Jud Ready first visited Beaverbrook Park for an adopt-a-stream event as a graduate student. When he moved to the northwest Atlanta neighborhood, he got involved with improvement efforts at the park. 

“It was a muddy mess back then. Over time, we added an exercise trail, playgrounds, a gazebo, and ball fields, but we didn't have a place where you could just walk through the woods,” Ready said. The problem? A creek prevented easy passage, and the park lacked a bridge to cross it.

Despite receiving a grant from Park Pride, a nonprofit that helps residents improve their parks, Ready realized it wasn’t nearly enough money to build a bridge over the rushing waters. Then Ready, a principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute with a joint appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering, learned that one of his colleagues was using decommissioned wind turbine blades for bridges.

For eight years, Russell Gentry, a professor in the School of Architecture and a member of the Re-Wind Network, has explored how to upcycle wind turbine blades into functional infrastructure. Re-Wind, an international organization, has constructed two bridges in Ireland, where wind energy is more prevalent. The Beaverbrook bridge is the first in the U.S., but building it hasn’t been a simple copy-and-paste process from across the Atlantic Ocean.

“It's not recycling because we're not taking the material back to its original state; it's really adaptive reuse,” explained Gentry. “Think of it as the difference between wood and paper. You can take a tree and grind it up finely for paper, but if you leave it in its original form, you have wood. It’s a much more capable material from a structural perspective.” 

Like almost everything in America, the blades are bigger than their European counterparts.  The 15-meter blade weighs around 7,000 pounds, so moving it from its first home in a Colorado wind farm to a Georgia public park was no easy feat. With funding from the National Science Foundation, the Department of Energy, and wind turbine manufacturer Siemens Gamesa, Ready and Gentry established a team of a dozen Georgia Tech students, researchers, and alumni to bring the blade to Beaverbrook Park. 

Cayleigh Nicholson (architecture), Sakshi Kakkad (computing and architecture), who both graduated in 2024, and fourth-year civil engineering student Gabriel Ackall made sure the bridge was engineered well and that it complied with city regulations. Nicholson spent a semester surveying Beaverbrook to determine the best path and placement of the bridge. Kakkad developed software to better understand the geometry of the blade and position it in the bridge. Ackall was involved in the design process, working with the foundation contractor, Cantsink, to calculate stresses and deflections in the BladeBridges.  

“We’ve essentially had to design the entire structural system of the bridge from scratch, as existing building and bridge codes do not have much information about either the composite materials used in wind turbine blades or in adaptive reuse for new construction,” Ackall noted. “We used advanced modeling software combined with the knowledge we’ve gained from over a half dozen years of wind turbine blade testing and prototyping to make the bridge a reality and ensure their safety.” 

Even alumnus Tierson Boutte, CE 2002, who owns the tree company Boutte Tree, helped make the installation possible. “We’re grateful to be able to give back to the community by pruning the trees for the crane to be able to lift the turbine blades,” he said. 

On a sunny day in mid-March, the bridge was installed with a combined crew of 16 from Chappell Construction, led by alumnus  Wade Chappell, IE  2000; Williams Erection Company, owned by alumnus Art Williams, CE 1983; and ironworkers from Local 387. Finally, with a little help from an unusual source, a neighborhood can fully enjoy its park.

Video by Maxwell Guberman 
Photos by Allison Carter

Georgia Tech researchers recently proposed a method for generating quantum entanglement between photons. This method constitutes a breakthrough that has potentially transformative consequences for the future of photonics-based quantum computing. 

“Our results point to the possibility of building quantum computers using light by taking advantage of this entanglement,” said Chandra Raman, a professor in the School of Physics. 

Quantum computers have the potential to outperform their conventional counterparts, becoming the fastest programmable machines in existence. Entanglement is the key resource for building these quantum computers. 

Light has always been seen as ideal for quantum computing, but it presents challenges. Photons don’t interact with each other. “If I have two or more photons, it's extremely difficult to make them interact; they fly right by each other,” said postdoctoral researcher Aniruddha Bhattacharya. “The key discovery here is we can entangle photons in a useful, controllable, and deterministic way.” 

The researchers devised a protocol to create entanglement consistently. Their protocol makes use of a mathematical geometric structure known as non-Abelian quantum holonomy, which can entangle photons without requiring quantum measurements. Holonomy can be implemented with on-chip photonic devices, suggesting this protocol could be used to create scalable and integrable photonic quantum computers.

The research’s implications are staggering for the future of quantum computing. Photonic quantum computers work well at room temperature, are portable, and are more easily integrated with existent quantum communication systems and links. Quantum computing is the future of not just computing but innovation, and photons could unlock new frontiers. This research was published in Physical Review Letters.               

The Georgia Institute of Technology recently joined the National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC), a public-private consortium dedicated to supporting and extending U.S. leadership in semiconductor research, design, engineering, and advanced manufacturing. This collaboration aligns with Georgia Tech's commitment to fostering innovation and driving economic growth through cutting-edge research and development.

"Joining the NSTC is a significant milestone for Georgia Tech," said George White, senior director for strategic partnerships. "This partnership will enable us to collaborate with leading experts in the semiconductor field, drive groundbreaking research, and contribute to the advancement of semiconductor technology in the U.S."

The NSTC is operated by Natcast (National Center for the Advancement of Semiconductor Technology) and supported by the Department of Commerce through the CHIPS and Science Act. NSTC brings together key stakeholders from academia, industry, and government to create a robust semiconductor ecosystem. As a member, Georgia Tech will have access to a wide range of benefits, including research grant opportunities, participation in NSTC-led research projects, and access to state-of-the-art facilities and resources.

Georgia Tech's involvement in the NSTC will focus on several key areas, including workforce development, research and development initiatives, and fostering collaboration between academia and industry. By participating in the NSTC, Georgia Tech aims to enhance its research capabilities, support the growth of the semiconductor industry, and contribute to national economic and security goals.

Learn more about CHIPS initiatives at Georgia Tech:

$100M Investment Will Propel Absolics Inc., Georgia Tech’s Advanced Packaging Research

Georgia Tech Joins $840M DoD Project to Develop and Manufacture Next-gen Semiconductor Microsystems

Semiconductor Research Corp. and Georgia Tech Secure $285M SMART USA Institute

Georgia Tech scientists are revealing how decades-long research programs have transformed our understanding of evolution, from laboratory petri dishes to tropical islands — along the way uncovering secrets that would remain hidden in shorter studies.

Through a new review paper published in Nature, the researchers underscore how long-term studies have captured evolution's most elusive processes, including the real-time formation of new species and the emergence of biological innovations.

"Evolution isn't just about change over millions of years in fossils — it's happening all around us, right now," says James Stroud, the paper’s lead author and an Elizabeth Smithgall Watts Early Career Assistant Professor in the School of Biological Sciences at Georgia Tech. "However, to understand evolution, we need to watch it unfold in real time, often over many generations. Long-term studies allow us to do that by giving us a front-row seat to evolution in action."

The paper, “Long-term studies provide unique insights into evolution,” is the first-ever comprehensive analysis of these types of long-term evolutionary studies, and examines some of the longest-running evolutionary experiments and field studies to date, highlighting how they provide new perspectives on evolution. For example, in the Galápagos, a 40-year field study of Darwin’s finches — songbirds named after evolutionary biology’s famous founder — documented the formation of a new species through hybridization. In the lab, a study spanning 75,000 generations of bacteria showed populations unexpectedly evolving completely new metabolic abilities.

“These remarkable evolutionary events were only caught because of the long-term nature of the research programs,” Stroud says. “Even if short-term studies captured similar events, their evolutionary significance would be hard to assess without the historical context that long-term research provides.”

