The 20 teams who participated in Startup Summer will demonstrate their products and services Tuesday starting at 4:30pm in the Egyptian Ballroom of the Fox Theatre.

Startup Summer is one of three main programs under the umbrella of CREATE-X, a Georgia Tech initiative to enhance and support entrepreneurship programs for undergraduate students. It is just one way the Institute is preparing the nation’s next entrepreneurs.

This is the third cohort of teams to go through the 12-week Startup Summer program. If the past is any indication, many of the teams will continue to succeed long after the program ends.

Three program graduates – FIXD, Gimme Vending and TEQ Charging – were among 10 emerging companies selected to participate in The Bridge:Atlanta, a startup commercialization program established by Coca-Cola to foster connections and create mentorships between entrepreneurs and established corporations. 

Others Startup Summer graduates joined Georgia Tech’s Advanced Technology Development Center, a statewide technology incubator.

Here’s a look at five past Startup Summer teams:

Keeping Cars ‘FIXD’

Drivers tense up when the check engine light come on. They wonder if the car is OK to drive or if it will be expensive to fix.

FIXD helps drivers quickly understand what’s wrong with their cars.

The FIXD sensor is plugged into a car’s diagnostics port, located just underneath the steering wheel. It relays problems to an app via Bluetooth. It provides a simple definition of what is wrong, explains the severity of the issue and warns of the consequences of driving without repairs. The device will also keep track of the vehicle’s diagnostics and let owners know when their car is due for maintenance.

The company was part of the inaugural Startup Summer class in 2014. Since then they’ve completed a successful Kickstarter campaign and are selling the FIXD sensor through their website and on Amazon. 

The startup isn’t just targeting individual drivers. John Gattuso, the company’s CEO and a graduate of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, said the device also benefits dealership service departments and auto repair shops.  

For example, FIXD enables dealership service departments to monitor customers' vehicles through a dashboard. The dealership's dashboard allows for the service departments to communicate with customers via the FIXD app on their smartphones.

Repair shops can give it to their customers so they can can easily schedule repairs and maintenance.

FIXD is currently working with Kuhn Volkswagen of Marietta, Georgia, and RPM Automotive, a repair shop in Jacksonville, Florida, with 10 stores.

“Startup Summer helped us lay an amazing foundation for FIXD and gave us the confidence to pursue our startup full-time,” said Gattuso, who graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering. “Even though we have graduated from Tech, we still rely heavily on the mentors and advisors that we met during our time in Startup Summer."

Revolutionizing Vending Machines

Cory Hewett knew from experience the problems vending machine companies face.

By the time he graduated high school, Hewett had owned and managed more than 25 gumball and vending machines.

It was during his time at Georgia Tech that Hewett co-founded a solution to allow vending machine operators to track what is happening in the field in real-time.

Gimme Vending developed a hardware and software solution that allows companies to replace their handhelds and easily monitor the status of their cash and inventory.

The devices work with the existing vending management software. The Gimme Key is installed into each vending machine’s DEX board and left there. It installs in seconds, with no tools or pairing. Data is communicated wirelessly from the key to the Gimme Drive app via Bluetooth. The data instantaneously uploads from the app to the Gimme Vending cloud and can be immediately accessible to executives. This provides operators faster service and fewer returns, and streamlines inventory.

Hewett, who studied electrical engineering, was also part of the first group of teams to go through Startup Summer.

Since then the startup has won $50,000 at the Technology Association of Georgia's Business Launch Competition and received $450,000 in seed funding.

In April the company won the Automatic Merchandiser 2016 Readers' Choice New Product of the Year Award.

Also in April, the company received its first invention patent -- for its method of wirelessly communicating data from vending machines even when there is no network connection.

“Gimme has made a significant impact on the vending industry in a short period of time, and is staged to further disrupt the industry in a positive way,” Hewett said. “We provide our customers with the data they need to operate more efficiently and profitably.”

Let Them Eat Bugs

As students at Georgia Tech, cousins Sean Warner and Patrick Pittaluga transformed the laundry room inside their apartment into a nursery for 700 larvae of black soldier flies.

It marked the beginning of Grubbly Farms, a startup company that breeds and sells the larvae as a sustainable source of protein for chicken, pigs and farmed seafood.

The country produces more than 30 million tons of food waste that is dumped into landfills and releases greenhouse gases that damage the environment. But Grubbly Farms is collecting the organic waste and feeding it to the black soldier fly larvae.

As the larvae eat, they excrete a nutrient-rich fertilizer that benefits gardeners and farmers. The larvae are later used as feed for fish and poultry farms.

Warner and Pittaluga knew that famers in Europe and Africa use black soldier fly larvae as a protein in livestock feed and wondered if famers in the U.S. would be willing to do the same. So as part of last year’s Startup Summer they travelled around the state and country to talk with chicken and fish famers to better understand the needs of the market and potential customers.

“We had the idea but CREATE-X gave us the skills and ability to launch our startup,” said Pittaluga, who graduate with a degree in business.

Warner graduated with a degree in building construction.

Shortly after Startup Summer ended they attended the 2015 Kairos Global Summit, which highlighted 50 innovative startups from around the world.

Last year the company partnered with Kennesaw State University to conduct research and development in a greenhouse on the university’s farm.

They recently moved into a 5,500-square-foot facility in Doraville and are getting ready to hire their first employee.

Grow Your Own Food

Ruwan Subasinghe grew tired of his produce and herbs going bad before he could eat it all. He wanted fresh food but didn’t have the time or space for a garden.

Instead he co-invented a machine to let people grow their own fresh produce right in their kitchens.

Together with Alex Weiss they launched Replantable, the startup behind the Nanofarm, a tiny modular farm that fits on a kitchen countertop. It grows vegetables, herbs and salad greens.

The Nanofarm cabinet includes a water tray, LED grow lights and a plant pad. The plant pads are soil-free, pre-seeded paper and fabric pads that contain the plant nutrients. The pads go on top of a water-filled growing tray, where they wick up water during the growing cycle. A built-in ventilation system pumps carbon dioxide to the plants and vents oxygen into the home.

Unlike other products to come out of Startup Summer this one doesn’t require an app or depend on a smartphone or computer to work.

The Nanofarm’s frame is built from powder-coated steel and natural wood. The door is

made of tinted glass and the door handle and hinge are made of marine-grade aluminum. It has three dials: one selects the length of the growing period, another starts the unit and a final light is lit when it’s time to harvest.

Subasinghe described the device as “set it and forget it.”

“There is no seeding or watering or adding nutrients and you don’t have to adjust the light,” he said. “After you hit start it will do all the work and let you know when it’s time to harvest.”

A group of beta testers spent about seven months using the device. The startup is planning to officially launch the Nanofarm this week on Kickstarter.

How to Charge EVs

While in different classes at Georgia Tech, Dorrier Coleman, Josh Lieberman and Isaac Wittenstein experimented with electric vehicles and their growing market.

They quickly identified a main source of frustration for drivers and owners of these vehicles: seeing one car plugged in to a charger all day while other drivers wait their turn.

The three pooled their knowledge and created a power management system for electric vehicle chargers. TEQ Charging aims to make charging easy and hassle free by allowing multiple drivers to plug their cars into a charging queue.

The company’s name is short for The Electric Queue and pays tribute to Georgia Tech.

A software system queues the power from one car to the next throughout the day. Although every car may be plugged into the charger, the company’s patent-pending algorithms place each connected car in a queue. Each charger turns on and off in the most efficient order to maximize the number of cars that can be charged during a specific period of time.

Meanwhile the TEQ app helps vehicle owners find open chargers.

They went through Startup Summer last year and began live testing the system in June at the Newberger Andes Offices offices, located on Roswell Road and I-285.

Results from beta testing will allow the company to further develop the technology. Wittenstein said they plan to talk with users to get their thoughts on the charging system and learn what improvements and changes they’d like to see.

“Georgia Tech gave us the opportunity to be where we are right now,” said Lieberman, the CEO of TEQ. “Without all the support and programs, we would not have been able to define and develop our business.”

To identify the bad content, researchers created a scanning tool that looks for features unique to the bad repositories, known as “Bars.” The features included certain types of redirection schemes and “gatekeeper” elements designed to protect the malware from scanners. Researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Indiana University Bloomington and the University of California Santa Barbara conducted the study.

Believed to be the first systematic study of cloud-based malicious activity, the research will be presented October 24 at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security in Vienna, Austria.  The work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation.

“Bad actors have migrated to the cloud along with everybody else,” said Raheem Beyah, a professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “The bad guys are using the cloud to deliver malware and other nefarious things while remaining undetected. The resources they use are compromised in a variety of ways, from traditional exploits to simply taking advantage of poor configurations.”

Beyah and graduate student Xiaojing Liao found that the bad actors could hide their activities by keeping components of their malware in separate repositories that by themselves didn’t trigger traditional scanners. Only when they were needed to launch an attack were the different parts of this malware assembled.

“Some exploits appear to be benign until they are assembled in a certain way,” explained Beyah, who is the Motorola Foundation Professor and associate chair for strategic initiatives and innovation in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “When you scan the components in a piecemeal kind of way, you only see part of the malware, and the part you see may not be malicious.”

In the cloud, malicious actors take advantage of how difficult it can be to scan so much storage. Operators of cloud hosting services may not have the resources to do the deep scans that may be necessary to find the Bars – and their monitoring of repositories may be limited by service-level agreements.

While splitting the malicious software up helped hide it, the strategy also created a technique for finding the “bad buckets” hosting it, Beyah said. Many of the bad actors had redundant repositories connected by specific kinds of redirection schemes that allowed attacks to continue if one bucket were lost. The bad buckets also usually had “gatekeepers” designed to keep scanners out of the repositories, and where webpages were served, they had simple structures that were easy to propagate.

“We observed that there is an inherent structure associated with how these attackers have set things up,” he explained. “For instance, the bad guys all had bodyguards at the door. That’s not normal for cloud storage, and we used that structure to detect them.”

The researchers began by studying a small number of known bad repositories to understand how they were being used. Based on what they learned, they created “BarFinder,” a scanner tool that automatically searches for and detects features common to the bad repositories. 

Overall, the researchers scanned more than 140,000 sites on 20 cloud hosting sites and found about 700 active repositories for malicious content. In total, about 10 percent of cloud repositories the team studied had been compromised in some way. The researchers notified the cloud hosting companies of their findings before publication of the study.

“It’s pervasive in the cloud,” said Beyah. “We found problems in every last one of the hosting services we studied. We believe this is a significant problem for the cloud hosting industry.”

In some cases, the bad actors simply opened an inexpensive account and began hosting their software. In other cases, the malicious content was hidden in the cloud-based domains of well-known brands. Intermingling the bad content with good content in the brand domains protected the malware from blacklisting of the domain.

Beyah and Liao saw a wide range of attacks in the cloud hosted repositories, ranging from phishing and common drive-by downloads to fake antivirus and computer update sites. “They can attack you directly from these buckets, or they can redirect you to other malicious buckets or a series of malicious buckets,” he said. “It can be difficult to see where the code is redirecting you.”

To protect cloud-based repositories from these attacks, Beyah recommends the usual defenses, including patching of systems and proper configuration settings. 

Looking ahead, the researchers hope to make BarFinder available to a broader audience. That could include licensing the technology to a security company, or making it available as an open-source tool.

“Attackers are very clever, and as we secure things and make the cloud infrastructure more challenging for them to attack, they will move onto something else,” he said. “In the meantime, every system that we can secure makes the internet just a little bit safer.”

Read about other Georgia Tech presentations at the ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security.

This work was supported in part by the National Science Foundation (grants CNS-1223477, 1223495, 1527141 and 1618493). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the author(s) and do not necessarily reflect the views of the National Science Foundation.

CITATION: Xiaojing Liao, et al., “Lurking Malice in the Cloud: Understanding and Detecting Cloud Repository as a Malicious Service,” ACM Conference on Computer and Communications Security (CCS).

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Ben Brumfield (ben.brumfield@gatech.edu).

Writer: John Toon

With the realization now that there are more than 200 types and subtypes of cancer, the battle plan has evolved from a one-size-fits-all strategy to a data-driven, more personalized approach, which means the army of researchers and clinicians devoted to fighting cancer also has evolved.

“We’re seeing the emergence of the new cancer biology,” says John McDonald, director of the Integrated Cancer Research Center (ICRC) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “It’s actually being driven now by technologies and expertise that lie outside the traditional framework of cancer biology. That’s why I think you’re probably going to see major breakthroughs in cancer research coming out of places like Georgia Tech and M.I.T., as opposed to traditional medical schools.”

Advances in genomics and high throughput sequencing have generated massive amounts of data, “and it’s opened up the field to people that were not trained as cancer biologists, but have the necessary skillsets for the analysis of all this new, big data,” says McDonald, a faculty researcher with the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience and professor in the School of Biological Sciences, who has definitely seen his share of breakthroughs in his own recent research focused on ovarian cancer.

The cancer biology that McDonald knew when he was a college student has moved from an era of specialization into an era of multidisciplinary research, in which researchers from a wide range of areas now work together on common projects.

“Twenty five years ago, these people probably wouldn’t have spoken to each other because they didn’t have any common interests,” says McDonald. “I was like a kid in a candy store when we first came to Georgia Tech, and it still feels like that – the idea of being in a place where all of this expertise and creativity exist. Cancer research is not a one-person endeavor. It’s all about collaboration.”

And McDonald has plenty of collaborators within and beyond the ICRC, which occupies a busy space where molecular biology, computational science, engineering and nanotechnology converge. Together, these scientists and engineers are developing next generation cancer diagnostics and therapeutics.

Family Affair

Fatih Sarioglu trained as an electrical engineer in his native Turkey and later at Stanford University, developing particular expertise in microsystems and nanosystems, developing sensitive, small-scale devices to look at atoms. After earning his Ph.D., he says, “I wondered how I could use these skills to benefit humanity.”

Sarioglu, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and a Petit Institute faculty researcher, he spent three years as a post-doc at Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School, learning about cancer. He found his opportunity, “to give biologists and biomedical scientists and clinicians capabilities they don’t have.”

There was a personal reason for Sarioglu’s interest in cancer, as well. The disease took the life of two grandparents. But he was particularly motivated when his mother-in-law was diagnosed, back in Turkey, with late-stage brain cancer.

“It was devastating. I knew life expectancy was about four or five months,” says Sarioglu. “But their diagnosis was based purely on the pathology, a biopsy slice.”

He asked a colleague at Mass General, David Lewis, one of the world’s top pathologists, for another opinion. Lewis’ conclusions were vastly different. The cancer was benign, operable, and Sagioglu’s mother-in-law is alive and well.

“It showed me that we still have to improve how we diagnose cancer,” says Sarioglu, whose lab develops microfluidic chips that can isolate tumor cells out of billions of other cells. At Mass General, he worked on a device that captures clumps of tumor cells before metastasis, preventing the spread of cancer.

He’s continued that work since arriving at Georgia Tech in 2014, developing microchip technology that analyzes cells accurately and at very high speeds. Essentially, it is a better way to find the needle in the haystack, a minimally invasive way to diagnose cancer, liquid biopsy.

“The possibilities are endless, really,” says Sarioglu, who counts McDonald and Fred Vannberg (an expert in DNA sequencing who specializes in the molecular analysis of cancer) among his research collaborators. “The technology is applicable to all types of cancer.”

Doing Better

The primary tumor is rarely the killer in cancer. Nine times out of 10, cancer kills because it spreads to other parts of the body. So when a patient gets a cancer diagnosis, one of his first questions is, “has it metastasized?”

“You can obviously appreciate the anxiety. The physician and patient wonder the same exact thing. That’s the first question,” says Stanislav Emelianov, professor in the Georgia Tech/Emory Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering (BME), a Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and the Joseph M. Pettit Chair in School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“Then there are more questions. What is the prognosis, the treatment, how do I deal with this – a lot of questions that can be better answered if we know the answer to the first question,” says Emelianov, whose team designs ultrasound imaging devices and algorithms, and has embarked on a project supported by a grant from the Breast Cancer Research Foundation to use light and sound and a non-radioactive molecularly targeted contrast agent, to answer that anxious first question.

The traditional approach has been to inject radioactive material and tracking that, then biopsy, which involves incision of the skin to expose the lymph node and taking pieces out to look for cancer.

“It is accurate, but it is also invasive, complicated and uses radioactive material,” Emelianov says. “We can do better.”

Emelianov speculates that in the future, we may be able to “weaponize” these contrast agents to actually kill cancer cells. Meanwhile, his team also is using its advanced imaging technology in collaboration with colleagues at Emory University’s Winship Cancer Center, to diagnose thyroid cancer and differentiate between malignant and benign tumors.

Tech’s Cancer Army

There are more than 40 faculty researchers at Georgia Tech who are members of the ICRC. They come from 12 different departments or schools. And there are an additional 16 researchers from academic and medical institutions that are affiliate members. It’s a diverse intellectual force that is giving Georgia Tech its own identity in cancer research.

“We can be a major player in cancer,” says McDonald. “How many medical schools have this breadth of expertise?”

He’s talking about young researchers like Susan Thomas, awarded Georgia Tech’s first grant from Susan G. Komen (breast cancer research foundation), supporting her work in immunotherapy for breast cancer; and Manu Platt, whose lab developed a new technique to give patients and oncologists more personalized information for choosing breast cancer treatment options.

And he’s referring to computer scientists like Constantine Dovrolis, who has spent the last few years investigating a phenomenon called “the hourglass effect” that is present in both technological and natural systems. He’s adapting what he learned studying embryogenesis with Georgia Tech biologist (and Petit Institute researcher) Soojin Yi to his collaboration with McDonald in cancer research.

He’s also thinking of BME-based researchers James Dahlman and William Lam.

Dahlman, an assistant professor who came to Georgia Tech earlier this year, works on cancer in two ways. Focusing extensively on primary lung tumors as well as lung metastasis, his team works on delivering genetic drugs to tumors.

“We have changed their gene expression, and either slowed tumor growth or caused established tumors to recede,” says Dahlman, an expert in gene editing. “In some cases, we have delivered multiple therapeutic RNAs to tumors, so that tumor cells are hit with a genetic ‘one-two’ punch that affects multiple cancer causing genes.”

His lab also creates tools to understand how cancer genes cause tumor resistance, studying how combinations of genes influence tumor growth, “because cancer is such a complicated disease and the genetics of cancer are notoriously difficult to understand,” Dahlman says. “It’s driven by many genes working together at once.”

For Lam, the war on cancer is waged in a lab and on the front lines, in a clinical setting. In addition to being a biomedical engineer, he’s also a pediatric hematologist-oncologist who treats patients at Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta.

His Ph.D. was actually focused on the biophysics of childhood leukemia, and his research in this area has focused on a small percentage of patients who develop leukostasis (stroke-like symptoms and lung failure).

“We always thought it was due to the biophysical properties of leukemia cells, which become big and sticky and jam up the plumbing of our blood vessels in our brain and lungs, which happen to have the smallest blood vessels,” says Lam, who is collaborating with Todd Sulchek, associate professor in mechanical engineering and a Petit Institute researcher.

“We’re combining some of Todd’s microfluidic technologies and our microfluidic technologies, to develop more high throughput ways to address this issue,” says Lam.

He’s also collaborating with the lab of BME professor Krish Roy on developing a ‘lymphoma on the chip’ model, to study how new cell therapies can directly affect the killing of cancer cells, as a way to determine whether those therapies have what it takes to work in the patient.

It’s all part of the multidisciplinary, “basement to bench to bedside” approach that Lam’s lab, with its connections to Georgia Tech, Emory University and Children’s Healthcare, has become known for.

“Within our lab, we’re certainly interested in technology development,” Lam says. “But then, we’re also interested in the assessment of the technology and, ultimately, directly translating that to the patient. Our lab lives in that entire space.”

LINKS

Integrated Cancer Research Center

McDonald Lab

Georgia Tech Cancer Army

CONTACT:

Jerry Grillo
Communications Officer II
Parker H. Petit Institute for
Bioengineering and Bioscience

“It was difficult to come up with a speech that would allow me to communicate complex ideas in three minutes,” said Kalelkar, who is pursuing his Ph.D. in chemistry. “I had to create multiple versions out of previous talks to my peers and colleagues to create the speech I used in the preliminaries.”  

Members of the campus community are invited to watch Kalelkar and nine other doctoral students compete in the final round of the competition on Nov. 15 from 5-8 p.m. in the LeCraw Auditorium at Scheller College of Business.  

The 3MT competition, which started at the University of Queensland in Australia and has spread to campuses around the world, is an event that challenges Ph.D. students to explain their research in three minutes in a way that someone with no knowledge of the subject would understand. Last year, Georgia Tech held its first annual 3MT event.

“Presenting in the 3MT competition is a very challenging exercise,” Kalelkar said. “It reinforces the key aspects of your research and how to communicate them to a diverse audience.”

The following students, who were selected during two preliminary rounds held in October, will compete for three research travel grants ranging from $2,000 to $1,000 and a $500 People’s Choice grant:

• Lalit Arun Darunte, Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering
  CO2 Capture from Air
• Diego Dumani Jarquin, Biomedical Engineering
  Photoacoustic Imaging and Therapy Monitoring of Lymph Node Metastasis
• Tesca Fitzgerald, Interactive Computing
  Teaching Robots to Reuse Skills
• Pranav Kalelkar, Chemistry
  Plastic Implants: A Novel Way to Heal Broken Bones
• Chandana Kolluru, Materials Science and Engineering
  Microneedles for Polio Vaccination
• Bharath Hebbe Madhusudhana, Physics
  Reading Out the Geometry from an Atom’s Memory
• Monica McNerney, Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
  Bacterial biosensors: Low-cost, Field-friendly Nutrition Tests
• Akanksha Krishnakumar Menon, Mechanical Engineering
  Generating Power from Printed Plastics
• Aravind Samba Murthy, Electrical and Computer Engineering
  Recovering Kinetic Energy Using Electric Motors
• Kirsten Parratt, Materials Science and Engineering
  Boosting Statistical Power- Building Better Biomaterials

For more information about the 3MT competition, visit www.grad.gatech.edu/3MT.

Developed by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology and colleagues from three other institutions, the technique provides a new way of inducing p-type electrical doping in organic semiconductor films. The process involves briefly immersing the films in a solution at room temperature, and would replace a more complex technique that requires vacuum processing.

“Our hope is that this will be a game-changer for organic photovoltaics by further simplifying the process for fabricating polymer-based solar cells,” said Bernard Kippelen, director of Georgia Tech’s Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “We believe this technique is likely to impact many other device platforms in areas such as organic printed electronics, sensors, photodetectors and light-emitting diodes.”

Sponsored by the Office of Naval Research, the work was reported December 5 in the journal Nature Materials. The research also involved scientists from the University of California at Santa Barbara, Kyushu University in Japan, and the Eindhoven University of Technology in The Netherlands.

The technique consists of immersing thin films of organic semiconductors and their blends in polyoxometalate (PMA and PTA) solutions in nitromethane for a brief time – on the order of minutes. The diffusion of the dopant molecules into the films during immersion leads to efficient p-type electrical doping over a limited depth of 10 to 20 nanometers from the surface of the film. The p-doped regions show increased electrical conductivity and high work function, reduced solubility in the processing solvent, and improved photo-oxidation stability in air. 

This new method provides a simpler alternative to air-sensitive molybdenum oxide layers used in the most efficient polymer solar cells that are generally processed using expensive vacuum equipment. When applied to polymer solar cells, the new doping method provided efficient hole collection. For the first time, single-layer polymer solar cells were demonstrated by combining this new method with spontaneous vertical phase separation of amine-containing polymers that leads to efficient electron collection at the opposing electrode. The geometry of these new devices is unique as the functions of hole and electron collection are built into the light-absorbing active layer, resulting in the simplest single-layer geometry with few interfaces.

“The realization of single-layer photovoltaics with our approach enables both electrodes in the device to be made out of low-cost conductive materials,” said Canek Fuentes-Hernandez, a senior research scientist in Kippelen’s research group. “This offers a dramatic simplification of a device geometry, and it improves the photo-oxidation stability of the donor polymer. Although lifetime and cost analysis studies are needed to assess the full impact of these innovations, they are certainly very exciting developments on the road to transform organic photovoltaics into a commercial technology.”

By simplifying the production of organic solar cells, the new processing technique could allow fabrication of solar cells in areas of Africa and Latin America that lack capital-intensive manufacturing capabilities, said Felipe Larrain, a Ph.D. student in Kippelen’s lab.

“Our goal is to further simplify the fabrication of organic solar cells to the point at which every material required to fabricate them may be included in a single kit that is offered to the public,” Larrain said. “The solar cell product may be different if you are able to provide people with a solution that would allow them to make their own solar cells. It could one day enable people to power themselves and be independent of the grid.”

Organic solar cells have been studied in many academic and industrial laboratories for several decades, and have experienced a continuous and steady improvement in their power conversion efficiency with laboratory values reaching 13 percent – compared to around 20 percent for commercial silicon-based cells. Though polymer-based cells are currently less efficient, they require less energy to produce than silicon cells and can be more easily recycled at the end of their lifetime. 

“Being able to process solar cells entirely at room temperature using this simple solution-based technique could pave the way for a scalable and vacuum-free method of device fabrication, while significantly reducing the time and cost associated with it,” said Vladimir Kolesov, a Ph.D. researcher and the paper’s lead author.

Beyond solar cells, the doping technique could be more broadly used in other areas of organic electronics, noted Ph.D. researcher Wen-Fang Chou. “With its simplicity, this is truly a promising technology offering adjustable conductivity of semiconductors that could be applied to various organic electronics, and could have huge impact on the industry for mass production.”

Also at Georgia Tech, the research involved professors Samuel Graham and Seth Marder, both from the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics. Beyond Georgia Tech, the project also involved Naoya Aizawa from Kyushu University; Ming Wang, Guillermo Bazan and Thuc-Quyen Nguyen from the University of California Santa Barbara, and Alberto Perrotta from Eindhoven University of Technology, 

This work was funded in part by the Department of the Navy, Office of Naval Research Award No. N00014-14-1-0580 and N00014-16-1-2520, through the MURI Center CAOP, Office of Naval Research Award N00014-04-1-0313 and by the Department of Energy through the Bay Area Photovoltaic Consortium under Award Number DE-EE0004946. Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.

CITATION: Vladimir A. Kolesov, et al., “Solution-based electrical doping of semiconducting polymer films over a limited depth,” (Nature Materials, 2016). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat4818

Research News
Georgia Institute of Technology
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Media Relations Contacts: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu) or Ben Brumfield (404-385-1933) (ben.brumfield@comm.gatech.edu).

Writer: John Toon

While the tools and techniques to be developed during the four-and-a-half year effort won't point directly to the individuals responsible, the initiative will provide proof of involvement by specific groups, identifiable by their methods of attack, consistent errors and other unique characteristics. Such attribution could support potential sanctions and policy decisions – and discourage attacks by providing transparency for activities that are normally hidden.

The research, sponsored by the U.S. Department of Defense, will be led by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, in collaboration with other academic institutions and companies. The project is expected to create an attribution framework dubbed Rhamnousia – in Greek mythology, the goddess of Rhamnous and the spirit of divine retribution.

"We should know who our friends are and who our enemies are in the cyber domain,” said Manos Antonakakis, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the project's principal investigator. "We owe it to the people of this country to objectively reason about the actors attacking systems, stealing intellectual property and tampering with our data. We want to take away the potential deniability that these attack groups now have."

Attributing attacks to specific groups or individuals could be partially achieved today, but it is largely a manual process that requires highly skilled investigators and weeks or months to complete. Rhamnousia will accelerate that process and provide both scientific reasoning and hard evidence about the guilty parties.

"We have a limited number of people working in cybersecurity and attacks occur every day, so we need to be able to optimize the forensic analysis that would lead to attribution," Antonakakis said. "In this project, we will use machine learning and algorithms to scale up the attribution process to help companies and the government protect against those bad actors. We will provide a systematic and scientific way to deal with the attacks."

Michael Farrell, chief scientist of the Cyber Technology and Information Security Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), is familiar with the issues the U.S. government faces due to an inability to identify those who are attacking U.S. interests in cyberspace. “Deterrence is virtually impossible if you’re unable to identify the adversary,” he noted. “Attribution is the linchpin for deterrence in cyberspace, and the U.S. government is in need of a repeatable and releasable way forward.”  

Farrell also serves as the associate director of the Institute for Information Security & Privacy (IISP), and coordinates Georgia Tech’s broad interests in attribution across campus. “There is a policy and strategy component to attribution that is deeply intertwined with the technical solution,” he added. “Georgia Tech is well positioned to engage the broad spectrum of constituents who have an important role to play in this space: industry, academia, government, technology, policy, practitioners and decision-makers.” 

The new research effort will use data science and engineering techniques to sift through existing and new data sets to find relevant information.

“Using a variety of data sets and analytical techniques, we can distill the information that will be useful to identifying the virtual cyber actors," Antonakakis said. “These bad actors have to use the network and computer systems, and they have to interact with sources. They are leaving crumbs behind, and we can leverage those.”

Rapid identification is important to companies and government organizations because the motives of the intruders suggest the kind of information they are seeking, the damage they can do and what the victims may use to stop the attack and minimize impacts.

“For a business, it's very important to know whether you are being targeted by a commodity-type threat, a run-of-the-mill threat, or if you are being targeted by a specific group that may have ties to a government or to a competitor," Antonakakis said. "The type of threat would affect business decisions."

Ultimately, the researchers hope to combine intrusion detection with attribution, allowing a quicker response – and helping victims cut off attackers more quickly.

From a technology standpoint, the project’s goals include development of three specific areas:

• Efficient algorithmic attribution methods able to convert the research team’s experience with manual attack attribution to novel, tensor-based learning methods. The algorithms will allow expansion of existing efforts to create a science of attribution and traceback;
• Actionable attribution, in which the application of the algorithms will produce attribution reports to be shared with the attribution community;
• Historic public attack datasets brought together into a single distributed environment.

At Georgia Tech, the project will tap the expertise of researchers from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Computing and GTRI. In addition to Antonakakis, the research team will include Dave Dagon, Doug Blough and Raheem Beyah from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and Mustaque Ahamad from the College of Computing.

Georgia Tech researchers have been involved in attribution research in support of cybersecurity efforts for many years. Researchers helped organize the Mariposa Working Group that helped identify the organizers of the Mariposa botnet. 

“Historically, attribution has been done primarily for law enforcement so they could put people behind bars and use that as a deterrent for others who might engage in these activities,” said Antonakakis. “We want to make sure that the people doing these attacks know that there is a very good chance that they will get caught and publicly attributed.” 

The Institute for Information Security & Privacy (IISP) at Georgia Tech connects government, industry, and academia to solve the grand challenges of cybersecurity. As a coordinating body for nine information security labs dedicated to academic and solution-oriented applied research, the IISP leverages intellectual capital from across Georgia Tech and its external partners to address vital solutions for national security, economic continuity and individual safety.

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"We encourage students to tackle highly impactful problems. The impact could be in terms of the size of the population the startup would serve, the size of the market it would cater to, the intensity of the pain it would relieve, and the lasting value it would create," said Raghupathy Sivakumar, director of CREATE-X. He feels that with the level of expertise that Georgia Tech students gain in diverse technologies, they shouldn’t be afraid of using their knowledge to build startups to tackle the bigger challenges facing the world today.

“We use the phrase "deep startup" to mean a startup that is focused on a technically difficult and challenging problem.  Many startups nowadays seem to be focused on seemingly superficial problems.  Our goal is to help our entrepreneurs think about larger and deeper problems that they can solve,” said Sanjay Parekh, Associate Director of CREATE-X. He believes that not only are deep startups more interesting and engaging to aspiring entrepreneurs than companies with more conventional everyday products, but they are also more viable over the long term. By design, deep startups are not as easily supplanted by other startups with a different twist on the same idea.

“People should be interested in building deep startups because they are seeking to make a lasting change in the world.  They aren't looking for simple solutions to unimportant problems.  The Deep Startups speaker series is about exposing attendees to the challenges within one industry and sparking discussion and ideas about how to solve those problems in the future,” said Parekh. Good examples of products created by existing Deep Startups include farming robots, ultrasound diagnostics, services for 3D printed parts, and mass manufacturing.

With a lineup of guest speakers who are well-respected in their fields, the Deep Startups series is designed to make their wealth of knowledge and experience on the topics discussed available to students. The first talk focusing on Information Security featured Chris Klaus, founder and CEO of Kaneva, and Vijay A. Balasubramaniyan, CEO, CTO and founder of Pindrop. The next session on October 31^st will focus on the topic of The Internet of Things, and feature George Yu, founder and CEO of Variable, Inc. (You can RSVP for that event here.)

For CREATE-X, this is just another example of their commitment to giving aspiring entrepreneurs at Georgia Tech all the tools they need to succeed. Their other programs include Startup Lab, Idea to Prototype, and Startup Launch. Idea to Prototype offers students faculty mentors, guidance, and seed funding to build prototypes for their ideas, along with 3-6 undergraduate research credits. Startup Lab is a three credit course that teaches students about the process of becoming an entrepreneur, and how to vet their ideas and market needs. Startup Launch, their signature program, takes teams of students from one developed idea or prototype to a fully launched startup, with $20,000 in funding to get them there.

With the introduction of the the Deep Startups Speaker Series, Sivakumar hopes that students will continue to use the resources CREATE-X offers to build their own companies from the ground up, no matter what their product idea may be. “We are enabling Georgia Tech students to create the next Intel, Apple, Google, or Facebook,” he said.

With the official opening of the Fortune 1000 firm’s Software Design Center, the company becomes the 15^th major corporation to make a home at or near Tech Square to tap into the Institute's research, student talent, and innovation ecosystem.

“We selected Georgia Tech and Midtown Atlanta based on several things, including the quality of students coming from Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) and School of Computer Science,” said Jay Alexander, Keysight’s chief technology officer.

Other critical factors were the quality of research and  longstanding partnerships the company has with researchers in those schools, along with a supportive business climate in Georgia and Atlanta’s quality-of-life attributes, he said. In 2014, Keysight made a $120 million in-kind donation of its software to Georgia Tech, which the Institute is deploying to help students become industry-ready engineers by using the same instruments and software used by customers in government and industry.

“All of those things came together for us, making it  an obvious choice,” said Alexander. “We couldn’t be happier with our decision.”

The Santa Rosa, Calif.-based company’s $13.9 million investment in Georgia is expected to create more than 200 software engineering jobs.

“Tech Square has been a magnet for a number of promising startups, but we’re excited that it also has attracted companies with an impressive legacy like Keysight,” Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson said. “For Georgia Tech, it’s a point of pride and a significant achievement that a company of this caliber believes we can add value to its operations. It is the ideal type of industry leader we seek for Tech Square and Georgia Tech.”

Companies such as Keysight also are ideal for Institute alumni and students such as Jonathan Jones, who graduated from Tech in 2016 with a master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering from ECE. He obtained his bachelor’s degree in computer engineering in 2015.

At Keysight, he will be part of a team of engineers who are building a new Keysight-wide software platform for rapid application development.

“I’ve heard people compare it to being a heavily funded startup, and that’s how I like to think about being here in Tech Square,” said Jones, a 23-year-old Macon native. “It was very attractive to be with the company as it’s starting something new; I like new challenges and tackling something new every day, so when I saw this opportunity, I knew I had to grab it.”

Deepika Narayanan, who is pursuing her master’s degree in electrical and computer engineering at ECE, echoed Jones’ sentiments.

“The fact this is opening in Atlanta and it’s a software design center attracted me to apply for the position, and I’m really excited,” said Narayanan, who expects to graduate in December. The 23-year-old will be working on coding and software development, and she said she hopes to go into data specialization analytics and machine learning.

Uday Ravuri, who also expects to obtain his master’s in electrical and computer engineering at ECE in December, said Keysight’s offerings and culture made it an ideal choice for him.

“I basically looked for three things — a cultural fit, technical fit, and career growth,” said Raburi, who will be working as a software engineer for the company. “And from the feedback I received from the employees, all three of those important factors seemed to be perfect in this company, and that’s why I went for it.”

“After more than 40 years in education, I thought it might be time to retire,” said Weinsheimer, who is now director of CTL. “But, the opportunity to create a culture at this university that promotes and rewards excellence in teaching — something I’ve always been passionate about — presented itself. And I couldn’t say ‘no’ to the challenge.” 

Recently, Weinsheimer shared her thoughts on CTL’s new name, other changes, and more about why she’s excited about her new role. Read on to find out more.

So, why change the center’s name? 
We wanted our emphasis to be on teaching and learning. When newcomers read “the enhancement of” in our name, they thought our focus was on fixing poor teaching. We sent out a survey to faculty and administrators, and 90 percent thought the change to Center for Teaching and Learning was a good idea. 

Who can use CTL's services?
Anyone teaching at Georgia Tech — whether the person is a faculty member, a temporary/part-time instructor, a postdoctoral scholar, a graduate student, an undergraduate who serves as a teaching assistant (TA) or tutor, or a staff member who teaches GT 1000.  There are a lot of different teaching roles on our campus, and CTL connects with them all.

What are some of the challenges that instructors at Georgia Tech face, and how can CTL help?
Having enough time to do everything well is difficult. This especially can pose a challenge to those who want to excel in both teaching and research. So, CTL provides a variety of ways to explore best teaching practices. Those who choose to invest just a little time can attend a workshop, consult about a particular class, or join our book club. Those who want to go into more depth can participate in a faculty learning community on a topic of their choice or participate in the future faculty program.  

What are you looking forward to most about your work as director?
As I’ve mentioned, I’m really passionate about creating a culture at Tech that promotes and rewards excellence in teaching. I want our students to have an educational experience that energizes them and prepares them for the future. We have instructors here who are using innovative strategies that engage students in the hard work of learning. As CTL’s director, I want to highlight what these folks are doing and help more of our instructional staff use evidence-based practices that enhance student learning. In addition, I enjoy working with my campus colleagues on “Creating the Next” in teaching and learning. How will we respond to the challenges that are emerging? What bold actions will we take to ensure that the educational experience we offer is worthwhile? I like being part of the “next” and helping it take shape at Tech.

Are there any new additions to the CTL staff?
I’ve changed the structure of CTL a bit this year. David Lawrence is now associate director, and we have organized CTL into three areas: learning and technology initiatives, TA development and future faculty initiatives, and faculty teaching and learning initiatives. We’ve welcomed two new staff members — Kate Williams and Tammy McCoy — both of which will work with our TA development and future faculty initiatives. We also hope to have a postdoctoral fellow join us soon. 

What changes will CTL make in the next few months?
I want to lead us into a new era of collaboration among administrators, instructional staff, and support units to maximize student learning on this campus. We have two new important partnerships underway:

• Provost Teaching and Learning Fellows. This new program makes it possible for CTL to partner with each of the colleges/schools and work on college-specific initiatives. With the help of the deans, we will select two to five fellows from each college to work directly with CTL in this hub-and-spoke model. This new collaboration will allow us to connect the expertise of CTL professionals with the expertise of disciplinary faculty. Together, we’ll enhance the learning environment in ways we have not been able to do before.
• CIRTL Network. We recently joined the Center for the Integration of Research, Teaching and Learning (CIRTL) Network and are now partnering with 46 research universities to prepare future faculty in all disciplines (with a particular emphasis on STEM fields). This means that beginning this fall, Tech grad students and postdocs who want to pursue the Tech to Teaching Certificate will have more pathways to satisfy the requirements of the program.  

What are some of the highlights of CTL’s recently redesigned website? How is it more useful to the campus community?  
There was just so much information to digest on the old site. Now, whether you’re a faculty member, a postdoc, or a student, the information is easier to find. Also, our events page breaks out teaching and learning-related events according to audience. Best of all, the homepage now features news and information related to teaching and learning for the whole campus — so, it’s easier to know what’s happening at Tech.   

Can you share a few new publications that you’d recommend to instructors trying to learn more about best practices? 

Right now our book club is looking at Are You Smart Enough? by Alexander W. Astin. Next, we’re reading Minds Online: Teaching Effectively with Technology by Michelle D. Miller. We’ll discuss this book during the Oct. 28, and Nov. 11 meetings — so stop by CTL to pick up a book, then join us in book club for a glass of wine and a great discussion!  

To learn more about CTL, visit ctl.gatech.edu

Machine Learning at Georgia Tech (ML@GT) and the Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies (CRNCH), both officially launched on July 1, are tackling major challenges that need to be overcome to advance computing.

“Although both are being led by College of Computing faculty members, these interdisciplinary research centers bring together some of the brightest minds from across the campus to solve extremely difficult problems,” said John P. Imlay Jr. Dean Zvi Galil. “The work these centers are undertaking is crucial to the advancement of computing, and strengthens Georgia Tech’s position at the vanguard of computer science.”

Machine Learning @ Georgia Tech

Based in the College of Computing, ML@GT represents all of Georgia Tech. It is tasked with pushing forward the ability for computers to learn from observations and data. As one of the fastest growing research areas in computing, machine learning spans many disciplines that use data to discover scientific principles, infer patterns, and extract meaningful knowledge.

According to School of Interactive Computing Professor Irfan Essa, inaugural director of ML@GT, machine learning (ML) has reached a new level of maturity and is now impacting all aspects of computing, engineering, science, and business.

“We are in the era of aggregation, of collecting data,” said Essa. “However, machine learning is now propelling data analysis, and the whole concept of interpreting that data, toward a new era of making sense of the data, using it to make meaningful connections between information, and acting upon it in innovative ways that bring the most benefit to the most people.”

The new center begins with more than 100 affiliated faculty members from five Georgia Tech colleges and the Georgia Tech Research Institute, as well as some jointly affiliated with Emory University.

Machine Learning is the new calculus

In addition to leading research, ML@GT is focused on developing human capital in machine learning. According to Dean Galil, “There is extensive demand for these classes from students in all majors across campus. Machine learning is the new calculus and it is showing.”

There are currently more than 200 undergraduate and 250 graduate students enrolled in introductory ML courses.

“I meet people in finance, hardware, logistics, and other industries that either want to know how machine learning can change their business or they want to hire somebody with in-depth knowledge of machine learning,” said Essa.

To meet this growing demand, students, researchers, and faculty at ML@GT focus on three areas: examining the foundations of ML theory; building upon existing technologies at the application level; and adapting ML algorithms in different domains.

With leading computing, statistics, and optimization experts as part of the team, a primary area of focus for ML@GT is delving into the foundations of ML theory.

These foundational building blocks include:

• Dynamic data and decision-making – building systems that can continuously update and process new data streams in order to make informed decisions.
• Neural Computation – creating more efficient and powerful computational processes inspired by biological systems.
• Data Mining and Anomaly Detection – developing new ways to detect anomalies that may be indicators of fraud, disease, or structural defects.
• Interactive Machine Learning – designing systems that can develop and learn from interaction with humans.
• Artificial Intelligence – strengthening the foundational roots of ML to build machines that can accomplish increasingly complex tasks and functions.
• Ethics and bias – considering the ethical implications and appropriate limitations of ML and its evolving roles in research, industry, and culture, and how biased inputs can affect outcomes.

At the application level, ML@GT is pushing established ML tools and practices forward to create more innovative modeling and predictive capabilities. These capabilities will focus on healthcare, education, logistics and operations, sensors and detection, social computing, information systems, security, and privacy, and financial markets. They will also be used to reveal informative patterns and identify abnormal behavior in these and other application areas.

ML@GT is also going inside the application level to research new ways of applying ML knowledge to new disciplines.

“Sometimes it is just not sufficient to take an existing algorithm and apply a new dataset to it,” said Essa. “You have to go inside the machinery in order to understand how to adapt the algorithm to a new domain.”

“This is the starting point. In the first year, we want to develop additional focal points, further strengthen the center’s educational mission, and move forward with establishing a machine learning Ph.D. program at Georgia Tech.”

As for ML@GT’s longer-term goals, Essa said, “Within five years we fully expect Georgia Tech will be a global leader, and the center will be recognized as the international home for advanced machine learning research and education.”

Center for Research into Novel Computing Hierarchies

Just as ML@GT is working to move machine learning into a new era, CRNCH is focused on getting over one of the biggest hurdles facing computing today: the impending end of Moore’s Law.

