Bill Dracos is a seasoned operations executive with over 20 years of experience leading complex organizational transformations, financial and operational turnarounds, and strategic growth initiatives across higher education and the private sector. Renowned for driving performance, reducing costs, and building high-impact teams, Dracos has consistently delivered results in mission-critical roles.

As the chief research operations officer at Georgia Tech, Dracos facilitates and directs the Institute’s research operations and oversees Research Integrity Assurance, Research Administration, and Research Development and Operations within the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research.

Previously, Dracos served as deputy chief operating officer for the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), where he led major cost-saving and operational streamlining initiatives. His work helped strengthen GTRI's financial and infrastructural foundation - from real estate negotiations, fiscal management, and capital investments to advanced analytics and risk controls.

Prior to GTRI, Dracos was the vice president for Operations and Business Services at George Mason University (GMU), where he managed a portfolio of business services, auxiliary enterprises, and internal consulting operations with direct P&L responsibility exceeding $65 million and a workforce of more than 750 employees. He also founded and led University Business Consulting, GMU’s internal consulting practice, and was a key member of the university’s Finance and Administration leadership team.

Prior to GMU, Dracos was associate vice president for Administration and managing director for University Consulting at Emory University. There, he launched and scaled the Business Practice Improvement (BPI) division, led the development of the university’s strategic plan, and directed numerous high-profile operational initiatives. He also oversaw several auxiliary and business service functions.

Earlier in his career, Dracos spent nearly 12 years at PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC), rising to director within the Health Sciences and Higher Education practices. Before PwC, he held leadership roles at Kaplan Inc., becoming product director at age 26 and later serving as program director.

Dracos earned his MBA with highest honors from Duke University, with concentrations in strategy, decision modeling, and health sector management. A respected thought leader, he serves on multiple boards and is a frequent speaker at business schools, financial associations, and medical institutions.

Tommer Ender is the Deputy Director for Research for the Electronics, Optics, and Systems Directorate (EOSD). In this role he manages operations for an 800-person unit with an annual $300 million research portfolio across three research laboratories: the Applied Systems Laboratory (ASL), the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory (EOSL), and the Electronic Systems Laboratory (ELSYS). He also serves on the GTRI Executive Council, helping set GTRI strategy and informing critical decisions impacting our organization.

Tommer previously served as Director of the ELSYS Laboratory. As GTRI’s largest lab with over 500 personnel at 12 locations across the United States and $165-$250 million in annual sponsor awards, ELSYS endeavors to be GTRI’s preeminent laboratory in total life cycle systems engineering and technology transition into operation. His personal area of research includes development of collaborative, executable Model Based Systems Engineering tools utilizing multidisciplinary design optimization and trade space analytics applied to complex problems.

Ender has served as an instructor and course developer for Georgia Tech’s Professional Master’s in Applied Systems Engineering, and has served on M.S. and Ph.D. thesis committees at Georgia Tech and other universities. He is a certified Project Management Professional (PMP) and Certified Systems Engineering Professional (CSEP). He is a Senior Member of IEEE, and active member of INCOSE, NDIA, and MORS, regularly publishing with those organizations. Tommer earned his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech.

B. David Bridges is the Vice President for the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2) at the Georgia Institute of Technology. EI2 is the largest, oldest, and most successful economic development organization at any university in the country. It is home to 11 economic development programs which (1) build and scale startups, (2) grow existing small and medium sized enterprises, including manufacturing firms, and (3) energize ecosystem builders (communities, governments, universities, and non-profits). These programs serve the State of Georgia, with programmatic reach across the Southeast region, the United States, and five continents around the world. Bridges concurrently serves as the Director of the Economic Development Lab (EDL) within the Enterprise Innovation Institute. EDL works with communities in Georgia on projects such as workforce development, fiscal and economic impact analyses, strategic planning, and downtown redevelopment. This lab also works locally and globally conducting innovation policy research and implementing innovation ecosystem building projects with 23 countries around the world.

Since joining the Georgia Institute of Technology in 1994, Bridges has worked in various practice areas serving manufacturing firms, national labs, international governments, and innovation ecosystems. He has been a Principal or Co-Principal Investigator on over $20 million in grants and has authored, co-authored, or significantly contributed to over $40 million in winning proposals. Bridges has won over 100 proposals from U.S. federal agencies, plus universities, governments and non-profits from around the world. He is a Principal Research Faculty member and a frequent lecturer and key note speaker in China, South Africa, and across Latin America on nascent, innovation ecosystem building.

Prior to joining EI2, he was a general management consultant and a brand manager at three consumer package goods companies. Bridges has a Bachelor of Business Administration from Emory University and a Master of Science in Marketing from Georgia State University.

Douglas Hope is a Senior Research Scientist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute who specializes in fundamental research on problems associated with Space Domain Awareness (SDA). Hope has expertise in imaging, signal detection, inverse problems, and information theory. In addition to his work in SDA, he collaborates with astronomers on interdisciplinary projects to detect and characterize planets around other stars.

In addition to research, Hope has experience teaching and mentoring undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students. He takes the honor of passing forward knowledge to the next generation as a serious responsibility. He has shown commitment to outreach and advancement in education, research, and scholarship. Hope firmly believes in giving first-generation and underrepresented scholars the opportunity to contribute toward solutions to address current and future space-related challenges.

In addition to his research and teaching here at GTRI, he is actively involved in numerous projects and collaborations within the U.S. and internationally.

Principal Research Associate with Georgia Tech Research Institute, specializing in defense applications such as command and control, battle management, national-to-tactical integration, and space situational awareness. Prior to this, career Air Force officer with extensive experience in acquisitions and tactical aviation.

Abdel-Khalik joined the Georgia Tech faculty as the Georgia Power Distinguished Professor in 1987. He was appointed to his current position as the Southern Nuclear Distinguished Professor in 1993. He served as Associate Director of the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering between 1990 and 1992 and as the Georgia Tech Secretary of the Faculty between 2002 and 2006. He served as a member of the USNRC Advisory Committee on Reactor Safeguards (ACRS) between 2006 and 2012, including two years as Chairman (2009-2011).  Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, Abdel-Khalik served as a faculty member in the Nuclear Engineering and Engineering Physics Department (1976-1987) and as a Postdoctoral Fellow in Chemical Engineering (1973-1975) at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Abdel-Khalik also served as a Senior Engineer at Babcock and Wilcox Nuclear Power Generation Division (1975); as a Guest Research Scientist at the Nuclear Research Center in Karlsruhe, Germany (1979); and as an Invited Professor at EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland (1982).

Abdel-Khalik currently serves as a member of the External Advisory Boards for the School of Nuclear Engineering at Purdue University and the Mechanical Engineering Department of King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. He also serves as a member of the Board of Trustees for Badr University in Cairo, Egypt.