Michael Helms is a versatile professional with a backgrounds in cognitive science, design theory, technology consulting, computer programming and financial services. He completed a Ph.D. in Computer Science from Georgia Institute of Technology in 2013, and recently completed NSF's entrepreneurial I-CORPS program as an entrepreneurial lead. Prior to receiving his Ph.D., he worked as a technology consultant building business cases for the development of large data infrastructure projects. In conjunction with with the Center for Biologically Inspired Design he provides design consulting services focused on product innovation by leveraging insight gleaned from 3.8 billion years of evolution. Most recently, Helms began research with the Center for Education (CEISMC), working on modeling school interventions as complex social systems.

The research in Chen Group is cross-disciplinary, bridging mechanical engineering, chemistry, and materials science, focusing on electrochemical energy storage related materials and devices, as well as functional and structural metals/alloys. The technical expertise of the group include development and application of advance in situ characterization methods for energy storage devices, computation-aided materials design and novel synthesis methods for nanostructured materials.

Udita Ringania is a Ph.D. candidate in the school of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech, advised by Dr. Saad Bhamla. Her research focuses on developing a sustainable, energy-efficient, low cost and easily scalable alternative for drying/dewatering cellulose nanomaterials, a high value forest product. She is the recipient of the 2020-2021 Blue Sky Young Researcher and Innovation Award presented by the International Council of Forest and Paper Associations (ICFPA). She has served as a leadership coach for Georgia Tech students through the LEAD program (2019-2021) and was a board member for AChEGS (2019-2020), a student run organization for graduate students. She holds a Master’s degree (2018) from the Indian Institute of Technology, Kharagpur, and an undergraduate degree (2015) from the National Institute of Technology, Rourkela, India, both in Chemical Engineering. She loves plants, volunteers at Trees Atlanta, and recently started running to help raise funds for the education of underprivileged children in India.

Advisor: Saad Bhamla

Christos Athanasiou is an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech's Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering, leading the Daedalus Lab. The lab's mission is to advance science and technology in biological and man-made systems for tackling grand social and environmental challenges with a major focus on energy storage, environmental remediation, and sustainable space exploration. Christos holds a Ph.D. in Photonics from EPFL. Initially, he carried out postdoctoral research at Brown University's School of Engineering, and later jointly at Brown University and MIT Media Lab.

Yuanzhi Tang holds undergraduate degrees in Geology and Economics from Peking University, China. She earned a Ph.D. degree in Environmental Geochemistry at Stony Brook University and then continued working in the microbiology group of Prof. Colleen Hansel.

Tang joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2013 as an assistant professor and is now an associate professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

Dr. Realff’s broad research interests are in the areas of process design, simulation, and scheduling. His current research is focused on the design and operation of processes that minimize waste production by recovery of useful products from waste streams, and the design of processes based on biomass inputs. In particular, he is interested in carbon capture processes both from flue gas and dilute capture from air as well as the analysis and design of processes that use biomass.

Dr. Scott Duncan is part of the Research Faculty within the School of Aerospace Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology, where he is a member of ASDL’s Digital Engineering Division. In his current position, Dr. Duncan leads and manages multi-disciplinary research teams in projects relating to terrestrial infrastructure systems, including community energy systems comprising grid-interactive efficient buildings, district thermal systems, distributed energy resources (DERs), and microgrids. These teams assess and support the design of these systems by applying techniques from systems engineering, data analysis, modeling and simulation, visualization, optimization, digital twinning, and model-based systems engineering. Dr. Duncan co-manages, with Dr. Jung-Ho Lewe, the Energy Infrastructure and Data Engineering group, which is part of the long-running Smart Campus Initiative between ASDL and GT Infrastructure & Facilities. Dr. Duncan is a Member of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), serving on its the Terrestrial Energy Systems (TES) Technical Committee. He is also the Initiative Lead for GT’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) overseeing research operations for the Tech Square Microgrid.