“We knew that at some point physics would come into play. We hit that wall around 2005,” said Tom Conte, inaugural director of CRNCH and professor in Georgia Tech’s schools of Computer Science and Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Since the 1960s, Moore’s Law has essentially held that, for a given price point, the number of transistors on an integrated circuit doubles roughly every two years. However, there are hard limits to building smaller integrated circuits because, as transistors get smaller they become less energy efficient. The problem gets worse as the chips get faster.

“We’ve gotten by since 2005 using multiple, slower-clocked cores per chip-- 'multicore processing,' in essence -- but it’s only a partial solution,” said Conte. “Very soon, computing’s historic performance growth rate will no longer be sustainable.”

In fact, according to the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) Rebooting Computing Initiative­ (of which Conte is a founding member and current co-chair) this inevitability means that wholesale changes are needed in both computing technologies and computer architecture if the next level of high performance supercomputing – machines capable of 10 million trillion floating-point operations per second (10 exaflops) – is to be achieved.

To facilitate these fundamental changes, Conte, along with School of Computational Science and Engineering Chair David Bader, Charlotte B. and Roger C. Warren Chair of Computing Richard DeMillo, Frederick G. Storey Chair in Computing Richard Lipton, Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar and Rhesa "Ray" S. Farmer, Jr. Distinguished Chair in Embedded Computing Systems Marilyn Wolf, and other Georgia Tech faculty proposed the establishment of a new interdisciplinary research center.

This IRC would take the lead in breaking down traditional barriers between computing’s various facets, such as devices, circuits, architecture, software, and algorithms, in order to restart the exponential growth rate embodied in Moore’s Law.

The proposal has come to fruition in the form of CRNCH.

“We didn’t want to be a close follower in the space,” said Conte. “By leveraging the broad, interdisciplinary talent that exists here, Georgia Tech is well-poised to become the international leader in novel computing hierarchies. In doing so, we firmly believe Georgia Tech will be the global epicenter of a new computing economy.”

To achieve the bold breakthroughs necessary to propel computing to the exascale level and beyond, CRNCH researchers are evaluating a number of possibilities.

“Several promising research areas have been identified,” said Conte. “However some are more disruptive to the computer stack than others.”

Some of the possible solutions that have been identified by the IEEE Rebooting Computing Initiative for further research include:

• Quantum computing – uses properties of quantum mechanics to solve optimization problems.
• Neuromophic computing – leverages what is known about the human brain to create new technologies.
• Approximate and stochastic computing – complimentary approaches based on the observation that computers often calculate results to higher than required accuracy and precision.
• Adiabatic and reversible computing ­– recycles unused inputs and utilizes non-traditional devices for substantial power savings
• Cryogenic superconducting – uses low temperature superconducting materials to conserve energy.

The CRNCH team includes experts in each of these focus areas. However, Conte said, “It’s important to note that these general approaches are only a sampling of what may be possible and other approaches and techniques are actively being explored by the team.”

With the team in place and the center open for business, Conte expects CRNCH to quickly take a leading role in researching new computer hierarchies and become recognized as the academic research embodiment IEEE’s rebooting computing initiative.

“Within three years we firmly believe that CRNCH will be providing international leadership and have significant influence on the development of new computer hierarchies,” said Conte. “ We also believe that CRNCH will establish Midtown Atlanta as a hotspot for this new computing technology.”

“We are honored to receive the HEED Award once again,” said Archie Ervin, vice president for Institute Diversity and president of the National Association of Diversity Officers in Higher Education. “It has been a landmark year for the Institute, from the most diverse freshman class in Georgia Tech’s history to the launch of the Black Student Experience Task Force and Gender Equity Initiatives. But there is still more work to do.”

As a recipient of the HEED Award, Georgia Tech will be featured — along with 82 other award winners — in the November 2016 issue of INSIGHT Into Diversity magazine.

“The HEED Award process consists of a comprehensive and rigorous application that includes questions relating to the recruitment and retention of students and employees, leadership support for diversity, and other aspects of campus diversity and inclusion. We take a holistic approach to reviewing each application in deciding who will be named a HEED Award recipient. Our standards are high, and we look for institutions where diversity and inclusion are woven into the work being accomplished every day across their campus,” said Lenore Pearlstein, publisher of INSIGHT Into Diversity.

To learn more about the HEED Award, visit www.insightintodiversity.com/about-the-heed-award/.

These are a pair of questions that Georgia Tech students Nathan Dass and Kshitij Kulkarni were attempting to address when they attended HackMIT last month at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Utilizing Microsoft’s HoloLens, both Dass’ and Kulkarni’s teams fared well at the event, the former earning the NASDAQ API prize for using the API in the most creative way and the latter placing in the top 10.

Dass, who is in his third year as a computer science major, enjoys artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction. He has worked in the past on a virtual reality project at Google, and said that helped direct his specific interests.

Although he had never participated in a hackathon before, when he heard that the HoloLens, an augmented reality device that enhances the experience of your physical surroundings, would be available for use, he wanted to participate.

“I knew there was really no other place that students could get basically a whole weekend with the HoloLens and make anything,” Dass said. “This was the opportunity in my opinion, so I sort of pushed my team toward that.”

What they came up with was an application that could retrieve and display stock information from the NASDAQ API on the HoloLens display in real time. When a user is wearing the device, they can simply look at a logo of a company, indicate through one of the device’s built-in gestures that they would like to access its information, and a graphic showing items such as current price and percent change would appear on the screen.

For their work, Dass’ team won the NASDAQ sponsor prize, which was awarded for the most creative use of NASDAQ’s API. The group will be flown to New York to meet with NASDAQ executives. Organizers are also trying to coordinate with representatives from Microsoft to attend the demonstration, as well. That trip is tentatively planned for some time during winter break, Dass said.

While in New York, Dass and his teammates will take part in the closing bell ceremony at the New York Stock Exchange, which will be broadcast live on the big screen in Times Square.

Kulkarni, who is a second-year undergraduate in electrical engineering, and his team finished among the top 10, earning the opportunity to present their project on stage to the hackathon attendees. Their hack, which also utilized the HoloLens, involved providing a more interactive experience for students in and out of the classroom. The goal was to create an application that could associate interactive graphs with specific key words on a page.

The team achieved the independent functionality for reading text off an image and putting it onto the HoloLens, as well as a separate function for visualizing the algorithm.

“What we were not able to do is put them together,” Kulkarni said. “Our next step is to bridge those two worlds together so that you have a seamless experience of having a book open, looking at it with the HoloLens, highlighting a word and then attaching an interactive visual display to that word.”

Kulkarni and his teammates came up with the concept when considering the shared experience they had during their first two years of undergraduate studies. Learning in-depth scientific and technological concepts out of a textbook presents challenges because of the difficulty in visualizing information that should be interactive.

“For example, if someone is trying to learn sorting or another algorithm, it’s very difficult to visualize that on a static sheet of paper,” Kulkarni said. “So we harnessed the power of the HoloLens and its augmented reality to attempt to overlay onto it educational modules that, in real time, show these algorithms happening.”

Kulkarni said their work at HackMIT was a proof of concept for many future modules.

Dass plans to finish his undergraduate degree in December 2017, then pursue a graduate degree and, eventually, work in technological innovation with the goal of eventually integrating artificial intelligence and human-computer interaction into our everyday lives. Kulkarni, who is interested in data visualization and processing and machine learning, plans to pursue a graduate degree upon his graduation and continue to work on those large-scale problems “that are currently stumping people.”

HackMIT is MIT’s headline hackathon, with more than 1,000 undergraduate attendees from around the world. During a 24-hour period, hackers collaborated and experimented on an assortment of software and hardware projects.

CREATE-X is relaunching Startup Summer as Startup Launch, a two-semester program in which student teams launch startups based on their ideas and prototypes. Teams are provided with mentorship, workspace, seed funding, intellectual property protection, and visibility. To date, 42 teams have launched startups through the 3-year-old program.

Startup Launch will have two start dates for 2017. One group will start the program in spring 2017 and another in summer 2017. The two groups will overlap during the summer semester, which is the full-time, intense period. The spring (for teams starting in spring) and fall (for teams starting in summer) semesters will be part-time commitments that can be done in conjunction with other classes or work commitments. Participants may also dedicate themselves full time in the spring or fall, but are not required to do so.

"There are so many avenues that you can go down after graduating from Georgia Tech — so many different careers,” said Samantha Becker, an undergraduate student and founder of TruePani. “But through CREATE-X and becoming an entrepreneur, you have such a sense of accomplishment and personal investment in the project that you're working on. The decision to participate in CREATE-X has directly influenced the course of my life.”

Applications for 2017 are now open. The deadline to apply for the spring cohort is Tuesday, Nov. 1. Applications for the summer cohort are also being accepted at this time, with a final deadline of March 3, 2017. As admission is granted on a rolling basis, the summer cohort may fill up before its deadline; earlier applications will have a higher chance of acceptance. Learn more at startuplaunch.gatech.edu or apply at startuplaunch.gatech.edu/apply.

The project is one of 10 “Big Data Spokes” announced by the National Science Foundation (NSF). The NSF’s $10 million initiative was created to improve the ability to solve the nation’s most pressing challenges with the use of big data. The Georgia Tech, Smithsonian and IBM “Spoke” will receive $1 million from NSF. IBM will also provide in-kind gifts. Overall, the project engages 24 researchers from 14 institutions from academia, industry, government and non-profit organizations.

“Environmental sustainability is a growing concern for our country. Scientists and citizens needbetter tools and data to rapidly build and test conceptual models of ecological phenomena,” said Ashok Goel, a Georgia Tech professor who is the principal investigator of the collaboration. “We want to empower them.”

The Encyclopedia of Life (EOL), headquartered at the Smithsonian Institution, is an online, open-access database that gathers information about all biological species on Earth.

“Modelers tell us that predicting an ecosystem's response to global changes requires knowledge of things like the mass of an algal cell, the lifespan of a copepod and the ecological partners of a reef-building coral,” said Bob Corrigan, EOL’s director of operations. “EOL is surfacing, structuring and sharing hundreds of years of careful measurements by generations of biologists. Combining these assets with the capabilities of Georgia Tech and IBM will give scientists and students alike the ability to model and study our biosphere at scales that have not been possible before.”

As part of the Spoke project, Watson Developer Cloud’s Language and Vision services will be trained to deeply understand the specialized ecology domain represented in the EOL webpages and images. 

“Unlocking all of this unstructured information from the Smithsonian’s Encyclopedia of Life, bringing it into the context of other relevant structured knowledge, and making it available for further human and machine reasoning holds tremendous potential,” said Lisa Amini, director, Cognitive Computing: Knowledge and Reasoning at IBM Research. “The possibilities are endless.”

Users will then take that information and plug it into Georgia Tech’s Modeling & Inquiry Learning Application (MILA) system. The interactive tool allows scientists to rapidly generate conceptual models, evaluates them through simulation and provides results.

The NSF grant will allow the team to seamlessly link EOL, Watson and MILA. The goal is to build a working system that enables ecological modeling by early 2018.

“You can have all the information in the world, but if you can’t easily find the knowledge, you can’t build a model,” said Goel. “And if you can’t build a good model, the information is useless. Our project uses artificial intelligence to address these concerns.”

The Big Data Spokes program is supported and organized by the NSF’s Big Data Regional Innovation Hubs (BD Hubs). The four Hubs (South, Northeast, Midwest and West) foster multi-sector collaborations among academia, industry and government. Georgia Tech co-leads the South Hub with the University of North Carolina.

"The Big Data Spokes advance the goals and regional priorities of each BD Hub, fusing the strengths of a range of institutions and investigators and applying them to problems that affect the communities and populations within their regions," said Jim Kurose, assistant director of NSF for Computer and Information Science and Engineering. “We are pleased to be making this substantial investment today to accelerate the nation’s big data R&D innovation ecosystem.”

Two other Spoke awards have ties to Georgia Tech. Santiago Grijalva, Georgia Power Distinguished Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, will study smart grids using big data with Texas A&M. Gari Clifford, an Emory University associate professor with a joint appointment in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, will investigate how to use data from fitness trackers and environmental monitors to improve patient care.

“Georgia Tech’s inclusion in these awards is reflective of the Institute’s unique breadth and depth of expertise that spans all areas of data science and data-driven discovery,” said Srinivas Aluru, co-executive director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Data Engineering and Science and principal investigator of the South Big Data Hub.

The wirelessly energized cage system was presented this month at the International Conference of the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society (EMBC) in Orlando, Florida.  

The Georgia Tech EnerCage is wrapped with carefully oriented strips of copper foils that can inductively power the cage and the electronics implanted in, or attached to, one or more animal subjects inside the cage. The system can run indefinitely and collect data without human intervention because of wireless communication and power transmission.

“It’s always better to keep an animal in its natural settings with minimum burden or stress to improve the quality of an experiment,” said Maysam Ghovanloo, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, who developed the EnerCage. “Anything that is abnormal or unnatural may bias the experiment, no matter what experiment in any field. That includes grabbing the animal to attach or detach wires, change batteries or transferring it from one cage to another.”

Ghovanloo uses four resonating copper coils to create a homogenous magnetic field inside the cage. The built-in closed loop power control mechanism supplies enough power to compensate for all freely behaving animal subject activities, whether they’re standing up, crouching down, or walking around the cage. The small headstage for the animal is also wrapped with resonators to deliver power to a receiver coil.

The Kinect is suspended about three feet above the cage. It has a high-definition camera, an infrared depth camera, and four microphones to record and analyze the animal behavior. It can capture both a two-dimensional high-resolution image of a rat’s location and a three-dimensional image that would identify its body posture.

“We’re building computer algorithms to determine if the animal is standing, sitting, sleeping, grooming, eating, drinking or doing nothing,” said Ghovanloo. “We’re hoping to reduce the expensive costs of new drug and medical device development by allowing machines to do mundane, repetitive tasks now assigned to humans.”

The Georgia Tech team is working in partnership with Emory University, hoping to impact the clinical efficacy of deep brain stimulation (DBS). A growing number of clinical trials are using DBS to treat disorders of the central nervous system, such as Parkinson’s disease, depression and obsessive compulsive disorder. The cellular mechanisms that contribute to the clinical efficacy of DBS remain largely unknown, however.

Emory’s Donald (Tig) Rainnie and his research team use freely moving rodent models to examine the effects of DBS on neural circuits thought to be disrupted in depression. They have tested the EnerCage system.

“The requirement to use a tethered headstage to record neural data and apply the DBS has hindered progress in this field,” said Rainnie, a researcher at Emory’s Yerkes National Primate Research Center and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science. “We provided critical feedback, via beta testing of the EnerCage system, on how to maximize the utility of the system for different behavioral applications. We found a key advantage of the EnerCage system is that it will allow researchers to conduct chronic DBS and track associated behavioral changes for days, if not weeks, without disturbing the test animals.”

Until now, Rainnie says, that hasn’t been possible, and it is key to understanding the long-term benefits of DBS in patients.

The next steps at Georgia Tech are designing EnerCage-compatible implants, such as one for delivering drugs, and expanding the system to a network of dozens of cages that can collect data from multiple animals at the same time. 

The conference paper, “A Wirelessly Powered Homecage with Animal Behavior Analysis and Closed-Loop Power Control,” is co-authored by Yaoyao Jia, Zheyuan Wang, Daniel Canales, Morgan Tinkler, Chia-Chun Hsu, Teresa E. Madsen and S. Abdollah Mirbozorgi.

The work is supported in part by the National Science Foundation (ECCS-1407880 and ECCS-1408318) and the National Institute of Health’s National Institute of Biomedical Imaging Bioengineering (1R21EB018561). Any opinions, findings, and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this material are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the sponsors.

This year, there are several events that may be of interest to anyone and everyone on campus, including those that spotlight some of Tech’s oldest traditions. This year’s Homecoming theme is “TrECHing Through the Jungle.” 

TEAM Buzz

Saturday, Oct. 22, Various Locations

Homecoming week kicks off with a citywide service day where students, faculty, and staff can serve in projects around Atlanta. Start a team or sign up as an individual at teambuzz.org.

Keynote Speaker Josh Pastner

Thursday, Oct. 27, 6 to 7 p.m., Room 236, Global Learning Center

After helping the Arizona Wildcats win the 1997 Championship as a player, Josh Pastner quickly made his mark as a tireless recruiter and one of the most successful young coaches in NCAA history, leading the Memphis Tigers to three Conference USA titles and four March Madness tournaments.  Join us as Coach Pastner shares his plans for rebuilding the Yellow Jackets men's basketball program, including how he put together his coaching team, how he goes after smart and talented players and what it's like to recruit in the ACC. 

All registrants will be automatically entered to win a family four pack to the first game vs. Tennessee Tech.

Celebrating the Olympic Village of 20 Years Ago

Friday, Oct. 28, 11:30 a.m. to 12:45 p.m., Global Learning Center

Join Tech storyteller and director of the Living History Program, Marilyn Somers, to hear about this one-and-done historical Tech event.

President’s Update 

Friday, Oct. 28, 1 to 2 p.m., Global Learning Center

President G.P. “Bud” Peterson, Tech’s 11th president, will share an update on the Institute’s global, regional, and local impact, as well as other news from around campus.

Navigating the College Admission Process

Friday, Oct. 28, 2:15 to 3:15 p.m., Global Learning Center

Representatives from the Office of Undergraduate Admission will discuss the college admission process.  

Campus Walking and Bus Tour

Friday, Oct. 28, 3:30 to 5 p.m., Global Learning Center

Student Ambassadors will guide attendees on a tour around campus highlighting landmarks and new additions. 

Mini 500 Tricycle Race

Friday, Oct. 28, 5 to 8 p.m., Peters Parking Deck

The Mini 500 has been part of Homecoming since 1969 when it started as a fraternity prank, where new pledges were forced to transport themselves around campus on tricycles. Today, the Mini 500 race is far from being considered a punishment; it is an exciting, intense competition filled with humor and fun.

Freshman Cake Race

Saturday, Oct. 29, 6:30 a.m., McCamish Pavilion

All first-year students are invited to take part in one of Tech’s oldest traditions, where students rise before the sun to run uphill for cake. All participants get a free cupcake.

Ramblin’ Wreck Parade

Saturday, Oct. 29, 9 a.m., Fowler Street

Students will design and build vehicles to parade down Fowler Street.

Ramblin’ Wreck Rally Tailgate

Saturday, Oct. 29, 2.5 hours before kickoff, Tech Tower Lawn

Enjoy free gameday swag, pictures with the Wreck, and live entertainment.

Football vs. Duke

Saturday, Oct. 29, Bobby Dodd Stadium

Homecoming culminates with the Yellow Jackets taking on the Duke Blue Devils. Kickoff time will be announced seven to 10 days before the game. Check ramblinwreck.com as the event gets closer.

Some events require registration. To register, visit gthomecoming.gatech.edu or homecoming.gatech.edu. 

To learn more about Tech traditions, visit traditions.gatech.edu. 

The robo-bartender is now $2 million richer!

Atlanta-based startup Monsieur, which makes robotic bartenders, announced a $2 million seed round of venture funding yesterday. BIP Capital led the round, followed by Base Ventures and TechSquare Labs. Tennessee Titans linebacker Derrick Morgan and Los Angeles Clippers power forward Glen Davis also participated in the round.

Monsieur claims it has developed what is literally the first AI robot that can bartend and pour drinks. The robot runs in conjunction with Monsieur-produced apps for iOS and Android devices.

The robot’s mixology skills and pours have laser-like accuracy, company executives say, and are, according to a release, “precisely tailored to meet the most discerning tastes, all at the touch of a button.”

Read full article.

And smartphones may be even more vulnerable to such spying.

Researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology are investigating where these information “leaks” originate so they can help hardware and software designers develop strategies to plug them. By studying emissions from multiple computers, the researchers have developed a metric for measuring the strength of the leaks – known technically as “side-channel signal” – to help prioritize security efforts.

“People are focused on security for the Internet and on the wireless communication side, but we are concerned with what can be learned from your computer without it intentionally sending anything,” said Alenka Zajic, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Even if you have the Internet connection disabled, you are still emanating information that somebody could use to attack your computer or smartphone.”

Results of the research were presented December 15 at the 47th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture in Cambridge, U.K. The work is sponsored by the National Science Foundation and the Air Force Office of Scientific Research.

Side-channel emissions can be measured several feet away from an operating computer using a variety of spying methods. Electromagnetic emissions can be received using antennas hidden in a briefcase, for instance. Acoustic emissions – sounds produced by electronic components such as capacitors – can be picked up by microphones hidden beneath tables. Information on power fluctuations, which can help hackers determine what the computer is doing, can be measured by fake battery chargers plugged into power outlets adjacent to a laptop’s power converter.

Some signals can be picked up by a simple AM/FM radio, while others require more sophisticated spectrum analyzers.  And computer components such as voltage regulators produce emissions that can carry signals produced elsewhere in the laptop.

As a demonstration, Zajic typed a simulated password on one laptop that was not connected to the Internet. On the other side of a wall, a colleague using another disconnected laptop read the password as it was being typed by intercepting side-channel signals produced by the first laptop’s keyboard software, which had been modified to make the characters easier to identify.

“There is nothing added in the code to raise suspicion,” said Milos Prvulovic, an associate professor in the Georgia Tech School of Computer Science. “It looks like a correct, but not terribly efficient version of normal keyboard driver software. And in several applications, such as normal spell-checking, grammar-checking and display-updating, the existing software is sufficient for a successful attack.”

Currently, there is no mention in the open literature of hackers using side-channel attacks, but the researchers believe it’s only a matter of time before that happens. The potential risks of side-channel emissions have been reported over the years, but not at the level of detail being studied by the Georgia Tech researchers.

“Of course, it’s possible that somebody is using it right now, but they are not sharing that information,” Zajic noted.

To counter the threat, the researchers are determining where the leaks originate.

“We are trying to understand why these side channels exist and what can be done to fix these leaks,” said Zajic. “We are measuring computers and smartphones to identify the parts of the devices that leak the most. That information can guide efforts to redesign them, and on an architectural level, perhaps change the instructions in the software to change the device behavior.”

Each computer operation has a different potential for leaking information. The processor draws different amounts of current depending on the operation, creating fluctuations that can be measured. Saving data to memory also requires a large amount of current, creating a “loud” operation.

“When you are executing instructions in the processor, you generate a different type of waveform than if you are doing things in memory,” explained Zajic. “And there is interaction between the two.”

To measure the vulnerability, Zajic, Prvulovic and graduate student Robert Callen developed a metric known as “signal available to attacker” (SAVAT), which is a measure of the strength of the signal emitted. They measured the level of SAVAT for 11 different instructions executed on three different laptops, and found the largest signals when the processors accessed off-chip memory.

“It is not really possible to eliminate all side-channel signal,” said Prvulovic. “The trick is to make those signals weak, so potential attackers would have to be closer, use larger antennas and utilize time-consuming signal analyses. We have found that some operations are much ‘louder’ than others, so quieting them would make it more difficult for attackers.”

The researchers are also now studying smartphones, whose compact design and large differential between idle and in-use power may make them more vulnerable. So far, they have only looked at Android devices.

Because the spying is passive and emits no signals itself, users of computers and smartphones wouldn’t know they’re being watched.

“If somebody is putting strange objects near your computer, you certainly should beware,” said Zajic. “But from the user’s perspective, there is not much they can do right now. Based on our research, we hope to develop something like virus scan software that will look for vulnerability in the code and tell developers what they should update to reduce this vulerability.”

This research has been supported, in part, by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under grant 1318934 and by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR) under grant FA9550-14-1-0223. The opinions expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official views of the NSF or AFOSR.

CITATION: Robert Callan, Alenka Zajic and Milos Prvulovic, “A Practical Methodology for Measuring the Side-Channel Signal Available to the Attacker for Instruction-Level Events,” (47th Annual IEEE/ACM International Symposium on Microarchitecture, 2014).

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

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

Writer: John Toon

The Early Action admits span all 50 states and 40 countries, plus Washington D.C. and Puerto Rico. 

Applications for the Early Action admission period totaled 11,702, a slight decrease from last year, yet more were admitted and the class has a higher academic profile. Nearly all of the students — 97 percent — have taken AP calculus or a higher level of math. They average 1488 on the SAT (2146 with its writing component) and 32 on the ACT, and have taken an average of 10 college level classes before even finishing high school. 

“It doesn’t really matter how many applications you get — you want the right class,” said Rick Clark, director of Undergraduate Admission. “We’re on our way toward an even better class.” 

The Early Action group is made up of nearly 41 percent women, the highest ever for this group, and more African American and Hispanic students than last year. Legacy students, which include siblings, children, and grandchildren of Tech grads or employees, were admitted at a rate of 51.5 percent.

“It doesn’t necessarily mean we will yield as high in all those groups, but our admit group has never hit 40 percent women,” Clark said.

This year, Undergraduate Admission welcomed faculty into the admission committee process for the first time. Faculty members from the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and College of Architecture helped review applicants to their schools. Admission staff also had the help of Tech international students in reviewing interviews from prospective international students.

“They can watch the interviews and help evaluate language skills and give us their thoughts on the applicant as a peer,” Clark said. “We’re making the admission process more and more inclusive, and taking more and more factors into consideration every year.”

Admission staff will visit metro Atlanta schools this week to present a few lucky high school students with hand-delivered acceptance packets, an outing that’s become something of a tradition for the Undergraduate Admission team.

“The time, dedication, diligence, and commitment of our staff is remarkable,” Clark said. “Their incredible efforts are what brings each class to fruition.”

Saturday was also the deadline for Regular Admission applications. Tech received more than 4,000 applications on that day alone, bringing the Institute to a total of 26,900 applications for the next freshman class — a 4 percent increase over last year. Regular Admission applicants, and those deferred during Early Action, will receive their admission decisions on March 14.

Those who want to give a virtual welcome to the admitted students can use #gt19 on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram.

Election to NAE is among the highest professional distinctions accorded to an engineer. Academy membership honors those who have made outstanding contributions to "engineering research, practice, or education, including, where appropriate, significant contributions to the engineering literature," and to the "pioneering of new and developing fields of technology, making major advancements in traditional fields of engineering, or developing/implementing innovative approaches to engineering education."

“Deepak, Vigor and Ajit have made exceptional contributions to their fields and to Georgia Tech,” said Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering. “This is a tremendous honor for these outstanding and deserving researchers. We are honored to have them as part of our engineering faculty.”

Divan was recognized by the NAE for “design and commercialization of advanced power conversion technologies for improved quality and controllability of the power grid.” He joined Georgia Tech in 2004 to create a strong program in the application of power electronics and related technologies to power systems and demanding defense and industrial applications. He has 40 issued and pending patents and has published about 250 technical papers, including more than 12 prize papers. Most recently he has been president, chief technical officer, and co-founder of Varentec, Inc., a company that builds power management and monitoring solutions for the electric grid.

NAE recognized Yang for his “contributions to combustion physics in propulsion systems and to aerospace engineering education.” Yang’s research encompasses a wide spectrum of topics, including combustion instabilities in propulsion systems, chemically reacting flows in air-breathing and rocket engines, combustion of energetic materials, high-pressure transport phenomena and combustion, active control of gas-turbine combustion dynamics, and nanotechnologies for propulsion and energetic applications. He has established, as the principal or co-principal investigator, more than 68 research projects dealing with fluid dynamics and combustion in aerospace propulsion and power systems.

Yoganathan was elected for his contributions to “improvements in the biomechanics of prosthetic heart valves and the development of heart repair devices.” He has published more than 250 peer-reviewed journal articles and book chapters in leading biomedical journals and books. He came to Georgia Tech in 1979, and his research deals with experimental and computational fluid mechanics as it pertains to artificial heart valves, left and right sides of the heart, and congenital heart diseases. His work involves the use of laser Doppler velocimetry, digital particle image velocimetry, Doppler ultrasound and magnetic resonance imaging to non-invasively study and quantify blood flow patterns in the cardiovascular system.

Read more about the new NAE members.

As a result of this law, there are now tighter timeframes and increased responsibility for award recipients. This means administrative reports will have to be submitted more quickly and often with a greater level of documentation.

“If you perform government-funded research, financial performance and technical performance are linked in the minds of the agencies,” said Jilda Garton, vice president for research and general manager of Georgia Tech Research Corporation. “The idea that you can perform the research now and catch up on the paperwork later is something we will have to be more careful about.”

The Uniform Requirements were developed in response to a directive from President Barack Obama to streamline guidance and increase accountability for federal grants. The Council on Financial Assets Reform (COFAR) took eight sets of existing regulations and collapsed them into one set, published in December 2013. As the new set of regulations was being developed, Georgia Tech and all others affected by the proposed changes were invited to provide comments and suggestions.

In addition to tightening the reporting timeframe, the government also is interested in seeing the award recipients’ internal control processes and will require a higher documentation standard for purchasing. For example, purchasing materials or supplies that cost more than $3,000 will require getting two quotes and choosing the less expensive option, or ensuring a valid reason for not choosing the less expensive option.

“Prior to this law, we didn’t require bids on anything under $10,000, but that has changed to $3,000,” said Garton. “Therefore, a lot more purchases will have to be documented.”

Because this change will require many university procurement systems to be updated, this purchasing requirement will not go into effect until July 1, 2016.

“The good news for Georgia Tech is that if you make purchases through Buzzmart there is already a competitive process, so you won’t have to provide additional documentation,” Garton said.

From ‘Should’ to ‘Must’

Garton noted that many rules that used to be “good practices” under the old regulations are now requirements. The word “should” has changed to “must,” and her office counted 823 “musts” in the new document.

But, award recipients will not receive additional funding to help them comply with the Uniform Requirements. Some may view this as another administrative burden.

“How can we do more with the same amount of funding is the trick,” Garton said. “Our interdisciplinary taskforce and department administrators from the College of Engineering, the College of Sciences, the College of Architecture, the College of Computing, and GTRI have been working on this since April. They have been part of the process because they will get the operational responsibility. We are doing our very best to make these changes as modest as possible, to automate systems wherever we can, and to bring everything into compliance.”

The plan is to streamline the research administration process and create an electronic pathway to make it easier for faculty to do what they need to do and get the documentation required.

“We are trying to give them better tools, easier access, faster ways to do things, and improve the information they have to manage,” Garton said.

All faculty members already have access to My Research Portal, an online system that provides customized access to every system they will need for research administration.

“If we do it right, this will be a win for the government and a win for us, too,” said Garton. “We will be able to give our faculty a better handle on what’s happening with their grants in real time. They will have better capacity to manage their grants. That helps them as much as it helps us.” 

At each event, Peterson will give a 30-minute campus update that will touch on progress with the Institute’s Strategic Plan, campus infrastructure projects, the new Serve•Learn•Sustain educational plan, wellness initiative, and Campaign Georgia Tech. Another 30 minutes will be spent answering audience questions. 

The town hall events are part of Peterson’s efforts to provide ongoing communication from leadership to the campus community.

The first spring town hall — held for the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts — took place on Feb. 12. The remaining dates include: 

• College of Computing: Feb. 17, 11 a.m., Banquet Hall, Technology Square Research Building
• Professional Education: Feb. 18, 3:30 p.m., Global Learning Center
• College of Engineering, Feb. 24, 3:30 p.m., Student Center Theater
• College of Sciences, March 30, 11 a.m., Press Rooms A and B, Bill Moore Student Success Center (rescheduled from Feb. 25, 3:30 p.m., Student Center Theater)
• Scheller College of Business, March 3, 11 a.m., LeCraw Auditorium, Scheller College 
• of Business
• Georgia Tech Research Institute, April 1, 11 a.m., Auditorium, GTRI Conference Center
• Staff Town Hall, May 7, 11 a.m., Location TBD

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.

It is the responsibility of the project PI and student to determine their ability to make use of the awarded time during the grant period. Extensions requested once the project has begun will not be granted.

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 is required 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 (including year of graduate work), 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. Rating of proposals will be done by a review committee of Georgia Tech faculty, with final selection of awardees by IEN.

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

For 2016, the Institute’s College of Engineering ranked No. 6 and all 11 of the programs within the college are ranked in the top 10, including industrial engineering (No. 1), biomedical and bioengineering (No. 2), environmental (No. 4), civil (No. 5), aerospace (No. 5), mechanical (No. 5), electrical (No. 6), computer (No. 7), nuclear (No. 5), materials (No. 6), and chemical (No. 9).

“Georgia Tech’s graduate programs continue to be among the best in the nation,” said President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “Members of the Georgia Tech community are united by a commitment to intellectual rigor and excellence, and are engaged in the discovery of knowledge in the classroom and in the research lab.”

The Scheller College of Business full-time MBA program ranked No. 30 while the part-time MBA program maintained the No. 20 spot.

The line of ticket-hungry hopefuls multiplied as news of Obama’s scheduled speech in McCamish Pavilion spread.

First in line was fifth year computer science major Stefan Koshy, who heard about the ticket distribution while he was sitting in the student center. Koshy's excitment was evident.

"It's kind of overwhelming. This is one of those things that defines a generation," Koshy said, "As a graduating senior, this feels amazing."

The line quickly exited the Student Center, wrapped around Tech Green and continued past the Mason Building up Atlantic Street. As the line grew, so did the air of excitement about the commander-in-chief's visit. 

"It's so exciting, regardless of your political views," explained Terynne Burgan, second year student from Kennesaw. "It's so cool to see an acting president. You can't really miss out on it."

About midway through the line, Anaïs Felix Carrion waited with a group of friends. She heard about the event from Georgia Tech's Twitter and Facebook pages.

"Everyone was already talking about it within 30 minutes of the news," Felix Carrion said. "It's really cool to have this opportunity."

Students ate lunch, played football and did some studying while they waited for tickets.  Editors of the Technique handed out copies of the student newspaper.  A few students grabbed instruments, entertaining the crowds with an impromptu jam session. The Rambling Wreck drove by, with its signature horn blaring. Even President G.P. “Bud” Peterson greeted students, taking a few selfies with students to help pass the time.

Around 4:00 p.m., William Higgins was the person at the end of the line. 

"This is a once in a lifetime opportunity," said Higgins. "If I don't go, where's my patriotic spirit.

Higgins' friend and fraternity brother just happened to be the first ticket-holder. But for Higgins, the wait would be well worth it.
"Being college students, we're about to be going into the workforce. We need to be keeping up with what's going on in the world," he said.

 The free tickets are available on a first-come, first-served basis the Georgia Tech students, staff and faculty with a valid Georgia Tech BuzzCard.

More information about the visit can be found here: http://www.gatech.edu/obama

“It’s great to be at one of the finest technical institutes in the world,” Obama said. “You’ve got to be if the Ramblin’ Wreck is still running after all these years.”

Nearly 10,000 students, faculty, staff, and guests gathered in McCamish Pavilion to hear from the president, who spent about 30 minutes encouraging students in the pursuit of higher education and talking about ways he hopes to make it more affordable and accessible. 

He outlined steps his administration has already taken, such as tax credit expansion, additional Pell Grant funds, and an income-based repayment program. 

He also asked for support from the crowd for a new declaration of values he called the Student Aid Bill of Rights. The set of four principles complements a memorandum calling for the Department of Education and other federal agencies to do more to help borrowers afford their loan payments.

“It was really relevant because I’m applying to medical school for next year and didn’t have to take out loans for my undergrad, but I’m going to have to take them out for grad school,” said Deeti Pithadia, a biochemistry major who attended the speech.

Read more about the president's speech and visit.

Saturday, March 21, 2015 - 10:00am to 12:00pm
Marcus Nanotechnology Building, Microscopy Suite, Level 0, Georgia Institute of Technology, 345 Ferst Drive NW, Atlanta, GA 30318

In addition to the on campus activity, the Georgia Tech Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology will be hosting a booth at Centennial Olympic Park during the Atlanta Science Festival’s Exploration Expo.

Saturday March 28, 2015 from 11:00am – 4:00pm
Centennial Olympic Park

Come visit GT- IEN at the Expo!

Now, a major gift from alumnus Chris Klaus is giving Tech a new way to do just that. On April 1, the Institute and the College of Engineering will formally launch CREATE-X, a collective of programs designed to boost students' entrepreneurial confidence and give them the tools they need to establish startups.

Many of the programs under the CREATE-X umbrella, such as the Startup Lab course, have already begun to be offered. But CREATE-X will unite them with a common goal: equipping undergraduate students with the knowledge, skills, abilities, and experiences to be entrepreneurially confident.

"These programs have always been part of a larger vision," says Professor Raghupathy Sivakumar, the Wayne J. Holman Chair in Electrical Engineering. He is the director of CREATE-X and one of the architects behind it. Professor Emeritus Ray Vito, a longtime champion of Georgia Tech’s student innovation ecosystem, is another architect behind the effort and serves as a special advisor for CREATE-X.

Open to all undergraduates across campus, CREATE-X is based on three simple principles: Learn, Make, Launch. The idea is that students who participate in CREATE-X will choose from an assortment of programs that correspond with each of these principles. The signature offerings of CREATE-X that correspond to each of the three principles will be, respectively, the Startup Lab course, the Idea to Prototype Undergraduate Research Experience, and the Startup Summer program.

Eventually, students will advance through all three concepts, and they’ll graduate Georgia Tech equipped with the entrepreneurial skills to succeed in both startup settings and larger, well-established companies.

One of CREATE-X’s defining features is Startup Summer, part of the program’s Launch portion. This summer, 20 teams are expected to participate.

Klaus, the namesake of the Institute’s Klaus Advanced Computing Building, has discussed his own experiences in entrepreneurship with students in the Startup Lab course. He is the founder of Kaneva, a social gaming company, and he sees Startup Summer as a transformational opportunity for Georgia Tech students.

By keeping students in school while they build their businesses, Klaus says, CREATE-X will occupy a unique position among startup accelerators. And, of course, students will get the business acumen and real-world experience they need to succeed with their companies.

“CREATE-X will be a revolutionary program for Georgia Tech, and I'm thrilled to help the Institute's efforts in getting students excited about innovation and entrepreneurship,” he says.

Other elements that will distinguish CREATE-X from similar programs at peer institutions will be its singular focus on undergraduate students, emphasis on the Learn, Make, Launch pathway that will cater to students throughout their undergraduate careers, and a strong reliance on the cross-disciplinary maker mindset that defines Georgia Tech.

Another part of what makes the program unique, though, is that participation requirements are somewhat flexible: No one will have to complete a strict regimen of courses to be involved.

That’s because organizers want to make it easy as possible for students to dive in to CREATE-X. All majors are invited to participate, but the program itself will be housed in the College of Engineering.

“We’ve built a reputation for innovation, and I’m excited to see how CREATE-X builds on that by focusing on entrepreneurial skills,” says Gary May, the College of Engineering dean.

May is a member of the program’s executive team. That team also includes Professor Ravi Bellamkonda, the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering chair; Professor Steve McLaughlin, the Steve Chaddick School Chair of the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Professor Bill Wepfer, the Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. School Chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

“The ‘X’ in CREATE-X is based on the notion that our students can create anything they want through their ideas – be it their own jobs, exciting startups, a new world, or their very future,” says Bellamkonda.

Eventually, organizers foresee the program reaching thousands of students across Georgia Tech. Other campus programs that CREATE-X will coordinate with in achieving its vision include VentureLab, the InVenture Prize competition, Startup Exchange, and Georgia Tech’s co-op program.

“Many of these opportunities focus on interdisciplinary work, a hallmark of Georgia Tech’s curriculum,” says McLaughlin.

With Klaus’ gift to CREATE-X, more students will be able to polish their skills and prepare for the business world – whether they want to join a large company or make a startup from scratch.

“We are finally,” says Sivakumar, “going to provide a platform for entrepreneurial students.” 

-- Written by Lyndsey Lewis

More than 27,250 students applied to Georgia Tech this year — a 5 percent increase from 2014. With an overall admit rate of 31 percent, compared to 41 percent two years ago and down a percent from last year, this class is the most competitive in Tech’s history. Those admitted boast an SAT average of 1480 (2185 with writing) and will have taken an average of nearly 10 college level courses before graduating from high school.

Tech continued to admit in-state students at a slightly higher rate, 37 percent, than the overall acceptance rate.

Now, the campus community is asked to help encourage these admitted students to become Yellow Jackets.

“At this point, it’s critical that faculty, staff, and current students are available and invested in helping us enroll the best possible class we can,” said Rick Clark, director of Undergraduate Admission. “We are competing with the world’s best institutions, and the expertise and background provided by our community is what will help families decide Tech is the best choice for them.”

This year, faculty members from both the College of Architecture and the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts sat in on the admission committee to help select students specifically passionate about those fields. Clark is hopeful that this type of commitment and enthusiasm will carry over to support the yielding of these students.

Nearly 5,000 prospective students and admits are expected to visit campus in the coming weeks as they evaluate which school is best for them and where to invest in their future. 

“In the weeks ahead, you’ll see throngs of wide-eyed visitors,” Clark said. “Stop and see if you can help them find where they’re going, recommend a good place to eat, or just share your favorite thing about Tech. Ask where they’re from, and if it’s an admitted student, congratulate them.”

Faculty, staff, and current students also can reach out to the admission liaison for their area of campus to assist with writing letters or making calls to admitted students to answer their questions and encourage them to enroll. Current students who want to go the extra mile can also apply to be a tour guide beginning this summer.

A first-of-its-kind robotic vehicle recently dove to depths never before visited under Antarctica’s Ross Ice Shelf and brought back video of life on the seafloor.

A team of scientists and engineers from the Georgia Institute of Technology assembled the unmanned, underwater vehicle on Antarctica. They deployed (and retrieved) the vehicle through a 12-inch diameter hole through 20 meters of ice and another 500 meters of water to the sea floor.

The robotic vehicle, called Icefin, carried a scientific payload capable of measuring ocean conditions under the ice. Icefin’s readings of the environment under Antarctica’s ice shelves, and video of the life that thrives in these harsh conditions, will help understand how Antarctica’s ice shelves are changing under warming conditions, and to understand how organisms thrive in cold and light-free environments. The technologies developed for Icefin will also help in the search for life on other planets, namely Europa, a moon of Jupiter. Antarctica’s icy oceans are remarkably similar to Europa’s ice-capped oceans.

“We built a vehicle that’s a hybrid between the really small probes and the ocean-going vessels, and we can deploy it through bore holes on Antarctica,” said Britney Schmidt, an assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Tech, and the principal investigator for the Icefin project. “At the same time, we’re advancing hypotheses that we need for Europa and understanding ocean systems here better. We’re also developing and getting comfortable with technologies that make polar science -- and eventually Europa science -- more realistic." 

Icefin was deployed as a part of the Sub Ice Marine and Planetary–analog Ecosystem (SIMPLE) program, funded by NASA and supported by NSF, with Schmidt as the principal investigator. The research team returned from Antarctica in December 2014. Icefin is planned to make its Arctic debut in summer 2016, with a return to Antarctica that fall, the team hopes (For more images from the mission, visit: http://bit.ly/1P2hBRx).

At McMurdo Station, Schmidt and a team including Georgia Tech scientists and engineers from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), led by principal research engineer Mick West, deployed Icefin to explore the underside of the ice shelves flowing off the continent.

“What truly separates Icefin from some of the other vehicles is that it’s fairly slender, yet still has all of the sensors that the scientists like Britney need,” West said. “Our vehicle has instrumentation aboard both for navigation and ocean science that other vehicles do not.”

The Southern Ocean can be as deep as 5,000 meters. Icefin is capable of diving 1,500 meters and can perform three-kilometer-long surveys. Previous vehicles in Icefin’s class were rated to a few hundred meters.

“We saw evidence of a complex community on the sea floor that has never been observed before, and unprecedented detail on the ice-ocean interface that hasn’t been achieved before,” Schmidt said. 

Video captured by Icefin shows eerie footage of an active seafloor 500 meters under the Ross Ice Shelf.

“Biologists at McMurdo were just amazed at the amount of biology at that location which included sea stars, sponges and anemones that were at the ocean bottom,” West said. “To have our very first deep-ocean dive happen through a small hole in the ice and go all the way to the ocean bottom and get the video we did was pretty amazing.” 

