Georgia Institute of Technology has named Michael “Mike” Gazarik as the new director of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and a Georgia Tech senior vice president, effective February 16. 

A nationally respected aerospace and research leader, Gazarik has led large, complex research organizations across government, industry, and academia, shaping strategy, driving growth, and building institutions that deliver mission-critical innovation. With more than three decades of experience, his career reflects a deep ability to align technology with national priorities and guide organizations through periods of change and opportunity. 

A Georgia Tech alumnus, Gazarik currently serves as faculty director of the Engineering Management Program at the University of Colorado Boulder and as a part‑time staff member at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory. He previously held senior leadership roles at NASA, including director of engineering at NASA Langley Research Center and inaugural associate administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). In industry, he spent eight years as vice president of engineering at Ball Aerospace, leading its strategic growth from an elite science contractor into a strategic national security asset that doubled in size.

“Mike Gazarik brings a rare combination of technical depth, executive leadership, and deep government experience,” said Tim Lieuwen, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for Research. “He knows large research enterprises operate within the realities of policy and budget and has a proven ability to align technology with mission priorities while earning trust across stakeholders. We are excited to welcome Mike back to Georgia Tech to lead GTRI at a pivotal moment for research and innovation.”

GTRI employs more than 3,000 employees, conducting nearly $1 billion in annual research in areas such as autonomous systems, cybersecurity, electromagnetics, electronic warfare, modeling and simulation, sensors, systems engineering, and threat systems. GTRI’s renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, and policy to address challenges facing national security, industry, and society.

For nearly a century, GTRI has partnered with government and industry to deliver solutions to the most mission-critical challenges facing our nation,” said Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera. “We are proud to welcome Mike Gazarik to lead a crown jewel of our research enterprise and a crucial component of our nation’s science and technology fabric. His experience and leadership will strengthen GTRI’s ability to deliver on its mission and help make our nation safer, healthier, and more competitive.”

Gazarik is widely recognized for leading complex research enterprises with a focus on stability, strategic alignment, and mission impact. At NASA, he helped shape the agency’s science and technology enterprise during periods of fiscal constraint and technical risk, maintaining balance across broad mission areas and forming STMD to consolidate technology development. At Ball Aerospace, he guided significant growth and aligned strategy with evolving national security and civil space needs. His academic work has focused on preparing engineering leaders for mission-driven organizations — experience that aligns closely with GTRI’s role as a trusted partner to government and industry.

He earned a B.S. in electrical engineering from the University of Pittsburgh and an M.S. and Ph.D. in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. Gazarik is a fellow of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), a former chair of AIAA’s Corporate Strategic Committee, and was elected to the AIAA Board of Trustees in 2025. His honors include NASA’s Outstanding Leadership Medal, the Silver Snoopy Award, the 2023 AIAA Rocky Mountain Section Educator of the Year, and recognition as Engineering Manager of the Year by the American Society of Engineering Management.

“GTRI has a remarkable legacy of delivering solutions that matter for the nation,” said Gazarik. “I’m honored to return to Georgia Tech and lead an organization that combines deep technical expertise with a mission-driven culture. My focus will be on listening, building on GTRI’s strengths, and ensuring we continue to advance research that makes a real difference for our partners and society.”

As director, Gazarik will lead GTRI’s multidisciplinary research enterprise, advancing its mission to deliver high‑impact science and technology solutions in support of national security, space systems, and critical societal needs.

People with autism seeking employment may soon have access to a new AI-based job-coaching tool thanks to a six-figure grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

Jennifer Kim and Mark Riedl recently received a $500,000 NSF grant to develop large language models (LLMs) that provide strength-based job coaching for autistic job seekers. 

The two Georgia Tech researchers work with Heather Dicks, a career development advisor in Georgia Tech’s EXCEL program, and other nonprofit organizations to provide job-seeking resources to autistic people.

Dicks said the average job search for people with autism can take three to six months in a good economy. It can take up to 18 months in a bad one. However, the new LLMs from Georgia Tech could help to reduce stress and fast-track these job seekers into employment.

Kim is an assistant professor who specializes in human-computer interaction technology that benefits neurodivergent people. Riedl is a professor and an expert in the development of artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning technologies.

The team’s goal is to identify job-search pain points and understand how job coaches create better employment prospects for their autistic clients.

“Large-language models have an opportunity to support this kind of work if we can have more data about each different individual strength,” Kim said.

“We want to know what worked for them in specific settings at work, what didn’t work, and what kind of accommodations can better help them. That includes how they should prepare for interviews, how they can better represent their skills, how they can address accommodations they need, and how to write a cover letter. It’s a broad range.”

Dicks has advocated for neurodivergent people and helped them find employment for 20 years. She worked at the Center for the Visually Impaired in Atlanta before coming to Georgia Tech in 2017.

She said most nonprofits that support neurodivergent people offer career development programs and many contract job coaches, but limited coach availability often leads to long waitlists. However, LLMs could fill this availability gap to address the immediate needs of job seekers who may not have access to a job coach.

“These organizations often run at a slow pace, and there’s high turnover,” Dicks said. “An AI tool could get the job seeker quicker support. Maybe they don’t even need to wait on the government system.

“If they’re on a waitlist, it can help the user put together a resume and practice general interview questions. When the job coach is ready to work with them, they’re able to hit the ground running.”

Nailing the Interview

Dicks said the job interview is one of the biggest challenges for people with autism.

“They have trouble picking up on visual and nonverbal cues — the tone of the interview, figuring out the nuances that a question is hinting at,” she said. “They’re not giving the warm and fuzzy vibes that allow them to connect on a personal level.”

That’s why Kim wants the models to reflect a strength-based coaching approach. Strength-based coaching is particularly effective for individuals with autism. Many possess traits that employers value. These include:

• Close attention to detail
• Strong technical proficiency
• Unique problem-solving perspectives

“The issue is that they don’t know how these strengths can be applied in the workplace,” Kim said. “Once they understand this, they can communicate with employers about their strengths and the accommodations employers should provide to the job seeker so they can successfully apply their skills at work.”

Handling Rejection

Still, Kim understands that candidates will need to handle rejection to make it through the search process. She envisions LLMs that help them refocus their energy and regain their confidence after being turned down.

“When you get a lot of rejection emails, it’s easy to feel you’re not good enough,” she said. “Being constantly reminded about your strengths and their prior successes can get them through the stressful job-seeking process.”

Dicks said the models should also be able to provide feedback so that candidates don’t repeat mistakes.

“It can tell them what would’ve been a better answer or a better way to say it,” Dicks said. “It can also encourage them with reminders that you get 100 noes before you get a yes.”

You’re Hired, Now What?

Dicks said the role of a job coach doesn’t end the moment a client is hired. Government-contracted job coaches may work with their clients for up to 90 days after they start a new job to support their transition.

However, she said, sometimes that isn’t enough. Many companies have probationary periods exceeding three months. Autistic individuals may struggle with on-the-job training or communicating what accommodations they need from their new employer. 

These are just a few gaps an AI tool can fill for these individuals after they’re hired.

“I could see these models evolving to being supportive at those critical junctures of the probationary period being over or the one-year job review or the annual evaluation that everyone dreads,” she said.

Dicks has an average caseload of 15 students, whom she assists in landing jobs and internships through the EXCEL program.

EXCEL provides a mentorship program for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities from the time they set foot on campus through graduation and beyond.

For more information and to apply, visit EXCEL’s website.

The Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) and the College of Design (CoD) awarded a seed grant to Christian Coles, lecturer in the School of Architecture; Moinak Choudhury, Ph.D., lecturer in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC); and Janelle Wright, environmental justice programs manager, at the West Atlanta Watershed Alliance (WAWA). Coles will serve as the principal investigator with Choudhury and Wright serving as the co-principal investigators.

Their project, “Designing Futures: Afrofuturist Co-Creation with AI for Community-Led Facade Design” will be realized during a 16-week design studio (ARCH 4016) class that will take place during fall 2026 and serve senior undergraduate architecture students. Participants from diverse majors will join through the Building for Equity and Sustainability Vertically Integrated Project (VIP) team, in partnership with the Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE). Pre-planning tasks will occur spring semester in preparation for the fall studio class.

The studio class will collaborate with Moinak Choudhury and students in LMC 3403, who bring expertise in technical communication, responsible AI use, and community-based learning to co-create engagement materials and public-facing documentation that strengthen the project’s interdisciplinary links between design, sustainability, and communication. 

