Each candidate’s bio and curriculum vitae, along with further details, will be accessible through the EVPR search site two business days ahead of each visit. Georgia Tech credentials are required to access all materials. Information is being made available in this manner to protect the confidentiality of the finalists.
Georgia Tech’s Executive Vice President for Research (EVPR) search committee has selected three finalists. Each candidate will visit campus and present a seminar sharing their broad vision for the Institute's research enterprise.
The seminars are open to all faculty, students, and staff across the campus community. Interested individuals can attend in person or register to participate via Zoom (pre-registration is required).
All seminars will take place at 11 a.m. on the following dates:
Each candidate’s bio and curriculum vitae, along with further details, will be accessible through the EVPR search site 48 hours prior to each visit. Georgia Tech credentials are required to access all materials. Information is being made available in this manner to protect the confidentiality of the finalists. Following each candidate’s visit, the campus community is invited to share their comments via a survey that will be posted on the candidate’s webpage.
The search committee is chaired by Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences. Search committee members include a mix of faculty and staff representing colleges and units across campus. Georgia Tech has retained the services of the executive search firm WittKieffer for the search.
Shelley Wunder-Smith | shelley.wunder-smith@research.gatech.edu
Director of Research Communications
Georgia Tech Energy Day provides an opportunity for key stakeholders to interact with Georgia Tech researchers who are pioneering work in this critical field. The focus areas of the event are Energy Storage, Solar Energy Conversion, and E-Fuels and Chemicals.
Matthew McDowell, Associate Professor, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Strategic Energy Institute Initiative Lead for Energy Storage
Associate Professor Matthew McDowell has been selected as the next Associate Chair for Research in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. He will step into the role on January 1, 2025.
The Associate Chair for Research is responsible for working with the Woodruff School’s faculty to develop a strategic research plan for future growth and investments in the School, as well as identifying new research opportunities, helping to foster strategic relationships with government, industry, and foundations, and synergizing research efforts with other units in the College of Engineering and across the Institute.
“I am thrilled to be chosen for this role, and I look forward to working with the faculty, students, researchers, and staff of the Woodruff School to enhance and support our world-class research program,” said McDowell.
McDowell joined Georgia Tech in the fall of 2015 as an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the Woodruff School and the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). He was named Carter N. Paden, Jr. Distinguished Chair earlier this year and serves as co-director of the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center (GTABC). Through this center, McDowell and Professor Gleb Yushin (MSE) are building community at the Institute, enhancing research and educational relationships with industry partners, and creating a new battery manufacturing facility on Georgia Tech’s campus.
“I am excited to work with Matt in advancing the research priorities and goals of the Woodruff School,” said Devesh Ranjan, Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. School Chair and professor. “Through his exceptional leadership of the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center, Matt has demonstrated a deep commitment to excellence in scholarship and to fostering partnerships that drive innovative, collaborative research across the Institute. I am confident in the positive transformation he will bring to our program in this new role.”
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Johney Green
Johney Green Jr., M.S. ME 1993, Ph.D. ME 2000, has been chosen to serve as the new laboratory director for Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL). A proud Yellow Jacket, Green received both his master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and currently serves on the Strategic Energy Institute’s (SEI) External Advisory Board. He also served on the board of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering from 2017 to 2022.
“SRNL has truly found an exceptional leader in Johney. His vision and dedication are inspiring, and I am genuinely excited to see the remarkable contributions he will make in advancing SRNL,” said Christine Conwell, SEI interim executive director. “We look forward to his continued partnership with SEI and the positive impact he will bring to the energy community in 2025 and beyond.”
The Battelle Savannah River Alliance (SRNL’s parent organization) selected Green for this role, describing him as “a dynamic leader who brings deep, wide-ranging scientific expertise to this new position.”
With an annual operating budget of about $400 million, SRNL is a multiprogram national lab leading research and development for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Offices of Environmental Management and Legacy Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons and nonproliferation programs.
Green currently serves as associate laboratory director for mechanical and thermal engineering sciences at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). In this position, he oversees a diverse portfolio of research programs including transportation, buildings, wind, water, geothermal, advanced manufacturing, concentrating solar power, and Arctic research. His leadership impacts a workforce of about 750 and involves managing a budget of more than $300 million.
At NREL, Green transformed the lab’s wind site into the innovative Flatirons Campus and transitioned the campus from a single-program wind research site to a multiprogram research campus that serves as the foundational experimental platform for the DOE’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) initiative.
"We are immensely proud to call Johney a Woodruff School alumnus. His achievements and service to Tech through advisory board engagement inspires us, and we are excited to see him step into this prestigious role at SRNL. We look forward to deepening our collaboration with him as he continues to make a powerful impact,” said Devesh Ranjan, Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. School Chair and professor in the Woodruff School.
Prior to his role at NREL, Green held several key leadership roles at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). As director of the Energy and Transportation Science Division and group leader for fuels, engines, and emissions research, he managed a broad science and technology portfolio and user facilities that made significant science and engineering advances in building technologies; sustainable industrial and manufacturing processes; fuels, engines, emissions, and transportation analysis; and vehicle systems integration. While Green was the division director, ORNL developed the Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) demonstration project, a model of innovative vehicle-to-grid integration technologies and next-generation manufacturing processes.
Early in his career, Green conducted combustion research to stabilize gasoline engine operation under extreme conditions. During the course of that research, he joined a team working with Ford Motor Co., seeking ways to simultaneously extend exhaust gas recirculation limits in diesel engines and reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions. He continued this collaboration as a visiting scientist at Ford's Scientific Research Laboratory, conducting modeling and experimental research for advanced diesel engines designed for light-duty vehicles. On assignment to the DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office, Green also served as technical coordinator for the 21st Century Truck Partnership. He also contributed to a dozen of ORNL's 150-plus top scientific discoveries.
Green was the recipient of a National GEM Consortium Master’s Fellowhip sponsored by Georgia Tech and ORNL, and he served as the National GEM Consortium chairperson from 2022-2024. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an SAE International Fellow. He has received several awards during his career and holds two U.S. patents in combustion science.
Priya Devarajan || SEI Communications Program Manager
Assistant Professor Anthony Harding
When it comes to finding solutions to climate change, there’s no shortage of technologies vying for attention, from renewable energy to electric vehicles to nuclear energy. One such contender, solar geoengineering, is favored by proponents who say it could quickly cool the planet and give the world time to fully implement efforts to limit emissions and remove carbon from the atmosphere.
But that promise comes with risks, which include potentially poorer air quality or depleted atmospheric ozone – both of which can cause serious health issues of their own.
A new Georgia Tech School of Public Policy-led study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS) suggests that while those risks deserve further consideration, solar geoengineering could save as many as 400,000 lives a year through a reduction in temperature-related deaths attributable to climate change.
“An important question is how the reduction in climate risks from solar geoengineering compares to the additional risks its use entails,” said lead author Anthony Harding of the School of Public Policy. “This study offers a first step in quantifying the risks and benefits of solar geoengineering and shows that, for the risks we considered, the potential to save lives outweighs the direct risks,"
Harding co-authored the PNAS article with Gabriel Vecchi and Wenchang Yang of Princeton University and David Keith from the University of Chicago.
The researchers studied a climate change mitigation strategy called stratospheric aerosol injection (SAI), a type of solar geoengineering that involves spraying tiny reflective particles into the upper atmosphere. Those particles would then redirect some sunlight back to space and help cool Earth.
The authors used computer models and historical data on how temperature affects death rates to see how much solar geoengineering might affect death rates, assuming a 2.5-degree Celsius increase in average temperature from pre-industrial levels and similar approaches to climate change as seen in the world currently.
They found that cooling global temperatures by 1 degree Celsius with solar geoengineering would save 400,000 lives each year, outweighing deaths caused by solar geoengineering’s direct health risks from air pollution and ozone depletion by a factor of 13. This means that the number of lives saved due to solar geoengineering-caused cooling would be 13 times the number of lives potentially lost from solar geoengineering’s known risks.
Many of those deaths would be avoided in hotter, poorer regions, the study notes. Cooler, wealthier regions could actually face increased cold-related deaths.
Solar geoengineering has generated millions of dollars in funding and a recommendation by the National Academies of Science that the federal government should provide millions more toward research and the development of a risk-risk analysis similar to what Harding’s team produced. But the tech has also drawn concern, including from the Union of Concerned Scientists. That group says there’s too much environmental, ethical, and geopolitical risk to proceed without much more research.
The authors caution that their study is an important starting point in better understanding solar geoengineering's promise and peril but is far from a comprehensive evaluation of the technology’s risks and benefits.
They say their models are based on idealized assumptions about aerosol distribution, population and income growth, and other factors. They also can’t capture all of the real-world complexities that solar geoengineering would entail. They note their study also does not address all of the potential risks of solar geoengineering, such as possible impacts on ecosystems, global politics, or the possibility governments will rely on the technology to delay politically difficult emissions cuts.
Still, the researchers say, the study suggests that for many regions, solar geoengineering could well be more effective at saving lives than emissions reductions alone and is worth keeping in the mix as the world searches for the optimal ways to cool our warming planet.
“There’s no perfect resolution to the climate crisis,” said Harding. “Solar geoengineering entails risks, but it could also alleviate real suffering, so we need to better understand how the risks compare to the benefits to inform any potential future decisions around the technology.”
The paper, “Impact of Solar Geoengineering on Temperature-Attributable Mortality,” was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences on Dec. 17. It is available at https://doi.org/10.1073/pnas.2401801121.
Michael Pearson
Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
We are pleased to invite you to our upcoming GT Manufacturing 4.0 Consortium Open Meeting and and Poster/Senior Design Fair on January 30, 2025 at the Georgia Tech Global Learning Center.
Register to join an information session with the Office of Sustainability on Sustainable Development Goals Week (March 3-7, 2025) at Georgia Tech. This annual week invites participants across campus to plan events, engagement, and communications showcasing their work in sustainable development.
Register: https://gatech.zoom.us/meeting/register/tJwrde-vrDIsE9Xt2gxZ9FtnoSnSqMNRCCQY
Created in partnership with the new Science for Georgia’s Tomorrow initiative, the College of Sciences has launched the Rising Tide Program, which will equip early career scientists with two-year fellowships that are focused on faculty mentoring and skills development to apply for competitive faculty positions.
The inaugural Rising Tide cohort is set to include seven fellows from several institutions — with research interests across nuclear physics, urban climate, resource recovery, machine learning, bioinformatics, and ecology.
Rising Tide is spearheaded by Alex Robel, an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences who serves as the Program’s inaugural director.
The Program has three primary goals. “We aim to improve our ability to recruit the most promising young scientists and mathematicians to careers at Georgia Tech, to raise the profile of Tech as an institution that develops academic careers in the sciences, and to better align the range of perspectives and lived experiences of faculty with Georgia Tech students,” Robel shares.
Robel adds that the program leverages the strong culture of mentorship in the College.
“Since I have been at Georgia Tech, I have been inspired by the many individual faculty in the College of Sciences who have achieved consistent success in mentoring students and postdocs to gratifying academic careers,” he says. “In designing the Rising Tide Program, my aim was to organize these successful faculty within a program that supports their existing efforts and complements those efforts with professional career development activities.”
The Rising Tide Program is supported by a generous gift from Nathan Meehan (PHYS 1975) and matching funds from the Office of the Provost.
Rising Tide is part of the just-launched Science for Georgia’s Tomorrow Center, which prioritizes research and teaching aligned with Georgia-specific issues — while connecting Georgia communities with that research and teaching. Robel hopes the Program will help provide a pathway to foster this type of local research at the Institute.
“Part of Rising Tide is to bring more faculty to the Institute who can contribute to research and teaching particularly relevant to communities in Georgia,” Robel explains. “We aim to improve the ability of the College to recruit scientists with professional or lived experience in the Southeast — or focused on research with particular relevance to the Southeast.”
Early career scientists at any institution can be nominated by College of Sciences faculty to participate in Rising Tide. Selected Fellows take part in the two-year program, where they are welcomed into the Georgia Tech community — then mentored virtually by College faculty and supported with ongoing opportunities to develop skills for applying to competitive faculty positions.
Robel emphasizes that, for the College and new Rising Tide Fellows, it’s a win-win.
“I am most excited to see how this first cohort of fellows interact and learn from each other,” Robel says. “I am also looking forward to seeing what new and exciting ideas and perspectives they can bring to the research and teaching mission of the College of Sciences.”
Written by Selena Langner
Contact: Jess Hunt-Ralston