To get to the bottom, Icefin first had to be built. A partnership between research-focused GTRI and academic-focused School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences (EAS) enabled the team to design, build and deploy Icefin under the ice in less than a year.Traditional design cycles for these types of vehicles typically are two to three years.

The team had to design for a number of challenges associated with deploying Icefin in such an extreme environment. For example, standard electronics systems are not typically rated to the extreme temperatures found under the Ross Ice Shelf.

“We had probably 100 contingencies for if something went wrong,” West said. “Through lots of analysis and robust design, we were fortunate not to have to initiate any of them.” 

Once Icefin was assembled, the vehicle was deployed through a bore hole in the ice that was 12 inches in diameter and 20 meters deep. Bore holes are often drilled on Antarctica for ocean moorings and sediment sampling.

Traditional underwater vehicles deployed on Antarctica are either “roving eyes” because they carry only a camera, or much larger vehicles that are deployed in the water on the edge of the ice shelf. Icefin fills the gap between these two kinds of vehicles: able to be deployed easily by small teams in any environment, yet still able to record oceanographic information traditionally done by much larger vehicles.

“Icefin is the most capable small vehicle that’s been down there,” Schmidt said. “What’s really rewarding is that at the same time, we were able to involve some outstanding students in the design, build and deployment of the vehicle.” 

Graduate student Anthony Spears and undergraduate Matthew Meister, as well as Georgia Tech Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) program participants, were involved in design of the vehicle. Spears and Meister also played key roles in the field integration and deployment of Icefin, along with EAS postdoctoral fellow Catherine Walker and graduate student Jacob Buffo from Icefin’s science team.

Icefin carries forward and up/down imaging and sonars and several different sensors. Icefin is also modular, similar to vehicles used on space missions. Scientists can swap sensors or point them in different directions as needed.

Traditional GPS does not work under the ice, so Icefin uses a navigation system called SLAM (simultaneous localization and mapping) to triangulate its position based on measuring the range and bearing of features on the seafloor or under the ice.

“Using algorithms such as SLAM allows us to construct a map of the unknown under-ice environment. When you can do that, you can begin to get a 3D picture of what’s going on under the water,” West said.

The sensors on Icefin are helping scientists understand how the ocean affects properties of the ice, and how the ice affects properties of the ocean. The exchange between ocean and ice is a process that mediates biology, affects the climate system and controls the stability of glaciers. 

“Those are important processes that we can work out here in our backyard at the same time as we’re answering how an ice shell would reflect the ocean chemistry on Europa,” Schmidt said. “The ice shell is built out of the ocean, but how that process works is not well understood.”

Videos from the seafloor: https://www.dropbox.com/sh/qn2j1q9qf3rqdto/AACn5xE17456hQK43XHj0RBRa?dl=0

Photos from the mission: https://www.flickr.com/photos/georgiatech/sets/72157650356164390/with/16626135435/

For more on explorers at Georgia Tech, see the feature story in the spring issue of Research Horizons magazine: http://www.rh.gatech.edu/features/explorers

This research is supported by Georgia Institute of Technology and the School of Earth and Atmospheric sciences through Schmidt’s startup funds, and partnership with GTRI. Icefin deployed to Antarctica with SIMPLE funded by NASA through grant NNX12AL65G. Deployment was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) under project B259. Any conclusions or opinions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the sponsoring agencies.

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

Writer: Brett Israel

The Energy Innovation Center – which will be located in Tech Square – will look for better, more reliable and more efficient ways to increase value for customers through products and services.

“The Energy Innovation Center is a concrete example of Southern Company’s decades-long commitment to harnessing the power of innovation for the benefit of the families our utilities serve,” said Southern Company Chairman, President and CEO Thomas A. Fanning. “We look forward to collaborating with Georgia Tech and other strategic partners to develop the next generation of energy technologies and customer-focused programs.”

The center will become a place where ideas, innovation and investment will intersect to develop a better customer experience.

“Southern Company and Georgia Tech have collaborated in numerous areas through the years, and now we are delighted to welcome them to Technology Square,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson.

“As the most recent addition, Southern Company’s presence in Tech Square will continue the growing momentum of the Southeast’s premier innovation ecosystem,” he said.  “We look forward to increased opportunities to partner as they pursue customer-focused energy innovation.”

The company joins a number of corporate giants that have come to Georgia Tech to create innovation and research centers. Others include: AT&T Mobility, Home Depot, Panasonic Automotive Systems Co. and ThyssenKrupp Elevator Americas.

Georgia Tech’s Institute for Robotics & Intelligent Machines (IRIM) will host its own event, featuring demos of robots and tours of labs on campus, on Wednesday, April 8, 2015. But if you can’t make it in person to check out Tech’s lineup of robots, you can still take part in the festivities: For the third year in a row, we’ve released a set of trading cards to celebrate National Robotics Week. These fun cards feature some of Georgia Tech’s most talented and productive players!

And for the second year in a row, IRIM has teamed up with IEEE Spectrum and iRobot to create a “national” set of our popular robot trading cards, featuring ten famous robots developed by companies and researchers in the U.S. Don’t forget about IEEE Spectrum’s award winning, internationally acclaimed Robots for iPad app, which you can get for FREE on iTunes.

See the full list

A task force drafted a proposal in early January with five key recommendations for modifying Georgia Tech’s academic calendar. The group of students, faculty, and staff focused on changes that were based on recommendations made by previous committees and white papers; were in compliance with University System of Georgia (USG) policies; and did not significantly change the existing spring-summer-fall structure. 

Per the proposal, starting in fall 2015, classes would not meet on the Wednesday before Thanksgiving, giving students an additional day for their break. A change implemented as a pilot this spring will continue to stand, which eliminated finals being held during the last exam session on the Friday before Commencement to prevent finals overlapping with graduation festivities. Starting the next academic year, it was approved to extend the individual course withdrawal deadline by two weeks, allowing students more time to evaluate whether to drop a class.

In Spring 2016, the current Dead Week would be replaced with Final Instructional Class Days and Reading Periods. The new schedule would designate Monday and Tuesday of the penultimate week of the semester as Final Instructional Class Days, followed by a day and a half of reading period, and administering the first final on Thursday afternoon. Finals would be broken up by that weekend and resume Monday, with an additional reading period the next Tuesday morning. Finals would finish that Thursday, allowing Friday for conflict periods and a day between exams and Commencement.

“Adding reading periods before and during final exams week so students have more time to prepare is one of the most important changes we can make to our calendar,” said Steven Girardot, associate vice provost for undergraduate education who co-chaired the Academic Calendar Task Force with Paul Kohn, vice provost for Enrollment Services. 

When benchmarking against peers and other USG institutions, Georgia Tech was one of few universities that did not already have a reading period of this kind. 

In many cases, Tech students were found to spend more time in class than at peer and USG institutions. 

“The fact is that Georgia Tech students spend a lot of time in school,” said Laura Margaret Burbach, vice president of Academic Affairs for the Student Government Association (SGA). Burbach participated in the academic calendar task force and helped draft a white paper last year from SGA on the topic.

For Burbach, getting the Wednesday before Thanksgiving is an immediate relief, but the changes to dead week and final exams will be the biggest change for campus.

“I hope it does a lot for alleviating student stress by incorporating additional study time, giving a true end to the semester, and letting students celebrate graduation,” she said.

Beyond Next Year

The complete task force recommendations that would be phased into the calendar during the next two years include:

• Replace Dead Week with Final Instructional Class Days and Reading Periods and wrap final exams around a weekend. (Beginning spring 2016)
• Eliminate final exams on the Friday before Commencement. (Implemented as a pilot in spring 2015)
• Add additional class holidays around Thanksgiving and July 4. (Beginning fall 2015)
• Begin the spring semester no earlier than the second Monday of January. (Beginning Spring 2016)
• Modify class length and breaks (contingent on final approval). (Beginning fall 2017)

The final recommendation would extend the length of Monday/Wednesday/Friday classes during spring and fall semesters from 50 to 55 minutes. Breaks between classes would extend from to 10 to 15 minutes. These extensions would ultimately mean the required number of instructional hours, per USG policy, is met in fewer days, giving additional flexibility for holidays or breaks during the semester. This recommendation has been approved in principle but will get additional study and potentially final approval at a later date. If approved, the change would go into effect in fall 2017.

“Right now you get significantly less class time in a Monday/Wednesday/Friday class than in a Tuesday/Thursday, so in more challenging courses, you get a lot more time with the material in a Tuesday/ Thursday section,” said Burbach. “This would make them more comparable. The longer time in between classes would make it easier for students to get to class across campus.”

The Process

The calendar changes have been approved by the Student Regulations Committee and will go before the full Faculty Senate for approval at its meeting on April 21. The Office of Undergraduate Education will hold an informational session on Friday, April 17, from 9 to 10 a.m. in the Student Center Theater to review the proposed changes and answer questions from the campus community.

Students have voiced concerns to Tech administrators about aspects of the academic calendar in recent years. The 2013 SGA white paper proposed three changes, two of which were the delayed withdrawal date and wrapping finals around a weekend. Both of those changes will be implemented by spring 2016. 

“With everything we’ve done the priority has been what’s in the best interest of our students and reducing stress,” said Girardot. “Faculty will also benefit by having more time to grade and to prepare for their own holidays.”  

The research proposes and demonstrates the world’s first multi-modality cellular sensor arranged in a standard low-cost CMOS process. Each sensor pixel can concurrently monitor multiple different physiological parameters of the same cell and tissue samples to achieve holistic and real-time physiological characterizations.

“Our research is intended to fundamentally revolutionize how biologists and bioengineers can interface with living cells and tissues and obtain useful information,” said Hua Wang, an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. “Fully understanding the physiological behaviors of living cells or tissues is a prerequisite to further advance the frontiers of bioscience and biotechnology.”

The research is part of the Semiconductor Synthetic Biology (SSB) program sponsored and managed by Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC). Launched in 2013, the SSB program concentrates on synergies between synthetic biology and semiconductor technology that can foster exploratory, multi-disciplinary, longer-term university research leading to novel, breakthrough solutions for a wide range of industries.

Wang said the research can have positive impact on semiconductors being used in the development of health care applications, including the more cost-effective development of pharmaceuticals and point-of-care devices and low-cost home-based diagnostics and drug testing systems. The research could also benefit defense and environmental monitoring applications for low-cost field-deployable sensors for hazard detections.

Specifically, in the case of the more cost-effective development of pharmaceuticals, the increasing cost of new medicine is largely due to the high risks involved in drug development. On average, only one out of every ten thousand tested chemical compounds eventually become an approved drug product.

In the early phases of drug development (when thousands of chemical candidates are screened), in vitro cultured cells and tissues are widely used to identify and quantify the efficacy and potency of drug candidates by recording their cellular physiology responses to the tested compounds.

Moreover, patient-to-patient variations often exist even under the administration of the same type of drugs at the same dosage. If the cell samples are derived from a particular patient, patient-specific drug responses then can be tested, which opens the door to future personalized medicine.

“Therefore, there is a tremendous need for low-cost sensing platforms to perform fast, efficient and massively parallel screening of in vitro cells and tissues, so that the promising chemical candidates can be selected efficiently,” said Wang, who also holds the Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professorship in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “This existing need can be addressed directly by our CMOS multi-modality cellular sensor array research.”

Among the benefits enabled by the CMOS sensor array chips are that they provide built-in computation circuits for in-situ signal processing and sensor fusion on multi-modality sensor data. The chips also eliminate the need of external electronic equipment and allow their use in general biology labs without dedicated electronic or optical setups.

Additionally, thousands of sensor array chips can operate in parallel to achieve high-throughput scanning of chemicals or drug candidates and real-time monitoring of their efficacy and toxicity. Compared with sequential scanning through limited fluorescent scanners, this parallel scanning approach can achieve more than one-thousand times throughput enhancement.

The Georgia Tech research team just wrapped its first year of research under the 3-year project, with the sensor array being demonstrated at the close of 2014 and presented at the IEEE International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in February 2015. In the next year, the team plans to further increase the sensor array pixel density while helping improve packaging solutions compatible with existing drug testing solutions.

“Georgia Tech’s research combines semiconductor integrated circuits and living cells to create an electronics-biology hybrid platform, which has tremendous societal and technological implications that can potentially lead to better and cheaper health care solutions,” said Victor Zhirnov, director of Cross-Disciplinary Research and Special Projects at SRC.

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Written by Semiconductor Research Corporation.

TI is an enduring partner in Georgia Tech’s efforts to provide an experiential learning environment for Tech students, according to Steven McLaughlin, Steve W. Chaddick school chair in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

“Georgia Tech is focused on providing an environment that nurtures project-based learning and professional leadership,” said McLaughlin. “Inside the TI Maker Space, electrical and computer engineering students — as well as students from other disciplines across Georgia Tech — will work together to solve technology design challenges that will not only give them the necessary project skills for career success but also provide the experience to address problems facing the industry and the world.”

The TI Maker Space will offer a dedicated, project-based lab area for undergraduate courses that cover subjects such as embedded systems, analog devices and communications, as well as senior design projects. The company will conduct annual reviews to ensure equipment is current, fully leveraged and meeting the needs of students and faculty.

“We are very excited to be a part of what is happening at Georgia Tech, and have benefited greatly through the years by engaging its faculty and students,” said Steve Lyle, TI’s director of Engineering Workforce Development and University Marketing programs. “We are hopeful that these spaces will inspire generations of engineers and computer scientists to create innovations that will change the world.”

For more than 80 years, innovation has been a thread that runs through everything TI develops, and its semiconductor innovations are unlocking the possibilities for a smarter, safer, greener, healthier and more enjoyable world. The company works with universities worldwide to advance electrical engineering education and research focused on building a brighter future for everyone.  For more information about TI, visit www.ti.com.

Your smartphone likely uses a dozen or so tiny — yet powerful — MEMS sensors to support its sophisticated functions. And that late-model car undoubtedly carries scores of devices based on MEMS and other sensing technologies.

Typically sized at the micron scale — millionths of a meter — MEMS devices use minuscule moving parts to perform a broad range of sensing tasks. Small as they are, they can detect sound, motion, position, force, pressure, chemicals, bacteria, and numerous other things worth knowing about. Note that these miniaturized sensors don’t always have moving parts, and a broader term — microsystems — is sometimes used rather than MEMS.

At Georgia Tech, more than 20 research teams focus on MEMS-related research and development. Supporting them is the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN), one of Georgia Tech’s nine Interdisciplinary Research Institutes. IEN’s extensive shared-user facilities, including advanced labs and cleanrooms, are used by as many as 200 Georgia Tech faculty, graduate students, and postdoctoral researchers who work on MEMS and other microsystems.

To read more about this research area, please visit this article in Georgia Tech's Research Horizons magazine.

A feature article in Research Horizons magazine highlights some of the projects, led by Georgia Tech faculty and researchers, that will improve the capture, storage, management, and delivery of renewable energy.

Read the full story: Power Up

Yet, educators should be warned that a flipped class can easily turn into a “flopped class” if flipping isn’t approached carefully, and if significant time and preparation are not given to this method of instruction.

The Center for 21st Century Universities (C21U) recently assembled a team of “flipping veterans,” Bonnie Ferri from the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Don Webster from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, and Jung Choi from the College of Sciences, to share successes and failures they’ve experienced in learning to flip a class. 

Why do educators value a flipped classroom?

The panelists agreed upon the fact that educators greatly value a flipped classroom because it allows for more hands-on or application-based project time, since students view lessons before class. 

“One of the core benefits of flipping a classroom,” says Ferri, “is that it delivers lessons beforehand and allows students time to apply these lessons in class.”

Improved examination scores have been another across-the-board benefit of this new style of teaching for Ferri, Webster, and Choi.

“After I looked at the application questions in my exam data, I realized that the students in the flipped version of my class did better than those who were in the previous model,” says Choi. 

What mistakes do educators make when planning to flip a class?

One of the greatest benefits of flipping is providing pre-recorded lessons for students to watch or engage with before class — but this can also become an educator’s greatest downfall when first learning how to flip a class.

All three faculty members have seen flipped courses fail because educators simply recorded their typical lecture materials and expected the format to translate to a flipped class. 

“I realized that if I wasn’t going to record something that was better than a normal lecture, then what was the point?” says Webster. 

Another major mistake made by faculty in a newly flipped course is to place too much time and emphasis on the out-of-class lectures, and not enough on the quality of the more flexible in-class interactions and projects.

“Recording the lecture video is less important,” says Choi. “It’s the in-class portion and what an instructor does with that time that really counts.”

What’s the best advice you would give to someone flipping a class for the first time?

Over and over, Ferri, Choi, and Webster asserted two important things to remember when flipping a class for the first time: Do not assume that a flipped class will be easier to manage or less work than a traditional class, and remember to ask for help.

“It’s tricky to successfully flip a class, and people can be discouraged easily without mentoring,” says Ferri. “A lot of times, a person teaching a newly flipped class will see their teacher ratings plummet because they just don’t know what they’re doing. So get a mentor.”

The panel of C21U faculty all concluded that if approached with planning, dedication, and mentorship, the experience of flipping a class is an opportunity for both student and instructor growth and success.

C21U provides resources and mentorship for those interested in flipped or blended classrooms. For resources and to find out more, explore C21U’s Guide to Flipping Your Classroom at www.c.gatech.edu/C21Uflipguide, or visit www.c21u.gatech.edu.

Ma literally grew up in restaurants, beginning in Maumelle, Ark., where his parents worked around-the-clock to keep open their small Chinese restaurant. Later, his family moved to New York in the 1980s, and some of the chef’s favorite childhood memories played out against the backdrop of his uncle’s much-acclaimed nouveau Chinese eatery, Paul Ma’s China Kitchen.

“We’d go almost every weekend to my uncle’s restaurant and see the entire family,” Ma recalls. “I remember being a little boy running around the restaurant. It was like one big dinner party.”

So it’s not surprising that the proud Yellow Jacket would eventually go on to open not one, but two successful restaurants of his own. It’s just that he didn’t realize that’s what he wanted to do with his life—he originally decided to try engineering.

“Georgia Tech was the last school I looked at,” Ma says. “I went on a campus visit and I immediately thought ‘I want to go here’.” He wound up choosing Tech despite being offered full rides to several others.

Ma studied hard for five years then graduated in 2000 with a degree in electrical and computer engineering. He then went on to get a master’s degree, and started to build a lucrative career as a government contractor in the Washington, D.C., area. By all outside accounts, he was doing more than well, but Ma couldn’t quiet the call of the kitchen.

And that’s when he did the contemporary version of running away to join the circus: He quit his job and went off to culinary school.

“I was in L.A. around 2006 visiting my sister and brother-in-law,” he says. “We were in a Japanese restaurant eating sushi and I kept thinking about how the food scene defines a city. By the end of the meal I told them that I wanted to open a restaurant.”

Despite lots of push back from his parents, Ma eventually moved forward with his plan. He and his now wife, Joey Hernandez, sold everything they had to move to New York City where he enrolled in the French Culinary Institute, which is now known as the International Culinary Center. The couple did a lot of couch surfing and bunking down in some pretty terrible apartments—some plagued with rats—to make it through. “At one point we were essentially homeless for 10 days,” Ma says.

But Ma had found his passion. And the demanding environment at Tech helped him conquer all his obstacles. After an externship with Chef David Chang of the Momofuku Empire and a short stint cooking in St. Thomas, Ma and Hernandez moved back to the D.C. area to open a place of their own, all on a shoestring budget.

In 2009, the couple leased an old decrepit doughnut shop on a strip in Vienna, Va., dotted with more auto shops than four-star restaurants. It was the only space they could afford and it sat decidedly outside the city’s vibrant food scene. “We found the place surfing Craigslist,” Ma says. “No broker would even talk to us.”

Together with the help of friends and family, Ma and his wife did everything to make the nine-table Maple Avenue Restaurant, as they dubbed it, into a reality—from hauling out the old fixtures to putting up drywall themselves. Ma and Hernandez, who serves as Maple Avenue’s general manager and shares her husband’s passion for restaurants, financed the venture with credit cards.Lots and lots of maxed-out credit cards.

It didn’t take long for their money and credit to run out. “I couldn’t even get a $500 Home Depot card at that point,” Ma admits.

At first, the barely 1,000-square-foot dining room sat empty most nights. Closing seemed inevitable. But just as Ma started dusting off his engineering resume, Maple Avenue had its very first day where it almost broke even. Then came a few more where it actually turned a profit. The critics started paying attention. Great dishes led to even better reviews, and the buzz brought in diners from across the region to sample Ma’s menu of American cuisine enhanced with Asian and French flavors.

“The dichotomy of Maple Avenue is that you walk into a building that is physically barely hanging on and get great food,” Ma says of his little restaurant that could.

In Maple Avenue’s early days, there were two nods to his time at Georgia Tech on the menu. The first was his take on the Southern classic—fried green tomatoes. The second was a pineapple steak that he loved eating at a Houston’s near campus that he went to all the time during college. “That item was such a rip off of that steak,” Ma jokes.

Building on Maple Avenue’s success, he and his wife—now parents of three children—opened a second restaurant, Water & Wall, in late 2013. This time the couple had no trouble getting a broker to answer their call or to lure customers into the spacious, professionally designed spot.

Ma rarely uses his engineering training anymore but says he does not regret his first career. “Through engineering I got to learn a lot of leadership qualities,” says Ma, who enjoys trading stories with the many Tech grads living in the D.C. area who frequent his restaurants.  “And my security clearance from my engineering days always helps when I apply for a liquor license." 

This story originally appeared in Vol. 90, No. 1 of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine.

The device is described in a Nature Methods paper that was published online May 18. Among the members of the research team is Fatih Sarioglu, now an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech.

“Early theories of cancer metastasis were based on clumps of tumor cells traveling through the bloodstream, but given that CTC clusters are even rarer in the blood than single CTCs, they have attracted minimal attention for several decades,” explained Mehmet Toner, PhD, director of the BioMicroElectroMechanical Systems Resource Center in the MGH Center for Engineering in Medicine, the paper's senior author. “The ability to isolate intact clusters will enable is to investigate carefully their role in the metastatic process, and understanding metastasis really is the ‘holy grail’ of cancer research.”