The final result of the project encompasses students who will design and install a modular, solar-powered façade panel system for the outdoor classroom on WAWA’s campus. This project extends work done by a previous Georgia Tech VIP team.

The panels will serve multiple functions: participatory community engagement, artistic expression, and climate regulation. This project will advance the classroom toward its intended vision as an Afrofuturist learning space with technological nods to the Keneda Building on Georgia Tech’s campus. With the help of this seed grant, interdisciplinary team members will delve into design, engineering, computing, communication, and community partnership.

Soft, wearable system offers continuous wireless monitoring of newborns’ health.

A new, soft, all-in-one, wearable system has been designed for continuous wireless monitoring of neonatal health in low-resource settings. Developed by Georgia Tech researchers using advanced packaging technologies, the system features a chest-mounted patch and a forehead-mounted pulse oximeter that transmits real-time data to a smartphone app. 

The wearable device measures and records important clinical parameters such as heart rate, respiration rate, temperature, electrocardiograms, and blood oxygen saturation. Speedy detection of abnormal readings in resource-challenged neonatal units could significantly reduce newborn mortality rates.

The device’s pilot study, conducted at Tikur Anbessa Specialized Hospital (TASH) in Addis Ababa, in collaboration with Abebaw Fekadu, Ph.D., from the Centre for Innovative Drug Development and Therapeutic Trials for Africa (CDT Africa Inc.), and neonatologist Asrat Demtse, M.D., from the TASH department of pediatrics, demonstrated a significant improvement over current vital sign monitoring and recording methods by providing continuous oversight using less medical equipment while also reducing handwritten paper tracking. Vital signs are a group of the most crucial medical data that indicate the status of the body's life-sustaining functions. The pairing of this wearable system with a smartphone app automated the monitoring process and delivered a superior level of neonatal care compared to the current processes at Ethiopia’s best hospital. 

Medical staff and parents also observed a reduced need to wake their babies when using the wearable monitoring system. In addition, after participating in the study, 84% of Ethiopian parents said they would use the device at home.

“Professor Hong Yeo and I connected immediately after he gave a brief research talk about a new, wearable cardiac monitor for children,” said Rudy Gleason. “I asked him if we could co-develop a wearable device for newborn babies in Ethiopia that measured not one, but a variety of vital signs. We both thought it was a great idea.”

Yeo and Gleason are faculty members in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech. And both are affiliated with Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology, which seeks to improve global health.

In 2009, Gleason and his wife were in the process of adopting a baby from Ethiopia named Kennedy. Before they could bring her home, however, she died — the result, Gleason said, of a seemingly preventable combination of malnutrition and diarrhea.

“This loss redirected my academic teaching, research, and service activities at Georgia Tech,” said Gleason. “Since then, I’ve spent most of my career focused on developing resource-appropriate biomedical devices to reduce maternal and child mortality.”

“When we started this latest study, Ethiopian parents were reluctant to participate. But once we recruited a few mothers in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU), everyone in the NICU community wanted their child to participate in our wearable health monitoring system.”

According to Yeo, “We designed the wearable patch as a safe, clinical-grade solution with minimal skin irritation. Its key design advantage lies in the use of nanomembranes, which allows the device to be soft and highly conformal to the baby's skin. Wearing the device helps to ensure critical events are not missed since the built-in automation acts as a force multiplier, freeing clinical staff to focus more on complex decision-making rather than manual data acquisition.”

“Rudy has a deep love for the people of Ethiopia. I feel fortunate to have met him as we embark on this project aimed at helping sick babies in the country. Without his support, I could not envision bringing this technology to Ethiopia,” said Yeo.

During the past decade, child mortality rates have decreased in Ethiopia, but newborn deaths have remained mostly unchanged. Both Yeo and Gleason feel their new wearable neonatal device could significantly lower mortality rates for newborns in Ethiopia as they advance this research. 

 

Citation: Zhou, L., Joseph, M., Lee, Y.J. et al. Soft, all-in-one, nanomembrane wearable system for advancing neonatal health monitoring in Ethiopia. npj Digit. Med. 8, 575 (2025).

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41746-025-01974-8

Funding: Gates Foundation (INV-006189) and the National Institutes of Health (R01HD100635). This work was also supported by the Imlay Foundation—Innovation Fund.