How much does a loan officer’s familiarity with an auditor affect their client’s ability to receive a commercial loan? New research from Georgia Tech suggests that while knowing an auditor doesn’t guarantee a commercial loan, loan officers are more likely to deny loans to companies that have auditors with poor reputations. 

Arnold Schneider, a professor in the Scheller College of Business, found that loan officers who knew the borrower’s audit firm were reassured the loan wasn’t high-risk. However, familiarity with an audit firm didn’t guarantee an approved loan. If anything, an audit firm’s negative reputation for association with a defaulting client or a client needing regulatory enforcement meant a new client is more likely to lose out on a loan.

The research was presented in “Do Familiarity With a Loan Applicant’s Auditor and the Auditor’s Associations With Past Borrowers Impact Lending Judgments?” in the 2023 issue of Advances in Accounting Behavioral Research.

In his study, Schneider conducted an experiment with 64 loan officers from 49 banks across the eastern U.S. He examined two main variables: whether the loan officer was familiar or unfamiliar with an auditor and whether an auditor had a history with regulatory enforcement of a client or a defaulting client.

Each questionnaire used the same case scenario: a client applying for a $4 million commercial loan at a hypothetical loan company, along with their financial statements. Participants were asked to assess risk on a 10-point scale and provide the probability that they would extend the credit at a reasonable rate of interest. Then they rated the importance of the factors that helped them make their decisions. 

“I found that the lenders did assess the risk higher in the case where the auditors were not familiar to them,” Schneider said. “But to my surprise, that did not translate into a lower probability of granting credit to these borrowers.”

Rather, if the loan officer only knew of an auditor because of their poor history with defaulting clients or clients having regulatory enforcement, this negative association would inhibit a loan.

Understanding the role of auditors in loan decisions is crucial for borrowers. While familiarity with a loan provider can reduce perceived risk, loan approval remains a complex process. 

A new in-depth analysis shows that users who reply to misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine on X, formerly known as Twitter, with a positive attitude, politeness, and strong evidence are more likely to encourage others to disbelieve the incorrect information.

Researchers from three Georgia Tech schools found the most effective way to confront vaccine misinformation on the X platform. 

They also created a predictive tool to show users whether their reply will succeed in changing minds or backfire and reinforce the misinformation. It can also pinpoint well-meaning replies meant to contradict misinformation but that interfere with social correction. 

A research paper with the full findings will be presented this week at the ACM Web Science Conference in Stuttgart, Germany.

Like white blood cells attacking a virus, social media users have been known to band together and debunk online misinformation being spread online in a phenomenon researchers call social correction. 

The success rate of social correction on most social media sites has not been determined. However, researchers now have a clearer picture of how successful user input can be on X. 

Their method uses a blend of artificial intelligence with a dataset of 1.5 million tweets containing misinformation about the Covid-19 vaccine. The researchers then studied user replies to misinformation as well as the consequences of those replies. 

In the paper, the researchers write that their data set pre-dates the rollout of X’s community notes feature, which allows users to submit corrections to posts on the platform. They point out that this system restricts users from responding to fact-checking text and labels and does not reflect the large flow of information on the site. 

As one of the first taxonomies of user social correction on the X platform, the researchers hope will aid future fact-checking efforts. While the paper only focused on text posts in the English language, it is a framework that can be expanded to address the growing threat of misinformation online. 

Corrective or Backfire: Characterizing and Predicting User Response to Social Correction was co-authored by Ph.D. students Bing He and Yingchen (Eric) Ma and their advisors Regents’ Entrepreneur Mustaque Ahamad, a professor with joint appointments in the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy and the School of Computer Science, and School of Computational Science and Engineering Assistant Professor Srijan Kumar. 

Melecio, who has also served as the deep tech catalyst in the Enterprise Innovation Institute’s ATDC startup incubator, will lead Innovation Lab, which encompasses new business development efforts in life sciences and biosciences. The Innovation Lab initiative centers on three core activities:

• Grow healthcare research, innovation, and workforce development practice. 
• Expand EI2 Global's international footprint. 
• Support VentureLab's National Science Foundation I-Corps activities.

“Nakia has been instrumental in helping to expand Georgia’s life sciences community and ecosystem,” said David Bridges, vice president of the Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Tech’s chief economic development arm. “Leading Innovation Lab already builds on a foundation he created since joining us in 2019 and further supports our broad economic development mission.”

He's already leading in the healthcare research practice expansion with his work in the MedTech Center and running the ScaleUp Lab Program for deep tech innovation.

Under Melecio’s leadership as founding director, the MedTech Center, which has the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership and Global Center for Medical Innovation as partners, has worked with and evaluated the innovations of more than 200 companies. Since launching in 2021, the MedTech Center’s 66 active startups have raised $13.1 million in investment capital and an additional $6.4 million in federal, non-dilutive funding grants.

In 2023, the MedTech Center was selected to join the Advanced Research Projects Agency for Health’s ARPA-H Investor Catalyst Hub to accelerate the commercialization of practical, accessible biomedical solutions.

He is supporting Georgia Tech’s efforts to collaborate with Atlanta University Center schools — Spelman College, Clark-Atlanta University, Morehouse College, and the Morehouse School of Medicine — to collaborate with those minority-serving institutions as they build out capacity for their scientists and researchers to create more life sciences technology companies, following an award from the Economic Development Administration.

Similarly, Melecio is working with the University of Alabama at Birmingham on a collaborative project in biologics and medical devices to move more of its researchers’ innovations out of the lab and into commercial markets.

As Innovation Lab lead, Melecio, who has secured more than $5.76 million in federal grants and awards to Georgia Tech, will also work to develop biomanufacturing partnerships for Georgia Tech.

With EI2 Global, the Enterprise Innovation Institute’s program that fosters economic opportunity through collaborations with universities, innovators, governments, and nonprofit organizations worldwide, Melecio will serve as an instructor on Lab-to-Market and CREATE-X programming for entrepreneurs. He will also create and provide educational content for EI2 Global’s university and ecosystem partners.

Closer to home, his Innovation Lab work includes ongoing projects as a principal in VentureLab, a program of Georgia Tech’s Office of Commercialization. In that capacity, he will work on VentureLab’s National Science Foundation-related Innovation Corps (I-Corps) programming. Those efforts, overseen by Commercialization Vice President Raghupathy "Siva" Sivakumar, include the NSF I-Corps Hub Academy, where Melecio will serve as director.

“Our efforts with Innovation Lab are centered around finding new opportunities, new markets, and new industries by leveraging our areas of expertise at the Enterprise Innovation Institute and Georgia Tech to build economic development capacity in the life sciences and biosciences space,” Melecio said.

“We’re looking to take a broader perspective, away from being hyper-focused in one or two niche areas in life sciences, to ensure that we maximize opportunities to support new ideas, build stronger practice areas in this space, and secure funding to bring those innovations to scale.”

Georgia Tech has been selected as one of six universities globally to receive funding for the newly established Global Industrial Technology Cooperation Center. The announcement was made by the Ministry of Trade, Industry, and Energy in South Korea during the Global Open Innovation Strategy Meeting in April.

The KIAT-Georgia Tech Semiconductor Electronics Center will receive $1.8 million to establish a sustainable semiconductor electronics research partnership between Korean companies, researchers, and Georgia Tech. 

“I am thrilled to announce that we have secured funding to launch a groundbreaking collaboration between Georgia Tech’s world-class researchers and Korean companies,” said Hong Yeo, associate professor and Woodruff Faculty Fellow in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering. “This initiative will drive the development of cutting-edge technologies to advance semiconductor, sensors, and electronics research.”

Yeo will lead the center, and Michael Filler, interim executive director for the Institute of Electronics and Nanotechnology, and Muhannad Bakir, director of the 3D Advanced Packaging Research Center, will serve as co-PIs.

The center will focus on advancing semiconductor research, a critical area of technology that forms the backbone of modern electronics.

The Cooperation Center is a global technology collaboration platform designed to facilitate international joint research and development planning, partner matching, and local support for domestic researchers. The selection of Georgia Tech underscores the Institute’s leadership and expertise in the field of semiconductors.

Georgia Tech’s Institute for People and Technology (IPaT) and the College of Computing have announced the Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) fellowship for students and faculty at the University of Liberia. These fellowships cover full tuition for the degree program.

“We are pleased to be able to offer this fellowship program to the people of Liberia,” said Steven McLaughlin, provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “The value of a Georgia Tech degree is well-documented and programs such as this one help us deliver on our commitment to empower people of all backgrounds and stages of life to learn and contribute to technological and human progress.”

Michael Best, executive director of IPaT, made the announcement during a luncheon hosted at Georgia Tech on May 11. Joseph N. Boakai, the 26th president of the Republic of Liberia, attended along with a Liberian delegation and representatives from the University Consortium for Liberia (UCL). The UCL provides scholarships, facilitates student exchange programs, study abroad opportunities, and service-learning initiatives between Liberia and partner organizations worldwide. This was President Boakai’s first official visit to the U.S. since becoming president in January.

“Education is the key to building a successful nation, and Georgia Tech is making great research and academic contributions to the Republic of Liberia and to the world,” said President Boakai. “The OMSCS fellowship program will provide the people of Liberia with an additional opportunity to benefit from this relationship and help advance our country.”

The OMSCS program, where coursework is done asynchronously, is one of Tech’s most successful global degree programs and is designed for students seeking a top-ranked degree with the flexibility to fit their studies around work and family commitments.

The purpose of the president’s visit was to thank assembled UCL members for their partnership in Liberia’s post-conflict development. In addition to Georgia Tech leadership, UCL members from Clark Atlanta University, Kennesaw State University, Fort Valley State University, Savannah State University, and the University of Georgia were also in attendance, along with Cynthia Blandford, UCL president.

Best, who also serves as a professor with Tech’s Sam Nunn School of International Affairs and School of Interactive Computing, has a longstanding relationship with Liberia. His involvement began in 2005, just two years after the end of their civil war. His research focuses on information and communication technologies for social, economic, and political advancement. In Liberia, he has partnered in the development of their national information and communications technology and telecommunications policy, created and deployed technology-focused workforce development programs, outfitted computer facilities for public sector units, helped found the iLab Liberia technology and innovation hub, and developed novel digital systems to support that country’s post-conflict healing and reconciliation.

“President Boakai’s visit to Georgia Tech, just four months into his administration, underscores our deep ties and lasting partnership,” said Best. “These new OMSCS fellowships were received with remarkable enthusiasm, demonstrating that the relationship between the Republic of Liberia and Georgia Tech continues to flourish.”