Josiah Hester

Josiah Hester

Josiah Hester

Interim Associate Director for Community-Engaged Research
Catherine M. and James E. Allchin Early Career Professor
Professor
Director, Ka Moamoa – Ubiquitous and Mobile Computing Lab
BBISS Lead: Computational Sustainability

Josiah Hester works broadly in computer engineering, with a special focus on wearable devices, edge computing, and cyber-physical systems. His Ph.D. work focused on energy harvesting and battery-free devices that failed intermittentently. He now focuses on sustainable approaches to computing, via designing health wearables, interactive devices, and large-scale sensing for conservation. 
   
His work in health is focused on increasing accessibility and lowering the burden of getting preventive and acute healthcare. In both situations, he designs low-burden, high-fidelity wearable devices that monitor aspects of physiology and behavior, and use machine learning techniques to suggest or deliver adaptive and in-situ interventions ranging from pharmacological to behavioral. 
   
His work is supported by multiple grants from the NSF, NIH, and DARPA. He was named a Sloan Fellow in Computer Science and won his NSF CAREER in 2022. He was named one of Popular Science's Brilliant Ten, won the American Indian Science and Engineering Society Most Promising Scientist/Engineer Award, and the 3M Non-tenured Faculty Award in 2021. His work has been featured in the Wall Street Journal, Scientific American, BBC, Popular Science, Communications of the ACM, and the Guinness Book of World Records, among many others.

josiah@gatech.edu

Office Location:
TSRB 246

Personal Site

  • Ka Moamoa
  • BBISS Initiative Lead Project—Computational Sustainability
  • Research Focus Areas:
    • Climate & Environment
    • Computer Engineering
    • Cyber-Physical Systems
    • Energy Harvesting
    • Flexible Electronics
    • Lifelong Health and Well-Being
    • Medical Device Design, Development and Delivery
    • Micro and Nano Device Engineering
    • Mobile & Wireless Communications
    • Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation
    • Social & Environmental Impacts
    • Sustainable Engineering

    IRI Connections:

    Trisha Sisk

    Trisha Sisk

    Trisha Sisk

    Director of Activities & Engagement, BBISS, RBI, and SEI

    As Director of Activities for three of Tech's Interdisciplinary Research Institutes: the Strategic Energy Institute, the Renewable Bioproducts Institute, and the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems, I'll help bring together researchers from different disciplines to address topics of strategic importance. Each interdisciplinary research group mobilizes faculty to address the needs of external stakeholders (federal, state, and local entities, corporations, foundations, and communities) by fostering an Institute-wide innovation ecosystem around a specific focus.

    trisha.sisk@gatech.edu

    University, College, and School/Department

    IRI Connections:

    Beril Toktay

    Beril Toktay

    Beril Toktay

    Interim Executive Director, Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems
    Professor of Operations Management and Brady Family Chair
    Faculty Director, Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business

    Beril Toktay is Professor of Operations Management, Brady Family Chairholder. Her primary research areas are sustainable operations and supply chain management. Professor Toktay's research has been funded by several National Science Foundation grants and has received distinctions such as the 2010 Brady Family Award for Faculty Research Excellence and the MSOM Society's 2015 Management Science Best Paper in Operations Management Award. Her research articles have appeared in Management Science, M&SOM, Operations Research, Production and Operations Management and Industrial Ecology. She became a Distinguished Fellow of the MSOM Society in 2017.

    Professor Toktay has taught Supply Chain Management courses at the PhD, MBA, and Executive Education levels as well as Operations Management and Operations Research courses at the PhD level. She has developed cases and pedagogical material for MBA and Executive Education audiences and co-curricular educational initiatives at the undergraduate level. She currently teaches Business Strategies for Sustainability in MBA and Executive Education programs. She's a recipient of the 2016 Ernest Scheller Jr. Award for Service Excellence and the Georgia Tech 2015 Women of Distinction Award.

