Whether it’s developing new products, reducing costs, or increasing accessibility, innovations in manufacturing stand to improve the lives of companies and consumers alike. Georgia Tech recently took another step toward ensuring those innovations make it from lab to market with the launch of a Modular Pilot Scale Roll-to-Roll Manufacturing Facility. 

“As researchers develop new materials, one of the key aspects we’re missing is how to make them at scale. This is a major oversight because if we can’t make them at scale, we can’t transition from basic research to commercialization,” said Tequila Harris, a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “With this new facility, we can prove our discoveries beyond lab-scale studies — and can go from materials innovation to product development at scale.”

Led by Harris, the new facility is the result of a partnership between the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI), the Strategic Energy Institute, and the Woodruff School. As a pilot facility, it will serve as a testbed for scaling up manufacturing research open for Georgia Tech researchers as well as academic, government, and industry partners around the world.

“The larger vision I see at Georgia Tech involves innovation in manufacturing for large-scale industries,” said Georgia Tech’s Interim Executive Vice President for Research Tim Lieuwen at the facility’s unveiling event on Sept. 19. “It’s crucial that we’re innovating in basic science and technology, but we also need to be innovating in large-scale manufacturing.”

Roll-to-roll (R2R) manufacturing transforms flexible rolls of substrate materials, such as paper, metal foils, and plastics, into more complex, transportable rolls upon coating the surface with one or more fluids, such as inks, suspensions, and solutions, which are subsequently dried or cured on the base substrate. Its high yield and efficiency make R2R an ideal method for the sustainable, large-scale production of components for solar cells, batteries, flexible electronics, and separations — all industries that have expanded in Georgia in recent years.

“As a state institution, we’re ultimately here to serve our state,” said Lieuwen, who is also Regents’ Professor and David S. Lewis Jr. Chair in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering. “We’re seeing Georgia emerge as the national leader in terms of recruiting corporate investments in this space and in industries that will be served by this facility.”

Roll-to-Roll Innovations

The R2R process is similar to the production of newspapers, where a large roll of blank paper goes through a series of rollers printing text and photos. “The roll-to-roll aspect is the process of using a specialized tool to force fluid onto a moving surface,” says Harris. It’s one of the fastest-growing methods for producing thin film materials — photovoltaics used in solar cells, transistors in flexible electronics, and micro-batteries, for example — at a large scale. 

Harris’s group works to develop novel manufacturing tools, with a particular focus on understanding and improving the dynamics of thin film manufacturing to increase efficiency and minimize waste. Her group is particularly interested in slot die coating, an R2R technique where a liquid material is precisely deposited onto a substrate through a narrow slot. With the new pilot facility, researchers like Harris will be able to take their work to the next level.

“Slot die coating on a roll-to-roll can handle the broadest viscosity range of most coating methods. Therefore, you can process a lot of different materials very quickly and easily,” says Harris. “It’s one of the fastest-growing technologies in the U.S. — and currently, this is the most advanced modular pilot scale facility at an academic university in the United States.”

“Georgia Tech is way ahead of the curve in terms of our facilities,” says GTMI Executive Director and Regents’ Professor Thomas Kurfess. “This will grow our capability in the battery area, membranes, flexible electronics, and more to allow us to support the development of new technologies.”

“As technologies around cleantech continue to advance at an unprecedented pace, pilot manufacturing facilities provide a critical bridge between innovative benchtop research and commercial-scale production and manufacturing,” says Christine Conwell, interim executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute. “We are excited about the opportunities this R2R facility will provide to the Georgia Tech energy community and our industry partners.”

The Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) invites applications and nominations for the Executive Director (ED) position in the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS). BBISS, one of Georgia Tech’s Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRIs), brings together researchers from across Georgia Tech, including academic and research units, to support world-class sustainability-focused research, student engagement, and industry, government, and nonprofit collaboration toward achieving systemic change.

The BBISS ED will be a dynamic, collaborative, and entrepreneurial leader who will unite a broad range of stakeholders around a vision to elevate and grow sustainability at Georgia Tech. As a systems thinker and inclusive relationship builder, the ED will expand and enhance BBISS collaborations and partnerships within and beyond Georgia Tech to broaden its sustainability footprint in local, regional, national, and international arenas.

The ED will catalyze the formation of interdisciplinary teams to support high-impact programming and grants in areas such as climate science, solutions, and policy; ecosystem and environmental health; sustainable cities and infrastructure; sustainable resource and material use; just and equitable sustainable development; and the economics and business of sustainability.

View the job description

Applications, Inquiries, and Nominations

To apply for the Executive Director position in the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, candidates are requested to submit the following:

• A curriculum vitae
• A letter of interest (not to exceed four pages) that summarizes your qualifications and includes a brief statement of your vision for BBISS
• Contact information for five references (to be contacted with candidate’s permission at a later date)

Candidates are requested to send their application materials (in Word or PDF) to the AGB Search Portal at this link by November 19, 2024, for best consideration.

Nominations and expressions of interest for this opportunity are encouraged. Please direct them to BBISSGATech@agbsearch.com or to the AGB search consultants listed below.

Monica Burton, Principal
monica.burton@agbsearch.com
C: 917.825.2961

Nancy Targett, Ph.D., Executive Search Consultant
nancy.targett@agbsearch.com
C: 302.233.5202

The Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM) launched a new initiatives program, starting with several winning proposals, with corresponding initiative leads that will broaden the scope of IRIM’s research beyond its traditional core strengths. A major goal is to stimulate collaboration across areas not typically considered as technical robotics, such as policy, education, and the humanities, as well as open new inter-university and inter-agency collaboration routes. In addition to guiding their specific initiatives, these leads will serve as an informal internal advisory body for IRIM. Initiative leads will be announced annually, with existing initiative leaders considered for renewal based on their progress in achieving community building and research goals. We hope that initiative leads will act as the “faculty face” of IRIM and communicate IRIM’s vision and activities to audiences both within and outside of Georgia Tech.

Meet 2024 IRIM Initiative Leads

Stephen Balakirsky; Regents' Researcher, Georgia Tech Research Institute & Panagiotis Tsiotras; David & Andrew Lewis Endowed Chair, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering | Proximity Operations for Autonomous Servicing

Why It Matters: Proximity operations in space refer to the intricate and precise maneuvers and activities that spacecraft or satellites perform when they are in close proximity to each other, such as docking, rendezvous, or station-keeping. These operations are essential for a variety of space missions, including crewed spaceflights, satellite servicing, space exploration, and maintaining satellite constellations. While this is a very broad field, this initiative will concentrate on robotic servicing and associated challenges. In this context, robotic servicing is composed of proximity operations that are used for servicing and repairing satellites in space. In robotic servicing, robotic arms and tools perform maintenance tasks such as refueling, replacing components, or providing operation enhancements to extend a satellite's operational life or increase a satellite’s capabilities.

Our Approach: By forming an initiative in this important area, IRIM will open opportunities within the rapidly evolving space community. This will allow us to create proposals for organizations ranging from NASA and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency to the U.S. Air Force and U.S. Space Force. This will also position us to become national leaders in this area. While several universities have a robust robotics program and quite a few have a strong space engineering program, there are only a handful of academic units with the breadth of expertise to tackle this problem. Also, even fewer universities have the benefit of an experienced applied research partner, such as the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), to undertake large-scale demonstrations. Georgia Tech, having world-renowned programs in aerospace engineering and robotics, is uniquely positioned to be a leader in this field. In addition, creating a workshop in proximity operations for autonomous servicing will allow the GTRI and Georgia Tech space robotics communities to come together and better understand strengths and opportunities for improvement in our abilities.

Matthew Gombolay; Assistant Professor, Interactive Computing | Human-Robot Society in 2125: IRIM Leading the Way

Why It Matters: The coming robot “apocalypse” and foundation models captured the zeitgeist in 2023 with “ChatGPT” becoming a topic at the dinner table and the probability occurrence of various scenarios of AI driventechnological doom being a hotly debated topic on social media. Futuristic visions of ubiquitous embodied Artificial Intelligence (AI) and robotics have become tangible. The proliferation and effectiveness of first-person view drones in the Russo-Ukrainian War, autonomous taxi services along with their failures, and inexpensive robots (e.g., Tesla’s Optimus and Unitree’s G1) have made it seem like children alive today may have robots embedded in their everyday lives. Yet, there is a lack of trust in the public leadership bringing us into this future to ensure that robots are developed and deployed with beneficence.