CTCs are living solid tumor cells found in the bloodstream at extremely low levels – about one in a billion cells. Starting in 2007, MGH researchers have developed three microchip-based devices that capture CTCs in ways that preserve molecular information that can help guide clinical treatment. The first two versions used antibodies directed at specific proteins on the surface of tumor cells, which limited the ability to capture cells that may have lost those marker proteins during the process of metastasis. The third version, developed in 2013, uses antigen-independent methods of isolating CTCs, which is also the case for the Cluster-Chip.

“Cancer is an extremely heterogeneous disease, and even within the same tumor you can find cells with different surface antigens,” said Sarioglu, co-lead author of the Nature Methods paper. “Since we are capturing clusters because of their physical properties, this chip is directly applicable to all types of cancer.”

Sarioglu explained that the strategy behind the design of the chip is based on the physical properties of clusters of cells. The 3- by 1 ½-inch plastic chip through which a blood sample is passed consists of rows of triangular microposts arranged in such a way that clusters passing between two posts will become trapped on the apex of a third central post and held in place by the balanced flow of fluid on either side. Single CTCs and blood cells will pass right through without being captured. In addition, passing the sample through the device at a slow rate minimizes the possibility that clusters will be broken, distorted or escape.

Initial testing of the Cluster-Chip with blood samples to which artificially formed tumor cell clusters had been introduced helped to determine the optimal flow rate to capture the most clusters in the least time. The researchers then compared the new device to the second-generation HBCTC-Chip, which relies on known cell-surface markers and was the first to isolate CTC clusters. The Cluster-Chip proved to be 40 to 50 percent better at finding clusters of cells expressing targeted markers and 100 percent better at capturing cells without target antigens.

While initial attempts to release captured clusters from the device by simply reversing the fluid flow had limited success, the investigators found that reducing the temperature of the device itself to 4 degrees Celsius (39 F) not only released 80 percent of clusters, but also improved the purity of the captured material by reducing the undesired capture of white blood cells.

Use of the Cluster-Clip to test blood samples from 60 patients with either breast cancer, melanoma or prostate cancer successfully captured CTC clusters in from 30 to 40 percent of samples. Analysis of captured clusters revealed they consisted of cells with significant molecular differences, some actively proliferating and other relatively quiescent, and were often accompanied by immune cells, an observation that could have important implications with the increased attention to immune-system-based cancer therapies.

“Testing of patient blood samples also revealed that there were significantly more CTC clusters in the blood than was previously believed,” said Toner. “We now are looking at ways to improve further the release of captured clusters, but we are only at the beginning of our quest to understand the role and biology of CTC clusters. Eventually we could develop ways to target clusters therapeutically as well as using them as a source of diagnostic information.” Toner is the the Benedict Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School.

“This new isolation device will be particularly useful in isolating clusters of CTCs, which seem to be the most malignant and metastasis-prone types of cancer cells in the blood,” said Daniel Haber, MD, director of the MGH Cancer Center and a co-author of the Nature Methods paper. “I’m particularly excited by the way in which the device was created – starting from a clinical and biological observation about the importance of these CTC clusters and then designing a specific microfluidic device to capture these cells, which will make it possible to study them in greater detail.”

Nicola Aceto, PhD, of the MGH Cancer Center is co-lead author of the Nature Methods paper. Support for the current study includes grants from the National Institutes of Health, the National Institute of Biomedical Imaging and Bioengineering, a “dream team” grant from Stand Up to Cancer, the Howard Hughes Medical Institute, the Prostate Cancer Foundation, the Charles Evans Foundation, and Johnson and Johnson. The MGH has filed a patent application for the Cluster-Chip.

The Georgia Institute of Technology is a leading research university committed to improving the human condition through advanced science and technology. Ranked as the #7 best U.S. public university, Georgia Tech provides a focused, technologically based education to more than 21,500 undergraduate and graduate students. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech has more than 100 centers focused on interdisciplinary research that consistently contribute vital research and innovation to government, industry, and business. For more information, please visit www.gatech.edu.

Massachusetts General Hospital, founded in 1811, is the original and largest teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School. The MGH conducts the largest hospital-based research program in the United States, with an annual research budget of more than $760 million and major research centers in AIDS, cardiovascular research, cancer, computational and integrative biology, cutaneous biology, human genetics, medical imaging, neurodegenerative disorders, regenerative medicine, reproductive biology, systems biology, transplantation biology and photomedicine.

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177 North Avenue
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Media Relations Contacts: Massachusetts General – Katie Marquedant, (kmarquedant@partners.org), (617 726-0337); Georgia Tech – John Toon (jtoon@gatech.edu), (404-894-6986).

Article written by Massachusetts General Hospital.

The new Georgia Tech algorithm that fuels this system demonstrates the potential of easily controlling large teams of robots, which is relevant in manufacturing, agriculture and disaster areas.

“It’s not possible for a person to control a thousand or a million robots by individually programming each one where to go,” said Magnus Egerstedt, Schlumberger Professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “Instead, the operator controls an area that needs to be explored. Then the robots work together to determine the best ways to accomplish the job.”

Egerstedt envisions a scenario in which an operator sends a large fleet of machines into a specific area of a tsunami-ravaged region. The robots could search for survivors, dividing themselves into equal sections. If some machines were suddenly needed in a new area, a single person could quickly redeploy them. 

The Georgia Tech model is different from many other robotic coverage algorithms because it’s not static. It’s flexible enough to allow robots to “change their minds” effectively, rather than just performing the single job they’re programmed to do.

“The field of swarm robotics gets difficult when you expect teams of robots to be as dynamic and adaptive as humans,” Egerstedt explained. “People can quickly adapt to changing circumstances, make new decisions and act. Robots typically can’t. It’s hard for them to talk and form plans when everything is changing around them.”

In the Georgia Tech demonstration, each robot is constantly measuring how much light is in its local “neighborhood.” It’s also chatting with its neighbor. When there’s too much light in its area, the robot moves away so that another can steal some of its light.

“The robots are working together to make sure that each one has the same amount of light in its own area,” said Egerstedt.

The tablet-based control system has one final benefit: it was designed with everyone in mind. Anyone can control the robots, even if they don’t have a background in robotics.

“In the future, farmers could send machines into their fields to inspect the crops,” said Georgia Tech Ph.D. candidate Yancy Diaz-Mercado. “Workers on manufacturing floors could direct robots to one side of the warehouse to collect items, then quickly direct them to another area if the need changes.”

A paper about the control system, “Multi-Robot Control Using Time-Varying Density Functions,” was recently published in the IEEE Transactions on Robotics (T-RO).

This material is based upon work supported by the Air Force Office of Scientific Research under Award No. FA9550-13-1-0029. Any opinions, findings and conclusions or recommendations expressed in this publication are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the views of the AFOSR.

Name: Ty Autry
Hometown: Camilla, GA
Major: Electrical Engineering
Clubs/Involvement: DramaTech Theatre Marketing Director. Actor: "Angel," "Rent," "Bert Bratt," and "How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying." Director and Choreographer. Tau Beta Pi, business analyst at Codesigned. Also worked at Turner Broadcasting System.

What are you doing after you graduate? This summer I am performing at OnStage Atlanta in "The Addams Family: The Musical," and in August I start my year-long apprenticeship at Georgia Ensemble Theatre! I will also continue working at Codesigned during the day. You can find me on Twitter/Instagram: @JTyAutry

Q: You're an engineer, but also an actor. How has acting impacted your time at Georgia Tech?
A: Acting has allowed me to de-stress from my busy work and school schedule. Even though going to rehearsals five night a week is stressful on its own, it allowed me be creative in ways that engineering doesn't allow me to be. During my four years at Georgia Tech, I was able to work the left and right side of my brain! On the flip side, getting an engineering degree has helped me grow as an actor in unique ways because it has taught me to think very analytically, be a problem solver, and analyze situations very quickly.

Q: What was the most difficult part of getting an engineering degree and what's your advice to someone starting their college career at Tech?
A: The most difficult part about getting an engineering degree was the very dense reading. There were times I had to force myself to focus and read through a textbook, even though I didn't want to. The best advice I can give to anyone coming to Georgia Tech is: 1) Always go to class, never skip (simple, but true)! 2) Do your homework, skipping a homework could be the difference between an A and a B. 3) Pick one or two TV shows to follow a semester, but limit your TV time to just those shows.

Q: What do you think is the most surprising thing people do not know about Georgia Tech?
A: Georgia Tech houses the oldest continuously running theatre in all of Georgia! DramaTech Theatre has been around since 1946 and is stronger than ever! The fact that Georgia Tech can put on amazing work of art with a bunch of engineers, computer scientists, and business majors running the whole place, is incredible!

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

• Ryan Randall (PI Eric Gaucher, Biology), Engineering Protein-based BioInks for 2D Printing
• Ning Xia (PI Rosario Gerhardt, Materials Science and Engineering), An Indium Tin Oxide Ink for All-Printing Liquid Crystal Display Devices
• Mason Chilmonczyk (PI Andrei Fedorov, Mechanical Engineering), Micro/Nanofabrication of Mass Spectrometry Probe for Single-Cell-Scale Biochemical Imaging
• Eric Tervo (PI Baratunde Cola, Materials Science and Engineering & Mechanical Engineering), A Proposal for Fabrication and Characterization of Surface Phonon Polariton Metamaterials
• Ruxiu Liu (PI Fatih Sarioglu, Electrical and Computer Engineering), Microfluidic Chip for Label-Free Single Cell Analysis

The five 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 for a six-month period. Awardees will present the results of their research efforts at a future IEN User Day.

Observation of “backward phase matching” – a phenomenon also known as the “nonlinear mirror” – provided proof that this new type of metamaterial had been created. Demonstration of the phenomenon was reported by researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology in a paper published June 15 in the journal Nature Materials.

Though by itself the discovery may have few immediate practical applications, realization of a material that had been predicted by theorists is a milestone that could lead to new areas of study, and prompt a re-evaluation of the fundamental rules governing nonlinear optics.

“Nonlinear optics is critically important to controlling light for information processing, sensing and signal generation,” said Wenshan Cai, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering who led the research team. “Our effort substantially expands the scope of nonlinear light-matter interactions in artificially structured media with engineered, unconventional linear and high-order material parameters.”

Engineered metamaterials offer unique properties not available in natural materials. This is especially useful in nonlinear optics, where materials with unconventional properties could make a difference anywhere light must be actively controlled. Researchers at multiple institutions have already created optical metamaterials that could be used to produce more efficient solar cells, faster computer chips, improved sensors – and even cloaking to permit invisibility.

“The linear responses of metamaterials have substantially augmented the linear properties available from naturally-occurring materials,” noted Cai, who also holds a faculty position in the Georgia Tech School of Materials Science and Engineering. “In the same way, the studies of nonlinear metamaterials may have a revolutionary impact on the field of nonlinear optics. The unconventional electromagnetic parameters made possible by metamaterials will provoke us to rethink and re-evaluate many of the established rules of nonlinear optics.”

Metamaterials obtain their properties from a repeated unit structure rather than the constituent materials. At the frequency range between visible and infrared light, subwavelength metallic structures can serve as building blocks – essentially “meta-atoms” – to create optical materials with properties that have not been available in the past.

Experimentally, the researchers struggled to create a negative index material – which has been a holy grail for metamaterial research – with a sample size large enough for testing. They had to tailor the refractive indices at both the fundamental and harmonic frequencies simultaneously.

The research team was able to demonstrate backward phase-matching by exploiting two distinct modes in a nonlinear plasmonic waveguide, which was built with a thin dielectric spacer of relatively high refractive index sandwiched between two flat silver films. A large dielectric constant in the gap enabled a pronounced separation of the surface plasmon and the bulk plasmon frequencies, while a narrow gap pushed the operating point away from the surface plasmon frequency and helped balance the magnitudes of the refractive indices of the two modes.

The waveguide operated with the real part of the mode refractive indices at 3.4 and -3.4 for the fundamental and harmonic waves, respectively. The observed peak conversion efficiency at the excitation wavelength of about 780 nanometers indicated fulfillment of the phase matching condition in which the coherent harmonic wave emerged along a direction opposite to that of the incoming fundamental light, the researchers reported in their paper.

The research team made a comprehensive set of measurements to experimentally confirm the phenomenon of backward phase-matching in the waveguide.

“We proposed a smart scheme that allowed us to experimentally achieve the backward phase-matching condition in a realistic way,” Cai explained. “Experimental demonstration of backward phase-matching in negative index metamaterials was considered to be extremely challenging, which is why it took nearly ten years to be realized.”

Phase matching is a standard technique to achieve efficient frequency generation using nonlinear optics, usually achieved by fine-tuning the orientation or temperature of a nonlinear crystal, Cai noted. In second harmonic generation – a nonlinear process to double the frequency of light – phase matching requires that the refractive index of the initial (fundamental) and the doubled (harmonic) frequencies be identical. That way, the fundamental light will gradually be converted to its harmonic along the direction of propagation, and the output harmonic light will co-propagate along the same direction.

In addition to Cai, the research team included first author Shoufeng Lan, a graduate student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Other co-authors are Lei Kang, Sean Rodrigues and Yonghao Cui from Georgia Tech, and David Schoen and Mark Brongersma from the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials at Stanford University.

What’s ahead for research in this area?

“Beyond the backward phase-matching, there are many other intriguing phenomena in nonlinear metamaterials awaiting exploration,” Cai said. “The ability to design custom, nonlinear materials, which is possible in metamaterials, is bound to open entirely new outlooks for nonlinear light-matter interactions.”

CITATION: Shoufeng Lan, Lei Kang, David T. Schoen, Sean P. Rodrigues, Yonghao Cui, Mark L. Brongersma and Wenshan Cai, “Backward phase-matching for nonlinear optical generation in negative-index materials,” (Nature Materials 2015). http://dx.doi.org/10.1038/nmat4324

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

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

Writer: John Toon

The Smart Energy Campus Program uses Georgia Tech as a living laboratory and collects data from energy utility systems all over campus. Through collaboration among multiple campus departments, insights from this project will directly impact energy planning and consumption on campus in many ways, with the hope of making Tech’s energy utility systems more efficient.

Smart Energy Campus is a joint sustainability research initiative with the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL), and Georgia Tech Facilities Management. Beginning in 2013, the idea behind this project was to see if Georgia Tech researchers could be of use to Facilities by utilizing data analysis as well as modeling and simulation tools to evaluate and optimize different energy systems on Tech’s campus. 

“It is extremely exciting to know that our team is supporting some of the most brilliant complex-system designers in the world,” said Mark Demyanek, assistant vice president of Operations and Maintenance within Facilities Management. “Using our built environment as a living laboratory is a concept that is growing in higher ed, and I believe we at Georgia Tech are leading that growth in a thoughtful and responsible way.”

Already, the Smart Energy Campus Program has created software for the Facilities Management Energy Conservation team to use when analyzing utility consumption trends and identifying potential energy efficiency projects. This project is designed to save labor hours, resources, and money by quickly identifying buildings that have unusually high energy usage, and then notifying teams to remedy the problem. 

“The Smart Energy Campus Program is trying to take advantage of new modeling tools and large amounts of data to gain deeper insight and predict what can happen in terms of energy utilization on campus,” said Scott Duncan, research engineer in the ASDL. 

The Facilities Management team consists of five people who meet with the research team several times per month. The research members on the team have included graduate students, research engineers, and postdoctoral fellows, all of whom serve as another set of eyes to interpret the data and help Facilities see problems in different ways.  

“This program is revolutionary in getting access to data,” said Duncan. “If we were doing this program for a community outside of campus, it would be difficult to get access to this much data.” 

With so much data, the project continues to grow and the mission evolves. Building a predictive model of campus energy is no easy feat.

“We keep finding things to do and smaller side projects to work on,” said Duncan. Through thermal network and electric grid modeling of campus, researchers will have greater agility and insight to see where energy is not being used efficiently, as well as analyze the effects of energy system technology upgrades.

Through the research effort, areas of improvement will be more visible and enable Facilities to channel resources toward areas of need. The ultimate vision of the research team is a “smart” system that will identify and react to problems and inefficiencies on its own, potentially without human assistance. 

“With any luck, one day soon, campuses across the world can use these tools to manage their facilities resources more efficiently,” said Demyanek.

The goal of the MOU is to engage talented researchers to work on practical, complex problems early in their academic careers and to introduce new ideas and technologies into the marketplace through jointly developed intellectual property.

President G.P. “Bud” Peterson said the collaboration with Sandia builds upon and expands Georgia Tech’s world-class research capabilities.

“This MOU furthers Georgia Tech’s research strategy, which is focused on the pursuit of transformative research, strengthening collaborative relationships and maximizing the economic and societal impact of our research,” said Peterson.

Georgia Tech and Sandia have long-standing collaborative relationships with Sandia in many areas, including computer science and advanced computer architectures, energy systems, manufacturing and materials science. Many Georgia Tech students and faculty spend time at Sandia, while Sandia counts many Georgia Tech graduates among its staff members.

The MOU will provide opportunities for students and faculty to experience research work at a national lab; enable joint recruiting of top graduate students, postdoctoral fellows and faculty; increase transfer of technology from Sandia and the university to the private and federal sectors; and build collaborations that address nationally significant problems.

Future opportunities for joint faculty appointments and for research sabbaticals are expected to further deepen the collaboration.

“It is exciting to see the long-term collaboration between Georgia Tech and Sandia move to an even higher level,” said Jill Hruby, vice president for Energy, Nonproliferation & High-Consequence Security at Sandia.  “I’m confident the common culture and research interests at our institutions combined with the focus that comes from this MOU, will produce innovative solutions and high quality research.”

The list is based on data from the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.

Georgia Tech ranked No. 25 with 78 patents. Other Georgia universities on the list are: Emory ranked No. 58 with 35 patents and UGA ranked No. 73 with 30 patents.

The top 15 universities:

1. The University of California System
2. Massachusetts Institute of Technology
3. Tsinghua University (China)
4. Stanford University
5. University of Texas
6. California Institute of Technology
7. Wisconsin Alumni Research Foundation
8. Johns Hopkins University
9. Columbia University
10. University of Michigan
11. National Tsing Hua University (Taiwan)
12. Korea Institute of Science Technology
13. University of South Florida
14. University of Pennsylvania
15. The Institute of Microelectronics of Chinese Academy of Science

“Knowing that we hit our overall goal well before the end of the Campaign timetable is exciting,” said John F. Brock III, Tech alumnus and Campaign co-chair. “It is an impressive accomplishment for Georgia Tech.” 

The Campaign is the largest in the Institute’s history. It is twice the size of the previous campaign, which was twice the size of its predecessor. 

“We are very grateful to the Brocks for their tireless energy and commitment in leading the public phase of Campaign Georgia Tech,” said President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. “Reaching the $1.5 billion goal early is a testimony not only to their leadership, but to the ongoing engagement and loyalty of the entire Georgia Tech community. Together, we are pressing forward to accomplish all of our major Campaign goals so that the entire campus may celebrate the success.”

As the Campaign continues, generous donations continue to roll in. The Ray C. Anderson Foundation, named for the alumnus devoted to the idea of sustainability in manufacturing, made a commitment to the Scheller College of Business for $5 million in expendable funds over the next decade, resulting in the naming of Scheller’s Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business. Established in 2013 with seed funding from the Ray C. Anderson Foundation and overseen by Beril Toktay and Howard Connell, the center was originally known as the Center for Business Strategies for Sustainability.

“Ray Anderson championed the business case for sustainability,” said Peterson. “His life’s work to pioneer sustainability in global manufacturing is an inspiration for generations to come. We are honored to continue his legacy through this Center.” 

Since its founding, the Center has been active in launching new research and developing coursework in business sustainability for students at all levels — undergraduates, MBAs, Ph.D. students, and executives. To support its mission, it continues to build relationships with an extensive network of businesses, other academic institutions, non-governmental organizations, industry groups, and sustain- ability experts.

Under the leadership of Maryam Alavi, dean and Stephen P. Zelnak Jr. Chair in the Scheller College, the new commitment will ensure and expand the Center’s ability to serve as an unparalleled resource as well as a bridge connecting students to research faculty, entrepreneurs, and executives. 

Another major goal was hit in May when Mike Anderson, president and CEO of both the Southern Company Charitable Foundation and Georgia Power Foundation, announced a
$5 million gift to establish the Dean’s Chair in the College of Engineering. In announcing the gift, Anderson recognized that Georgia Power and Georgia Tech have been linked for more than 125 years. 

“I’m pleased that the most recent commitment from the Southern Company Foundation is directed to what is arguably the largest, most diverse, and finest College of Engineering in the nation, if not the world,” Anderson said.

Gary S. May, dean of the College of Engineering, will be the inaugural holder of the Southern Company Dean’s Chair. 

“I cannot thank our friends at Southern Company enough,” May said. “I am honored to be the first dean to hold the Southern Company Dean’s Chair and very much value the partnership we have with Southern Company.”

The gift is structured to provide discretionary funds for the dean to use to continue building on the priorities of the College, which presently include faculty recruitment and retention, graduate student support, student and faculty diversity efforts, and enhancing the student experience on campus.

“Southern Company has created a vital, lasting legacy that provides essential resources for recruiting, retaining, and rewarding student and academic leaders,” May said. “This gift is truly an investment in the future of the College.”

Southern Company has a long history of offering support for Georgia Tech, including funding for Georgia Power Professors, research support for the Carbon-Neutral Energy Solutions Lab and the Strategic Energy Institute, and funds for student scholarships.

Campaign Georgia Tech will continue unabated until Dec. 31 at 11:59 p.m. To learn more, visit www.development.gatech.edu.

"I could not be more honored to receive this recognition from President Obama,” said May. “Mentoring engineering students and broadening participation among underrepresented groups has been a pillar of my career, and it is truly gratifying for my contributions to be acknowledged. I want to thank the White House and all of the students who have enriched my life in so many ways."

May created the Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering/Science (SURE) program, for which he was granted more than $2.7 million from the National Science Foundation (NSF). Through SURE, he annually hosted minority students to do research at Georgia Tech in the hopes that they would pursue a graduate degree. More than 73 percent of SURE participants enrolled in graduate school. May was also the creator and director of the Facilitating Academic Careers in Engineering and Science (FACES) program, for which he was granted over $10 million from NSF to increase the number of African-American Ph.D. recipients produced by Georgia Tech.