    Professor Toktay served as Associate Editor for M&SOM (2007-2018), POM (2009-2013), and Management Science (2011-2017), and Area Editor (Environment, Energy and Sustainability) for Operations Research (2012-2018). She co-edited the M&SOM Special Issue on the Environment. She was the President of the MSOM Society and VP of Finance of the POM Society. At Georgia Tech, she serves as the Scheller College of Business ADVANCE Professor, a role that is focused on supporting the advancement of women and underrepresented minorities in academia. She is the founding Faculty Director of the Ray C. Anderson Center for Sustainable Business and the co-architect and Executive Co-Director of Georgia Tech's Serve.Learn.Sustain Quality Enhancement Plan.

    beril.toktay@scheller.gatech.edu

    404.385.0104

    Office Location:
    800 West Peachtree Street, N.W., Room 4426

    Website

    University, College, and School/Department
    Research Focus Areas:
    • Logistics
    • Policy & Economics
    • Supply Chain
    Additional Research:
    Sustainable operations; closed-loop supply chains; supply chain management; Strategic Planning

    IRI Connections:

    Ameet Pinto

    Ameet Pinto

    Ameet Pinto

    Associate Co-Director for Interdisciplinary Research
    Carlton S. Wilder Associate Professor

    Dr. Ameet Pinto is an Environmental Engineer and Carlton S. Wilder Associate Professor in Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). Ameet is a Chemical Engineer from the Institute of Chemical Technology (University of Mumbai) with post-graduate degrees in Environmental Engineering from the University of Alaska (2005) and Virginia Tech, USA (2009). Before joining Georgia Tech in 2021, he was an Assistant Professor at Northeastern University (2016-2021) and Lecturer/Senior Lecturer (2012-2015) at the University of Glasgow. Ameet’s research focuses on microbial ecosystems at the interface of infrastructure and public/environmental health with a focus on the engineered water cycle. The overall research goal is to characterize and manipulate microbial communities to (1) protect and improve public and environmental health and (2) improve functional reliability and economic feasibility of water infrastructure. To do this, his research group develops and applies state-of-the-art microbial molecular and sensing tools and modelling approaches to monitor and manage the microbiology of the engineered water cycle. Ameet also serves as the Editor for Water Research (the premier journal for the engineering, science, and technology for water quality management) and as the Secretary of the Microbial Ecology and Water Engineering (MEWE) Specialist Group of the International Water Association.

    ameet.pinto@ce.gatech.edu

    Pinto Lab Website

    Google Scholar

    Additional Research:
    Drinking waterWastewaterMicrobiomeMicrobial ecologyComputational biologyPublic health

    IRI Connections:

    Jennifer Leavey

    Jennifer Leavey

    Jennifer Leavey

    Interim Associate Director for Interdisciplinary Education
    Assistant Dean for Faculty Mentoring, College of Sciences
    Principal Academic Professional, School of Biological Sciences

    Jennifer Leavey is a principal academic professional in the School of Biological Sciences and assistant dean for Faculty Mentoring for the College of Sciences. She also coordinates the College's educational programs related to science and sustainability including the Georgia Tech Urban Honey Bee Project and the Living Building Science Vertically Integrated Project Team.   

    jennifer.leavey@cos.gatech.edu

    Departmental Bio


    IRI Connections:

    Yuanzhi Tang

    Yuanzhi Tang

    Yuanzhi Tang

    Associate Co-Director for Interdisciplinary Research
    Associate Professor
    SEI Lead; BBISS Co-lead: Sustainable Resources
    SEI Lead; BBISS Co-lead: Sustainable Resources

    Yuanzhi Tang holds undergraduate degrees in Geology and Economics from Peking University, China. She earned a Ph.D. degree in Environmental Geochemistry at Stony Brook University and then continued working in the microbiology group of Prof. Colleen Hansel.

    Tang joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2013 as an assistant professor and is now an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

    yuanzhi.tang@eas.gatech.edu

    404-894-3814

    Office Location:
    ES&T 1232

    Research Group

  • EAS Profile
  • BBISS Project - Sustainable Resources for Clean Energy
  • Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Biochemicals
    • Climate & Environment

    IRI Connections: