Machine learning (ML) has transformed the digital landscape with its unprecedented ability to automate complex tasks and improve decision-making processes. However, many organizations, including the U.S. Department of Defense (DoD), still rely on time-consuming methods for developing and testing machine learning models, which can create strategic vulnerabilities in today’s fast-changing environment. 

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) is addressing this challenge by developing a Machine Learning Operations (MLOps) platform that standardizes the development and testing of artificial intelligence (AI) and ML models to enhance the speed and efficiency with which these models are utilized during real-time decision-making situations.   

“It’s been difficult for organizations to transition these models from a research environment and turn them into fully-functional products that can be used in real-time,” said Austin Ruth, a GTRI research engineer who is leading this project. “Our goal is to bring AI/ML to the tactical edge where it could be used during active threat situations to heighten the survivability of our warfighters.” 

Rather than treating ML development in isolation, GTRI’s MLOps platform would bridge the gap between data scientists and field operations so that organizations can oversee the entire lifecycle of ML projects from development to deployment at the tactical edge. 

The tactical edge refers to the immediate operational space where decisions are made and actions take place. Bringing AI and ML capabilities closer to the point of action would enhance the speed, efficiency and effectiveness of decision-making processes and contribute to more agile and adaptive responses to threats. 

“We want to develop a system where fighter jets or warships don’t have to do any data transfers but could train and label the data right where they are and have the AI/ML models improve in real-time as they’re actively going up against threats,” said Ruth.   

For example, a model could monitor a plane’s altitude and speed, immediately spot potential wing drag issues and alert the pilot about it. In an electronic warfare (EW) situation when facing enemy aircraft or missiles, the models could process vast amounts of incoming data to more quickly identify threats and recommend effective countermeasures in real time. 

AI/ML models need to be trained and tested to ensure their effectiveness in adapting to new, unseen data. However, without having a standardized process in place, training and testing is done in a fragmented manner, which poses several risks, such as overfitting, where the model performs well on the training data but fails to generalize unseen data and makes inaccurate predictions or decisions in real-world situations, security vulnerabilities where bad actors exploit weaknesses in the models, and a general lack of robustness and inefficient resource utilization.

“Throughout this project, we noticed that training and testing are often done in a piecemeal fashion and thus aren’t repeatable,” said Jovan Munroe, a GTRI senior research engineer who is also leading this project. “Our MLOps platform makes the training and testing process more consistent and well-defined so that these models are better equipped to identify and address unknown variables in the battle space.” 

This project has been supported by GTRI’s Independent Research and Development (IRAD) Program, winning an IRAD of the Year award in fiscal year 2023. In fiscal year 2024, the project received funding from a U.S. government sponsor. 

 

Writer: Anna Akins 
Photos: Sean McNeil 
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.

Four faculty members have been selected for the second cohort of the Faculty Executive Leadership Academy (FELA) program, which is designed to identify and develop senior faculty members for leadership. The new cohort includes:    

• David Ballantyne, Professor and Associate Chair for Academic Programs, School of Physics  

• Martha Grover, Professor and Associate Chair for Graduate Studies, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, and ADVANCE Professor in the College of Engineering  

• Aaron Levine, Professor, School of Public Policy, and Associate Dean for Research and Outreach, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts  

• Han Zhang, Steven A. Denning Professor of Technology and Management, Scheller College of Business

This program will build on the Fellows’ previous leadership experiences by providing access to senior leadership and their decisions; creating opportunities for them to interact with academic leaders from across the nation; offering close, and accessible mentoring with a cohort learning model; and participating in the formulation of project-based solutions and policies related to real problems and ongoing issues. FELA is led by former provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs Rafael Bras. 

“More than ever before, the health and future of higher education depends on good, experienced leaders with a broad understanding of many issues,” said Bras. “FELA is designed as an immersive program to develop that experience and understanding. Georgia Tech is investing in its future by developing the leadership talents of its senior faculty.” 

This cohort of FELA Fellows will serve a two-year term beginning in July 2024. During their FELA experience, Fellows will rotate every six months into one of the four Executive Leadership Team offices – the Office of the President, Office of the Provost, Office of the Vice President for Research, and Office of the Vice President for Administration and Finance. In addition to shadowing and project work during these rotations, Fellows will participate in regular cohort meetings with Bras for leadership guest speakers, case studies, and role play activities to further ground their experience.  

“Georgia Tech fosters the careers of thousands of the brightest faculty minds in higher education,” said Steve McLaughlin, provost and executive vice president for Academic Affairs. “These four new members of our Faculty Executive Leadership Academy represent those who wish to step forward as future leaders and learn what it takes to support the work of a university on an executive level. We look forward to working alongside them in the coming months.” 

Learn more about the FELA program and members of the first and second cohorts. 

In 1950, Alan Turing asked, “Can machines think?” More than 70 years later, advancements in artificial intelligence are creating exciting possibilities and questions about its potential pitfalls.  

A recent executive order issued by President Joe Biden seeks to establish "new standards for AI safety and security" while addressing consumer privacy concerns and promoting innovation. Georgia Tech experts have examined the key elements of the order and offer their thoughts on its scope and what comes next.  

A Precautionary Tale 

The order calls for the development of standards, tools, and tests to ensure the safe use of AI. From voice scams and phishing campaigns to larger-scale threats, the technology’s potential dangers have been widely documented. But Margaret Kosal, associate professor in the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, says that additional context is often needed to dispel hysteria. 

"No one is going to be hooking up AI to launch nuclear weapons, but AI capabilities may enable targeting, or enable the command and control and the decision-making time to be compressed,” she said.  
 
The order will create an AI Safety and Security Board tasked with addressing critical threats. Companies developing foundation models that "pose a serious risk to national security, national economic security, or national public health and safety” will be required to notify the federal government when training the model and required to share the results of all red-team safety tests — a simulated cyberattack to test a system's defenses.  

Since the launch of ChatGPT in 2022, a CNBC report details a 1,267% rise in phishing emails. Srijan Kumar, assistant professor in the College of Computing, attributes the increase to the technology's availability and an inability to rein in "bad actors."  

He says these scams will only continue to get more sophisticated and personalized. They “can be created by knowing what you might be willing to fall prey to versus what I might fall prey to,” said Kumar, whose systems have influenced misinformation detection on sites like X (formerly Twitter) and Wikipedia. “AI is not going to autonomously do all of those bad things, but this order can ensure there are consequences for people who misuse it.”  

A Delicate Balance 

Building an AI platform requires large amounts of data regardless of its intended application. Two primary goals of the executive order are protecting privacy and advancing equity.  

To protect personal data, the order tasks Congress with evaluating how agencies collect and use commercially available information and address algorithmic discrimination.  

Acknowledging that everyone should be allowed to have their voice represented in the outputs of AI data sets, Deven Desai, associate professor in the Scheller College of Business, noted, "There are people who don't want to be part of data sets, which is their right, but this means their voices won't be reflected in the outputs.”   

The order also includes sections to address intellectual property concerns among inventors and creators, though legal challenges will likely set new precedents in the years ahead.  

When that time comes, Kosal says that defining “theft” in the context of AI becomes the true challenge and that, ultimately, money will play a significant role. "If you spit out a Harry Potter book and read it yourself, nobody will care. It's when you start selling it to make money, and you don't share proceeds with the original people, then it becomes an issue," she said.   

What Does AI-Generated Mean? 

The order instructs the Department of Commerce to develop guidelines for content authentication and watermarking to label AI-generated content. Desai questions what it means for something to be truly created by AI.  

An important distinction lies between using AI to assist a writer in organizing their thoughts and using the technology to generate content. He likens the trend to the music industry in the 1980s.  

"Synthesizers really changed people's ability to generate music and, for a while, people thought that was horrible. They can just program the music. They're not. I am still the human responsible for that music, or that article in this case, so what is the point of the label?" he asks. 

As AI assistance becomes commonplace in content creation, trusting the source of information is increasingly important. Recently, articles published on Sports Illustrated's website featured AI-generated content provided by a third-party company that had used a machine to write the content and create fake bylines. Sports Illustrated, which may not have known of the problem, ran the material without disclosure to readers. CEO Ross Levinsohn was ousted shortly after the story broke.  

“Perhaps if the third party had disclosed its use of AI software, SI would have been able to assess how much AI was used and then chosen not to run the material, or to run it with a disclaimer that AI helped write the material,” Desai said. "Of course, even if they label the content as AI-generated, a reader still won't know exactly how much of the content came from AI or a human.” 

AI and the Workforce 

As AI systems and models become more sophisticated, workers may become more concerned about being replaced. To counteract these concerns, the order calls for a study to examine AI’s potential impact on labor markets and investments in workforce training efforts.  

Kumar compares the rise of AI to similar technological innovations throughout history and sees it as an opportunity for workers and industries to adapt. "It's less a matter of AI replacing workers and more of reskilling people to use the new technology. It's no different from when assembly lines in the auto industry were created."  

Promoting Innovation and Competition 

The power to harness the full potential of AI has initiated a race to the top. Desai believes that part of the executive order providing resources to smaller developers can help level the playing field.   

"There is a possibility here for markets to open up. Current players using models that weren't built with transparency in mind might struggle, but maybe that's OK." 

The issue of reliability and transparency comes into focus for Desai, especially as it relates to government usage of AI. The order calls on agencies to "acquire specified AI products and services faster, more cheaply, and more effectively through more rapid and efficient contracting."  

When taxpayer dollars are at stake, government can’t afford to trust a technology it doesn’t fully understand — a topic Desai has explored elsewhere. "You can’t just say, ‘We don’t know how it works, but we trust it.’ That’s not going to work. So that’s where there may be a slowdown in the government’s ability to use private sector software if they can’t explain how the thing works and to show that it doesn’t have discriminatory issues.” 

What's Next 

Promoting and policing the safe use of AI cannot be done independently. Georgia Tech experts agree that participation on a global scale is necessary. To that end, the European Union will unveil its comprehensive EU AI Act, which includes a similar framework to the president's executive order.  

Due to the evolving nature of AI, the executive order or the EU's actions will not be all-encompassing. Law often lags behind technology, but Kosal points out that it's crucial to think beyond what currently exists when crafting policy.  

Experts also agree that AI cannot be regulated or governed through a single document and that this order is likely the first in a series of policymaking moves. Kosal sees tremendous opportunity with the innovation surrounding AI but hopes the growing fear of its rise does not usher in another AI winter, in which interest and research funding fade. 

You may be familiar with yeast as the organism content to turn carbs into products like bread and beer when left to ferment in the dark. In these cases, exposure to light can hinder or even spoil the process. 

In a new study published in Current Biology, researchers in Georgia Tech’s School of Biological Sciences have engineered one of the world’s first strains of yeast that may be happier with the lights on.

“We were frankly shocked by how simple it was to turn the yeast into phototrophs (organisms that can harness and use energy from light),” says Anthony Burnetti, a research scientist working in Associate Professor William Ratcliff’s laboratory and corresponding author of the study. “All we needed to do was move a single gene, and they grew 2% faster in the light than in the dark. Without any fine-tuning or careful coaxing, it just worked.”

Easily equipping the yeast with such an evolutionarily important trait could mean big things for our understanding of how this trait originated — and how it can be used to study things like biofuel production, evolution, and cellular aging.

Looking for an energy boost

The research was inspired by the group’s past work investigating the evolution of multicellular life. The group published their first report on their Multicellularity Long-Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE) in Nature last year, uncovering how their single-celled model organism, “snowflake yeast,” was able to evolve multicellularity over 3,000 generations.

Throughout these evolution experiments, one major limitation for multicellular evolution appeared: energy.

“Oxygen has a hard time diffusing deep into tissues, and you get tissues without the ability to get energy as a result,” says Burnetti. “I was looking for ways to get around this oxygen-based energy limitation.”

One way to give organisms an energy boost without using oxygen is through light. But the ability to turn light into usable energy can be complicated from an evolutionary standpoint. For example, the molecular machinery that allows plants to use light for energy involves a host of genes and proteins that are hard to synthesize and transfer to other organisms — both in the lab and naturally through evolution. 

Luckily, plants are not the only organisms that can convert light to energy.

Keeping it simple

A simpler way for organisms to use light is with rhodopsins: proteins that can convert light into energy without additional cellular machinery.

“Rhodopsins are found all over the tree of life and apparently are acquired by organisms obtaining genes from each other over evolutionary time,” says Autumn Peterson, a biology Ph.D. student working with Ratcliff and lead author of the study.

This type of genetic exchange is called horizontal gene transfer and involves sharing genetic information between organisms that aren’t closely related. Horizontal gene transfer can cause seemingly big evolutionary jumps in a short time, like how bacteria are quickly able to develop resistance to certain antibiotics. This can happen with all kinds of genetic information and is particularly common with rhodopsin proteins.

“In the process of figuring out a way to get rhodopsins into multi-celled yeast,” explains Burnetti, “we found we could learn about horizontal transfer of rhodopsins that has occurred across evolution in the past by transferring it into regular, single-celled yeast where it has never been before.”

To see if they could outfit a single-celled organism with solar-powered rhodopsin, researchers added a rhodopsin gene synthesized from a parasitic fungus to common baker’s yeast. This specific gene is coded for a form of rhodopsin that would be inserted into the cell’s vacuole, a part of the cell that, like mitochondria, can turn chemical gradients made by proteins like rhodopsin into energy. 

Equipped with vacuolar rhodopsin, the yeast grew roughly 2% faster when lit — a huge benefit in terms of evolution.

“Here we have a single gene, and we're just yanking it across contexts into a lineage that's never been a phototroph before, and it just works,” says Burnetti. “This says that it really is that easy for this kind of a system, at least sometimes, to do its job in a new organism.”

This simplicity provides key evolutionary insights and says a lot about “the ease with which rhodopsins have been able to spread across so many lineages and why that may be so,” explains Peterson, who Peterson recently received a Howard Hughes Medical Institute (HHMI) Gilliam Fellowship for her work. Carina Baskett, grant writer for Georgia Tech’s Center for Microbial Dynamics and Infection, also worked on the study.

Because vacuolar function may contribute to cellular aging, the group has also initiated collaborations to study how rhodopsins may be able to reduce aging effects in the yeast. Other researchers are already starting to use similar new, solar-powered yeast to study advancing bioproduction, which could mark big improvements for things like synthesizing biofuels.

Ratcliff and his group, however, are mostly keen to explore how this added benefit could impact the single-celled yeast’s journey to a multicellular organism. 

“We have this beautiful model system of simple multicellularity,” says Burnetti, referring to the long-running Multicellularity Long-Term Evolution Experiment (MuLTEE). “We want to give it phototrophy and see how it changes its evolution.”

Citation: Peterson et al., 2024, Current Biology 34, 1–7.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2023.12.044 

 

Africa is on fire. It has been for thousands of years. The continent contains more than 50% of the total area on Earth that is burning, on average, and there is no sign of it stopping — indeed, the migrating, hemisphere-hopping African wildfire season is steadily increasing.

The fire is essentially feeding itself in a kind of feedback loop as aerosols, induced by the perpetual conflagration, interact with the climate. It’s a process that plays a critical role in the regulation of African ecosystems, reinforcing wildfires and paving the way for elevated fire seasons in subsequent years.

Aerosols are tiny particles that have a large impact on the Earth’s climate. They comprise a wide range of materials. Besides the human-induced air pollution that we can see (that brown smog is the interaction of light with aerosols), there are a lot of natural aerosols: salty sea spray, mineral dust, volcanic ash, and wildfire smoke.

Suspended in the atmosphere, the role of aerosols in our climate is complex. But a new study by Georgia Tech researchers demonstrates the role they play in the African wildfire life cycle. The research, published in the journal iScience, could have significant implications for understanding the impacts of fires and climate change in Africa and other regions of the planet prone to wildfire.

“We used to think that aerosols had a short-term, localized climate impact and can be effectively removed by precipitation within a week. But in this study, we’re showing that isn’t necessarily correct,” said Yuhang Wang, professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences and corresponding author of “Positive Feedback to Regional Climate Enhances African Wildfires.”

The Wang lab works at solving mysteries of atmospheric pollution, and the team is onto something with its latest research, revealing new clues in its study of wildfires in Africa, where the unique alternation between dry and wet seasons along the equator extends the lifespan of aerosols.

“Basically, with the combination of wildfires and fire-induced aerosols, the impact of aerosols can be longer term, extending over seasons,” said Wang, whose team invented the tool it needed to complete its investigation.

Building a Better Model

Several years ago, Wang’s lab developed the Region-Specific Ecosystem Feedback Fire (RESFire) Model to augment the existing, publicly accessible Community Earth System Model (CESM). Managed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, CESM is an open-source global climate model that provides computer simulations of the Earth’s climate system.

RESFire improves CESM’s fire simulation capability, helping researchers develop a better grasp of complex fire-climate-ecosystem interactions, “which are still not very well understood,” said Wang, whose team used its CESM-RESFire model to study aerosol feedback in Africa for the latest research.

“We found that the extension of the aerosols’ lifespan in Africa occurs through a positive feedback mechanism,” said Wang.

Aerosols can essentially give clouds a bad case of constipation, absorbing vapor from the atmosphere, making it difficult for clouds to produce large droplets.

“Fire aerosols are transported from burning or dry regions to wet regions,” Wang explained. “That leads to reduced precipitation and drying of fuel loads.”

The Feedback Mechanism

Identifying the fire-aerosol positive feedback mechanism in Africa sheds light on wildfire-related climate feedback globally. Other studies have shown that in some coastal areas, such as the western United States, fire smoke alters local fire weather, resulting in positive feedback. These coastal regions have distinct fire seasons, and the escalation caused by aerosol feedback doesn’t persist into the next fire season.

Africa is different. With its shifting fire regions and prevailing winds, the positive feedback affects the current season and amplifies burning in the subsequent season. And fire weather season has increased by up to 40% in Africa over the past four decades, which means there may be shifts in distribution and variability of burned areas.

“The good news is that this mechanism is self-sustaining. It even has some resilience built in,” Wang said. “The question is what happens in the presence of persistent global climate change. What we know is, the mechanism underlying this natural system of wildfires depends on the current state of the atmosphere.”

The positive feedback mechanism implies that a warmer, drier climate will likely lead to more persistent burning in Africa in the future, the researchers write, concluding, “The systematic fire-climate feedback may also be present in other fire-prone tropical regions and has significant ramifications for understanding the impacts of fires and climate change on humans and plant life.”

Citation: Aoxing Zhang, Yuhang Wang, Yufei, Zou. “Positive feedback to regional climate enhances African wildfires.” iScience.

Funding: This work was supported by the National Science Foundation (NSF) (grant 1743401). 

 

 

Three GTRI researchers made it to the finals and came home with second place in the "Southeastern Cyber Cup" competition, a multi-day, national-level, higher education competition and cyber hacking event held last month. The three researchers are Justin Hsu, Garrett Brown, and Drew Petry. Their team, named the "Clockcycles," was one of the 15 finalists in the event. Georgia Tech made an impressive mark, with eight teams among the final 15.

