Katherine Graham

Portrait of Katy Graham.
kgraham61@gatech.edu

Dr. Graham joined Georgia Tech as an Assistant Professor in January 2023. She completed a President’s Postdoctoral Fellowship at Georgia Tech, and completed her MS and PhD in Environmental Engineering and Science at Stanford University. Prior to that, she received her undergraduate degree at the University of Michigan in Chemical Engineering.

Dr. Graham’s research interests focus on the fate and transport of pathogens and antimicrobial resistance genes in the built and natural environments. Her previous research projects have focused on wastewater-based epidemiology, quantitative microbial risk assessment (QMRA), and the removal of pathogens in green stormwater infrastructure. Her lab aims to use molecular biology, microbiology, and modeling tools to address issues of water, climate, and health domestically and internationally.

Assistant Professor
Additional Research
  • Microbial water quality
  • Water, sanitation, and hygiene
  • Public health and risk assessment
  • Environmental virology
  • One Health
IRI And Role
The Water/Climate/Health Lab
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Ebenezer Fanijo

Ebenezer Fanijo
ebenezer.fanijo@design.gatech.edu

Fanijo’s research centres around sustainable and smart-resilient buildings/civil infrastructure with a particular interest in decarbonizing infrastructure using novel low-carbon construction materials and alternative energy sources. Buildings contribute to more than one-third (39%) of the global energy-related CO2 emissions and 35% of global energy consumption, mainly from manufacturing, building materials and transportation. As such, advanced research on developing innovative construction materials is urgently required to address the carbon emissions from materials and construction processes of buildings' life cycle. His research approach includes examining the fresh properties and rheology, early-age cracking, microstructure evaluation, mechanical and durability performance, and life cycle assessment of building systems (particularly cementitious composites) made with these sustainable construction materials. 

He has also conducted research across different disciplines, including cementitious and concrete composites; corrosion monitoring and mitigation; concrete durability; green concrete technology using recycled and by-product materials; 3D printing of cementitious materials; highway pavement; geopolymers; fibre-reinforced concrete; advanced sensing technologies and automation; and non-destructive structural monitoring and evaluation. 

Fanijo received his B.S. in Building Construction with first-class honours from the Obafemi Awolowo University, Nigeria. In 2019, He earned an M.S. in Civil Engineering from the University of Idaho. Subsequently, he got his PhD in Civil Engineering (with a simultaneous Master’s degree – MEng in Material Science and Engineering) from Virginia Tech in 2022. He has worked on numerous funded research projects and published in various peer-reviewed journals and proceedings. Fanijo has also received numerous national and international awards for his excellence in research, with his recent NSBE Golden Torch Award recognized as the graduate student of the year 2022. 

At Georgia Tech, he is passionate about teaching construction materials and methods and their critical role in the design and construction of buildings. Fanijo developed and currently teaching the Construction Materials and Methods Course so that Building Construction students can have in-depth knowledge of building materials and systems, their properties, and their intrinsic relationship to structural systems and environmental performance. He also develops and teaches courses on Green Construction Technology, Concrete Durability and Sustainable Construction Materials and Techniques. 

Fanijo is a Professional Engineer (P.E.) and LEED Green Associate with more than five years of working experience in the construction sector.

Assistant Professor, School of Building Construction
Office
Caddell Building, 223
Building Construction Profile
Ebenezer
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Micah Ziegler

Micah Ziegler
micah.ziegler@gatech.edu
Personal Website

Dr. Micah S. Ziegler is an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering and the School of Public Policy.

Dr. Ziegler evaluates sustainable energy and chemical technologies, their impact, and their potential. His research helps to shape robust strategies to accelerate the improvement and deployment of technologies that can enable a global transition to sustainable and equitable energy systems. His approach relies on collecting and curating large empirical datasets from multiple sources and building data-informed models. His work informs research and development, public policy, and financial investment.

Dr. Ziegler conducted postdoctoral research at the Institute for Data, Systems, and Society at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. At MIT, he evaluated established and emerging energy technologies, particularly energy storage. To determine how to accelerate the improvement of energy storage technologies, he examined how rapidly and why they have changed over time. He also studied how energy storage could be used to integrate solar and wind resources into a reliable energy system.

Dr. Ziegler earned a Ph.D. in Chemistry from the University of California, Berkeley and a B.S. in Chemistry, summa cum laude, from Yale University. In graduate school, he primarily investigated dicopper complexes in order to facilitate the use of earth-abundant, first-row transition metals in small molecule transformations and catalysis. Before graduate school, he worked in the Climate and Energy Program at the World Resources Institute (WRI). At WRI, he explored how to improve mutual trust and confidence among parties developing international climate change policy and researched carbon dioxide capture and storage, electricity transmission, and international energy technology policy. Dr. Ziegler was also a Luce Scholar assigned to the Business Environment Council in Hong Kong, where he helped advise businesses on measuring and managing their environmental sustainability.

Dr. Ziegler is a member of AIChE and ACS, and serves on the steering committee of Macro-Energy Systems. His research findings have been highlighted in media, including The New York Times, Nature, The Economist, National Geographic, BBC Newshour, NPR’s Marketplace, and ABC News.

Assistant Professor, School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering, School of Public Policy
SEI Lead: Energy Storage
Phone
404.894.5991
Office
ES&T 2228
Additional Research
  • Energy
  • Materials and Nanotechnology
  • Sustainable Engineering
Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=tMFMFdUAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
LinkedIn ChBE Profile Page
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Omar Asensio

Omar Asensio
asensio@pubpolicy.gatech.edu
Website

Omar I. Asensio is an Associate Professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy and the Director of the Data Science & Policy Lab at Georgia Tech. During the 2023-2024 academic year, he was a fellow at the Institute for Business in Global Society at Harvard Business School. Professor Asensio’s research focuses on climate and electrification strategies at the intersection of technology, AI, and sustainability. He employs large-scale data, field experiments, and human-in-the-loop AI systems to address innovation challenges in energy systems, transportation, and human mobility. He contributed to the zero emission vehicles (ZEV) policy guidance for COP26 and the Glasgow Climate Pact.

Prof. Asensio is a member of the U.S. National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine (NASEM) New Voices 2021 cohort, which recognizes early- to-mid career leaders for exceptional contributions to science, engineering and medicine. He is a two-time former chair of the Natural Resource, Energy, and Environmental Policy section of APPAM, and is the recipient of the 2023 Faculty Excellence in Research Award from the Ivan Allen College. At Georgia Tech, he is a Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems (BBISS) Fellow and a faculty affiliate of the Institute for Data Engineering & Science (IDEaS), the Machine Learning Center, and the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI).

Professor Asensio has received multiple awards for his research, including the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability (ARCS) Emerging Scholar Award, and the Research Impact on Practice Award (RIPA) from the Academy of Management’s Organizations & the Natural Environment Division (ONE-NBS). His work has been published in leading journals such as Nature Energy, Nature Sustainability, and PNAS. 

Professor Asensio’s research and teaching have been supported by awards from the National Science Foundation, Microsoft, ESRI, the U.S. State Department’s Diplomacy Lab, and the U.S. Department of Energy. His work has informed policy advisory communications for the U.S. National Academy of Sciences, the UK government, the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, and the IndiaAI initiative. His research has been featured in popular press, including Bloomberg, Scientific American, Motor Trend, Fast Company, NPR’s All Things Considered, Yahoo! News, The Huffington Post, and the Washington Post.

Dr. Asensio serves as Associate Editor of Data & Policy journal published by Cambridge University Press. He earned his doctorate in Environmental Science & Engineering with specialties in Economics from UCLA.

Associate Professor, School of Public Policy
Additional Research

Cyber/ Information Technology; Strategic Planning; Building Technologies; Electric Vehicles; Policy/Economics; Public Policy; Energy Efficiency and Conservation

Data Science and Policy Lab
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Johannes Milz

Johannes Milz
johannes.milz@isye.gatech.edu
Department Webpage

Johannes Milz is an Assistant Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering. His research focuses on optimization under uncertainty and optimal control of uncertain systems, with a strong emphasis on sustainability applications. By addressing large-scale optimization challenges in physics-based models under uncertainty, he aims to contribute to the development of sustainable energy systems, such as renewable tidal energy farms. Dr. Milz is also dedicated to open science; he develops reproducible numerical simulations and shares them publicly, making his results accessible to a broad group of researchers and practitioners. Prior to joining ISyE, he was a postdoctoral researcher at the Technical University of Munich, where he earned his Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics in 2021.

Assistant Professor, School of Industrial Systems Engineering
Office
Groseclose 444
Additional Research

Resource assessment and design of renewable marine energy systems, especially tidal energy. 

Personal Website
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Constance Crozier

Constance Crozier
constance.crozier@isye.gatech.edu
Constance Crozier School Webpage

I am an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech ISyE. My research concerns the control and operation of decarbonized power systems, particularly with the integration of flexible loads such as electric vehicles. I got my Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in the Energy and Power Group, and completed my postdoc in the GRIFFIN Lab at CU Boulder.

Assistant Professor, School of Industrial Systems Engineering
Additional Research

Power systems and Electric vehicles

Research Focus Areas
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Akanksha Menon

Akanksha Menon
akanksha.menon@me.gatech.edu
Akanksha Menon Profile

Dr. Akanksha Menon is an Assistant Professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to this, she was a Rosenfeld Postdoctoral Fellow at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, where she performed research on hybrid membrane-thermal desalination processes using solar energy, and she also contributed to the development of thermal energy storage materials. Dr. Menon completed her Ph.D. at Georgia Tech, where she focused on developing semiconducting polymers and new device architectures for thermoelectric energy harvesting. She holds a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M University at Qatar, as well as a master’s degree in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech.

Her research group at Georgia Tech is working on technologies for the water-energy nexus.

Assistant Professor, Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
Research Focus Areas
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Yiyi He

Yiyi He
yiyi.he@design.gatech.edu
College of Design Profile Page

Yiyi He is an assistant professor in the School of City and Regional Planning (SCaRP) at the College of Design at Georgia Tech. Her research centers on the interdisciplinary fields of urban planning, GIScience, climate science, and artificial intelligence. She is interested in building a better understanding of the uncertainty and asymmetric impacts of climate-change-induced extreme weather events (e.g., flooding, wildfires, extreme heat) on critical components of the built environment (e.g., lifeline infrastructure networks, vulnerable neighborhoods). She leverages data-driven approaches, such as GIS, network science, hyperspectral remote sensing, machine learning, and spatial statistics to tackle complex challenges in climate change and resilience research and to inform more intelligent planning and policy directives.

Her previous work involves using 3D hydrodynamic flood models to simulate flooding under different climate change scenarios and analyze the impact of both coastal and inland flooding on critical infrastructure networks. She received her bachelor’s degree from Nanjing University and her master’s and Ph.D. degree from UC Berkeley.

Assistant Professor, School of City and Regional Planning
Additional Research

GI Science Network ScienceEnvironmental Planning

Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=xoUOI-wAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
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Peng Chen

Peng Chen
pchen402@gatech.edu
Scientific Machine Learning (SciML) and Uncertainty Quantification (UQ)

Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering. Previously he was a Research Scientist at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Chen’s research is in the multidisciplinary fields of computational mathematics, data science, scientific machine learning, and parallel computing with various applications in materials, energy, health, and natural hazard. Specifically, his research focuses on developing fast, scalable, and parallel computational methods for integrating data and models under high-dimensional uncertainty to make (1) statistical model learning via Bayesian inference, (2) reliable system prediction with uncertainty quantification, (3) efficient data acquisition through optimal experimental design, and (4) robust control and design by stochastic optimization.

Assistant Professor
Office
CODA | E1350B
Additional Research

Bayesian InferenceInfectious DiseasesOptimal Experimental DesignPlasma FusionStochastic OptimizationUncertainty Quantification

Google Scholar
https://scholar.google.com/citations?hl=en&user=AaVPa5kAAAAJ&view_op=list_works&sortby=pubdate
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