor John C. Crittenden is the Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, Hightower Chair in Environmental Techniques, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Environmental Technologies, and Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

G. Wayne Clough is Secretary Emeritus of the Smithsonian Institution and President Emeritus of the Georgia Institute of Technology.  Clough was president of Georgia Tech from 1994 to 2008, and Secretary of the Smithsonian Institution from 2008 to 2014.

Report citation:
Domenico Grasso, John C. Crittenden, G. Wayne Clough, et al., “Environmental Engineering for the 21st Century:  Addressing Grand Challenges,” National Academies Press, ISBN 978-0-309-47652-2, 2018, 120 pgs., DOI:  10.17226/25121.

“The overarching goal is trying to figure out a way to use wastewater nutrients to grow produce in urban areas so we can decentralize vegetable production,” Chen said. A grant provides $5 million over five years from the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA) to create and operate a hydroponic growing system using domestic wastewater extracted from the Georgia Tech campus sewer system. It is the largest USDA award Georgia Tech has received. 

“Currently we treat wastewater by taking all the nutrients from it,” said Chen. “Then we have to use an energy-intensive process to synthesize and add fertilizer to the food production process.” 

The proposed anaerobic membrane biological treatment process will transfer organic contaminants into biogas and remove pathogens such as E. coli to ensure food safety, but the nutrients (nitrogen, phosphorus and potassium, for example) will remain. By using a smart membrane or nanomaterials to extract trace contaminants like endocrine disruptors, heavy metals and pharmaceuticals, the nutrients that are left can be pumped through a vertical hydroponic system to grow produce without adding fertilizer. The project will monitor water and produce quality and measure contamination from chemicals and microbes continuously.

The overall goal, said Chen, is to show that using the nutrients and water resources from domestic wastewater (DWW) in an urban controlled environment agriculture system (CEAs) is socially, environmentally and financially sustainable and can easily be replicated in other cities. The project will closely track nutrient requirements, energy needed to produce, handle and transport the fruits and vegetables, and water needs to determine what resources are needed to support this kind of CEA system (DWW-CEAs).

Ecological network analysis for DWW-CEA coupling will track material and energy flows across components that produce, consume and recycle food. Using a geodesign approach, Chen’s team will then compare data from traditional agriculture and DWW-CEAs to see how the system performs and how it could be designed to perform better in terms of water, energy and nutrient needs.

“Our model will have options to calculate energy consumption for the system, water consumption, water balance and nutrient balance,” said Chen. “We’ll conduct a life-cycle analysis and techno-economic analysis to evaluate whether this type of system will be commercially feasible or profitable in different locations, not just Atlanta.”

Chen will use machine learning in the controlled growing environment to seek a “recipe” for each plant type: the ideal amount of nutrients, growing temperature and humidity needed for lettuce, for example, so that each head of greens will taste the same. The project also provides an opportunity to test a number of other technologies, such as using solar power for cooling or biogas extracted from the wastewater and discarded food to power a micro chiller. 

Of course, showing that such a DWW-CEA system is feasible and profitable is one hurdle – another is getting consumers on board with the way the produce is produced. “If we are going to decentralize this system, what are the implications for policy related issues?” Chen asked. “Will people buy products produced by wastewater?” The project will involve working with a number of collaborators at Georgia Tech and in Atlanta, including Kaye Husbands Fealing, professor and chair of the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech, and the Mayor’s Office of Sustainability.

“We want to change the current wastewater treatment practice, step back a little bit and think outside the box,” Chen said. “This could have a big impact locally, regionally or even nationally and internationally.”

This research is supported by the U.S. Department of Agriculture’s (USDA) National Institute of Food and Agriculture (NIFA), Agriculture and Food Research Initiative (AFRI) Water for Food Production Systems (Grant 2018-68011-28371). 

Research News
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Media Relations Contact: Kenna Simmons (404-894-6015) (kenna.simmons@comm.gatech.edu)

As residents will tell you, sometimes those paths can be a bumpy, cracked mess. But it’s difficult for cities to keep track. That’s why Guensler and his students have been working for several years on a simple system to help communities assess the condition of their sidewalks.

Their latest project includes cataloging 200 miles in an Atlanta suburb in Cobb County.

Along with graduate student Daniel Walls, Guensler demonstrated the system to WABE’s Stephannie Stokes:

As it rolls along, the tablet records video of the sidewalk and any rumbling the wheelchair experiences. The computer also documents the location.

Guensler’s students then review the data back at the lab to create an inventory of sidewalks — and any problems, like cracks or obstructions.

Guensler said cities can use the inventories to make sure they’re meeting federal requirements to accommodate people with disabilities.

Otherwise, local governments can face lawsuits, like Atlanta has.

The city, for its part, has said it is working to comply with federal rules. And Guensler said cities around the country — not just Atlanta — have neglected their sidewalks.

Sidewalks tend only to have a lifespan of about 40 years.

“They’re really not difficult to maintain. It’s just that we don’t consider them to be streets,” Guensler said.

In other words, cities don’t consider the sidewalks to be part of their overall transportation system.

Walls, the graduate student, said this research has made him pay more attention.

“It’s almost impossible for me to not recognize bad sidewalks now,” Walls said.

Story courtesy of GT School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.
Listen to the full story on WABE NPR Radio.

Concurrent to Weissburg’s appointment, five others were named Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems Faculty (BBISS) Fellows:

• Kate Pride Brown (School of History and Sociology),
• Emanuele Massetti (School of Public Policy),
• Yuanzhi Tang (School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences),
• Cassandra Telenko (Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering), and
• Perry Yang (School of City & Regional Planning).

In addition to their own work, Brook Byers Professors and BBISS Fellows serve as a board of advisors to the BBISS, and help to advance its vision, mission, values, and objectives across the community of sustainability-minded researchers, educators, and students at Georgia Tech.

Additional Links:
http://sustainable.gatech.edu/profs_fellows

The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems promotes comprehensive and innovative systems-based approaches to address the challenges and opportunities inherent in achieving a sustainable and prosperous future. The BBISS enhances Georgia Tech’s research, education, and service missions, and campus operations through leadership, communications, development, and decision making inspired and defined by the principles of sustainability. More information is available at the BBISS Website.

Professor Thomas holds a joint appointment in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial & Systems Engineering and in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Tech. Dr. Thomas's research interests include energy systems, sustainability, industrial ecology, technology assessment, international security, and science and technology policy. Her current research projects include the environmental impacts of biofuels and electricity system policy and planning. Dr. Thomas is a member of the USDA/DOE Biomass Research and Development Technical Advisory Committee. In 2004-2005, she was the American Physical Society Congressional Science Fellow. Dr. Thomas is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, and of the American Physical Society, and has been a Member of the U.S. EPA Science Advisory Board. She is currently a member of the board of the Southeast Energy Efficiency Alliance and a member of the Federation of American Scientists Board of Experts. She has previously worked at the Department of Engineering and Public Policy at Carnegie Mellon University, and at Princeton University’s Environmental Institute. Dr. Thomas received a B.A. in physics from Swarthmore College and a Ph.D. in theoretical physics from Cornell University.

• Faizah Asif, Biological Sciences
• Anneke Augenbroe, Biomedical Engineering
• Leo Chen, Computer Science
• Braden Gilleland, Mechanical Engineering
• Kian Halim, Computational Media
• Dongyuan He, Electrical and Computer Engineering
• Hayden Mcleod, Business Administration
• Ellen Murphy, Environmental Engineering
• Gigi Pavur, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences
• Benjamin Tasistro-Hart, Architecture

Through their research, the Fellows are learning about Living Buildings, performance dashboards, systems and complexity, and the design of human interfaces. Their work is being facilitated by Drs. Michael Chang (Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems) and Dana Hartley (School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences). Beyond the inaugural year, it is the intent that this pilot project will serve as the basis for a new Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) that allows undergraduates to earn academic credits by working on faculty-led research projects over multiple semesters, with students participating for up to three years.

Take a look at the abstract for more details: ScienceDirect

Xu, M.; Li, R.; Crittenden, J. C.; Chen, Y.-S. CO2 emissions embodied in China's exports from 2002 to 2008: a structural decomposition analysis. Energy Policy 2011, 39 (11), 7381-7388, DOI:  10.1016/j.enpol.2011.08.068.

• American municipalities pay $1 billion a year to haul food waste to rapidly filling landfills where it decomposes releasing greenhouse gases. 
• The substitution of synthetic fertilizers with an organic alternative prevents pollution of waterways from runoff and results in healthier and more productive plants.
• Organic fertilizers also reduce dependence on fossil fuels and reduce greenhouse gas emissions because their production is energy intensive and uses natural gas as a feedstock.

• Gray Ghost Ventures
• MaRC Sustainable Design & Manufacturing
• Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
• College of Management
• Tedd Munchak Chair in Entrepreneurship
• Institute for Leadership and Entrepreneurship

• I2S Competition Page
• Urban RePeel Poster
• Urban RePeel Short Video 
• Georgia Tech News Item

Some may regard building dashboards as a worthy, but unsuccessful experiment of many green buildings in the recent past.  However, Chang and Hartley think the Living Building puts the idea of a dashboard in a new context.  Chang explains, “Most building dashboards lose their novelty soon after building commissioning and become stale, obsolete, or inoperable within a few months of their debut. In contrast, this living monitoring system will adapt as the building moves through its lifecycle, as its occupants transition through, and as the climate and environment in which it resides evolves. Students in the future may have very different interests and needs than students today. They will benefit from the efforts of those that came before them, but so too will they be able to reconfigure the monitoring system – and hence the building also – to their contemporary interests.”

