With iconic films like Schindler’s List, Dunkirk, and Oppenheimer, the World War II film genre continues to shape Western cultural memory of that period in history. But how do the films of other cultures — including those that fought for the Axis Powers — remember and understand World War II? How has that understanding changed over time?

In her recent book Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema, School of Modern Languages Associate Professor Amanda Weiss explores this question.

Weiss traces the history of films about World War II in China, Japan, and the United States. She became interested in the topic while studying on a Fulbright scholarship at the Beijing Film Academy.

“Many of my classmates were Japanese actors, and I noticed that they were always in World War II movies,” Weiss said. “I realized that World War II films were really dominant at that time in China, even though it was the 2000s. I found it really curious, so I started to investigate the topic.”

After she completed her studies in Beijing, Weiss attended graduate school in Japan to immerse herself in the perspectives of both cultures. Living in Japan showed her how complicated and fractured the discourse about World War II is in the two countries.

“There are clear politically right and left perspectives on the war, and then there is a much more ambiguous and dominant middle. It’s a bit similar to how Americans remember Vietnam,” she said.

A Cultural ‘Memory Loop’

“As stories of the war and its aftermath are told and re-told in film and literature over the course of decades, the different cultural memories of those events are written and rewritten in a kind of ‘memory loop,’” said Weiss. “The history of World War II cinema in China, Japan, and the U.S. reveals an interconnected, transnational discourse about the war.”

Weiss traces this discourse — and rising national tensions — through the conflicts between the male figures in film.

A Unified Narrative, Divided

“During the 1980s, many films about the war were co-produced by China and Japan, representing an attempt to move forward together, to create a unified narrative between the two nations,” said Weiss.

But in the 1990s, that co-created narrative began to fall apart. After 2000, co-productions were gone, and Japanese and Chinese films about this era began to reflect rising tensions between the two countries.

As an example, Weiss noted Tokyo Trial, a 2006 Chinese film about the postwar tribunals. The film depicts a heroic Chinese judge standing up to bullying Americans and to the Japanese soldiers who committed crimes during the war.

Japanese films about post-war tribunals have a more ambiguous and conflicted narrative — and understandably so.

“For Japanese audiences, the tribunal films grapple with very difficult and ambivalent national feelings about being labeled a perpetrator of war crimes, about nationalism, and about losing the war,” said Weiss.

It’s no surprise, then, that the narratives of mainstream Japanese tribunal films tend to be ambiguous and conflicted, addressing existential questions of justice, guilt, and morality.

“One recurring narrative in Japanese tribunal films is ‘victor’s justice.’ Some people argue that history is written by the victors, so perhaps the whole story isn’t being told,” said Weiss. “Then there are more right-wing films that depict the accused soldier as a heroic figure whose honor needs to be protected,” she added.

What Are Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors?

“Different aspects of nation are often articulated through masculinities,” she said. “In this film genre, we have stalwart judges, heroic soldiers, and good leaders. We also have perpetrators of war crimes and political leaders.

The term "Han" refers to the ethnic majority in China. Weiss conceptualizes “Han heroes” as the dominant heroic trope in recent Chinese war films, a trope that often emphasizes Chinese nationalism through cultural notions of idealized masculinity like “wen” (literary) and “wu” (martial). "Yamato" refers to the ethnic majority in Japan. Weiss argues that the “Yamato warrior” is also an idealized masculine figure who represents imagined Japanese values of loyalty, bravery, self-sacrifice — and more problematically, fervent nationalism.

What’s Next?

Weiss said her next book will be about the “feminization of memory” in Japanese popular memories of Manchuria. Her project explores media spectacles around the return of Japanese women left in China after WWII, literature written on Manchuria by female writers, and new heroic images of wartime women like Torihama Tome, the “kamikaze mother.” One chapter will discuss a singer, actress, journalist, and politician named Yamaguchi Yoshiko. A Japanese woman born in China, Yamaguchi was an actress in the Manchurian film industry during World War II, acting in propaganda films under the name Li Xianglan or Ri Koran.

“In 1945, Yamaguchi was prosecuted for treason in China, because she had played all these roles of Chinese women falling in love with Japanese soldiers,” said Weiss. “She only escaped execution when they realized she was a Japanese citizen.”

Yamaguchi went on to have a decades-long film career that spanned many countries and languages.

“She was a remarkable person. There are many books about her, but no one has talked much about the impact of her death in 2014,” said Weiss. “I want to understand how her death reopened this gendered World War II memory discourse, as people in Japan and China reflected on what her life and career meant.”

Weiss’ book, Han Heroes and Yamato Warriors: Competing Masculinities in Chinese and Japanese War Cinema, was published in October 2023 by the Hong Kong University Press. It is available at https://doi.org/10.2307/jj.6695534.

The School of Modern Languages is a unit of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts. Weiss’ work is one example of arts-related research in the College. Others include examining the intersection of art and AI, evoking conversations about sustainability through digital media artworks, and exploring the transformative impact of hip-hop.

The Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) of Georgia Tech is excited to announce that Bettina Arkhurst is the 2023 recipient of the James G. Campbell Fellowship Award. Arkhurst’s commitment to academics, research, and community service has been recognized by the award committee. She is a Ph.D. candidate advised by Katherine Fu, professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering.

Arkhurst holds a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and a master’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech. Her research seeks to understand how concepts of energy justice can be applied to renewable energy technology design to better consider marginalized and vulnerable populations. She strives to create frameworks and tools for mechanical engineers to apply as they design energy technologies for all communities.

As an energy equity intern at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, Arkhurst has worked with colleagues to better understand the role of researchers and engineers in the pursuit of a more just clean energy transition. She is also a leader in the Woodruff School’s graduate student mental health committee, which seeks to improve the culture around graduate student mental health and well-being. Additionally, Arkhurst is working with the Georgia Tech Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education (SCoRE) to develop a course on community engagement and engineering that will launch in Spring 2024.

The Energy, Policy, and Innovation Center (EPICenter) and the Strategic Energy Institute are proud to announce the 2023 Spark Award recipients: Jake Churchill, Jordan R. Hale, Andrew G. Hill, Henry J. Kantrow, Emily Marshall, and Jacob W Tjards. The award honors outstanding leadership in advancing student engagement in energy research.

Churchill is a master’s student in mechanical engineering advised by Akanksha Menon, assistant professor in the Woodruff School. Working with Menon in the Water-Energy Research Lab, his research focuses on coupling reverse osmosis desalination with renewable energy and storage technologies to provide clean, sustainable, and affordable water in the face of growing global water stress. Churchill has led the Georgia Tech Energy Club’s Solar District Cup team for three years, guiding students interested in solar energy careers. He has also been involved with several SEI initiatives, including EPICenter’s high school summer camp, Energy Unplugged. He is currently facilitating a student-led study to quantify the benefits of cleaning photovoltaic panels using the rooftop array at the Carbon Neutral Energy Solutions Lab.

Hale is pursuing a Ph.D. in chemistry, specializing in theoretical and computational chemistry under Joshua Kretchmer, assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His current research focus is utilizing various quantum dynamics formalisms and unique computational techniques to identify the microscopic mechanisms of electron transport in perovskite solar cells. Hale has mentored high school students, teaching them the fundamentals of computational chemistry and various programming skills. Additionally, he has been actively engaged with undergraduate students from other universities both in and out of Georgia through the Summer Theoretical and Computational Chemistry workshop.

Hill is a Ph.D. candidate in the Soper Lab in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. His research is focused on the activation of strong chemical bonds using Earth-abundant metals for energy conversion and storage. He has taken an active leadership role on campus, in part through service as the president of the Georgia Tech Chemistry Graduate Student Forum.

Marshall is a second-year graduate student working for Alan Doolittle, professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. She uses specialized molecular beam epitaxy techniques to grow high-quality III-nitride materials for next-generation power, radio frequency, and optoelectronic devices. Her current research focuses on improving the fundamental understanding of the scandium catalytic effect to optimize the growth of scandium aluminum nitride, a material that shows great promise for applications in future power grids. In addition to her research, Marshall is committed to teaching, having volunteered for five semesters serving her fellow students as a peer instructor at the Hive Makerspace and currently training junior members of her lab to grow semiconductors via molecular beam epitaxy. After earning her master’s and Ph.D., she hopes to continue teaching, mentoring, and connecting others across the world in an effort to bring about a brighter future.

Kantrow is a Ph.D. candidate in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, co-advised by Natalie Stingelin and Carlos Silva. His research seeks to understand the photo physics of semiconducting polymers operating in dynamic dielectric environments and to provide material design guidelines for solar fuel technologies. He is an active student leader in the Center for Soft Photo-Electrochemical Systems, where he also serves on the energy justice committee. He served as the secretary of the Association for Chemical Engineering Graduate Students (AChEGS) in 2022 and continues to mentor first-year graduate students in AChEGS and through the Pride Peers Program at Georgia Tech.

Tjards is a graduate research assistant at Georgia Tech’s Sustainable Thermal Systems Laboratory. He graduated with a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech in 2021 before beginning his Ph.D. program, where he is studying energy systems. Tjards’ research is focused on modeling new manufacturing processes of drywall and aluminum to reduce water consumption during production. Additionally, he is working on a new technique for water purification. While in school, he has been a teaching assistant and instructor for the undergraduate mechanical engineering course on energy systems analysis and design (ME 4315). In his free time, Tjards enjoys Formula 1 racing, Georgia Tech baseball games, and woodworking.

There are young children celebrating the holidays this year with their families, thanks to the 3D-printed medical devices created in the lab of Georgia Tech researcher Scott Hollister. For more than 10 years, Hollister and his collaborators have developed lifesaving, patient-specific airway splints for babies with rare birth defects. 

These personalized Airway Support Devices are made of a biocompatible polyester called polycaprolactone (PCL), which has the advantage of being approved by the Food and Drug Administration. Researchers use selective laser sintering to heat the powdered polyester, which binds together as a solid structure. Devices made of PCL have a great safety record when implanted into patients.

Unfortunately, PCL has the disadvantage of having relatively stiff and linear mechanical properties, which means this promising biomaterial has yet to be applied functionally to some other critical biomedical needs, such as soft tissue engineering. How do you make a firm thermoplastic into something flexible, and possibly capable of growing with the patient? Hollister’s lab has figured out how.

“3D auxetic design,” said Jeong Hun Park, a research scientist in Hollister’s lab who led the team’s recent study demonstrating the successful 3D printing of PCL for soft tissue engineering. An auxetic material, unlike typical common elastics, has a negative Poisson’s ratio. That means if you stretch an auxetic material longitudinally it will also expand in the lateral direction, whereas most materials will get thinner laterally (because they have a positive Poisson’s ratio).

So, an auxetic structure can expand in both directions, which is useful when considering biomedical applications for humans, whose bodies and parts can change in size and shape over time and comprise many different textures and densities. Hollister’s team set out to give usually firm PCL some new auxetic properties.

“Although the mechanical properties and behavior of the 3D structure depend on the inherent properties of the base material — in this case, PCL — it can also be significantly tuned through internal architecture design,” explained Park.

Park guided the design of 3D-printed structures made up of tiny struts, arranged at right angles — imagine the bones of very tiny skyscrapers. The team began by creating cube-shaped structures first, to test the auxetic design’s flexibility, strength, and permeability.

Flexible Behavior

Basically, an auxetic material is a network structure designed by assembling unit cells. These unit cells consist of struts and their intersecting joints, which are an important aspect of an auxetic device’s behavior. The rotation of those intersecting joints within the network, under compression or extension, causes negative Poisson’s behavior. It also enables advanced performance for a printed device, including impact energy absorption, indentation resistance, and high flexibility. 

“When you look at the numbers, based on Jeong Hun’s work, the new structure is about 300 times more flexible than the typical solid structure we make out of PCL in our lab,” said Hollister, professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, where he also holds the Patsy and Alan Dorris Chair in Pediatric Technology and serves as the department’s associate chair for translational research.

The combination of flexibility and strength in a device is particularly important here, Park said, because the ultimate goal of the research is to “apply this structure to develop a breast reconstruction implant that has comparable biomechanical properties to native breast tissue. Currently, we don’t have a biodegradable breast implantation option in the clinical setting.”

He explained that these biodegradable breast reconstruction implants serve as a kind of scaffold. The idea is, the biocompatible material (PCL) eventually degrades and is absorbed into the body, while maintaining similar mechanical properties to native breast tissue.

“We expect that native tissue will be first infiltrated into the pores of the biodegradable implant,” Park said. “Tissue volume will then increase within the implant as it degrades and eventually the device itself is replaced with the tissue after complete degradation of the implant.”

Expanding the Cellular Network

Essentially, the 3D-printed breast implant is designed to provide reconstructive support while also facilitating the growth of new tissue.

The space between those tiny struts makes all the difference for the larger device, giving it a softness and pliability that would have been impossible otherwise. Those spaces eventually can be filled with hydrogel that will help foster cell and tissue growth. 

The team’s architected auxetics also include the design of inner voids and spaces inside the struts, creating a kind of microporosity that enables the mass transport of oxygen, nutrients, and metabolites to nurture the expansion and growth of a cellular network.

Park is working with Emory surgeon Angela Cheng in submitting a grant for further research and testing of the breast implant. And the team already is adapting the technology for other applications. One of the collaborators in this research, for example, is Mike Davis, whose lab at Emory is focused on cardiac regeneration.

“Because of the great flexibility, they’re using it to reconstruct infarcted or necrotic myocardial tissue,” Hollister said.

And Park has developed an auxetic version of the pediatric tracheal splint. “The advantage there is, with this design, it can expand in two directions,” he said. “So, as young patients grow, the new device will grow with them.”

Video Demonstration of Auxetic compression from Hollister Lab

At least half of veterans with spinal cord injuries will develop sores on their skin from the unrelieved pressure of sitting for long periods of time in a wheelchair. It’s a constant worry, because these skin ulcers can greatly limit patients’ mobility.

“Pressure injuries directly impact the veteran’s quality of life, because the medical provider will order the veteran to bed rest for weeks and potentially months,” said Kim House, a physician and medical director of the Spinal Cord Injury Clinic at the Atlanta Veterans Administration Healthcare System. “At every clinic visit, I provide education for pressure injury prevention.”

House could one day have a new tool to offer her patients, thanks to researchers in the Georgia Tech College of Engineering, and wheelchair-bound veterans are just the beginning.

Materials engineers are developing new fabric sensors and a customized wheelchair system that assesses and automatically eases pressure at contact points to prevent injuries from developing in the first place.

“We have three key issues happening: First, continuous pressure. Second, moisture, because when you're sitting in the same spot, you tend to sweat and generate moisture. And third is shear. When you try to move somebody, the skin shears. That perfect combination is what causes pressure injuries,” said Sundaresan Jayaraman, professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE). “We believe we have a solution to the perfect storm of pressure, moisture and shear, which means the user’s quality of life is going to get better.”

Get the full story on the College of Engineering website.

Kathleen T. Gosden, Georgia Tech’s chief counsel for Student Life and Academic Affairs, has been named the executive chief of staff for the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research (EVPR), effective Dec. 1.

Gosden joined Georgia Tech in 2011 and has served in varying roles, including as interim general counsel and vice president for Ethics and Compliance and acting deputy general counsel, roles she held concurrently during 2022. Prior to that, she served as assistant chief counsel and senior attorney in employment and litigation for 10 years. She has practiced law in both private practice and public service roles. Notably, before joining Tech, she served for 12 years at the State of Georgia Attorney General’s Office, where she represented and advised state agencies, including the Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia.

In the new role, Gosden will advise Chaouki Abdallah, EVPR and the overall EVPR office on administrative and institutional matters and develop actions plans on policies and procedures, operational effectiveness, and communications on issues that advance the Institute’s priorities, goals, and outcomes set forth in the Institute strategic plan. She will serve as a key campus collaborator on executive initiatives, promote research-related matters and objectives, serve as a liaison and representative on campus committees, and provide strategic oversight to administrative staff within the Office of the EVPR.  

“Kathleen’s time at Tech and her mix of private and public experience position her well to serve in this new capacity,” said Abdallah. “She has been a great partner, collaborator, and trusted expert to the Georgia Tech research enterprise, and I look forward to working with her in her new role as we continue to safely grow our research and improve our services to our research personnel.”

During her tenure at Georgia Tech, Gosden has counseled on a range of institutional issues, including Free Speech and the First Amendment, Title IX, research administration and security, compliance, and scholarly misconduct. She has also served on various committees and negotiations and provided advising and training on issues related to Human Resources, Athletics, and Faculty Affairs, among others. 

“In my time at Georgia Tech, I have been extremely impressed by the research enterprise, its leadership, and the tremendous growth and innovation,” said Gosden. “I am thrilled to be joining the EVPR’s Office and to be serving in this new role.”    

Gosden holds a Bachelor’s of Arts in English and a Juris Doctor from the University of Georgia.

Stefan Abi-Karam, a member of the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and a Ph.D student in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech, has been honored with the prestigious FPL Community Award at the 33rd International Conference on Field-Programmable Logic and Applications (FPL 2023) in Gothenburg, Sweden.

Abi-Karam, a Research Engineer I in GTRI's Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research (CIPHER) Laboratory, was recognized for his paper titled "GNNBuilder: An Automated Framework for Generic Graph Neural Network Accelerator Generation, Simulation, and Optimization." The paper explores the intersection of hardware acceleration and applied deep learning, and delves into areas such as electronic design automation (EDA), FPGA architecture, and VLSI algorithms.

The FPL Community Award recognizes significant research contributions within the field-programmable logic community. It is awarded based on the impact and potential long-term benefits of open-source research, as assessed by peer reviewers during the conference.

Said Stefan, "I am really happy that there is community recognition for open-source academic hardware research, as this is still not the norm, or the open-source aspect is not seen as valuable in many academic research projects."

Abi-Karam's work, conducted in collaboration with Prof. Cong Hao of Georgia Tech's School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), stands out for its focus on the pragmatic aspects of engineering, automation, and co-design of high-level-synthesis-based hardware accelerators for computing graph neural networks. Stefan also received his bachelor's degree from Georgia Tech.

Stefan’s research has potential applications in various fields, including high-energy physics, where the deployment of graph neural networks in hardware.

Abi-Karam's dedication to his research and his success in blending his Ph.D. studies with his work at GTRI exemplify GTRI’s Mission's aims of Educating Future Technology Leaders and being a “People-First” environment.

This award not only recognizes Abi-Karam's individual excellence but also underscores GTRI’s and Georgia Tech's role as leaders in the field of cybersecurity and electrical and computer engineering research.

"The award itself was very unexpected since this was my first time at the FPL conference!" said Stefan excitedly and humbly. "It was also the first time I got to meet and talk to many of the other professors and students for the first time who also work in my research area as well as other areas that overlap with my work at GTRI." 

Congratulations, Stefan!

Recently, GTRI leadership and research faculty were joined by State of Georgia leaders, corporate representatives, and educators to celebrate a notable milestone for an important GTRI program.

STEM@GTRI celebrated its 25th anniversary recently. STEM @GTRI is the Georgia Tech Research Institute's K-12 outreach program. STEM @GTRI strives to inspire, engage, and impact Georgia's students and educators through hands-on experiences, outreach, and professional learning.

