Ronald C. Arkin

Ronald C. Arkin

Ronald C. Arkin

Regents' Professor; School of Interactive Computing
Director; Mobile Robot Laboratory

Ronald C. Arkin received the B.S. Degree from the University of Michigan, the M.S. Degree from Stevens Institute of Technology, and a Ph.D. in Computer Science from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst in 1987. He then assumed the position of Assistant Professor in the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology where he now holds the rank of Regents' Professor and is the Director of the Mobile Robot Laboratory. He also serves as the Associate Dean for Research in the College of Computing at Georgia Tech since October 2008. During 1997-98, Professor Arkin served as STINT visiting Professor at the Centre for Autonomous Systems at the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH) in Stockholm, Sweden. From June-September 2005, Prof. Arkin held a Sabbatical Chair at the Sony Intelligence Dynamics Laboratory in Tokyo, Japan and then served as a member of the Robotics and Artificial Intelligence Group at LAAS/CNRS in Toulouse, France from October 2005-August 2006.

arkin@cc.gatech.edu

(404) 894-8209

Office Location:
GVU/TSRB

College of Computing Profile Page

  • Mobile Robot Lab
  • Research Focus Areas:
    • Autonomy
    • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
    Additional Research:

    Artificial intelligence; Robotics; Robot ethic; Autonomous agents; Mobile Robots and Unmanned Vehicles; Multi-Agent Robotics; Machine Learning


    IRI Connections:

    Annie Anton

    Annie Anton

    Annie Anton

    Professor

    Annie Anton, Ph.D., is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Tech, which she chaired until 2017. Previously, she served as a professor in the Computer Science Department of the College of Engineering at North Carolina State University, where she was director of the CSC Policy and Compliance Initiative and a member of the NCSU Cyber Defense Lab. In 2010, she chaired the NC State University Reappointment, Promotion and Tenure Committee. In 2008, she chaired the NC State Public Policy Task Force. Anton's research focuses on methods and tools to support the specification of complete, correct behavior of software systems used in environments that pose risks of loss as a consequence of failures and misuse. This includes systems in which the security of personal and private information is particularly vulnerable. Current extensions to this work, include the analysis of federal security and privacy regulations, and compliance practices. Anton is the founder and director of ThePrivacyPlace.org, a research group of students and faculty at Georgia Tech, CMU, NC State and UMBC. This group is interested in technologies that assist practitioners and policy makers in meeting the challenge of eliciting and expressing policies and regulations (a form of requirements). These tools help ensure that software systems are aligned with the privacy polices and regulations that govern these systems. Her professional activities include a notable combination of multi-disciplinary research and education. She is co-founder of the annual Requirements Engineering and the Law Workshop (RELAW). She is a former associate editor for IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, cognitive issues subject area editor for the Requirements Engineering Journal, and the International Board of Referees for Computers & Security. Antón has served on various boards, ᅠincluding: ᅠPresident Obama's Commission on Enhancing National Cybersecurity, the NIST Information Security & Privacy Advisory Board, the IEEE Computer Society Research Board, an Intel Corporation Advisory Board, the Future of Privacy Forum Advisory Board. ᅠShe is a former member of the U.S. DHS Data Privacy and Integrity Advisory Committee, the CRA Board of Directors, the NSF Computer & Information Science & Engineering Directorate Advisory Council, the Distinguished External Advisory Board for the TRUST Research Center at U.C. Berkeley, the DARPA ISAT Study Group, the USACM Public Policy Council, the Advisory Board for the Electronic Privacy Information Center in Washington, D.C., the Georgia Tech Alumni Association Board of Trustees, the Microsoft Research University Relations Faculty Advisory Board, the CRA-W, the Georgia Tech Advisory Board (GTAB), and Corporate Secretary for Trekking for Kids, Inc.

    aa16@gatech.edu

    404.894.8591

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Cybersecurity Public Policy
    Additional Research:
    Data Security & Privacy;

    IRI Connections:

    David Anderson

    David Anderson

    David Anderson

    Professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

    David V. Anderson received the B.S and M.S. degrees from Brigham Young University and the Ph.D. degree from Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) in 1993, 1994, and 1999, respectively. He is currently a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. Anderson's research interests include audio and psycho-acoustics, machine learning and signal processing in the context of human auditory characteristics, and the real-time application of such techniques. His research has included the development of a digital hearing aid algorithm that has now been made into a successful commercial product. Anderson was awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award for excellence as a young educator and researcher in 2004 and the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers in the same year. He has over 150 technical publications and 8 patents/patents pending. Anderson is a senior member of the IEEE, and a member the Acoustical Society of America, and Tau Beta Pi. He has been actively involved in the

    david.anderson@ece.gatech.edu

    404.385.4979

    Office Location:
    TSRB 543

    ECE Profile Page

    Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Bioengineering
    • Biotechnology
    • Computer Engineering
    • Electronics
    • Machine Learning
    • Micro and Nano Device Engineering
    • Miniaturization & Integration
    • Optics & Photonics
    Additional Research:

    Audio and Psycho-AcousticsBio-DevicesDigital Signal ProcessingLow-Power Analog/Digital/Mixed-Mode Integrated Circuits 


    IRI Connections:

    Leanne West

    Leanne West

    Leanne West

    Chief Engineer, Pediatric Technologies, GTRI
    Principal Research Scientist

    Leanne West is Chief Engineer of Pediatric Technologies at the Georgia Institute of Technology and Pediatric Innovation Catalyst at the Global Center for Medical Innovation where she leads innovation in pediatric medical devices. In her 25+ years working at Georgia Tech, she has led multimillion dollar programs and teams of researchers to develop products for government and industry partners. She also started her own company, Intelligent Access, to take her invention of a wireless personal captioning system to market. She serves as the technical liaison between Georgia Tech and pediatric hospitals around the world, with Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and Shriners Hospitals being the main partners. West works closely with clinicians to understand and identify problems that need a solution to allow them to take better care of their patients. She is an invited Judge for many medical device pitch competitions and serves on several Boards in the healthcare and technology arenas. 

    West is the President of the International Children’s Advisory Network (iCAN). Since 2014, iCAN fosters greater global understanding about the importance of the pediatric patient and caregiver voice in healthcare, clinical trials, and research. iCAN gives its members the opportunities to share their stories and experiences in front of organizations like the FDA, AAP, and CDC, and conferences. iCAN is an official partner of the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) Center for Devices and Radiological Health (CDRH) as an official member organization of the Patient and Caregiver Connection Partner program and the Total Product Life Cycle Advisory Program. West is also a patient advocate for one of her two rare diseases, serving on the Foundation for Sarcoidosis Research Patient Advisory Council and Speaker’s Bureau. 

    She has served as the twice-elected Chair of the Georgia Tech Executive Board (2007, 2008) and was the GT Chair of the State Charitable Campaign (2017). She was recognized by Georgia Trend magazine as one of Georgia’s “40 Under 40” in 2004; she was selected for Leadership Georgia in 2008; she was a member of the team awarded the international Optical Society 2012 Paul F. Forman Engineering Excellence Award; she received Georgia Tech’s Outstanding Achievement in Research Enterprise Enhancement Award in 2014, and she was Women in Technology’s Woman of the year in 2014. In 2017, she was appointed to the board of the Georgia Technology Authority by the late Speaker of the House, David Ralston.

    lwest@gatech.edu

    404-407-6405

    Office Location:
    Centergy Bldg 683

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Platforms and Services for Socio-Technical Frontier
    Additional Research:
    Assured Monitoring; Enhanced Mobility; Social Connectedness

    IRI Connections:

    Doby Rahnev

    Rahnev

    Doby Rahnev

    Associate Professor

    Dr. Rahnev received his Ph.D. in Psychology from Columbia University in 2012. After completing a 3-year post-doctoral fellowship at UC Berkeley, he joined Georgia Tech in 2015 where he is currently Blanchard Early Career professor. His research focuses on perceptual decision making – the process of internally representing the available sensory information and making decisions on it. Dr. Rahnev uses a wide variety of methods such as functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI), transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS), psychophysics, computational modeling, and deep neural networks (DNNs). Dr. Rahnev’s work appears in high-impact journals such as Behavioral and Brain Sciences, PNAS, Nature Communications, and Nature Human Behavior. He has received over $3.5M in funding, including PI grants from NIH, NSF, and the Office of Naval Research.

    rahnev@psych.gatech.edu

    Office Location:
    J.S. Coon 130

    https://rahnevlab.gatech.edu/

    University, College, and School/Department
    Additional Research:

    Big Data

    Human Augmentation 


    IRI Connections:

    Turgay Ayer

    Turgay Ayer

    Turgay Ayer

    Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Chair
    Professor, Industrial and Systems Engineering
    Research Director of Business Intelligence and Healthcare Analytics, Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems

    Turgay Ayer is the Virginia C. and Joseph C. Mello Chair and a professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Ayer also serves as the research director for healthcare analytics and business intelligence in the Center for Health & Humanitarian Systems at Georgia Tech and holds a courtesy appointment at Emory Medical School.

    His research focuses on healthcare analytics and socially responsible business analytics with a particular emphasis on practice-focused research. His research papers have been published in top tier management, engineering, and medical journals, and covered by popular media outlets, including the Wall Street Journal, Washington Post, U.S. News, and NPR.

    Ayer has received over $2.5 million grant funding and several awards for his work, including an NSF CAREER Award (2015), first place in MSOM Responsible Research in Operations Management (2019), first place in the MSOM Best Practice-Based Research Competition (2017), INFORMS Franz Edelman Laureate Award (2017), and Society for Medical Decision Making Lee Lusted Award (2009).

    Ayer serves an associate editor for Operations Research, Management Science, and MSOM, and is a past president of the INFORMS Health Application Society. He received a B.S. in industrial engineering from Sabanci University in Istanbul, Turkey, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in industrial and systems engineering from the University of Wisconsin–Madison.

    tayer3@mail.gatech.edu

    404-385-6038

    ISyE Profile

  • Personal Research Website
  • Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems
  • Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Lifelong Health and Well-Being
    • Public Health
    • Smart Cities and Inclusive Innovation
    • Systems Biology
    Additional Research:

    Socially Responsible Operations; Practice-focused Research; Healthcare Analytics


    IRI Connections:

    David Peeler

    David Peeler

    David Peeler

    Research Scientist

    David Peeler is a research scientist and a recent graduate from Georgia Tech having completed a bachelor's degree in computer science in May 2022. His research interests lie in machine learning, mobile (Android) development, and STEM education. Currently, he is supporting the TechSAge D2 fall detection project detecting and reporting user falls from wheelchairs. He is also supporting STEM @ GTRI's rural education project giving 1000+ hours of direct instruction and curriculum development of different topics of computer science to high schoolers.

    davidpeeler@gatech.edu


    IRI Connections:

    Jon Duke

    Jon Duke

    Jon Duke

    Director of the Center for Health Analytics and Informatics at the Georgia Tech Research Institute
    Principal Research Scientist

    Dr. Jon Duke is the director of the Center for Health Analytics and Informatics at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and a principal research scientist at the School of Interactive Computing in the College of Computing. He began working at Georgia Tech in 2016. His career before Tech was entirely in medical environments, both as a physician and a researcher.  

    At Georgia Tech his research focuses on advancing techniques for identifying patients of interest from diverse data sources with applications spanning research, quality, and clinical domains. 

    Dr. Duke has led over $21 million in funded research for industry, government, and foundation partners. Dr. Duke’s research focuses on advancing techniques for identifying patients of interest from diverse data sources with applications spanning research, quality, and clinical domains.  He led the Merck-Regenstrief Partnership in Healthcare Innovation and was a founding member of OHDSI, an open-source international health data analytics collaborative.  In addition to numerous peer-reviewed publications, his work has been featured in the lay media including the New York Times, NPR, and MSNBC.  Dr. Duke completed his medical degree at Harvard Medical School and a master's in human-computer interaction at Indiana University.

    jon.duke@gatech.edu

    Website


    IRI Connections:

    Ashok Goel

    Ashok Goel

    Ashok Goel

    Professor; School of Interactive Computing
    Director| Ph.D. program in Human-Centered Computing; College of Computing
    Co-Director; Center for Biologically Inspired Design
    Fellow; Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems

    Ashok Goel is a Professor of Computer Science in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA. He obtained his Ph.D. from The Ohio State University. At Georgia Tech, he is also the Director of the Ph.D. Program in Human-Centered Computing, a Co-Director of the Center for Biologically Inspired Design, and a Fellow of Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems. For more than thirty years, Ashok has conducted research into artificial intelligence, cognitive science and human-centered computing, with a focus on computational design, modeling and creativity. His recent work has explored design thinking, analogical thinking and systems thinking in biological inspired design (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wiRDQ4hr9i8), and his research is now developing virtual research assistants for modeling biological systems. Ashok teaches a popular course on knowledge-based AI as part of Georgia Tech's program on Online Masters of Science in Computer Science. He has pioneered the development of virtual teaching assistants, such as Jill Watson, for answering questions in online discussion forums (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WbCguICyfTA). Chronicle of Higher Education recently called virtual assistants exemplified by Jill Watson as one of the most transformative educational technologies in the digital era. Ashok is the Editor-in-Chief of AAAI's AI Magazine.

    ashok.goel@cc.gatech.edu

    Office Location:
    GVU/TSRB

    Design & Intelligence Laboratory

    Google Scholar

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Human Augmentation
    • Platforms and Services for Socio-Technical Frontier
    • Shaping the Human-Technology Frontier
    Additional Research:

    Artificial Intelligence; Cognitive Science; Computational Design; Computational Creativity; Educational Technology; Design Science; Learning Science and Technology; Human-Centered Computing


    IRI Connections:

    Brad Fain

    Brad Fain

    Brad Fain

    Executive Director, Center for Advanced Communications Policy
    Principal Research Scientist, GTRI

    Brad Fain, principal research scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and at the Center for Advanced Communications Policy (CACP), has been appointed as executive director of CACP. The appointment was announced on January 2, 2019 by Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts Dean Jacqueline Royster.

    Housed in the Georgia Tech School of Public Policy, CACP focuses on key issues that influence the development, implementation and adoption of communications technologies. CACP work includes assessment of policy issues and production of regulatory filings, identification of future options for innovation, and articulation of a clearer vision of the ever-changing technology landscape. The Center’s research addresses a wide range of advanced communications policy issues and related technology applications, particularly in the wireless and new technology arenas.

    Fain brings to bear more than twenty-five years of experience in human performance. He directs Georgia Tech’s HomeLab research initiative and leads a team that is pioneering research into issues and products design to assist with successful aging in place. He joined Georgia Institute of Technology in 1992 and has extensive experience developing technologies, evaluation processes, and curriculum in the field of accessible design. He has also led or assisted in a variety of research programs on the design of fixed and rotary wing crew interfaces, and he currently leads a project to build a virtual reality usability testbed for first responder technologies enabled by FirstNet for the National Institute for Standards and Technology (NIST). He has performed over one hundred accessibility evaluations for national and international customers in twenty projects. He has executed over two hundred consumer product evaluation projects. He pioneered the development of Consumer Product Integration (CPI) as a design process for the realization of products with universal design features.

    Fain led the National Council on Disability’s (NCD) universal design research program. The focus of the research program was to determine the impact of Section 508 of the Rehabilitation Act on the design and procurement of electronic and information technologies. Fain’s report contained universal design policy recommendations that were endorsed by the NCD and sent to the president of the United States for consideration. He conceived and led the development of an information portal containing information pertaining to the design and procurement of accessible electronic and information technologies. The Accessibility Assistant (http://accessibility.gtri.gatech.edu) is the culmination of eight years of accessibility research at Georgia Tech and serves over 1,500 visitors monthly.

    Fain has also led the technical portion of the EAC’s Military Heroes Initiative to search for new technologies that would allow recently wounded soldiers to place a private and secure vote. He served as the technical director of the EAC’s Accessible Voting Technology Initiative (AVTI) to develop technologies solutions that facilitate accessible voting for the general population. The AVTI resulted in the development of a voting system test bed used to conduct accessibility research for ballot design and novel hardware design. He also led a NIST research grant to determine best practices for quantifying and certifying the accessibility and usability of new voting systems. Fain served as the technical director for the Information Technology and Technical Assistance Training Center (ITTATC) project. He led the needs assessment and technical assistance portions of the ITTATC project and has developed materials to support accessibility curriculum development efforts. He led the development of the Accessibility Evaluation Facility to support independent third-party evaluations of electronic and information technology accessibility and usability. In addition, he led the development of training materials to educate designers and accessibility specialists in the measurement of accessibility. In 2004, Fain modified the AEM to measure ease of use for special populations and, as a result, GTRI was named as the national test lab for the Arthritis Foundation’s Ease of Use Commendation Program.

    brad.fain@cacp.gatech.edu

    Website


    IRI Connections: