Dr. Aidun joined the Woodruff School as a Professor in 2003 after completion of a two-year period as program director at the National Science Foundation. He began at Tech in 1988 as an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Paper Science and Technology. Prior, he was a research Scientist at Battelle Research Laboratories, Postdoctoral Associate at Cornell University and Senior Research Consultant at the National Science Foundation's Supercomputer Center at Cornell. 

Dr. Aidun's research is at the intersection between fundamentals of the physics of complex fluids/thermal transport and applications to engineering and biotransport. He has a diverse research portfolio in fluid mechanics, bioengineering, renewable bioproducts and decarbonization of industrial processes. 

A major focus has been to understand the physics of blood cell transport and interaction with glycoproteins (e.g., vWF) with applications to cardiovascular diseases.

Dr. Boukouvala is originally from Piraeus, which is the port of Athens in Greece. As the daughter of an airforce pilot, she travelled a lot with her family. Her first international move was actually to the USA, where she spent one year in Montgomery, Alabama. She later on lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Crete, Greece, before returning to Athens to get her B.S Degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University in Athens. In 2008, she moved back to the US to obtain a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Rutgers University in NJ. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in both Princeton University and Texas A&M University. In August 2016, Dr. Boukouvala returned to the South East US, as an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Her research interest in Process Systems Engineering (PSE) started during her PhD years, where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Marianthi Ierapetritou, on modeling and optimization of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing. Her background on optimization and data-driven modeling was enhanced during her years as a postdoc with the late Christodoulos A. Floudas. Dr. Boukouvala is a proud 4th generation member of the academic family tree of the father of PSE, Roger Sargent.

Andreas (Andy) S. Bommarius is a professor of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering as well of Chemistry and Biochemistry at the Georgia Institute of Technology in Atlanta, GA.  He received his diploma in Chemistry in 1984 at the Technical University of Munich, Germany and his Chemical Engineering B.S. and Ph.D. degrees in 1982 and 1989 at MIT, Cambridge, MA.

From 1990-2000, he led the Laboratory of Enzyme Catalysis at Degussa (now Evonik) in Wolfgang, Germany, where his work ranged from immobilizing homogenous catalysts in membrane reactors to large-scale cofactor-regenerated redox reactions to pharma intermediates.

At Georgia Tech since 2000, his research interests cover green chemistry and biomolecular engineering, specifically biocatalyst development and protein stability studies.  His lab applies data-driven protein engineering to improve protein properties on catalysts ranging from ene and nitro reductases to cellobiohydrolases.  Bommarius has guided the repositioning of the curriculum towards Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering by developing new courses in Process Design, Biocatalysis and Metabolic Engineering, as well as Drug Design, Development, and Delivery (D4), an interdisciplinary course with Mark Prausnitz.

Andy Bommarius in 2008 became a Fellow of the American Institute of Medical and Biological Engineering.  Since 2010, he is Director of the NSF-I/UCR Center for Pharmaceutical Development (CPD), a Center focusing on process development, drug substance and product stability, and novel analytical methods for the characterization of drug substances and excipients.

Dr. Bert Bras has been a Professor at the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology since September 1992. From 2001 to 2004, he served as the Director of Georgia Tech’s Institute for Sustainable Technology and Development. 

In 2014, he was named a Brook Byers Professor of Sustainability. He was named the Associate Chair for Administration for the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech in 2016 and briefly served as Interim School Chair in 2018. 

Dr. Bras’ 25-year career as a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology equips him with considerable expertise in sustainable design and manufacturing that has taken him through many areas of industry, from automotive to alternative energy.

He holds an MS in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Twente (Netherlands) and a Ph.D. in Operations Research from the University of Houston. Prior to completing his Ph.D., he worked at the Maritime Research Institute Netherlands (MARIN).

Russell D. Dupuis earned all of his academic degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his bachelor's degree with "Highest Honors-Bronze Tablet" in 1970. He received his master's in electrical engineering in 1971, and his Ph.D. in 1973. His alma mater has honored him with the University of Illinois Alumni Loyalty Award, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Dupuis worked at Texas Instruments from 1973 to 1975. In 1975, he joined Rockwell International where he was the first to demonstrate that MOCVD could be used for the growth of high-quality semiconductor thin films and devices. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1979 where he extended his work to the growth of InP-InGaAsP by MOCVD. In 1989 he became a chaired professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In August 2003, he was appointed Steve W. Chaddick Chair in Electro-Optics at Georgia Tech in ECE. He is currently studying the growth of III-V compound semiconductor devices by MOCVD, including materials in the InAlGaN/GaN, InAlGaAsP/GaAs, InAlGaAsSb, and InAlGaAsP/InP systems.

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.

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.

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.