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:

Annalisa Bracco

Annalisa Bracco

Annalisa Bracco

Associate Chair and Professor; Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Dr. Annalisa Bracco is a professor at Georgia Tech with extensive background in computational fluid dynamics and physical oceanography. Her research interests include coastal ocean circulation, with focus on meso- and submesoscale processes, ocean predictability and inverse dynamics, impacts of physical forcing on ecosystems, and climate model validation. Her group has been involved in field collections during the Deepwater Horizon spill (July/Aug. 2010) and was back in the Gulf in the summer of 2011.

abracco@gatech.edu

Website

University, College, and School/Department
Research Focus Areas:
  • Health & Life Sciences
Additional Research:
Data Mining

IRI Connections:

Kate Pride Brown

Kate Pride Brown

Kate Pride Brown

Associate Professor

Kate Pride Brown is an environmental and political sociologist whose research focuses on a range of issues, including environmental activism in Russia and conservation policy in the United States. She received her doctorate from Vanderbilt University and completed a postdoctoral fellowship at the Vanderbilt Institute for Energy and Environment. Her book, Saving the Sacred Sea: The Power of Civil Society in an Age of Authoritarianism and Globalization (Oxford University Press, 2018), examines the conflict between local and transnational environmentalists, multinational corporations, and the Russian government over the future of Lake Baikal, the largest, deepest and oldest freshwater lake on Earth. While she continues to study environmental issues in Russia, especially around Lake Baikal, Dr. Brown has also published research on water and energy politics and policy in the United States. She is currently studying the "nuclear renaissance" in the southeastern United States. Among other honors, she has received a Fulbright Fellowship, a Critical Language Scholarship from the U.S. Department of State, and funding from the Horowitz Foundation for Social Policy and the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research. Her research has appeared in Communist and Post-Communist Studies, Energy Research and Social Science, Environmental Politics, Environmental Sociology, Ethnography, Memory Studies, Nature and Culture, Research in Political Sociology, Social Movement Studies, Sustainability: Science, Practice and Policy, Water Policy and WIREs Water.

k.p.brown@gatech.edu

(404) 894-0616

Website

University, College, and School/Department

IRI Connections:

Jennifer Kaiser

Jennifer Kaiser

Jennifer Kaiser

Assistant Professor

In the Kaiser group, we work to improve the understanding of the emissions and atmospheric processes that influence air quality and climate. Our research focuses largely on volatile organic compounds (VOCs), which are reactive organic species that are precursors to ozone and aerosol. Our work is grounded in insights from field, and aimed at understanding atmospheric composition at broad spatial and temporal scales.

jennifer.kaiser@ce.gatech.edu

(404) 894-2644

Departmental Bio

  • Lab Website
  • Research Focus Areas:
    • Social & Environmental Impacts
    Additional Research:
    Climate/EnvironmentAtmospheric Chemistry, Aerosols & CloudsRemote SensingAtmospheric composition and chemistryBiogenic and anthropogenic emissionsGlobal chemistry-transport modelingIn-situ and remote sensing

    IRI Connections:

    Daniel Matisoff

    Daniel Matisoff

    Daniel Matisoff

    Professor

    Daniel Matisoff teaches and conducts research in the areas of public policy, energy policy, and corporate sustainability. His research focuses on the effectiveness and efficiency of comparative approaches to addressing environmental problems and the adoption and diffusion of energy technologies and policies. He currently is a fellow with the Brook Byers Institute for Sustainability, and is affiliated with the Strategic Energy Institute and Center for Urban Innovation. He has participated in over $4 million of sponsored research through the National Science Foundation, the European Union Center for Excellence, the German Academic Exchange Service, the Georgia Department of Transportation, and the National Electric Energy Testing Research and Applications Center. His recent research has resulted in publications in the Review of Environmental Economics and Policy, Environmental and Resource Economics, Energy Economics, Environmental Science and Technology, Energy Policy, and Business Strategy and the Environment, among other outlets. His current research interests include: evaluating the effectiveness of voluntary eco-labeling programs; the effectiveness of incentives for solar electricity; the adoption of smart grid technologies and policies; and the impact of large scale solar adoption on consumer rates and bills.

    matisoff@gatech.edu

    (404) 385-0504

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Energy Utilization and Conservation
    • Policy & Economics
    Additional Research:
    Building Technologies; Policy/Economics

    IRI Connections:

    Mitchell Walker II

    Mitchell Walker II

    Mitchell Walker II

    Professor
    Associate Chair for Graduate Studies

    Dr. Walker's primary research interests lie in electric propulsion, plasma physics, and hypersonic aerodynamics/plasma interaction. He has extensive design and testing experience with Hall thrusters and ion engines. Dr. Walker has performed seminal work in Hall thruster clustering, vacuum chamber facility effects, plasma-material interactions, and electron emission from carbon nanotubes. His current research activities involve both theoretical and experimental work in advanced spacecraft propulsion systems, diagnostics (including THz time-domain spectroscopy and Thomson scattering), plasma physics, helicon plasma sources, magnetoplasmadynamic thrusters, and pulsed inductive thrusters. Dr. Walker also teaches the undergraduate Jet & Rocket Propulsion course, as well as the graduate level Rocket Propulsion, Electric Propulsion, and Gasdynamics courses.

    mitchell.walker@ae.gatech.edu

    404-385-2757

    Office Location:
    Tech Tower 307

    Website

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Energy Generation, Storage, and Distribution
    • Energy Harvesting
    • Thermal Systems
    Additional Research:
    Energy Harvesting; Thermal Systems

    IRI Connections:

    Jennifer Hirsch

    Jennifer Hirsch

    Jennifer Hirsch

    Senior Director, SCoRE
    Senior Academic Professional
    SEI Lead: Sustainable Communities

    Dr. Jennifer Hirsch is an applied cultural anthropologist recognized internationally for fostering university and community engagement in sustainability and climate action. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, she is the inaugural Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities Research & Education (SCoRE), creating a culture of collaboration in which students, faculty, and staff engage in long-term relationships with community, government, and industry partners to build sustainable communities.

    Dr. Hirsch’s research and teaching interests focus on: 1) equity in the sustainable built environment; 2) grassroots sustainability innovation; and 3) community leadership in energy equity.

    Dr. Hirsch is also a co-founder and lead coordinator of RCE Greater Atlanta – a Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development - officially acknowledged in 2017 by the United Nations University. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgia Tech’s School of City and Regional Planning. She serves on the faculty of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute hosted by DePaul University and on the Board of Directors of AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education).

    Before coming to Georgia Tech, Dr. Hirsch worked in Chicago as Associate Director of Study Abroad at Northwestern University; as Urban Anthropology Director at The Field Museum of Natural History; and as an independent consultant with clients such as the City of Cleveland, Enterprise Community Partners, the U.S. Green Building Council, The Institute of Cultural Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Joliet Junior College. Dr. Hirsch received a Bachelor’s degree in American Culture from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

    jennifer.hirsch@gatech.edu

    Departmental Bio

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Climate & Environment
    • Global Change
    • Social & Environmental Impacts
    Additional Research:
    Sustainability PedagogyEquity in the Sustainable Built EnvironmentGrassroots Sustainability InnovationSustainability in Cross-cultural Perspective 

    IRI Connections:

    Joyelle "Joy" Harris, Ph.D.

    Joyelle "Joy" Harris, Ph.D.

    Joyelle Harris

    Director, Women in Engineering

    Dr. Joy Harris has a diverse career within the Georgia Institute of Technology (GA Tech). Through her primary appointment as a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), she serves as a teacher, mentor, and research advisor to undergraduate students. Within ECE, Dr. Harris focuses on lowering barriers and increasing access to all opportunities within the department. She also serves as faculty director for the Engineering for Social Innovation (ESI) Center, where she creates the space for students to use their technical skills for positive social impact. 

    As ESI director, she leads undergraduate service breaks to developing countries; she operates a graduate leadership and development program; and she helps her students increase the operating capacity of non-profit organizations. Dr. Harris formerly served as faculty director of the Global Leadership Living and Learning Community (LLC), where she taught a course in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and she helped her first-year LLC students to successfully integrate into the GA Tech community. Dr. Harris also served as one of the Associate Directors for the CREATE-X entrepreneurship initiative. In this capacity, she helped students increase their entrepreneurial confidence through designing their own career paths and by launching startups. Through all her roles on campus, Dr. Harris enjoys teaching and serving thousands of students throughout the academic year. 

    Joy’s educational background includes a bachelor's in mathematics from Spelman College and a bachelor's in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. She earned her master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Princeton University and an MBA at Georgia Tech in 2017.

    joyelle.harris@ece.gatech.edu

    404.894.8365

    Departmental Bio

    Research Focus Areas:
    • Social & Environmental Impacts

    IRI Connections:

    Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena

    Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena

    Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena

    Assistant Professor
    IMS/SEI Initiative Lead: Materials for Solar Energy Harvesting and Conversion

    Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena is an Assistant Professor and the Goizueta Junior Faculty Rotating Chair in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, USA.

    His group focuses on understanding and control of crystallographic structure and effects on electronic dynamics at the nanoscale of low-cost semiconductors for optoelectronic applications. Juan-Pablo’s group works on advanced deposition techniques, with emphasis on low-cost and high throughput, as well as advanced characterization methods that include synchrotron-based mapping and imaging approaches with nanoscale resolution.

    His research program at Georgia Tech has attracted funding from the Department of Energy and the Department of Defense, which funds cutting-edge research on new materials for solar energy conversion.

    His work has been cited over 28,000 times (h-index of 59) making him a top cited researcher as recognized by the Web of Science Group, Highly Cited Researchers-cross-field (2019, 2021) and Chemistry (2020), and Nature Index, Leading early career researcher in materials science (2019).

    jpcorrea@gatech.edu

    Departmental Bio

  • 2023 Initiative Lead Profile
  • University, College, and School/Department

    IRI Connections: