Idling at a crossroads no longer, the automotive industry is embracing electrification like never before. With more electric vehicles purchased in 2022 than any year prior, consumers are beginning to follow their lead. Yet, while opportunity abounds, new challenges will require an innovative approach to ensure a sustainable and accessible electric future for all.

With historic investments from major players in the EV space, including Rivian, Kia, and Hyundai, the state of Georgia is uniquely positioned to serve as a leader in this effort. As the state's leading research institute, Georgia Tech is on the cutting edge of the movement. 

The transportation sector is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the U.S. at nearly 30%, with passenger vehicles accounting for around 80% of the sector's total output1 as of 2019. Electric vehicles are widely regarded as a budding solution to reduce emissions, but even as both demand and production continue to increase, EVs currently account for around 1% of the cars on America's roadways. 

From the supply chain to the infrastructure needed to support alternative-fuel vehicles alongside consumer hesitancy, achieving the goals set by both the public and private sectors — including the Biden Administration's target of EVs making up at least 50% of new car sales by 2030 — will not be easy. Through research and development, policy, and collaboration, Tech experts are working toward finding solutions that will serve as catalysts during this transitionary period for the environment and the way Americans drive.

Check out the full story. 

Through its interdisciplinary research, service-based learning, and innovative coursework, Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering is a leader in systems-level thinking and technological innovation at the interface of built, natural, information, and social systems. The school aims to not only define the challenges and complex problems facing humanity and the environment, but to catalyze the solutions to solve them.

This installment of the Faces of Research Q&A series is with Joe F. Bozeman III, assistant professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, the School of Public Policy, and director of the Social Equity and Environmental Engineering Lab (SEEEL).

What is your field of expertise and why did you choose it?
I research and develop equitable climate change adaptation and mitigation strategies anchored in environmental engineering practice. My current focus areas are urbanization, food-energy-water, and circularity (e.g., circular materials and the circular economy). I chose this path because I felt that I could merge my lived experiences, having come from humble beginnings, with the technical aspects of engineering and public policy to realize more equitable infrastructure and policy outcomes.  

What makes Georgia Tech research institutes unique?
Georgia Tech’s research institutes have an existing system which allows for collaboration across scientific disciplines and with real community members. This is something that I think is uniquely beneficial for folks like me. That is, for my research to have real-world impact, I need access to faculty and community collaborators who share an equity-centered mindset. 

What impact is your research having on the world?
It has been wonderful to see my research enter broader community and academic spaces through mainstream media, scientific publications, regulatory deliberation, and even art. For instance, my work on U.S. food-consumption impacts — for example, greenhouse gas emissions, land, and water impact that come from what we eat — across sociodemographic subgroups (Black, Latinx, white, and socioeconomic status) was featured in a range of media outlets including NPR, the New York Post, Popular Science, Free Speech TV, and political radio programs. Other aspects of my research have established international research priorities for cities, or urban systems, and even inform some of the music you may have heard on network TV and streaming services. My lab, the Social Equity and Environmental Engineering Lab (SEEEL), is exploring other ways to merge equity, engineering, and art in meaningful ways.     

What is the most challenging aspect of your research?
For SEEEL activities, acquiring and fairly distributing money, and time resources is the most challenging part. The concept of integrating systemic equity into existing engineering practices is new. This is exciting in many ways. However, it also presents challenges when it comes to developing standards around flexible funding access, community-based research and development, and establishing criteria to evaluate how well systemic equity is being achieved in various domains (e.g., within research labs, within governmental bodies, and for actual community members). Through these types of efforts, I hope to play a role in regaining some of the public’s trust in academia.

If you weren't a researcher, what would you be?
If I weren’t a researcher, I probably would have continued as a music sound engineer, producer, and performer. As I previously mentioned, I hope to leverage my experience in the arts to help translate some of the technical engineering findings into content that all of us can easily digest (e.g., songs, video, film, and physical art). I’d even go as far as to say that I think there is room to make the technical engineering findings, in their original form, more accessible to the broader public. This has compelled SEEEL to master the art of effective writing and presentation delivery.

What was the first thing you remember wanting to be when you were a kid?
As a kid, I first wanted to be a NBA player. Ironically, I listed becoming an engineer as a very close second. Back then, I believe I thought of engineering as a means to video game and sound design.

This news release first appeared in the Chinese Academy of Sciences newsroom, and has been tailored for Georgia Tech readers.

Mycorrhizal symbiosis — a symbiotic relationship that can exist between fungi and plant roots — helps plants expand their root surface area, giving plants greater access to nutrients and water. Although the first and foremost role of mycorrhizal symbiosis is to facilitate plant nutrition, scientists have not been clear how mycorrhizal types mediate the nutrient acquisition and interactions of coexisting trees in forests.  

To investigate this crucial relationship, Lingli Liu, a professor at the Institute of Botany of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (IBCAS) led an international, collaborative team, which included School of Biological Sciencesprofessor Lin Jiang. The team studied nutrient acquisition strategies of arbuscular mycorrhizae (AM) and ectomycorrhizal (EcM) trees in the Biodiversity–Ecosystem Functioning (BEF) experiment in a subtropical forest in China, where trees of the two mycorrhizal types were initially evenly planted in mixtures of two, four, eight, or 16 tree species.   

The researchers found that as the diversity of species increased, the net primary production (NPP) of EcM trees rapidly decreased, but the NPP of AM trees progressively increased, leading to the sheer dominance (>90%) of AM trees in the highest diversity treatment. 

The team's analyses further revealed that differences in mycorrhizal nutrient-acquisition strategies, both nutrient acquisition from soil and nutrient resorption within the plant, contribute to the competitive edge of AM trees over EcM ones.  

In addition, analysis of soil microbial communities showed that EcM-tree monocultures have a high abundance of symbiotic fungi, whereas AM-tree monocultures were dominated by saprotrophic and pathogenic fungi.  

According to the researchers, as tree richness increased, shifts in microbial communities, particularly a decrease in the relative abundance of Agaricomycetes (mainly EcM fungi), corresponded with a decrease in the NPP of EcM subcommunities, but had a relatively small impact on the NPP of AM subcommunities.  

These findings suggest that more efficient nutrient-acquisition strategies, rather than microbial-mediated negative plant-soil feedback, drive the dominance of AM trees in high-diversity ecosystems.  

This study, based on the world’s largest forest BEF experiment, provides novel data and an alternative mechanism for explaining why and how AM trees usually dominate in high-diversity subtropical forests.

These findings also have practical implications for species selection in tropical and subtropical reforestation—suggesting it is preferable to plant mixed AM trees, as they have a more efficient nutrient-acquisition strategy than EcM trees.  

This study was published as an online cover article in Sciences Advances on Jan. 19 and was funded by the Strategic Priority Research Program of CAS and the National Natural Science Foundation of China.

The $1.3 billion research enterprise at Georgia Tech is the embodiment of a commitment the advancement of technology and betterment of the human condition. Georgia Tech's research enterprise through offerings such as the Enterprise Innovation Institute, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, Commercialization, and Interdisciplinary Research Institutes, to solve the most pressing challenges in a host of sectors, including computing, engineering, design, the sciences, liberal arts, and business.

This installment of the Faces of Research Q&A series is with Chaouki T. Abdallah, Executive Vice President for Research at Georgia Tech.

What is your field of expertise and why did you choose it?
My field of expertise is Systems Theory, and my degrees are all in Electrical Engineering. I chose it because it was heavily mathematical but can also be applied across multiple fields (aerospace, chemical, mechanical, electrical, biology, etc.).

What makes Georgia Tech research institutes unique?
Our IRIs (Interdisciplinary Research Institutes) connect research across colleges but what makes them even more impactful is their intra-connectivity. Problems that are even too big for one IRI, are being solved by researchers across multiple ones. 

What impact is your research having on the world?
My own research impact has been mostly through my students. However, I did use my research in systems and network science to study and improve the complexity of college curricula, leading to 150% improvement in the four-year graduation rate and tens of millions of dollars in savings for students.

What is the most profound advice you ever received?
Pick the hill you’re willing to die on.

What is something you wished you knew as a budding researcher that everyone considering research as a career should know?
The joy of knowing something is eclipsed by the joy of explaining it to others.

What song or album best describes you?
"With a Little Help From My Friends" by The Beatles.

Akanksha Menon, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded a prestigious Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation’s (NSF) Division of Chemical, Bioengineering, Environmental and Transport Systems (CBET).

Menon directs the Water–Energy Research Lab (WERL) at Georgia Tech, which focuses on applying thermal science and functional materials to develop sustainable energy and water technologies.

"I am incredibly honored to receive an NSF CAREER award," said Menon. "I remember attending the College of Engineering panel on writing a successful NSF proposal wondering if I would be able to do this, and here I am with a CAREER award on my first try!"

Menon’s NSF CAREER project, “Nonequilibrium effects in thermochemical energy storage: linking microstructure to thermal transport,” aims to bridge our understanding of structure-property relationships in thermochemical materials across different lengths and timescales.

Currently, thermal loads (e.g., space conditioning and hot water) account for 50% of the energy consumption in buildings. To match energy demand with supply especially from renewables, a thermal battery can be used that stores and releases energy as heat. Among the different storage materials, thermochemical salt hydrates are promising as they have a higher energy density compared to phase change or sensible storage materials. However, these salt hydrates experience mechanical stress and hygrothermal instabilities that reduce their energy density as the thermal battery is cycled (charge-discharge).

Menon aims to provide a mechanistic understanding of the key factors governing thermochemical phase transitions and their impact on coupled heat-and-mass transport, which will eventually enable the development of reversible thermal batteries with long-term stability to decarbonize buildings.

Menon's research will be complemented by two education and outreach efforts. She will provide interdisciplinary and experiential learning opportunities for traditionally underrepresented students in Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) from the high school to graduate levels, as well as curriculum development for teachers to increase knowledge about energy storage broadly.

Menon’s award of $607,000 over five years will provide support for both her research and education and outreach efforts.

"The funding allows me to bring on a Ph.D. student to grow our efforts in decarbonizing heat, and it also supports my educational and outreach goals – all of which is what motivated me to become a faculty member," she said.

The CAREER Program offers the NSF’s most prestigious awards in support of early-career faculty who have the potential to serve as academic role models in research and education and to lead advances in the mission of their department or organization.

Menon joined Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 2021. Prior, she was a Rosenfeld Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she worked on hybrid membrane-thermal desalination processes using solar energy. She also contributed to the development of thermal energy storage materials for high-temperature industrial process heat. Menon completed her Ph.D. at Georgia Tech, where she developed semiconducting polymers and new device architectures for thermoelectric energy harvesting. She holds a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M University at Qatar and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech.