Sarah Roney studies oysters — and coastline restoration, wave energy, erosion, blue crabs, and predator chemical cues. A Ph.D. candidate in Georgia Tech’s Ocean Science and Engineering program and a Brook Byers Graduate Fellow, Roney has spent the past four years studying how strategically placing oyster reefs along Georgia’s coast could yield significant benefits.

Georgia’s coastal ecology is being degraded by several threats. Erosion caused by a combination of traffic from water vessels, sea-level rise, increased storm intensity and frequency, and property development, are negatively impacting both coastal living systems and the state’s economy. Tourism, agriculture, recreation, fisheries, property development, and trade (through the Port of Savannah) all rely on healthy coastlines.

Roney’s interest in coastal ecology and oysters drew her to focus her doctoral thesis on this problem. She divided her project into two parts. The first involved understanding how much oyster reefs reduce the erosion caused by wave energy (ship wake) from water traffic. The second part demonstrated a method for making young oysters resistant to predation — increasing their survival rates and that of the reef colonies they call home. Roney focused her research on two major waterways in the Savannah area. The Intracoastal Waterway and the South Channel of the Savannah River, which leads to the Port of Savannah, are both subject to heavy ship and boat traffic. According to Roney’s collaborators at Georgia Tech, 65% of the wave energy lashing the South Channel’s shores is generated by cargo vessels navigating to and from the Port of Savannah. Because traffic along the Intracoastal Waterway is subject to very few speed restrictions, there is plenty of erosive wave energy there also, even though the vessels are almost exclusively small.

Roney chose one site in each waterway to place her reef structures. Mesh bags of oyster shells were seeded with young oysters by personnel working at a University of Georgia Shellfish Research Lab. Roney created her reef structures by placing these bags in a row 15 to 20 meters long and a meter wide. Once established, Roney found that constructed reefs dissipate 40% of the wave energy before it reaches the marsh edge. “This is an experimental pilot study, so the reefs are on the smaller side,” Roney explained. “Reefs as large as 100 meters long may be necessary to protect certain areas — which sounds like a big investment. But because these are living shorelines, they are self-sustaining, and will keep growing and building on themselves.”

Establishing oyster reefs can be challenging, however, because predators feast on young oysters. Blue crabs are among the most voracious. The second part of Roney’s research was to develop a method that improves adolescent oysters’ chances of surviving to adulthood — when they infrequently succumb to predation. Roney and her collaborators at Georgia Tech identified two compounds found in blue crab urine, called trigonelline and homarine, that induce young oysters to devote more energy toward growing their shells, which become 25-60% stronger than normal. Roney found that after four to eight weeks of exposure to these compounds in hatchery conditions, their overall survival rate improved by 30% once placed in a reef. Her method not only helps constructed reefs to become established, but can also help existing oyster reefs become more resilient by slowing, or reversing, their decline.

While coastal restoration projects are not new in Georgia, the techniques Roney developed are relatively novel. Conventional shoreline restoration projects involve excavation, placing gravel beds, and extensive plantings, mostly with sea grasses. Roney has shown that using living shoreline strategies are less intensive and less expensive to establish and are also effective in reducing wave energy in waterways vulnerable to erosion. Perhaps most significantly, these techniques also restore the foundational functions of the ecosystems in which they are placed. The reefs become nurseries, incubating fish, bird, plant, and crustacean species.

Roney engaged several partners over the four years of her project, many in the communities along Georgia’s coast. Over 35 coastal residents, business owners, citizen scientists, and students volunteered their time and resources to help Roney’s project succeed. Roney said, “I think the most rewarding part of the project has been seeing how many people are truly invested in our coastal resources and want oyster reefs to thrive.”

This project isn’t likely to end once Roney earns her PhD. For living shoreline restoration practices to catch on, several other problems require investigation. Roney wants to devise a way to slowly release predator cue compounds into the water near oyster reefs, so baby oysters won’t need to spend as much time in a hatchery before being placed in the wild. Perfecting such a time-release mechanism could also help rejuvenate naturally occurring oyster reefs under threat from erosion and predation.

Roney also wants to try combining constructed oyster reefs with oyster farms, integrating one of the most sustainable ways that protein can be raised with living shoreline restoration. “As the mariculture industry in Georgia grows, there will be lots of opportunities to investigate the possible intersections between the ecological benefits, engineering benefits, and cultural benefits of oyster farming,” Roney said. “Food might be a continuous byproduct of shoreline restoration projects.”

Roney’s research shows that economic development and preserving, or even regenerating, diverse and productive coastal habitats for future generations don’t have to be mutually exclusive propositions.

Roney’s thesis advisor is Marc Weissburg, Brook Byers Professor in the School of Biological Sciences. Kevin Haas, professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, helped Roney map and measure the hydrodynamic forces in her study zones. The Coastal Resources Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the National Parks Service, and the University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant program provided access, permitting, funding, and resources.

Laboratories are central to Georgia Tech’s mission of driving groundbreaking research, innovative discoveries, and life-saving technology. However, these labs are also significant consumers of resources. With nearly 900,000 square feet of campus lab space, labs use, on average, 10 times the electricity and four times the water of a typical classroom. They also produce most of the hazardous waste on campus. In 2023, Environmental Health and Safety (EH&S) brought the issue to the attention of the Office of Sustainability, which led the charge in 2024 to launch a My Green Lab working group and sponsored three campus labs to work toward certification, including the School of Biological Sciences Instructional Labs, the Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience’s Molecular Evolution Core Facility, and the Takayama Lab.  

My Green Lab is an international community of scientists dedicated to making laboratories more sustainable and resource-efficient. To achieve My Green Lab certification, each lab conducted an initial assessment to evaluate their current sustainability practices and identified areas of improvement, including waste, water, and electricity. Labs were encouraged to adopt measures such as defrosting and cleaning refrigerator coils, using timers for test equipment, and promoting best practices. Alicia Wood-Jones, Lab and Safety Officer for EH&S, was a key leader in the working group. Known for her work on the Chemical Reclamation Committee, Wood-Jones’ vision and drive are instrumental in finding innovative solutions to long-standing challenges in lab decommissioning. 

She thanks her colleagues, including the EH&S Lab and Chemical Safety Team, “for their help and vision. We believe that even small steps forward can make a big difference here at Georgia Tech. I am so appreciative to all involved. I look forward to future collaborations with lab members on campus.”  

Katherine Nguyen and her team in the Takayama Lab construct multicellular models and dissect cell signaling pathways to understand disease physiology. While pursuing this research, the lab team activated measures to responsibly manage their lab resources, such as recycling in the lab, keeping centrifuges at room temperature when not needed, and consolidating orders. 

“I’m incredibly happy and proud to have been a part of this program and appreciate everyone’s hard work to try to make Georgia Tech a more sustainable campus,” she said. “Our lab was the first academic lab at Georgia Tech to get certified. Sometimes, graduate students want to be greener, but don’t know how to or feel like we have the power to. My Green Lab helped identify feasible options for labs to reduce their waste. Even if labs couldn’t make every single change, any improvement is a positive change.”  

Sustainability efforts at the Molecular Evolution Core Laboratory are led by Anton Bryksin, Shweta Biliya, and Adam Fallah. The lab is pioneering Tip-Cycle, a program that sterilizes and recycles pipettes for reuse. This lab also monitors campus blackwater for diseases such as Covid-19, using thousands of pipettes in their work. Faced with resource constraints during the pandemic, these researchers developed innovative solutions to maximize resource efficiency. “We’ve always wanted to make our lab practices more sustainable, but weren’t sure where to start. My Green Lab gave us the tools and guidance to turn that intention into action. This certification represents the dedication of our entire team to create a more sustainable environment,” said Biliya, a Georgia Tech research scientist.  

The My Green Lab initiative offers an approach for transforming campus labs into more efficient spaces while producing less hazardous waste. By prioritizing sustainability in our labs, Georgia Tech can have both a global reputation for research and responsible resource management.  

Visit the Office of Sustainability for more information on My Green Lab. 

What’s the hottest thing in electronics and high-performance computing? In a word, it’s “cool.”

To be more precise, it’s a liquid cooling system developed at Georgia Tech for electronics aimed at solving a long-standing problem: overheating.

Developed by Daniel Lorenzini, a 2019 Tech graduate who earned his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, the cooling system uses microfluidic channels — tiny, intricate pathways for liquids — that are embedded within the chip packaging.

He worked with VentureLab, a Tech program in the Office of Commercialization, to spin his research into a startup company, EMCOOL, headquartered in Norcross.

“Our solution directly addresses the heat at the source of the silicon chip and therefore makes it faster,” Lorenzini said. “Our design has our system sitting directly on the silicon chips that generate the most heat. Using the fluids in the micro-pin fins, it carries the heat that’s produced away from the chip.”

That cooling solution is directly integrated into the electronic components, making it significantly more efficient than conventional cooling methods, because it enhances the heat dissipation process.

The result is a much lower risk of overheating and reduced power consumption, he said.

Lorenzini, who researched and refined the technology in the lab of Yogendra Joshi at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, was awarded a patent for the technology in September 2024.

Now, EMCOOL, which has five empoloyees, is actively pursuing venture capital funding to scale its technology and address the escalating thermal management challenges posed by AI processors in modern data centers.

The system uses a cooling block with tiny, pin-like fins on one side and a special thermal interface material on the other. There's also a junction attached to the block, with ports for the fluid to flow in and out. The cooling fluid moves through the micro-pin fins and helps to carry away the heat.

Since the ports are designed to match the shape of the fins, it ensures that the fluid flows efficiently and the heat is dissipated as effectively as possible at chip-scale. 

As electronic devices — from high-performance personal computers to data centers used for artificial intelligence processing — become more powerful, they generate more heat. This excess heat can damage components or cause the device to underperform.

Traditional cooling methods, which include fans or heat sinks, often struggle to keep pace with the increasing demands of the newer model electronics. Lorenzini’s microfluidic system addresses the challenge of overheating with his patented, more effective, compact, and integrated cooling solution.

With the guidance of Jonathan Goldman, director of Quadrant-i in Tech’s Office of Commercialization, Lorenzini secured grant funding through the National Science Foundation and the Georgia Research Alliance to further the research and build design prototypes.

“We immediately had the sense there was commercial potential here,” Goldman said. “Thermal management, or getting rid of heat, is a ubiquitous problem in the computer industry, so when we saw what Daniel was doing, we immediately began to engage with him to understand what the commercial potential was.”

Indeed, the initial focus for the technology was the $159 billion global electronic gaming market. Gamers need a lot of computing power, which generates a lot of heat, causing lag.

But beyond gaming systems, the company, which manufactures custom cooling blocks and kits at its Norcross facility, is eyeing more sectors, which also suffer from overheating, Goldman said.

The technology addresses similar overheating electronics challenges in high-performance computing, telecommunications, and energy systems.

“This work propels us forward in pushing the boundaries of what traditional cooling technologies can achieve because by harnessing the power of microfluidics, EMCOOL's systems offer a compact and energy-efficient way to manage heat,” Goldman said. “This has the potential to revolutionize industries reliant on high-performance computing, where heat management is a constant challenge.”

The College of Sciences has named Professor Joel Kostka the inaugural faculty director of Georgia Tech for Georgia's Tomorrow. The new center, announced by the College in December 2024, will drive research aimed at improving life across the state of Georgia. 

“Joel is perfectly suited to lead this new initiative, especially since his research for a number of years has focused on Georgia and the vulnerability of both humans and ecosystems to climate change,” says Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences, Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Chair, and professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “I look forward to seeing how Science for Georgia’s Tomorrow takes shape and evolves under his thoughtful leadership.”

“I believe that my experience in research administration and in leading multidisciplinary research programs, along with the focus of my research on the vulnerability of Georgia’s communities to climate change, have prepared me well for this role,” says Kostka, who is the Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professor and associate chair for Research in the School of Biological Sciences with a joint appointment in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. “I am excited about the opportunity to lead the center as its inaugural director.” 

Kostka’s appointment will begin on May 1, 2025. 

Championing science in Georgia

Georgia's Tomorrow was created to foster research related to the health and resilience of Georgia’s people, ecosystems, and communities. Specifically, it will serve to boost research collaboration across the Institute, pave the way for public-private partnerships, and expand opportunities for Georgia students and communities to engage with Institute research. 

Among Kostka’s first tasks as faculty director will be the development of the center’s strategic plan and the completion of two dedicated cluster hires from within the College of Sciences’ six schools. 

Meet Joel Kostka

Kostka is known for bridging biogeochemistry and microbiology to elucidate the role of microorganisms in ecosystem function. He has emerged as an international leader in ecosystem biogeoscience, providing a quantitative predictive understanding of how ecosystems function as well as determining the mechanisms by which climate change alters ecosystem resilience. He partners with a variety of stakeholders to conduct research on the restoration and adaptive management of coastal ecosystems in Georgia.

Kostka has also served as the PI of a range of multidisciplinary research projects focused on environmental change as well as scientific advisory boards including Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute, the NSF-funded Plum Island Estuary Long-term Ecological Research program, and the Johnston Center for Coastal Sustainability on Bald Head Island.

Kostka received a B.S. in Biology from Western Illinois University and a Ph.D. in Marine Science from the University of Delaware. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2011, he was a professor at the Department of Oceanography and Associate Director of the Institute of Energy Systems, Economics, and Sustainability at Florida State University.

Initial support for Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow is generously provided by the College of Sciences Betsy Middleton and John Clark Sutherland Dean's Chair fund. Cluster hire funding has been awarded by Provost Steven W. McLaughlin. The initiative will also seek funding from state, national and international organizations, private foundations, and government agencies to expand impact. Philanthropic support will also be sought in the form of professorships, programmatic support for the center, and seed funding.

Georgia Tech for Georgia's Tomorrow initially launched under the working name Science for Georgia's Tomorrow (Sci4GT).