The Gutekunst Lab is interested in pushing the limits of complexity in macromolecular systems using innovative concepts from synthetic organic chemistry. 

Specific projects in the lab will explore the design of novel monomers for the construction of functional polyamides, the development of small molecule reagents for the dynamic modulation of branched polymer architectures, and the investigation of new concepts for creating covalent bonds in challenging contexts. Each of these research projects will enable the generation of new functional materials with structures or assemblies that were previously inaccessible for study. 

Prospective students will obtain extensive training in synthetic organic chemistry, as well as polymer synthesis and characterization.

Eric M. Vogel is currently professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to joining Tech in August 2011, he was an associate professor of Materials Science and Engineering and electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas (UT Dallas) where he was also associate director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence and led UT Dallas's portion of the Southwest Academy for Nanoelectronics. Prior to joining UT Dallas in August of 2006, he was leader of the Semiconductors and Novel Devices Group and founded the Nanofab at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. He received his Ph.D. in 1998 in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and his B.S. in 1994 in electrical engineering from Penn State University. Professor Vogel's research interests relate to materials and devices for future micro-/nano-electronics. He has published over 150 journal publications and proceedings, written six book chapters and given over 75 invited talks and tutorials.

John R. Reynolds is a Professor of Chemistry and Biochemistry, and Materials Science and Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology with expertise in polymer chemistry and serves as a member of the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics (COPE). His research interests have involved electrically conducting and electroactive conjugated polymers for over 30 years with work focused to the development of new polymers by manipulating their fundamental organic structure in order to control their optoelectronic and redox properties. His group has been heavily involved in developing new polyheterocycles, visible and infrared light electrochromism, along with light emission from polymer and composite LEDs (both visible and near-infrared) and light emitting electrochemical cells (LECs). Further work is directed to using organic polymers and oligomers in photovoltaic cells.  Reynolds obtained his M.S. (1982) and Ph.D. (1984) degrees from the University of Massachusetts in Polymer Science and Engineering, he has published over 300 peer-reviewed scientific papers, has 15 patents issued and ~25 patents pending, and served as co-editor of the “Handbook of Conducting Polymers” which was published in 2007.  He was awarded the ACS Award in Applied Polymer Science in 2012.  He serves on the editorial board for the journals ACS Applied Materials and Interfaces, Macromolecular Rapid Communications, Polymers for Advanced Technologies, and the Journal of Macromolecular Science, Chemistry.

George will oversee activities designed to facilitate individual faculty members and teams of researchers in attracting extramural research funding, particularly opportunities with a focus or component involving external partnerships. This proactive and strategic role will allow George to assemble teams for creating collaborative research relationships with HBCUs and other MSIs, industry, government agencies, and other external organizations in order to respond to large-scale research opportunities.

Zhou's research interests concern material behavior over a wide range of length scales. His research emphasizes finite element and molecular dynamics simulations as well as experimental characterization with digital diagnostics. The objective is to provide guidance for the enhancement of performance through material design and synthesis. Zhou maintains a high-performance computer cluster with 384 parallel processors and an intermediate-to-high strain rate material research facility which includes a split Hopkinson pressure bar apparatus, a tension bar apparatus, and a combined torsion-tension/torsion-compression bar apparatus.

Recent research focuses on the characterization of the dynamic shear failure resistance of structural metals and the role of microscopic damage in influencing failure processes through shear banding and fracture. Micromechanical models are developed to outline microstructural adjustments that can improve the performance of materials such as metal matrix composites, ceramic composites, composite laminates and soft composites. These models explicitly account for random microstructures as well as random crack and microcrack development. At the nanoscale, ongoing research focuses on the novel shape memory and pseudoelasticity that were recently discovered in metal (e.g., Cu, Au and Ni) nanowires. The coupling between the thermal and mechanical responses of semiconducting oxide (e.g., ZnO and GaN) nanowires is another active research direction which uses molecular dynamics simulations and continuum modeling. Dr. Zhou's group is also actively engaged in research on the equivalent continuum (EC) representation of atomistic deformation at different length scales. Related research projects are sponsored by the National Science Foundation (NSF), NASA, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research (AFOSR), the Air Force Research Lab (AFRL), the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the Army Research Office (ARO), industry, and the Center for Computational Materials Design (CCMD).

Yao Xie is a Coca-Cola Foundation Chair and Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech, which she joined in 2013 as an Assistant Professor. She also serves as Associate Director of Machine Learning and Data Science of the Center for Machine Learning. From September 2017 until March 2023 she was the Harold R. and Mary Anne Nash Early Career Professor. She was a Research Scientist at Duke University from 2012 to 2013. 

Her research lies at the intersection of statistics, machine learning, and optimization in providing theoretical guarantees and developing computationally efficient and statistically powerful methods for problems motivated by real-world applications. 

She is currently an Associate Editor for IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, Journal of the American Statistical Association: Theory and Methods, Sequential Analysis: Design Methods and Applications, INFORMS Journal on Data Science, and an Area Chair of NeurIPS and ICML.

Dr. Justin Romberg is the Schlumberger Professor and the Associate Chair for Research in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the Associate Director for the Center for Machine Learning at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Romberg received the B.S.E.E. (1997), M.S. (1999) and Ph.D. (2004) degrees from Rice University in Houston, Texas. From Fall 2003 until Fall 2006, he was a Postdoctoral Scholar in Applied and Computational Mathematics at the California Institute of Technology. He spent the Summer of 2000 as a researcher at Xerox PARC, the Fall of 2003 as a visitor at the Laboratoire Jacques-Louis Lions in Paris, and the Fall of 2004 as a Fellow at UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics. In the Fall of 2006, he joined the Georgia Tech ECE faculty. In 2008 he received an ONR Young Investigator Award, in 2009 he received a PECASE award and a Packard Fellowship, and in 2010 he was named a Rice University Outstanding Young Engineering Alumnus. He is currently on the editorial board for the SIAM Journal on the Mathematics of Data Science, and is a Fellow of the IEEE.

His research interests lie on the intersection of signal processing, machine learning, optimization, and applied probability.

Michael Filler is a professor and the Traylor Faculty Fellow in the School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He earned his undergraduate and graduate degrees from Cornell University and Stanford University, respectively, prior to completing postdoctoral studies at the California Institute of Technology. Filler has been recognized for his research and teaching with the National Science Foundation CAREER Award, Georgia Tech Sigma Xi Young Faculty Award, CETL/BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, and AVS Dorothy M. and Earl S. Hoffman Award. Filler also heads Nanovation, a forum to address the big questions, big challenges, and big opportunities of nanotechnology.

Erturk began at Georgia Tech in May 2011 as an Assistant Professor, he was promoted to Associate Professor with tenure in 2016 and became a full Professor in 2019. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he worked as a Research Scientist in the Center for Intelligent Material Systems and Structures at Virginia Tech (2009-2011). His postdoctoral research interests included theory and experiments of smart structures for applications ranging from aeroelastic energy harvesting to bio-inspired actuation. His Ph.D. dissertation (2009) was centered on experimentally validated electromechanical modeling of piezoelectric energy harvesters using analytical and approxIMaTe analytical techniques. Prior to his Ph.D. studies in Engineering Mechanics at Virginia Tech, Erturk completed his M.S. degree (2006) in Mechanical Engineering at METU with a thesis on analytical and semi-analytical modeling of spindle-tool dynamics in machining centers for predicting chatter stability and identifying interface dynamics between the assembly components.

Professor Citrin earned a B.A. from Williams College (1985) and a M.S. (1987) and a Ph.D. (1991) from the University of Illinois, all in physics, where his dissertation was on the optical properties of semiconductor quantum wires. Subsequently, he was a post-doctoral research fellow at the Max Planck Institute for Solid State Research, Stuttgart, Germany (1992-1993) and Center Fellow at the Center for Ultrafast Optical Science at the University of Michigan (1993-1995). Dr. Citrin was an assistant professor of physics and materials science at Washington State University (1995 to 2001).

Professor Citrin joined the faculty at Georgia Tech in 2001 where his work focuses on terahertz technology and nanotechnology. He is a recipient of a Presidential Early Career Award for Scientists and Engineers and of a Friedrich Bessel Award from the Alexander Von Humboldt Stiftung. In addition, he is Project Coordinator on Nonlinear Optics and Dynamics at Georgia Tech-CNRS UMI 2958 located at Georgia Tech-Lorraine. Professor Citrin’s research in terahertz imaging is featured in the Georgia Tech press release, ”Imaging Technique Unlocks the Secrets of 17th Century Artists"; a list of some media placements from the press release may be found at http://photonics.georgiatech-metz.fr/node/33.

Research interests: 

• Terahertz nondestructive testing of materials
• Terahertz characterization of art and cultural heritage
• Chaos and nonlinear dynamics in external-cavity semiconductor lasers
• Nanophotonics
• High-speed electronic, photonic, and optoelectronic devices
• Nonlinear optical properties of semiconductor materials and devices