Arthi Rao is a research scientist at the Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development at Georgia Tech. She has had a consistent focus on Health and Place research throughout her career. She has an interdisciplinary educational and professional background in Urban Planning, Epidemiology and Geographic Information Systems (GIS) from Georgia Tech. Her research interests focus on social determinants of health, healthcare access, healthy communities, and spatial methods. She uses methods including spatial clustering, data mining/classification techniques and hierarchical modeling in her research. She has integrated these methods to create decision-support tools for academic and industrial applications.

She regularly collaborates with researchers at The Morehouse School of Medicine, Georgia Tech, and the American Planning Association as a subject matter expert on healthy communities’ research and geospatial methods. She has published in journals on the topics of Health Impact Assessment (HIA), sustainability, walkability analysis, regional planning, and therapeutic landscapes. She also teaches courses titled “Public Health and the Built Environment” and “Public Health Analytics” at Georgia Tech.

Specialization Area: Health and Environment

Paige Clayton is an Assistant Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning at Georgia Tech. She is also affiliated with the CREATE Economic Development Research Center at UNC Kenan-Flagler Business School’s Kenan Institute of Private Enterprise. Dr. Clayton joined Georgia Tech in 2020 after completing her Ph.D. in Public Policy at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a concentration on entrepreneurship and innovation, regional economic development, and science and technology policy. At the University of North Carolina, Dr. Clayton received the Nancy W. Stegman Fellowship and the Dissertation Completion Fellowship. During her PhD, she held visiting positions at SKEMA Business School (Sophia Antipolis, France) and at UCLA’s Department of Geography. 

Dr. Clayton’s research focuses on regional patterns of economic development and how entrepreneurship and innovation influence local economies. Key themes include entrepreneurial support organizations, social network analysis, entrepreneurial ecosystems, university technology transfer, research & development, and institutions, and the connections between these factors which help support local entrepreneurship and innovation. Her research has been published in Research Policy, Industrial & Corporate Change, Academy of Management Perspectives, the Journal of Technology Transfer, Industrial Labor & Relations Review, International Regional Science Review, and the Oxford Handbook on Entrepreneurship and Collaboration, among others. 

Paige is an alumna of Georgia Tech’s School of Public Policy and a native Atlantan.

The Strategic Energy Institute and EPICenter are excited to welcome Andrea Pinabell as a 2023 External Fellow. Andrea will be working primarily with our EPICenter Director, Joe Hagerman, on the expansion of publicly-facing energy related knowledge and information, including hydrogen (with GTRI) and direct air capture of carbon dioxide (with the College of Chemical Engineering). This is primarily intended to expand the reach and opportunities across the HBCU and technical college network system (in close coordination with the EVPR’s office).

In addition, Andrea will work to explore the development and implementation of an urban design center focused on net zero low-income housing first within the English Ave corridor on Atlanta’s westside which is in early discussions with the College of Design, the award-winning GT solar decathlon team, and westside neighborhood partners including the Westside Future Fund and ANDP. All external fellows will help SEI and EPICenter bridge industry and academia in both a strategic and tactical manner to help GT have outsized impact. 

Andrea is well known on the Georgia Tech campus and has been involved in multiple activities across campus. A few highlights include:

• A member of the Strategic Energy Institute’s External Advisory Board for three years
• A member of the Ray C Anderson Center for Sustainable Business Advisory Board for four years
• Led the Swarm outreach and learnings from the Kendeda Building construction and launch highlighting the innovation coming from the construction sub partners.
• Participated in the founding and launch of the RCE Greater Atlanta
• Partner in Drawdown GA research and subsequent launch of Drawdown GA Business Compact
• Frequent speaker across campus on sustainability-related topics