Our Approach: This proposal seeks to assemble a team of bright, savvy operators across academia, government, media, nonprofits, industry, and community stakeholders to develop a roadmap for how we can be the most trusted voice to guide the public in the next 100 years of innovation in robotics here at the IRIM. We propose to carry out specific activities that include conducting the activities necessary to develop a roadmap about Robots in 2125: Altruistic and Integrated Human-Robot Society. We also aim to build partnerships to promulgate these outcomes across Georgia Tech’s campus and internationally.

Gregory Sawicki; Joseph Anderer Faculty Fellow, School of Mechanical Engineering & Aaron Young; Associate Professor, Mechanical Engineering | Wearable Robotic Augmentation for Human Resilience 

Why It Matters: The field of robotics continues to evolve beyond rigid, precision-controlled machines for amplifying production on manufacturing assembly lines toward soft, wearable systems that can mediate the interface between human users and their natural and built environments. Recent advances in materials science have made it possible to construct flexible garments with embedded sensors and actuators (e.g., exosuits). In parallel, computers continue to get smaller and more powerful, and state-of-the art machine learning algorithms can extract useful information from more extensive volumes of input data in real time. Now is the time to embed lean, powerful, sensorimotor elements alongside high-speed and efficient data processing systems in a continuous wearable device.

Our Approach: The mission of the Wearable Robotic Augmentation for Human Resilience (WeRoAHR) initiative is to merge modern advances in sensing, actuation, and computing technology to imagine and create adaptive, wearable augmentation technology that can improve human resilience and longevity across the physiological spectrum — from behavioral to cellular scales. The near-term effort (~2-3 years) will draw on Georgia Tech’s existing ecosystem of basic scientists and engineers to develop WeRoAHR systems that will focus on key targets of opportunity to increase human resilience (e.g., improved balance, dexterity, and stamina). These initial efforts will establish seeds for growth intended to help launch larger-scale, center-level efforts (>5 years).

Panagiotis Tsiotras; David & Andrew Lewis Endowed Chair, Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering & Sam Coogan; Demetrius T. Paris Junior Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering | Initiative on Reliable, Safe, and Secure Autonomous Robotics 

Why It Matters: The design and operation of reliable systems is primarily an integration issue that involves not only each component (software, hardware) being safe and reliable but also the whole system being reliable (including the human operator). The necessity for reliable autonomous systems (including AI agents) is more pronounced for “safety-critical” applications, where the result of a wrong decision can be catastrophic. This is quite a different landscape from many other autonomous decision systems (e.g., recommender systems) where a wrong or imprecise decision is inconsequential.

Our Approach: This new initiative will investigate the development of protocols, techniques, methodologies, theories, and practices for designing, building, and operating safe and reliable AI and autonomous engineering systems and contribute toward promoting a culture of safety and accountability grounded in rigorous objective metrics and methodologies for AI/autonomous and intelligent machines designers and operators, to allow the widespread adoption of such systems in safety-critical areas with confidence. The proposed new initiative aims to establish Tech as the leader in the design of autonomous, reliable engineering robotic systems and investigate the opportunity for a federally funded or industry-funded research center (National Science Foundation (NSF) Science and Technology Centers/Engineering Research Centers) in this area.

Colin Usher; Robotics Systems and Technology Branch Head, GTRI | Opportunities for Agricultural Robotics and New Collaborations

Why It Matters: The concepts for how robotics might be incorporated more broadly in agriculture vary widely, ranging from large-scale systems to teams of small systems operating in farms, enabling new possibilities. In addition, there are several application areas in agriculture, ranging from planting, weeding, crop scouting, and general growing through harvesting. Georgia Tech is not a land-grant university, making our ability to capture some of the opportunities in agricultural research more challenging. By partnering with a land-grant university such as the University of Georgia (UGA), we can leverage this relationship to go after these opportunities that, historically, were not available.

Our Approach: We plan to build collaborations first by leveraging relationships we have already formed within GTRI, Georgia Tech, and UGA. We will achieve this through a significant level of networking, supported by workshops and/or seminars with which to recruit faculty and form a roadmap for research within the respective universities. Our goal is to identify and pursue multiple opportunities for robotics-related research in both row-crop and animal-based agriculture. We believe that we have a strong opportunity, starting with formalizing a program with the partners we have worked with before, with the potential to improve and grow the research area by incorporating new faculty and staff with a unified vision of ubiquitous robotics systems in agriculture. We plan to achieve this through scheduled visits with interested faculty, attendance at relevant conferences, and ultimately hosting a workshop to formalize and define a research roadmap.

Ye Zhao; Assistant Professor, School of Mechanical Engineering | Safe, Scalable, and Sustainable Human-Robot Teaming: Interaction, Synergy, and Augmentation

Why It Matters: Collaborative robots in unstructured environments such as construction and warehouse sites show great promise in working with humans on repetitive and dangerous tasks to improve efficiency and productivity. However, preprogrammed and nonflexible interaction behaviors of existing robots lower the naturalness and flexibility of the collaboration process. Therefore, it is crucial to improve physical interaction behaviors of the collaborative human-robot teaming.

Our Approach: This proposal will advance the understanding of the bi-directional influence and interaction of human-robot teaming for complex physical activities in dynamic environments by developing new methods to predict worker intention via multi-modal wearable sensing, reasoning about complex human-robot-workspace interaction, and adaptively planning the robot’s motion considering both human teaming dynamics and physiological and cognitive states. More importantly, our team plans to prioritize efforts to (i) broaden the scope of IRIM’s autonomy research by incorporating psychology, cognitive, and manufacturing research not typically considered as technical robotics research areas; (ii) initiate new IRIM education, training, and outreach programs through collaboration with team members from various Georgia Tech educational and outreach programs (including Engaging New Generations at Georgia Tech through Engineering and Science; Vertically Integrated Projects; and Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing) as well as the Atlanta University Center Consortium (the world’s largest consortium of African American private institutions of higher education) which comprises Clark Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and Spelman College; and (iii) aim for large governmental grants such as Department of Defense Multidisciplinary University Research Initiative, NSF Research Trainee program, and NSF Future of Work programs.

-Christa M. Ernst

Electrical signals make the heart  contract, but when those normal signals are disturbed, they can develop spiral waves that can lead to dangerous cardiac arrhythmias. 

Georgia Institute of Technology and Emory University researchers have received a 2023 Georgia Clinical & Translational Science Alliance (CTSA) award. The collaborators received the Team Science Award of Distinction for Early Stage Research for their recent work using live explanted human hearts to better understand arrhythmias.

The award recognizes multidisciplinary research, with a winning team comprised of Georgia Tech physicists and Emory electrocardiologists and cardiac surgeons. The team is led by Flavio Fenton, a professor in the School of Physics, and Neal Kumar Bhatia, an assistant professor of medicine at Emory.

The work captures high-resolution visualizations of the spiral waves that create arrhythmias from live human hearts taken from recent transplant patients. This access brings a new understanding to deadly arrhythmias such as tachycardia and fibrillation.

“This highly interdisciplinary study requires extremely diverse expertise and thus could not be done without a strong collaboration among cardiologists, physicists, and computational scientists,” Fenton said. “This award recognizes the great partnership we have between Emory and Georgia Tech that has allowed us to investigate live human hearts in the laboratory.”

The Emory team includes Shahriar Iravanian, M.D.; Michael Burke, M.D.; Faisal M. Merchant, M.D.; Anand D. Shah, M.D.; Mikhael F. El-Chami, M.D.; Mani Daneshmand, M.D.; and David Vega, M.D. The Georgia Tech group consists of School of Computational Science and Engineering Associate Professor Elizabeth Cherry, physics Research Scientist Ilija Uzelac, and graduate students Henry Chionuma and Mikael Toye.

“This award also acknowledges the potential of these studies for clinical applications and for improving patient treatments,” Fenton said.

Two Georgia Tech assistant professors are among the recipients of this year’s Early Career Research Program (ECRP) grants from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). Itamar Kimchi, in the School of Physics, and Sourabh Saha, in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, have each been awarded $875,000 over five years to pursue research on the role of entanglement in quantum materials and manufacturing cost-effective fuel capsules for fusion energy, respectively.

The Department of Energy has funded these early career awards since 2010, and this year distributed $138 million to 91 scientists nationwide. These awards are critical to DOE’s long-standing efforts to develop the next generation of STEM leaders and solidify America’s role as the driver of science and innovation. 

“Investing in cutting-edge research and science is a cornerstone of DOE's mission and essential to maintaining America’s role as a global innovation leader,” said U.S. Secretary of Energy Jennifer M. Granholm.

Itamar Kimchi

Kimchi’s research in quantum theory explores the role of entanglement in strongly correlated quantum materials, which have potential applications in quantum computers, sensors, and solid-state devices. His work addresses the challenges posed by defects and quenched disorder in these materials. 

Kimchi’s project aims to construct theoretical models to describe novel behaviors, particularly in quantum spin liquid (QSL) phases of magnetic insulators. The research seeks to demonstrate the transformation of QSLs from weak disorder, predict defect effects in QSLs, and collaborate with experimental labs to address the dichotomy between global and local experimental probes in materials with local defects.

The ECRP award will support Kimchi’s efforts to develop theoretical frameworks that guide new concepts and experimental probes — and to uncover how crystallographic defects can identify, generate, and control emergent quantum behavior, contributing to next-generation technologies for energy applications.

“Quantum sciences and technologies are becoming increasingly important for U.S. interests, as seen in the National Quantum Initiative, the CHIPS and Science Act, and other efforts,” said Kimchi. “Together with my research group, we are delighted to be supported by the Department of Energy and to join its extraordinary network of researchers, which enables us to pursue these challenges in understanding and using quantum materials.” 

Sourabh Saha

Saha’s research focuses on generating novel, advanced manufacturing capabilities that will massively reduce the cost of fabricating fuel capsules for inertial fusion energy. Nuclear fusion is the mechanism that powers the sun and generates the sunlight received on Earth. Fusion can be a clean, safe, abundant, and reliable source of electricity, but controlling it on Earth is a major challenge. 

Inertial fusion is one way to achieve and control fusion. This requires holding the nuclear fuel within pea-sized capsules, called targets, that are manufactured to extreme precision. For fusion to be a cost-effective source of electricity, the expense of producing these fuel capsules must be reduced from tens of thousands of dollars to less than a dollar. This is where Saha’s work lies: in enabling new ways of making the fuel capsules, cost-effectively and precisely.    

The ECRP award will allow Saha to focus on advancing the scientific knowledge base for scalable manufacturing of fusion targets. Generally, manufacturing scale-up is perceived as a late-stage engineering activity that can be postponed until a technology’s scientific underpinnings have been determined. But this perception has also often led to the underfunding of manufacturing science research. 

Saha believes that to solve many of engineering’s current grand challenges, the science of manufacturing scale-up should be considered early on — and in concert with researching other aspects of a technology. 

“The DOE award allows our group to do precisely this kind of research in the area of fusion energy. I am humbled to be able to work on one of the most challenging but worthwhile problems of our time,” Saha said.

Early Career Program awardees in this round of funding were required to be an untenured assistant or associate professor on the tenure track at a U.S. academic institution, or a full-time employee at a DOE national laboratory or Office of Science user facility who received their Ph.D. within the past 12 years. A list of the 91 recipients, their institutions, and the titles of their research projects is available on the ECRP website.

Previous Georgia Tech Recipients of DOE Early Career Grants

Wenjing Lao, associate professor, School of Mathematics

Ryan Lively, Thomas C. DeLoach Professor, School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering

Devesh Ranjan, Eugene C. Gwaltney Jr. School Chair and professor, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

A series of events across Georgia, starting with a kickoff event at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, will highlight the use of artificial intelligence (AI) in manufacturing and how it can transform communities and jobs. 

Georgia AIM Week, which takes place Sept. 30 – Oct. 4, is hosted by Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM). The week kicks off at Georgia Tech's John Lewis Student Center with the debut of the Georgia AIM Mobile Studio. The vehicle will tour the state during the week to showcase how a wide range of organizations, including public schools, manufacturers, and technology startups, are using AI. The week will conclude on Oct. 4, National Manufacturing Day, at the University of Georgia in Athens. 

Funded by a $65 million federal Economic Development Administration grant, Georgia AIM launched in September 2022 and connects 16 projects across the state, all working to develop a manufacturing workforce skilled in smart technologies and to deploy innovation in the manufacturing industry. Georgia AIM is one of the largest federally funded initiatives of its kind in the country to connect economic development with AI in manufacturing to foster advancements in innovation and workforce development. The grant project is led by Georgia Tech's Enterprise Innovation Institute.

“Georgia AIM Week allows us to showcase the incredible work that we have accomplished in partnership with a range of organizations over the last two years,” said Donna Ennis, Georgia AIM co-director. “Artificial intelligence and smart technologies are a game-changer for small and medium manufacturers, and learning these technologies opens doors for our workforce. Georgia AIM is working across the state to ensure Georgia can take advantage of these new technologies, and Georgia AIM Week is highlighting these efforts.”