“The most fascinating results from long-term evolution studies are often completely unexpected — they're serendipitous discoveries that couldn't have been predicted at the start,” explains the paper’s co-author, Will Ratcliff, Sutherland Professor in the School of Biological Sciences and co-director of the Interdisciplinary Ph.D. in Quantitative Biosciences at Georgia Tech.

“While we can accelerate many aspects of scientific research today, evolution still moves at its own pace,” Ratcliff adds. “There's no technological shortcut for watching species adapt across generations.” 

Decades of discovery — from labs to islands

The new paper also highlights a growing challenge in modern science: the critical importance of supporting long-term research in an academic landscape that increasingly favors quick results and short-term funding. Yet, they say, some of biology's most profound insights emerge only through multi-decadal efforts.

Those challenges and rewards are familiar to Stroud and Ratcliff, who operate their own long-term evolutionary research programs at Georgia Tech. 

In South Florida, Stroud’s ‘Lizard Island’ is helping document evolution in action across the football field-sized island’s 1,000-lizard population. By studying a community of five species, his research is providing unique insights into how evolution maintains species’ differences, and how species evolve when new competitors arrive. Now operating for a decade, it is one of the world’s longest-running active evolutionary studies of its kind.

In his lab at Georgia Tech, Ratcliff studies the origin of complex life — specifically, how single-celled organisms become multicellular. His Multicellularity Long Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE) on snowflake yeast has run for more than 9,000 generations, with aims to continue for the next 25 years. The work has shown how key steps in the evolutionary transition from single-celled organisms to multi-celled organisms occur far more easily than previously understood.

Important work in a changing world

Stroud says that the insights from these types of studies, and this review paper, are arriving at a crucial moment. “The world is rapidly changing, which poses unprecedented challenges to Earth's biodiversity,” he explains. “It has never been more important to understand how organisms adapt to changing environments over time.”

“Long-term studies provide our best window into achieving this,” he adds. “We can document, in real time, both short-term and long-term evolutionary responses of species to changes in their environment like climate change and habitat modification."

By drawing together evolution's longest-running experiments and field studies for the first time, Stroud and Ratcliff offer key insights into studying this fundamental process, suggesting that understanding life's past — and predicting its future — requires not just advanced technology or new methods, but also the simple power of time.

 

Funding: The US National Institutes of Health and the NSF Division of Environmental Biology

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41586-025-08597-9

In the movies, Ant-Man can shrink down to the size of an insect to carry out his superhero missions. It makes for fun cinema, but of course, it is impossible. For starters, biological systems can’t scale up or down and stay proportional. The hero would die before throwing his first teeny, tiny punch. 

That’s miniaturization science for you. It’s the study of how materials and systems behave at microscopic scales, and it’s transforming biomedical engineering. And though it has led to breakthroughs in diagnostics and treatments, “teaching students about the subject is really challenging,” said David Myers, assistant professor in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory. 

“It’s because the behavior of fluids and materials at such small scales defies intuition, and you can’t really observe what’s going on,” added Myers, who understands the instructional challenge well — he teaches a graduate level course focused on translational microsystems, which is heavily integrated with his lab’s research. 

Recognizing the limitations of traditional coursework, Myers and his collaborators have developed a different approach. In Myers’ class, students build and test and observe the workings of microfluidic devices, a hallmark of miniaturization science — microfluidics is the manipulation of tiny volumes of fluids in miniaturized devices. 

Their new approach has made all the difference, even earning Myers a CIOS Award for teaching excellence. But Myers is quick to emphasize that this was a team effort. He and his lab developed a hands-on activity to help students learn device construction (and the underlying technical concepts). 

Then he reached out to Todd Fernandez, senior lecturer and Coulter BME’s director of learning innovation. Together they optimized the activity to maximize students’ learning. That has evolved into an ongoing partnership between technical and educational research faculty in the department, resulting in an article in the journal Lab on a Chip. 

"In other microfluidics courses, you walk through the step-by-step process of fabrication, but actually seeing the device come together in front of you provides such valuable insight into the underlying concepts and manufacturing techniques,” explained Priscilla Delgado, a fifth-year graduate student in Myers’ lab and lead author of the published study. “That hands-on experience is crucial for truly understanding this technology."

Bridging Critical Gaps

Myers’ course bridges several critical gaps, including the high cost of advanced learning activities. It also addresses student misconceptions. 

“The primary objective isn’t just the successful construction of devices, but a deeper conceptual understanding of miniaturization science and design principles,” said Myers, whose approach emphasizes conceptual change. 

Students often come into the course with misunderstandings about microscale phenomena, “assuming that fluid flow at this scale behaves the same way as in larger systems,” Myers said. 

Delgado added, “but it’s wild how fluid behavior changes at the microscale. If you mix two colored liquids in a regular cup, you get a third color. But in microfluidics, the laminar flow and reliance on diffusion can keep those streams separate — it really challenges your intuition about mixing.”

The class allows students to build and test microfluidic kits — mixers, valves, and bubble generators, using inexpensive, widely available materials. This activity is structured to help students encounter misunderstandings and work through them. Rather than simply presenting correct information, instructors guide students through a learning cycle in which they identify errors, reflect on their mistakes, and refine their understanding. 

“You can see their brains just sizzle,” said Myers. “Then you kind of add a little bit of structure. You ask, ‘Are you sure you have all the layers there that you’re thinking about?’ And then they’ll go back, count, and realize—oh, there’s this missing middle layer.”

The layer-by-layer assembly technique uses laser-cut adhesive films to construct microfluidic devices. Because the devices are assembled from transparent layers, students can see how their designs function and they can troubleshoot any errors. 

“One of the best things about these sticker-based microfluidic devices is how easy they are to prototype,” said Delgado. “I can literally have a new design laser-cut and assembled within an hour, rather than waiting months using traditional methods. The accessibility and speed of iteration is a game-changer."

Expanding the Possibilities

Beyond its accessibility, the sticker-based microfluidic approach also expands the possibilities for innovation. 

“The really cool thing is, this is a sticker,” Myers said. “You can place it on your skin. You can place it on the table. You can place it on the wall, if you really felt like it. And when you integrate it with high-end instrumentation like advanced sensors, suddenly you have a resource that traditional microfluidics can’t easily replicate.”

This kind of flexibility enables students to explore microfluidics in new ways. The study involved 57 students, some of whom took their designs beyond the classroom. 

“I cannot say enough how much I love how accessible it is and the portability of it,” Delgado said. “You can do this anywhere. You could do this at home. We’ve done it at science fairs for high school students to really challenge the way they think about mixing.”

The impact of the work has also influenced the direction Delgado wants to take in her career. She’s found herself drawn deeper into the field, inspired by microfluidic design. 

“The first time I laid eyes on that microfluidic device I had just built, I was captivated,” she said. “I remember thinking, ‘This is so cool; I have to dive deeper into this field.’ That’s when I knew a PhD was in my future, even though I had initially planned otherwise.”

This approach to teaching miniaturization science not only enhances learning but also democratizes access to innovation, according to Myers.

“The really cool thing that I love about this activity is that you’re sharing knowledge and power with the people using the technology,” he said. “Instead of them receiving technology from some high-resource institution, they’re able to look at the problems and start addressing them themselves.”

Miniaturization science plays a crucial role in developing point-of-care medical devices and other low-cost diagnostic tools, particularly in resource-limited settings. Equipping students around the world with the ability to create microfluidic systems could help empower future researchers and engineers.

Fernandez believes this hands-on approach represents a shift in how miniaturization science will be taught. 

“By focusing on student-driven exploration and conceptual understanding rather than rote device assembly, educators can better prepare the next generation of engineers and scientists to navigate and contribute to the ever-expanding world of microsystems,” he said. “ And what’s really cool is, you let them play, and they learn more. They discover things that we didn’t even have time to teach them.”

 

In 2023 the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering launched a new program designed to train the next generation of leaders in cardiovascular research. Five first-year graduate students formed the first cohort that fall.

Currently, there are nine students in the Cardiovascular Biomechanics Graduate Training Program at Emory and Georgia Tech (CBT@EmTech). The program offers two years of training in an assortment of disciplines, including cardiovascular biomechanics, mechanobiology, medical imaging, computational modeling, medical devices, therapeutics discovery and delivery, and data science.

“The goal of the program is to stimulate interdisciplinary training,” so we expose the students to multiple areas of research,” says Hanjoong Jo, CBT@EmTech director, Wallace H. Coulter Distinguished Professor. 

“And we have a very diverse group of trainees interested in various aspects of cardiovascular research and medicine,” Jo added. “Four out of five students from our first cohort already have secured prestigious fellowships, demonstrating the caliber of the trainees in the program.”

The students from that cohort brought a wide range of experiences, interests, and ambitions to the program. Now in their final months as CBT@EmTech trainees, they took time to share their stories.

 

Yohannes Akiel

Principal Investigator: Michael Davis

Campus: Emory

Undergraduate: University of Texas-San Antonio
I've always had a passion for helping people and I feel that I’m doing this through my research on aortic valve tissue engineering for pediatric patients. Aortic valve disease is found in 1-2% of live births, because of congenital heart defects or infections. Current valve replacements are limited — for one thing, they’re incapable of growing and remodeling with the patient. This presents a need for a new tissue-engineered valve that can address these challenges. In the Davis lab, we’re working on a tissue engineered heart valve to provide a better, long-term solution. 

Throughout my time in the CBT@EmTech program, I've gained a range of knowledge in the cardiovascular space, learning about atherosclerosis, peripheral artery disease, valve disease, as well as computational and imaging techniques to help solve some of these problems. As part of the program, we are also required to take an Advanced Seminar class in the cardiovascular area. 

Through this class, I was able to participate in some interesting clinical observations in the Emory University Hospital cardiology department. For example, I watched a cardiologist perform a transesophageal echocardiogram. The doctor was checking for heart blockages on a patient who had atrial fibrillation. This procedure was followed by a cardioversion to restore a normal heart rhythm. This was a profound demonstration of biomedical technology in action that left a lasting impression on me.

  

Leandro Choi

Principal Investigator: Hanjoong Jo

Campus: Emory

Undergraduate: Duke University

As a PhD student in the Jo Lab, I am studying how disturbed flow influences transcriptional regulation in endothelial cell reprogramming and atherosclerosis. Our goal is to identify and develop therapeutics that target non-lipid residual pathways contributing to this widespread and deadly disease. 

I initially became interested in this line of research due to a family history of cardiovascular disease. As an undergraduate, I worked in a tissue engineering lab where I employed stem cell and tissue engineering methods to model the circulatory system. A desire to further explore the role of mechanosensitive genes and proteins in cardiovascular disease led me to pursue a PhD in this field.

One of the most valuable aspects of the CBT@EmTech program has been the opportunity to connect with a network of students and faculty who are leaders in cardiovascular research. Through monthly meetings, we share our work and gain insights into the diverse engineering applications our interdisciplinary program brings to the field, with the common goal of improving cardiovascular health.

  

Aniket Venkatesh

Principal Investigator: Lakshmi Prasad

Campus: Georgia Tech

Undergraduate: Georgia Tech

 October 2024 marked the three-year anniversary of my uncle’s passing due to complications from a mild heart attack. His angiogram showed 30% vessel blockage, leading to heart surgery. Sadly, he suffered a brain stroke days later, resulting in deteriorating speech, muscle movement, and eventually death at 48. This personal tragedy brought urgency to my research questions: Can the risk of complications following cardiovascular treatments be predicted? Can underlying cardiovascular pathology be treated before it progresses to a heart attack or stroke? Was my uncle’s death preventable? These questions drive my cardiovascular research, focused on predicting post-procedural heart valve outcomes through computational modeling.

Being part of the prestigious CBT@EmTech program at Emory and Georgia Tech has significantly advanced my research journey. Learning from fellow trainees, presenting my research, and attending academia-focused workshops (like one about grant writing) have helped me stand out in heart valve computational modeling. The program, along with my PI, Dr. Lakshmi Prasad Dasi, and co-PI, Dr. John Oshinski, has provided the resources needed to translate my research from the lab to the clinic through regular meetings with clinicians and data transfer to and from hospitals. I am grateful for the opportunity to pursue my long-term goal of predicting risks of complications before cardiovascular treatments and helping prevent adverse clinical outcomes like those experienced by my uncle.

 

Isabel Wallgren

Principal Investigator: Simone Douglas-Green

Campus: Georgia Tech

Undergraduate Degree: University of Virginia

Peripheral artery disease (PAD) occurs when atherosclerotic plaque accumulates in limb arteries, blocking blood flow. Current interventions limit disease progression, but surgery is often needed to prevent critical limb ischemia. A less invasive approach promotes angiogenesis and arteriogenesis to strengthen collateral vessels and bypass blockages. The Hansen Lab studies satellite cells (SCs), which repair muscle fibers and release growth factors, as a potential PAD therapy.

My research focuses on improving the delivery of SCs using a special fibrin scaffold in a mouse model of blocked blood flow in the legs. By adjusting the properties of the fibrin scaffold, we can create an environment that helps these cells grow and renew themselves. We study how quickly the fibrin forms to ensure the cells stay where we inject them and how it breaks down to keep a steady supply of renewing SCs. We believe that with fibrin, the cells will move into the damaged tissue, repair muscle fibers, and release growth factors to encourage new blood vessel growth.

The goal is to create alternative treatments for PAD that prevent disease progression and improve patients' quality of life.

The CBT@EmTech program has given me a supportive network of peers and mentors, enhancing my growth as a researcher. The program chairs have tailored the curriculum to our needs and allowed us to shape it. For example, I’ve had the privilege of co-planning our biannual retreat. We recruited guests for two panels and invited a guest speaker for a storytelling workshop. This retreat shows how the program imparts knowledge beyond research, aiming to improve our scientific storytelling and self-presentation skills, valuable for any career.

  

Deborah Wood

Principal Investigator: Simone Douglas-Green

Campus: Georgia Tech

Undergraduate Degree: University of Virginia

As a researcher, I am challenged to explore the unknown. Moreover, my role as an engineer is rooted in using knowledge that has already been conceptualized. Combining these perspectives as a biomedical engineer has led me to pursue research with an emphasis on improving human health.

Today, cardiovascular diseases represent the global leading cause of death. While this glaring statistic indicates the egregious burden of cardiovascular diseases, my parents' lived experiences with cardiovascular diseases is what drives me to use my life’s work to address critical challenges at the intersection of the cardiovascular field and biomedical engineering. 

My research seeks to alleviate cardiovascular diseases by using nanoparticles to target endothelial cells, which line the innermost layer of blood vessels and contribute to blood vessel function. The Cardiovascular Biomechanics and Mechanobiology Program at Emory (CBT@EmTech) has given me an avenue to pursue this research. 

Through my CBT@EmTech co-mentorship, I have developed a foundation in endothelial cell biology and atherosclerosis. I have also been challenged to think critically about how my research benefits both science and society through my exposure to prominent cardiovascular researchers. My experiences with CBT@EmTech have made me eager to use my training to pursue a postdoc in the and eventually lead a lab answering critical questions in cardiovascular research.