Robert Butera

Robert Butera serves Georgia Tech as the Chief Research Operations Officer (CROO). He facilitates the Institute’s research activities and oversees Research Integrity Assurance, Research Administration, Research Operations/Infrastructure, and Research Development as part of the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research. Butera is a Professor jointly appointed in the Wallace H. Coulter Dept. of Biomedical Engineering and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

Prior to taking on the role of CROO, Butera served as the Vice President for Research Development and Operations (2019-2023). Prior to joining the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research, Butera served as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Engineering (2016-2019). He previously directed the Neural Engineering Center (2014-2016), served as founding Faculty Director of the Grand Challenges Living Learning Community (2012-2015), and Director of the Interdisciplinary Bioengineering Graduate Program (2005-2008).   During the 2008-2009 academic year he served as a Jefferson Science Fellow at the US Department of State in Washington, DC.

Butera received his BEE degree from Georgia Tech (1991) and his MS (1994) and PhD (1996) from Rice University. Following graduate school, he conducted postdoctoral research (1996-1999) at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Bethesda, Maryland. He joined the faculty of Georgia Tech in 1999.

Butera’s research is focused on developing novel methods for peripheral and autonomic nerve modulation using electrical signaling, combining engineering and neuroscience to tackle clinically motivated problems. For much of his earlier career, he conducted research in computational approaches to problems in systems and cellular neuroscience.

Professionally, Butera has served as Vice-President for Finance (2011-2014) and Vice-President for Publications (2017-2019) for the IEEE Engineering in Medicine and Biology Society as well as on its AdCom (Board of Directors) from 2005-2010.  He also served on the Board of Directors for the Organization for Computational Neuroscience (2013-2015). Butera is a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering and the American Association for the Advancement of Science.

Contact:
rbutera@gatech.edu
404-894-2935

Executive Assistant: 
Bob Shackleford
bob.shackleford@gatech.edu