Providing research testing services to both internal and external stakeholders is an integral function of the Renewable Bioproducts Institute (RBI). These services include chemical analysis; corrosion; paper, board and box testing; pulp analysis; and pulp recovery analysis. Established over 25 years ago, RBI’s testing services are well-known in the industry for their quality and customer service. RBI is one of the ten interdisciplinary research institutes at Georgia Tech that champions innovation in converting biomass into value-added products, developing advanced chemical and bio-based refining technologies, and advancing excellence in manufacturing processes.

The RBI research testing services is a team of professional scientists and engineers who work together to provide information and offer solutions required by a manufacturers and users of biomass products, as well as Georgia Tech faculty and students engaged in research on campus. The multidisciplinary capabilities of the team make them uniquely qualified to address customers' technical needs in the areas of process and product development, and quality control. Where appropriate, the team involves RBI faculty and other staff experts to arrive at the best possible solution for their customers and users.

In this article, we will focus on a day’s work with the chemical analysis team. Headed by Rallming Yang, senior research scientist at RBI, the team is equipped to follow the Technical Association of the Paper and Pulp industry (TAPPI) standard of testing, which only a small number of labs in the country can do, and has also developed some of its own internal protocols. Yang leads two specific characterization programs within RBI: (1) the pulping and bleaching analysis, paper recycling, and recovery lab, and (2) the chemical analysis lab.

The chemical analysis team is busy year-round with research projects and testing services. In addition, during the Spring semester, the team also provides support to a paper science laboratory course for undergraduate and graduate students. In the recent times, chemical analysis of black liquor from pulp mills has kept the team busy with more than 30 projects completed by the team over three months for various industry customers. Currently, black liquor analysis continues to account for over 50% of the workload of the lab.

Black Liquor (BL) is a byproduct of a wood pulping and is released when cellulose fibers are separated from wood chips. BL contains lignin, which is used as a biofuel within the mill, and several other chemicals that are recovered and reused. In most pulp mills, nearly 50-70% of BL is converted into a convenient source of fuel or energy. Due to the important role played by black liquor in a paper mill, it needs to be tested regularly to ensure consistency in composition. The RBI chemical analysis lab gets BL samples from a pulp mill, who contact the lab by email to get their testing request into the queue. The process involved in the testing is very intense and has multiple steps that need to be carefully administered.

In the first step, inorganic elements in BL are identified by digesting it in a precise mixture of acids and filtering the mixture. The filtrate is introduced into an Inductively Coupled Plasma (ICP) Emission Spectrometer that can identify more than 70 different inorganic elements and compounds like sulfur, potassium, sodium, iron, calcium, etc. The next step involves identifying the proportion of anions like sulfate, chloride, thiosulfate. In this step, BL is diluted to a specific level and analyzed using a method called Capillary Ion Electrophoresis (CIE).

The next step involves analyzing BL for organic substances using two methods – gas chromatography mass spectrometry (GC/MS) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometry (FTIR). For organic substances with a lower molecular weight of less than 600 Daltons (Da), GC/MS is employed where the gas chromatography separates the chemical mixture, and the mass spectrometry identifies each of the components.

The final step is to identify organic substances and polymers with higher molecular weights. For example, lignin is one of the main polymers in BL with a molecular weight higher than 600 Da. FTIR is used for testing during this step. Based on vibrations within each molecule, an FTIR spectrum allows identification of molecular groups within lignin. The equipment then uses a computer to identify the substances by comparing the sample spectrum with a built-in library. The RBI team provides detailed lab reports that is used by the pulp mill to adjust their operating parameters for trouble-free operations.

In addition to the chemical analysis of byproducts like black liquor and other chemical compounds, Rallming Yang’s team also conducts studies on pulping and bleaching, repulping, and fiber characterizations.

Scientists have discovered that electrons from Earth may be contributing to the formation of water on the Moon’s surface. The research, published in Nature Astronomy, has the potential to impact our understanding of how water — a critical resource for life and sustained future human missions to Earth's moon — formed and continues to evolve on the lunar surface.

“Understanding how water is made on the Moon will help us understand how water was made in the early solar system and how water inevitably was brought to Earth,” says Thom Orlando, Regents' Professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry with a joint appointment in the School of Physics, who played a critical role in the discovery alongside Brant Jones, a research scientist in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech.

“Understanding water formation and transport on the Moon will help explain current and future observations,” Jones adds. “It can help predict areas with high concentrations of water that will help with mission planning and in situ resource utilization (ISRU) mining. This is absolutely necessary for sustained human presence on the Moon.”

The role of solar wind

“Water production on airless bodies is driven by a combination of solar wind, heat, ionizing radiation and meteorite impacts,” Jones explains. Solar wind — a continuous stream of protons and electrons emitted by the Sun, traveling at 250 to 500 miles per second — is widely thought to be one of the primary ways in which water has been formed on the Moon. 

