Joel Kostka will soon receive $3.2 million from the Department of Energy (DOE) to build upon research that has ranged from northern Minnesota peat bogs to coastal Georgia wetlands, all to learn how climate change impacts soils and plants that trap greenhouse gasses — and whether some of those plants could end up as eco-friendly biofuels.

Kostka, a professor and associate chair of research in the School of Biological Sciences with a joint appointment in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, will receive funding as part of a wider $178 million dollar DOE effort to advance sustainable technology breakthroughs that can improve public health, help address climate change, improve food and agricultural production, and create more resilient supply chains. The 37 new projects also include efforts to engineer plants and microbes into bioenergy and improve carbon storage. 

Kostka’s wetlands research will continue in the salt marshes off Georgia’s coast, where his team has already conducted studies on the microbial life that benefits Spartina cordgrass in those areas, helping to strengthen resilience of the plant to sea level rise and catastrophic storms.

The DOE’s funding initiative is split into four groups. Kostka’s studies will focus on the role of microbiomes — all the microorganisms living in a particular environment — in the biogeochemical cycling of carbon in terrestrial soils and wetlands by using genomics-based and systems biology. 

Other research areas involve renewable bioenergy and biomaterials production; quantum-enabled bioimaging and sensing for bioenergy, and research to characterize gene function in bioenergy crop plants.

“Our project seeks to understand the controls of soil organic matter degradation and the release of greenhouse gasses, both of which are largely mediated by microbes” Kostka said. “And then also, as we've been studying for many years now, how climate drivers — principally the warming of ecosystems and carbon dioxide enrichment in the atmosphere — limit greenhouse gas release to the atmosphere. How might changes in plant and microbial communities lead to climate feedbacks, thereby accelerating the release of greenhouse gasses from soil carbon stores?”

That question has driven much of Kostka’s research team in the past as they focused on how soil microbes break down biomasses like woody plants and peat mosses, at an Oak Ridge National Laboratory facility in northern Minnesota called Spruce and Peatland Responses Under Changing Environments (SPRUCE). Kostka’s team is using genomics to study all the genes that code for microbial enzymes that decompose biomass in soil and how plants, which are also changing with climate, impact microbiomes by providing carbon sources that fuel microbial activities. In particular, the work is focused on lignocellulose or lignin, which gives plants their rigidity or structure and arguably comprises the most abundant renewable carbon source on the planet.

“We're just at the point now where we finally have the tools to unlock the black box of soil microbiology and chemistry,” Kostka said. “Recent advances in sophisticated analytical chemistry methods used to quantify microbial metabolites along with improved metagenome sequencing approaches enable us to better uncover metabolic pathways.”

Kostka will serve as principal investigator of the research team for the grant. That team includes School of Biological Sciences researchers Caitlin Petro, research scientist, and Katherine Duchesneau, a third-year Ph.D. student; co-principal investigator Kostas Konstantinidis, Richard C. Tucker Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering; Rachel Wilson, postdoctoral scholar, Florida State University; Malak Tfaily, associate professor, University of Arizona; and Chris Schadt, senior staff scientist, Oak Ridge National Laboratory. 

Unlocking the “enzyme latch” hypothesis

As part of his new research, Kostka will revisit what scientists call the “enzyme latch” hypothesis. This could help uncover the mechanisms by which soils and plants capture harmful greenhouse gasses, and what prompts their release into the atmosphere.

The idea behind this hypothesis is that when soils are wet, they lack oxygen, which suppresses a specific class of enzymes, oxidases, that catalyze the beginning steps in the microbial breakdown of organic compounds produced by plants in soil. When oxidases are suppressed, the breakdown products of lignin, phenolic compounds, accumulate and poison the rest of the microbial carbon cycle.  Thus a single class of enzymes may be responsible for keeping greenhouse gasses like carbon dioxide and methane captured within the soil.

“The climate linkage here is that it's thought that as the climate warms, we'll get more greenhouse gas production, because simply it'll be warmer, and microbial enzymes work faster at higher temperature. But then also, in wetlands in particular, the hypothesis is that as wetlands warm, they're going to dry out. And so when a wetland dries out, you're going to get more injection of oxygen-rich air into the soil, which would then accelerate the breakdown of organic matter.”

When that happens, it could also mean different plants having an impact on carbon storage and the breakdown of biomass. “As wetlands dry out, plant communities in northern peatlands where most of Earth’s soil carbon is stored, are expected to shift from a dominance of mosses, which do better when it's wet — to woody plants, shrubs, and trees that do better with less water, when it's drier. That would in turn potentially spark the release of more reactive carbon compounds from plant roots — mosses don’t have roots — which would likely accelerate organic matter decomposition and the production of more greenhouse gas in a feedback loop with climate.”

Kostka’s research may also help to develop new approaches for converting woody biomass into potential alternative energy sources. “To make our society more sustainable, we have to basically recycle everything, or reuse as much as we can. And that includes the biomass from plants that can be grown on more arid lands that are less suitable for food crops,” he said, referring to plant-based materials that can be used to produce biofuels and bioenergy. “And so the DOE is leading research efforts to understand the controls of biomass degradation in plants such as switchgrass and poplar.” 

Kostka and Konstantinidis will develop a database of genes that code for the breakdown of lignocellulose and lignin, compounds that largely make up plant biomass and for which metabolic pathways of degradation have been elusive. Kostka and his colleagues will also have access to the extensive resources of the DOE Genomic Sciences program, including a collaboration with the agency’s Joint Genome Institute.

“We hope that information generated from our project can be used to improve methods for breaking down woody biomass so that it can be used in a sustainable way to produce biofuels,” Kostka said. 

Public abstract of Department of Energy grant DE-SC0023297

About Georgia Tech

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 44,000 students representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

John Crittenden will be stepping down as executive director of BBISS effective August 31, 2022. Beril Toktay, Professor of Operations Management, Brady Family Chairholder, and Regents’ Professor, will serve as BBISS’ interim executive director. Beril said, “John took the inclusion of the word ‘Systems’ in BBISS’ name to heart at a time when large interdisciplinary research collaborations at Georgia Tech were still a rarity. The bold vision now coming out of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Plan 2020-2030 and the Sustainability Next strategic plan initiative can be directly linked to John’s leadership and his challenge to ‘go bigger.’ I am delighted to accept the baton and run the next leg in advancing BBISS’ mission in collaboration with the Georgia Tech sustainability community.”

John will continue as a faculty member, educator, mentor, and researcher at Georgia Tech in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, maintaining his appointment as GRA Eminent Scholar in Sustainable Technologies. John has led BBISS since 2009, when the prior Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development (ISTD) was renamed in honor of Brook Byers (a Georgia Tech alumnus, sustainability advocate, and founding president of the Kleiner Perkins venture capital firm).

As a world-renowned researcher, John has made, and continues to make, critical contributions in the fields of water treatment (having co-authored the preeminent book on the subject which is used by 300 universities around the world), pollution prevention, energy harvesting technologies, the food-energy-water nexus, sustainable materials, sustainable urban infrastructure, sustainable engineering pedagogy, advanced modeling of urban systems, and urban form and policy.

Among John’s many awards and honors are: Member of the National Academy of Engineering; Fellow of the American Society of Civil Engineers; Member of the European Union Academy of Sciences; Member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; American Institute of Chemical Engineers 100 Eminent Chemical Engineers in Modern Times; Athalie Richardson Irvine Clarke Prize from the National Water Research Institute; Simon W. Freese Environmental Engineering Award from the American Society of Civil Engineers; and the Chinese Friendship Award. The American Chemical Society will host a special symposium series to honor John’s long-term accomplishments in sustainability and physical chemical treatment processes for engineered water infrastructure systems at the Fall 2022 ACS meeting in Chicago.