Keeping students involved in refining and reformatting the dashboard will initially be supported by re-centering the existing course, EAS 2420: Environmental Measures of Urban and Regional Change, taught by Chang and Hartley.  Here the SURFers will learn the fundamentals of systems thinking as it applies to the urban environment, and how to apply these principles through the creation and execution of complex computer models.  EAS 2420 will be required for all future SURFers.  In addition, SURFers will meet for weekly “hack-a-thons” during the Fall 2017 and Spring 2018 semesters.

Beginning in the Fall of 2018 the pilot project will phase into the development and launch of a new Vertically Integrated Project (VIP).  Chang and Hartley envision that the project can run in perpetuity as a VIP as a means to solve the stale building dashboard problem.  A living building should have a living monitoring system which will address the cascade of scales as they impact the Living Building through each of the seven performance metrics, or “petals,” that are key to the Living Building Challenge: Site, Water, Energy, Health, Materials, Equity, and Beauty.

For BBISS researchers, the explosion of urban growth in China presents a unique opportunity to propose, design, test, and build more sustainable infrastructure systems whose elements behave more like organisms within an ecological system than machines along a conveyor belt.  Please take a look at a survey of BBISS’s work, past and present in China.

• BBISS director, John C. Crittenden, helped to organize and will be delivering a plenary talk at the upcoming International Conference on Sustainable Infrastructure (ICSI).  The conference will be held in Shenzhen, China from October 17th – 19^th, 2016.
• A paper was recently published in The Journal of Cleaner Production by BBISS researchers in collaboration with colleagues in China entitled, “Courtyard Integrated Ecological System:  An Ecological Engineering Practice in China and its Economic-Environmental Benefit.”  This paper analyzes the ecological and financial benefits of integrating energy, water and waste flows into household scale hydroponic, aquaponics, solar, grey/blackwater, compost, and agricultural systems.
• $1 Million Joint US – China Study on Sustainable Steel Manufacturing  - A multidisciplinary research team from Georgia Tech has just been awarded $500,000 over four years to study ways in which steel production in China can be made more sustainable.  The grant is being awarded by the National Science Foundation (NSF).  It is matched with a research grant from the National Natural Science Foundation of China (NSFC) to a group of Chinese investigators from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and China’s Northeastern University.
• Professor Crittenden travels frequently to China.  On one such trip in 2014 he was inducted into the Chinese Academy of Sciences, one of 16 non-Chinese scientists to receive the honor that year.  He also delivered a plenary talk at the International Conference on Engineering Science and Technology 2014 (ICEST 2014) in Beijing.  It was during that trip that he had the honor of meeting the President of China, Xi Jinping.
• Tsinghua University Students visit BBISS - Eight students and one faculty member from Tsinghua University’s School of Environment visited Georgia Tech for two weeks as part of a student exchange program. It was funded by a cost sharing collaboration between Tsingua University and the BBISS. The exchange provided a cultural and academic forum for students studying many aspects of sustainable urban systems to learn from each other while gaining a cultural perspective that only international travel can foster.
• In 2012, a delegation from Georgia Tech participated in “The China-US Workshop on Environmental Protection and Urban Sustainable Development” in Tianjin.  It was co-organized by the Chinese National Natural Science Foundation and the U.S. National Science Foundation and co-hosted by Tianjin University and Georgia Institute of Technology.  The U.S. delegation of investigators are part of an NSF funded project from the Emerging Frontiers in Research and Innovation - Resilient and Sustainable Infrastructures (EFRI-RESIN) program called, “Sustainable Infrastructures for Energy and Water Supply (SINEWS).”   The Chinese delegation is affiliated with the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) at Tianjin University.

When he first entered the professional world, the primary focus of his work was developing technologies to meet regulations. The goal was not to reduce carbon or water footprints but rather to reduce fuel consumption. Even though environmentalism wasn’t driving his work, the focus on efficiency did have the secondary benefit of reducing environmental impacts. Dr Crittenden, “I wasn’t making a big difference. So the next step up is beginning to look at sustainability issues.” Sustainability issues get you to look at three things: the environment, human health, and the economy. At this point, Dr. Crittenden started looking into how to make urban systems more sustainable. Infrastructure created to support these urban systems uses an enormous amount of materials and there is much work to be done to make infrastructure systems sustainable.

Since 2009, Dr. Crittenden has led the BBISS at Georgia Tech.  He took a moment to describe some of the Institute's projects:

"BBISS has worked on problems such as the decentralization of energy and water. In the past our infrastructure was optimized in a silo fashion, where each provider focuses specifically on their product. We look at connecting those and optimizing the system as a whole. An example that we have looked into is a combined heating cooling and power system. Basically it is a device that creates electrical energy and gives off heat. If this is close to where you live, then you can utilize that heat. In terms of water, Atlanta gets about 45 inches of rainwater per year. According to our calculations that could provide 40-50 percent of water demands. Collecting that water for use also reduces the energy impact associated with getting water because it no longer needs to be pumped from a plant to your sink. All of these play into community design which is truly dictated by what the people living there want. For a grant, we are analyzing surveys from the Atlanta Regional Commission to help determine the best way to integrate more sustainable systems into an already large infrastructure system. We have learned that the adoption rate of technologies is higher when the technologies are provided in packages and systems."

As Dr. Crittenden began to dig into the nitty gritty of his projects, I asked him to talk about sustainability from a broad perspective. He came back with a unique definition of sustainability derived from his years of engineering experience. He stated, “To achieve overall sustainability, we need to change the anthroposphere to exist within the confines of nature. That means two things: man’s activities cannot overwhelm the natural cycles . . . [and] we must use renewable resources.” He followed saying, “this is not even considering the social aspect.” He elaborated by describing how humans are interfering with and abusing natural cycles. "The cycle for phosphorus is disrupted by mining it to use as a fertilizer; interrupting the carbon cycle is causing global warming; the water cycle that shows such a misalignment of resources that many places in the world don’t have access to water. In terms of using renewable resources, only about 20 percent of the 79 gigatons of material in the world are renewable." He emphasized that society has to work on closing the loop and the life cycle of those materials.

From here, Dr. Crittenden broke into how to think about sustainability:

"What is the difference between a traditional engineer and someone who focuses on sustainable engineering? I’ll tell you. An example is the New York water supply. So they were going to decide how to treat the water that’s coming down from the Adirondacks into the city and how they were going to provide safe water. And the main concern was turbidity (particles) and pathogens. So if you are a run of the mill, ordinary engineer who is focused on disciplinarily and water treatment, your solution would be to build a water filtration system. Wrong. You need to go upstream and find where the particles and pathogens come from then you find out if I pay the farmers to have easements near waterway and protect the watershed, I’m not going to have any particles and I’m not going to have any pathogens. And I don’t need to build a water filtration plant. If you have been trained in the discipline, you tend to really focus on that as a solution. As opposed to taking a step back and asking what is the problem, what is the whole list of solutions you could have then boom you see which ones are going to have greater sustainability performance." He elaborated by explaining that sustainability is not a field in itself, but rather an idea to be applied to other fields.

When I asked about the global environmental goals and initiatives, he became a realist and said that the world will not be able to achieve the goals of the Paris Climate Accords “by any stretch of the imagination.” In fact, Dr. Crittenden believes the current line of thought is not good enough to solve the biggest issues of our time. He saw a big problem with the G12 discussing how to make our society more sustainable even though they are largely the cause of environmental issues for the underdeveloped world which is the most affected by climate change. This disparity shows that no one is having the right conversation about how sustainable the global market economy is. The conversation is not there. People are thinking more about making a plastic bottle out of plants.

In the not-too-distant future, water and energy harvested by individuals, communities and other non-traditional systems – think rain barrels, grey water recycling, solar panels and windmills – may be integrated into centralized municipal networks.

With these added resources flowing into existing municipal systems, water and energy supplies around the world could become more sustainable, more resilient, and more secure in the face of potential natural disasters and possible security threats.

However, according to School of Computational Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Bistra Dilkina, getting to a point where this is possible on a broad scale is not going to be easy.

“While the benefits of these integrated systems will be huge, there are also many potential problems to be solved,” said Dilkina. “Without careful planning and design there could be unintended consequences such as unexpected interdependencies, over-production, conflicts in resource acquisition, and an overall greater use of resources.”

To better understand the complexities of integrating decentralized resources with existing resource networks, Dilkina, along with postdoctoral fellow Zhongming Lu of the Brook Byers Institute of Sustainable Systems and others, is undertaking a two-year, $246,500-plus project titled, “Sustainable and Resilient Design of Interdependent Water and Energy Systems at the Infrastructure-Human-Resource Nexus."

The project is funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF) and is one of 15 projects being funded this year as part of a recently announced $22.7 million investment to strengthen the nation's critical infrastructure. This is a collaborative project with a complementary grant led by a research team at the University of New Hampshire (UNH).

"The projects being funded…are making it possible to deeply embed computation into physical systems and improve the safety, security and resilience of our critical infrastructures," said Jim Kurose, NSF's assistant director for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. "These 'smart' critical infrastructures will in turn positively impact many aspects of our daily lives and have profound benefits for our nation."

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According to Dilkina, the project’s principal investigator, one of the primary goals of the Georgia Tech and the UNH projects is to be able to inform decision makers about possible outcomes and tradeoffs in different decentralized water and energy adoption scenarios, taking into account the interdependence between water and energy infrastructures.

“The project facilitates the planning and design of decentralized systems, and informs policy development to create more sustainable and resilient infrastructure systems for urban communities,” said Dilkina.

To achieve the project goals, the research team will use survey tools and a crowdsourcing platform to engage stakeholders and gather data. This information will be used to develop spatial agent-based models, spatial optimization models, and other machine learning and computational methods that can reveal patterns, trajectories, and anomalies in a variety of usage scenarios.

“The analysis will be done using future demographic, climate, and technology scenarios,” said Dilkina. “In the end, we will better understand and be able to characterize possible best-case outcomes, inform policy decisions, and determine the impact of incentive/disincentive programs.”

Atlanta and Boston have been selected to participate in this project as test beds to develop the required modeling framework.

The ARCS Foundation, Inc. is a national organization dedicated to supporting the best and brightest U.S. graduate and undergraduate scholars by providing financial awards in science, engineering and medical research.  The Foundation is run by more than 1500 women volunteer members from 16 regional chapters.  The 150 member Atlanta chapter is committed to providing support for outstanding scholars from Emory University, the Georgia Institute of Technology, Morehouse College and the University of Georgia.

More than conventional agriculture, urban agriculture presents the greatest and most immediate opportunity to fully integrate food, energy, and water systems owing to the proximity of human, industrial, water, power, and transportation resources in cities. But while small scale urban agriculture is growing as a practice, progress at the commercial scale is hampered by many technological and knowledge barriers. The workshops surfaced, and the report conveys, 25 research topics that address barriers to commercial scale urban agriculture and the integration of food, energy, and water systems. Included among the 25 are:

• Urban planning models that include commercial scale urban agriculture;
• Effective data and knowledge sharing methods and tools that bridge the linguistic, social, economic, and technological gaps that exist between the Food, Energy, and Water domains;
• A means for identifying the appropriate balance of technology, affordability, and maintainability for agricultural technologies;
• A research program that focuses on the ideal engineered characteristics of plant biology, environment and lighting, resource flows, and feedback/control;
• Planning tools for integrating systems across boundaries rather than focusing on self-sustained systems;
• Life cycle assessment models that balance food, water, and energy; and  
• Models that integrate food production, energy and water use, and transport with nutrition and diet

The first workshop was held in Atlanta, Georgia on December 8, 2015.  A diverse group of urban agriculture practitioners, entrepreneurs, researchers, local government officials, and representatives from utilities and non-profit organizations were asked to share their vision for the future of urban agriculture, and the barriers that might prevent movement from the present state to a future state where urban agriculture can compete with conventional rural agriculture at a commercial scale. In a second workshop held in Washington, D.C. on February 11, 2016, an expanded group was asked to shape the challenges identified in the first workshop into research questions and programs of research through which the NSF could channel research funding.  The report captures, organizes, and conveys all the ideas expressed at the workshops, and channels the findings into 25 recommendations that the NSF can use to inform its plans for future investments in its new (as of FY17) Innovations in Food, Energy, and Water Systems (INFEWS) research initiative.

The middle of 2009 saw the balance shift from a majority of people living in rural settings to cities as the dominant form of human habitation. The number of megacities, those with a population of ten million people or more, went from 2 in 1950 to 35 in 2015.  This trend is not going away.  In fact, it’s accelerating.  One of the consequences of this trend is that about 12% of the global population lives in “informal settlements” near city centers that often have substandard or non-existent infrastructure.  Cities offer us many advantages over rural living.  They are centers of art, culture, commerce, employment, education, convenience, proximity, comfort and opportunity.  These are the intended benefits of cities which attract people to become urbanites.  Along with these benefits are a whole host of unintended consequences that require mitigation, such as poor air quality, water pollution, heat island effect, suburban sprawl, concentrated resource use, and concentrated wastes of all kinds, to name only a few.

Cities are currently designed and built as agglomerations of stand-alone technological systems.  There is one that transports clean water to us, another to transport dirty water away from us.  One system delivers electrical energy, another pipes natural gas to us.  Networks of roads, rails, sidewalks, parking lots, and gas stations enable us to freely move about.  Global networks of producers, suppliers, retailers, and restaurateurs give those with the means access to any kind of food prepared in any style no matter the season.  But, of course, we must attend to all those unintended consequences.  The current practice of designing, building, and operating infrastructure is unsustainable. Our failure to recognize the interdependencies between infrastructure components results in a sub-optimal system that is viable only because of the availability of cheap fossil fuels, non-renewable resources, and the externalization of costs, risks, and harms. 

The concept of “Smart Cities” is showing promise by enabling the flow of information in, out, and among the various urban systems. This is proving to be useful in developing mitigation strategies, but it only serves to highlight that cities are not really a collection of systems that behave in a linear fashion even though they are designed that way. Making cities smarter is a step in the right direction, but does not adequately deal with the mounting unintended consequences that emerge alongside the intended ones.

It is becoming more obvious, as the complex flows of material, energy, information, and nutrients through cities are studied, that cities are non-linear, complex systems of systems that exhibit emergent properties.  An emergent property is one that arises from the interactions of the components of a system that aren’t obvious from studying those components in isolation. For this reason, a traditional reductive engineering approach, that divides responsibility for individual systems amongst the relevant engineering disciplines, is showing its limitations in the face of increasing complexity.

Gigatechnology is a newly integrative and use-inspired science committed to the study of the interconnections and interdependencies inherent in very large systems, and the properties that emerge from these interactions.  Some of the questions that the study of gigatechnology will begin to answer are:

• How can an ecological paradigm be used to understand urban infrastructure systems?
• What new technologies are needed to measure, model, and manage infrastructure systems-of-systems?
• What and how do properties emerge from infrastructure system’s interactions with other systems?
• How can the infrastructure ecosystem be made more sustainable, resilient, and productive?
• How best can we develop a pedagogy to teach the design and engineering of massive, open and complex infrastructure systems?

Engineers are rarely challenged to address infrastructures as a system of systems.  Infrastructure is typically designed to capitalize on economies of scale (horizontal integration), and/or publicly-owned, centralized monopolies (vertical integration).  Applying the notion of integration to gigatechnology systems leads us to understand them as more than horizontal or vertical, but “massively integrated.”

Designing a massively integrated system of systems that optimizes for more positive consequences and interactions while greatly minimizing the negative consequences seems like it would be an unbearably complex task.  However, a model for how this might be possible already exists in the form of functioning ecosystems.  Nature has been operating massively integrated systems regeneratively for a couple of billion years.  While gigatechnologies like cities are manmade, the application of an ecological paradigm in their design offers us strategies that could yield unprecedented levels of sustainability.

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The editors of Elementa embrace the idea that basic knowledge can foster sustainable solutions for society.  The journal’s focus will be original research reporting on new knowledge of the Earth’s physical, chemical, and biological systems; interactions between human and natural systems; and steps that can be taken to mitigate and adapt to global change.  Elementa will report on fundamental advancements in research organized initially into six knowledge domains.  Each of the six knowledge domains is edited by one of the journal’s founding editors.  The six domains are:

• Atmospheric Science – Detlev Helmig, University of Colorado Boulder

• Earth and Environmental Science – Joel D. Blum, University of Michigan

• Ecology – Donald R. Zak, University of Michigan

• Ocean Science – Jody W. Deming, University of Washington

• Sustainable Engineering – Michael Chang, Georgia Institute of Technology

• Sustainability Sciences – Anne Kapuscinski and David R. Peart, Dartmouth

Dr. Chang, in a Q & A on the journal’s website, puts the new publication model in context in this way, “Elementa is a ground-up reinvention of the way the research community communicates even as it holds onto the requirement of rigor in peer review. And given these changes, it is wholly appropriate then that Elementa is about the Science of the Anthropocene. The speed and magnitude of change occurring in the publishing paradigm is an excellent metaphor for the speed and magnitude of change occurring on the planet. New challenges call for new solutions.”

Submissions will be accepted beginning in April 2013 with publishing dates for the first articles in July.

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Like Georgia Tech, most universities now have sustainability initiatives that work internally with their faculty and students.  Likewise, private and public organizations have their own education and training programs related to sustainability and energy.  Each has been successful within its niche and with its own constituency, but to date there has been no direct connection between any of these programs.  As one unit of the system graduates mechanical engineers educated in sustainability and another unit produces mechanics trained in sustainability, it is often left to employers and the invisible hand of the economy to coordinate their practice and knowledge, and to fill any gaps. VIRTUES will improve the state’s workforce development capabilities by producing an educational “roadmap” for creating the type of vertically integrated workforce that is required for the “Next Industrial Revolution.”

In 2013, VIRTUES will host four workshops around the state of Georgia with the purpose of identifying gaps in the current higher educational system and needs for the future.  The workshops will invite participation from all the universities and colleges in the state, in-state private sector employers especially in manufacturing, state and regional economic development offices, and state, county, and municipal officials.

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See the Ray C. Anderson Foundation press release here.
See the Georgia Tech news story here.

Computational sustainability is a young field of study.  Highly trans-disciplinary research teams focus on mathematical and computational models to aid in management and decision making for the major challenges related to sustainability, such as poverty mitigation, renewable energy, and biodiversity conservation.  Computational sustainability problems tend to be dynamic and complex, often utilizing combinatorial decision making algorithms, big data, citizen science, dynamical models, machine learning, and optimization.

CompSusNet is one of three Expeditions in Computing grants awarded by the NSF.  These grants represent some of the NSF’s largest investments in computer science research.  The two other 2015 Expeditions in Computing grants went to “The Science of Deep Specification” at Princeton University, which aims to eliminate software “bugs” that can lead to security vulnerabilities, and “The Evolvable Living Computer Project” at Boston University, which will study which computing principles can be applied repeatedly and reliably to synthetic biology.

Dilkina’s expertise and research interests, as well as the resources available at Georgia Tech (such as the Institute for Data and High Performance Computing), dovetail well with goals of the Computational Sustainability Network grant.  Dilkina’s project focuses on developing decision support models to optimize biodiversity conservation by balancing habitat connectivity with other urban planning considerations.  As human-centered landscapes become more developed, wildlife habitat becomes fragmented and isolated.  Maintaining landscape connectivity has been shown to be an effective strategy to preserve biodiversity, however it is extremely complex to implement. Together with ecologists and computer scientists at Cornell University, Dilkina will develop a habitat connectivity-focused conservation plan for the Andean bear populations in Ecuador.  However, the models and techniques that will be developed will not necessarily be specific to species, ecosystem, or spatial scale.

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Two days later, Professor Crittenden will speak at a forum to celebrate the 30th anniversary of the School of Environment at Tsinghua University.  His talk is entitled, “Advances in Advanced Oxidation Processes for Water Treatment." This will be followed by a meeting of the Research Center for Eco-Environmental Sciences (RCEES) at the Chinese Academy of Sciences which Professor Crittenden will co-chair.  The meeting will focus on an NSF funded pilot project entitled “Ecological Infrastructure Engineering for Sustainable Development of Chinese Cities,” and is organized to facilitate collaboration between Georgia Tech researchers and researchers in China.  This kick-off meeting will also be attended by Georgia Tech faculty members Subhro Guhathakurta, and Perry Yang. The following faculty will be involved over the term of the project:

• Godfried L. Augenbroe - College of Architecture, Building energy simulation.
• Bert Bras - School of Mechanical Engineering, Computer-aided engineering, design and manufacturing; environmentally conscious design, design for recycling and robust design.
• Marilyn Brown - School of Public Policy, Climate change, market analysis of new and improved energy technology and policy analysis.
• Miroslav Begovic - School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Analysis, monitoring and control of voltage stability in electrical power systems.
• Yongsheng Chen - School of Civil & Environmental Eng., Membrane technology, nanomaterials, and sustainability.
• John C. Crittenden - School of Civil & Environmental Eng., Sustainable systems, pollution prevention, and infrastructure ecology.
• Steven French - School of City & Regional Planning, Geographic information systems, planning support systems, sustainability.
• Richard M. Fujimoto - College of Computing, Execution of discrete-event simulation programs on parallel and distributed computing platforms.
• Subhrajit Guhathakurta - School of City & Regional Planning,Geographic information systems, planning support systems, sustainability.
• Haesun Park - College of Computing, Numerical algorithms; data and visual analytics; scientific computing; bioinformatics; missing value estimation; text analysis and parallel computing.
• Perry Yang - School of City & Regional Planning, Ecological urban planning, landscape ecology, urban ecology, and spatial analysis.
• Valerie Thomas - School of Industrial & Systems Engineering, Environmental impacts and costs of energy systems, environmental impacts of products and services, and the effects of policies and technologies on energy systems.

Crittenden will then travel to Northeast Normal University to establish a collaboration project on chemical oxidation processes for water treatment.

The tour will culminate in the 12th General Assembly of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) scientists and engineers.  Being elected into the Chinese Academy of Engineering is the highest academic title for the field of engineering in China.  "I am deeply honored to be inducted into the Chinese Academy of Engineering," Crittenden said.  "It is my hope that through my involvement in the CAE that I may work with my colleagues to further the development of sustainable cities that will benefit, not only the coming generations of the people of China, but all the future city dwellers in our rapidly urbanizing world." 

This lifelong honor is granted every two years to no more than 60 people per cycle. To date, there are 807 members. This year's group of 51 includes four from the United States (one of which is Crittenden), one from Australia, and one from Denmark, bringing the total number of foreign CAE inductees to date to 45.  The CAE extends membership to prominent scientists from other countries to bolster international collaboration in engineering, science and technology.  560 candidates were considered for the honor during this cycle. The Chinese Academy of Engineering was originally established in 1994 and is an institution of the State Council of China.  The CAE is China’s equivalent to the National Academy of Engineering (NAE) in the United States, to which Crittenden was elected in 2002.  The current president of the CAE is Zhou Ji.

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References:
[1] 1 Gigaton, abbreviated as Gt, is equal to 1 billion metric tons (10^9). 
[2] Ashby, M.F., Materials and the Environment: Eco-informed Material Choice. Elsevier, 2012, ISBN 0123859727. 
[3] Xu, M., Crittenden, J.C., Chen, Y., Thomas, V.M., Noonan, D.S., Desroches, R., Brown, M.A., French, S.P., 2010. “Gigaton Problems Need Gigaton Solutions,” Environ. Sci. Technol. 44, 4037–4041.

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•  Baabak Ashuri, School of Building Construction, College of Architecture 
•  Atalay Atasu, Scheller College of Business
• Kevin Caravati, Georgia Tech Research Institute
• Kim Cobb, School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences, College of Sciences
• Bistra Dilkina, School of Computational Science & Engineering, College of Computing 
• Ellen Dunham-Jones, College of Architecture
• Tom Fuller, School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering, College of Engineering
• Ashok Goel, School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing
• Randy Guensler, School of Civil & Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering
• Daniel Matisoff, School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Juan Moreno-Cruz, School of Economics, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Marc Weissburg, School of Biology, College of Sciences

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One of the most unique aspects of this work is its multi-disciplinary nature.  The project team spans across ten different units, from five of the six colleges at Georgia Tech, plus the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).  The project team is:

•  John Crittenden (PI) – Dir., Brook Byers Institute of Sustainable Systems, CEE

• Baabak Ashuri (Co-PI) – Dir., Economics of the Sustainable Built Environment Lab, BC

• Richard Fujimoto (Co-PI) - Computational Science and Engineering

• Marc Weissburg (Co-PI) – Co-Dir., Center for Biologically Inspired Design, Biology

• Jennifer Clark (Co-PI) – Dir., Center for Urban Innovation, Public Policy

• Miroslav Begovic - Electrical and Computer Engineering

• Nancey Green Leigh – Assoc. Dean for Research, College of Arch., City and Regional Planning

• Subhrajit Guhathakurta – Dir., Center for Geographic Information Systems, CRP

• Tom McDermott - Deputy Director and Director of Research, GTRI

• Valerie Thomas - Industrial and Systems Engineering

• Bert Bras – Dir., Sustainable Design and Manufacturing Program, Mechanical Engineering

The main hypothesis of this project is that infrastructure systems that are interconnected and decentralized are more resilient than those that are isolated and centralized.  A secondary hypothesis is that decentralized infrastructure systems are also more adaptable and scalable.  However, the means to assess these hypotheses are not readily at hand.  Currently, infrastructure systems are designed, built, and operated as independent entities with little consideration for how they interact with other infrastructure systems, or even within their socio-economic context.  This project will develop that capability and then use it to understand the resilience of centralized versus decentralized infrastructure systems at the metropolitan, city, and community level. Atlanta, GA will serve as a test bed.

There are 4 main research thrusts of this project.

1.   A functional model for water, energy, and transportation infrastructures will be built based in system dynamics.  This model will be used to assess how infrastructure systems respond and adapt to various stressors under different urban growth scenarios.  

2.  A model to quantify the resilience of water, energy, and transportation infrastructures will be developed with an ecological engineering approach to resilience.  Proposed designs will be benchmarked with this model taking into account climate change stressors and a demographically representative cohort of stakeholders.

3. An agent-based simulation tool of the socio-economic environment will be developed to understand decision-making and system performance under stressors.  This tool will capture the impacts to service amongst the stakeholders, feed decisions back to the systems model, and provide prescriptions for future development/rehabilitation.

4. A model of resilience and sustainability will be developed for water, energy, and transportation infrastructures to assess the effects of climate change stressors like extreme heat events, droughts, and floods and how these infrastructure systems interact with each other under such stresses.

This research represents a new system-of-systems approach to engineering the resilience of critical urban infrastructures.  Developing models which place urban infrastructure systems in context with their physical and socio-economic environments will serve to bridge the gap between social decision making processes and the design of urban systems.  As the world increasingly urbanizes and contends with complex ecological constraints, unique approaches such as this project may contribute to the framing of a national research agenda for integrating urban resilience and sustainability into urban planning.

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With a career spanning 37 years, Crittenden has been a pioneer in the research and development of several key water treatment technologies and processes that are in widespread use today.  Crittenden and his colleagues worked with NASA to alleviate the costs of sending fresh water to the International Space Station by helping to design a water recycling system tailored to treat the impaired waters that are unique to space flight. NASA installed the system on the ISS in 2012 where it is still in use.  Also among his achievements is the 2011 textbook, Water Treatment: Principles and Design, on which he served as senior author.  Crittenden's body of work in pollution prevention and green chemistry led the American Institute of Engineers to award him as one of the 100 Eminent Chemical Engineers in Modern Times.

Crittenden is also distinguished among his peers for his vision and dedication to ensuring the sustainability of urban water resources. In 2008, Crittenden was recruited to Georgia Tech to direct the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems. BBISS was established to take a comprehensive, trans-disciplinary approach in creating technological, management, and policy strategies to ensure a sustainable future. Crittenden aims to understand water resources in context with other major urban infrastructure systems, such as energy and transportation systems. “His work in sustainability is particularly bold and innovative, and will change the way we will promote water security, enhance economic development, and alleviate concerns of wars over water,” said Joseph B. Hughes, Ph.D, P.E., DEE, of Drexel University.

The Clarke Prize will be presented to Crittenden on Friday, October 30, 2015, at the Twenty-Second Annual NWRI Clarke Prize Conference, Lecture, and Award Ceremony, to be held in Huntington Beach, California. Established in 1993, the Clarke Prize is one of only a dozen water related prizes awarded worldwide and has been distinguished by the International Congress of Distinguished Awards as one of the most prestigious awards in the world.

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The National Water Research Institute (NWRI) was founded in 1991 by a group of Southern California water agencies in partnership with the Joan Irvine Smith and Athalie R. Clarke Foundation to promote the protection, maintenance, and restoration of water supplies and to protect the freshwater and marine environments through the development of cooperative research work. NWRI’s member agencies include Inland Empire Utilities Agency, Irvine Ranch Water District, Los Angeles Department of Water and Power, Orange County Sanitation District, Orange County Water District, and West Basin Municipal Water District.

John C. Crittenden, Ph.D., P.E., N.A.E, C.A.E., is the Director of the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems at Georgia Institute of Technology, holds the Hightower Chair, is a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Environmental Technologies, and a professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Tech in Atlanta, Georgia.