Tom Sammon focuses on implementing lean manufacturing practices and helping companies develop capital equipment applications.

Dr. Stephen Balakirsky is the Chief Scientist for the Aerospace, Transportation & Advanced Systems Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), and the Director of Technical Initiatives at the Petit Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience at GT.

Dr. Balakirsky’s research interests include robotic architectures, planning, bio-automation, robotic standards, and autonomous systems testing. His work in knowledge driven robotics couples real-time sensors and knowledge repositories to allow for flexibility and agility in robotic systems ranging from assembly and manufacturing systems to surveillance and logistics systems. The framework promotes software reuse and the ability to detect and correct for execution errors.

Previously, Dr. Balakirsky worked as a project manager at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) and was a senior research engineer at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL). At ARL, Dr. Balakirsky performed mobile robotics research in several areas, including command and control, mapping, human-computer interfaces, target tracking, vision processing and tele-operated control.

Alex Adams’s research focuses on designing, fabricating, and implementing new ubiquitous and wearable sensing systems. In particular, he is interested in how to develop these systems using equity-driven design principles for healthcare. Alex leverages sensing, signal processing, and fabrication techniques to design, deploy, and evaluate novel sensing technologies.

Originally a musician, Alex became fascinated by how he could capture and manipulate sounds through analog hardware and digital signal processing, which led him back to his hometown (Concord, NC). Alex completed his BS at the University of North Carolina at Charlotte in 2014 and his Ph.D. at Cornell University in 2021 (advised by Professor Tanzeem Choudhury). Alex then became the resident Research Scientist for the Precision Behavioral Health Initiative at Cornell Tech (NYC) until the fall of 2022, when he joined the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Currently, his research focuses on the equity-driven design and the development of multi-modal sensing systems to simultaneously assess mental and physical health to enable a new class of mobile health technologies.

Ratan is an Assistant Professor of Cognition and Brain Science in the School of Psychology at Georgia Tech, and the Director of the Murty Lab (murtylab.com). He obtained his PhD from Indian Institute of Science (IISc) Bangalore and was a postdoctoral researcher in the Kanwisher and DiCarlo labs at MIT before moving to Georgia Tech. Research in the Murty Lab aims to uncover the neural codes and algorithms that enable us to see. The central theme of the lab's work is to integrate biological vision with artificial models of vision. The lab combines the benefits of closed-loop experimental testing (using 3T/7T human functional-MRI) with cutting-edge computational methods (like deep neural networks, generative algorithms, and AI interpretability) toward a new computationally precise understanding of human vision. This research also guides the development of neurally mechanistic biologically constrained models aimed to uncover a better understanding of the neurobiological changes that underlie perceptual abnormalities such as agnosias.

Alex Abramson is an assistant professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research, which focuses on drug delivery and bioelectronic therapeutics, has been featured in news outlets such as The New York Times, NPR, and Wired. Abramson has received several recognitions for scientific innovation, including being named a member of the Forbes 30 Under 30 Science List and the MIT Technology Review Innovators Under 35 List. He is passionate about translating scientific endeavors from bench to bedside. Large pharmaceutical companies have exclusively licensed a portfolio of his patents to bring into clinical trials, and Abramson serves as a scientific advisor overseeing their commercialization. In addition to his scientific endeavors, Abramson plays an active role in his community by leading diversity and inclusion efforts on campus and volunteering as a STEM tutor to local students.

Abramson received a B.S. in chemical and biomolecular engineering from Johns Hopkins University and a Ph.D. in chemical engineering from MIT as an NSF Graduate Research Fellow under the direction of Professors Robert Langer and Giovanni Traverso. He conducted postdoctoral work at Stanford University as an NIH fellow with Professors Zhenan Bao and the late Sanjiv S. Gambhir.

The Abramson Lab develops ingestible, implantable, and wearable robotic therapeutic devices that solve key healthcare problems and provide measurable therapeutic outcomes. Our translationally focused research spans a multitude of areas, including (1) drug delivery devices for optimal drug adherence, (2) soft materials for bioelectronic sensors and therapeutics, and (3) preclinical drug screening technologies.

Jun Ueda received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from Kyoto University, Japan, in 1994, 1996, and 2002 all in Mechanical Engineering. From 1996 to 2000, he was a Research Engineer at the Advanced Technology Research and Development Center, Mitsubishi Electric Corporation, Japan. He was an Assistant Professor of Nara Institute of Science and Technology, Japan, from 2002 to 2008. During 2005-2008, he was a visiting scholar and lecturer in the Department of Mechanical Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology. He joined the G. W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology as an Assistant Professor in 2008 where he is currently a Professor. He received Fanuc FA Robot Foundation Best Paper Award in 2005, IEEE Robotics and Automation Society Early Academic Career Award in 2009, Advanced Robotics Best Paper Award in 2015, and Nagamori Award in 2021. 

Anqi Wu is an Assistant Professor at the School of Computational Science and Engineering (CSE), Georgia Institute of Technology. She was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Center for Theoretical Neuroscience, the Zuckerman Mind Brain Behavior Institute, Columbia University. She received her Ph.D. degree in Computational and Quantitative Neuroscience and a graduate certificate in Statistics and Machine Learning from Princeton University. Anqi was selected for the 2018 MIT Rising Star in EECS, 2022 DARPA Riser, and 2023 Alfred P. Sloan Fellow. Her research interest is to develop scientifically-motivated Bayesian statistical models to characterize structure in neural data and behavior data in the interdisciplinary field of machine learning and computational neuroscience. She has a general interest in building data-driven models to promote both animal and human studies in the system and cognitive neuroscience.

Dr. Gregory S. Sawicki is an Associate Professor at Georgia Tech with appointments in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Biological Sciences. He holds a B.S. from Cornell University ('99) and a M.S. in Mechanical Engineering from University of California-Davis ('01). Dr. Sawicki completed his Ph.D. in Human Neuromechanics at the University of Michigan, Ann-Arbor ('07) and was an NIH-funded Post-Doctoral Fellow in Integrative Biology at Brown University ('07-'09). Dr. Sawicki was a faculty member in the Joint Department of Biomedical Engineering at NC State and UNC Chapel Hill from 2009-2017. In summer of 2017, he joined the faculty at Georgia Tech with appointments in Mechanical Engineering 3/4 and Biological Sciences 1/4.

Education

Masters of Science, Computer Science, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2022

Bachelors of Science, Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2020

Research Expertise

Robot Planning and Control, Embodied Artificial Intelligence, Laboratory Automation, Software Engineering

Selected Publications

Bowles-Welch, A., Byrnes, W., Kanwar, B., Wang, B., Joffe, B., Casteleiro Costa, P., Armenta, M., Xu, J., Damen, N., Zhang, C., Mazumdar, A., Robles, F., Yeago, C., Roy, K., Balakirsky, S. (2021). Artificial Intelligence Enabled Biomanufacturing of Cell Therapies. Georgia Tech Research Institute Internal Research and Development (IRAD) Journal

Byrnes, W., Ahlin, K., Rains, G., & McMurray, G. (2019). Methodology for Stress Identification in Crop Fields Using 4D Height Data. IFAC-PapersOnLine, 52(30), 336–341. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ifacol.2019.12.562

Byrnes, W., Kanwar, B., Damen, N., Wang, B., Bowles-Welch, A. C., Roy, K., & Balakirsky, S. (2023). Process Development and Manufacturing: A NEEDLE-BASED AUTOSAMPLER FOR BIOREACTOR CELL MEDIA COLLECTION. Cytotherapy, 25(6), S172.

Wang, B., Kanwar, B., Byrnes, W., Costa, P. C., Filan, C., Bowles-Welch, A. C., ... & Roy, K. (2023). Process Development and Manufacturing: DIGITAL TWIN-ENABLED FEEDBACK-CONTROLLED AUTOMATION WITH INTEGRATED PROCESS ANALYTICS FOR BIOMANUFACTURING OF CELL THERAPIES. Cytotherapy, 25(6), S206-S207.

Professional Activities

STEM@GTRI Program Mentor

IEEE Member

My primary interest is floating ice systems - Jupiter's moon Europa and Earth's ice shelves. I am interested in how these environments work and how they may become habitable. I have chosen to focus on Europa because of its potential to have what other places may not have: a stable source of energy from tides that can power geological cycles over the lifetime of the solar system. At its most basic form, life is like a battery, depending upon redox reactions to move electrons. A planetary proxy for this is activity, whereby a planet recycles through geologic processes, and maintains chemical gradients of which life can take advantage. Without recycling, it is possible that even once habitable environments can become inhospitable. This is where terrestrial process analogs come into the picture - by studying how ice and water interact in environments on Earth we can better understand the surface indications of such on Europa (and other icy worlds). My work provides a framework by which to remotely understand planetary cryospheres and test hypotheses, until such time as subsurface characterization becomes possible by radar sounding, landed seismology, or one day, roving submersibles. Much work remains to correlate observations and models of terrestrial icy environments - excellent process analogs for the icy satellites - with planetary observations. I think about how to incorporate melting, hydrofracture, hydraulic flow, and now brine infiltration as process analogs into constructing models for the formation of Europa's geologic terrain and to study the implications for ice shell recycling and ice-ocean interactions. The inclusion of realistic analogs in our backyard-Earth's poles -using imaging and geophysical techniques is a common thread of this work, giving tangible ways to generate and test hypotheses relevant to environments on Earth and Europa. In the long term, I envision constructing systems-science level models of the Europan environment to understand its habitability and enable future exploration. I'm lucky to work with a talented group of students, post docs, and collaborators who share this vision and continue to make my life's passion, understanding the worlds around us, tenable.