Young people in Atlanta and Boston will be able to lead efforts to improve their communities through new civic technologies supported by Georgia Tech, Northeastern University, and Massachusetts Institute of Technology researchers.

With the help of a $1.25 million grant from the National Science Foundation, the three institutions seek to increase youth input into policymaking and encourage youth-led community organizing.

Youth-designed civic technologies are an effective way to engage youth with their communities, said Andrea Parker, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Interactive Computing. 

Examples of civic technologies are public data initiatives, citizen science projects, public issue reporting platforms, and digital voting platforms. Parker said the perspectives of young people are often neglected in the design of such technologies.

“We don’t know much about what community issues are important to youth because we haven’t asked them,” she said. “What is their vision for community well-being, and what do they want to address through civic technology?”

Parker is the lead principal investigator (PI) on the project that will engage youth from low socio-economic communities in Atlanta and Boston. She said the youth will decide what technologies will be created, but they could include a mobile app or a publicly accessible platform.

“We’re interested in studying how technologies can help youth become more civically engaged in their communities and build social connection, trust, and belonging amongst neighbors,” she said. 

“Youth in lower-income neighborhoods face increased threats to their mental health. Socially cohesive communities can counteract those barriers and are essential for youth well-being.”

Parker added that impoverished communities often have less social cohesion compare to wealthier areas. Higher-income neighborhoods often have more access to resources that support social cohesion and civic engagement. 

Backed by Data

Brooke Foucault Welles, co-PI, professor, and interim dean at Northeastern’s College of Media, Arts and Design, said she’s interested in seeing which issues the youths from both Atlanta and Boston will address through their design process. Studying and working with youth across these geographic settings will help the team identify how civic technology can best support youth in varied neighborhood contexts.

The project will also advance data literacy among young people as they collect and study data to support the new technologies. Welles said data-centered advocacy increases young people’s chances of being heard by elder community members.

“Empowering young people to use data when they’re making their arguments about what matters to them and to their communities is the point of this project,” she said. “It makes their arguments more compelling if they can present data to the adult members of their communities about what’s going on.”

The project’s reach could expand beyond Atlanta and Boston.

Once the technologies are designed, the researchers will package them and make them publicly available as a toolkit. 

If successful, the project could drive a movement toward more collective organizing to ensure the youth perspective gets factored into community decision-making. 

“They’re a vital part of our communities, and they’re the ones for whom our decisions have the biggest impact,” Welles said. “These are the times when they’re forming their own civic identities, so engaging them in civic life has long ripple effects. We create more active and thoughtful citizens when we engage young people with civic life.”

A new partnership between Georgia Tech’s Aware Home Research Initiative and the Georgia Tech EXCEL program is helping students with intellectual and developmental disabilities gain essential life skills—starting in the kitchen.

The EXCEL program—short for expanding career, education, and leadership opportunities—is a four-year college experience designed for students with intellectual and developmental disabilities. It leads to two certificates and focuses on academic enrichment, social growth, career development, and independent living. 

“We accept students from across the country, not just Georgia,” said Sherri Burrell, EXCEL’s mentorship coordinator. “Our goal is to prepare our students for life after college, and that includes learning how to live independently.”

Burrell joined the EXCEL team in August 2024 and quickly identified a gap in the program: students needed a hands-on space to learn about nutrition, cooking, and healthy living—skills that could not be taught effectively in a traditional classroom. That’s when she connected with Brian Jones, director of research at Georgia Tech’s Aware Home lab.

The Aware Home, a three-story, 5,040-square-foot living laboratory, is designed to mirror a real home environment where Georgia Tech researchers, faculty, and students can develop and test innovative technologies. With its fully equipped kitchen and smart home capabilities, it offers an ideal setting for EXCEL students—many of whom are tactile learners—to engage in real-world, hands-on learning.

The partnership began with current EXCEL students and their Georgia Tech mentors—traditional students who support EXCEL participants in areas like social development, wellness, and life transitions. Together, mentors and mentees learned to prepare simple, nutritious meals. “It wasn’t just beneficial for our EXCEL students,” Burrell noted. “Many of the mentors were also new to cooking. They learned new skills and knowledge right alongside their mentees.”

The collaboration expanded into the EXCEL Summer Academy, a two-week program for high school juniors and seniors interested in applying to EXCEL. During the summer sessions, prospective students visited the Aware Home to explore topics like nutrition, dining, and making healthy food choices. “Even though incoming students are on a meal plan and don’t have kitchens, it’s still important they understand how to make smart decisions about what they eat,” Burrell said.

A Legacy of Research Innovation

Beyond this Excel program educational role, the Aware Home, the first residential laboratory of its type, has a rich legacy of shaping the future of smart home technology. One of its most influential contributors is Shwetak Patel, a Georgia Tech alumnus and now a professor at the University of Washington’s Paul G. Allen School of Computer Science & Engineering. Patel’s time in the Aware Home as a Ph.D. student profoundly influenced his career and the broader field of ubiquitous computing. He described how the Aware Home lab’s impact on his research career fell into three distinct “buckets”:

1. Career Transformation

Patel credits the Aware Home with fundamentally reshaping his career path. His early exposure to real-world research problems in a home-like setting helped him discover his passion for applied computer science and human-centered innovation. “It totally informed the way I do research now,” he said.

2. Living Laboratory Innovation

The Aware Home’s immersive environment allowed Patel to explore practical challenges in home sensing and automation. His doctoral work, Infrastructure Mediated Sensing, focused on detecting water and electricity usage, human presence, and environmental context—technologies that laid the foundation for the smart home industry. This research led to the creation of startups like Zensi and Phyn, and influenced commercial products such as Belkin’s Conserve line, smart meters, and even [Google] Nest and Sense devices. Patel is also a distinguished engineer and health technologies leader at Google who guided  many of Google’s smart home technologies. “You can draw a direct line from our early work in the Aware Home to the smart home technologies we see today,” Patel explained.

3. Defining Innovation

Patel’s experience in the Aware Home helped him refine his understanding of innovation—not just as a technical achievement, but as a meaningful solution to everyday problems. “The Aware Home really informed my view on how to do innovation,” he said. “It’s about solving real-world problems in ways that matter to people.”

 

Helping People Today and in the Future

As the EXCEL program and Aware Home Lab continue to collaborate, they’re not only teaching students how to cook—they’re also contributing to a broader legacy of innovation. With future research opportunities on the horizon, this new partnership and other ongoing research projects across Georgia Tech, such as the Aware Home collaboration with the AI Caring Institute, are poised to further explore how smart environments can support independent living and improve the quality of life.

If you are a researcher, company, or start-up interested in using the Aware Home lab for research, testing, or evaluating in-home technologies, contact Brian Jones, lab director of the Aware Home, at brian.jones@gatech.edu.

Georgia Tech has posted its strongest year ever in research commercialization, breaking multiple records for invention disclosures, issued patents, and licensed technologies — clear indicators of the Institute’s expanding role in delivering research-driven innovation to the marketplace.

“Invention is only the beginning. What sets Georgia Tech apart is our ability to move our ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace, where they can make a tangible impact on human life and contribute to our economy,” said Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech. “This year’s record results show that our researchers aren’t just pushing the boundaries of knowledge — they’re creating marketable solutions with the power to improve everyday lives.”

For fiscal year 2025, Georgia Tech reported:

• More than 460 new invention disclosures — a 30% increase over the previous year and the highest ever recorded by the Institute.
  • 70 invention disclosures for the Georgia Tech Research Institute, marking a 70% increase year over year.
• A 210% increase in technologies licensed, and 140% in total licenses executed, reflecting unprecedented industry interest, with 65 licenses in total.  
• 124 U.S. patents were issued, representing a 20% increase compared to the prior year.
  • In 2024, Georgia Tech is in the top 15 public universities for U.S. utility patents filed, according to the National Academy of Inventors.

This momentum strengthens Atlanta’s position as one of the nation’s fastest-growing innovation economies. Georgia Tech plays a leading role in advancing the region’s ambition to become a top 5 tech hub by connecting world-class research with industry, supporting a thriving startup ecosystem, and fueling talent pipelines that serve emerging sectors like AI, cybersecurity, and clean energy.  

Omer Inan, a Georgia Tech researcher and faculty member, has launched multiple companies with the support of the Institute’s commercialization resources. Cardiosense is a medical AI company that leverages sensors to provide better management of cardiovascular disease. Having just achieved FDA 501(k) clearance, its latest device — CardioTag — is the first multimodal, wearable sensor that simultaneously captures three cardio signals to provide noninvasive solutions for heart health.  

"The med tech research I conduct at Georgia Tech delivers new technologies to keep patients with heart failure out of the hospital and enables them to monitor their health status at home,” said Inan. “Now, we are commercializing the technology our lab helped develop, so that this dream of improving the quality of care and life for millions of Americans with heart failure can one day become reality."

“As we look to solidify Georgia Tech’s status as a national innovation hub, we are moving research into the marketplace so it can truly make a difference in people’s lives,” said Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, vice president of Commercialization and chief commercialization officer at Georgia Tech. “We are at a pivotal moment to put Atlanta on the map as a leader in research commercialization and have an opportunity to capitalize on our $1.4 billion in research expenditures that drive meaningful inventions, IP, and industry partnerships.”  

To learn more about the licensing and commercialization process at Georgia Tech, visit licensing.research.gatech.edu.

Available for Media Interviews

Raghupathy "Siva" Sivakumar 
Vice President of Commercialization and 
Chief Commercialization Officer 
Georgia Tech

Omer Inan 
Professor and Regents’ Entrepreneur  
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech

Media Contact: 
Lauren Schiffman       
PressFriendly   
lauren@pressfriendly.com  

Angela Barajas Prendiville   
Director of Media Relations    
Georgia Institute of Technology   
aprendiville@gatech.edu  

 

When film director Tamer Shaaban, CS 11, set out to create a commercial announcing Audi’s 2026 debut in Formula 1, he turned to Unreal Engine, a computer program normally used for developing video games. It was a creative decision that’s becoming more common. According to Jason Freeman, Tech’s interim associate vice provost for the arts, new technology is causing different forms of media and entertainment to converge. The ways in which video games and films are created are more similar than a decade ago, and 10 years from now, those methods will merge even more. Whether students plan to pursue a career in animation or one in film, they will need a common set of skills and the ability to respond to fast-changing technology. And Georgia Tech wants its students to be prepared for that.

“There’s an opportunity for us to better develop the workforce as this industry is evolving, and to become thought and research leaders in this space,” says Freeman. “To do this, we need a flagship academic program, something that becomes a hub for all that activity.”

For many years now, the arts have become increasingly visible at Georgia Tech. Rafael L. Bras, Tech’s former provost and Regents’ Professor, was an early champion of integrating the arts into the fabric of campus through works of public art and through collaborations between Georgia Tech students and artists-in-residence.

“Dr. Bras helped us to understand that all GT students, regardless of their discipline of study, needed to embrace creativity to be successful in their careers, and that the arts are essential in teaching our students to flex their creative muscle,” Freeman says.

In the fall of 2026, the Institute plans to launch a bachelor’s of science degree in Arts, Entertainment, and Creative Technologies. The new curriculum, which includes collaboration with departments across campus, focuses on artistic practice, technical innovation, and entrepreneurship. Tech also plans to develop the former Randall Brothers property on Marietta Street as an innovation hub called the Creative Quarter focused on the arts, creativity, design, and technology.

“We have had this reputation for so long as being just an engineering school,” Freeman says. “But bit by bit we’re making clear to the world that the arts are a very important part of our DNA here at Tech as well.”

Here, we feature nine alumni who prove just that (link to full Alumni Magazine article) >>

Two of the featured alumni, Heather Pritchett and Wayne Wooten, are GVU alumni.

Article originally published in the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Vol. 101, No. 1, Spring 2025

Imagine walking into your doctor’s office feeling sick – and rather than flipping through pages of your medical history or running tests that take days, your doctor instantly pulls together data from your health records, genetic profile and wearable devices to help decipher what’s wrong.

This kind of rapid diagnosis is one of the big promises of artificial intelligence for use in health care. Proponents of the technology say that over the coming decades, AI has the potential to save hundreds of thousands, even millions of lives.

What’s more, a 2023 study found that if the health care industry significantly increased its use of AI, up to US$360 billion annually could be saved.

But though artificial intelligence has become nearly ubiquitous, from smartphones to chatbots to self-driving cars, its impact on health care so far has been relatively low.

A 2024 American Medical Association survey found that 66% of U.S. physicians had used AI tools in some capacity, up from 38% in 2023. But most of it was for administrative or low-risk support. And although 43% of U.S. health care organizations had added or expanded AI use in 2024, many implementations are still exploratory, particularly when it comes to medical decisions and diagnoses.

I’m a professor and researcher who studies AI and health care analytics. I’ll try to explain why AI’s growth will be gradual, and how technical limitations and ethical concerns stand in the way of AI’s widespread adoption by the medical industry.

Read the complete article written by Professor Turgay Ayer in The Conversation >>

Published July 11, 2025.

Can you tell what someone is feeling based on their facial expression?

Proponents of emotion AI — a type of artificial intelligence that analyzes facial expressions, text, voice, and other cues to infer emotions — say it can do just that.

Georgia Tech researcher Noura Howell, who received an NSF CAREER award to study emotion AI in 2024, said the technology has a number of shortfalls that can lead to inaccurate results. Like generative AI, emotion AI is also subject to bias, and its use raises ethical and privacy concerns.

Despite these shortcomings, Howell said emotion AI has quietly shaped decisions in areas like hiring, education, mental health, and public safety in recent years. 

Yet most people don’t know it exists.

Howell and Digital Media Ph.D. students Xingyu Li and Alexandra “Allie” Teixeira Riggs in the School of Literature, Media, and Communication are working to change that. They held workshops across Atlanta over the last two months, giving participants a rare opportunity to try emotion AI for themselves — and then share their impressions, ideas, and concerns.

Read the full article.

Eighty teachers from four states recently completed intensive training on how to teach artificial intelligence (AI) to middle schoolers, part of a growing initiative to make AI education more accessible and engaging for students across the country.

The AI4GA program, launched through a National Science Foundation grant and now supported by Google, continues to grow through expanded teacher training and curriculum development. It was initially led by Christina Gardner-McCune (University of Florida), Dave Touretzky (Carnegie Mellon University), and Bryan Cox (Georgia Tech). The curriculum was co-designed with educators and faculty, including Georgia Tech’s Judith Uchidiuno.

Now in its fifth teacher cohort, AI4GA is focused on upskilling educators, many of whom don’t have a background in computer science. Participants in the latest group included science, English, math, and social studies teachers from Georgia, Florida, Texas, and New York.

“We did a really good job with Georgia, so now we’re scaling up,” said Cox, Kapor Fellow in Georgia Tech’s Constellations Center for Education in Computing.

The curriculum introduced the cohort to machine learning, automated decision-making, natural language processing, and other foundational concepts in AI. They also learned about AI applications, including autonomous robots and self-driving vehicles.

Read the full story here from the College of Computing >>