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.

Dr. Gregory S. Sawicki is the Interim Executive Director of the Institute for Robotics and Intelligent Machines and Professor and Joseph Anderer Faculty Fellow 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.

During his graduate work at UC, Berkeley, Simon sought to uncover general principles of animal locomotion that reveal control strategies underlying the remarkable stability and maneuverability of movement in nature. His work has demonstrated the importance animals’ natural dynamics for maintaining stability in the absence of neural feedback. His research emphasizes the importance of placing neural control in the appropriate dynamical context using mathematical and physical models. He has collaborated with researchers at four other institutions to transfer these principles to the design of the next generation of bio-inspired legged robots. 

Simon received his Ph.D. in Integrative Biology at UC, Berkeley and has been a Hertz Fellow since 2002. His work has led to fellowships and awards from the National Science Foundation, the University of California, the Woods Hole Marine Biological Institute, the American Physical Society, the Society of Integrative and Comparative Biology, and the International Association of Physics Students. He is also currently affiliated the new Center for Interdisciplinary Bio-Inspiration in Education and Research (CIBER) at Berkeley.

Karen M. Feigh is a Professor at Georgia Tech's Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering with a courtesy appointment in the School of Interactive Computing. As the director of the Georgia Tech Cognitive Engineering Center, she leads a research and education program focused on the computational cognitive modeling and design of cognitive work support systems and technologies to improve the performance of socio-technical systems. She is responsible for undergraduate and graduate level instruction in the areas of flight dynamics, human reliability analysis methods, human factors, human-automation interaction and cognitive engineering. Feigh has over 14 years of relevant research and design experience in fast-time air traffic simulation, ethnographic studies, airline operation control centers, synthetic vision systems for helicopters, expert systems for air traffic control towers, human extra-vehicular activities in space, and the impact of context on undersea warfighters. Recently her work has focused on human-autonomy teaming and the human experience of machine learning across a number of domains.

Feigh has served as both Co-PI and PI on a number of FAA, NIA, ONR, NSF and NASA sponsored projects. As part of her research, Feigh has published 35 scholarly papers in the field of Cognitive Engineering with primary emphasis on the aviation industry. She serves as an Associate Editor for the Journal of Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making. She previously served as the Chair to the Human Factor and Ergonomics Society’s Cognitive Engineering and Decision Making Technical Group, and on the National Research Council’s Aeronautics and Space Engineering Board (ASEB).

David Hu is a fluid dynamicist with expertise in the mechanics of interfaces between fluids such as air and water. He is a leading researcher in the biomechanics of animal locomotion. The study of flying, swimming and running dates back hundreds of years, and has since been shown to be an enduring and rich subject, linking areas as diverse as mechanical engineering, mathematics and neuroscience. Hu's work in this area has the potential to impact robotics research. Before robots can interact with humans, aid in minimally-invasive surgery, perform interplanetary exploration or lead search-and-rescue operations, we will need a fundamental physical understanding of how related tasks are accomplished in their biological counterparts. Hu's work in these areas has generated broad interest across the fields of engineering, biology and robotics, resulting in over 30 publications, including a number in high-impact interdisciplinary journals such as Nature, Nature Materials, Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences as well as popular journals such as Physics Today and American Scientist. Hu is on editorial board member for Nature Scientific Reports, The Journal of Experimental Biology, and NYU Abu Dhabi's Center for Center for Creative Design of Materials. He has won the NSF CAREER award, Lockheed Inspirational Young Faculty award, and best paper awards from SAIC, Sigma Xi, ASME, as well as awards for science education such as the Pineapple Science Prize and the Ig Nobel Prize. Over the years, Hu's research has also played a role in educating the public in science and engineering. He has been an invited guest on numerous television and radio shows to discuss his research, including Good Morning America, National Public Radio, The Weather Channel, and Discovery Channel. His ant research was featured on the cover of the Washington Post in 2011. His work has also been featured in The Economist, The New York Times, National Geographic, Popular Science and Discover His laboratory appeared on 3D TV as part of a nature documentary by 3DigitalVision, "Fire ants: the invincible army," available on Netflix.

My research integrates my work in complex fluids and granular media and the biomechanics of locomotion of organisms and robots to address problems in nonequilibrium systems that involve interaction of matter with complex media. For example, how do organisms like lizards, crabs, and cockroaches cope with locomotion on complex terrestrial substrates (e.g. sand, bark, leaves, and grass). I seek to discover how biological locomotion on challenging terrain results from the nonlinear, many degree of freedom interaction of the musculoskeletal and nervous systems of organisms with materials with complex physical behavior. The study of novel biological and physical interactions with complex media can lead to the discovery of principles that govern the physics of the media. My approach is to integrate laboratory and field studies of organism biomechanics with systematic laboratory studies of physics of the substrates, as well as to create mathematical and physical (robot) models of both organism and substrate. Discovery of the principles of locomotion on such materials will enhance robot agility on such substrates

Frank L. Hammond III joined George W. Woodruff George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering in April 2015. Prior to this appointment, he was a postdoctoral research affiliate and instructor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at MIT and a Ford postdoctoral research fellow at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences. He received his Ph.D. in 2010 from Carnegie Mellon University.

Jeff comes to VentureLab after 35 years in the personal computing industry, focusing on communications, mobility, Internet services, and usability. As a software developer and architect from the earliest days of the PC, Jeff has been instrumental in creating applications and co-founding companies that led their markets and were highly regarded by customers and the industry. He co-founded his first startup with his Georgia Tech graduate advisor in 1982, and sold his most recent company, Rover Apps, in 2013. Jeff earned an AB in Mathematics from Wabash College, and his MS in Information and Computer Science from Georgia Tech. His personal passions include FIRST Robotics and STEM education for young people.