The trick is to identify when such attacks are underway.

The Department of Energy has awarded the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) $1.7 million to help detect cyber attacks on our nation’s utility companies.

By partnering with the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering’s National Electric Energy Testing, Research and Applications Center (NEETRAC) and the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI), GTRI will work together with experts in smart grid technology to develop protocols and tools to detect such attacks.

“Utilities and energy delivery systems are unique in several ways,” said GTRI researcher Seth Walters, one of the principal investigators on the project. “They provide distribution over a large geographic area and are composed of disparate components which must work together as the system’s operating state evolves. Relevant security technologies need to work within the bandwidth limitations of these systems in order to see broad adoption and they need to account for the varying security profiles of the components within these power systems.”

To detect adversarial manipulation of the power grid, the cyber security tool suite will consist of advanced modeling and simulation technologies and a network of advanced security sensors capable of acting to protect the power system in real-time on the basis of this modeling and simulation.

Rather than attempting to identify the source of an attack, the system will evaluate the content of information sent to the power system.

“It is impossible to predict what a clever cyber attacker can devise in the future,” said A.P. “Sakis” Meliopoulos, a Georgia Power Distinguished Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), who is part of the team. “A command to the control and operation infrastructure of the system can be evaluated on the basis of its content and the effect on the power system.”

The system will build on past Georgia Tech research into the monitoring, protection, control and operation of electric power utilities and their automation infrastructure, as well as work on information security. Georgia Tech’s power system control and automation laboratory will be used to develop methods to detect intrusion and malicious commands before the system is field demonstrated in an actual utility environment.

“This project is particularly exciting as it integrates GTRI’s cyber security expertise, with the expertise in grid and electrical power of NEETRAC and ECE,” said SEI Executive Director Tim Lieuwen. “A key piece of our energy strategy is promoting certain signature energy areas where Georgia Tech combines unique breadth and depth into best of class capabilities – the area of electrical power is one of those, and this project further demonstrates Georgia Tech’s commitment to this space.”

The project will consist of three phases, which include research and development, test and validation at Georgia Tech, and technology demonstration at operational utility sites with the assistance of multiple utility company partners.

“GTRI’s expertise in systems engineering and cyber security will be a great advantage for execution on this award,” Walters said. “We also have the singular advantage in being able to collaborate with professors from Georgia Tech. The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering was instrumental in bringing emerging research ideas to the proposal narrative.”

GTRI worked with Meliopoulos, ECE Associate Professor Santiago Grijalva and NEETRAC engineer Carson Day, who are experts in power grid and smart grid technology, and Raheem Beyah, an ECE associate professor and an expert in cyber security.

“My group, the Communications Assurance and Performance [CAP] Group, will work with GTRI researchers to develop, test and deploy a context-aware network-based intrusion detection system [NIDS],” Beyah said. “Working with a power grid simulator, the NIDS will have the ability to prevent network packets containing application-layer commands that render the power grid unstable from entering the network.”

A Georgia Power Distinguished Professor and SEI Associate Director, Grijalva will integrate a cyber-power co-simulator where numerous cyber-attack mechanisms can be simulated, including their effects in the physical power infrastructure. He will also develop real-time decision-making algorithms that evaluate the impact of potential cyber-induced power infrastructure malfunction.

“The proposed cybersecurity system is complex, so a disciplined approach to delivering a system of systems which embodies this complexity will be required,” Walters said. “Furthermore, as part of research and development, we will be working to ensure that the tool suite, as conceptualized by the team, remains relevant to current and emerging industry needs.”

Andrew Howard, who heads GTRI’s research on emerging threats and countermeasures, noted that this is a unique part of this proposal. “This proposal isn’t just about the research,” Howard said. “In addition to the extensive modeling and simulation, it’s also about developing a commercialization plan for other utilities to benefit.”

The research described in this news release is supported by the Department of Energy under contract number DE-OE0000673. Any findings or opinions expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the Department of Energy.

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

Media Relations Contacts: Lance Wallace (404-407-7280) (lance.wallace@gtri.gatech.edu) or John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu).

Writer: Robert Nesmith

But after talking with more than a hundred potential users of the device, she learned the real need was for a generic interface system able to connect a wide range of input devices – big button switches, joysticks, sip-and-puff straws and others – to the tablet computers. And it turned out that the market was much larger than Howard imagined, extending to adults with disabilities and potentially even persons with Alzheimer’s.

A professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Howard has now launched a company, Zyrobotics, to commercialize the device, and a prototype has already been developed. The company, run by a former graduate student, won’t be the next IBM, but it will help disabled children do what all kids want to do: play video games and interact with computers.

Assistance with refining the device came through the Innovation Corps (I-Corps™), a National Science Foundation program that helps NSF-funded researchers learn about starting up a company – and by talking to potential customers, determine whether there’s really a market for what they’ve developed.

“Without I-Corps, I wouldn’t have thought to pursue this,” said Howard, who holds the title of Motorola Foundation Professor. “They showed us how to talk about the technology in terms that the general public could understand. And I-Corps made us take a step back and ask if what we had developed was really of value to potential customers.”

I-Corps Innovation

A dozen Georgia Tech teams – each composed of a faculty member, entrepreneurial lead and industry mentor – have now gone through the six-week I-Corps program. About a third of them have, like Howard, revised their plans and decided to move forward with forming a company and creating a product based on the results of NSF-supported research. The program is part of a national effort to turn research discoveries into new companies and new products, supporting economic development and building understanding of what it means to be an entrepreneur.

“Through the Innovation Corps, NSF seeks to accelerate the development of new technologies, products and processes that arise from fundamental research,” said Rathindra (Babu) DasGupta, the NSF’s program director for I-Corps. “The goals of I-Corps are to spur translation of fundamental research, to encourage collaboration between academia and industry, and to train students to understand innovation and entrepreneurship.”

The program provides mentoring and funding designed to move the results of NSF-supported research through the early stages of company formation. “NSF investments strategically strengthen the nation’s innovation ecosystem by addressing the challenges inherent in the early stages of the innovation process,” DasGupta added.

I-Corps at Georgia Tech

Because of its long experience with forming companies from university research, in July 2012 Georgia Tech was selected to be among the first institutions to become ”nodes” teaching the I-Corps curriculum. The program is basically a boot camp that shows what it’s like to form a startup company – and ensures that there’s a real market for a fledgling company’s proposed product. About 25 teams from universities around the country participate each time the program is taught at one of the I-Corps nodes, including Georgia Tech.

“The I-Corps process is very similar to the scientific method, which scientists and engineers are familiar with,” explained Keith McGreggor, who directs the I-Corps program at Georgia Tech. “We use this process to turn fiction – what you might think is true – into fact by doing experiments and testing hypotheses in the real world with customers instead of in the laboratory.”

I-Corps puts faculty members and graduate students through a pressure cooker environment that simulates a real startup. Not everyone is cut out for entrepreneurship, McGreggor noted. Faculty members often have a skill set – collaborating with other researchers, teaching students and publishing papers – that’s different from the skills needed to produce products and services that non-researchers are willing to buy.

The centerpiece of the program is “customer discovery” in which the teams must talk with at least 100 potential customers about their proposed product. This interaction with the real world almost inevitably leads to what I-Corps calls “the pivot,” which occurs when the teams, based on the customer feedback, realize they’ve been developing a product for which there isn’t a market. In many cases, that realization leads to new, and successful, directions for the technology.

“Everyone starts out with one idea about what they want to do, and they almost always change to something else that they are also capable of doing,” McGreggor said. “It can be difficult for people to switch gears, but what’s beautiful about this program is that they do switch.”

At the end of the six weeks, the teams decide whether or not to go forward with their idea. For Georgia Tech teams, fledgling companies that emerge from the process can join VentureLab, a program that helps researchers form companies, create prototypes, bring in experienced management and obtain early-stage funding. VentureLab companies can go on to be members of the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), Georgia Tech’s accelerator program that helps entrepreneurs launch and build successful companies.

Marketing MOFs

Krista Walton and David Sholl used the I-Corps process to confirm the market need for metal-organic frameworks (MOFs), a new materials technology with a broad range of potential market applications. With NSF support, the researchers had developed a way to scale up the synthesis of MOFs, a class of nanomaterials, but weren’t sure what direction to take next – a classic problem for technologies that have many possible applications.

“By talking with more than 100 potential customers, we went through numerous refinements in our understanding of how we can create a sustainable business with our technology,” said Sholl, who is now chair of Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. “We saw over and over again that the issues that obsess researchers doing fundamental research and the issues that matter to customers are often not the same.”

Talking with the customers required a large investment of time, but Sholl – who is also a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Energy Sustainability – was pleased with the level of interest in the technology. The potential customers he and Walton interviewed also identified applications they had never considered.

As a result of the process, Sholl and Walton – an associate professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering – formed Inmondo Tech, and are working with several initial customers to develop a first product.

Smartphone Questions

For Gregory Abowd, the benefits of I-Corps were different. A serial entrepreneur with a record of launching successful companies, Abowd felt he knew how to commercialize technology he developed that helps connect young patients with their doctors through handheld devices. But he wanted to apply I-Corps’ systematic process to starting up a new company.

“I’ve had some successful and unsuccessful startup efforts, but I really didn’t understand what were the important elements of the successful ones,” said Abowd, who is a Regents’ and Distinguished Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. “I was intrigued with the idea of being a little more structured going into this one, because I had learned there are an infinite number of ways to make mistakes in the business world.”

The company, established as L.S.Q. LLC in Georgia, will provide a way to ask questions of smartphone users at times when they aren’t actively using their handheld devices. Building on the original purpose of the technology, which was to boost interaction with children who have chronic diseases, Abowd sees many possible applications, including surveys designed for the small screens of mobile devices.

“We’ll ask questions at a point when people are interacting with their phones, but at a point of pause,” he explained. Abowd has assembled a team and is talking with potential customers. He expects to form a joint venture with a market research firm in early 2014 and develop a product quickly.

Advice to Others

What advice do the teams give faculty members and graduate students thinking about the I-Corps opportunity?

“There is a growing network to help with commercialization, both at Georgia Tech and around the country,” noted Abowd. “A successful startup requires a lot of effort, and it’s more than a full-time job. I-Corps gives you a six-week exposure to help you determine whether this is right for you.”

I-Corps requires a large investment of time, something that can be difficult if faculty members aren’t prepared for it, Howard noted. To be successful, at least one member of the team has to be available nearly full-time during the six-week program.

“I would recommend this 100 percent, and have already talked with other faculty members about I-Corps,” she said. “This process is very different from what we normally do in research and teaching, and it has changed the way I think about what I do. It was a great experience for us.”

I-Corps teams follow a rigorous application process designed to determine whether team members are truly committed to launching and building a startup, McGreggor noted. That can be daunting.

“I-Corps simulates a startup, so it puts a lot of heat on the team to see if they are going to stay together when they get into a company,” he said. “We challenge the researchers in ways that they have probably not been challenged since they were graduate students. It is exquisitely uncomfortable for some people.”

Broader Impacts

I-Corps has also changed the way that Georgia Tech approaches startup companies. Customer discovery and early pivoting to serve the marketplace, for instance, are now at the core of Georgia Tech’s VentureLab and Flashpoint programs, which serve all researchers regardless of their funding sources, McGreggor said.

“Faculty members are forced to look into the face of a world that may not want what they have produced,” McGreggor said. “What we’ve learned is that when entrepreneurs get it wrong, it’s usually because they are building something that nobody really wants. This has really changed our approach to doing things in VentureLab.”

The I-Corps approach has also changed the role of graduate students in the startup process, and opened it more to junior faculty members. In the past, VentureLab had assumed that only tenured faculty would have the time and flexibility to commit to a startup. Now, he says, the program makes no distinction among researchers, and realizes that the graduate students involved in developing a technology may be the right team members to go forward as part of the new company. That makes creating a startup a real alternative to traditional post-graduation opportunities.

Beyond the new enterprises begun, the I-Corps program is having a larger impact on the universities whose faculty members have participated.

“Additional successes of the program have been far-reaching,” said the NSF’s DasGupta. “Faculty are taking what they learned in I-Corps about innovation and technology transfer back to their universities and training their students differently. The participation of students and post-docs in I-Corps has also had favorable impacts: they report that their employability is enhanced by their participating in I-Corps.”

The program was launched in 2011, and continues to evolve as NSF tracks the results. In addition to its teams of researchers, entrepreneurs and mentors, I-Corps is also focusing on nodes and sites to bring the concepts to a larger group of NSF researchers.

“We continue to explore ways to expand the program’s impact nationally, and at the state and local levels,” DasGupta added.

Research News

Georgia Institute of Technology

177 North Avenue

Atlanta, Georgia  30332-0181

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu) (404-894-6986) or Brett Israel (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu) (404-385-1933).

Writer: John Toon

What ensued that day was a cascade of failures throughout the northeastern United States and southeastern Canada. In all, 50 million customers lost power for up to two days. For many, this blackout served as a wake-up call to the fragility of the electric energy grid.

More than 10 years later, our electric power system continues to be challenged. In the United States, 149 power outages affecting at least 50,000 customers occurred between 2000 and 2004, a number which grew to 349 between 2005 and 2009. In 2012, the prolonged power outages in New York and New Jersey caused by Hurricane Sandy once again demonstrated the system’s vulnerability.   

The demands of our digital society are increasing. What’s more, our need to accommodate renewable energy generation is rising, and threats to infrastructure security and concerns over global climate change are growing. To help address these concerns, Georgia Tech is conducting research that crosses many disciplines, including electrical and computer engineering, public policy, mechanical engineering and information security.

Revolutionizing the Delivery of Electricity

The electricity grid is a large, complex system of power generation, transmission and distribution. High-voltage transmission lines carry power from large power plants to load centers hundreds of miles away. Next, lower-voltage distribution systems draw electricity from the transmission lines and distribute it to individual customers.

This long-standing electricity paradigm is phasing out as advancements to the grid essentially make it “smarter.” Smart grids are equipped with advanced sensing, communication, and control systems that will allow unprecedented interaction between electricity providers and consumers. The smart grid will integrate renewable energy sources and allow a new class of utility customers to be both providers and consumers of power.

Georgia Tech: Advancing the Smart Grid

The potential of the smart grid is enormous: improved energy efficiency, optimization of power supply and demand, and greater transparency into power consumption.

Georgia Tech researchers across several disciplines are helping to advance the smart grid by developing technologies, creating methodologies and analyzing policies.

Thwarting Blackouts

A phenomenon called a “voltage collapse” can cause a blackout when electricity demands reach a critical level, even if there is sufficient power generation to meet the demand. The Northeast Blackout of 2003 led utilities and the government to team up to install a phasor network throughout the United States.

By placing phasor measurement units at critical points in the network, operators can assess system stress. Miroslav Begovic, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, helped to develop a methodology that uses the data collected from phasor measurement units. System operators can quickly assess the state of the power system and determine in real time whether it is in danger of a blackout.

Integrating Renewable Energy Sources

Wind, sun, water, wood, organic waste, and geothermal energy generated about 12 percent of the electricity in the United States in 2012. 

Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, Strategic Energy Institute, and School of Mechanical Engineering  are working together to allow expansion of this percentage. Researcher teams are developing a more distributed and flexible control architecture that supports high levels of renewable energy generation and storage. In addition, they are studying market mechanisms that balance supply and demand in the presence of these energy sources.

This new architecture is based on the emerging concept of “prosumers” — a combination of the words “consumer” and “producer” — which are economically motivated small-scale energy ecosystems that can consume, produce and store electricity. For example, prosumers could include homeowners who consume electricity from the grid while also producing power onsite from solar panels on their homes’ roofts that feeds back into the grid.

Analyzing Energy Policies

In recent years, several U.S. states, the federal government and other countries have adopted or are considering laws, regulations, programs, and requirements aimed at improving power systems.

Researchers from Georgia Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and School of Economics are analyzing and recommending policies that promote the path toward the next generation of the electric utility grid.

Securing Utilities from Cyber Attacks

In addition to asset management concerns, utilities are also worried about cyber threats. A National Research Council report warned that a coordinated strike on the electric grid could have devastating effects on the American economy. Georgia Tech researchers have helped secure and protect devices throughout U.S. government and corporate networks for years.

To help prevent cyber attacks, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, National Electric Energy Testing, Research and Applications Center and the Strategic Energy Institute are working with experts in smart grid technology to develop tools that can detect weaknesses.

What’s Next?

Technical, regulatory and financial obstacles have slowed its worldwide adoption, and it is estimated to take decades for the entire grid renovation. Georgia Tech researchers continue their development of this transformative technology and the smart grid momentum is growing.  In fact, smart grid technology is already a reality in several U.S. cities. 

Learn More About the Smart Grid:

• Tackling Energy Challenges with Technology and Policy
• Department of Energy Awards Contract to Detect Cyber Attacks on Utilities
• Energy and Sustainable Infrastructure Research at Tech
• University Center of Excellence for Photovoltaics Research and Education

Although these operating speeds were achieved at extremely cold temperatures, the research suggests that record speeds at room temperature aren't far off, said professor John D. Cressler, who led the research for Georgia Tech. Information about the research was published in February 2014, by IEEE Electron Device Letters.

"The transistor we tested was a conservative design, and the results indicate that there is significant potential to achieve similar speeds at room temperature – which would enable potentially world changing progress in high data rate wireless and wired communications, as well as signal processing, imaging, sensing and radar applications," said Cressler, who hold the Schlumberger Chair in electronics in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. "Moreover, I believe that these results also indicate that the goal of breaking the so called ‘terahertz barrier’ – meaning, achieving terahertz speeds in a robust and manufacturable silicon-germanium transistor – is within reach."

Meanwhile, Cressler added, the tested transistor itself could be practical as is for certain cold-temperature applications. In particular, it could be used in its present form for demanding electronics applications in outer space, where temperatures can be extremely low. 

IHP, a research center funded by the German government, designed and fabricated the device, a heterojunction bipolar transistor (HBT) made from a nanoscale SiGe alloy embedded within a silicon transistor. Cressler and his Georgia Tech team, including graduate students Partha S. Chakraborty, Adilson S. Cardoso and Brian R. Wier, performed the exacting work of analyzing, testing and evaluating the novel transistor.

“The record low temperature results show the potential for further increasing the transistor speed toward terahertz (THz) at room temperature. This could help enable applications of Si-based technologies in areas in which compound semiconductor technologies are dominant today. At IHP, B. Heinemann, H. Rücker, and A. Fox supported by the whole technology team working to develop the next THz transistor generation,” according to Bernd Tillack, who is leading the technology department at IHP in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany.

Silicon, a material used in the manufacture of most modern microchips, is not competitive with other materials when it comes to the extremely high performance levels needed for certain types of emerging wireless and wired communications, signal processing, radar and other applications. Certain highly specialized and costly materials – such as indium phosphide, gallium arsenide and gallium nitride – presently dominate these highly demanding application areas.

But silicon-germanium changes this situation. In SiGe technology, small amounts of germanium are introduced into silicon wafers at the atomic scale during the standard manufacturing process, boosting performance substantially. 

The result is cutting-edge silicon germanium devices such as the IHP Microelectronics 800 GHz transistor. Such designs combine SiGe's extremely high performance with silicon's traditional advantages – low cost, high yield, smaller size and high levels of integration and manufacturability – making silicon with added germanium highly competitive with the other materials.

Cressler and his team demonstrated the 800 GHz transistor speed at 4.3 Kelvins  (452 degrees below zero, Fahrenheit). This transistor has a breakdown voltage of 1.7 V, a value which is adequate for most intended applications.

The 800 GHz transistor was manufactured using IHP’s 130-nanometer BiCMOS process, which has a cost advantage compared with today’s highly-scaled CMOS technologies. This 130 nm SiGe BiCMOS process is offered by IHP in a multi-project wafer foundry service.

The Georgia Tech team used liquid helium to achieve the extremely low cryogenic temperatures of 4.3 Kelvins in achieving the observed 798 GHz speeds. "When we tested the IHP 800 GHz transistor at room temperature during our evaluation, it operated at 417 GHz," Cressler said. "At that speed, it's already faster than 98 percent of all the transistors available right now." 

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

Media Relations Contacts:

Georgia Tech: John Toon (404894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Brett Israel (404-385-1933) (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu).

IHP: Dr. Wolfgang Kissinger (kissinger@ihp-microelectronics.com)

Writer: Rick Robinson

The InVenture Prize competition is designed to encourage and support undergraduate students’ interest in invention, innovation and entrepreneurship. About 560 students signed up for this year’s contest.

This year’s finalists offer up solutions to various health and consumer issues.

The 2014 InVenture finalists are:

The Better Walk Crutch: The Better Walk Crutch provides more comfort and support for those using crutches while rehabilitating from lower leg injury.

Team members: Partha Unnava, biomedial engineering major from Dublin, Ohio; Frankie Swindell, biomedical engineering major from Grayslake, Ill.; and Andrew Varghese, biomedical engineering major from Suwanee, Ga.

Enlighten Music Trainer: The Enlighten Music Trainer uses interactive LED technology to change the way people learn to play the guitar.

Team members: Richie Choy, computer engineering major from Alpharetta, Ga.; Jacob Howard, electrical engineering major from Alpharetta, Ga.; Ian MacKensie, electrical engineering major from Dahlonega, Ga.; and Garrett Wade, electrical engineering major from Warner Robins, Ga.

Sleepwell Sleepwear: Sleepwell Sleepwear by Lights Out is a nightshirt that reduces snoring and symptoms of sleep apnea. The garment uses automated positional therapy.

Team members: Geries AbuAkel, electrical engineering major from Duluth, Ga.; Michael Duke, biomedical engineering major from Atlanta; Saranya Karthikeyan, biomedical engineering major from Cary, N.C.; and Dershika Patel, biomedical engineering major from Covington, Ga.

Safi Choo Toilet: The Safi Choo Toilet is an inexpensive, mobile toilet designed to address health and contamination issues in refugee camps.

Team members: Jasmine Burton, industrial design major from Dunwoody, Ga.; Erin Cobb, industrial design major from Atlanta; and Brandie Banner, civil engineering major from Alpharetta, Ga.

Sucette Smart Soother: The Sucette Smart Soother is a modernized pacifier designed to fit the growing dentition of infants. It changes color when infants have a fever.

Team members: Rachel Ford, a biomedical engineering major from Powder Springs, Ga.; Esteban Ongini, a biomedical engineering major from Miami; and Will McAllister, a biomedical engineering major from Charlotte, N.C.

Upsadazy: Upsadazy is a baby stroller that safely and quickly climbs stairs without the risk of tipping over and harming the child.

Team members: Zachary Churney, mechanical engineering major from Marietta, Ga.; Charlsie Lemons, mechanical engineering major from Alpharetta, Ga.; James Hess, mechanical engineering major from Acworth, Ga.; and AJ Yllander, electrical engineering major from Warner Robins, Ga.

The winning team receives $20,000 and a spot in Georgia Tech’s startup accelerator program, Flashpoint. Second place wins $10,000.

Both the first and second place finishers will receive free US patent filings by Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing.

A $5,000 People’s Choice Award will go to the fans’ favorite invention. Voting will be by text messaging during the March 26 event.

Free tickets to the broadcast are available at http://inventureprize.gatech.edu/tickets.

The 50-minute talk was unique in that it was given by a Tech alumnus and donor, but as for its format or content, Klaus is just one of several guest entrepreneurs to visit the class, a new offering this semester called Startup Lab.

“The focus is on better equipping students to pursue startup creation,” said Professor Raghupathy Sivakumar of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who teaches the course. “They could do this coming out of the class, a few months down the road, or even after graduating.”

The course begins with students hearing from a different guest each week about his or her experience in a startup or entrepreneurial environment. Students then team up to develop a business model for a startup idea of their own under the guidance of co-instructors Keith McGreggor and Paul Freet from the Georgia Tech Venture Lab.

“The class has a fantastic structure,” said Megna Saha, a fourth-year biomedical engineering major who enrolled in the course to sharpen her business acumen. “I feel like my communication has improved, but also my imagination and creativity are being cultivated.”

Klaus talked about his experience founding his first company, Internet Security Systems, from his dorm in Smith Hall. IBM eventually bought ISS for $1.3 billion. Klaus went on to start Kaneva, a social gaming company based in Atlanta. In his Startup Lab visit, Klaus covered topics including gamification, metrics, and customer validation. Other subjects to be discussed throughout the semester include opportunity identification, ideation, customer discovery, market analysis, business models, intellectual property, and raising capital.

“Even students who want to go work for established companies can thrive in such environments if they are entrepreneurial,” Sivakumar said. They'll also be living out Tech's strategic goal of ensuring entrepreneurship is a fundamental characteristic of its graduates.

The class requires no prerequisites and is cross-listed in electrical and computer engineering, biomedical engineering, and mechanical engineering, but Sivakumar hopes to open it to even more students when he offers it again next spring. He emphasizes cross-pollination of ideas and team members from different disciplines.

During his visit, Klaus echoed the need for collaboration, advising students to seek partners at neighboring universities such as the Savannah College of Art and Design. He dismissed the notion that students are too young to start companies or that age bias in the marketplace should stop them.

“The reason to do a startup is to change the world and create value,” Klaus said.

Students interested in doing either of those things can enroll in Startup Lab in Spring 2015, or visit create.gatech.edu to explore more opportunities at Tech for exploring the startup world.

What does “big data” mean to you from the perspective of the research in your center (or in your research group)?

In my view, big data means letting real data, particularly in large quantities, speak for the truth and help us solve problems directly without over relying on the so-called expert surrogates. Big data research, therefore, involves at least the following two inquiries: “How do we find truth in real data?” and “How do we use data to solve problems directly?”

What are the greatest opportunities you see for Georgia Tech in big data?

Georgia Tech has an impressive collection of research groups in various areas, which can take advantage of this paradigm shift, from expert surrogate to big data. For example, people in ISyE have been well recognized for their expertise in coupling data with decision. In ECE, many of us in the Center of Information and Signal Processing (CSIP) have long been engaged in data analysis, modeling, representation, identification, processing and search, particularly related to media data.

The greatest opportunity for Georgia Tech lies in our ability to identify substantial problems and to integrate the aforementioned expertise to formulate overarching problem-solving approaches that can produce impactful solutions directly from big data with measurable performance objectives. Again, the operative words are “problem-solving” and “measurable objective.”

A problem must have a clearly defined and measurable objective. As an illustrating example, enabling a machine to make a decision is not a problem; enabling a machine to make the least number of errors in its decision is. How to use big data to achieve this in useful applications is where research opportunities exist.

What are some of your—or your colleagues’—current research projects or major activities related to big data?

We have a vast number of big-data related projects ongoing in our group. Rather than enumerate them all, I’ll highlight a few.

When data quantity is vast, its organization can be a challenge, including designing methods for easy retrieval, reliable identification, and accurate reconstruction, to name a few. My colleagues are figuring out ways to identify the succinct features of the data for these purposes.

In another telecom related project, we have access to a large set of wireless calling data, from which one can infer the best resource allocation scheme for wireless services based on the user’s perspective of feeling satisfied.

We also have a long tradition in speech and language related research. We ask questions like “Can a machine identify those most important words in a conversation for the sake of understanding the semantic transactions most accurately?” Or in a similar vein, given a lengthy article, “What is the shortest condensed message that retains the meaning of the text?” Even more provocative, “Can a machine translate a sentence or a paragraph in one language into another without understanding its meaning but just by searching for the most relevant expressions from a large set of cross-reference sentences?”

Another project we are working on in geo-signal processing aims at the possibility of inferring the seismic structure based on a vast amount of reference data from the past; e.g., “Where is the oil and how much is present?” or “Will the foundation of my house change due to nearby fracking?”

How do you think a campus-wide initiative in big data could help you enhance your research or develop new collaborations and funding opportunities?

As I alluded to above, if we share the common interest to develop problem-solving capabilities directly from big data, and we are able to integrate the wide and deep expertise currently available at Georgia Tech, we’ll succeed in bringing about a huge impact on society. A campus-wide big data initiative can certainly help with this integration and serve as a catalyst to make this potential a reality.

The Capstone Design Expo has become one of the largest student-driven design expos in the U.S.  It is an opportunity for student teams to present team projects and ideas in front of industry investors and the general public.  These skills are vital to their ability to convey ideas to potential buyers, employers, and even consumers. By studying doctors’ schedules, for example, a team of industrial engineering majors helped the Emory Orthopaedics & Spine Center boost patient satisfaction and save money.

“Capstone Design allows engineering students to learn how to function on multidisciplinary teams to solve problems,” said Laurence Jacobs, associate dean for academic affairs. “It also challenges our students to think, not just learn. Through this course they collaborate, lead and participate in teams experiencing true hands-on activities.”

The Design Expo showcases the work of engineering and industrial design majors, but they’re not the only students present. Each year, hundreds of high school students also attend the event to learn from the work and find inspiration. 

“To see the culmination of the undergraduate studies of more than 400 graduating seniors through their hands-on/design/build capstone projects was truly inspiring,” said Craig Forest, an assistant professor in mechanical engineering. “From the invention studio to the makers club to capstone design, Georgia Tech undergraduates are showing us what they can do with the resources and incentives to pursue invention, innovation, and entrepreneurship.”

A core technological hurdle in this field involves the electrical power requirements of computing hardware. Although a human brain functions on a mere 20 watts of electrical energy, a digital computer that could approximate human cognitive abilities would require tens of thousands of integrated circuits (chips) and a hundred thousand watts of electricity or more – levels that exceed practical limits.

The Georgia Tech roadmap proposes a solution based on analog computing techniques, which require far less electrical power than traditional digital computing. The more efficient analog approach would help solve the daunting cooling and cost problems that presently make digital neuromorphic hardware systems impractical. 

"To simulate the human brain, the eventual goal would be large-scale neuromorphic systems that could offer a great deal of computational power, robustness and performance," said Jennifer Hasler, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), who is a pioneer in using analog techniques for neuromorphic computing. "A configurable analog-digital system can be expected to have a power efficiency improvement of up to 10,000 times compared to an all-digital system."

Hasler and a former student recently published a detailed plan that describes the development of computer systems capable of human-like cognition. The paper, "Finding a Roadmap to Achieve Large Neuromorphic Hardware Systems" by Hasler and Bo Marr, was published in the September 2013 edition of the journal Frontiers in Neuroscience.

"To my knowledge, this is the first time a detailed neuromorphic roadmap has been attempted," said Hasler. "We describe specific computational techniques could offer real progress in neuromorphic systems."

Unlike digital computing, in which computers can address many different applications by processing different software programs, analog circuits have traditionally been hard-wired to address a single application. For example, cell phones use energy-efficient analog circuits for a number of specific functions, including capturing the user's voice, amplifying incoming voice signals, and controlling battery power.

Because analog devices do not have to process binary codes as digital computers do, their performance can be both faster and much less power hungry. Yet traditional analog circuits are limited because they're built for a specific application, such as processing signals or controlling power. They don't have the flexibility of digital devices that can process software, and they're vulnerable to signal disturbance issues, or noise.

In recent years, Hasler has developed a new approach to analog computing, in which silicon-based analog integrated circuits take over many of the functions now performed by familiar digital integrated circuits. These analog chips can be quickly reconfigured to provide a range of processing capabilities, in a manner that resembles conventional digital techniques in some ways.

Over the last several years, Hasler and her research group have developed devices called field programmable analog arrays (FPAA). Like field programmable gate arrays (FPGA), which are digital integrated circuits that are ubiquitous in modern computing, the FPAA can be reconfigured after it's manufactured – hence the phrase "field-programmable."

Hasler and Marr's 29-page paper traces a development process that could lead to the goal of reproducing human-brain complexity. The researchers investigate in detail a number of intermediate steps that would build on one another, helping researchers advance the technology sequentially.

For example, the researchers discuss ways to scale energy efficiency, performance and size in order to eventually achieve large-scale neuromorphic systems. The authors also address how the implementation and the application space of neuromorphic systems can be expected to evolve over time.

"A major concept here is that we have to first build smaller systems capable of a simple representation of one layer of human brain cortex," Hasler said. "When that system has been successfully demonstrated, we can then replicate it in ways that increase its complexity and performance."

Among neuromorphic computing's major hurdles are the communication issues involved in networking integrated circuits in ways that could replicate human cognition. In their paper, Hasler and Marr emphasize local interconnectivity to reduce complexity. Moreover, they argue it's possible to achieve these capabilities via purely silicon-based techniques, without relying on novel devices that are based on other approaches.

Commenting on the recent publication, Alice C. Parker, a professor of electrical engineering at the University of Southern California, said, "Professor Hasler's technology roadmap is the first deep analysis of the prospects for large scale neuromorphic intelligent systems, clearly providing practical guidance for such systems, with a nearer-term perspective than our whole-brain emulation predictions. Her expertise in analog circuits, technology and device models positions her to provide this unique perspective on neuromorphic circuits."   

Eugenio Culurciello, an associate professor of biomedical engineering at Purdue University, commented, "I find this paper to be a very accurate description of the field of neuromorphic data processing systems. Hasler's devices provide some of the best performance per unit power I have ever seen and are surely on the roadmap for one of the major technologies of the future."

Said Hasler: "In this study, we conclude that useful neural computation machines based on biological principles – and potentially at the size of the human brain -- seems technically within our grasp. We think that it's more a question of gathering the right research teams and finding the funding for research and development than of any insurmountable technical barriers."

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

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu) (404-894-6986) or Brett Israel (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu) (404-385-1933).

Writer: Rick Robinson

Each spring the Institute honors students at this event for their hard work in scholarship and service throughout the year. Last week, the following students were thanked for their achievements.

Alvin M. Ferst Leadership and Entrepreneur Scholarship Award

• Chibueze Ihenacho
• James Schwoebel

Georgia Tech Faculty Women's Club Scholarships 

• Gautam Goel
• Yash Sanjay Mehta
• Sameer Mishra
• Jackie Podoll
• Xialin Yan

Merri Gaye Hitt-Strauss Memorial Scholarship

• Emily Gooding

Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning 

• Allison Martin, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant Award
• G. James Lemoine Jr., Outstanding Graduate Student Instructor Award
• Arun Kumar, Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award
• Nadia Dorado, Frank Bogle Nontraditional Student Award 

Center for Career Development and Discovery

• Zachary Dawson, Dorothy Cowser Yancy Incentive Award
• Stephanie MacLeod, Briaerean Scholarship Cup 
• Luke Eichelkraut, J.E. McDaniel Award
• Kelsi Austin, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Lorenzo Azarcon, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Jonathan Hill, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Andrew Kolpitcke, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Margaret McKenney, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Samuel Skidmore, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Chuan Yao, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Dong Zheng, James G. and Mary G. Wohlford Scholarships
• Breona Jenkins, Joe T. LaBoon Outstanding Graduating Senior Co-op Award
• Shaweta Saini, The Georgia Tech Internship Program Student of the Year Award 
• Camilo Caballero, International Internship/Co-op Program Student of the Year 

Sigma Xi Awards 

• W. Christopher Edens, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Lining Ju, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Mehdi Kiani, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Qing Li, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Lei Ma, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Kevin Manktelow, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Hamidreza Marvi, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Seungdae Oh, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Graham Sanborn, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Wencen Wu, Sigma Xi Best Ph.D. Thesis
• Quang Minh Kieu, Sigma Xi Best Undergraduate Thesis
• Zhiyuan Lin, Sigma Xi Best Undergraduate Thesis

Graduate Awards

• Aravind Michiry, MS Research Award
• Muhammed Shahbaz, Outstanding Graduate Teaching Assistant
• Zane Cochrane, Donald V. Jackson Fellowship
• Sathya Gunasekaran, Donald V. Jackson Fellowship
• Nick Olive, Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
• Elias Khalil, Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
• Danny Lee, Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
• Douglas Mackey, Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
• David Munoz, Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
• Mukul Sati, Marshall D. Williamson Fellowship
• Yujia He, International Affairs Outstanding Graduate Student
• Noah Solomon, International Affairs Outstanding Graduate Student
• Amy Bledsoe, Charles R. Brown Urban Design Fellowship
• Sherene Cadet, Stanley, Love-Stanley, P.C.Graduate Award
• Joe Estep, Kurt Frankel Award
• Xiaofeng Meng, EAS Research Excellence Award
• Emily Saad, IV Glen Cass Award
• Jiumeng Liu, EAS John Bradshaw Award
• Stacy Carolin, EAS Best Paper Award
• Brian Doyle, MSE Outstanding Teaching Assistant
• Alex Bryant, MSE Atlanta Chapter of the ASM International Graduate Award
• Daniel Murdock, ECE Graduate Teaching Assistant Excellence Award
• Afshin Abdi, Colonel Oscar P. Cleaver Award
• Arnand Louis, Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant
• Jae Woong Sim, Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant
• Alexander Zook, Outstanding Graduate Research Assistant
• Matthew Cox, William H. Read Award
• Jonah Bea-Taylor, History, Technology and Society Homer Rice Award
• Michael Delinsky, AIA Henry Adams Medal
• Ahmad Beirami, ECE Graduate Research Assistant Excellence Award
• Lu Lu, ECE Graduate Research Assistant Excellence Award

College of Computing

• Alissa Hartenbaum, Outstanding Senior in Computing
• Rachel Clark, Outstanding Junior in Computing
• Alexandru Stelea, Outstanding Sophomore in Computing
• Kartikay Kini, Outstanding Freshman in Computing
• Alexander Clegg, Outstanding Undergraduate Teaching Assistant Award
• William Holton, Outstanding Undergraduate Research in Computing Award

Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts

• Dasom Eom, Outstanding Senior in the School of Modern Languages Awards
• Andrew Estis, Outstanding Senior in the School of Modern Languages Awards
• Ayanda Francis, Outstanding Senior in the School of Modern Languages Awards
• Bryce Huebner, Outstanding Senior in the School of Modern Languages Awards
• Mustafa Kothawala, Outstanding Senior in the School of Modern Languages Awards
• Shelby Schuller, Outstanding Senior in the School of Modern Languages Awards
• Heather Yukto, Outstanding Senior in the School of Modern Languages Awards
• Matthew Price, History, Technology, and Society Chair's Award
• Kendall Eide, Bellon Excellence in Research Award
• April Martin, Bellon Excellence in Research Award
• Chloe Stargel, Excellence in International Affairs and Modern Languages Award
• Sophia Rashid, 1996 Olympic Envoy Program Legacy Award
• Chen Ling, Omicron Delta Epsilon Outstanding Student Award
• Elizabeth Perreault, Excellence in Global Economics and Modern Languages
• James Kepner, Outstanding Economics and International Affairs Student Award
• Jennifer Boudreau, Mollie Newton Award for Excellence in Economics
• Graham Goldberg, Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Public Policy Award
• Sahra Jabbehdari, Outstanding Undergraduate Student in Public Policy Award
• Anna Arnau, Bernard P. Bellon Prize in Historical Studies
• Danielle Sharpe, Bernard P. Bellon Prize in Historical Studies
• Fletcher Maffett, James Dean Young Award
• Abbey Wysocki, James Dean Young Award
• James McDowell, Excellence in Applied Languages and Intercultural Studies Award
• Andres Marcuse-Gonzalez, Michael Williams Minority Student Award
• Shaudie Fassih, Michael Williams Minority Student Award
• Michael de la Guardia, Outstanding Economics Student Award
• Yvonne Ploder, I am Liberal Arts Award

College of Architecture 

• Gloria Woods, Stanley, Love-Stanley, P.C. Undergraduate Award
• Andrew Blanchard, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Emily Brooks, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Parker Buntin, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Kevin Cho, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Jefferson Dixon, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Michael Edwards, Kelley Music Scholarship
• George Lin, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Catherine Schramm, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Robert Stocking, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Frances Tsenn, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Christopher Wang, Kelley Music Scholarship
• Jessica Hughes, Alpha Rho Chi Award
• Sarah Lashinsky, Industrial Designers Society of America Student Merit Award

Scheller College of Business

• Stephen Roegge, The Jennifer R. and Charles B. Rewis Award for Student Excellence
• Andrew Currie, ConocoPhillips Scholarship
• Rachel Palumbo, ConocoPhillips Scholarship
• Harris Clayton, Smith & Howard Accounting Scholarship
• Andrew Czuchry, Naresh Malhotra Scholarship
• Nathan Anderson, Chambless Willbern McGill Perseverance Prize
• Graham Goldberg, The John R. Battle Award for Student Excellence
• Alexei Nikonovich-Kahn, The Dow Chemical-P.C. McCutcheon Prize for Outstanding Student Achievement in Management

College of Sciences

• Daniel Nielsen, EAS Undergraduate Student Quarter Century Award
• Rachel Azevedo, John H. Ridley Award
• Sampurna Mandal, John H. Ridley Award
• Jiby Yohannan, John H. Ridley Award
• Jennifer Goff, Cherry L. Emerson Research Award
• Alicia Lane, Cherry L. Emerson Research Award
• Abigail Shockey, Williams-Walls Life Science Award
• Carolyn Tye, Williams-Walls Life Science Award
• Ilia Larkin, H. Fukuyo Memorial Scholarship Award in Physics
• John Parker, H. Fukuyo Memorial Scholarship Award in Physics
• Jared Huggins, The Joyce M. and Glenn A. Burdick Award
• Joshua Rafshoon, Chemical Rubber Company Awards in Freshman Chemistry
• John Ticknor, Chemical Rubber Company Awards in Freshman Chemistry
• Kabir Dhada, Undergraduate Award in Analytical Chemistry
• James Going, Herbert O. House Memorial Scholarship
• Colin Stone, Herbert O. House Memorial Scholarship
• Lucia Chen, W.M. Spicer Scholarship in Chemistry
• John Gray, W.M. Spicer Scholarship in Chemistry
• Rachel Hutto, W.M. Spicer Scholarship in Chemistry
• Peter Schnaak, W.M. Spicer Scholarship in Chemistry
• Charles Wang, W.M. Spicer Scholarship in Chemistry
• Rabeea Ahmad, Peter B. Sherry Memorial Scholarship
• Alex George, Peter B. Sherry Memorial Scholarship
• Abigail Lorenz, Peter B. Sherry Memorial Scholarship
• Jennifer Rudelt, Peter B. Sherry Memorial Scholarship
• Elizabeth Wood, Peter B. Sherry Memorial Scholarship
• Lindsay Dahora, Richard W. Fink Memorial Scholarship
• Niti Khambhati, Richard W. Fink Memorial Scholarship
• Sarah Lau, Richard W. Fink Memorial Scholarship
• Anabel Liyen Cartelle, Richard W. Fink Memorial Scholarship
• Zachary Motley, Richard W. Fink Memorial Scholarship
• Florence Pham, Richard W. Fink Memorial Scholarship
• Kaelin Priger, Richard W. Fink Memorial Scholarship
• Charles Wang, Hypercube Scholar Award
• Anthony Rojas, Anthony Arduengo III Award
• John Gray, The Chance Family Scholarship Award
• Mitchel Banks, Dr. William H. Eberhardt Scholarship
• Quinton Bruch, Dr. William H. Eberhardt Scholarship
• Deeti Pithadia, Dr. William H. Eberhardt Scholarship
• Melissa Puntkattalee, Dr. William H. Eberhardt Scholarship
• Yuxuan Qiu, American Institute of Chemists Award
• Niti Khambhati, Virginia C. and Herschel V. Clanton Jr. Scholarship
• Ryan Keane, Cythnia L. Bossart and James Efron Scholarship
• Courtney Hegener, Metha Phingbodhipakkia Undergraduate Memorial Scholarship
• Rebecca Wolf, The Roger M. Wartell, Ph.D., and Stephen E. Brossette, M.D., Ph.D., Award for Multidisciplinary Studies in Biology, Physics, and Mathematics
• Jeffrey Heninger, Nickelson-Sutherland Prize
• Ryan Birmingham, EAS S. Rutt Bridges Award
• Zachary Hetherington, EAS S. Rutt Bridges Award
• Janessa Rowland, EAS S. Rutt Bridges Award
• Leonid Aksenov, Faculty Award, School of Biology
• John Gray, H. Fukuyo Outstanding Physics Undergraduate Award
• Jeffrey Heninger, H. Fukuyo Outstanding Physics Undergraduate Award
• Dakota Lindsey, Moll Davenport Award
• Corley Price, W.M. Spicer Outstanding Senior Scholarship
• Dakota Lindsey, Robert A. Pierotti Memorial

College of Engineering

• Elyse Watkins, BME Outstanding Research Award
• Franklin Swindell III, BME Outstanding Entrepreneur Award
• Partha Unnava, BME Outstanding Entrepreneur Award
• Andrew Varghese, BME Outstanding Entrepreneur Award
• Gabriela Lamas, BME Outstanding Industrial Experience Award
• Wells Yang, BME Outstanding Academic Service Award
• Carmine Cuda, BME Outstanding Community Service Award
• Emily Gooding, School of Materials Science and Engineering, Chapman/Pentecost Scholarships
• Julien Turner, Atlanta Chapter Undergraduate ASM International Award
• Jordan Avery, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Dylan Buczek, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Nicholas Buczek, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Jialei Deng, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Jifeng Jiang, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Erin Lightfoot, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Jaclyn McClain, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Binita Patel, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Tanay Rajore, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• Jeremiah Strang, The Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals Scholarship
• David Chen, Jack C. Webb Scholarship
• Ayodeji Hambolu, Jack C. Webb Scholarship
• Heather Humphrey, Jack C. Webb Scholarship
• Tahsin Munir, Jack C. Webb Scholarship
• Jeremiah Strang, Jack C. Webb Scholarship
• David Weigel, Jack C. Webb Scholarship
• Caleb Steiner, ALCOA Foundation Scholarship
• Jordan Avery, Kurt Salmon Associates Scholarship in Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Andres Borda Cabal, Kurt Salmon Associates Scholarship in Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Patrick Nadeau, Kurt Salmon Associates Scholarship in Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Hongfan Chen, CoE Undergraduate Research Award
• Haley Hahmann, The Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Senior Service Award
• Katherine Durden, Centennial Outstanding Junior in Aerospace Engineering Award
• Benjamin Leon, Leon A. Tolve Outstanding Junior in Aerospace Engineering Award
• Shane Lympany, Leon A. Tolve Outstanding Senior in Aerospace Engineering Award
• Emily Schulte, AIAA Outstanding Service Award
• Cleary Mahaffey, Sigma Gamma Tau Sophomore Award
• Katherine Copenhaver, American Association of Textile Chemists and Colorists Award
• Hanne Gregersen, Outstanding Sophomore Award in Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Melissa Meyer, Buck Stith Outstanding Junior Award in Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Aditya Garg, Outstanding ECE Sophomore Award
• Shai Messingher, ECE Junior Scholar Award
• Priya Bajaj, ECE Undergraduate Research Award
• Jessica Block, ECE Faculty Award
• Alexander Newton, Most Outstanding ECE Senior Co-op Award
• James Sutehall, ECE Award for Outstanding Service to Georgia's Community
• Neal Jean, ECE Senior Scholar Awards
• Jason McElrath, ECE Senior Scholar Awards
• Eric Squires, ECE Senior Scholar Awards
• Julie Bergen, Pi Tau Sigma Outstanding Senior Award
• Samuel Cruz, Pi Tau Sigma Outstanding Senior Award
• Julian Brew, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Parker Buntin, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Mitchell Carr, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Virginia Collier, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Maria Diaz Ortiz, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Joseph Guinta, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Pravara Harati, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Melissa Meyer, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Brian Nemsick, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Daniella Remolina, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Alan Zhang, Henry Ford II Scholar Award
• Arun Kumar, BME Outstanding Senior Award
• Harrison Bartlett, BME Academic Award
• Jaclyn Cann, School of Materials Science and Engineering Outstanding Senior Award
• Jiaqi Xue, Outstanding Computer Engineering Senior Award
• Sukirat Bakshi, The Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Leadership Award
• Tanay Rajore, The Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Leadership Award
• Hongfan Chen, Alpha Pi Mu Academic Excellence Award
• Matthew Benvenuto, Aerospace Engineering Outstanding Senior Scholar Award
• Travis Harris, School Chair's Outstanding Senior Award in Civil and Environmental Engineering
• James Sutehall, Outstanding Electrical Engineering Senior Award
• Max Carlson, Outstanding Scholastic Achievement Award, Nuclear and Radiological Engineering Program, School of Mechanical Engineering
• John Harber, Richard K. Whitehead Jr. Memorial Awards
• Joshua Jones, Richard K. Whitehead Jr. Memorial Awards
• Paul Kern, Richard K. Whitehead Jr. Memorial Awards
• Harrison Bradley, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Outstanding Scholar Award
• Nathan Sacks, School Chair's Award, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
• Lauren Dermody, Helen E. Grenga Outstanding Woman Engineer Award
• James Sutehall, Tau Beta Pi Senior Engineering Cup

Institute Awards

• Jeffrey Michael Heninger, Love Family Foundation Scholarship

View Secretary Moniz's keynote address >

Themed “U.S. Competitiveness Amid a Changing Natural Gas Landscape: A View from the Southeast,” the policy forum provided a platform for Secretary Moniz to urge leaders in energy research like Georgia Tech to focus on energy independence, cost, and security, and we can do all three if we apply our innovation thinking. 

After the forum, director of the Georgia Tech Strategic Energy Institute Tim Liewen hosted the Secretary in focused meetings with faculty and students. Faculty briefed Moniz on their work to define the future of the nation’s energy grid, improve national security and explore international aspects of energy. 

Admiral James "Sandy" Winnefeld will address the Ph.D. and master’s ceremony on Friday, May 2, in the McCamish Pavilion at 7 p.m. Muhtar Kent, chairman of the board and chief executive officer of The Coca-Cola Company, and Ralph de la Vega, president and CEO of AT&T Mobility, will address the undergraduate ceremonies on Saturday, May 3 at 9 a.m. and 3 p.m., respectively.

Admiral Winnefeld serves as the ninth vice chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In this capacity, his is a member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the nation’s second highest-ranking military officer.

Admiral Winnefeld graduated from the Georgia Institute of Technology and received his commission from the Navy Reserve Office Training Corps program. He subsequently served with three fighter squadrons flying the F-14 Tomcast and as an instructor at the Navy Fighter Weapons School.

Admiral Winnefeld’s unit commands at sea include Fighter Squadron 211, USS Cleveland (LPD 7) and USS Enterprise (CVN 65). He led “Big E” through her 18^th deployment, which included combat operations in Afghanistan in support of Operation Enduring Freedom immediately after the terrorist acts of September 11, 2001. As commander, Carrier Strike Group TWO/Theodore Roosevelt Carrier Strike Group, he led Task Forces 50, 152 and 58 in support of Operation Iraqi Freedom and maritime interception operations in the Arabian Gulf. He also served as commander, United States SIXTH Fleet; commander, NATO Allied Joint Command Lisbon; and commander, Striking Support Forces, NATO.

His shore tours include service in the Joint Operations Directorate (J-3), as senior aide to the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and as executive assistant to the vice chief of naval operations. As a flag officer he served ashore as director, Warfare Programs and Transformational Concepts, United States Fleet Forces Command, as director of Joint Innovation and Experimentation at United States Joint Forces Command and as the director of Strategic Plans and Policy (J-5) on the Joint Staff. He most recently served as the commander of North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD) and the U.S. Northern Command (USNORTHCOM).

Admiral Winnefeld’s awards include the Defense Distinguished Service Medal, Distinguished Superior Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star, the Defense Meritorious Service Medal, the Air Medal and five Battle Efficiency awards.

Muhtar Kent is chairman of the board and chief executive officer of The Coca-Cola Company, a position he has held since April 2009. Previously he was president and chief executive officer and earlier, president and chief operating officer.

Kent joined The Coca-Cola Company in Atlanta in 1978 and has held a variety of marketing and operations leadership roles throughout his career in markets across Europe, Asia and the Middle East. 

In 2005, Kent was appointed president of Coca-Cola International, responsible for overseeing all operations outside of North America.  In 2006, he assumed the role of president and chief operating officer and in 2008 was elevated to president and CEO. 

Kent holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Economics from the University of Hull in England and a Master of Science degree in Administrative Sciences from Cass Business School, City University London. 

Active in the global business community, Kent is chairman of the International Business Council of the World Economic Forum, co-chair of the Bipartisan Policy Center’s CEO Council on Health and Innovation, a fellow of the Foreign Policy Association, a member of the Business Roundtable, immediate past co-chair of the Consumer Goods Forum, a past chairman of the U.S.-China Business Council and chairman emeritus of the U.S. ASEAN Business Council. He also is a member of the Eminent Persons Group for ASEAN, appointed by President Barack Obama and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.  He serves on the boards of 3M, Special Olympics International, Ronald McDonald House Charities, Catalyst and Emory University.   

Ralph de la Vega is president and CEO of AT&T Mobility, a position he has held since 2007. Under his leadership, AT&T Mobility has become one of the world’s leading smartphone and mobile Internet providers and is expanding into new growth areas such as home security and automation, connected cars and mobile payments.

Previously, de la Vega served as chief operating officer of Cingular Wireless, with responsibility for technology planning, network operations, marketing, sales and customer care. Before joining Cingular in 2004, he served as president of BellSouth Latin America. He started his career in 1974 with BellSouth (then Southern Bell) as a management assistant.

De la Vega serves on the boards of New York Life Insurance Company, the Georgia Aquarium, Morehouse College and the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce. As a strong believer in community service, de la Vega actively supports nonprofit and youth organizations, serving as chairman of All-Markets Initiatives for the Boy Scouts of America and previously as chairman of Junior Achievement Worldwide. In 2013, he was honored with the Boy Scouts’ highest commendation – the Silver Buffalo Award – recognizing his distinguished service to youth.

The recipient of numerous awards recognizing his leadership, de la Vega has been inducted into the Atlanta Business Hall of Fame and the Hispanic Scholarship Fund’s Alumni Hall of Fame. He is featured in the HBO original documentary The Latino List, which profiles notable and influential Latinos in America. In 2011, he received the prestigious Global Innovation Award from Emory University’s Goizueta Business School. 

De la Vega holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Florida Atlantic University and a master’s degree in business administration from Northern Illinois University. He completed the Executive Program at the University of Virginia and received an honorary doctorate from Florida Atlantic. He is the author of the best-selling book Obstacles Welcome: Turn Adversity to Advantage in Business and Life.

A native of Cuba, de la Vega lives in Atlanta.

Alex Cheu is one of the students organizing Tech Treasure, an initiative that will bring Goodwill trailers to campus to accept donations of unwanted items during move-out.

“We saw the potential for student involvement in finding a place for all the reusable items that get discarded during move-out,” said Cheu, an electrical engineering major. He and three classmates from the Grand Challenges program — Rishabh Ananthan, Jessica Taylor, and Ed Zhu — decided to tackle this challenge and found Goodwill to be an eager partner.

“They want to work more with colleges and are already doing similar programs at other schools,” he said. “We’re able to let students support Goodwill’s mission by helping them stock their stores.”

Perhaps most importantly, the program makes it convenient for students to donate rather than discard their unwanted items. Goodwill trailers will be stationed outside East Campus housing on Techwood Drive from Wednesday, April 30, through Saturday, May 3, from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. Cheu hopes the program can expand to serve additional areas of campus in the future.

Student volunteers will help direct students who are headed to the dumpster with reusable goods to instead take them to a Goodwill employee at one of the trailers. Volunteers have signed agreements that they won’t be handling donations or “dumpster diving,” but simply trying to intercept students who may be throwing away items in good condition.

“We’re trying to do a small part of solving the grand challenge of sustainability in our community,” Cheu said. This effort supports goal three of Tech’s Strategic Plan, which focuses on student innovation, entrepreneurship, and public service.  

Specific items volunteers will be looking to divert to Goodwill are couches, futons, televisions, refrigerators, microwaves, computers, and books.

• Win up to $4,500 in prize money! Grand Prize of $2,500 and additional prizes given for content and presentation.
• Create a unique, succinct, 2-minute video that communicates the significance and challenges in your research.
• Deadline for submission of your Registration Form is June 15, 2014.
• Deadline for submission of your video is July 15, 2014.
• Prize winners announced on October 15, 2014.
• All videos will be featured on the COPE Youtube page.

In order to showcase and celebrate the beautiful, strange and incredibly small work occurring in the IEN cleanrooms and labs, the IEN Characterization Group will be holding a monthly image contest open to all IEN facility users. The submitted work will be used to promote IEN users’ research and IEN capabilities to potential users, on campus and beyond. Three monthly winners of the contest will receive 5 free hours on the characterization tool of their choosing, and the monthly winners will be entered into a semi-annual Grand Prize selection for cash prizes of $60 for First Prize and $30 for each of the 2 Second Prize winners.

If you would like a chance to see you small image get big representation, check out the full contest details below or, for further questions contact Walter Henderson at <ahref="mailto:walter.henderson@ien.gatech.edu">walter.henderson@ien.gatech.eduor Jie Xu at jie.xu@gtri.gatech.edu.

Image Contest Submission Dates
 Open May 1^st – May 27^th and the 1^st –the 27^th of each month thereafter. Monthly winners will be notified by email.  Grand prize winners will be announced at the IEN user meeting on June 26^th, and again just before the winter break in December.

Contest Rules

• Images must be taken on an IEN tool
• Images should not be previously published
• Photographer must provide details with image such as the tool, sample type, PI etc.
• Photo-enhancement is allowed, (e.g., coloration, added artistic touches, etc.) but the original image details should not be altered.
• Up to 4 entries per user per month

Submit images as a .bmp file to walter.henderson@ien.gatech.edu

This week, the Georgia Tech student chapter of the American Society for Engineering Education (GT-ASEE) will host INSPIRE², its second annual workshop designed to equip graduate students with new tools and techniques to engage students in the classroom.    

“We realize we’re talking to graduate students who aren’t yet in a position to design revolutionary classrooms, so we’re focusing on small changes you can apply yourself in class,” said Scottie-Beth Fleming, a doctoral student in aerospace engineering and former president of GT-ASEE.

What began as a one-day event last year has doubled to two this year. Day one will feature Michael Prince, a professor of chemical engineering at Bucknell University who professes to be “interested in almost any question that has to do with how engineering students learn” and whose research focuses on enhancing classroom experiences.

Day two will include presentations from an array of Tech faculty who are piloting new teaching methods in their classrooms or have expertise in learning sciences. Presenters include Bonnie Ferri, Joe LeDoux, Wendy Newstetter, Caroline Noyes, Amy Pritchett, Dia Sekayi, Don Webster and Damon Williams.

A panel of graduate students, all of whom have completed the Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning’s (CETL) Tech to Teaching program, will talk with their peers about their experiences as instructors of college courses.

All presenters will discuss active learning, focusing on student-centered classroom organization.

As a national organization, ASEE takes learning research and applies it to the classroom. GT-ASEE was founded in 2011 by graduate students and aims to create a community of students interested in enhancing classroom experiences through teaching and scholarship. Newstetter also serves as the organization’s advisor.

“I didn’t recognize the importance of the intricacies involved in effective classroom design when I first started my Ph.D. program,” Fleming said. “Learning about the scholarship of teaching and learning got me involved with and excited about the future of engineering education. I now hope to incorporate contributions to engineering education in my end thesis.”

The workshop is free to attend, thanks to support from Graduate Education and Faculty Affairs, the Student Government Association, CETL, Georgia Tech Student Foundation, and Campus Services Buzzfunds. Nearly 100 are expected to attend this year. 

The 5 winning projects, from a diverse group of engineering disciplines, were awarded a six month block of IEN cleanroom and lab access time. In keeping with the interdisciplinary mission of IEN, the projects that will be enabled by the grants include research in materials, biomedicine, optoelectronics, and packaging applications.

The Spring 2014 IEN Seed Grant Award winners are:

• Jordan Ciciliano (PI Wilbur Lam, Biomedical Engineering), Point-of-Care Microfluidic Neutrophil Count Diagnostic for Cancer Patients
• Jong Seok Park (PI Hua Wang, Electrical and Computer Engineering), Developing Post-Processing Techniques to Build High-Quality Optical Filters on Standard CMOS Sensor Chips
• Misha Rodin and Sampath Kommandur (PI Shannon Yee, Mechanical Engineering), Measuring Thermal Conductivity of Amorphous Thin-Films
• Ben Rainwater (PI Meilin Liu, Materials Science and Engineering), Fabrication of Thin-film Li-ion Electrolyte Membranes with Vertically Aligned Interfaces Tailored for Dramatic Enhancement of Ionic Conductivity
• Bopeng Zhang (PI Yongsheng Chen, Civil and Environmental Engineering),  Synthesis of Novel Nano-composite Reverse Electrodialysis (RED) Ion-exchange Membranes for Sustainable Energy Production using Salinity Gradient

 Awardees will present the results of their research efforts at the annual IEN User Day in 2015.

For more information about IEN cleanroom facilities, research capabilities, and collaboration opportunities please visit www.ien.gatech.edu.

The Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), held from May 19 to 23 in Phoenix, is the flagship activity of the IEEE Computer Society’s Technical Committee on Parallel Processing (TCPP), representing a unique international gathering of computer scientists from around the world.

For IPDPS 2014, Georgia Tech participates in virtually every part of the technical program, where researchers from the College of Computing and the Institute for Data and High Performance Computing (IDH) have gathered to present their latest research findings in all aspects of parallel computation. They will take part in numerous paper presentations, workshops, and other parts of the 28th annual IPDPS program. David A. Bader serves as the 2014 IPDPS program chair, and Srinivas Aluru has been tapped as the program chair for the 2015 symposium.

This year, Georgia Tech researchers—CSE’s Associate Professor Edmond Chow and graduate students Xing Liu and Aftab Patel, and CS’s Associate Professor Santosh Pande and graduate student Kaushik Ravichandran—took home two of the four best paper awards given at IPDPS 2014.

Georgia Tech’s participation at IPDPS 2014 includes:

Leadership

Srinivas Aluru 

• IPDPS 2014 Program Committee
• IPDPS 2015 Program Chair
• HiCOMB Workshop Co-Chair

David A. Bader 

• IPDPS 2014 Program Chair
• HCW Panelist: Is the Amount of Heterogeneity Increasing in Future Computer Systems?
• Graph Algorithms Building Blocks (GABB) Workshop Co-organizer
• GABB Workshop Presenter: STINGER: Multi-threaded Graph Streaming
• High Performance Computational Biology (HiCOMB) Workshop Co-Chair

Edmond Chow 

• IPDPS 2014 Program Committee

Zhihui Du (visiting professor) 

• Parallel and Distributed Computing for Large Scale Machine Learning and Big Data Analytics (ParLearning) 2014 Program Committee

David Ediger 

• MTAAP 2014 Program Committee

Bo Hong 

• PhD Forum Co-Chair
• Student Travel Chair
• IPDPS 2014 Program Committee
• MTAAP 2014 Program Committee

Santosh Pande 

• IPDPS 2014 Program Committee

Jason Riedy 

• IPDPS 2014 Program Committee
• MTAAP 2014 Program Committee
• GABB Workshop Presenter: STINGER: Multi-threaded Graph Streaming

Karsten Schwan 

• HPDIC2014 Keynote: pMem—Persistent Memory for Data-intensive Applications

Magdalena Slawinska 

• IPDPS 2014 Program Committee

Jeffrey S. Vetter 

• MTAAP 2014 Program Committee
• ASHES Workshop Keynote: Exploring Emerging Technologies in the HPC Co-Design Space

Richard Vuduc 

• High-Performance, Power-Aware Computing (HPPAC) Panelist: Emerging Challenges to Software Management of Power and Energy

Best Papers 

A New Scalable Parallel Algorithm for Fock Matrix Construction
Xing Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Aftab Patel (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Edmond Chow (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

F2C2-STM: Flux-based Feedback-driven Concurrency Control for STMs
Kaushik Ravichandran (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Santosh Pande (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Papers

Scibox: Online Sharing of Scientific Data via the Cloud
Jian Huang (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Xuechen Zhang (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Greg Eisenhauer (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Karsten Schwan (Georgia Tech, USA); Matthew Wolf (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Stephane Ethier (PPPL, USA); Scott Klasky (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA)

Parallel Mutual Information Based Construction of Whole-Genome Networks on the Intel(R) Xeon Phi(TM) Coprocessor
Sanchit Misra (Intel Corporation, India); Kiran Pamnany (Intel Corporation, India); Srinivas Aluru (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Finding Motifs in Biological Sequences Using the Micron Automata Processor
Indranil Roy (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Srinivas Aluru (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

TBPoint: Reducing Simulation Time for Large Scale GPGPU Kernels
Jen-Cheng Huang (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Lifeng Nai (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Hyesoon Kim (Georgia Tech, USA); Hsien-Hsin Lee (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Algorithmic Time, Energy, and Power on Candidate HPC Compute Building Blocks
Jee Choi (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Marat Dukhan (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Xing Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Richard W. Vuduc (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Large-scale Hydrodynamic Brownian Simulations on Multicore and Manycore Architectures
Xing Liu (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Edmond Chow (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Interactive Program Debugging and Optimization for Directive-Based, Efficient GPU Computing
Seyong Lee (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA); Dong Li (Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA); Jeffrey S. Vetter (Oak Ridge National Laboratory & Georgia Tech, USA)

Workshop Papers

Presented in Conjunction with IPDPS 2014.

HiCOMB 2014

Parallelization of the Trinity Pipeline for de Novo Transcriptome Assembly
Vipin Sachdeva (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); Chang-Sik Kim, Kirk Jordan; Martyn D. Winn

MTAAP 2014

Revisiting Edge and Node Parallelism for Dynamic GPU Graph Analytics
Adam McLaughlin (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA); David A. Bader (Georgia Institute of Technology, USA)

Serving as the leadership organization of engineering deans in the U.S., the Council currently has 344 members, representing more than 90 percent of all U.S. engineering deans. The Engineering Council is charged with providing vision and leadership on engineering education, research, and engagement; influencing U.S. policy on engineering education and research; and promoting diversity in all aspects of engineering education, research, and engagement. Founded in 1893, the American Society for Engineering Education is a nonprofit organization of individuals and institutions committed to furthering education in engineering and engineering technology.

Dr. May was named Georgia Tech's Dean of Engineering after a national search assuming the position in July, 2011. He serves as the chief academic officer of the college and provides leadership to more than 400 faculty members and 13,000 students. The College of Engineering at Georgia Tech is the largest producer of engineering graduates in the United States. Prior to his current appointment, Dr. May was the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech.

The FDA approved CardioMEMS implantable device is intended for the treatment of patients with chronic pulmonary disease. The miniature device records and transmits pulmonary artery pressure for the remote monitoring of patients by physicians.

CardioMEMS was founded in 2001 by cardiologist Jay Yadav and Mark Allen, a Georgia Tech nanotechnology professor. Yadav predicts a growth in Atlanta hiring due to the acquisition as the company's headquarters is expected to stay in the area.

Read the full story at the AJC here.

The IEN Characterization team opened a visual door to these minuscule works of art last month in their inaugural Monthly Image Contest. From intentionally engineered objects to happy accidents caught on film, here are the winners of the May round –

“Grape cluster"
by Payam Alipour, PI:  Ali Adibi

A nanocluster (particle diameter ~100 nm) of random contamination on a layer of TiO₂ deposited on a silicon piece using e-beam evaporation. Image taken with the Zeiss Ultra 60 SEM located in the Marcus Microscopy Suite, level 0 of the Marcus Building.

"Soccer Ball"
by Jamey Gigliotti, PI: Farrokh Ayazi and Z.L. Wang

Photo of a ZnO Nanowire Sphere with a particle diameter of 3.95µm. Image taken with the Hitachi S4700 FE-SEM in the Marcus Inorganic Cleanroom, level 1 of the Marcus Building.

"Blue Paisley"
by Majid Sodagar, PI: Ali Adibi

Top view of bonded SiN/SOI wafers (through thermal glue under pressure) after backside etching of the handle layer. Image taken with the Olympus MX61 located in the Pettit Cleanroom, level 1 of the Pettit Building.

Congratulations to the winners, who will get 5 free hours on the tool of their choice and be entered into a bi-annual Grand Prize selection for cash prizes!  Also, thanks to all those who submitted.

To see a slideshow of all of the entries, please follow this link.

The second round of the Image Contest is underway so, if you have a mini masterpiece, see the contest details below or contact Walter Henderson at walter.henderson@ien.gatech.edu or Jie Xu at jie.xu@gtri.gatech.edu.

 Image Contest Submission Dates
 Open June 1^st – June 27^th and the 1^st –the 27^th of each month thereafter.

Contest Rules

• Images must be taken on an IEN tool
• Images should not be previously published
• Photographer must provide details with image such as the tool, sample type, PI etc.
• Photo-enhancement is allowed
• Up to 4 entries per user per month
• Submit images as a .bmp file to walter.henderson@ien.gatech.edu

Regulators in the Southeast are known for deferring to the interests of the major utilities, but U.S. EPA's proposed rules to stem carbon pollution could force utility commissioners to make unpopular decisions around rates, fuel choice, generation mix and efficiency.

The EPA rules and emissions targets are tailored for each state (Greenwire, June 2). Some Southern states like Georgia and Tennessee already have made the transition away from coal to natural gas and have adopted renewables more willingly than their neighbors in Alabama, for example. Mississippi has strong energy efficiency programs, and North Carolina has had a renewable portfolio standard in place for several years.

The region is also the only one where several states are building or plan to build new nuclear reactors, which are emission free.

But coal was the dominant method for keeping the lights on in the South for decades, and regulators argue that moving away from the fuel even more means utilities will have less diversity, and consumers will face higher prices.

"You've got President Obama and his EPA receiving a fair amount of accolades for coming up with this rule, and I'm stuck here in Georgia handing out the bill," said Georgia Public Service Commission Chairman Chuck Eaton.

Georgia is one of the few states in the Southeast with a diverse electricity mix that includes nuclear power and doesn't draw more than half of its fuel from any one source. The state also will get a greater source of power from solar over the next couple of years (EnergyWire, May 27).

More than a dozen of Georgia's coal- and oil-fired plants already are slated to be closed as part of parent Southern Co.'s plan to take 20,000 megawatts of coal off the grid to comply with previous environmental regulations.

Even with those efforts, yesterday's proposed rule will make it harder for utility regulators to control the price of what customers pay if coal continues to be less of an option, another commissioner said.

"Even if we have made significant gains (to cut back on coal use), the problem is that it determines what economic dispatch will be made by the utility," Georgia utility regulator Stan Wise toldEnergyWire. "Instead of burning coal on a hot summer day, they are going to be forced to use other resources that may not be the least-cost option."

Some regulators in other states deferred comment to their environmental protection agencies but agreed that it was the PSC that would have to sign off on any plant closures, changes to a utility's generation mix and whether customers would pay for those costs.

Electric companies said they are continuing to evaluate the proposal, which requires them to meet targets that would result in a 30 percent CO2 reduction nationwide compared with 2005 levels by 2030.

Big actors

The South is the home to two of the nation's largest utilities, Duke Energy Corp. and Southern Co., which have taken steps to cut carbon emissions. Duke has reduced its emissions 20 percent based on 2005 levels, the company said. Southern has cut its carbon emission levels by 26 percent based on that level, CEO Tom Fanning said at the company's annual meeting last week.

The 2005 baseline "is going to really ease the pain in the South," said Marilyn Brown, a professor at Georgia Tech's school of public policy and a board member of the Tennessee Valley Authority.

Southern is now the nation's third-largest consumer of natural gas, but shaking its historic image as a coal utility will take a while, despite the company's efforts to promote its uses of gas, nuclear and renewables (EnergyWire, May 29).

Southern's smaller utility subsidiaries, Gulf Power and Mississippi Power, now get more than 60 percent of their electricity from natural gas. Alabama Power still gets slightly more than half of its electricity from coal, however.

"We think this is a really important issue," Fanning told shareholders after being questioned about Southern's actions to reduce carbon emissions. Southern's words aren't rhetoric, he said.

At the meeting, Fanning touted Southern's involvement in the National Carbon Capture Research Center. The company's Mississippi Power subsidiary also is building a next-generation coal plant in Kemper County. The project has made news because of cost overruns, but Southern is hoping to expand the project's coal-gasification technology (EnergyWire, April 11).

But two of Southern's traditional coal-fired plants routinely stand out as well. Georgia Power's Plant Scherer and Alabama Power's Plant Miller rank No. 1 and 2 on the list of CO2-emitting power plants in the United States.

Plant Scherer routinely ranks at the top of the list because of its size.

Efficiency lags

States can use energy efficiency to help meet their targets, but this is one area where the Southeast falls short.

Collectively, the states have spent half of what the others have on energy-efficient programs, said Brown at Georgia Tech. Where some states have strong energy efficient programs, those actions may be only pilot programs in the South, she said.

"The South is one of the most energy inefficient regions in the country," Brown said.

There's been little incentive for utilities to invest in energy-efficiency programs in the Southeast because electricity prices have been so cheap, Brown said. She's hoping that changes now that energy efficiency has more value.

Brown and other environmental advocates point to TVA as a model for cutting emissions.

TVA's carbon emission levels already are more than 17 percent below what they were in 2005, according to the utility's figures. It is on track to reduce CO2 levels to 40 percent of what they were in 2005 by 2020, company officials say (EnergyWire, April 29).

TVA is in the middle of hashing out a long-term energy plan, which includes additional carbon reductions. As a federally owned utility, TVA must follow a mission -- energy, environment and economic development -- which includes taking care of the natural resources and communities in the seven states it serves.

In a conference call with reporters, TVA CEO Bill Johnson said the utility has been lucky to find a "sweet spot" in lower-emitting fuels that are also less expensive. It will be a challenge to continue to do that going forward.

"We're going to have to work harder and be smarter," he said. "Over the last five years, we've done a lot of work in this space, we still have very competitive rates, still attract business and industry to this region. We know what that sweet spot is, and we're going to have to work harder to get there."

Copyright 2014, Environment and Energy Publishing LLC. Reprinted with permission.

Either way, the RoboJackets, a student group focused on robotics, are hard at work trying to bring this and other robo-feats to reality.

This weekend, a team of RoboJackets travels to Rochester, Michigan, for its first competition of the summer at the Intelligent Ground Vehicle Competition (IGVC). In this event, autonomous robots built by college students from around the world face off in an outdoor obstacle course. 

“It’s a pretty tight-knit international community,” said Ben Nuttle, RoboJackets president and a computer science major. “We meet up and compete against a lot of the same people all the time.”

In IGVC, robots are designed to respond to obstacles in real-time, without any human interference. The RoboJackets employ stereoscopic cameras and several other technologies to get their robot through the course.

Later this summer, the RoboJackets will also send a team to RoboCup, where groups compete in varying leagues with robots designed to focus on specific robotics aspects or functions as they relate to playing soccer.

“We simplify the dynamics and mechanical challenges to really focus on things like intelligence, coordinating passing plays, and how you would strategically play a soccer game,” Nuttle said. “The emphasis of the competition is really on who has the best software.”

The RoboJackets also develop custom hardware from scratch — though the competition itself emphasizes software. Other behind-the-scenes work addresses hardware maintenance and upgrades, including the design and construction of custom control boards and new mechanical subsystems. At RoboCup, RoboJackets compete in the small-scale league, deploying small, omnidirectional robots that use custom radio signaling to play as a team. In the medium- and large-scale leagues, robots are closer to human size and focus on other aspects of mobility and intelligence. This year’s competition, which takes place July 17–29, serves as an encore to the actual World Cup, which takes place in Brazil June 12 – July 13.

While one RoboJackets team is in Brazil, another will be in Ontario from July 25–26, competing for the first time in the International Autonomous Robot Racing Challenge (IARRC).

The RoboJackets have been fielding robotics teams in various competitions since 1999, and in addition to participating in the three summer competitions, the group also hosts a FIRST Robotics Competition, where team members serve as mentors for high school students, and fields a team for BattleBots. 

Around 10 students will travel to each competition this summer. The campus community can follow along via Facebook, and students interested in getting involved can contact Sue Pedapudi.

Georgia Tech is leading the way, graduating the most female engineers in the nation, but the College of Engineering is not resting on its success. Its incoming freshman class this fall will have close to 30 percent women. Two of Georgia Tech’s engineering programs, biomedical and environmental, both have more than 50 percent women. 

Despite the success, Georgia Tech Dean of Engineering Gary May knows the Institute can do more.

“Right now we have a lot of work to do to build awareness and provide a support system for our women students as well as for our faculty, for that matter,” said May, who hosted a media roundtable in Washington, D.C. to discuss the challenges and success stories involved with attracting women to the STEM fields.

“I think the most critical aspect of what we’re doing is bringing awareness of the issues,” said May. “As an institution in a leadership position in the production of women engineers and scientists, it is our responsibility to get the word out about how important this is to the rest of the nation.”

The roundtable, held on Capitol Hill, highlighted a discussion of thought leaders from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, IBM and Caterpillar; representatives from academia; and recent alumni.  Panelists shared their personal stories about overcoming obstacles, how they developed their own career in a STEM field as well as shared what their employers are doing to encourage women in the STEM fields.

“I’m an engineer. I’ve had a terrific career and really enjoyed what I’ve done and the types of problems you can bring your toolset to solve,” said Patricia Falcone from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy and a roundtable panelist. “When I went to school, it was kind of the early days for women going into engineering. What surprises me is that the numbers haven’t gone up. We know that having mixed and diverse teams really enables creativity and good solutions.”

“I believe the number one issue with girls and women in technical fields is confidence or lack of confidence,” said Susan Puglia, vice president of IBM’s Global University Programs and vice chair of IBM’s Academy of Technology board of governors. “Building that confidence early on as girls are going through middle school, high school and even college, as well as into the workforce, is so important.”

Puglia says that IBM and other companies have programs designed to support their female workforce.

“We’ve been focused on some programs at IBM on teaching women what computing and engineering is all about," she said. "In the workforce, it takes the form of coaches or sponsorships to help them progress and do well in their fields.

The media roundtables are an example of a collaborative effort between Georgia Tech’s Office of Government and Community Relations, College of Engineering, Office of Development and Institute Communications.

“Policymakers in Washington, D.C. are very concerned about the STEM crisis in our country and the impact it’s having on our competitiveness,” said Robert Knotts, Georgia Tech’s director of Federal Relations. "As the producer of more engineers than any other university in the country, it’s important that Georgia Tech lead the discussion about how we can get more girls and women engaged in engineering. We were thrilled to hear from Congresswoman Eddie Bernice Johnson (the ranking member of the House Science, Space and Technology Committee) and from our distinguished panel of experts about what we can all do to encourage and support female engineers.”

“This collaborative effort was possible because we had the support of so many units across campus,” said Matt Nagel, director of media relations. “Media roundtables give us a unique opportunity to raise Georgia Tech’s profile among many of its key audiences on a national level including media, congressional staff and other influencers in the D.C. area.”

Georgia Tech media relations team is working on several upcoming media roundtables, but Nagel says they are always looking for good ideas from the units across campus.

“Each roundtable is different. The Women in Engineering roundtable was targeted toward congressional staff and higher education reporters. In the future, we may take a more specific topic and have a much more intimate group setting.”

On Thursday, July 10, 2014, during the 1:30-3:30PM “Breakthrough Research Technologies” session located at the TechXPOT South Pavilion in the South Hall, Moscone Center, Professor Oliver Brand, Interim Executive Director of the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN) at Georgia Tech, will present “MEMS-Based Sensing Systems and their Packaging”.

The presentation discusses research advances at Georgia Tech in the areas of chemical microsensors, inertial sensors and micromachined ultrasonic transducers. The examples presented will highlight how research in the area of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) is moving from processes and single devices to packaged microsystems, as well as how access to state-of-the-art fabrication and characterization facilities have become increasingly important for accelerated interdisciplinary research advances. The presentation presents how the Georgia Institute of Technology promotes such interdisciplinary research through the formation of Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs), such as the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN), and how the Center for MEMS and Microsystem Technologies (CMMT), a research center within IEN, supports technology advances, benefiting from the shared-user cleanroom facilities available on the Georgia Tech campus.  

SEMICON West, first held in 1971, is one of the largest international conferences for the presentation of new technologies for the microelectronics industry. Featuring professional development sessions and corporate exhibits that represent diverse topics such as semiconductors, nano and micro-device fabrication and testing, photovoltaics, LEDs and OLEDs, and flexible electronics that cut across the global electronics supply chain.

For more information about IEN or IEN’s capabilities and faculty base please visit IEN's website at ien.gatech.edu. For information about SEMICON West and to register for the conference, please follow this link.

These tours are designed for President Peterson to discuss Georgia Tech’s impact across the state. They also provide a chance for him to hear concerns from community members across the region.

Over the course of the past five summer tours, the president has traveled more than 4,000 miles, visited more than 34 cities and nearly every one of Georgia’s 159 counties.

This year’s tour will include: Augusta, Sandersville, Dublin, Hawkinsville, Warner Robins, Perry and Griffin.

The facility is jointly managed by C21U and Professional Education on behalf of the Provost. The state of the art facility was designed to be highly flexible  so that it can be used in any setting where experimental teaching is needed. The first floor Klaus facilities include a highly connected classroom, control room, and broadcast quality studio, as well as a dedicated support team.

Please join us for refreshments, tours, and equipment demos on June 26th from 3:30 to 5:00 pm at the facility, rooms 1203-1207 in the Klaus Advanced Computing Building.  For information, or to RSVP, please contact Kristen Schroeder kschroed@cc.gatech.edu.

The researchers have paired a small humanoid robot with an Android tablet. Kids teach it how to play Angry Birds, dragging their finger on the tablet to whiz the bird across the screen. In the meantime, the robot watches what happens and records “snapshots” in its memory. The machine notices where fingers start and stop, and how the objects on the screen move according to each other, while constantly keeping an eye on the score to check for signs of success.

When it’s the robot’s turn, it mimics the child’s movements and plays the game. If the bird is a dud and doesn’t cause any damage, the robot shakes its head in disappointment. If the building topples and points increase, the eyes light up and the machine celebrates with a happy sound and dance.

“The robot is able to learn by watching because it knows how interaction with a tablet app is supposed to work,” said Georgia Tech’s Ayanna Howard, Motorola Foundation Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering who is leading the project. “It recognizes that a person touched here and ended there, then deciphers the information that is important and relevant to its progress.”

The robot analyzes the new information and provides appropriate social responses while changing its play strategy.

“One way to get robots more quickly into society is to design them to be flexible for end users,” said Hae Won Park, Howard’s postdoctoral fellow working closely on the project. “If a robot is only trained to perform a specific set of tasks and not able to learn and adapt to its owner or surroundings, its usefulness can become extremely limited.”

That flexibility is one reason Howard and Park see their robot-smart tablet system as a future rehabilitation tool for children with cognitive and motor-skill disabilities. A clinician could program the robot to cater to a child’s needs, such as turn taking or hand-eye coordination tasks, and then send the machine home.

Another benefit for rehab: parents don’t always have time or enough patience for repetitive rehabilitation sessions. But a robot never gets tired or bored.  

“Imagine that a child’s rehab requires a hundred arm movements to improve precise hand-coordination movements,” said Howard. “He or she must touch and swipe the tablet repeatedly, something that can be boring and monotonous after a while. But if a robotic friend needs help with the game, the child is more likely to take the time to teach it, even if it requires repeating the same instructions over and over again. The person’s desire to help their ‘friend’ can turn a five-minute, bland exercise into a 30-minute session they enjoy.”

In a new study, Howard and Park asked grade-school children to play Angry Birds with an adult watching nearby. Afterwards, the kids were asked to teach a robot how to play the game. The children spent an average of nine minutes with the game as the adult watched. They played nearly three times as long (26.5 minutes) with the robot. They also interacted considerably more with the robot than the person. Only 7 percent of their session with the adult included eye contact, gestures and talking. It was nearly 40 percent with the robot.

The next steps for the Georgia Tech team will include more games for the robot, including Candy Crush and ZyroSky. They will also recruit more children diagnosed with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) and children with motor impairments to interact with the system. Their most recent study included two kids with ASD. Their interaction times with the adult were significantly less than those in the typically developing group. They were about the same with the robot. The findings were presented in June at the Rehabilitation Engineering and Assistive Technology Society of North America (RESNA) 2014 Annual Conference in Denver.  

This research was partially supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant 1208287. Any conclusions expressed are those of the principal investigator and may not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF.

The designation acknowledges Tech’s work with public and private sector partners in the state and region to support economic development through innovation and entrepreneurship, technology transfer, workforce development, and community development. Tech received the designation after conducting a self-review and submitting an application for independent review.

“Public universities serve as economic engines for their local communities and states by conducting cutting-edge research to reach new breakthroughs, and by developing the talent to help existing businesses grow stronger and enabling new ones to develop and thrive,” APLU President Peter McPherson said. “The institutions receiving the 2014 Innovation and Economic Prosperity University designation serve as models. They demonstrate how public research universities extend beyond their campuses to engage their communities in economic development that creates jobs and improves lives.”

The IEP designation is valid for five years, and requires an application for re-designation.

http://www.news.gatech.edu/2014/07/10/georgia-tech-named-innovation-and-economic-prosperity-university

The Staff Council’s primary mission is to act as an advisory group to the Institute’s executive and senior leadership and provide insight on how decisions regarding policies, procedures, and investments affect this segment of the campus community. The Council, which will meet with executive leadership at regular intervals, is intended to serve as a conduit for staff perspectives that are broadly representative of the greater staff population.

“When I first came to Georgia Tech in 2009, one of the first things I noticed is that we didn’t have a group in place to share insight and advice on decisions that affected our staff,” said Peterson. “Our new Staff Council will enable our staff to have a formal channel of communication with Georgia Tech’s senior leadership, just like our faculty and students already have. I would like to thank the planning committee and the members of the interim Staff Council for their work in helping to make this a reality.”

The interim Staff Council, which was appointed by the president, is charged with developing a plan for the planning and execution of the inaugural campuswide Staff Council elections this fall. In August, this group will lead public forums as a means for staff to learn more about the Staff Council as well as involvement opportunities.

To facilitate this goal of transferring appointed seats to elected seats in January 2015, the interim Staff Council also elected its first leadership team to help steer the committee toward a successful first term.

• Council Chair: Dwayne Palmer, lead information technology project manager in the Office of Information Technology
• Council Vice-chair: Christie Stewart, associate director of Campus Recreation
• Council Secretary: Andrea Be, assistant director for business operations in the Office of Industry Research

“The interim Staff Council is very excited to serve the campus community in this capacity,” said Palmer. “There is a lot to accomplish in the short term. This summer, we will conduct several information sessions where we will engage staff – asking them to bring their concerns and input to the Council. In addition, we will also be establishing the Staff Council elections process for fall 2014. I am really charged up about this opportunity for Georgia Tech's Staff Council to have a positive impact on campus.” 

Seats on the 20-member Staff Council will be allocated based upon the relative size of the staff populations under the Institute’s Job Classification and Compensation System (JCCS). For instance, the 739 staff members who comprise the skilled trade classification equate to five council seats. There are five categories in JCCS: Administrative and Professional, Scientific and Research, Skilled Trade, Information Technology, and Development.

A Staff Council website will be launched later this summer. In the meantime, questions and comments can be submitted to: staffcouncil@gatech.edu.

The brainchild of Barry Givens, ME 08, this Android-driven, robotic bartender was first conceived while Givens and his college friends were watching the NBA Finals at a restaurant in Atlanta several years ago. After placing an order for some cocktails before the game started, they found themselves waiting until halftime before their drinks finally arrived.

“The place was packed, and the bar was slammed with orders,” Givens says. “Being an engineering student, I couldn’t help but think there had to be an easier and faster way to make and serve those drinks.”

Read the full story from the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine. 

Follow this link to read more about the students and their research interests.

The program aims to give students an understanding of a diversity of robotics topics, such as mechanics, interaction, perception, and artificial intelligence and cognition.

Georgia Institute of Technology is one of 16 universities participating in the Advanced Vehicle Technology Competition, EcoCAR 3. The U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors Company are among the sponsors.

The teams are tasked with developing and implementing an innovative vehicle powertrain that will lower emissions by incorporating alternative fuels. They must keep the Camaro’s body design, retain safety standards and maintain consumer satisfaction with performance and cost.

“It is a great opportunity to develop our own vehicle based on our own innovation,” said Justin Wilbanks, a graduate research assistant in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “This is real-world experience while we’re still in school. And it’s exciting to know we’re going to work on a Camaro.”

Wilbanks was among a group of undergraduate and graduate students and faculty who worked on Georgia Tech’s application for the competition.

When the fall semester starts later this month, students will begin work on their overall design concept. They will receive a new Camaro during fall 2015 and continue to work on the car through 2018.

Students applied for membership on the team through Georgia Tech’s Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP). The program allows undergraduate and graduate students to work on multidisciplinary projects that can last for years.

Three advisors will work with the team: Tom Fuller, professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering; Michael Leamy, associate professor in mechanical engineering; and David Taylor, professor in the School of Electrical of Computer Engineering.

The other 15 competing institutions are: Arizona State University, California State University (Los Angeles), Colorado State University, Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University, McMaster University, Mississippi State University, Ohio State University, Pennsylvania State University, University of Tennessee (Knoxville), University of Alabama, University of Washington, University of Waterloo, Virginia Tech, Wayne State University and West Virginia University.

When faculty from across campus served as beta testers for the new system last fall, their feedback helped improve the system in ways that ensured it will remain easy to use. In the spring, academic units began providing faculty CVs to be imported into the system by the GTScholar team. To date, 70 faculty profiles have been created, with 100 more in a queue. With every new user, the Institute is one step closer to having a tool that will make life easier for faculty.

“I used an equivalent of GTScholar in my previous position at Imperial College,” said Ross Ethier, professor in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. “Once it was set up, it was a snap; every month or two, I would get an email with notification of my publications that it had found. The email contained a link I could click on and confirm authorship of the articles, abstracts, or book chapters.”

By creating a centralized data source for faculty CVs, teaching, research, and service activities, GTScholar will support Tech’s Southern Association of Colleges and Schools reaffirmation process.

GTScholar also opens the door to new cross-campus research collaborations.

“GTScholar will provide excellent support to track research trends across thematic areas such as energy or sustainability,” said Mary Hallisey Hunt, senior research associate and director of operations for the Strategic Energy Institute. “Whether identifying strengths to facilitate engage- ment with industry partners or developing new collaborations across colleges, schools, and Interdisciplinary Research Institutes to pursue large interdisciplinary proposals, GTScholar will be a great resource.”

In his new post, Brand leads an IRI that unites a wide range of faculty, research centers and shared-user laboratories working in the complementary fields of electronics and nanotechnology. This combination of infrastructure and interdisciplinary research activity seeks to fortify Georgia Tech’s expertise in microsystems, advanced semiconductors, photonics and photovoltaics, electronics design, microelectronics packaging, and systems integration, while stimulating new and emerging application areas in biomedicine, energy, and nanomaterials.

"I view my most important task as that of enabling our faculty – maximizing their research involvement opportunities and prospects," said Brand, who was awarded the executive position after a nationwide search. "IEN's job is to help enhance interdisciplinary research at Georgia Tech, and at the same time promote industry-sponsored projects that offer opportunities to develop applications and products in electronics, nanotechnology and related fields, while accelerating new discoveries into the marketplace."

Interdisciplinary research institutes (IRIs) are inclusive units that help connect and support Georgia Tech's 200-plus research centers and laboratories. They extend across college, department and laboratory boundaries to help faculty and staff work with both industry and government on basic and applied research programs. IRIs provide critical research infrastructure, create and utilize novel research laboratories, interact with students, and collaborate with other research partners including corporations, universities and research institutes.

Each IRI is dedicated to one of Georgia Tech’s core research areas. Besides electronics and nanotechnology, Georgia Tech IRIs focus on bioengineering and bioscience; energy and sustainable infrastructure; manufacturing, trade and logistics; materials; national security; people and technology; renewable bioproducts; and robotics (see www.research.gatech.edu/institutes).   

"In addition to promoting collaboration and new research, I believe IEN should be forward-looking and help define future research grand challenges," Brand said. "On the one hand, we need to react quickly and effectively to requests for research proposals coming in to us, and on the other hand, we need to be proactive by seeding concepts that can be used to generate future calls for proposals."

Brand received his Ph.D. from ETH Zurich in Switzerland in 1994. He did postdoctoral research at Georgia Tech from 1995-1997, and then returned to ETH Zurich as a lecturer and deputy director of its Physical Electronics Laboratory. He came back to Georgia Tech in 2003 as a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, gaining tenure in 2007 and becoming a full professor in 2009.

"Professor Brand is committed to seeding and growing new interdisciplinary and industry-sponsored research efforts and working closely with faculty and sponsors to define an electronics and nanotechnology roadmap for the future," said Stephen E. Cross, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research. "In addition, he is wholeheartedly dedicated to positioning Georgia Tech as the home of the nation’s leading electronics and nanotechnology thought leaders." 

As IEN's executive director, Brand oversees some 60 staff members, and shared-user research facilities that include two major buildings and more than 200 micro/nanoelectronic fabrication and characterization tools in multiple cleanrooms and laboratories (see www.ien.gatech.edu). The IEN and its associated research centers support the work of more than 200 faculty members from 10 academic schools, as well as the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI).

Brand's own area of research focuses on micro-electromechanical systems, or MEMS.  MEMS is a complex field that spans a number of traditional engineering disciplines including mechanical engineering, electrical engineering and chemical engineering, along with physics and chemistry. This interdisciplinary work, he said, helps him appreciate the broad spectrum of research performed under the IEN banner.

Though directing IEN will consume much of his time, Brand said, he will continue to direct a research group and expects to teach some courses as well.

"The research enabled by IEN has the potential to revolutionize medicine, help protect the environment, enhance homeland security, and provide fresh approaches in energy creation and storage," he said. "It can also improve the size, performance and effectiveness of devices and systems used in many other traditional consumer and industrial applications worldwide."

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

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Brett Israel (404-385-1933) (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu).

Writer: Rick Robinson

Georgia Tech is the highest ranked Georgia university on the list. In addition, it is ranked 19th in the world for computer science and 23rd for chemistry. For overall science programs, Georgia Tech ranked 40th in the world according to the ARWU. Georgia Tech’s mathematics programs came in at number 41 in the world, and business programs ranked in the top 75.

Several indicators are used to differentiate the world’s institutions of higher education, including cited researchers, staff and faculty honors, and per capita performance. These rankings, which have been compiled since 2003 by Shanghai Jiao Tong University, are also broken down across disciplines and fields, including engineering, medicine, business, and science majors.

As an internationally recognized technological research university, Georgia Tech contributes vital research, ideas, and innovation to business, industry, government, and academia, regionally, nationally, and around the world.

Learn more about Georgia Tech's College of Engineering.

What makes Ford’s accomplishment so remarkable is that 79 student teams applied to be part of the final eight that qualified for the Startup Summer program. So, the odds weren’t in her favor.

“I was just thrilled that I managed to get into the program, but to have both of my teams get in is an amazing accomplishment. But it’s a testament to the teams, not one person,” says Ford, a senior majoring in biomedical engineering with a minor in finance. “I was blessed to have two good teams to be part of. It was luck and serendipity, and a lot of hard work.”

The graduation (August 15 at the Technology Square Research Building, or TSRB) showcased the results of all that hard work, the culmination of a 12-week summer program. Eight companies with working prototypes, gave startup presentations in the TSRB auditorium, real-world training that may net real-world results for these teams, all of them made up of undergraduate students – recently graduated seniors, mostly. It was a day of celebration for a new program that might be heralding a change in the undergraduate educational experience at Georgia Tech.

“I think we are at a point in time where this eventually will become the norm in all universities, and I’m thrilled that Georgia Tech is taking a bold step in terms of leading this kind of movement,” says program coordinator Raghupathy ‘Siva’ Sivakumar, a successful entrepreneur who has started two venture-backed companies, and is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), which supported the pilot Startup Summer effort, along with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME).

The Startup program is, “part of a larger initiative to have 'entrepreneurial confidence' be a signature feature of a large number of Georgia Tech undergraduate students of all majors,” explains Ravi Bellamkonda, the professor who chairs the Coulter Department. “The idea started with the realization that students increasingly want to work for their own startups and businesses.  Also, larger companies value employees who are creative and entrepreneurial and take initiative.  These two aspects combined to create a burning question in my mind. What if Georgia Tech designed a set of experiences where students create their own jobs as a part of their experience at Georgia Tech?’’

The answer to that question led to a fruitful collaboration and partnership across many university departments, spearheaded by the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and the Executive Vice President for Research’s office. They needed someone with entrepreneurial experience to help lead the program, and Sivakumar was glad to step in.

“As an entrepreneur myself, I’m passionate about this program, which provides a platform for students that are interested in entrepreneurship,” Sivakumar says. “Our broader vision, going forward, is to create a bouquet of programs for undergraduate entrepreneurs, from the first day a student lands at Georgia Tech until they leave, giving them the knowledge, skills and experiences to pursue their own opportunities when they go out into the world. Startup Summer is one key aspect of that, and only the beginning.”

Sivakumar offered a class for sophomores and juniors, ‘Startup Lab,’ in the spring that he’ll bring back next spring. His co-leader in Startup Summer, Ray Vito (professor emeritus in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering) offers a freshman/sophomore level class, ‘Your Idea, Your Invention.’ “These are just examples,” Sivakumar says. “Our vision is really to have 20 such programs, all through the education process of an undergraduate student.”

Sivakumar, having already created venture-capital supported companies (including, most recently, StarMobile and Asankya) was a logical choice to lead the program, with an instructional team that included Vito, Keith McGreggor (director of VentureLab at Georgia Tech), and Tech alum and entrepreneur Sanjay Parekh. These guys were tasked with choosing from among the 79 applicant teams.

“The biggest challenge going forward will be keeping up with the demand,” Vito says. “There is a lot of student interest. We looked at 79 teams, interviewed about 30 of them, and there were at least five or 10 teams in addition to the final eight that could easily have benefited from this experience. It took a fair amount of work on the part of the teams. A lot of it was in developing the technologies, and taking what they learned and essentially putting it to good use. The presentations went great today, and they seemed to all come together at the last minute. But then, the Tech culture is a last-minute culture.”

Sivakumar envisions a time in the not too distant future when the Startup suite of programs is helping to create up to 100 student-led companies a year, with a longer-range goal of 300. But creating little enterprises is not the only aim of the program. It’s more like a targeted bonus.

“Its not just about starting companies, which only a small percentage of our students might do,” says ECE professor and chair Steve McLaughlin, who partnered with Bellamkonda in helping to launch the program (and provide a major chunk of support). “Its about creating leaders and equipping our students with a life skill over and above the superior education they get as engineers, scientists, and business graduates.”

In the summer program, eight teams went through 12 weeks of entrepreneurial training, most of that time spent on identifying potential customers and market needs. It took a lot of intent. One team (Filitic, an apparel analytics company) flew across country to meet with different clothing companies. Another team, Unmanned United, a drone technology company that spent a lot of time working outdoors.

“They practically went and lived with farmers in South Georgia,” Sivakumar says. “It’s one thing to hypothesize the problem, but another thing to actually be embedded with the customer and understand what their problems are.”

The other teams were Sucette (which makes a pacifier that changes colors when the baby is running a temperature, or it gets too hot outside for safety); Narvaro (which offers revolutionary, 3D telepresence for hyper-real virtual experiences); Gimme (which makes software that vastly increases efficiency for small to medium vending machine owners); Cloudpin (which offers an easier way to wirelessly share content with people nearby, opening up new avenues for location-based digital marketing); SonoFAST (which incorporates an innovative polymer pad for medical ultrasound procedures, replacing the need for messy liquid ultrasound); and FIXD (which has developed a plug-in sensor and an app that helps you understand your vehicle by translating your check engine light).

“What does this light really mean? In reality, this light can mean over 7,000 things,” says John Gattuso, FIXD co-founder, who gave his company’s presentation. “So a few months ago I get a call from my mom. She says, ‘John, I’m driving home from work and my ‘check engine’ light came on. What does it mean? Can you help me?’ Me being 500 miles away, I wasn’t much use. I told her to go home, go to a mechanic and they’d be able to figure out. It turns out the problem was a malfunction in the airbag system. My mother’s life was in danger, but because this light is so vague, she was none the wiser. Her car was talking to her but she was not able to listen.”

Each of the companies set up a table with information and demonstrations, and all were busy fielding questions, showing off their product or service, or explaining the technology behind it. The multi-talented Ford spread her time out among the two companies she helped start– Sucette (where she has utilized her biomedical engineering education and product development skills developed at DuPont, where she worked under a co-op arrangement), and FIXD (where she is putting her finance education to work in more of a business development capacity).

“I’m trying to bridge the gap between science and business,” says Ford, who dreams of being a CEO and a soccer mom – she wants to have it all. “When I worked in industry, at DuPont, I found that you really need backgrounds in both.”

The Startup Summer teams were generally comprised of two to five students. Each team had a mentor that worked with them along the early stage startup path. For Chris Klaus, the former Georgia Tech student who launched the multi-million dollar ISS (Internet Security Systems), then founded (and still leads) Kaneva (a 3D virtual world that supports 2D web browsing, social networking and shared media), this meant answering a lot of one on one business questions.

“What’s a startup? How do we reach customers? How do we set up a set up a web site? That kind of stuff,” Klaus says. “I acted as a sort of advisor, or coach, for Narvaro. It’s a 3D telepresence concept that has never really been explored before. It’s been done in science fiction, but now we have the technology, and it’s about to explode, within the next 12 months. So I saw this as a unique opportunity to jump in and provide some guidance, offer any lessons that I stubbed my toes on along the way.”

The difference between the Startup program philosophy and a typical business school approach, Klaus says, “is like the difference between researching how to drive a car and actually driving the car. You’re going to make mistakes, everyone does, but you’re going to learn much quicker if you get in the car and drive.”

And the program is exactly what it implies it is – a start, not the end all, but a first step toward starting a viable business.

“It sort of accelerates the learning curve for student entrepreneurs,” observes Lee Herron, vice president of commercialization for the Georgia Research Alliance, who has spent most of his career starting bioscience companies and helping others do the same. “I’m not saying it makes them entrepreneurs, but it accelerates the learning curve. These were some very polished, well-coached, well rehearsed pitches, and some unique ideas.”

Herron wonders if this does mark the beginning of a change in undergraduate education, a new element to the experience. Bellamkonda and McLaughlin both believe it very well could be that, and more.

“We believe that Startup Lab and Startup Summer are just the beginning of something big, not only for engineering students, but all Georgia Tech students,” McLaughlin says. “The idea that we are giving students the exposure, experience, and confidence to create their own jobs is exciting to students and increasingly important for their careers and lives in general.”

Bellamkonda also sees the potential for economic benefits rippling throughout the Atlanta region.

“One very likely outcome of this initiative is going to be a large number of student led startups that can vitalize the Atlanta economy further,” he says. Still, he maintains that the primary aim goes beyond the rapid creation and rise of fledgling companies. He wants to help create a new entrepreneurial mindset. “I honestly believe that this entrepreneurial confidence in Georgia Tech undergrads is going to be transformative in terms of their ability to be successful leaders, no matter what they pursue after they graduate.”

 Written by Jerry Grillo

Admission is accepting applications for its Women’s Recruitment Team (WRT), which plays an important role in the undergraduate recruitment process. Team members help prospective female students connect with women on campus who can share stories about their lives at Tech.

“I attended a couple of WRT events in high school, and it was the deciding factor for my enrollment at Georgia Tech,” said Mary Peters, a current WRT member. “WRT has so much power in raising the male to female ratio on campus.”

WRT members participate in three to four events for perspective students per semester, including tailgates, coffee nights, socials, talking with visitors in the admission office, and assisting with phone and email campaigns. 

In addition to helping current students meet prospective students, it also gives current students opportunities to connect with one another.

“I love WRT because it has enabled me to get to know other awesome women on our campus and learn about their passions,” Peters said.

Interested students should contact Katie Mattli at katie.mattli@admission.gatech.edu for application information. Applications are due Friday, Sept. 5.

Learn more about WRT at the Admission website or on Facebook.

The festival is free and open to the public and takes place in the downtown Decatur Square. In addition to author discussions, it includes book signings, live music, parades, cooking demonstrations, an interactive children’s area, and writing workshops.

Georgia Tech authors include:

• John Cressler, professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who will share highlights from his latest novel, Shadows in the Shining City; 
• Kristie Macrakis, professor in the School of History, Technology, and Society, who will discuss her recent book, Prisoners, Lovers, & Spies: The Story of Invisible Ink from Herodotus to al‑Qaeda; and
• Brittain Fellows Lauren Neefe and Caroline Young, as well as undergraduate students Jack Anninos, Brent Hornilla, and Ritika Ravichandra will represent Georgia Tech on the Local Poetry Stage.

Many of Tech’s participants are part of the Festival’s Science Track, which features a total 10 different sessions:

• School of Psychology Professor Randy Engle shares the stage with author Daniel Levitin and his book The Organized Mind;
• School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering Associate Professor Pete Ludovice joins author Scott Weems on Ha! The Science of How We Laugh and Why;
• School of Psychology Professor Jenny Singleton and author and journalist Lydia Denworth explore the science of sound in I Can Hear You Whisper; and
• School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Assistant Professor James Wray will discuss Mars Up Close: Inside the Curiosity Mission with author Marc Kaufman.

A full schedule of events and more information is available at www.decaturbookfestival.com.

Program Eligibility
This program is open to any current Georgia Tech or GTRI faculty member as project PI. The graduate student performing the research should be in the first 2 years of his/her graduate studies. Preference will be given to students who are new users of the IEN facilities. The student’s research advisor (project PI) does not need to be a current user of the IEN cleanroom/lab facilities. Past awardees of a seed grant may submit additional proposals for different students/projects, but not in consecutive funding cycles.

Award Information
Each seed grant award will consist of free cleanroom access to the student identified in the proposal for 2 (consecutive) billing quarters. Based on current access rates and the academic cap on hourly charges (https://cleanroom.ien.gatech.edu/rates/), this comprises a maximum award of $6000 for the 6 month period. This maximum award amount is still in effect even if IEN non-cleanroom (lab) equipment or electron beam lithography (EBL) is required. The designated student user is expected to only utilize the cleanroom/tool access while working with the PI on the proposed project. Members of the IEN Advanced Technology Team (ATT) will be available to consult during the project period. The number of awards for each proposal submission date will depend on the number and quality of the proposals, but typically 3-5 awards will be made. A short report describing the research activities will be requested midway and at the completion of the award period.

Submission Schedule
This Seed Grant program is offered in two competitions each year with due dates on October 1 and April 1. While it is expected that research activity will begin on December 1 and June 1, respectively, there is flexibility in scheduling the 2 quarters of research work, as long as they conform to the IEN billing quarters.

Proposal Requirements (2 pages max)
The proposal (submitted as a PDF file of no more than 2 pages) should include the following information:

1. Identify the research problem and specify the proposed methods.
2. Indicate the IEN research tools necessary to conduct the research. If assistance is needed with this component, members of the IEN Advanced Technology Team are available for consultation.
3. Describe the relationship of this research to the PI’s other research activity.
4. Identify the PI and the graduate student involved, and if there will be a mentoring relationship with the PI’s other students. Note if there are collaborative relationships with other Georgia Tech faculty that bear on this research project.
5. Specify the potential for follow-on funding based on the results of this initial work.
Submit the PDF file by the specified due date to Ms. Amy Duke (amy.duke@ien.gatech.edu).

Review Criteria
Proposals will initially be reviewed by IEN staff for technical feasibility within the 6-month time frame. Final selection of awardees will be done by a review committee of Georgia Tech faculty.

For more information, please contact David Gottfried, dsgottfried@gatech.edu, (404) 894-0479.

These questions are now easily answered thanks to FIXD, a device developed by a team of students from the Georgia Institute of Technology. 

FIXD gets plugged into a car’s diagnostics port, just underneath the steering wheel. The device connects a car to a person’s smartphone via Bluetooth. It explains the cause for the check engine light, diagnoses the seriousness of the problem and provides repair estimates. The sensor also delivers updates on when the car needs repairs and regular maintenance.

“We are helping drivers understand more about their cars,” said John Gattuso, the company’s CEO and a senior in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

The startup surpassed its $30,000 goal on Kickstarter and is seeking seed round investors.

An Android version of the app is scheduled to be on the market by November and the iPhone version is expected by March, said Rachel Ford, a senior in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering who handles the company’s business development and investor relations.

“What we’re doing now is extremely different from our technical engineering classes,” Ford said. “We would not have been able to do any of this without the startup classes and programs Georgia Tech offered us.”

Ford, Gattuso and Kevin Miron, a recent Tech graduate, began working on the sensor last spring through a new course called Startup Lab. The class teaches students to channel their ideas into startups and covers everything from customer discovery to creating sustainable businesses.

FIXD wasn’t the group’s original idea. They first created a device for women to make self-breast exams easier to complete on a regular schedule. But after interviewing about 80 women, they realized this wasn’t a feasible idea for a startup. Instead they switched to a diagnostic tool for cars.

The students turned down internships with other companies this summer to continue working on FIXD. A fourth student – Rikin Marfatia, a senior in the School of Computer Science – joined the team.

The team was one of eight that completed Startup Summer, a new 12-week Georgia Tech internship for students who want to launch startups based on their own inventions and prototypes. Each team was paired with a mentor, assigned workspace and given $15,000 to further develop their ideas.

The summer internship and spring course are part of an Institute-wide initiative to foster and support entrepreneurship among undergraduate students, said Raghupathy Sivakumar, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering who is involved in the initiatives.

Students retain all equity in the startups.

“Tons of other Georgia Tech students have ideas for startups,” Gattuso said. “They just need to be pushed off the ledge to try and do it.”

“This is the 16th consecutive year that Georgia Tech has ranked among the top ten public universities,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “Georgia Tech continues to be recognized nationally for the faculty’s commitment to excellence in preparing our students to meet the challenges that face our society through innovation, research, and collaboration.”

Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering moved up to a fourth place ranking (rising from fifth place in 2014) for undergraduate engineering programs at institutions that award doctoral degrees. The college also continued with solid rankings in its engineering programs, with seven programs ranking in the top five.

Georgia Tech’s internship and cooperative education initiatives are also cited in the publication’s “Academic Programs to Look For.”

The Scheller College of Business ranked 29th for undergraduate business education.

GEORGIA TECH BY THE NUMBERS

National Ranks

#7 ­­– Public Universities

#4 – Undergraduate Engineering Programs

#29 – Undergraduate Business Programs

Specialty Ranks - Engineering

#1 – Industrial Engineering

#2 – Civil Engineering

#3 – Aerospace Engineering

#3 – Environmental Engineering

#4 – Biomedical Engineering

#5 – Mechanical Engineering

Specialty Ranks – Business

#5 – Quantitative Analysis

See the full list of Georgia Tech rankings from U.S. News and World Report.

The Consortium to Promote Reflection in Engineering Education (CPREE) is supported through a $4.4 million grant from The Leona M. and Harry B. Helmsley Charitable Trust. The group will focus on first- and second-year undergraduates who want to be engineers. The goal is to enhance students’ ability to learn, help a greater percentage complete their degrees, and ultimately foster a larger, more diverse and better-trained workforce.

“Given what we know about the important role that reflective practice plays in the development of effective engineers, there is great opportunity to expand the use of reflective practice in teaching and learning within the College of Engineering and beyond,” Dean Gary S. May said. “This works hand in hand with Georgia Tech’s commitment to developing effective practitioners who excel in complex problem solving and design.”

Reflection – giving meaning to prior experiences and determining how that meaning will guide future actions – has long been recognized as important in higher education.

“Reflection is important for achieving deep and enduring learning and remains crucial for problem solving and professional development,” said Esther Jordan, assistant director for programming for Georgia Tech’s Center for the Enhancement of Teaching and Learning (CETL) and Georgia Tech’s lead on this project. “We expect there is great need for teaching enrichment in this area, and CETL is uniquely positioned to lead this charge.”

Georgia Tech and others in the consortium will each receive $200,000 over two academic years to fund a principal investigator and other colleagues to carry out the work. Tools and practices developed throughout this initiative will be shared with engineering programs nationwide.

The 12-school consortium will involve nearly 250 educators who will collect data on 18,000 student experiences. The consortium’s member institutions each bring a distinct perspective on engineering instruction and great enthusiasm for expanding their focus on reflection, organizers said.

“The Trust is delighted to support such a diverse group of schools in this effort to increase our nation’s engineering capacity,” said Ryan Kelsey, program officer for higher education at the Helmsley Charitable Trust. “Helping first- and second-year students reflect on what it means to be an engineer as they learn foundational concepts is a very promising strategy for attracting and retaining a larger and more diverse future engineering workforce.”

The consortium is led by the University of Washington’s Center for Learning and Teaching.

Other involved schools are: Arizona State University, Polytechnic School, Mesa, Arizona; Bellevue College in Bellevue, Washington; California Polytechnic State University in San Luis Obispo, California; Clarkson University in Potsdam, New York; Green River Community College in Auburn, Washington; Highline College in Des Moines, Iowa; Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology in Terre Haute, Indiana; Seattle Central College in Seattle; Seattle University in Seattle; Stanford University in Palo Alto, California; and the University of Washington. 

At stake is the largest hackathon prize to date: $60,000.

Hackers from across the nation will travel by bus and plane to represent more than 100 universities in the South’s largest hackathon. The mission: Build products to improve the state of software and hardware today.

“There are no limits and no restrictions during the 36 hours, except for the limits of the hackers’ imagination and their stamina,” said Shehmeer Jiwani, a computer science major at Georgia Tech and an organizer of the student-run event. “They can explore the vulnerabilities of existing hardware, create new apps, or develop new code.”

“For HackGT, we’ve said that you should be able to come to a hackathon and build a chair, as long as it’s the best chair we’ve ever seen,” said Pavleen Thukral, also a computer science major and organizer. “As long as students come here with a determination to build and to ‘Expect Greatness’.”

Sponsors range from eBay to twilio to Microsoft to Bloomberg, with several providing hardware and programs for hackers to improve or to discover vulnerabilities. These include Intel’s Edison modules, the Leap Motion Controller, the Thalmic Myo, and the Oculus Rift. 

The top team will win a $10,000 grand prize, along with an additional $50,000 in investments from Tech Square Labs to launch their winning project.

Thad Starner, a professor with the School of Interactive Computing and the technical lead for Google Glass, will serve as the event’s closing keynote speaker on Sunday, Sept. 21.  Scott Grimes, CEO of Cardlytics and a partner sponsor, will provide the keynote during the opening ceremony on Friday, Sept. 19.

Judges include Carie Davis, global director of innovation and entrepreneurship at The Coca-Cola Company; Dave Jagoda, technical director at Andreessen Horowitz; Paul Judge, an entrepreneur cited by MIT Technology Review as one of the Top 100 innvoators in the world; Michael Koziol, director of the Atlanta office of Huge, a leading digital design and development firm; and Joe Uhl, operation director for MailChimp.

For information, visit hackgt.com.

“But RFID doesn’t tell the robot where it is,” said Charlie Kemp, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. “To actually find the object and get close to it, the robot has to be more clever.”

That’s why Kemp, former Georgia Tech student Travis Deyle and University of Washington Professor Matthew Reynolds developed a new search algorithm that improves a robot’s ability to find and navigate to tagged objects. The team has implemented their system on a PR2 robot, allowing it to travel through a home and correctly locate different types of tagged household objects, including a medication bottle, TV remote, phone and hair brush. The research was presented September 14-18 in Chicago at the IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS).

The researchers have equipped a PR2 robot with articulated, directionally sensitive antennas and a new algorithm that allows the robot to successfully find and navigate to the intended object. Due to the physics of radio-frequency propagation, these antennas tend to receive stronger signals from a tag when they are closer to it and pointed more directly at it. By moving around the antennas on its shoulders and driving around the room, the PR2 can figure out the direction it should move to get a stronger signal from a tag and thus become closer to a tagged object.  In essence, the robot plays the classic childhood game of “Hotter/Colder” with the tag telling the PR2 when it’s getting closer to the target object.

In contrast to other approaches, the robot doesn’t explicitly estimate the 3D location of the target object, which significantly reduces the complexity of the algorithm.

“Instead the robot can use its mobility and our special behaviors to get close to a tag and oriented toward it,” said Deyle, who conducted the study in Kemp’s lab while earning his doctoral degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Deyle, who currently works at Google, says the research has implications for future home robots and is particularly compelling for applications such as helping people with medicine, as RFID is able to provide precise identification information about an object or a person.

“This could allow a robot to search for, grasp and deliver the right medication to the right person at the right time,” he added. “RFID provides precise identification, so the risk of delivering the wrong medication is dramatically reduced. Creating a system that allows robots to accurately locate the correct tag is an important first step.”

Reynolds added, “While we have demonstrated this technology with a few common household objects, the RFID tags can uniquely identify billions of different objects with essentially zero false positives. This is important because many objects look alike, yet must be uniquely identified – for example, identifying the correct medication bottle that should be delivered to a specific person.”

“With a little modification of the objects in your home, a robot could quickly take inventory of your possessions and navigate to an object of your choosing,” said Kemp, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Biomedical Engineering. “Are you looking for something? The robot will show you where it is.”

CITATION: Travis Deyle, Matt Reynolds and Charles C. Kemp, “Finding and Navigating to Household Objects with UHF RFID Tags by Optimizing RF Signal Strength.” IEEE/RSJ International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), 2014.

FUNDING: This work was supported in part by National Science Foundation (NSF) awards CBET-0932592 and CBET-0931924, an NSF Graduate Research Fellowship Program award and Willow Garage. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring agency.

The new technique uses a thin film of porous silicon material to coat a layer of light-conducting dense silicon. The porous silicon thin film contains many connected pores and internal surfaces that greatly increase the effective area onto which a chemical component of interest – often referred to as an analyte – can bind. The increased surface area allows the porous silicon to capture larger numbers of analyte molecules, which increases overall detection sensitivity and thereby facilitates detection of analytes occurring in low concentrations.

Unlike earlier methods for generating porous silicon, the Georgia Tech thin-film process is more easily adapted for use with standard silicon-on-insulator (SOI) substrates, and also allows for highly precise control of the thickness of the porous silicon layer. The research was described in a recent paper, "Magnesiothermically Formed Porous Silicon Thin Films on Silicon-on-Insulator Optical Microresonators for High-Sensitivity Detection," published in the journal Advanced Optical Materials.  

"A larger surface area means there's more room for the analytes you're seeking to land, and then to interact with the optical signal – the light – that detects them," explained Ali Adibi, Joseph M. Pettit Chair and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), who co-led the research along with Kenneth H. Sandhage, B. Mifflin Hood Professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). "And unlike other techniques, our process confines the pores to the thin film layer on top. The porous area doesn't impinge on the dense-silicon layer underneath, and consequently doesn't compromise the optical quality of the devices fabricated in the dense layer and the ability of the sensor to detect the analytes."

The work was part of the Centers in Integrated Photonics Engineering Research (CIPhER) program, a $4.3 million, two-year effort funded by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) to develop advanced laboratory-on-chip sensing technology capable of detecting multiple biological and chemical threats on a compact integrated platform. Other center participants included Emory University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, University of California-Santa Cruz, and Yale University. 

At Georgia Tech, Professor Mostafa El-Sayed of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry and David Gottfried of the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology were also principal investigators on the CIPhER program. Ali A. Eftekhar, an ECE research engineer, was also part of the technical management of this project. Adibi was the lead principal investigator of this program.

Optical Detection of Analytes

The Georgia Tech researchers are working with a silicon-based optical sensor that utilizes a racetrack-shaped optical resonator capable of coupling strongly with light passing through a nearby optical waveguide at particular light frequencies. The resonator's surface is chemically functionalized to bind with specific bio-markers, chemical components or other analytes being sought. 

As the optical signal passes through the silicon waveguide and resonator, the associated electromagnetic field can interact with one or more specific types of chemical components captured in the silicon surface. If an analyte is present, it alters the resonance frequency of the racetrack resonator, showing its effect on the power transmitted through the waveguide. The greater the concentration of the analyte, the larger the frequency shift, and the larger the effect on the transmitted power. 

Traditionally in bio-sensing, a layer of dense silicon has served a dual purpose. It functions as the waveguide for the optical signal that detects analytes, and it also provides the surface that captures those analytes.

"The problem with that approach is that dense, planar silicon has limited surface area onto which analytes can bind," explained Sandhage, who is also on the faculty of the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. "That significantly reduces how much response you get from the interaction of the light with the analyte."

Previous efforts to create pores in silicon to increase surface area have encountered drawbacks, including complexity – such as difficulty in adapting to standard silicon-on-insulator substrates – and a reduction in silicon's ability to transport optical signals, he said. One such technique, called anodization, hinges on the problematic use of a hazardous hydrofluoric acid bath with an applied electrical current to etch into doped silicon. The technique tends to yield relatively large columnar (two-dimensional) pores in doped silicon, a modest surface area, and higher loss of optical signals.

The ability to controllably convert silica into porous silicon with fine, 3-D-interconnected pores is useful in other applications besides chemical sensing, Sandhage said. These include anodes for lithium ion batteries, optical displays, and inverse opals, which are three-dimensional photonic crystals.

"The collaborative interplay between Professor Adibi's group and my group was essential to the success of this work," he said. "We both brought to bear specific techniques and expertise that enabled us to accomplish what neither of us could have done alone."

A Simpler Method

In their recent paper, the Georgia Tech teams report development of a simpler, more effective device fabrication approach. Using an oxidation process, they first grew silica (silicon dioxide) on top of the dense-silicon layer. Then, using a shape-preserving magnesiothermic reduction process, the Sandhage group exposed the silica layer to magnesium gas generated by heating magnesium silicide. The process has been patented by the Georgia Tech Research Corp. under U.S. Patent No. 7,615,206.

The resulting magnesium gas reacted with the silica layer to yield a fine mixture of silicon and magnesium oxide, but did not react with the dense-silicon layer underneath. The magnesium oxide was then easily dissolved with a weak acid solution to yield a porous silicon layer with very fine 3-D-connected pores, which trapped analytes effectively but did not appreciably scatter light and could be tailored to within about a nanometer of thickness. 

Forming a reliable sensor requires careful design and optimal fabrication of the nanophotonic structures, a task that was performed in Adibi’s group. The fabrication process includes a critical step – using electron beams to cut channels in the porous silicon and underlying dense silicon, to form a patterned structure. This microlithography technique creates tiny trenches in the porous silicon and dense silicon, yielding porous-silicon-on-dense-silicon waveguides and microresonators that guide the optical signals and enable them to detect analytes.

In addition, the Adibi  team used advanced computing approaches to model the materials development process and to design the sensor structures. The models helped the researchers understand which techniques were most effective for producing efficient microresonators.

"We have demonstrated that you can integrate microlithography and controlled-pore silicon on dense silicon without significantly sacrificing the quality of the resonator," Adibi said. "The result is a resonant-frequency response for sensing with much larger sensitivity – by about a factor of six – compared to when you don't have the porous silicon."

This research was supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Any opinions, findings, conclusions or recommendations expressed in this article are those of the principal investigators and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsor, DARPA.

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

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu) (404-894-6986) or Brett Israel (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu) (404-385-1933).

Writer: Rick Robinson

Mr. Bankoff joined six other experts from China, America, Hong Kong, and Israel in presenting their views on how best to attract and support the necessary talent, infrastructure and policies to create an “innovation economy” in this bay city next to Hong Kong that was the first of China’s Special Economic Zones.

Based on his long experience in global intellectual property and arbitration matters, Mr. Bankoff presented a 3-part model that urged continued liberalization of the arbitration rules and intellectual property procedures.  He stressed the need to create a trusted rule of law environment for successful innovation and investment and to attract, educate and support the necessary human capital.

Mr. Bankoff attended at formal dinner hosted by Wang Rong, Member of Standing Committee of the CPC and the most senior government official in Shenzhen.  He also toured the site and discussed the plans for the development of Quanhai as a sub-zone within Shenzhen. 

Georgia Tech is the first American school invited to become part of the Shenzhen “Virtual University” that includes outstanding technology and business institutes in China and globally.  This fall Georgia Tech began to offer its first masters class in Electrical and Computer Engineering.  Mr. Bankoff visited the Georgia Tech facility and visited with Zhiya Wang, officer manager and with Dr. Tong Zhou who is the Director of Georgia Tech’s Shenzhen program.

The program was extensively covered by the Chinese Media in the following links:

http://sztqb.sznews.com/html/2014-09/18/content_3007462.htm

http://szsb.sznews.com/html/2014-09/18/content_3007569.htm

http://www.forbeschina.com/review/event/shenzhen.shtml

http://sz.southcn.com/s/2014-09/18/content_108707952.htm

http://v.ifeng.com/news/society/201409/013ed968-1dcb-433d-b6fb-aaaa16c60821.shtml

• Miles O’Brien, Science Nation Correspondent
• Marsha Walton, Science Nation Producer

College students from across the U.S. are getting an opportunity that is unavailable to many of them on their own campuses—the chance to program robots. The students are taking part in a 10-week Summer Undergraduate Research Experience, or SURE for short.

This particular SURE program is at Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM). It’s an immersive robotics research experience that is designed to attract underrepresented students into graduate school in the fields of engineering and science. IRIM associate director of research Ayanna Howard says the projects—such as programming a robot to serve food to a person with a disability—are also meant to enlighten the students about the various applications of robotics and the multidisciplinary aspects of the research. She says the students also develop more confidence.

In addition to the hands-on technology, the students also get advice on how to apply to and pay for graduate school. SURE is supported by the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergraduates (REU) program, and co-funded by the Department of Defense (DoD) in partnership with the NSF REU program and NSF's Division of Engineering Education and Centers (EEC).

The research in this episode was supported by NSF award #1263049, REU Site: Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE).

Tech moved up one spot from 28th the previous year.

The Times Higher Education World Rankings claim to judge world-class universities across all of their core missions including teaching, research, knowledge transfer and international outlook.  The rankings employ 13 performance indicators in an attempt to provide a comprehensive comparison.

Directing kids to the vast opportunities that await them in the future of the high tech workforce is the goal of Meindl’s “Teachable Moments” Legacy Program. The project allows the general public and students to go online and fund a laboratory based graduate student research project being conducted in the multidisciplinary cleanroom space housed at the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology at Georgia Tech. After the project is funded, the student donors have the opportunity to actively participate in the research with the graduate student mentor in charge of the project.

To fund the projects, $1,000 stipends have been created with cost share commitments from Meindl, the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), the ACE/Sloan Legacy Project, and the Vice President of Institute Diversity. To engage the public in sponsoring these activities, the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) crowd funding website has set aside space where the public can contribute funds to any of 20 graduate student projects. Donors get to be involved with desired “Teachable Moments” in various ways, ranging from Skype time with the researcher to research lab tours. In addition to the outreach training and kits, graduate students involved will receive a stipend to create a demonstration and will gain public exposure for their research.

To learn more about the “Teachable Moments for the Future STEM Workforce” project, visit the website at this link.

- Christa Ernst

Tech topped the list, followed by the University of California, Berkeley, College of William and Mary, United States Air Force Academy, and University of Virginia.

The list was compiled by Jonathan Wai, a Duke University professor, who analyzed average standardized test scores reported to.

Read more…

This competition is offered biannually, in the spring and fall.  The 4 student winners for this award cycle come from various schools across campus, and will be provided no-cost access to the IEN cleanrooms and labs. In keeping with the interdisciplinary mission of IEN, the projects that will be enabled by the grants include MEMS, electronics, batteries, and optoelectronics research.

The Fall 2014-2015 IEN Seed Grant Award winners are:

• Serife Tol (PI Alper Erturk, Mechanical Engineering), Bistable Snap-through MEMS Systems for Ultra-broadband Nonlinear Energy Harvesting from Elastoacoustic Wave

• Xinyi Gong (PIs Erik Shipton, Raj Pulugurtha, and Rao Tummala, GTRI, Packaging Research Center, and Electrical and Computer Engineering), Magnetic Nanoarrays for Ultra-miniaturized Micro- and mm-wave Structure
• Zhipeng Pan (PI Shuman Xia, Mechanical Engineering), Nanofabrication of Lithuim-Ion Battery Electrodes with Embedded Multiphysics Sensors
• Jun Chen (PI ZL Wang, Materials Science and Engineering), Piezo-phototronic Vertical Nanowire-LEDs Array for Reconfigurabel/Tunable Optoelectronics

Awardees will present their results of their research efforts at the annual IEN User Day in 2015.

Now the magazine, which started as a four-page, black and white publication for the-then Engineering Experiment Station (today, Georgia Tech Research Institute), has undergone a major content update and design metamorphosis.

In the new Research Horizons, which debuted this month, readers will see a publication with more visuals — larger photographs, illustrations, and accompanying graphics — shorter, more compact stories; punchier headlines; and contemporary typefaces. The refresh is designed to present the research in a more contemporary, compelling, and engaging way.

The publication’s new look coincides with a broader strategic research marketing plan that also includes a revamped monthly electronic newsletter and a new website (www.rh.gatech.edu) with videos, real-time updates, and shareable features. And it includes the launch of a digital e-zine, through Georgia Tech’s app on the Apple storefront for iPads.

It also serves to highlight what Executive Vice President for Research Stephen E. Cross has identified as the core goals for his unit: to pursue transformative research, strengthen collaborative partnerships, and enhance the societal and economic impact of those findings.

“I see this as more than just a magazine redesign. It’s a rethinking of how we talk about and how we share research that comes out of Georgia Tech,” said Cross.

The changes follow several months of study, focus group research, and planning centered on what Research Horizons readers like, how to increase the publication’s appeal, and how to make it more attractive and useful to subscribers, according to Kirk Englehardt, Georgia Tech’s director of research communications.

One of those changes is the addition of an indexed list of Georgia Tech’s research contacts to the back of the magazine — something readers surveyed said they wanted.

Another change is story length. While still comprehensive in scope, the stories are shorter and range from 1,500 to 3,000 words — versus 8,000 to 10,000 per article — Englehardt said.

The magazine, which has a circulation of about 20,000, also reflects a greater emphasis on a broader mix of stories from Georgia Tech’s 12 core research areas. To help them focus on research of specific interest to them, website visitors can view a list of stories from each core research area.

“We try to balance different technology areas — the feature stories include life sciences, military technology, technology transfer, and robotics,” said John Toon, Research Horizons’ editor. “There’s a pretty good cross section of what Georgia Tech is all about.”

That underscores a strategic decision to broaden the magazine’s focus to appeal to business and industry, in addition to the federal government sponsors of Georgia Tech research, the original catalysts for Research Horizon’s creation in 1983.

Indeed, when Cross began overseeing research in 2010, one of his goals was to expand the scope of the work done by faculty to address the needs of business and industry, as well as government agencies such as the National Science Foundation, U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Department of Energy, and the National Institutes of Health.

“What we set out to do was try to create a magazine that would address both groups: industrial companies that needed research and development to solve problems, and the traditional base of federal government sponsors,” said Toon.

Some of the magazine’s new section headings, “Exhibit A” and “Front Office,” for example, are designed to reflect those efforts to appeal to the industrial audience. The idea is to give industry research executives a “sneak peak” at what’s next.

The magazine’s longevity is a testament to Georgia Tech’s commitment to research and to its understanding that sharing those stories is important, said Mark Hodges, a senior research associate at the Georgia Tech Research Institute and the magazine’s first editor.

“The main reason behind this was the realization that research was becoming a bigger part of Georgia Tech,” Hodges said of the original magazine launch. “And this publication was part of increasing Georgia Tech’s profile.”

If you would like to receive Research Horizons at no cost, visit http://c.gatech.edu/rh-signup and complete the short online form. You may opt into Georgia Tech’s monthly research e-newsletter at that link, too.

You can also get up-to-the-minute Georgia Tech research news on the new Research Horizons website: www.rh.gatech.edu.

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

Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu) (404-894-6986) or Brett Israel (brett.israel@comm.gatech.edu) (404-385-1933).
Writer: Peralte Paul

Bankoff presented Building an Internationalized City: Planning for Innovation, which commented on the experimentation in Qianhai, the first of China’s Special Economic Zones, and what additional steps might be taken in envisioning a special zone that can become a global leader in research, development, experimentation, innovation, and commercialization of services and technology.

Bankoff joined six other international experts from China, America, and Israel in discussing the best methods to attract and support the necessary talent, infrastructure, and policies to create an innovation economy. He offered a three-part model that urged continued liberalization of the arbitration rules and intellectual property procedures, stressing the need to create a trusted rule of law environment for successful innovation and investment and to attract, educate, and support the necessary human capital.

While in China, Bankoff had the opportunity to visit the Georgia Tech facility in Shenzhen’s Virtual University Park and visit with Zhiya Wang and Tong Zhou, program manager and director of Georgia Tech’s Shenzhen program, respectively. He also attended a formal dinner and tour of Quanhai hosted by Wang Rong, former mayor of Shenzhen.

Team Revolutionary Agricultural Technologies (RAT) won the Pakathon Atlanta Competition on Sept. 28 and moved on to win the Pakathon Global Competition in Boston on Oct. 11.

Aneeq Zia and Muneeb Zia, Tech graduate students in electrical and computer engineering, worked with their teammates, who included startup entrepreneurs, to design the Tensiometer, a device to monitor soil water status in the root zone of a crop. The Tensiometer can help low-income, low-technology farmers know when and how much to irrigate certain crops, which in return should provide better crop yield and water-use efficiency.

“With future populations increasing and fresh water supplies decreasing, this device is in development to help solve the issue of over-watering crops, thus saving more water for human consumption and food growth,” said Zia.

Muhammad Asif Rana, head of the Pakathon Atlanta Chapter, believes Team RAT’s dedication to making a physical device, rather than an app, was what made them stand out among the competition.

“I think the main reason our winning team won the global competition was that they proposed an engineering solution,” he said. “They provided an actual hardware prototype which was pretty novel. The other ideas were mostly apps.”  

Pakathon Atlanta is one of several chapters that participate in Pakathon, a two-round global hackathon that takes place synchronously in 16 cities in the U.S., Pakistan, and Canada. The first round determines city winners, who then move onto the global finale. 

The goal of Pakathon is to provide developing countries, specifically Pakistan, with sustainable projects and companies and to connect entrepreneurs from around the world to Pakistan. From Pakistan, Pakathon hopes to eventually move on to developing countries all over the world.

“Since our nation’s founding, the engineering enterprise has been the wellspring of our security and prosperity,” said Jeff Wilcox, Lockheed Martin’s vice president of engineering and founder of NEF. “The NEF movement is dedicated to bringing together stakeholders from across the engineering community and developing an actionable roadmap to ensure the sustainability of that enterprise.”

NEF’s regional dialogue series has been to 14 American engineering hubs, including New York, Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, Boston, and Chicago. Still ahead are dialogues in Phoenix and several more locations in the planning stages.

“NEF is a center of gravity pulling everyone together to face engineering’s challenges of capacity, capability and competitiveness. We call those challenges the 3C’s,” Wilcox said.

Atlanta was chosen as a regional dialogue city because of its significant role in technology, biomedical engineering, manufacturing, and education. Georgia Tech and the Georgia Research Alliance are ideal NEF hosts. Georgia Tech is a renowned science and technology-focused research institution, serving more than 13,000 students in the College of Engineering. The university is acclaimed for its achievements in clean, sustainable energy research, discoveries in diseases and treatment, and advancements in national defense and security, while the Georgia Research Alliance is aligned with

Georgia’s universities, and brings focus to science and industry in the region, launching new companies and creating high-value jobs.

“At Georgia Tech, we’ve learned that innovation solutions are many times interdisciplinary and the result of collaboration between education, business, industry, and government,” said Georgia Tech President G. P. “Bud” Peterson.

“Regional dialogues like this one, initiated by the National Engineering Forum, are helping to stimulate the conversation between thought leaders from all of these groups, and helping to build a community of action with tremendous potential in order to advance U.S. leadership in engineering.”

“Engineering talent is critical to the future of American innovation and competitiveness,” said C. Michael Cassidy, President and CEO of the Georgia Research Alliance.  “We were proud to cohost the NEF Regional dialogue and look forward to collaborating with our partners from the universities, business and government on how to address the needs of the U.S engineering enterprise.”

“It is critical that we bring together all those who have a stake in preserving and growing the American engineering enterprise,” said Chad Evans, executive vice president of the Council on Competitiveness. “We need engineers themselves,along with the business community, government leaders, educators and the media collaborating to enlighten our collective national consciousness about the power of engineering and its vital role in our nation’s competitiveness in the global economy.”

 About the National Engineering Forum:

The National Engineering Forum (NEF) brings together leaders concerned about the sustainability of the United States engineering field and the impact on the nation’s security and prosperity. NEF involves industry executives, academics, policymakers, media, engineering societies, and nonprofits to develop solutions to the challenges facing the U.S. engineering enterprise. For more on NEF, visit: www.nationalengineeringforum.com or follow us on Twitter @NatlEngForum.

Ten years ago, Evans suffered a stroke that left him with limited mobility. Over the past two years, he’s been working with Kemp, an associate professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, to develop and test robots that help him shave, adjust a blanket when he’s cold, and even scratch an annoying itch.

“We did things with the robots that I never could have imagined,” said Evans, who contacted Kemp after seeing him on a CNN broadcast about health care robots.

Robots working directly with people – even helping them shave – is both challenging and unusual. Most robots today work in manufacturing facilities where, for safety reasons, they stay far away from humans. But Georgia Tech robotics researchers believe people and robots can accomplish much more by working together – as long as the robots have common sense to know, for instance, how much force humans apply when shaving.

“A major challenge for health care robots is that they lack so much of the knowledge and experience that people take for granted,” said Kemp. “To us, it’s just common sense that everybody has; for robots, it’s a serious impediment.”

Giving robots common sense is just one milestone on the path to the kinds of collaboration that will be required to meet the needs of a growing population of older persons. Beyond personal care, the benefits of co-robotics are many. To produce better products more efficiently, manufacturing robots will need to team up with humans, each contributing unique abilities. And in defense and homeland security, robots will increasingly have to take on the dangerous jobs, leveraging people’s skills while protecting them from harm.

Read more of this article from Georgia Tech's Research Horizons magazine.

Two of Tech’s major academic showcases take place this week. The second annual Tech4Good Poster Showcase and the twice-yearly Capstone Design Expo both help students gain real world experience and promote creativity in designing their own products for market.

Tech4Good lets students from different areas of study work on projects that benefit nonprofit organizations and local communities. It aims to build on current service learning activities on campus and promote social entrepreneurship and civic engagement in Tech's curriculum.

The Capstone Design Expo focuses on mechanical, biomedical, electrical and computer, and industrial and systems engineering projects, as well as industrial design projects. Students in these majors take the Capstone Senior Design course and develop innovative ideas that solve an industry-sponsored challenge, help researchers develop technology, or form the basis for their own startup. Both events allow students to meet professionals from their field of study who provide helpful criticism and potential job and investment offers.

From helping nonprofit companies to competing for cash prizes and job offers, each expo shows Tech’s student talent. Tech4Good will take place Wednesday, Dec. 3, from 4 – 6 p.m. on the first floor of Clough Commons. The Capstone Design Expo will be held Thursday, Dec. 4, from 5:30 – 8:30 p.m. at McCamish Pavilion. Both events are free and open to the public.

Oh, A Ph.D. student in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), is advised by ECE Associate Professor Muhannad Bakir and ECE Professor and College of Engineering Dean Gary May.

The title of his poster was “Electrical interconnect and microfluidic cooling within 3D ICs and silicon interposer”. Oh’s coauthors on the work were Li Zheng and Yue Zhang, his fellow Ph.D. students in the Integrated 3D Systems Group, which is led by Bakir.

The poster presented a three-dimensional integrated circuit (3D IC) system with an embedded microfluidic cooling heat sink (MFHS). In the proposed 3D IC system, high power tiers contain embedded MFHS and high-aspect ratio (23:1) through-silicon vias (TSVs) routed through the integrated MFHS. Each tier has dedicated solder-based electrical and fluidic microbumps for electrical interconnection and fluidic delivery, respectively. In addition, thermal characterization of a microfluidic heat sink with embedded TSVs was also presented for the first time.

Mishra, a newly graduated Ph.D. from the School of Materials Science and Engineering, was advised by 3D Systems Packaging Research Center Director and ECE Professor Rao Tummala and 3D Systems Packaging Research Center research faculty member P.M. Raj.

Mishra’s poster, titled “Multilayered ferromagnetic –polymer composite structures and their integration for power supply inductors,” presented the material modeling, design, processing, characterization and integration of a new class of multilayered ferromagnetic-polymer composite structures for high-density power inductor applications. The multilayered composite structures comprise of stacked high-permeability, high-Ms, low-coercivity magnetic layers with ultrathin polymer adhesives. The adhesive acts as an insulating layer to reduce eddy current losses while also enabling high permeability at higher operating frequencies. The final outcome was the achievement of high inductance densities with improved power handling in 1-10 MHz frequency regime.

Packaging Research Center students also garnered the second and third place awards. The second place poster prize was awarded to Brett Sawyer, “Design and demonstration of 2.5D glass interposers at 40-50um bump pitch for 100 GB/s to 1 TB/s die-to-die bandwidth,” and Jialing Tong, “Modeling and characterization of taper through-package-vias (TPVs) in glass substrate”.  Third place went to Ninad Shahane, “Metastable Cu-Sn interconnections for high-throughput ultrafine pitch SLID bonding,” and Ting-Chia Huang, “Low-temperature, low-pressure Cu Interconnections without solder at ultra-fine pitch”.

E. Roe Stamps, a private investor and co-founder of the Boston-based private investment company Summit Partners, will address the undergraduate ceremony at 9 a.m. Zhong Lin (Z.L.) Wang, A Regents Professor at Georgia Tech and the Hightower Chair in Materials Science and Engineering, will address the Ph.D. and master’s ceremony on Friday, December 12 at 7 p.m.

Stamps a former lieutenant in the United States Navy Reserve, will also be awarded an honorary degree during the Saturday morning ceremony.  His company, Summit Partners has grown to be one of the largest and most successful investment firms in the country.

Born in Waycross and raised in Macon, Stamps earned bachelor’s and master’s degrees in industrial engineering from Georgia Tech in 1967 and 1972, respectively. He went on to earn an MBA from Harvard Business School. Stamps and his wife, Penny, are members of The Hill Society, Georgia Tech’s most prestigious donor recognition society that honors principal benefactors. 

Through the Stamps Family Charitable Foundation, the Stamps have invested in Georgia Tech’s most promising undergraduate students for more than 14 years, beginning with gifts in support of the President’s Scholarship Program in 2000. The Stamps expanded their support of Georgia Tech’s leading undergraduate students through the launch of the merit-based Stamps Leadership Scholars Program in 2006. This visionary initiative became a prototype for the program that has expanded on a national basis to include scholars from more than three dozen universities from coast to coast. Of the 583 current scholars nationwide, 51 are from Georgia Tech.

Prior to the advent of the Stamps Leadership Scholars Program, the Stamps’ philanthropy at Tech had positively affected thousands of students through their support of Stamps Field, the Edward R. Stamps III Student Health Services, and Stamps Student Center Commons. 

In addition to his philanthropy, Stamps has provided extensive volunteer leadership to his alma mater. He served as vice chairman for Campaign Georgia Tech during the quiet phase, and along with his wife, Penny, serves as an honorary chair of the Campaign. He also was a member of the Campaign for Georgia Tech National Steering Committee.

An emeritus member of the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering Advisory Board and the Georgia Tech Foundation Board of Trustees, Stamps has received the Distinguished Alumni Award from both the Stewart School and the College of Engineering. He was inducted into the College of Engineering’s Hall of Fame in 2001. Stamps also received the Joseph Mayo Pettit Alumni Distinguished Service Award, the highest award conferred by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, recognizing lifetime leadership, achievement and service to the Institute and to the community. In 2012, he received Harvard Business School’s Alumni Achievement Award, the school’s top honor.  

Professor Wang has made original and innovative contributions to the synthesis, discovery, characterization and understanding of fundamental physical properties of oxide nanobelts and nanowires, as well as applications of nanowires in energy sciences, electronics, optoelectronics and biological science.

One of the world’s leading figures in ZnO nanostructure research, Wang has pursued work in developing nanogenerators that has established the principle and technological road map for harvesting mechanical energy from the environment and biological systems for powering personal electronics. His research on self-powered nanosystems has inspired a worldwide effort in academia and industry for studying energy for micro-nano-systems, which is now a distinct discipline in energy research and future sensor networks. Wang coined and pioneered the field of piezotronics and piezo-phototronics by introducing the piezoelectric potential gated charge transport process in fabricating new electronic and optoelectronic devices. This historical breakthrough has important applications in smart MEMS/NEMS, nanorobotics, human-electronics interface and sensors.

Wang also invented and pioneered the in-situ technique for measuring the mechanical and electrical properties of a single nanotube/nanowire inside a transmission electron microscope (TEM).

A highly regarded educator, Wang has advised and graduated 38 doctoral students and two master’s students, and is currently advising 10 doctoral students. He has also hosted and supervised 105 postdoctoral fellows and visiting scientists. His students have received more than 30 awards from Georgia Tech and various professional societies for best paper/poster presentation and other academic achievements.

Wang is recognized as a pioneer and world leader in nanoscience and nanotechnology. He has authored and co-authored six scientific reference and textbooks and more than 950 peer-reviewed journal articles, edited and co-edited 14 volumes of books on nanotechnology and held more than 100 U.S. and foreign patents. He is one of the world’s top five most cited authors in nanotechnology.

The recipient of numerous honors and awards, Wang was named the 2014 Georgia Tech Distinguished Professor. He also received the 2014 NANOSMAT Prize (United Kingdom), the China International Science and Technology Collaboration Award and the 2014 James C. McGroddy Prize in New Materials from the American Physical Society. Other honors include the ACS Nano Lectureship (2013); the Edward Orton Memorial Lecture Award, American Ceramic Society (2012); the Materials Research Society Medal (2011); the Purdy Award, American Ceramic Society (2009); the John M. Cowley Distinguished Lecture, Arizona State University (2012); NanoTech Briefs, Top 50 Award (2005); Georgia Tech Faculty Outstanding Research Author (2004, 2000); the S.T. Li Prize for Distinguished Achievement in Science and Technology (2001); the Burton Medal, Microscopy Society of America (1999); Outstanding Overseas Young Scientist Award; and the NSF China (1998) and NSF CAREER (1998) awards.

Wang holds a doctorate in physics from Arizona State University.