While solar wind buffets the Moon’s surface, Earth is protected due to its magnetosphere, a shield that forms as a result of the magnetic fields associated with the hot metals circulating in the Earth’s molten interior layers. However, solar wind is affected by the magnetosphere, forming the northern lights (aurora borealis) and southern lights (aurora australis) at Earth’s poles, and stretching the spherical shield into having a long “tail" — the magnetotail — which the Moon passes through periodically on its orbit around Earth.  When the Moon is in the magnetotail region, it is temporarily shielded from the protons in solar wind, but still exposed to photons from the Sun.

"This provides a natural laboratory for studying the formation processes of lunar surface water," says University of Hawai‘i (UH) at Mānoa Assistant Researcher Shuai Li, who led the research study. "When the Moon is outside of the magnetotail, the lunar surface is bombarded with solar wind. Inside the magnetotail, there are almost no solar wind protons and water formation was expected to drop to nearly zero."

Surprisingly, while the Moon was within the magnetotail, and shielded from solar wind, the researchers found that the rate of water formation did not change. Since water was still forming in the absence of solar wind, the researchers began to theorize what could be responsible for forming the water.

Building on previous research, Orlando and Jones hypothesized that electrons from Earth could be responsible. 

A work in progress

“This work was actually based, in part, on our previous studies examining the role of ionizing radiation in metal-oxide particles present in nuclear waste storage tanks,” Orlando explains, adding that in a previous project as part of an Energy Frontier Research Center called IDREAM, they showed that water forms when a mineral called boehmite is irradiated with electrons produced by energetic particles after radioactive decay.

While boehmite does not exist on the Moon’s surface, minerals with similar compositions are present, and Orlando and Jones theorized that, like the boehmite, irradiation from electrons might be producing water on lunar surface grains. “Despite the incredibly different physical environments,” Orlando says, “the chemistry and physics is likely very similar.”

The solar wind water cycle has the potential to make huge impacts on human discovery of the Moon and beyond. “While some of these water molecules will be destroyed by the Sun, some will eventually make it to the cold spots in permanently shadowed regions at higher latitudes,” Orlando says, in “the regions where some of the planned Artemis landings will be.” The next step? “Our hope is to prove that the hypothesis is correct!”

Orlando and Jones have been studying the role of solar wind on the in situ production of water on the Moon, Mercury, and other airless bodies as part of the NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) center called Radiation Effects on Volatile Exploration of Asteroids and Lunar Surfaces (REVEALS). 

The realization that electrons from Earth were part of the dynamic lunar water cycle was a direct result of the interactions of several scientists with diverse backgrounds made possible by the SSERVI support. The work, which will further expand on the solar wind water cycle — including other sources of energy beyond surface temperature like meteorite and electron impacts — will continue in a new Georgia Tech-led SSERVI program, the Center for Lunar Environment and Volatile Exploration Research (CLEVER).

The Covid-19 pandemic was one of the most serious crises since the end of World War II, taking a staggering human and economic toll across the planet. As the world gets up again, groggily, like a punch-drunk fighter, it’s become increasingly clear that this coronavirus changed everything in our society. And it’s forcing leadership to consider new and evolving paths forward.

In the U.S., one of the more challenging and complicated post-pandemic deliberations is around national security and how to respond to the next infectious disease run amok. Georgia Institute of Technology researcher Margaret Kosal addresses the issue in her study, “How Covid-19 is Reshaping U.S. National Security Policy,” published recently in the journal Politics and the Life Sciences.

The study was inspired, in part, by Kosal’s participation in National Academy of Sciences (NAS) committees focused on reducing bioterrorism and chemical terrorism.

“My work with NAS prompted me to think about how we are designing our strategies and what is driving these choices,” said Kosal, associate professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs within the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

In the wake of the pandemic, the U.S. is actively changing part of its national security enterprise. Kosal researched Department of Defense documents, among other sources, and noted that recent trends are moving policy in a different direction. Directing the national response to infectious disease is a task that has moved from public health into the domain of national security.

It’s a process called securitization. And based on Kosal’s findings, the current trend, “turns the securitization debate on its head.” That is, instead of treating an emerging infectious disease, like Covid-19, as a national security problem, there has been a noticeable shift to treat biological weapons and bioterrorism as a public health problem.

It’s not quite the “public healthization” of biodefense programs, according to Kosal, “but rather, it is an intermingling of the two, especially in the context of critical aspects of politics and warfare.”

And that presents a potentially confusing problem for national defense and security where clarity and specificity are most important. The use of biological weapons, or an act of bioterrorism, “are fundamentally political decisions, choices of warfare,” Kosal said. “But a disease is not something that depends on political will, and it isn’t influenced by power.”

An emerging infectious disease like Covid-19 is clearly a public health issue and should be treated as such, falling under the purview of the National Institutes of Health or Centers for Disease Control, she added, then emphasized, “but biological weapons and bioterrorism should not be treated like infectious diseases. They are different in very important ways.”

The Danger of Bad Information

Complicating any national security discussion, according to Kosal, are misinformation and disinformation, and the resultant erosion of confidence in institutions, “including but not limited to governments,” she wrote. “This is a missing aspect of the current discussions about

U.S. policies to reduce biological threats, whether from states or terrorists, in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic.”

The pandemic revealed a significant weakness in governments’ ability to adequately address the problem of misinformation and disinformation, a failure that manifested in conspiracy theories and the flouting of public health recommendations.

Kosal cited numerous articles and studies that demonstrate how a global crisis opened the door to distortion of the facts, as extremist groups worked to leverage fears and anxieties, usually to broaden the appeal of their own narratives. Some of the more radical included: an al-Qaeda faction that claimed Covid, “is a hidden soldier sent by God to fight his enemies; a leader of Boko Haram faction who told followers the pandemic was, “divine punishment for the world.”

Kosal observed, too, that economic hardships and other impacts of the pandemic have made it easier for extremist groups to exploit the fragility of weak governments, while gaining followers and resources, and putting a halt to peace-building efforts in some regions. Technology, like the content-generating algorithms used in social media, has helped spread wrong information, too.

“The misinformation and disinformation problem is serious because it leads to this loss of confidence in government,” Kosal said. “That confidence is crucial in the context of disease and in responding to bioterrorism.”

Ultimately, she hopes her study will have an impact on defense policymakers who are helping to form and clarify our nation’s security plans.

“I’d really like to see more recognition of the political piece,” she said. “It’s critically important for our counter proliferation efforts and for our efforts to reduce the threat of these weapons more broadly.”

Placing extremist ideologies and manufactured weapons in a public health context, she argued, lessens the emphasis on the political will and the importance of the relevant strategic choices necessary to address a potential conflict.

And the nature of conflict, she said, “is all about people and power. Diseases don’t care really care about those things.”

“You're in the middle of an ice sheet, and it’s one of the most desolate places on Earth. There are no living animals there. There are no plants there. The only animals you see are birds. They might be lost.”

That’s how Rachel Moore describes the view from the top of the Greenland ice sheet. “It's a really challenging environment, but it was really, really interesting to be there. I was there for nearly 50 days.”

Moore is an expert at collecting data in difficult research environments, traveling to some of the most extreme places on Earth in order to research microbes, and what hints they might give regarding astrobiology. 

“It all started in grad school, when I joined a microbial ecology lab,” Moore recalls. “I pretty quickly learned that I love to do really difficult, challenging projects. I got interested in working around fire, biomass burning and forests, and I started collecting bacteria from the air. That was a challenge in and of itself, just trying to collect these really tiny things while standing in the smoke from the forest fires. But from that I learned that I loved to go out into the environment and collect things and try to understand everything around me.”

“I have a lot of different projects, but they all connect through astrobiology,” Moore says. “I’m interested in anything that hasn't been answered yet.” Moore is also leading a project called EXO Methane, which is investigating if different Archaea could survive in Martian and Enceladus-like environments. She’s also collaborating on a project that will send a probe to Venus next year.

Moore started her postdoctoral research at Georgia Tech, and is now continuing her work as a Research Scientist in the same laboratory. “The first project I started in this lab focused around how microbes can survive a really, really dry environment,” she adds. To study this, Moore traveled to the Atacama desert in Chile — the driest place on Earth, and also one of the best analogs to the surface of Mars. “What we were interested in there is how organisms survive intense radiation and intense desiccation. And how does that change as you look at different sites in the Atacama?”

Then, this past summer, Moore traveled to another extreme environment — Greenland. “Instead of being hot and dry, Greenland is extremely cold and dry,” Moore explains. “So it was similar in some aspects, but completely different in terms of logistics and sampling methods. Because we were there in the summer, the sun never set. We were also at high elevation — 10,530 feet above sea level.”

Beneath the ice

The project was started by Nathan Chellman and Joe McConnell from the Desert Research Institute (DRI), and Moore’s role this year was to investigate the microbiology component of the research. “They had been seeing some anomalies in methane and carbon monoxide in ice samples,” Moore says. “We were curious if microbes might be producing some of this, either in the ice core after it’s been sampled, or while it’s still in the glacier.”

“The microbes would not be swimming around or anything” in the ice cores, Moore explains, “but it’s possible that their metabolism is still active, and they’re potentially able to make some of the gases, like methane, in this frozen environment. Our goal was to measure these things in the environment.”

Gathering samples wasn’t easy. “We set up a lab on the glacier, and we set it up in a trench to try to keep any of the ice cores that we pulled out roughly at the same temperature as the glacier itself,” Moore says. Because of that, “weather was a huge, huge thing. Anytime it would get stormy, the wind would blow all of the snow around, and it would fill the entrance to our trench. We had to dig ourselves out several times. People would put out flags so that you could see your way back to the main house or back to your dorms.”

The team hopes that this research will give a more defined record of the past from the Greenland ice sheet, improving climate change predictions. Moore also notes applications in astrobiology, adding that “there are a lot of icy worlds like Mars, Enceladus, and Europa, with either an icy crust over the ocean or glaciers on the northern and southern poles.”

Moore was also able to test new technology in the field, using a tool built by Georgia Tech undergraduates alongside her advisor Christopher Carr, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences. An ice melter that can be used to take and clean ice samples, the tool is a miniaturized prototype that may be able to help take measurements on Mars, or in similar remote environments in the future.

“Being able to take a tool that Georgia Tech undergraduates made to Greenland and test it on 600-year-old ice in the field was a really cool experience,” Moore adds. “We brought Starlink with us, and so I was able to video call the undergraduate team while I was testing their tool, which was really special.”

The team is now lab-analyzing ice cores that they brought back from Greenland, unraveling which microbes might be present and potentially active. “It's really interesting to see: Is this all chemistry? Is it biology based? Or is there some intersection of the two?” Moore says. “Maybe there's some chemistry or photochemistry happening, plus some biology happening. Whatever it is, we'll have to wait and see.”

Projects address basic research challenges facing the Energy Earthshots Initiative to mitigate climate change and reach a net-zero carbon economy.

Georgia Tech faculty and researchers are involved in five university-led projects and two new Energy Earthshot Research Centers that are part of a $264 million grant from the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE). The funding includes establishing 11 new Energy Earthshot Research Centers (EERC) led by DOE’s national labs and 18 university research teams addressing one or more of DOE’s Energy Earthshots initiatives focused on industrial decarbonization, carbon storage and removal, offshore wind, and more.

Matthew McDowell, Akanksha Menon, and Claudio Di Leo

Akanksha Menon, assistant professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, has been awarded $3 million in funding to lead a university project titled “Understanding Thermo-Chemo-Mechanical Transformations in Thermal Energy Storage Materials and Composites.” The project will bring together Matthew McDowell, associate professor in the Woodruff School; Claudio Di Leo, assistant professor in the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering; and Jeff Urban from the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory to provide a fundamental understanding of the coupled thermo-chemo-mechanical phenomena in thermal energy storage materials that will enable low-cost and stable storage.

Annalisa Bracco, Taka Ito, and Chris Reinhard

Annalisa Bracco, professor and associate chair; Taka Ito, professor; and Chris Reinhard, Georgia Power Chair and associate professor — all from the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences — will join colleagues from Princeton, Texas A&M, and Yale University for an $8 million Earthshot project that will build an “end-to-end framework” for studying the impact of carbon dioxide (CO_²) removal efforts. The project, titled “Carbon dioxide removal and high-performance computing: Planetary Boundaries of Earth Shots,” includes creating computer models to measure how well CO_² removal techniques work on land, rivers, and oceans.

Elizabeth Qian, assistant professor in the Guggenheim School and the School of Computational Science and Engineering, will join colleagues from New York University, Los Alamos National Lab, and National Renewable Energy Lab for an Earthshot project titled “Learning reduced models under extreme data conditions for design and rapid decision-making in complex systems (ROME).” The project will develop mathematical foundations and computational methods to support the design and operation of complex systems for carbon removal and renewable energy generation that will be used for simulation, design, and decision-making of the Floating Offshore Wind Shot and the Carbon Negative Shot EERCs.

 

David Flaherty, professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering will join colleagues from the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, Northern Arizona University, Texas State University, and Argonne National Lab to co-lead a project titled “Harnessing Electrostatics for the Conversion of Organics, Water and Air: Driving Redox on Particulate Liquids Earthshot (DROPLETS).” The overall objective of DROPLETS is to explore an approach based on microdroplet-enabled redox reactions (which involve the transfer of electrons between substances) toward H_² production (a clean and renewable energy source), CO_² activation (which can help mitigate greenhouse gas emissions), and the synthesis of redox species for long-duration energy storage.

Guoxiang (Emma) Hu, assistant professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, joins colleagues from Georgia State University, Carnegie Melon University, Oak Ridge National Lab, and the University of Utah on a project titled “Atomic Level Compositional Complexity for Electrocatalysis (Atomic-C_²E).” Atomic-C_²E will integrate fundamental electrochemistry, quantum chemical and multiscale simulations, and materials chemistry to develop an understanding of electrocatalysts that aid in the conversion of CO_² into value-added chemical fuels and hydrogen production via water electrolysis — and address technological bottlenecks challenging them.
 

The DOE national lab EERCs will bring together multi-institutional, multidisciplinary teams to perform energy-relevant research with a scope and complexity beyond what is possible in standard single-investigator or small-group awards. Addressing key research challenges relevant to the Energy Earthshots, the 11 new centers will be housed at eight DOE national laboratories and will receive a combined $195 million over four years.

Of the 11 lab centers, the DEGradation Reactions in Electrothermal Energy Storage (DEGREES) center led by the National Renewable Energy Laboratory consists of Professor Akanksha Menon and Associate Professor Shannon Yee from the Woodruff School. DEGREES is an EERC that will provide fundamental understanding of the science behind complex degradation mechanisms and instabilities that affect the performance of thermal energy storage.




 

Non-Equilibrium Energy Transfer for Efficient Reactions (NEETER) is the second EERC that will be housed at the Department of Energy's Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL) and involves Georgia Tech. Led by David Sholl, director of ORNL’s transformational decarbonization initiative and professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, NEETER is focused on developing chemical processes that use sustainable methods instead of burning fossil fuels to radically reduce industrial greenhouse gas emissions to stem climate change and limit the crisis of a rapidly warming planet.

The Department of Energy launched the Energy Earthshots Initiative to spur decarbonization efforts that will help the United States meet climate and clean energy goals. The initiative connects DOE’s basic science and energy technology offices to accelerate innovations toward more abundant, affordable, and reliable clean energy solutions; seeks to revolutionize many sectors across the United States; and will rely on fundamental science and innovative technology to be successful.

Professor Elizabeth Qian will Serve as Co-PI on DoE Energy Earthshots Project                  

Qian will develop computing methods to support design and operation of complex systems for carbon removal and renewable energy generation.

Full story

Three Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Researchers Awarded DOE Earthshot Funding for Carbon Removal Strategies

Bracco, Ito, and Reinhard will create computer models to measure how well CO_² removal techniques work on land, rivers, and oceans, as part of $264 million in grants.

Full story

Assistant Professor Akanksha Menon Awarded $3 Million for Research as part of DOE's Energy Earthshots Initiative

Menon and her team will address two Energy Earthshots to help achieve net-zero carbon by 2050, combat climate crisis.

Full story

Professor David Sholl Leading New Energy Earthshot Research Center to Stem Climate Change

The Department of Energy also selected David Flaherty to co-lead a second project designed to lower energy input and reactor cost for complex chemical reactions.

Full story

Writer and Media Contact:
Priya Devarajan | priya.devarajan@research.gatech.edu        

Training ranges across the United States and around the world help pilots and aircrew members stay at the top of their game, all while adopting the new tactics and equipment necessary to address the changing threat environment. A training solution known as WarRoom is helping fulfill the program’s tagline, “Better Training. Faster.” by integrating disparate training applications and systems at the ranges.

WarRoom, part of the U.S. Air Force’s Live Mission Operations Capability (LMOC) program, has now been installed at over 20 different training ranges around the world. It brings together as many as a dozen programs that provide information on potential threats, handle radio communications, analyze aircraft engagements, support mission planning, and display a fused combat operating picture. WarRoom operates on non-proprietary commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) computer systems. 

What WarRoom does is comparable to how modern smartphones brought together separate pagers, cameras, mobile phones, electronic calendars, and other devices, explained Joel Rasmussen, a research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), which developed WarRoom and an allied display application known as Angel for the U.S. Air Force.

“The whole concept of LMOC is to get more competency into the brains of our warfighters in less time,” he said. “More efficient training helps warfighters improve more quickly, allowing the collective capabilities of our Air Force to elevate. We can also replicate and adapt to changing enemy capabilities because this system is designed to be agile.”

Training ranges provide valuable assistance to pilots and aircrews, allowing them to battle “red team” opponents and learn new tactics and techniques in a controlled environment. WarRoom increases the training value of each training mission to help prepare warfighters for combat.

By providing a common hardware/software operating platform for combat training ranges, WarRoom also allows new applications to be quickly installed and updated. Previously, new applications had to be installed individually at the ranges, a time-consuming process. 

“We can host these applications on a single server cluster and give them to everybody who needs them,” Rasmussen said. “The main thing is that every range, no matter the size, can have the best tools available. There are many advantages to having a common platform for the ranges.”

In developing the WarRoom, a team headed by GTRI Systems Research Manager Ed Loeffler virtualized legacy range systems so they could operate on a common architecture. That allows all the applications to run on virtual machines, which reduces maintenance and hardware upgrade costs – and facilitates data sharing. Loeffler’s team is experienced in scalable and interconnected live-synthetic, hybrid, and digital architectures and environments with redundant, fail-safe capabilities that can be rapidly reconfigured between unit-level or large-force test and training events and wargaming exercises.

For ranges that don’t yet have WarRoom, GTRI has developed a scripted deployment process that reduces the overall installation time. “This has turned a months-long integration effort into a couple of days with a pre-approved Authority to Operate (ATO). That really helps with getting a new installation approved and accredited, and also ensures that we have good repeatability at each of the ranges,” Loeffler said.

WarRoom can easily accommodate new applications thanks to the Test and Training Enabling Architecture (TENA). Additionally, several ranges using WarRoom are now connected using the Live Mission Operations Network (LMON).

“Beyond the existing WarRoom systems, GTRI has several additional installations scheduled, along with multiple updates. A typical new WarRoom install requires the team to be on-site for less than a month for installation, integration, and user training,” Rasmussen said. 

A key component of WarRoom is a new display system known as Angel that supports blended training for the combat air force. Angel is a versatile visualization tool not limited to legacy data formats or architectures, does not use any proprietary data models, and is not tied to any specific ground system.

WarRoom also supports Live Virtual Constructive (LVC), which will allow a live person in a real aircraft to interact with a live person in a simulator – or an artificial intelligence or “constructive” entity on a computer. While this training component hasn’t yet been fully implemented, WarRoom is designed to enable LVC by integrating all the data necessary for it in a single platform.

Based on input from warfighters, WarRoom has been in development since 2019 and has been implemented incrementally over time. This has allowed the research team to respond to the changing needs identified by users – and new threats that have arisen.

Jared Lyon, a GTRI Senior Research Engineer in the Phoenix Field Office, has been involved with the project since its inception. “We frequently solicit and receive feedback from the people using the system so we can make sure it does exactly what they need,” Lyon said. “We recently hosted more than a dozen system users in our Phoenix field office to get input. We were making changes to the product in real-time, trying to understand challenges from the warfighters’ perspective.”

Though developed for the Air Force, WarRoom may expand to other Department of Defense branches that also could benefit by integrating their training range software. Using a common platform could facilitate more interaction between the services, Rasmussen said.

WarRoom is a major project for GTRI involving more than 40 researchers altogether. The work is principally being done in three field offices – Utah, Phoenix, and Orlando – as well as GTRI headquarters in Atlanta. More than a dozen subcontractors have been involved, including Space Dynamics Lab and Raytheon Solipsys.

In addition to the GTRI researchers already mentioned, the project has included Principal Research Engineer Mike “Scratch” Fitzpatrick and Principal Research Associate Mike Naes.

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.

AI solutions have the power to become our silent partners in ways that could drastically improve our daily lives — and are already doing it. Yet, in a world where algorithms can sift through data with a precision no human can match, uneasiness stirs. 

Georgia Tech researchers are confronting the paradoxes, pitfalls, and potential of artificial intelligence. Here, some of them shed light on the emerging role of AI in our lives — and answer questions about how humans and machines will coexist in the future.  

We asked Georgia Tech AI experts key questions about the technology, its use and misuse, and how it might shape our shared future. Here’s what they had to say.

Click here to read the story. 

Carolina Colón, a Ph.D. student at Georgia Tech and a member of GTRI’s GEM Fellowship cohort, has been honored with the "Role Model Award – Graduate" by the Society of Hispanic Professional Engineers (SHPE). This award is part of SHPE's Technical Achievement and Recognition (STAR) Awards and will be presented at the SHPE National Convention taking place in Salt Lake City, Utah, from Nov. 1-5.

Carolina Colón

Carolina is currently working toward her Ph.D. in Bioengineering, focusing on T-cell therapies, at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. She earned her B.S. in Aerospace Engineering from the Florida Institute of Technology in 2022 and holds an A.A. in Engineering from Valencia College, awarded in 2019.

Originally from Puerto Rico, she moved to Florida for her last year of high school.

Research at GTRI, Georgia Tech

Carolina's research work aims to combine aerospace engineering and bioengineering to develop devices that enable the mass production of cell therapies to lower their cost and make them more accessible.

GEM Fellowship

Colón was a participant in GTRI’s GEM Fellowship program in 2022. The national GEM Consortium provides funding for graduate education through corporate sponsorships and a partnership with university partners, such as Georgia Tech. 

The National GEM Consortium is a network of leading corporations, government laboratories, elite universities, and elite research institutions that empowers qualified students from underrepresented communities to pursue a graduate degree in a STEM field. GEM’s mission is to garner a talent pool of African American, Hispanic American, and Native American advanced degree-seekers in STEM fields.

Every year, GEM identifies and recruits close to 2,000 students and working professionals from underrepresented groups to participate in its program, which consists of three graduate fellowship tracks: Master of Science in Engineering, Ph.D. in Science, and Ph.D. in Engineering.

GEM also provides financial support to aspiring graduate students from underrepresented groups, allowing them to pursue their dreams without worrying about money.

Students selected into the GEM Fellowship program must complete a corporate internship during the summer and attend graduate school during the fall and spring semesters. In exchange, students are provided funding for graduate school through an agreement with their home institutions.

In the GEM Fellowship program, one of her advisors was GTRI Principal Research Engineer Jud Ready of the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL).

Ready said that Carolina “increased teamwork and morale while creatively expanding knowledge of her lab mates’ different cultural backgrounds.”

Said Carolina of her GEM experience: "The experience I gained at GTRI will definitely last me a lifetime, and it’s something that has changed my life immensely. Thanks to all at EOSL and GEM."

Other Research Programs

Carolina’s research and professional trajectory has also been aided by her participation in multiple Georgia Tech summer research programs, including the Cell Therapy Manufacturing (CMaT), FOCUS, and SURE programs. Georgia Tech’s FOCUS program is one of the nation’s premier graduate recruitment programs designed to attract highly skilled students who have historically been underrepresented in higher education. The Summer Undergraduate Research in Engineering/Sciences (SURE) program is a 10-week summer research program designed to attract qualified under-represented minority and women students into graduate school in the fields of engineering and science.

Woodruff School Honors

Most recently, as a new graduate student at Georgia Tech, she has been selected as the Vice President of the Woodruff School Graduate Women (WSGW) group and has already put into motion her ideas regarding Hispanic heritage, GT PRIDE, community college information sessions, etc.

The School of Mechanical Engineering has recognized her Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion (DEI) efforts. She is an active volunteer with student recruitment panels and represented the school at the Women of Technology Gala. The school also awarded her the Inaugural Women of Woodruff “Rising Star” award for her efforts. 

To cap it off, the Woodruff School also awarded Carolina the inaugural Interdisciplinary Research Fellowship (IRF). This honor recognized Carolina's vision of intertwining the fields of aerospace and bioengineering to create enhanced devices and enable cell therapies in the space environment for astronauts in long-term space missions.

Nada es imposible si lo intentas. (Nothing is impossible if you try.)
 -- Carolina Colón

Beyond Academia

In addition to her studies, Carolina has worked with Marriott Hotels for about ten years. When she is not in the lab, Carolina enjoys activities such as watching anime, learning languages, playing video games, and swimming.

About the Award and SHPE

SHPE is the largest association in the U.S. aimed at supporting Hispanics in STEM fields. The organization’s STAR Awards are annual honors given to individuals, companies, and government agencies that have demonstrated commitment and measurable impact in advancing Hispanics in STEM. The awards are a key feature of the annual SHPE National Convention.

Carolina has been a member of SHPE for three years. A key example of her contribution to SHPE is that, in 2022, she was invited to represent Georgia Tech College of Engineering at the SHPE national conference in North Carolina, and is reprising the same role this year as well.

Leading up to last year’s event, she helped students with graduate school applications, resumes, practice interviews, and pointers on how to land internships. At the event, she talked to many students and told/encouraged them to apply to the many programs that she has participated in, such as Georgia Tech’s FOCUS and SURE programs.

The award received by Carolina Colón reflects GTRI’s and Georgia Tech’s ongoing commitment to creating a diverse academic environment and advancing excellence in STEM fields.

Carolina Colón’s recent accolade serves as a testament to her dedication and contribution to the field of STEM. It also highlights the quality of research and academics within GTRI and Georgia Tech.

We are proud to celebrate her achievements.

Ready said about Carolina: “It seems apparent already that she is destined to be one of those ‘special’ students that go on to make an impact throughout their career in numerous areas.”

We agree—and expect to note many more achievements in the future.

Writer: Christopher Weems 
GTRI Communications
Georgia Tech Research Institute
Atlanta, Georgia

Photos: Candler Hobbs
Georgia Institute of Technology

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.

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) has named Terence Haran as the new Director for the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL), effective Oct. 1. Haran will be responsible for bringing strategic leadership and vision to the lab, which is a leader in optics and microelectronics.

Haran has been part of EOSL for over 24 years. In 1999, he joined GTRI as a student. He became a full-time research faculty member in 2002 after completing his bachelor’s degree in Electrical Engineering at Georgia Tech. In 2008, Haran was named a Branch Head and went on to become Associate Division Chief in 2015. He has also served as the Interim Division Chief for the Electro-Optical Systems Innovation Division and, most recently, as Associate Lab Director.

Haran’s research experience includes analyzing, prototyping, and testing integrated optical systems for intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) and threat warning applications. He has led program development and sponsor engagement in those areas within EOSL and across GTRI. 

His experience also spans into being an advisor for government programs. He served as a trusted technical advisor for several DoD program offices, which provided regular opportunities to represent GTRI in front of senior DoD officials. He also oversaw two major GTRI-wide contract vehicles sponsored by the Army and the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD).

Don Davis, Deputy Director for Research in Electronics, Optics, and Systems at GTRI, described Haran’s contributions to GTRI. 

“Terence has fostered key collaborations across GTRI, greatly enhancing our mission impact,” Davis said. “He has distinguished himself as a leader in all aspects of the lab’s business, including technical contributions, sponsor engagement, and program development and management. I have confidence that following his vision, EOSL will achieve our goal of being a nationally recognized and preeminent research organization in the fields of optics and microelectronics.”

EOSL is a leader in Electro-Optic (EO) and radio frequency (RF) signal and information processing, with expertise covering materials and devices, system design, algorithm development, and modeling and simulation for signals across the electromagnetic spectrum from RF through UV. Major research areas include optical and photonic systems for ISR, EW, and related applications; optical and electronic materials and devices; aircraft survivability equipment system analysis and optimization; and AI/ML applied to these activities.

Haran said he is looking forward to contributing to the expansion of EOSL’s national impact.

“I am very excited about the opportunity to lead a great team of very talented researchers as we tackle some of the hardest problems in optics and microelectronics,” he said.  “EOSL has incredible potential in an area with significant demand from our research sponsors and I look forward to increasing our impact on the nation.”

GTRI conducts research through eight laboratories located on Georgia Tech’s midtown Atlanta campus, in a research facility near Dobbins Air Reserve Base in Smyrna, Georgia, and in Huntsville, Alabama. GTRI also has more than 20 locations around the nation where it serves the needs of its research sponsors. GTRI’s research spans a variety of disciplines, including autonomous systems, cybersecurity, electromagnetics, electronic warfare, modeling and simulation, sensors, systems engineering, test and evaluation, and threat systems.

Writer: Madison McNair (madison.mcnair@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 $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.

We work with coworkers every day to help us solve problems. For example, we may exchange ideas when discussing ways to increase revenue or when rolling out a new product or service. As we develop closer relationships with colleagues, we may notice a coworker who often thinks outside the box or is always teeming with ideas to help improve the organization. You might even be the person with all the ideas.

A recent study looked at the influence of coworker creativity on work relationships and discovered something interesting: Participants sought a closer relationship with coworkers they perceived as being more creative. Moreover, the subjects were more inclined to establish a closer relationship with a creative coworker of the opposite sex or from a different demographic than them.

The researchers Christina E. Shalley, Sharon M. and Matthew R. Price Chair and professor of Organizational Behavior at the Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business; Amy P. Breidenthal, assistant professor of Business Management at Agnes Scott College; and Gamze Koseoglu, senior lecturer in Management at The University of Melbourne, examined whether the number and strength of a creative coworker's relationships increased over time as more colleagues sought them out. Their paper "When perceiving a coworker as creative affects social networks over time: A network theory of social capital perspective" was recently published in the Journal of Organizational Behavior.

 If a creative coworker's network did increase, they posited that the coworker would also be seen as a high performer and given a more favorable position within the organization, especially if the organization valued and encouraged creativity. In other words, in an organization that encouraged creativity, the more coworkers developed relationships with a creative coworker, the more others sought to do the same, which increased the creative person's network and standing within the organization. 

Perhaps most surprising is that among their hypotheses, a creative coworker in a minority group and from a different demographic was viewed as more creative and experienced more popularity within the network. This is due to a perception among coworkers - and in previous research - that minorities and those from different demographics tend to offer distinctive points of view, different ways of thinking, and, therefore, more significant creative insights.

“Besides improving relationship opportunities for minority employees, this also provides advantages for employees in the majority since they can potentially benefit from learning from diverse other perspectives and acquiring resources from them,” said Shalley.

Based on their findings, creative individuals within the workplace are viewed in high regard, prompting others to work on establishing a closer relationship with these colleagues. Furthermore, when a creative employee’s network is expanded, they may be offered more opportunities in an organization, particularly if the organization encourages creativity. In addition, their work suggests that being seen as a creative employee boosts confidence in their abilities with themselves and their coworkers.

Shalley et al. believe organizations would do well to encourage creativity in the workplace. The researchers suggest organizations can accomplish this by providing development opportunities that help introduce colleagues who may not know each other and encourage them to discuss potential solutions to organizational problems. Holding brainstorming meetings can also promote creativity among workers as long as organizations ensure that all ideas are treated equally.

“Our findings highlight practical opportunities for both employees and managers to enhance relationships closeness, especially for employees who are dissimilar from their coworkers, by being creative at work,” said Shalley.