Along with the kickoff and wrap-up events, Georgia AIM Week events will occur in Atlanta, Augusta, Dawsonville, LaGrange, McDonough, Moultrie, Savannah, and Warner Robins. Virtual “Hour of Coding” activities for 6th to 12th graders are also planned from noon to 1 p.m. each day that week. 

Manufacturing-focused events will be hosted by the Georgia MBDA Business Center, Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and the Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility located at Georgia Tech.

Georgia AIM’s work across the state includes K-12 initiatives to connect STEM and problem-solving activities to students, new labs and equipment at Technical College System of Georgia campuses, a new program for cybersecurity training at the Cyber Innovation & Training Center with Augusta University, and new workforce development programs that include training and apprenticeships and fellowships that align with local manufacturing needs. Overall, more than 3,000 students and 1,500 teachers in K-12 schools have connected with new science-based challenges. New programs are connecting Southwest Georgia career academies to advanced technologies, and the number of robotics programs for K-12 schools in Middle Georgia has doubled. 

Georgia AIM funding created the AI-Enhanced Robotics Center at the Veterans Education Career Transition Resource (VECTR) Center in Warner Robins, where 24 students have received AI-Enhanced Robotic Manufacturing Specialist technical training certificates. Georgia AIM has also connected with dozens of manufacturers and communities across the state, assisting with technology implementation and pilot projects to help incorporate smart technologies.

About Georgia AIM
Funded by a $65 million grant from the federal Economic Development Administration, Georgia AIM is a network of projects across the state that connect the manufacturing community with AI and smart technologies and a ready workforce. Georgia AIM works across all geographies and demographics to bring traditionally underrepresented participants to manufacturing spaces, specifically rural residents, women, people of color, veterans, and those without a college degree. Georgia AIM projects include K-12 education, Georgia’s universities and technical colleges, workforce education, regional partnerships, nonprofits, and support for emerging technologies and manufacturers.

For more information on Georgia AIM, please visit georgiaaim.org.

In the past year, Georgia Tech researchers Vidya Muthukumar and Eva Dyer have made a powerful impression on the National Science Foundation (NSF), forging partnerships between their labs and the foundation that may ultimately lead to more efficient, equitable, human-centered, and human-like artificial intelligence, or AI.

Working at the forefront of research in AI and machine learning, the two are both recent NSF CAREER Award winners – and are collaborators in a multi-institutional, three-year, $1.2 million effort supported by the NSF’s Division of Information and Intelligent Systems. 

“Our goal is to provide a precise understanding of the impact of data augmentation on generalization,” said Muthukumar, assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. She’s also principal investigator of the NSF project called, “Design principles and theory for data augmentation.”

Generalization is a hallmark of basic human intelligence – if you eat a food that makes you sick, you’ll likely avoid foods that look or smell like that food in the future. That’s generalization at work, something that we do naturally, but takes a greater effort to do efficiently in artificial intelligence. 

To build more generalizable AI, developers use data augmentation (DA), in which new data samples are generated from existing datasets to improve the performance of machine learning models. For example, data augmentation is often used in computer vision – existing image data is augmented through techniques like rotation, cropping, flipping, resizing, and so forth. 

Basically, data augmentation artificially increases the amount of training data used in machine learning models. The idea is, a machine learning model trained on augmented images of dogs is better equipped to recognize dogs in different environments, poses, and angles, even if the environments, poses, and angles are different from those seen during initial model training.

“But data augmentation procedures are currently done in an in an ad-hoc manner,” said Muthukumar. “It’s like, let’s apply this and see if it works.”

They are designed and tested on a dataset-by-dataset basis, which isn’t very efficient. Also, augmented data does not always have the desired effects – it can do more harm than good. So, Muthukumar, Dyer, and their collaborators are developing a theory, a set of fundamental principles to understand DA and its impact on machine learning and AI.

“Our aim is to leverage what we learn to design novel augmentations that can be used across multiple applications and domains,” said Dyer, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University.

Good, Bad, and Weird

Muthukumar became interested in data augmentation when she was a graduate student at University of California at Berkeley.

“What I found intriguing was how everyone seemed to view the role of data augmentation so differently,” she said. During a summer internship she was part of an effort to resolve racial disparities in a machine’s classification of facial images, “a commonly encountered problem in which the computer might perform well with classifying white males, but not so well with dark-skinned females.”

The researchers employed artificial data augmentation techniques – essentially, boosting their learning model’s dataset by adding virtualized facial images with different skin tones and colors. But to Muthukumar’s surprise, the solution didn’t work very well.  “This was an example of data augmentation not living up to its promise,” she said. “What we’re finding is, sometimes data augmentation is good, sometimes it’s bad, sometimes it’s just weird.”

That assessment, in fact, is almost the title of a paper Muthukumar and Dyer have submitted to a leading journal: “The good, the bad and the ugly sides of data augmentation: An implicit spectral regularization perspective.” Currently under revision before publication, the paper lays out their foundational theory for understanding how DA impacts machine learning. 

The work is the latest manifestation of a research partnership that began when Muthukumar arrived at Georgia Tech in January 2021, and connected with Dyer, whose NerDS Lab has a wide-angled focus, spanning the areas of machine learning, neuroscience, and neuro AI (her work is fostering a knowledge loop – the development of new AI tools for brain decoding and new neuro-inspired AI systems).

“We started talking about how data augmentation does something very subtle to a dataset, changing what the learning model does at a very fundamental level,” Muthtukumar said. “We asked, ‘what the heck is this data augmentation doing? Why is it working, or why isn’t it? And, what types of augmentation work and what types don’t?’”

Those questions led to their current NSF project, supported through September 2025. Muthukumar is leading the effort, joined by co-principal investigators Dyer; Mark Davenport, professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Electrical and Computer Engineering; and Tom Goldstein, associate professor in the Department of Computer Science at the University of Maryland.

Clever, Informed DA

The four researchers comprise a kind of super-team of machine learning experts. Davenport, a member of the Center for Machine Learning and the Center for Signal and Information Processing at Georgia Tech, aims his research on the complex interaction of signal processing, statistical inference, and machine learning. He’s collaborated with both Dyer and Muthukumar on recent research papers. 

Goldstein’s work lies at the intersection of machine learning and optimization. A member of the Institute for Advanced Computer Studies at Maryland, he was part of the research team that recently developed a “watermark” that can expose text written by artificial intelligence.

Dyer is a computational neuroscientist whose research has blurred the line between neuroscience and machine learning, and her lab has made advances in neural recording and gathering data. Muthukumar is orchestrating all of this expertise to thoroughly characterize data augmentation’s impact on generalization in machine learning.

“We hope to gain a full understanding of its influence on learning – when it helps and when it hurts,” Muthukumar said. Furthermore, the team aims to broaden the promise of data augmentation, expanding its effective use in other areas, such as neuroscience, graphs, and tabular data.

“Overall, there’s promise in being able to do a lot more with data augmentations, if we do it in a clever and informed kind of way,” Dyer said. “We can build more robust brain-machine interfaces, we can improve fairness and transparency. This work can have tremendous long-range impact, especially regarding neuroscience and biomedical data.”

Billions of years ago, self-replicating systems of molecules became separated from one another by membranes, resulting in the first cells. Over time, evolving cells enriched the living world with an astonishing diversity of new shapes and biochemical innovations, all made possible by compartments. 

Compartmentalization is how all living systems are organized today — from proteins and small molecules sharing space in separate phases to dividing labor and specialized functions within and among cells.

Now, with $6 million in support from NASA, a team of researchers led by Georgia Tech’s Frank Rosenzweig will study the organizing principles of compartmentalization in a five-year project called Engine of Innovation: How Compartmentalization Drives Evolution of Novelty and Efficiency Across Scales.

It's one of seven new projects selected recently by NASA as part of its Interdisciplinary Consortia for Astrobiology Research (ICAR) program. ICAR is embedded among NASA’s five Astrobiology Research Coordination Networks (RCNs). Rosenzweig is co-lead for the RCN launched in 2022, LIFE: Early Cells to Multicellularity.

“We’re excited by the prospect of exploring this fundamental question through the interplay of theory and experiment,” said Rosenzweig, professor in the School of Biological Sciences, whose team of co-Investigators includes biochemists, geologists, cell biologists, and theoreticians from leading NASA research centers: Jeff Cameron, Shelley Copley, Alexis Templeton, and Boswell Wing from the University of Colorado Boulder; Josh Goldford and Victoria Orphan from California Institute of Technology; and John McCutcheon from Arizona State University. Collaborating with them is Chris Kempes, professor at the Santa Fe Institute.

Rosenzweig is also eager to eventually collaborate with existing ICAR teams, such as MUSE, led by the University of Wisconsin’s Betül Kaçar, a former Georgia Tech postdoctoral researcher, and newly selected teams, such as Retention of Habitable Atmospheres in Planetary Systems, led by Dave Brain at University of Colorado Boulder.

Meanwhile, he plans to build upon Georgia Tech’s outstanding reputation in astrobiology, where a cluster of researchers, such as Jen Glass, Nick Hud, Thom Orlando, Amanda Stockton, and Loren Williams, among others, is engaged in a diverse range of work supported by NASA.

“This is just the latest chapter in a long history of excellence in NASA research at Georgia Tech, one written by my colleagues across the Institute,” Rosenzweig said.

Two faculty members in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering — associate professors James Dahlman and Gabe Kwong — have been elected to the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering (AIMBE) College of Fellows.

It’s considered one of the highest professional accolades for medical and biological engineers. Dahlman and Kwong are among 163 colleagues in this year’s induction class, joining only two percent of engineers in their fields who are accorded this distinction. Inductees are nominated and elected by peers and members of the College of Fellows.

“Many of the scientists I look up to are part of this organization, so I’m deeply honored to be named an AIMBE Fellow,” said Dahlman, McCamish Foundation Early Career Professor in Coulter BME, a joint department of Georgia Tech and Emory University.

AIMBE recognized him “for his sophisticated in vivo screens to develop clinically relevant lipid nanoparticles for delivering targeted RNA-based therapies outside the liver.”

Dahlman’s lab has developed nanoparticle barcodes that allow them rapidly to screen hundreds of potential drug delivery molecules at once, accelerating the discovery and delivery of new RNA therapeutics.

“I’m grateful for the recognition, but this honor really goes to the excellent trainees we have at Georgia Tech and Emory. Without their creativity and hard work, this recognition simply does not happen,” said Dahlman, who also called out his personal advisors, undergraduate mentor Daniel Miracle, and pioneering biotechnologists Robert Langer and Feng Zhang: “They believed in me and gave me the confidence to pursue high-risk, high-reward science at Georgia Tech and Emory.”

Kwong was elected, according to the AIMBE citation, “for pioneering advances in immunoengineering and the clinical translation of such advancements for early cancer detection and immunotherapy.”

He’s leading a $50 million project as part of President Biden’s Cancer Moonshot initiative to map the metabolic signatures of cancer. Project CODA (for Cancer and Organ Degradome Atlas) will use this information to build bioengineered sensors for the early detection of multiple cancers.

“It’s the kind of multi-institutional project with a potential for great impact that every researcher dreams about,” noted Kwong, who said he did not develop a passion for research until college.

“That’s when I discovered that I liked solving problems — the harder the better,” said Kwong, whose Laboratory for Synthetic Immunity engineers medicines to intercept and treat disease. “After avoiding classes like chemistry in high school, I realized that I enjoy peeking under the hood, so to speak, and learning about the body, about cells and molecules.”

He added, “It just goes to show that there are multiple paths we can take to make contributions to human health. And this honor from AIMBE is personally significant, because it comes from a group of professionals that I sincerely admire, and that inspire me.”

AIMBE Fellows are some of the nation’s most distinguished medical and biological engineers, including three Nobel Prize laureates and 22 winners of the Presidential Medal of Science or Medal of Technology and Innovation. Also, 214 Fellows have been inducted to the National Academy of Engineering, 117 to the National Academy of Medicine, and 48 to the National Academy of Sciences.

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In this episode, Beril Toktay, Regents' Professor and faculty director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business, defines net zero and discusses some ways to alleviate climate change by reducing carbon emissions to the point of net zero emissions.

Globally, most major polluters, such as China, the U.S., India, and the EU, are among over 140 nations with net-zero goals, which encompasses roughly 88 percent of global emissions. Meeting the Paris Agreement's 1.5°C climate threshold requires 45 percent emissions cut by 2030 and net-zero emissions by 2050 (United Nations Climate Action).

Toktay describes ways this can be accomplished in different business sectors. For example, in the energy sectors, this means moving from fossil fuels to renewable technologies, and in the transportation sector, moving to electrification and innovative battery technologies as well as developing the infrastructure to support these initiatives. These efforts help move businesses towards achieving net zero as well as providing cleaner air and water, and better health outcomes to the global population.

Listen as Toktay discusses what net zero means, the importance of getting to net zero, and how businesses can help reduce carbon emissions.