STEM@GTRI customizes professional development experiences for educators, connects students and classrooms to Georgia Tech labs and researchers, and brings hands-on, fun, and relevant programming to STEM (science, technology, engineering, and math) educational outreach events across Georgia. STEM@GTRI leverages State of Georgia funding through grants and partnerships to bring additional STEM programming to K-12 students in Georgia. The program first received State of Georgia funding in 1998.

To commemorate this auspicious occasion, STEM@GTRI hosted a luncheon celebrating 25 years of K-12 STEM outreach at GTRI. During the program, an array of speakers reflected on the STEM @GTRI program over the past 25 years and its impact in Georgia and on the future of students.

STEM @GTRI’s First Champion: Claudia Huff

Claudia Huff, the retired GTRI Principal Research Associate who was the first Director of STEM @GTRI, spoke on its inspirational and aspirational early days. She noted that, in 1998, the U.S. was experiencing a rapid permeation of emphasis on STEM education, fueled by legislation such as the Telecommunications Act of 1996. However, while there was a desire to increase technology education, the actual means lagged.

“Computers were coming to the schools, but they weren't ready. There were computer-using educators that are scattered across the state of the country, but they were really organized together, and they hadn't seen some of the things that we could see coming down the road,” she said. That was, in large part, the impetus for the program, which was then called Foundations for the Future (F3).

She embraced and pioneered the partnership-seeking approach that is now a hallmark of the renamed STEM@GTRI.

Huff started with a small amount of seed funding from GTRI. However, her dogged determination led her to secure $2 million in funding from AT&T to really get the ball rolling. The AT&T funds were leveraged into that all-important funding from the State of Georgia, which continues to the present.

“I think the biggest impact was getting everybody aware, or getting people who needed the resources aware that we have resources, letting them know,” Claudia said.

The principles and practices that she put into place out of necessity became the foundation for what STEM@GTRI is 25 years later.

To honor and thank Claudia Huff, she was presented with STEM @GTRI’s inaugural STEM Champion Award.

Educating Future Technology Leaders

GTRI Director Jim Hudgens said that when he first arrived at GTRI four years ago, STEM @GTRI was one of the first programs he heard about: “I was just blown away by the program,” he said during his opening remarks.

“Educating future technology leaders is one of our core mission areas,” said Hudgens. “A big part of what we do in educating technology leaders is that we take it very seriously. Our people are extremely passionate about this--about their many volunteer hours going out to science fairs, going to high schools across the state, teaching classes in high schools--doing as much as they can.

“It's an amazing community at GTRI that makes this happen.”

That passion and spirit of commitment was noted often during the 25th Anniversary luncheon.

The anniversary event was hosted by Leigh McCook, Director of STEM @GTRI, which she calls “a fun role.” Her passion and commitment to STEM@GTRI was noted by speakers throughout the luncheon program.

“One of the greatest impacts I get to experience is working with our K-12 future STEM workforce. When I see a Georgia Tech/GTRI researcher explain and demonstrate their work to a classroom of elementary, middle, or high school students or experience students of all ages interact with our researchers through questions and discovery — I am thrilled to witness students have that ‘ah ha!’ moment and think ‘This is cool stuff! I want to study to learn to be a (fill in the STEM field here),’ or even ‘Oh, now I know why I’m having to learn this topic in my class — someone really does use this stuff in the real world!’

“When we get to bring diversity to Georgia’s classrooms across the state through our outreach, we open worlds of awareness of possibilities and opportunities for our K-12 students.”

Bringing ‘What If’ to the Real World Through Partnerships

“Real-world” impact, and opening students’ (and teachers’) eyes and minds to possibilities were common themes reiterated by the luncheon speakers.

District 25 State Rep. Todd Jones spoke of several of his “dreams” for the State of Georgia: advancements in daily life, from improved transportation to medical advances—all “dreams” that are dependent on significant advances in technology, which Jones said he believes is incumbent on advancing technology education throughout Georgia, including in rural areas without extensive technology resources or even a large quantity of technology educators. That, he said, is where STEM @GTRI’s outreach is invaluable.

Jones said that his office’s ongoing partnership with GTRI is key to improving the “access and rigor” of STEM education in Georgia.

“I'm going to give all the credit to GTRI. There might have been passion coming out of my office and willingness to find a partner to make this happen, but between Bert (Reeves, Vice President, Institute Relations) and the GTRI team, that is what kind of made this a success.

“We did know that GTRI had the resources to be able to make this work. What they had to deal with for a couple of decades around STEM, around the work, shows a passion and an application. That was what we were looking for.”

McCook noted that Jones’ initiative to improve access and rigor of computer science education across Georgia, as part of the newly funded Rural Computer Science Education Program, shows how committed STEM @GTRI is about fostering and furthering partners. She noted that,  in partnership with Georgia Tech’s Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing (CEISMC), the project is “in 16 (Georgia school) districts right now” and includes contributions from the Institute for People and Technology (IPaT), the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines (IRIM), and others.

“You can't dream it if you've never been exposed to it,” Jones said enthusiastically “Dreams come from ‘what if,’ but ‘what if’ can't be had unless you know what's possible and maybe what could be next.”

Such a commitment to fostering a sense of making “what if” possible was reiterated by Karen Faircloth, Director of School Improvement & Professional Learning for the Northwest Georgia Regional Education Service Agency (RESA), which encompasses school districts in smaller communities such as Cartersville, Dallas, Rome, and Tallapoosa.

STEM@GTRI High School Internship Program

STEM@GTRI thrives today largely because of the indefatigable efforts of High School Summer Internship Program co-directors Therese Boston, a Senior Research Associate in ICL, and ATAS Principal Research Engineer Erick Maxwell. STEM@GTRI’s High School Internship Program is one of its premier initiatives. In the internship program, Georgia high school students who are at least 16 years old may apply for five-week paid summer internships hosted in GTRI labs. Interns work on projects in GTRI laboratories and the GTRI Warner Robins field office with the goal of providing students with real-world experiences in science and engineering research. GTRI researchers mentor students by working with them on projects to engage them in first-hand STEM experiences.

As an example of the first-hand nature of the internship, Maxwell cited a project done by an intern team in conjunction with the 3rd Infantry Division (3ID) at Fort Stewart, Georgia. The high schoolers developed a means to streamline the arduous task of counting ammunition rounds via the use of “smart” gloves. To further emphasize the tangible benefits of the students’ experience, Maxwell noted that the students are included on the project’s application for a full patent on the gloves.

The High School Internship Program and other programs of STEM@GTRI make use of partnerships with GTRI’s laboratories, Georgia Tech, the U.S. military, and businesses in technology-related industries.

Among the industry representatives in attendance was Patrick Govan, Higher Education Account Manager at Cisco. He explained how his company, a leader in digital communications technologies, works in outreach along with STEM@GTRI. “We are starting to work with the STEM outreach program, bringing some of the students and internships into our office--we just built a new office in the Coda building (at Tech Square). So, we're show showcasing how technology is used in everyday life and in office space to inspire the younger kids. [We show them] a day in the life of what a career would look like in the tech space.

“Leigh (McCook) and I are trying to get the [STEM@GTRI] summer internship program incorporated into office visits and things like that.”

Looking ahead to future goals and activities was very much a part of the 25th-anniversary celebration. Here’s to the next 25 years of STEM@GTRI!

Writer: Christopher Weems 
Photos: Christopher J. Moore
GTRI Communications
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Atlanta, Georgia

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Founded in 1934 as the Engineering Experiment Station, GTRI has grown to more than 2,900 employees, supporting eight laboratories in over 20 locations around the country and performing more than $940 million of problem-solving research annually for government and industry. GTRI's renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, policy, and technical expertise to solve complex problems for the U.S. federal government, state, and industry.

State policymakers, health care researchers, and others will have a clearer picture of the health of Georgia citizens thanks to a new database of medical, dental, and pharmacy claims for public and private insurance plans in the state. The Georgia All-Payer Claims Database (APCD), supported by researchers at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), will begin reporting and releasing data in early 2024.

The APCD was established by the Georgia General Assembly (O.C.G.A. 31-53-40) by Senate Bill 482 in 2020 to address growing concerns over the cost, quality, and access to healthcare across the state. The Office of Health Strategy and Coordination (OHSC) is responsible for creating and implementing the APCD, and the APCD's administrator is GTRI’s Center for Health Analytics and Informatics (CHAI).

When in full operation, the APCD will provide regular reports on Georgia health care issues and accept requests from stakeholders for other customized data. Beyond benefits to researchers and policymakers, the data will help support price transparency and drive consumer-focused tools reporting on such issues as quality, cost, and patient outcomes. The APCD’s information will not include any personally identifiable information about patients.

“The APCD will serve as a platform to help us really understand and improve the quality of health care in Georgia,” said Megan Denham, a GTRI senior research associate who serves as Implementation Project Director for the system. “It will help the citizens of Georgia understand more about their care and know what to expect so they can make informed decisions. Policymakers will use the data to drive funding allocations and make interventions. For our large community of researchers, it will allow them to leverage a really broad view of health data.”

Development of the system will put Georgia among the more than two dozen U.S. states that are able to make critical health care decisions based on data about the specific needs of their citizens, said Jon Duke, director of GTRI’s Health Emerging and Advanced Technologies (HEAT) Division.

“The Georgia APCD will move Georgia into the ranks of states that have a deeper understanding of their population’s health, health care costs and utilization, and opportunities for improvement,” Duke said. “We’ve seen report after report of how all-payer claims databases have led to concrete reductions in cost, improvements in care, and more informed policy-making across a wide range of topics. It will be a huge win for Georgia.”

The system will initially include information for about 5.4 million Georgia citizens – more than half of the state’s population – and is expected to be the largest aggregator of the state’s health data. The information will include data from Medicare, Medicaid, and the state health benefit plan, along with commercial claims payers. 

Data will be provided in aggregate, and maintained without personally identifiable information. “Privacy and security are paramount,” said Duke. “There’s a huge focus on privacy protection, and we have an incredible team of collaborators across the state working to help ensure that we provide only the minimum data necessary for key use cases. The APCD will not analyze or share patient identifiers such as medical record numbers, names, or addresses.”

Beyond data on specific treatment protocols, the system will also provide information on their context. For instance, data on a knee replacement surgery could include information on imaging done, diagnostic testing, and presurgical activities leading up to the procedure, as well as physical therapy afterward – and both cost and outcome measures. 

“It’s much more than just the surgery,” said Denham. “We want to look at it as a whole, and also consider the components. That gives more information about the care that people are receiving and what they can expect.”

Beyond the care itself, the system will provide generalized information about patients receiving it – demographics, the symptoms that led to the diagnosis, relevant medical conditions such as arthritis and diabetes, and other claims made by the patient. 

“All of these things can be brought together to help understand the equation,” said Duke. “People who have had knee replacement surgery can be looked at in the aggregate so we can assess potential risk factors for poor outcomes, or conversely, factors that may support patients recovering more quickly.”

Certain claims-paying entities are required by law to provide data to the APCD, while others are invited to submit information voluntarily. Beyond the value to policymakers and researchers, information about Georgia-based costs will also be helpful in understanding what consumers pay as their share of health care service costs. 

“Price transparency is a key goal for the APCD. While there are many factors affecting what data can be shared, in other APCD states, there are excellent tools designed to support consumer knowledge about the cost of different procedures at different locations where someone might go for a specific procedure,” Duke said. “Some tools provide data on health care quality from Medicare and Medicaid which allows for some integrated perspective on cost and quality measures.”

The APCD plans to regularly provide reports on specific Georgia health care issues, such as the incidence and context of chronic diseases that affect large populations in Georgia. These will include diabetes, hypertension, heart disease, and heart failure. The system will also provide data on cancer, as well as maternal and child health, and the median rate for “surprise billing.”

Beyond reports on broad issues important to providing a big picture of health in Georgia, aggregated data on these five million patients can also be made available to state agencies, policymakers, researchers, health care organizations, and others. Requests for standard and customized data sets and reports will be reviewed by a data release and review committee, based on alignment with the APCD objectives, the qualifications of the requesters, and other factors.

Development of the Georgia APCD benefits from the lessons learned from similar projects established in other states, as well as guidance and input from a broad range of industry and academic stakeholders. “We’re taking the best of what other states have learned and put them together to meet the specific needs of our state,” Duke said. “The legislation creating our APCD was well thought-out and reflects the best ideas from APCDs nationally.”

Writer: John Toon (john.toon@gtri.gatech.edu)  
GTRI Communications  
Georgia Tech Research Institute  
Atlanta, Georgia

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is the nonprofit, applied research division of the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Founded in 1934 as the Engineering Experiment Station, GTRI has grown to more than 2,900 employees, supporting eight laboratories in over 20 locations around the country and performing more than $800 million of problem-solving research annually for government and industry. GTRI's renowned researchers combine science, engineering, economics, policy, and technical expertise to solve complex problems for the U.S. federal government, state, and industry.

The American Mathematical Society (AMS) recently announced top honors for three School of Mathematics professors, including a top research award and a pair of faculty recognized as AMS Fellows for their work in advancing the field.

Levi L. Conant Prize

School of Mathematics Associate Professor Jennifer (Jen) Hom has received the 2024 Levi L. Conant Prize from the AMS. The award recognizes the best expository paper published in either Notices of the AMS or Bulletin of the AMS in the preceding five years. Hom is recognized for her paper, “Getting a handle on the Conway knot,” which was published in the Bulletin in 2021.

“These awards partially signal the depth and breadth of accomplishment and influence of these three remarkable scholars," says School of Mathematics Chair Mike Wolf. "Jen’s tribute is for her how she was able to communicate the clarity of her understanding of fundamental and difficult mathematics to a wide audience, creating a resource that will affect mathematics and mathematicians for many years."

“I am honored to receive the 2024 Levi L. Conant Prize,” Hom says. “An extremely important but often undervalued part of our job as mathematicians is communication, and I’m grateful to the AMS for valuing high-quality exposition in their publications.” 

Hom adds that she’s “proud to be in the company of my esteemed former colleague Dan Margalit,” who won the Conant Prize in 2021. Margalit then served as a Mathematics Professor at Georgia Tech, and is now Stephenson Professor and Chair of the Department of Mathematics at Vanderbilt University.

AMS cited Hom’s article as “a wonderful resource for the community on timely and important material,” adding that “Hom’s paper packs a remarkable amount of knot theory into 11 pages, but remains clear, engaging, and easy to read throughout. Readers are left with new understanding and a sense of excitement for the future of this field.”

American Mathematical Society Fellows

Last year, Hom was also recognized as an AMS Fellow for her topology research and service to the mathematical community.

This season, two fellow School of Mathematics faculty, Professor Greg Blekherman and Professor Thang Le, also have joined those ranks.

“Thang and Greg received a distinction reserved for only the top few percent of research mathematicians nationwide," Wolf says. "Thang was singled out for his deep work in the creation and development of the fairly new subject of quantum topology over the last quarter century as well as for that subject’s implications for the very classic area of low-dimensional topology. Quantum topology is now a vast area, but many of its most prominent achievements came about through the work of Thang.

“Greg’s work courses through and blends algebraic and convex geometry as well as combinatorics and optimization — and also mathematical biology," Wolf explains. "Most notably, Greg is known for his diverse and important contributions to the theory of nonnegative and “sum of squares” polynomials, a hugely important topic in contemporary optimization theory.

Blekherman and Le are among more than three dozen mathematical scientists from around the world named 2024 AMS Fellows — a cohort which also includes Kasso Okoudjou, a former School of Mathematics Ph.D. student advised by Professor Christopher Heil. 

“It is my pleasure to congratulate and welcome the new class of AMS Fellows, honored for their outstanding contributions to the mathematical sciences and to our profession,” notes AMS President Bryna Kra. "This year's class was selected from a large and excellent pool of candidates, highlighting the many ways in which our profession is advanced, and I look forward to working with them in service to our community."

“The school is just thrilled by these well-deserved awards to our wonderful colleagues," Wolf added.

About Jennifer (Jen) Hom

Hom joined Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 2015 after she served as a Ritt Assistant Professor at Columbia University. She has been an associate professor in the School of Mathematics since 2018. Hom’s research centers on low-dimensional topology, which she usually studies using Heegaard Floer homology. She was asked to speak in the topology section of the 2022 International Congress of Mathematicians, the world’s largest gathering of mathematicians. Hom has held a Sloan Fellowship and a Simons Fellowship, is an AMS Fellow, and holds a National Science Foundation CAREER award. 

About Greg Blekherman

Blekherman, who joined Georgia Tech in 2011, is a 2012 recipient of the Sloan Research Fellowship. His research interests lie at the intersection of convex and algebraic geometry. Blekherman received his Ph.D. in 2005 from the University of Michigan under the direction of Alexander Barvinok, and he has held postdoctoral positions at the Microsoft Research Theory Group, Virginia Bioinformatics Institute, Institute for Pure and Applied Math (UCLA) and UC San Diego before joining Georgia Tech.

About Thang Le

Le received his M.S. and Ph.D. from Lomonosov Moscow State University, and joined Georgia Tech in 2003. His research interests include differential topology, 3-manifolds, knot theory, and quasicrystals. He serves as an editor of Quantum Topology, The Journal of Knot Theory and Its Ramifications, and Acta Mathematica Vietnamica. 

Read the AMS press releases on the 2024 Conant Prize and AMS Fellows here.

In an article published this week in Nature Human Behaviour, computational science and engineering Assistant Professor Srijan Kumar and his colleagues describe why new behavioral science interventions are needed to tackle AI-generated disinformation.

Generative artificial intelligence (AI) tools have made it easy to create realistic disinformation that is hard to detect by humans and may undermine public trust. Some approaches used for assessing the reliability of online information may no longer work in the AI age. We offer suggestions for how research can help to tackle the threats of AI-generated disinformation.

In March 2023, images of former president Donald Trump ostensibly getting arrested circulated on social media. Former president Trump, however, did not get arrested in March. The images were fabricated using generative AI technology. Although the phenomenon of fabricated or altered content is not new, recent advances in generative AI technology have made it easy to produce fabricated content that is increasingly realistic, which makes it harder for people to distinguish what is real.

Generative AI tools can be used to create original content, such as text, images, audio and video. Although most applications of these tools are benign, there is substantial concern about the potential for increased proliferation of disinformation (which we refer to broadly as content spread with the intent to deceive, including propaganda and fake news). Because the content generated appears highly realistic, some of the strategies presently used for detecting manipulative accounts and content are rendered ineffective by AI-generated disinformation.

How AI disinformation differs

What makes AI-generated disinformation different from traditional, human-generated disinformation? Here, we highlight four potentially differentiating factors: scale, speed, ease of use and personalization. First, generative AI tools make it possible to mass-produce content for disinformation campaigns.

One example of the scale of AI-generated disinformation is the use of generative AI tools to produce dozens of different fake images showing Pope Francis in haute fashion across different postures and backgrounds. In particular, AI tools can be used to create multiple variations of the same false stories, translate them into different languages, mimic conversational dialogues and more.

Second, compared to the manual generation of content, AI technology allows disinformation to be produced very rapidly. For example, fake images can be created with tools such as Midjourney in seconds, whereas without generative AI the creation of similar images would take hours or days. These first two factors — scale and speed — are challenges for fact-checkers, who will be flooded with disinformation but still need substantial amounts of time for debunking. 

Continue reading Research Can Help to Tackle AI-generated Disinformation.