Johney Green Jr., M.S. ME 1993, Ph.D. ME 2000, has been chosen to serve as the new laboratory director for Savannah River National Laboratory (SRNL). A proud Yellow Jacket, Green received both his master’s and doctoral degrees in mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech and currently serves on the Strategic Energy Institute’s (SEI) External Advisory Board. He also served on the board of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering from 2017 to 2022.

“SRNL has truly found an exceptional leader in Johney. His vision and dedication are inspiring, and I am genuinely excited to see the remarkable contributions he will make in advancing SRNL,” said Christine Conwell, SEI interim executive director. “We look forward to his continued partnership with SEI and the positive impact he will bring to the energy community in 2025 and beyond.”

The Battelle Savannah River Alliance (SRNL’s parent organization) selected Green for this role, describing him as “a dynamic leader who brings deep, wide-ranging scientific expertise to this new position.” 

With an annual operating budget of about $400 million, SRNL is a multiprogram national lab leading research and development for the Department of Energy’s (DOE) Offices of Environmental Management and Legacy Management and the National Nuclear Security Administration’s weapons and nonproliferation programs. 

Green currently serves as associate laboratory director for mechanical and thermal engineering sciences at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). In this position, he oversees a diverse portfolio of research programs including transportation, buildings, wind, water, geothermal, advanced manufacturing, concentrating solar power, and Arctic research. His leadership impacts a workforce of about 750 and involves managing a budget of more than $300 million.

At NREL, Green transformed the lab’s wind site into the innovative Flatirons Campus and transitioned the campus from a single-program wind research site to a multiprogram research campus that serves as the foundational experimental platform for the DOE’s Advanced Research on Integrated Energy Systems (ARIES) initiative.

"We are immensely proud to call Johney a Woodruff School alumnus. His achievements and service to Tech through advisory board engagement inspires us, and we are excited to see him step into this prestigious role at SRNL. We look forward to deepening our collaboration with him as he continues to make a powerful impact,” said Devesh Ranjan, Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr. School Chair and professor in the Woodruff School.

Prior to his role at NREL, Green held several key leadership roles at Oak Ridge National Laboratory (ORNL). As director of the Energy and Transportation Science Division and group leader for fuels, engines, and emissions research, he managed a broad science and technology portfolio and user facilities that made significant science and engineering advances in building technologies; sustainable industrial and manufacturing processes; fuels, engines, emissions, and transportation analysis; and vehicle systems integration. While Green was the division director, ORNL developed the Additive Manufacturing Integrated Energy (AMIE) demonstration project, a model of innovative vehicle-to-grid integration technologies and next-generation manufacturing processes.

Early in his career, Green conducted combustion research to stabilize gasoline engine operation under extreme conditions. During the course of that research, he joined a team working with Ford Motor Co., seeking ways to simultaneously extend exhaust gas recirculation limits in diesel engines and reduce nitrogen oxide and particulate matter emissions. He continued this collaboration as a visiting scientist at Ford's Scientific Research Laboratory, conducting modeling and experimental research for advanced diesel engines designed for light-duty vehicles. On assignment to the DOE’s Vehicle Technologies Office, Green also served as technical coordinator for the 21st Century Truck Partnership. He also contributed to a dozen of ORNL's 150-plus top scientific discoveries.

Green was the recipient of a National GEM Consortium Master’s Fellowhip sponsored by Georgia Tech and ORNL, and he served as the National GEM Consortium chairperson from 2022-2024. He is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and an SAE International Fellow. He has received several awards during his career and holds two U.S. patents in combustion science. 

From combating cancer and infections to storing energy, lipid-protein interactions are critical to biological processes in cells. But the mechanisms that drive these interactions have historically been difficult to map and understand.

A study led by Georgia Tech is showcasing a new resource to help researchers understand the structure and function of these interactions — called assemblies — at both molecular and functional levels. The work is published in the Nature-family journal Communications Chemistry.

Called BioDolphin — short for Biological Database of Lipid-Protein Highly Inclusive Interactions — the resource is the first comprehensive, annotated database of protein-lipid interactions. Integrated into a user-friendly web server, BioDolphin is freely accessible to all. Users can easily view and download interaction data and systematically analyze lipid-protein assemblies.

“Understanding lipid-protein interactions is crucial in advancing our understanding of human health and disease treatment,” says the study’s corresponding author, Andrew McShan. “BioDolphin is the first resource to collect this type of information for all kinds of proteins, not just those found in membranes. And because it is publicly available, this information is now at the tips of researchers’ fingertips.”

“BioDolphin as a comprehensive database of lipid–protein binding interactions” is led by McShan, an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry at Georgia Tech, alongside first author Li-Yen (Zoey) Yang, Bioinformatics Ph.D. student; School of Computational Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Yunan Luo; and Kaike Ping, a Ph.D. student at Virginia Tech.

Diving into accessible data

A curated database with richly annotated information, BioDolphin contains over 127,000 lipid-protein binding interactions. And while most databases of lipid-protein assemblies have focused solely on a specific type of protein — membrane proteins — BioDolphin expands beyond that.

“BioDolphin enables us to globally define the structural features of lipid-protein assemblies across the eight different classes of lipid compounds to understand their cellular function and roles in disease,” says McShan, adding that the database also provides information on paired lipid-protein annotation, experimental binding affinities, intermolecular interactions, and atomic structures across a wide range of lipid-protein interactions — all available to anyone with an internet connection.

A molecular blueprint for research — and teaching

“In the past, this research has been limited because lipids are notoriously difficult to study in the lab,” McShan says. "BioDolphin changes the paradigm. It is the first time that anyone has collected, annotated, and analyzed the known structural universe of lipid-protein interactions across all organisms.”

It’s a rapidly developing field. McShan was recently awarded a prestigious Curci grant for cutting-edge cancer research into lipid-based universal immunotherapies and vaccines.

Beyond research applications, the team hopes that BioDolphin will be a resource for biochemistry students. 

“The database can serve as a tool for teachers and students studying these protein-lipid interactions, which is often an underdeveloped topic in biology and biochemistry courses,” McShan says. “I hope that BioDolphin is a valuable resource for the researchers of today — and that it can also be a building block for the researchers of tomorrow.”

Funding: Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation, NSF Advanced Cyberinfrastructure Coordination Ecosystem: Services & Support (ACCESS) program, NIH National Institute of General Medical Sciences (NIGMS), Partnership for an Advanced Computing Environment (PACE) at the Georgia Institute of Technology, and Taiwan Ministry of Education Government Scholarship to Study Abroad program.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s42004-024-01384-z 

The next is now at Georgia Tech.

The Institute’s Research Next initiative has officially concluded with a legacy of successes that help redefine the future of interdisciplinary research. It launched nearly five years ago as a bold strategy to enhance Georgia Tech’s research capabilities and address some of the world’s most pressing challenges. 

Research Next was composed of three phases. At its outset, the Commission on Research Next tapped the knowledge and expertise of Georgia Tech faculty, staff, and students to broadly analyze the future research landscape for Georgia Tech and for other research-intensive universities. 

Then, a second team of faculty, staff, and students worked on Phase 2 of the effort. They created goals aligned with the Institute Strategic Plan to help Georgia Tech respond to the challenges identified in Phase 1. Phase 3 assembled implementation teams to create strategies for achieving the goals laid out in Phase 2. 

Tim Lieuwen, Georgia Tech’s interim executive vice president for Research and Research Next co-chair, said he is excited about the initiative’s achievements and its “transformative outcomes.”

“Thanks to the valuable input from our Georgia Tech community, the Research Next team created a framework for the role of research universities in solving societal problems. That led to several significant Georgia Tech initiatives, including HBCU engagement, launching center-scale efforts, research leadership development, and research faculty support. I am particularly proud these initiatives are centered around supporting and developing the people who make our research enterprise thrive,” he said.

Key Outcomes

• Scaling Research Operations: Identified pain points in invoicing and procurement, onboarded a research center startup manager, and advanced project management workflows.
• HBCU/MSI Partnerships: Hired a program manager, hosted the 2023 Research Collaboration Forum with 170 attendees, and launched CollabNext, a software tool to help foster partnerships between Georgia Tech and HBCU faculty members who have similar interests. Our HBCU program was highlighted by the White House and President of the United States.
• Research Faculty Support: Established an associate vice president for research faculty, improved onboarding, and launched several mentoring programs.
• Community Building: Fostered connectedness with events like Research Administrators’ Day and launched Spotlight Awards for staff, faculty, and postdoctoral researchers.
• Improved Administration: Updated 40-plus policies, expanded training, and began developing a chatbot to streamline award lifecycle processes.
• Leadership Development: Created the Research Leadership Academy, launching in Spring 2025, to prepare leaders for large-scale research initiatives.

“Research Next has reshaped our interdisciplinary research framework,” said Research Next co-chair Mark Whorton. “By addressing operational excellence and enhancing strategic collaborations, we've cultivated a more cohesive and dynamic research setting that drives innovation and discovery."

One of the enduring legacies of Research Next is an annual strategic analysis to shape new research and enhance existing projects. It’s meant to foster collaboration, improve communication, and inform hiring priorities. The strategic analysis is an integral component of Georgia Tech President Ángel Cabrera’s Big Bets.

Chaouki Abdallah, former Georgia Tech executive vice president for Research, launched Research Next to equip Georgia Tech for future challenges through “innovation, expertise, creativity, and a commitment to improving lives.”

In celebrating its conclusion, Abdallah said, "Research Next has demonstrated that when we come together with a shared vision and plans, we achieve remarkable things. In addition to advancing the Georgia Tech’s research capabilities, the outcomes of this initiative reinforce the Institute’s commitment to serving society as a whole. I am excited to see how Georgia Tech will build on this foundation to drive meaningful impact regionally, nationally, and globally."

In South Florida, two Caribbean lizard species met for the first time. What followed provided some of the clearest evidence to date of evolution in action. 

Lead author James Stroud, an assistant professor in the School of Biological Sciences, was studying Cuban brown anoles (Anolis sagrei) in South Florida when the Puerto Rican crested anole (Anolis cristatellus), suddenly appeared in the region.

Published in Nature Communications, the study documents what happens as the two Anolis lizards adapted in response to the new competitor, while helping to resolve a longstanding challenge in evolutionary biology — directly observing the role of natural selection in character displacement: how similar animals adapt in response to competition.

"Most of what we know about how animals change in response to this process comes from studying patterns that evolved long ago,” Stroud says. “This was a rare opportunity where we could watch evolution as it happened."

Competition from coexistence 

While these two small, brown lizards diverged evolutionarily between 40-60 million years ago and evolved on completely separate Caribbean islands, the two species are nearly identical, and fill similar ecological niches.

So, when the Puerto Rican crested anole suddenly appeared in Cuban brown anole habitat at Fairchild Tropical Botanic Garden in 2018, the two were competing for similar habitats and food sources.

“When two similar species compete for the same resources, like food and territory, they often evolve differences that allow them to coexist,” Stroud says. But, while scientists have found many examples of similar species developing different traits to ease this overlap, “scientists have rarely been able to observe this process as it unfolds in nature.”

Stroud’s team had already been studying Cuban brown anoles at the Fairchild Tropical Botanic Gardens in Miami, Florida, two years prior to when the crested anoles invaded. The team was able to quickly pivot to observe how the invasion changed both species, analyzing the lizards’ changing diets, measuring if the lizards were moving through foliage or on the forest floor, and recording the different species’ locations relative to each other. For over a thousand lizards, they also measured perch height — the distance from the ground that the lizard is perching — a primary marker of how Anolis lizards divvy up habitat.

“We not only observed how these lizards changed their habitat use and behavior when they encountered each other,” says Stroud, “but we also documented the natural selection pressures driving their physical evolution in real-time."

Human-made habitats and natural experiments

The research team found that when these lizard species occur together, they divide up their habitat in predictable ways — the Cuban brown anole shifted to spend more time on the ground, and evolved longer legs to run faster in this habitat, while the slightly larger Cuban crested anole lived in vegetation above the ground. 

"We found that brown anoles with longer legs had higher survival after crested anoles showed up," says Stroud. "This matches perfectly with the physical differences we see in populations where these species have been living together for many generations."

Stroud adds that while the research provides some of the strongest observations of evolution in action to date, it also demonstrates how human activities can create natural experiments that help us understand fundamental evolutionary processes — both species of Anolis lizard in the study were originally non-native to South Florida.

“As species increasingly come into contact due to human-mediated introductions and climate change, these studies may be important for predicting how communities will respond,” he says. "By studying these non-native lizards who are meeting each other for the first time in their existence, we had a unique opportunity to see the actual process unfold and connect it to the patterns we observe in nature."

Gold and white pompoms fluttered while Buzz, the official mascot of the Georgia Institute of Technology, danced to marching band music. But the celebration wasn’t before a football or basketball game — instead, the cheers marked the official launch of Georgia AIM Week, a series of events and a new mobile lab designed to bring technology to all parts of Georgia

Organized by Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing (Georgia AIM), Georgia AIM Week kicked off September 30 with a celebration on the Georgia Institute of Technology campus and culminated with another celebration on Friday at the University of Georgia in Athens and aligned with National Manufacturing Day.

In between, the Georgia AIM Mobile Studio made stops at schools and community organizations to showcase a range of technology rooted in AI and smart technology.

“Georgia AIM Week was a statewide opportunity for us to celebrate Manufacturing Day and to launch our Georgia AIM Mobile Studio,” said Donna Ennis, associate vice president, community-based engagement, for Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute and Georgia AIM co-director. “Georgia AIM projects planned events in cities around the state, starting here in Atlanta. Then we headed to Warner Robins, Southwest Georgia, and Athens. We’re excited about the opportunity to bring this technology to our communities and increase access and ideas related to smart technology.”

Georgia AIM is a collaboration across the state to provide the tools and knowledge to empower all communities, particularly those that have been underserved and overlooked in manufacturing. This includes rural communities, women, people of color, and veterans. Georgia AIM projects are located across the state and work within communities to create a diverse AI manufacturing workforce. The federally funded program is a collaborative project administered through Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute and the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute.

A cornerstone of Georgia AIM Week was the debut of the Georgia AIM Mobile Studio, a 53-foot custom trailer outfitted with technology that can be used in manufacturing — but also by anyone with an interest in learning about AI and smart technology. Visitors to the mobile studio can experience virtual reality, 3-D printing, drones, robots, sensors, computer vision, and circuits essential to running this new tech.

There’s even a dog — albeit a robotic one — named Nova.

The studio was designed to introduce students to the possibilities of careers in manufacturing and show small businesses some of the cost-effective ways they can incorporate 21st century technology into their manufacturing operations.

“We were awarded about $7.5 million to build this wonderful studio here,” said Kenya Asbill, who works at the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs (RICE) as the Economic Development Administration project manager for Georgia AIM. “We will be traveling around the state of Georgia to introduce artificial intelligence in manufacturing to our targeted communities, including underserved rural and urban residents.”

Some technology on the Georgia AIM Mobile Studio was designed in consultation with project partners Kitt Labs and Technologists of Color. An additional suite of “technology vignettes” were developed by students at the University of Georgia College of Engineering. RICE and UGA served as project leads for the mobile studio development, and RICE will oversee its deployment across the state in the coming months.

To request a mobile studio visit, please visit the Georgia AIM website.

During Monday’s kickoff, the Georgia Tech cheerleaders and Buzz fired up the crowd before an event that featured remarks by Acting Assistant Secretary of the U.S. EDA Christina Killingsworth; Jay Bailey, president and CEO of RICE; Beshoy Morkos, associate professor of mechanical engineering at the University of Georgia; Aaron Stebner, co-director of Georgia AIM; David Bridges, vice president of Georgia Tech’s Enterprise Innovation Institute; and lightning presentations by Georgia AIM project leads from around the state.

Following the presentations, mobile studio tours were led by Jon Exume, president and executive director, and Mark Lawson, director of technology, for Technologists of Color. The organization works to create a cohesive and thriving community of African Americans in tech.

“I’m particularly excited to witness the launch of the Georgia AIM Mobile Studio. It really will help demystify AI and bring its promise to underserved rural areas across the state,” Killingsworth said. “AI is the defining technology of our generation. It’s transforming the global economy, and it will continue to have tremendous impact on the global workforce. And while AI has the potential to democratize access to information, enhance efficiency, and allow humans to focus on the more complex, creative, and meaningful aspects of work, it also has the power to exacerbate economic disparity. As such, we must work together to embrace the promise of AI while mitigating its risks.”

Other events during Georgia AIM week included the Middle Georgia Innovation Corridor Manufacturing Expo in Warner Robins, West Georgia Manufacturing Day – Student Career Expo in LaGrange, and a visit to Colquitt County High School in Moultrie. The week wrapped on Friday, Oct. 4, at the University of Georgia in Athens with a National Manufacturing Day celebration.

“We’re focused on growing our manufacturing economy,” Ennis said. “We’re also focused on the development and deployment of innovation and talent in the manufacturing industry as it relates to AI and other technologies. Manufacturing is cool. It is a changing industry. We want our students and younger people to understand that this is a career.”