The Southeastern Cyber Cup is hosted by Georgia Tech’s Office of Information Technology in partnership with Deloitte. The virtual hacking event is open to cybersecurity and IT students and professionals and is held to generate enthusiasm and excitement around cybersecurity careers. 

As part of the annual competitors are challenged to find a "flag": a string of text. The flags for each challenge are submitted online to receive points. Challenge categories include network, web, crypto, miscellaneous, forensics, and reverse engineering.

Why Is the Southeastern Cyber Cup Important for GT/GTRI?

The Southeastern Cup and similar competitions are among the many ways that Georgia Tech and GTRI can showcase the skills of its researchers and aid in their professional development. The team’s Southeastern Cyber Cup win also indicates GTRI's role as a leader in the field of cybersecurity. 

“Historically, CTF (Capture the Flag) competitions are a practical way to sharpen the skills that any cybersecurity researcher/enthusiast may utilize during their career. If you’re interested in cybersecurity, CTFs are a great way to add new tools to your toolbox, as I often find myself picking up new skills during the course of such competitions,” Brown shared.

The Clockcycles team undoubtedly got the opportunity to sharpen their skills during the competition. Hsu shared that he and his team “stayed up for at least 20+ hours straight," participating in each event round. The time commitment and dedication certainly paid off in the end!

GT/GTRI's Impact on CTF Competitions

GTRI routinely has a group of researchers that participate in CTF competitions. In 2021, Petry and his team had an impressive win at the Hack-a-Sat 2 competition. In 2022, Petry and Hsu traveled to an east coast naval facility as part of a GTRI team that competed in person at an invitation-only event held by the US Navy, "Maritime Militia CTF." Their team was awarded a physical flag to bring back to GTRI, which they hung up as a trophy.

GTRI's dedication to these competitions hasn't gone unnoticed. At a CTF in 2022, GTRI received a letter of appreciation from the Naval Surface Warfare Center commending their performance. The Clockcyles' win at the Southeastern Cup is just one example of GTRI's impact as a research organization.

Meet the dedicated team members who brought home second place!

Justin Hsu

Justin Hsu is a Research Scientist in GTRI’S CIPHER (Cybersecurity, Information Protection, and Hardware Evaluation Research) Lab, Software Assurance Branch. Hsu's work includes looking at and working towards developing tools for software security testing and vulnerability analysis/assessments. He received a B.S. in Computer Information Systems from Shorter University, and an M.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. Hsu has spent the majority of his professional career in software development. He previously worked at the ELSYS (Electronic Systems Laboratory) and shared that he moved to CIPHER after attending a seminar that rekindled his interest in cybersecurity. 

"I’ve been interested in cybersecurity since I was young, probably watching the movie ‘Hackers’ one too many times, and spent the majority of my career doing software development. But after hearing someone talk at a Friday Morning Seminar about their research work on malware, I was reminded of my interest in cybersecurity and wound up making the move from ELSYS to CIPHER," Hsu shared. 

This was the first year Hsu participated in the Southeastern Cyber Cup, but he has participated in CTFs with fellow CIPHER colleagues since 2021. To date, he's competed in about six different events, including ones sponsored by the U.S. Navy (HACKtheMACHINE, HACKtheMACHINE Unmanned) and the U.S. Air Force/Space Force (Hack-a-Sat, Hack-a-Sat 2, and Hack-a-Sat 3). 

Drew Petry

Drew Petry works as a Research Engineer in the Embedded System Vulnerability Division (ESVD) of CIPHER. Petry’s work focuses on the reverse engineering and security assessment of embedded systems and cyber EW (Electronic Warfare) techniques. He received a B.S. in Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech in 2010. In 2014, he also received his M.S. in Electrical and Computer Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Petry has spent the past fourteen years as a professional research engineer at GTRI, working in the embedded system security and vulnerability field. He shared that he’s always been drawn to embedded systems because he "enjoys interacting with low-level hardware and ‘bare-metal’ code.” Bare metal programming is the process of programming directly on the hardware without using an operating system or middleware.

Outside of the inaugural Southeastern Cyber Cup competition, Petry competes in capture-the-flag competitions yearly. The events he’s competed in while representing GTRI include the annual U.S. Air/Space Force Hack-a-sat CTFs and the U.S. Navy Hack the Machine cybersecurity competitions.

Garrett Brown

Garrett Brown is a Research Scientist in the Embedded Cyber Techniques (ECT) branch of the ESVD at CIPHER. He primarily works on vulnerability discovery and analysis of embedded systems. Brown received his B.S. in Computer Science from Georgia Tech. 

Brown shared that he found his passion in this field after participating in the VIP (Vertically Integrated Project) program while at Georgia Tech as an undergraduate student. During this program, he was a part of the Embedded Systems Cyber Security (ESCS) team, which gave him his "first taste of the work [he] would soon come to love."

"I believe cybersecurity practitioners can improve the lives of many around the world, and I'd like to be a part of whatever positive impact we can make," shared Brown when asked why he was passionate about his work.

While this was Brown's first time competing in the Southeastern Cyber Cup, he is not a stranger to competitions. He's previously competed in other CTFs as part of the CIPHER team for competitions such as the Hack-a-Sat and HACKtheMACHINE events.

When asked how he felt about their team's award, he shared, "I felt both relief and disappointment--relief that I could finally go to sleep and disappointment that we got second place instead of first!”

Congratulations Clockcycles team!

 

Writer: Madison McNair (madison.mcnair@gtri.gatech.edu)  
Photographer: Christopher Moore 
GTRI Communications  
Georgia Tech Research Institute  
Atlanta, Georgia

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

While quantum computing is still in its early stages, it has the power to unlock unprecedented speed and efficiency in solving complex computational fluid dynamics (CFD) problems that could revolutionize several industries, including the defense space. 

The Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) are exploring how the powerful processing capabilities of quantum computers can expedite CFD’s resource-intensive simulations used in aircraft design, weather prediction, nuclear weapons testing and more.  

“Through a collaboration between GTRI and Georgia Tech, we are developing an application of quantum computing to solve proof-of-principle problems in computational fluid dynamics that could streamline efficiencies and reduce costs across numerous industries,” said Bryan Gard, a GTRI senior research scientist who is leading this project.

Quantum computing offers a new way of doing computations using the principles of quantum mechanics, a science that explores the behavior of tiny particles such as atoms and photons. Computers and software that are built on the theories of quantum mechanics can process a large amount of information simultaneously and much faster than classical computers. That is because unlike classical computers, which use bits that are either 0 or 1, quantum computers use quantum bits or qubits. 

Classical bits are similar to regular on/off switches, which can only exist in one state at a time. Qubits, meanwhile, can exist in multiple states at once thanks to a property in quantum mechanics known as superposition.  

Because CFD involves complex simulations of how fluids, such as air or water, move and interact with different surfaces, classical computers often struggle with the immense number of calculations needed for such detailed simulations. The ability for quantum computers to process information in parallel could significantly speed up these simulations and produce more accurate results. 

“Say you are examining how air flows over a plane wing and you want to identify the large- and small-scale dynamics of that interaction,” explained Gard. “This type of problem would be very hard for a classical computer to handle because it wouldn’t be able to examine those large- and small-scale aspects simultaneously.” 

The team has split its research into two parts. The parts that involve linear differential equations are solved on a quantum computer and the other, non-linear parts are handled conventionally on a classical machine. 

The reason for this division is that as the problem scales up on classical supercomputers, the communication between nodes becomes inefficient, creating a bottleneck. Even though quantum computers are not yet large-scale, they can handle certain parts of the problem without facing the same communication challenges, Gard explained. 

These principles could help organizations strategically allocate resources and avoid costs associated with manufacturing and testing potentially flawed designs. In the defense realm, an example of this can be seen with designing aircraft. 

Instead of the conventional methods of building and testing structures in a wind tunnel, quantum-enhanced CFD would allow engineers to analyze stresses, assess designs and predict performance more efficiently and cost effectively. This becomes particularly relevant at high speeds, where factors such as air flows and turbulence pose additional challenges for running accurate simulations. 

“It all comes down to money, as with everything else,” said Gard. “If you could save yourself a lot of time and money by running this simulation, which you couldn't do before, then it would allow you to allocate your resources more effectively.” 

For this project, GTRI is collaborating with Spencer Bryngelson, an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering who has expertise in computational physics, numerical methods, fluid dynamics and high-performance computing. Zhixin Song, a graduate student at Georgia Tech who is researching quantum algorithms for CFD, has also contributed.   

“This project is particularly interesting because although it is challenging, it could have outsize performance gains if one can find the right tools for the job, meaning the right quantum algorithm to solve the right fluid dynamics problem,” Bryngelson said. “GTRI and Georgia Tech have already made progress in this area, and also work well together, so it has been a good experience.” 

The project has been supported by GTRI’s Independent Research and Development (IRAD) Program, winning an IRAD of the Year award in fiscal year 2023, and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). 

 

Writer: Anna Akins 
Photos: Christopher Moore 
Art Credit: Img2Go.com, Adobe 
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.

Mo Li, professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech, has received the Humboldt Research Award from the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. The award honors internationally leading researchers in recognition of their entire academic record to date.

The Humboldt recipients are academics whose fundamental discoveries, theories, or insights have had a significant impact on their own disciplines and who are expected to continue producing cutting-edge achievements in the future.

Li’s research focuses on theory and computation of disordered materials — such as glass and liquid — with an emphasis on understanding the underlying atomic structures and their relations to properties. These materials are known for the lack of long-range order, making it extremely difficult, if not possible, to determine the exact atomic structures experimentally. The missing connection between the structure and property has challenged scientists for decades.

Using computational and theoretical approaches, Li’s research is directed towards the fundamental understanding of the mechanisms, process, and structures of the materials. He has made many contributions in the topics of glass transitions, deformation localization in glassy materials, thermodynamic and statistical physics models for metastable systems and their phase transitions, and algorithm development for computations.

“Besides the honor and recognition, for which I am very grateful, the Humboldt Research Award brings a tremendous opportunity for international collaboration of basic research through the financial support and also the Humboldt network.” Li said. "The fundamental understanding enables us to carry out new experiment and computation that could lead to development of new materials that have not been possible for disordered or amorphous materials.”

In addition to the honor, the Foundation also provides financial support for Li to foster and carry out creative collaborative research in Germany. Li will work closely with colleagues in two world-class institutions in Germany: Prof. Robert Maaß at Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM) in Berlin and Prof. Jörg Weissmüller at Hamburg University of Technology in Hamburg.

They will work on how new design of microstructures in disordered materials could bring revolutionary changes to the physical and mechanical properties and how length scale and geometric and topological shapes influence the surface and interface properties of this class of materials.

Georgia Tech engineers are working to make fertilizer more sustainable — from production to productive reuse of the runoff after application — and a pair of new studies is offering promising avenues at both ends of the process.

In one paper, researchers have unraveled how nitrogen, water, carbon, and light can interact with a catalyst to produce ammonia at ambient temperature and pressure, a much less energy-intensive approach than current practice. The second paper describes a stable catalyst able to convert waste fertilizer back into nonpolluting nitrogen that could one day be used to make new fertilizer.

Significant work remains on both processes, but the senior author on the papers, Marta Hatzell, said they’re a step toward a more sustainable cycle that still meets the needs of a growing worldwide population.

“We often think it would be nice not to have to use synthetic fertilizers for agriculture, but that’s not realistic in the near term considering how much plant growth is dependent on synthetic fertilizers and how much food the world’s population needs,” said Hatzell, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. “The idea is that maybe one day you could manufacture, capture, and recycle fertilizer on site."

Get the full story on the College of Engineering website.