Baratunde A. Cola is a professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his degrees from Vanderbilt University and Purdue University, all in mechanical engineering, and was a starting fullback on the Vanderbilt football team as an undergrad. Cola has received a number of prestigious early career research awards including the Presidential Early Career Award for Scientist and Engineers (PECASE) in 2012 from President Obama for his work in nanotechnology, energy, and outreach to high school art and science teachers and students; the AAAS Early Career Award for Public Engagement with Science in 2013; and the 2015 Bergles-Rohsenow Young Investigator Award in Heat Transfer from the American Society of Mechanical Engineers. In addition to research and teaching, Cola is the founder and CEO of Carbice Corporation, which sells a leading thermal management solution for the global electronics industry.

Julie Champion is the William R. McLain Endowed Term Professor in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her B.S.E. in chemical engineering from the University of Michigan and Ph.D. in chemical engineering at the University of California Santa Barbara. She was an NIH postdoctoral fellow at the California Institute of Technology. Champion is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering and has received awards including American Chemical Society Women Chemists Committee Rising Star, NSF BRIGE Award, Georgia Tech Women in Engineering Faculty Award for Excellence in Teaching, Georgia Tech BioEngineering Program Outstanding Advisor Award. Professor Champion’s current research focuses on design and self-assembly of functional nanomaterials made from engineered proteins for applications in immunology, cancer, and biocatalysis.

Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb joined Georgia Tech in summer 2007 as an assistant professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering. Prior to this, she was a senior engineer in the materials and device R&D group of MEMS Research and Innovation Center at QUALCOMM MEMS Technologies, Inc. Her work included characterization and optimization of optical and electric response of IMOD displays and research on novel materials for improved processing and reliability of IMOD. Bassiri-Gharb's research interests are in smart and energy-related materials (e.g. ferroelectric and multiferroic materials) and their application to nano- and micro-electromechanical systems. Her research projects integrate novel micro and nanofabrication techniques and processes and study of the fundamental science of these materials at the nanoscale, at the interface of physical and electrochemical phenomena.

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

Jaydev P. Desai, Ph.D, is currently a Professor and BME Distinguished Faculty Fellow in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in August 2016, he was a Professor in the Department of Mechanical Engineering at the University of Maryland, College Park (UMCP). He completed his undergraduate studies from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay, India, in 1993. He received his M.A. in Mathematics in 1997, M.S. and Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics in 1995 and 1998 respectively, all from the University of Pennsylvania. He was also a Post-Doctoral Fellow in the Division of Engineering and Applied Sciences at Harvard University. He is a recipient of several NIH R01 grants, NSF CAREER award, and was also the lead inventor on the "Outstanding Invention of 2007 in Physical Science Category" at the University of Maryland, College Park. He is also the recipient of the Ralph R. Teetor Educational Award. In 2011, he was an invited speaker at the National Academy of Sciences "Distinctive Voices" seminar series on the topic of "Robot-Assisted Neurosurgery" at the Beckman Center. He was also invited to attend the National Academy of Engineering's 2011 U.S. Frontiers of Engineering Symposium. He has over 150 publications, is the founding Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Medical Robotics Research, and Editor-in-Chief of the Encyclopedia of Medical Robotics (currently in preparation). His research interests are primarily in the area of image-guided surgical robotics, rehabilitation robotics, cancer diagnosis at the micro-scale, and rehabilitation robotics. He is a Fellow of the ASME and AIMBE.

Dragomir Davidovic's research focuses on the exploration of physical properties that emerge in objects when their size approaches nanometer-scale. The objects of study are metallic or insulating particles, molecules, atomic-scale diameter wires, and droplets of one phase surrounded by another phase. Recent advances in lithography enable attachment of these objects to larger scale conducting electrodes, making it possible to explore their physical properties by electronic transport. The properties of nanoscale objects can be fundamentally different from those in bulk. As an example, whereas in bulk metals, the energy spectrum of conduction electrons is continuous, in metallic nanoparticles the spectrum is discrete. As a result, metallic nanoparticles are more like atoms than bulk metals, and nanoparticles are commonly referred to as artificial atoms.

The Curtis lab is primarily focused on the physics of cell-cell and cell-extracellular matrix interactions, in particular within the context of glycobiology and immunobiology. Our newest projects focus on questions of collective and single cell migration in vitro and in vivo; immunophage therapy "an immunoengineering approach - that uses combined defense of immune cells plus viruses (phage) to overcome bacterial infections"; and the study of the molecular biophysics and biomaterials applications of the incredible enzyme, hyaluronan synthase. A few common scientific themes emerge frequently in our projects: biophysics at interfaces, the use of quantitative modeling, collective interactions of cells and/or molecules, cell mechanics, cell motility and adhesion, and in many cases, the role of bulky sugars in facilitating cell integration and rearrangements in tissues.

Wenshan Cai joined the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology in January 2012 as an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, with a joint appointment in the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Prior to this, he was a postdoctoral fellow in the Geballe Laboratory for Advanced Materials at Stanford University. His scientific research is in the area of nanophotonic materials and devices, in which he has made a major impact on the evolving field of plasmonics and metamaterials. Cai has published more than 50 papers in peer-reviewed journals, and the total citations of his recent papers have reached approxIMaTely 10,000 within the past 10 years. He authored the book, Optical Metamaterials: Fundamentals and Applications, which is used as a textbook or a major reference at many universities around the world. He received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from Tsinghua University in 2000 and 2002, respectively, and his Ph.D. from Purdue University in 2008, all in electrical/electronic engineering. Cai is the recipient of several national and international distinctions, including the OSA/SPIE Joseph W. Goodman Book Writing Award (2014), the CooperVision Science & Technology Award (2016), and the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award (2017).