As the leader of BBISS, John also fostered a dedicated team of staff, students, and faculty. The many students who have participated in sustainability research inherited his systems perspective and have carried it into their careers. He oversaw the development of several programs to support career development and collaboration, including the BBISS Graduate Fellows, the BBISS Faculty Fellows, and the Brook Byers Professors, all made possible with donations from Brook and Shawn Byers. He has been a tireless sponsor of early- and mid-career researchers, nominating them for awards and memberships on committees, and providing valuable advice. He has hosted visiting scholars from all over the world, engaging them in interdisciplinary research and the development of solutions to global sustainability challenges.

Julia Kubanek, Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research, shared the following comments: “Thank you, John, for the many programs you have initiated and the research that you have supported and inspired while leading BBISS. On behalf of all the faculty, students, and staff at Georgia Tech, I look forward to continuing to engage with you as a faculty member of the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering.”

Beril Toktay has made varied high-impact contributions to sustainability at Georgia Tech since she joined the Institute in 2005. She is the founding faculty director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business in the Scheller College of Business. Beril served as the co-architect and co-executive faculty director of Serve-Learn-Sustain, Georgia Tech’s campus-wide academic initiative offering students opportunities to collaborate with diverse partners on key sustainability challenges to help create sustainable communities. She was also Scheller College’s ADVANCE Professor, a role dedicated to the advancement of women and underrepresented minorities in academia. Beril is currently serving as co-chair of Sustainability Next, the sustainability and climate-focused strategic planning initiative of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Plan 2020-2030.

Beril is regarded as one of the most influential scholars in the field of sustainable operations management. Her research helped to introduce sustainability into the field of operations management, and she has had a significant hand in shaping its ongoing development, including serving as area editor in Environment, Energy and Sustainability for Operations Research, co-editor of the Business and Climate Change special issue for Management Science, and as department editor in Health, Environment and Society in Manufacturing and Service Operations Management (MSOM). For her pioneering role in advancing sustainable business scholarship and her leadership in building a sustainable operations community, respectively, she was elected Distinguished Fellow of the INFORMS MSOM Society in 2017 and received the MSOM Distinguished Service Award in 2018.

Beril values interdisciplinary research and education. Earlier in her Georgia Tech career, she served as the coordinator of ECLIPS (Georgia Tech Focused Research Program on Expanding Closed-Loops in Production Systems), an interdisciplinary group of faculty from management, engineering, and public policy interested in circular economy solutions. Her NSF-funded research on circular economy enterprise solutions involved collaborators from mechanical engineering and industrial and systems engineering. For her translational work in this area, she received the 2021 Sustainability Champion Award from the Global Electronics Council (formerly known as the Green Electronics Council). In 2017, Beril co-developed the Carbon Reduction Challenge program in collaboration with the Georgia Tech Global Change Program. This program challenges undergraduate student interns to identify a project that achieves significant reductions in carbon emissions and yields cost savings for their host company.

Through her role in the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, Beril has been instrumental in creating the Drawdown Georgia Business Compact, a statewide, business-led, collective action initiative aimed at achieving a just, prosperous, and sustainable transition towards net-zero carbon emissions in the state by 2050. In 2019, the Metro Atlanta Chamber of Commerce selected her as an E3 Impact Award Finalist, an award that recognizes “visionary individuals advancing sustainability in Atlanta.”

“Beril’s sustainability and business expertise as well as her experience leading teams and initiatives will ensure that BBISS remains on a strong footing and can continue to grow its impact,” said Julia Kubanek. “I’m especially excited about new ideas coming out of the Sustainability Next strategic planning effort that can contribute to the evolution of BBISS.”

Beril will lead BBISS until a new executive director is selected through a process that will be announced by the Vice President for Interdisciplinary Research later this year.

Along with the Georgia Tech faculty tapped and reappointed as Regents’ Professors and Researchers at the Aug. 9 University System of Georgia (USG) Board of Regents meeting were five Georgia Tech professors named to the new distinction of Regents’ Entrepreneur.

Georgia Tech faculty named as the first Regents' Entrepreneurs in the USG include Farrokh Ayazi, Ken Byers Professor in Microsystems, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; Kirk Bowman, professor, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs; Andrei Fedorov, Neely Chair and professor, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Biosciences; Mark Prausnitz, Regents’ Professor, J. Erskine Love Jr. Chair, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering; and Gleb Yushin, professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering.  

Regents’ Professor First-Time Appointments 
The Board of Regents approved the title of Regents’ Professor to Facundo Fernández, professor and Vasser Woolley Foundation Chair in Bioanalytical Chemistry, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry; Willie Pearson, professor of sociology, School of History and Sociology; Krishnendu Roy, professor, Robert A. Milton Endowed Chair, NSF Engineering Research Center for Cell Manufacturing Technologies, Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering; and Beril Toktay, professor of Operations Management and Brady Family Chairholder, Scheller College of Business.  

Regents’ Researcher First-Time Appointments 
Those named as Regents’ Researchers include Stephen Balakirsky, principal research scientist, Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI); Anton Bryksin, principal research scientist, Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; Walter Bradley Fain, principal research scientist, School of Public Policy; and Anita Pavadore, principal research engineer, GTRI. 

First-Time Reappointments 
Receiving a first-time reappointment as Regents’ Professor was Surya Kalidindi, Regents’ Professor, Rae S. and Frank H. Neely Chair, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. Receiving a first-time reappointment as Regents’ Researcher was Margaret Loper, principal research scientist, GTRI. 

Other Reappointments 
Regents’ Professor and Researcher designations only require Institute approval for second-time reappointments. Second-time Regents’ Professor appointments at Georgia Tech include Sy Goodman, Regents’ Professor and professor of International Affairs and Computing, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs; Nicholas Hud, Regents’ Professor, School of Chemistry and Biochemistry; and Vladimir Tsukruk, Regents’ Professor, School of Materials Science and Engineering. Receiving a second-time Regents’ Researcher reappointment was Alexa Harter, director of the Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research Laboratory at GTRI. 

New Recognition for Entrepreneurship and Innovation 
The board approved the Regents’ Entrepreneur designation in their February 2022 meeting to recognize and support faculty entrepreneurship and innovation. The Regents’ Entrepreneur designation may be granted by the Board of Regents to an outstanding full-time tenured faculty member who has an established reputation as a successful innovator and who has taken their research into a commercial setting. The Regents’ Entrepreneur designation is bestowed by the board only upon the unanimous recommendation of the USG institution president, the chief academic officer, and the chancellor, and upon the approval of the Committee on Academic Affairs. 

Farrokh Ayazi 
Farrokh Ayazi is director of the Georgia Tech Analog Consortium. His main research interest is in integrated micro and nano electromechanical systems and integrated microsystem design. He is the founder and chief technology officer of Qualtré, which was acquired by Panasonic in 2016. He is currently leading StethX Microsystems, an ATDC company, in commercializing advanced wearable sensors for cardiopulmonary applications.

Kirk Bowman 
Kirk Bowman is the Rise Up & Care term chair in Global Development and Identity. In 2014, Bowman founded Rise Up & Care, a nonprofit corporation that employs an innovative model of international community development, combining global development research; high-level performance organizations in the Global South to transform youth; powerful documentary films by top local directors; and children's books illustrated by local street artists. He directs a Georgia Tech Vertically Integrated Project on Global Social Entrepreneurship with 18 undergraduate students.

Andrei G. Fedorov  
Andrei G. Fedorov’s research covers atomic scale nanomanufacturing; distributed power generation with carbon dioxide management; instrumentation for biomedical research; and thermal management of electronics and medicine. With his students and collaborators, Fedorov started several technology companies to commercialize his inventions in the space of gene/drug delivery; biomarker discovery and quality control in cell therapy manufacturing; and thermal management of high-power generation devices. 

Mark Prausnitz 
Mark Prausnitz has co-founded seven companies that have together raised more than $350 million for commercialization of microneedle technologies developed in his lab at Georgia Tech. Three of the companies have products for sale, including an FDA-approved treatment of ocular inflammation. His technologies have been studied in more than 20 human clinical trials. He has almost 80 issued or pending U.S. patents, with additional international filings. Prausnitz has published more than 300 journal articles and supervised 50 Ph.D. students among a total of almost 350 graduate, postdoctoral, or undergraduate researchers in his lab. 

Gleb Yushin  
Gleb Yushin is a pioneer and globally recognized leader in advanced materials for next-generation Li-ion batteries. He is member of the National Academy of Inventors and fellow of three international professional societies. He has been awarded more than 200 patents, while also being one of the most cited Georgia Tech professors since 2019. He co-founded the most economically successful Georgia Tech startup Sila Nanotechnologies ($3.3B valuation). Yushin has served as a founding faculty advisor for the Entrepreneurs Club at Tech and as an advisor to the Georgia Tech startup CellFE. 

Regents’ Professorships and Regents’ Researcher titles may be granted for a period of three years by the Board of Regents to outstanding faculty members of Georgia Tech, Augusta University, Georgia State University, the University of Georgia, and, in special circumstances, other USG institutions. 

The Center for Advancing Sustainable and Distributed Fertilizer Production (CASFER) is a collaborative effort between the National Science Foundation (NSF) and five universities.

Thanks to efforts to combat climate change, many have heard the catchphrase “closing the carbon loop” — a global effort to convert carbon dioxide into something useful to mitigate the damaging effects of pollution on the planet. Another environmental challenge relates not to carbon dioxide but nitrogen. Now, an ambitious plan to close the nitrogen loop is underway, and with it comes the potential to revolutionize agriculture in the U.S. and around the world.

The Georgia Institute of Technology will be part of CASFER, an NSF Engineering Research Center (NSF-ERC), with four other universities. Supported by an initial grant of $26 million from NSF, CASFER seeks to transform the U.S. from nitrogen cycle pollution to a nitrogen circular economy by developing new technologies and programs for capturing, recycling, and producing decarbonized nitrogen-based fertilizers (NBFs). Georgia Tech is joined by Florida Agricultural and Mechanical University, Case Western Reserve University, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and Texas Tech University, which will lead the effort and serve as CASFER’s headquarters.

Nitrogen is used in many commercial applications, but one of the most significant uses is in NBFs for growing food. NBFs are put out into fields, but most do not get used — 80% are washed away and wasted, ending up as pollutants in the watershed. With support from NSF, this team of universities will attempt to recover and reuse nitrogen compounds, the principal element in fertilizers.

“By taking pollutants out of the water and converting them for use, we are taking a negative and making a positive out of it,” said Paul Kohl, Regents' Professor and Thomas L. Gossage Chair in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE) and co-lead of the CASFER effort at Georgia Tech, along with Marta Hatzell, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “This process will both decrease pollution and lower the cost of farming.”

CASFER has three areas of focus it will pursue to achieve its goal. The first involves measuring and analyzing data to identify new opportunities and locations for collecting wasted fertilizer and determining how exactly the fertilizer affects individual environments.

The second area — Kohl and Hatzell’s focus — is the actual collection and separation of nitrogen compounds from the three types of environments where they usually show up: produce farms, livestock farms, and wastewater treatment plants. They will develop specialized separation methods to pull nitrogen pollutants out of the various environments, creating new types of polymer membranes that work to separate and concentrate the compounds into solutions that can be converted for future use. The work will start in the laboratories at Georgia Tech, but later the team will build test beds — portable laboratories the size of small trailers — to test their separation methods on-site.

“All our separations technologies will be modular, electrified, and largely decarbonized,” said Hatzell. “Our overall goal is to design processes that synthesize new or recover used fertilizers from waste at the same or lower price than traditional chemical manufacturing processes.”

The third area is reconverting the concentrated solutions into usable fertilizer. Humans have been making fertilizer the same way for more than 100 years, using an expensive chemical process that requires natural gas — a resource in short supply. CASFER researchers will develop the conversion methods to create new fertilizers and strategies for dispensing it back into fields for growing crops.

“One strength of NSF Engineering Research Centers is their ability to bring interdisciplinary academic teams together in convergent research to identify novel approaches to thorny societal challenges,” said NSF Assistant Director for Engineering Susan Margulies. “With their unique testbeds and industry partners, the centers innovate and translate solutions that are effective and sustainable.” 

CASFER is poised to bring about dramatic changes to the agriculture industry. Since the inception of the Engineering Research Centers program in 1985, the NSF has awarded fewer than 100 grants to open ERCs, which are designed to foster innovation and collaboration between industry leaders, government agencies, and institutions of higher education.

“For decades, NSF Engineering Research Centers have transformed technologies and fostered innovations in the United States through bold research, collaborative partnerships, and a deep commitment to inclusion and broadening participation,” said NSF Director Sethuraman Panchanathan. “The new NSF centers will continue the legacy of impacts that improve lives across the nation.” 

Looking to the future, universities will launch workforce development efforts like training and education to prepare a new generation of farmers and scientists for work in the nitrogen circular economy.

Georgia Tech researchers involved in the grant include Kohl (Co-Thrust Leader), Andrew Medford, and Joseph Scott from ChBE; Peter Hesketh (Co-Thrust Leader) and Hatzell (Thrust Leader/Co-PI) from the Woodruff School; Mary-Lynn Realff from the School of Materials Science and Engineering; Lizanne DeStefano (EWD Lead) from CEISMC; and Jie Xu and Milad Navaei from the Georgia Tech Research Institute.

For decades, engineers and scientists have looked to nature for inspiration. One of the most famous examples is Swiss electrical engineer George de Mestral. In 1955, he invented the hook and loop fastener (which he later named Velcro) after studying burdock burrs that kept sticking to his clothes during a hunting trip. For the birth of flight, the Wright brothers studied how birds change the angle of their wings to roll right or left while in the air. They would use the example to refine their control systems in the world’s first successful motor-operated airplane.  

A number of Georgia Tech researchers are also focused on biologically inspired design, ranging from the study of how honey bees transport pollen pellets to how small, snakelike lizards move.  

With the assistance of a $3 million National Science Foundation grant, Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC) and the Center for Biologically Inspired Design (CBID) are partnering on a three year research project that introduces biologically inspired design to high school students throughout metro Atlanta.

Read the Full Story at the College of Engineering Website

“Thirty years ago not many folks were interested or thinking about sustainability. BBISS was. At Georgia Tech, we do cover many areas in sustainability, and right now after 30 years, BBISS has the history and the ability that can provide expertise to those that are seeking solutions.” 
Chaouki Abdallah, Executive Vice President for Research

The Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) is one of Georgia Tech’s 10 interdisciplinary research institutes.

The second class of Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Graduate Fellows has been selected. The BBISS Graduate Fellows Program provides graduate students with enhanced training in sustainability, team science, and leadership in addition to their usual programs of study. Each two-year fellowship is funded by a generous gift from Brook and Shawn Byers and is additionally guided by a Faculty Advisory Board. The students apply their skills and talents, working directly with their peers, faculty, and external partners on long-term, large team, sustainability relevant projects. They are also afforded opportunities to organize and host seminar series, develop their professional networks, publish papers and draft proposals, and develop additional skills critical to their professional success and future careers leading research teams.

The 2022 class of Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems Graduate Fellows are:

• Oliver Chapman - Ph.D. student, School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Megan Conville - Ph.D. student, School of City and Regional Planning, College of Design
• Carlos Fernandez - Ph.D. student, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering
• Sarah Roney - Ph.D. student, School of Biological Sciences
• Olianike Olaomo - Ph.D. student, School of History and Sociology, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts
• Vishal Sharma - Ph.D. student, School of Interactive Computing, College of Computing

The Faculty Advisory Board for the BBISS Graduate Fellows is composed of the faculty who submitted the students' nominations. Nominations for Class III of the BBISS Graduate Fellows program will open in the Spring 2023. It is expected that 6 to 8 scholars will be selected for next year’s group.

The Faculty Advisory Board for the inaugural class are:

• Marta Hatzell
• Marilyn Brown
• Elora Raymond
• Kate Pride Brown
• Marc Weissburg
• Neha Kumar

Updates and outcomes will be posted to the BBISS website as the project progresses. Additional information is available at https://research.gatech.edu/sustainability/grad-fellows-program.