The mentors received their awards during a White House ceremony. May is pictured with John Holdren, Assistant to the President for Science and Technology, and Director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy; and France A. Córdova, Director of the National Science Foundation.

The Presidential Award for Excellence in Science, Mathematics, and Engineering Mentoring is awarded by the White House to individuals and organizations to recognize the crucial role that mentoring plays in the academic and personal development of students studying science and engineering—particularly those who belong to groups that are underrepresented in these fields. By offering their expertise and encouragement, mentors help prepare the next generation of scientists and engineers while ensuring that tomorrow’s innovators represent a diverse pool of science, technology, engineering, and mathematics talent throughout the United States.

Picture credit: National Science Foundation

The fire department is working to do just that thanks to a summer internship program sponsored by Georgia Tech and Oracle.

The city agency is one of four groups participating in this year’s Data Science for Social Good (DSSG), where 14 undergraduate and graduate students show non-profits and government agencies how data can tackle social and societal problems.

Other projects include maintaining and improving Atlanta’s urban forest, increasing efficiency for a popular hotline system, and working with Georgia Tech’s WiFi data to understand mobility patterns.

“It’s important to get students involved in real-world projects,” said Christopher LeDantec, co-director of the program and an assistant professor of digital media in the School of Literature, Media and Communication in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. “We are building out sustainable learning opportunities that allow students and Georgia Tech to have a wider impact in the community. “

The four students working with Atlanta Fire Rescue shadowed inspectors to learn not only how they work, but also how they create and use data. The students identified hundreds of additional commercial properties at high risk for a fire that should be inspected with greater frequency, said Matt Hinds-Aldrich, a management analyst with Atlanta Fire Rescue working with the student team.

The program is “helping us make more informed and data-driven decisions on how best to allocate our limited resources as we balance protecting residents, visitors and commerce in our community all while remaining fiscally responsible,” Hinds-Aldrich said.

While many public agencies and non-profits collect data, staff may be overwhelmed by the volume or may lack the time and capabilities to interpret the information, said Bistra Dilkina, co-director of the DSSG program and an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering in the College of Computing.

The program shows groups how data can work to their advantage, while exposing students to different career paths, Dilkina said.

“Nonprofits and conservationists need data scientists, too,” she said.

Georgia Tech received more than a dozen project proposals, but could only staff four. More than 100 students applied for the 10-week paid internship and 14 were selected.

Richard Huckaby, a rising third-year student in computer engineering, joined because he wanted to learn new skills and help people.

He’s part of the team working with the United Way of Greater Atlanta on their 211-hotline system, which is a searchable database of city services. Students will suggest ways to improve and reconstruct the existing call menu to better organize incoming calls and reduce average wait time.

“There’s more to data science than commercialization or helping large companies,” he said.

To conduct their work, students pulled data from multiple sources and had to go through several steps before it was ready for analysis.

The urban forest team working with the City of Atlanta and Trees Atlanta relied on tax parcels, thermal maps, city inventories, floodplain data and other sources.

“Games and apps are fun, but we’re setting up a system the city and Trees Atlanta can build on in the future,” said Caroline Foster, who will start Georgia Tech’s masters program in Human-Computer Interaction next month.

Students from all four teams will present their findings and recommendations during a public demonstration scheduled to begin at 6:30 p.m. Thursday at Ponce City Market. 

The Coulter program, which partners with the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory, provides annual awards to research teams that develop products with great commercial potential and meet a well-defined health care need. Each research team pairs scientists or engineers with physicians. This year’s amount also includes $100,000 contributed by the Atlanta Clinical and Translational Science Institute.

“We were very happy with the number of good projects we saw during this year’s funding round,” said Rachael Hagan, who serves as program director for the Coulter Translational Partnership Program. More than 50 applications requesting funding were received this year.

“In June, we vetted each application for its potential to achieve commercial success with the help of professional health care consultants in marketing, regulatory, reimbursement and intellectual property to determine the likelihood of receiving commercial follow-on funding for these health care innovations. Projects that have been selected for funding will continue to work with these business experts to commercially de-risk their technologies to ensure successfully exiting the universities.”

The project awardees this year were:

AnemoCheck: a simple, disposable, handheld biochemical device that is inexpensive, accurate and provides a quantitative evaluation of anemia in less than two minutes (principal investigators: Wilbur Lam and Erika Tyburski).

AngioCloud: cloud-based software that assists interventional neurologists with the selection and deployment of flow diverters for the treatment of unruptured brain aneurysms (principal investigators: Frank Tong and Alessandro Veneziani).

Cardiovascular MR Imaging: method of uploading, displaying, and automatically analyzing cardiovascular magnetic resonance function, viability and perfusion studies (principal investigators: Ernest Garcia, John Oshinski, Gerald Pohost and Anthony Yezzi).

InvisiCool: gel to alleviate heat-related pain while not otherwise affecting the effectiveness of laser treatments (principal investigators: Jeff Dover, Andrei Fedorov and Craig Green).

KIDS: a low-volume, low-error continuous renal replacement therapy (CRRT) device for pediatric patients. There are currently no FDA-approved CRRT devices for patients who weigh less than 20 kilograms, and the KIDS technology is being developed to meet this unmet need (principal investigators: Shiva Arjunon and Matt Paden).

Levit Catheter:  a drug delivery catheter for localized delivery of therapeutic-seeded hydrogels to the pericardial space (principal investigators: Andres Garcia and Rebecca Levit).

MitraPlug: a transcatheter implant that seeks to “plug” the fluid path, which is seen in patients with mitral regurgitation (principal investigators: Murali Padala and Eric Sarin).

Nanocomposite Scintillators: an imaging replacement for current, expensive crystals (principal investigators: Brooke Beckert, Eric Elder and Jason Nadler).

IC3D: an imaging silicon chip for Chronic Total Occlusion (CTO) procedures with improved visualization for physicians (principal investigators: Levent Degertekin and Habib Samady).

These newly funded academic projects were chosen by a committee composed of Emory doctors, Georgia Tech biomedical engineers and technology transfer representatives from each school. The other half of the selection committee included industry experts, venture capital specialists, serial entrepreneurs and angel investors.

“This seed funding is similar to venture capital funding, except there are no strings attached,” said Hagan. “Our committee picks projects based on a higher probability of receiving  commercial follow-on investment in hopes our best clinical research moves out of our universities to actual patient care.”

“It is tremendously exciting to reinvigorate the Coulter Translational Program with an investment of over $1.5 million per year,” said Ajit Yoganathan, Regents’ Professor and associate chair for translational research in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. “The excitement and need for the program was obvious based on the number of initial applications. It demonstrates there is a pipeline of translational projects that has the potential for commercialization at Georgia Tech and Emory. The projects selected for funding cut across various areas of medicine including pediatrics. Funding pediatric technologies is critical, since kids are an underserved population.”

 In 2001, the Wallace H. Coulter Foundation made a $25 million grant to the Georgia Tech-Emory biomedical engineering program. In recognition of this grant, the combined department is known as the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. The department combines Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering with Emory’s School of Medicine. The grant also contains a $10 million endowment to provide ongoing funding specifically for translational research. Translational research is part of a continuum in which research findings are moved from a researcher’s laboratory to a patient’s bedside and community. Each year, co-investigators – composed of engineering faculty from Georgia Tech and medical staff and faculty from Emory – apply for commercialization funding that may lead to improvements in patient care.

“Since our inception, our collaborative biomedical engineering department has leveraged academic, industry and donor support to create some of the best physician and engineering teams in the world,” said Ravi Bellamkonda, chair of the Coulter Department. “Our entrepreneurial spirit and culture combined with the world-class facilities at Georgia Tech and Emory result in a unique environment that fosters innovation.  We are fortunate to be able to provide funding to accelerate the development of these promising biomedical technologies so they can reach patients faster and be successfully translated from the laboratory to clinical use.”

The Coulter Department is the Coulter Foundation’s flagship academic institution. The department’s graduate program is ranked number two by U.S. News & World Report. There are an additional 14 universities with Translational Research Partnership Programs supported by the foundation that include distinguished biomedical research institutions such as Johns Hopkins, Duke, Columbia, and Stanford universities.

In response to these issues, researchers from the Georgia Institute of Technology examined options for the power industry’s future. The report released Monday will “help states define their preferred approach for complying with proposed carbon pollution regulations,” said Marilyn Brown, the project’s lead investigator and the Brook Byers Professor of Sustainable Systems in the School of Public Policy.

The report, “Low-Carbon Electricity Pathways for the U.S. and the South,” examines two key issues: how states can reduce carbon pollution in the most cost-effective way and how different options impact household electricity bills.

“To minimize costs, the South needs to reduce its coal consumption more rapidly, continue to expand its gas-fired power plants, but temper this growth with aggressive policies to increase energy efficiency and renewable energy,” Brown said.

The project took a turn when last year, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency proposed the first ever carbon pollution standards for existing power plants (known as the Clean Power Plan). Since states have considerable latitude to define their preferred response, they are vigorously debating the pros and cons of different options.

Using state-of-the-art modeling, Georgia Tech identified least-cost clean power pathways that would lower household electricity bills and reduce carbon pollution. This combination may not seem intuitive to some, but it is good news for states across the South and the nation.

“This work provides the type of analytic basis that is needed to inform policymaking and will guide the future of the power industry for decades,” said Tim Lieuwen, director of the Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Tech. "Georgia Tech plays an important role as honest broker in national policy discussions, and we will continue to support decision makers through these types of analyses." 

The Intel Diversity Scholars Program will recruit and retain underrepresented minority students to STEM (science, technology, engineering and mathematics) majors and prepare them for graduate school. The effort is anticipated to benefit about 1,000 students over five years through mentoring, scholarships and professional development workshops.

Earlier this year, Intel announced a new goal: to achieve full representation of underrepresented minorities and women by the year 2020 in its U.S. workforce, along with a $300 million Diversity in Technology Initiative to help build a workforce pipeline.

“Filling the tech industry pipeline with diverse students is critical to increasing the number of diverse engineers and computer scientists in the field,” said Rosalind Hudnell, vice president of human resources and chief diversity officer at Intel. “The goal of this program is to inspire and support more women and underrepresented minorities to earn technical degrees so we can hire them down the road – we want to foster those future tech innovators.”  

Georgia Tech is a leading producer of women and minority STEM graduates and graduates nearly 10 percent of all African-American Ph.D. engineers in the nation.

“It is a national imperative that the U.S. continue to enhance the engagement of students of all backgrounds in STEM fields to create a more robust economy,” said Gary May, dean and Southern Company Chair in the College of Engineering at Georgia Tech. “The higher education and private sectors must combine forces to achieve the impact that is necessary. As a national leader in producing outstanding underrepresented engineering graduates, Georgia Tech is pleased to partner with Intel in this transformative initiative.”

The gift will expand several Georgia Tech initiatives already underway, including:

• Summer Engineering Institute. The three-week Summer Engineering Institute hosts rising 11^th- and 12^th-graders from around the country. Students learn basic engineering and computer science techniques and gain hands-on experience through working in teams to solve real-world engineering problems.
• RISE. Retaining Inspirational Scholars in Technology and Engineering (RISE) provides financial support to talented underrepresented minority and non-traditional students. The Intel Diversity Scholars program would provide scholarships, with priority going to those whose majors align with Intel’s interests: electrical engineering, computer science and computer engineering.
• Peer-2-Peer Mentoring. This program provides specialized guidance and support to undergraduate students majoring in STEM, while also helping them adjust to the climate and culture at Georgia Tech. Mentors and mentees develop leadership, communication and networking skills.
• SURE. Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering (SURE) is a 10-week research program to attract qualified minority students from across the country into graduate school in the fields of engineering and science. In addition to conducting research, participants receive mentoring from faculty and graduate students and participate in professional development and technical seminars.
• FOCUS. This program invites college juniors and seniors from around the country to attend a three-day event designed to raise awareness of graduate education among underrepresented students. Participants learn about financial resources, visit research laboratories, network with other scholars and receive help with the graduate school application process.

The Intel and Georgia Tech program was announced in conjunction with the first-ever White House Demo Day, which celebrates the important role entrepreneurship plays in America's economy. Unlike a private-sector Demo Day, where entrepreneurs and startups pitch their ideas to funders, the new event invites innovators from around the country to "demo" their individual stories in Washington, D.C.  

“Deadlines will be here soon, and we can help you find out which fellowships may be a good fit and provide feedback and support on your applications,” said Kathryn Meehan, prestigious fellowships advisor. “Applications usually require several weeks of preparation, so we encourage students to make appointments early.”

Meehan can provide additional information, timelines, and deadlines for students interested in a number of awards, including the following:

For Sophomores and Juniors

For rising sophomores and juniors with either an interest in research or a commitment to public service, these scholarships provide significant funding and enrichment opportunities:

• Goldwater Scholarship: For sophomores and juniors with research experience who are studying science, technology, engineering, or math. Tech nominates four students each year for this national competition.
• Truman Scholarship: For juniors with public service experience and plans for a career in public service.
• Udall Scholarship: For sophomores and juniors who work with the environment, have a high GPA and plan for careers in an environmental area.
• Astronaut Scholarship: For sophomores and juniors with research experience who are studying science, technology, engineering, or math. Tech nominates two students each year for this national competition. (Despite its name, it is not limited to aspiring astronauts.)

For Seniors, Master’s Students, and Recent Graduates

The campus deadline for preliminary applications for the following nationally competitive scholarships is August 31. Students should work with the Fellowships Office to prepare for this deadline.

• Rhodes Scholarship
• Marshall Scholarship
• Churchill Scholarship
• Gates Cambridge Scholarship
• Mitchell Scholarship

Also for Seniors and Graduate Students

• Fulbright Awards: Open to rising seniors and graduate students, offering one-year awards for research, graduate study or an English teaching assistantship in one of more than 140 countries.

• National Science Foundation Graduate Research Fellowships: Open to seniors, first-year graduate students and first-semester second-year graduate students in science, technology, engineering and math who are U.S. citizens. This three-year award is for those planning a research Ph.D. at a U.S. university. Deadline is in November. 

Postdocs and Postgraduate Opportunities

• Fulbright Postdoctoral Research Fellowships: Preference is for candidates who have received a doctorate within three years of the application deadline or who will receive a doctorate before the grant term begins. Eight awards are available for studies at seven research institutions in Israel. 

• National Academies Christine Mirzayan Science and Technology Policy Graduate Fellowships: Participants spend 12 weeks at the National Academies in Washington, D.C., learning about science and technology policy and the role that scientists and engineers play in advising the nation. Deadline is September 9.

• AAAS Science and Technology Policy Fellowships: For recently graduated postdocs, mid-career professionals, faculty on sabbatical, or retired faculty. Must have a completed Ph.D. or master’s degree with three years of professional experience and U.S. citizenship. Deadline: November 1.
• Presidential Management Fellowship Program: Open to master’s degree and doctoral students who will complete their degree during the coming year. International students are eligible to apply. Deadline is in November.
• Marshall Sherfield Postdoctoral Fellowship: One or two years of postdoctoral research at any U.K. university or institute. Though no fellowships will be offered for 2016, it is not too early to start preparing for next year. The 2017 deadline is October 10, 2016.

The BOR approved the establishment of a professional master’s degree program in manufacturing leadership, as well as one in sustainable electrical energy. The manufacturing leadership program is designed for those who hold a bachelor’s degree in science or engineering, have at least one year of working experience, and seek advancement to leadership positions in manufacturing. The sustainable electrical energy program is designed for working engineers in the electrical energy and power industry and will be cohort based.

Faculty 

The Board also approved the establishment of two new faculty chairs: the William H. Harrison Chair in the School of Architecture, and the Garry Betty/V Foundation Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Cancer Nanotechnology in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering. Scott Marble was approved to hold the Harrison Chair, and Ravindra Kane to hold the Betty Chair.

In addition to these two appointments, the following faculty appointments were also approved at the August 12 meeting:

• Vivek Ghosal, Mary S. and Richard B. Inman Jr. Professorship in Economics
• Stanislav Emelianov, Joseph M. Pettit Chair and GRA Eminent Scholar in Electrical and Computer Engineering 
• Ayanna Howard, Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering 

Facilities

As Tech looks toward the renovation of the Van Leer Building, the Board approved the appointment of BLDGS Inc., Atlanta, as the design firm for the Interdisciplinary Design Commons project. The project received a $3.2 million gift from Texas Instruments in April, and will include a new maker space and outdoor plaza for students of all majors and levels of study. 

In addition, the Board voted to allow for Campus Services to lease space to the west of campus on Joseph E. Lowery Boulevard. The space will provide service and storage facilities for trade shops, vehicle parking, and vehicle maintenance, and will allow for existing space on 14th Street to instead be used for the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute and Boeing Research Center.  

Benefits and Retirement

The BOR approved health care plans and premiums for 2016. All premiums will see a slight increase, though not as large as increases in recent years. More information on plans and premiums is available online at www.c.gatech.edu/benefits2016.

Changes were also made for University System of Georgia (USG) retirees over the age of 65. Medicare-eligible retirees age 65 and over and Medicare-eligible dependents age 65 and older will enroll in their supplemental health care coverage and receive the USG health care benefit in a new way in 2016. Medicare Part A and B will provide primary coverage the same as today. Supplemental coverage will be provided through the Aon Retiree Health Exchange, and USG will deposit money into a Health Reimbursement Account (HRA) for retirees and/or dependents to use toward premiums and other eligible out-of-pocket health care expenses.

The BOR approved the USG HRA funding of $2,736 per year or $228 per month per 65 and older Medicare-eligible retiree and any 65 and older Medicare-eligible covered dependent(s). In order to receive the USG HRA funding, the retiree and/or dependent must be enrolled in coverage through the USG plan in 2015 and must purchase coverage through the Aon Retiree Health Exchange in 2016.

To learn more, visit www.c.gatech.edu/usgretiree, or attend an informational meeting on Friday, August 21, at 10 a.m. in the Student Center Ballroom. 

Georgia Tech’s #7 ranking places the Institute within the top 5 percent of global institutions in the field of engineering. Georgia Tech’s computer science program ranked 22nd globally.

Chemistry ranked 28th in the world and mathematics came in 38th. Georgia Tech’s overall science programs were ranked in the top 50 in the world, at 46. Georgia Tech’s business and economics program placed within the top 75 worldwide. Both social sciences and physics ranked within the top 50 percent of all universities evaluated.

Georgia Tech has ranked within the top 10 of ARWU’s global engineering programs since 2007. 

In describing the Institute, the ARWU says, “As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech has more than 100 centers focused on interdisciplinary research that consistently contribute vital research and innovation to American government, industry, and business.”

Complete information on the rankings and their methodology can be found on the Shanghai Jiao Tong website.

Two years ago, Georgia Tech became the first American institution to become a member of Shenzhen Virtual University Park.  Similar to the Georgia Tech/Tech Square model back home in Atlanta, the Shenzhen Virtual University Park emphasizes university-industry partnerships. A single facility houses educational institutions, startups, and established companies.

We moved to Shenzhen after years of offering masters degrees in Shanghai. That program was very successful; its “Coulter Fellows” graduates are already doing amazing things in industry and academia. With the Coulter Foundation support, we were able to educate many who could not otherwise afford quality education. Moving to Shenzhen involved risks but continues to offer enormous opportunities. We began by offering a Master of Science in Electrical and Computer Engineering.  We are proud that the program was the first Chinese Ministry of Education-approved program in Shenzhen offered by a U.S. university.  Current students in that program hail from mainland China, the U.S., Taiwan, France, India, and Indonesia. Our programs in China are under the extraordinary leadership of Prof. G. Tong Zhou. Without her energy and vision none of our activities would be possible.

The challenge in China is: you do not walk, you must run all the time. Even though we are just beginning to settle into our new role in Shenzhen, we are already talking about bringing the effort to the next level. We are speaking to partners in Tianjin University – a well-established, technology-oriented institution in China – about co-locating our activities and increasing collaboration in brand new facilities in Shenzhen under the auspices of the Shenzhen Education Bureau. With that possibility in mind, we met for over three hours with leadership of the Shenzhen Education Bureau who would be the sponsors of the endeavor.

We also toured four sites where the facilities are being offered as possible “homes.” It is difficult to describe what we saw. They ranged from multibillion dollar science and industrial parks – brand new, self-contained cities, still being built; to facilities that were once a resort largely used for government officials (lakes and all) and very close to what is called “University City” that houses Shenzhen campuses of Chinese institutions like Tsinghua University of Beijing; to a self-contained living, leisure resort with everything from 12 golf courses to and international school for children – I have never seen anything quite like it before. 

Now we head for Shanghai, very familiar stomping grounds for Georgia Tech. I hope to tell you more about our trip from our meetings and events there.

- Rafael L. Bras

Photo above (from left to right): Ning Chen (PhD ECE 2006); Shelton Chan (MS IL 2003), Asia Pacific, managing director of development; Marta Garcia, associate vice president for development; Ziling Huo, vice president of Mindray; Sue Van (Hon. PhD - Georgia Tech); Rafael L. Bras, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs; Patricia Chew, vice president of human resources, Walmart China; John Zhong (MS EE '88), chief executive officer of Amlogic; Professor Tong Zhou; Professor Yves Berthelot; and Professor George Riley (PhD 2001). 

The expansion, sources said, will triple local manufacturing capacity and involve the addition of a new building.

Suniva, a Georgia Tech spinoff founded by Ajeet Rohatgi, makes high-efficiency crystalline silicon solar cells and modules. Suniva’s cells can convert about 20 percent of the sun’s energy into electricity, meaning fewer cells are needed to produce the same energy output. Conventional crystalline silicon solar cells average 15.5 percent to 16.5 percent efficiency.

The United States is the second-largest solar power market in the world, with California, alone, being the sixth largest.

Read more about the local impact here.

The session, moderated by Dr. Paul Joseph - External User Program Coordinator and Biomedical Consulting Specialist at GT-IEN,  featured five speakers from the joint Georgia Tech – Emory University Bioengineering program presenting their most recent pioneering research in the area of nanotechnology applications in clinical chemistry,

• Pradnya Samant, representing Professor Mark Prausnitz - School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, presented her work titled, “Microneedle Patches for point-of-Care Diagnostics”
• Dr. Jian Xu, representing Professor Shuming Nie - Emory University, discussed his research titled, “Nanotechnology for Image-Guided Diagnostics and Surgery”
• Professor A. Fatih Sarioglu - School of Electrical & Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, talked about his work, “Label-Free Capture of Circulating Tumor Cell-clusters from Patient Blood Samples Using a Microfluidic Chip”
• Professor Susan Thomas – Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, presented her research work titled, “Lymph Node Targeted Nanomedicine”
• Professor Gabe Kwong - School of Biomedical Engineering at GT and Emory, discussed his work on “Engineering Synthetic Biomarkers”

The AACC welcomed thousands of medical professionals and healthcare leaders to the 2015 AACC Annual Meeting & Clinical Lab Expo, and a total of 17,500 participants attended this year’s event. The meeting showcased revolutionary advancements in clinical testing research and technology that improves the ability of healthcare providers to diagnose patients quickly and accurately and ensure patients get timely and effective medical treatment. Dedicated to achieving better health through laboratory medicine, the AACC brings together more than 50,000 clinical laboratory professionals, physicians, research scientists, and business leaders from around the world focused on clinical chemistry, molecular diagnostics, mass spectrometry, translational medicine, lab management, and other areas of progressive laboratory science. Since 1948, the AACC has worked to advance the interdisciplinary interests in the field, providing programs that advance scientific collaboration, knowledge, expertise, and innovation.

“For almost two decades Georgia Tech has ranked in the top 10 among public research universities. While we are well known for excellence in engineering and other STEM fields, word is also getting out about our other outstanding programs, such as our undergraduate business program, along with our focus on innovation,” said Georgia Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. 

Georgia Tech’s College of Engineering maintained fifth place for undergraduate engineering programs at institutions that award doctoral degrees. The college also continued with solid rankings in its engineering programs, with all of its programs ranked in the top 10 of their disciplines and in the top five among public institutions.

Georgia Tech's Scheller College of Business ranked 29th among best undergraduate business programs. The college continued its fifth place ranking in Quantitative Analysis while its Management Information Systems program ranked No. 7.

U.S. News & World Report introduced a number of new categories this year. Georgia Tech ranked 13th in the Most Innovative Schools category and 30th in Best Colleges for Veterans.

“These rankings reaffirm our vision to ‘define the technological university of the 21st century.’ It is gratifying to get the recognition of our continuing excellence in all areas of engineering and to see that recognition expanding to many other areas like business,” said Georgia Tech Provost Rafael L. Bras. “It is indeed one of the most innovative schools in the nation, and we will not rest until all our programs are the very best in the world.” 

GEORGIA TECH BY THE NUMBERS

National Ranks

#7 ­­– Public Universities

#5 – Undergraduate Engineering Programs

#29 – Undergraduate Business Programs

Specialty Ranks - Engineering

#1 – Industrial Engineering

#2 – Aerospace Engineering

#2 – Mechanical Engineering

#3 – Biomedical Engineering

#3 – Civil Engineering

#4 – Electrical Engineering

#6 – Chemical Engineering

#6 – Computer Engineering

#6 - Environmental Engineering

#7 – Materials Science and Engineering

Specialty Ranks – Business

#5 – Quantitative Analysis

#7 – Management Information Systems

#12 – Production/Operations Management

#12 – Supply Chain Management/Logistics

Luckily, departments across campus have organized a variety of resources to help students be Career Fair ready.

Before the Career Fair:

1. Dig up your resume from spring semester and add your summer activities. Did you complete an internship, do research, or hold a leadership position? Be sure your resume is up-to-date and then bring it to the Center for Career Discovery and Development’s Fall Resume Blitz. Just in time for the Career Fair, the Resume Blitz will be held Sept. 9, 10, and 11 in the Bill Moore Student Success Center from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. Stop by with a paper copy of your resume and get advice from many of the same employers that are recruiting on campus this fall. 
2. First impressions matter at career fairs. That’s why Tech’s Campus Closet lends professional attire to students for career-related events. Students must wear business professional attire to the fall Career Fair, but if you don’t have a suit, don’t let that hinder your job search. You can easily borrow a variety of professional attire from Campus Closet by registering at www.gtcampuscloset.com.
3. The Student Alumni Association (SAA) leverages alumni resources to assist students with their job searches. The SAA Get Ready for the Real World (GRRW) committee is dedicated to preparing students for life after Tech. An upcoming webinar hosted by SAA, Be Career Fair Ready, will take place Sept. 8 from 6 to 7 p.m. Register to attend the webinar here. If you aren’t able to attend this event, then check out these recorded GRRW events.
4. Lastly, download the Georgia Tech Career Fair App from the Apple Store or Google Play Store to have the most updated information about company locations, floor plan, event details, and announcements before and during the event.

After the Career Fair:

Aside from the usual follow-ups such as applying online and sending thank you notes to recruiters, here are a few more things you can to do to keep your job search alive after the fall Career Fair.

1. Although the fall Career Fair is the largest of the year, there are plenty of other career fairs around campus this fall. Some of these smaller career fairs are major-specific, which makes it easier to find employers in your field. Check here for a complete list of career fairs this semester.
2. Company information sessions are another way to get one-on-one time with recruiters. If career fairs seem overwhelming, then information sessions are a great place to start your job search. Check www.career.gatech.edu throughout the semester to see if new information sessions have been added. The current schedule can be viewed here.

For more information about the Georgia Tech Fall Career Fair, visit www.career.gatech.edu/careerfair.

Program Description: The Georgia Tech IEN is an Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) comprised of faculty and students interested in using the most advanced fabrication and characterization tools, and cleanroom infrastructure, to facilitate research in micro- and nano-scale materials, devices, and systems. Applications of this research span all disciplines in science and engineering with particular emphasis on biomedicine, electronics, optoelectronics and photonics, and energy applications. As there can be a learning curve associated with initial proof-of-concept development and testing using cleanroom tools, this seed grant program was developed to expedite the initiation of new graduate students and new research projects into productive activity. Successful proposals to this program will identify a new, currently-unfunded research idea that requires cleanroom access to generate preliminary data necessary to pursue other funding avenues.

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.
It is the responsibility of the project PI and student to determine their ability to make use of the awarded time during the grant period. Extensions requested once the project has begun will not be granted.

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 is required 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 (including year of graduate work), 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. Rating of proposals will be done by a review committee of Georgia Tech faculty, with final selection of awardees by IEN.

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

The following gifts and commitments are responsible for pushing these six units past their Campaign goals.

Scheller College of Business

• $175 million goal
• Finish line donors: Raena and Joseph Evans, a 1971 industrial management alumnus

The Evans’ estate provision will establish endowments providing undergraduate scholarships and graduate fellowships in the Scheller College. 

“The inspiration for this commitment comes from seeing what an impact the Dean’s Scholarship Program has had on the College,” said Evans. “The high level of talent being brought in because of this program has been energizing. We have truly become competitive for the very best students.”

College of Engineering

• $480 million goal
• Finish line donors: Mary and John Brock

See the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering section for information on the Brock gift.

School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering

• $45 million goal
• Finish line donors: Mary and John Brock, who holds bachelor’s (1970) and master’s (1971) degrees in chemical engineering

The Brocks’ commitment established the John F. Brock III School Chair in Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, the final remaining school in the College of Engineering to have an endowed school chair. In addition to the Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering goal, the Brocks’ commitment also pushed the College of Engineering past its overall $480 million goal.

“This is a special opportunity that means so much to me,” said Brock, who is serving as Campaign co-chair along with his wife, Mary. “To be able to make this commitment to the School that nurtured my love of engineering, equipped me with the tools I needed to succeed, and provided opportunities I never would have dreamed of — it truly is an honor.”

School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

• $165 million goal
• Finish line donor: Steve Chaddick, who holds bachelor’s (1974) and master’s (1982) degrees in electrical engineering

Chaddick’s estate provision will establish an endowment fund providing unrestricted support for the School, ensuring greater resources for future advancements on important initiatives that may otherwise be out of reach.

“It was gratifying to be able to help punch through that goal,” said Chaddick. “ECE made me who I am, in large measure. I wouldn’t have had the opportunities, the skills, and the knowledge to do the things I’ve done in my career had I not been in that place — as an undergraduate and a graduate student.”

Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

• $25 million goal
• Finish line donors: Helen and Roger Krone, a 1978 aerospace engineering alumnus

The Krones’ estate provision will establish a faculty endowment fund that will help the school chair attract and retain the very best faculty in the field.

“The four years in Aerospace Engineering helped me to realize my dream,” said Krone. “It is our hope that this gift will help other students realize their dreams.”

School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

• $45 million goal
• Finish line donor: Howard Tellepsen Jr., a 1966 civil engineering alumnus

Tellepsen’s estate provision will establish a permanent endowment that will provide unrestricted support to the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, allowing the chair to take advantage of emerging opportunities or to further long-term strategic priorities.

“My entire experience of Georgia Tech has been so positive,” said Tellepsen. “I am truly grateful for the chance to serve Georgia Tech and especially to help the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering to reach even greater success.”

A new service gives those who aren’t full-time Web developers an easy way to create or maintain a website that shares information about themselves or their work. 

Professional Web Presence (PWP) lets those without coding and Web development experience create a website with a Georgia Tech theme with just a few clicks. 

“We looked at the Web as it exists on campus and were seeing a lot of sites that were outdated, visually unappealing, and vulnerable to hacks,” said Eric Sembrat, Web manager in the College of Engineering who helped get the PWP system up and running. Sembrat and others in the campus Web development community from the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and College of Sciences took it upon themselves last year to explore solutions in response to requests from faculty and staff in their own colleges. 

PWP issues Wordpress-based sites and comes with pre-set packages, themes, and plug-ins all designed with Georgia Tech users in mind. Site administrators can include additional Georgia Tech users on their site and give them different privileges for editing and updating content. Websites or individual page privileges can also be password-protected for those groups who may want to limit who can view certain information. 

The system is ideal for those who need a simple site for their work, such as a faculty member. But it is not meant for those wanting or needing more customized options, or a more in-depth website of the scale that a school or college may need.

“We wanted to make something for those who work with the Web as a very small part of their jobs, and have it be as simple as possible so it’s basically self-service,” Sembrat said.

Many of Tech’s websites are built on the open source Drupal platform, which is designed to be user-friendly but still has a learning curve. In the Wordpress system, those who have used a blogging platform or done formatting in Microsoft systems should find it fairly intuitive. A mobile-friendly view even lets users make changes from a tablet or phone.  

The PWP administrative team handles security updates and patches, and all the themes are built with accessibility in mind. So far, 260 users are working on more than 180 sites created with the system. Some examples of sites built with the system include the InVenture Challenge (inventurechallenge.gatech.edu), Stanley Neural Coding Laboratory 
(stanley.gatech.edu), and blog of Gary May, Southern Company Chair and Dean of the College of Engineering (deanmay.gatech.edu). 

This fall, PWP is taking its training on the road and scheduling information sessions in schools and colleges around campus. The group also hosts a monthly drop-in session at Highland Bakery in the Bradley Building where users can stop by with their laptop to ask questions or learn more. The next drop-in session takes place Wednesday, Sept. 16, from 1:30 to 4 p.m. in the Bradley Conference Room. 

To learn more or get started creating a website, visit pwp.gatech.edu.

Combined with connection technology that operates through structures in the cooling passages, the new technologies could allow development of denser and more powerful integrated electronic systems that would no longer require heat sinks or cooling fans on top of the integrated circuits. Working with popular 28-nanometer FPGA devices made by Altera Corp., the researchers have demonstrated a monolithically-cooled chip that can operate at temperatures more than 60 percent below those of similar air-cooled chips.

In addition to more processing power, the lower temperatures can mean longer device life and less current leakage. The cooling comes from simple de-ionized water flowing through microfluidic passages that replace the massive air-cooled heat sinks normally placed on the backs of chips.

“We believe we have eliminated one of the major barriers to building high-performance systems that are more compact and energy efficient,” said Muhannad Bakir, an associate professor and ON Semiconductor Junior Professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “We have eliminated the heat sink atop the silicon die by moving liquid cooling just a few hundred microns away from the transistors. We believe that reliably integrating microfluidic cooling directly on the silicon will be a disruptive technology for a new generation of electronics.”

Supported by the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA), the research is believed to be the first example of liquid cooling directly on an operating high-performance CMOS chip. Details of the research were presented on September 28 at the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference in San Jose, Calif.

Liquid cooling has been used to address the heat challenges facing computing systems whose power needs have been increasing. However, existing liquid cooling technology removes heat using cold plates externally attached to fully packaged silicon chips – adding thermal resistance and reducing the heat-rejection efficiency.

To make their liquid cooling system, Bakir and graduate student Thomas Sarvey removed the heat sink and heat-spreading materials from the backs of stock Altera FPGA chips. They then etched cooling passages into the silicon, incorporating silicon cylinders approximately 100 microns in diameter to improve heat transmission into the liquid. A silicon layer was then placed over the flow passages, and ports were attached for the connection of water tubes.

In multiple tests – including a demonstration for DARPA officials in Arlington, Virginia – a liquid-cooled FPGA was operated using a custom processor architecture provided by Altera. With a water inlet temperature of approximately 20 degrees Celsius and an inlet flow rate of 147 milliliters per minute, the liquid-cooled FPGA operated at a temperature of less than 24 degrees Celsius, compared to an air-cooled device that operated at 60 degrees Celsius.

Sudhakar Yalamanchili, a professor in the Georgia Tech School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and one of the research group’s collaborators, joined the team for the DARPA demonstration to discuss electrical-thermal co-design.

“We have created a real electronic platform to evaluate the benefits of liquid cooling versus air cooling,” said Bakir. “This may open the door to stacking multiple chips, potentially multiple FPGA chips or FPGA chips with other chips that are high in power consumption. We are seeing a significant reduction in the temperature of these liquid-cooled chips.”

The research team chose FPGAs for their test because they provide a platform to test different circuit designs, and because FPGAs are common in many market segments, including defense. However, the same technology could also be used to cool CPUs, GPUs and other devices such as power amplifiers, Bakir said.

In addition to improving overall cooling, the system could reduce hotspots in circuits by applying cooling much closer to the power source. Eliminating the heat sink could allow more compact packaging of electronic devices – but only if electrical connection issues are also addressed.

In a separate research project, Bakir’s group has demonstrated the fabrication of copper vias that would run through the silicon columns that are part of the cooling structure fabricated on the FPGAs. Graduate student Hanju Oh, co-advised with College of Engineering Dean Gary May, fabricated high aspect ratio copper vias through the silicon columns, reducing the capacitance of the connections that would carry signals between chips in an array.

“The moment you start thinking about stacking the chips, you need to have copper vias to connect them,” Bakir said. “By bringing system components closer together, we can reduce interconnect length and that will lead to improvements in bandwidth density and reductions in energy use.”

The cooling research was funded by DARPA’s Microsystems Technology Office, through the ICECOOL program. At Georgia Tech, DARPA funds two major cooling and system integration projects, one called STAECool directed by George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering Professor Yogendra Joshi, and the other, called SuperCool, that is directed by Bakir. In collaboration with the STAECool effort, Bakir and Joshi, along with Professors Andrei Fedorov and Suresh Sitaraman from the School of Mechanical Engineering, developed a thermal design vehicle to emulate challenging power maps to test the benefits of microfluidic cooling.

“We have reached an important milestone that we hope to use as a stepping stone to reach other objectives,” said Bakir. “There is still a big challenge ahead, but we expect this to allow much denser, higher-performance computing systems that will dissipate less power. We can think of many interesting applications for these cooling technologies.”

Altera’s principal investigator for the project, Arifur Rahman, said: “Future high-performance semiconductor electronics will be increasingly dominated by thermal budget and ability to remove heat. The embedded microfluidic channels provide an intriguing option to remove heat from future microelectronics systems.”

This research was supported by DARPA-MTO; the contents of the news release are the responsibility of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official position of DARPA.

CITATION: Thomas E. Sarvey, et al., “Embedded Cooling Technologies for Densely Integrated Electronic Systems,” (IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference, 2015).

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In a rare interview in 2013, Henry said Georgia Tech has always been “Nerd University,” and a major player in Atlanta’s science and science fiction heritage – a unique environment that allows Dragon Con to succeed.

What makes Dragon Con so interesting to those of us from Georgia Tech? Discover Georgia Tech’s stories of nerdy inspiration at the nation’s premier science fiction, fantasy, and pop culture fan convention.

The Spectacular Collision of Georgia Tech and Dragon Con

Read more in Forbes Online

“The current ecosystem seems to be based largely on meritocracy. But, the fact is that people from underrepresented backgrounds almost never have access to the networks, resources, and support necessary to create homerun success,” said Hank Williams, founder and CEO of Platform. “That’s why creation of indispensable social capital for and within our community has always been core to our mission at Platform and why we created the Platform Summit three years ago.”

During the Platform Summit, five innovation topics were presented, and each topic featured four to six distinguished speakers, including Ayanna Howard, professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. The topics included:

• Go Ahead, Fix Education…I Dare You
• Living Happy, Healthy, and Maybe Forever
• The Problem with the Economy Is It Doesn’t Need You Anymore
• The New Capital Is Social
• WOW! What’s Next…Now!

On the first day of the Platform Summit, Georgia Tech hosted a reception for more than 400 attendees in the Student Center Ballroom, where several Georgia Tech students showcased their inventions that were InVenture Prize finalists or winners. These inventions included Better Walk, Haplit, Shortweb, and WISH for Wash.

“It was an honor to co-host this year’s Platform Summit with Morehouse College and host the Platform Summit Reception. Our partnership with Morehouse College has spanned decades, and we all share a passion for technology and ‘what is next,’” said Georgia Tech’s Institute Diversity Vice President Archie Ervin.

Since 1969, Morehouse College students have had the option to study engineering through a cooperative agreement with Georgia Tech. This partnership has helped Georgia Tech become the No. 1 school for awarding bachelor’s degrees in engineering to all minority students and doctoral degrees in engineering to African-American students.

For more information on the Platform Summit, visit www.platform.org.

The latest of these initiatives is the recent acquisition of the final cast of Robert Berks’ monument to Albert Einstein.  The other installations of Berks’ sculptures of Einstein are located at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. and the Israel Academy of Sciences and Humanities in Jerusalem.  On Friday, October 23, as thousands of alumni and students converge on campus to celebrate homecoming, we will officially dedicate the final cast of Berk’s Einstein sculpture right here on campus.

Atlanta resident and Berks collector, Jim Barksdale, first brought the idea to Georgia Tech after learning the final cast was available. Jim was particularly passionate about Einstein’s legacy as a human rights advocate, and thought Atlanta and Georgia Tech represented the perfect place for the cast to call its new home.  We couldn’t agree more, and Jim’s generous cornerstone gift was instrumental in bringing Einstein to Georgia Tech.

Einstein was so much more than one of the 20^th century’s most brilliant and original physicists, he was also a tireless and highly visible advocate for peace and social justice.  Georgia Tech and Atlanta embody science and civil and human rights like no other institution and city in the world.  It is fitting that we will be the home of this unique piece of public art.  The monument consists of a larger-than-life bronze of the famous scientist holding a book with the famous equations that brought together energy and matter and space and time – effectively redefining physics, and reminding us that we are just one small expression of an extraordinary universe whose beginning and end we still seek to understand.

The design of a sitting Einstein and the science allegory is common to all three existing monuments. But our Einstein is unique in that he gazes down to a black granite platform with the exact replica of the night sky over Atlanta on December 10, 1948 –  the day of the signing of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

Engraved on the granite steps are two quotes representing Einstein the scientist and the  humanist.  Most fittingly, one of the quotes is pulled from Article I of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and reads, “All human beings are born free and equal in dignity and rights." 

The excitement surrounding the Einstein project has been, in my experience, unprecedented. What began as an idea, quickly transitioned into a highly successful campaign for resources, and the support continues. Honestly, I have never seen a project generate this much support in such a small amount of time. Many friends and alumni followed Jim Barksdale’s example and donated generously to the effort, sufficient to cover all costs and hopefully, as it continues, to fund annual programs around the subject matter that the monument evokes.

The Class of 1966 recently voted to make the project the subject of their 50^th year class gift. Their initial goal was reached the day they made the decision. Fittingly they have decided to raise the goal, which will make all our aspirations for the impact of the Einstein piece on the campus and community come true.

Unquestionably, the Einstein Monument at Georgia Tech will become a fitting icon for what we represent: science, technology and the betterment of the human condition.

Since it started in 2002, the program has hosted more than 130 collegiate teams. The program has also grown internationally with expansion into Europe, China, Latin America, and the Middle East. 

The Solar Decathlon team is currently looking for students with the following backgrounds or interests: 

• Electrical engineering, computer engineering, computer science: Renewable energy, Internet of Things, and the ability to build systems
• Mechanical engineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering: Hands-on work, designing sustainable energy systems, with preferred experience in thermodynamics/heat transfer
• Materials science and engineering, chemical and biomolecular engineering: Phase Change Material or other new materials for use in residential homes 
• Civil and environmental engineering, architecture: Sustainable building analysis and construction, hands-on work 
• Business: Marketing, commercialization, fundraising, operations management, human capital management, and controlling

Students can learn more about the VIP program and Solar Decathlon project by attending an upcoming information session:

• Friday, Nov. 6, 5 – 6:30 p.m. in Klaus 1447
• Monday, Nov. 9, 7 – 8 p.m. in Klaus 2447

Throughout the semester the team will meet Tuesdays from 9:30 to 11 a.m. Students interested in joining the Solar Decathlon Team can apply here or contact Alexandre Poux alex.poux@gatech.edu.

The Georgia Tech team is organized through the Vertically Integrated Projects (VIP) Program. This program joins undergraduate teams with faculty and graduate student advisors to create large-scale design and discovery projects.

Participation in VIP can be registered for academic credit, so the program is able to encourage students to participate for more than one semester. Students gain more exposure to multidisciplinary design projects and professional skills than they would in regular courses. For a list of all the current project teams, visit www.vip.gatech.edu/teams.