Emma Hu joins the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech as an assistant professor. Her group will use quantum mechanical modelling combined with materials informatics to understand the underlying mechanisms of energy harvesting and utilization at the atomic level, and reveal structure-property-performance relationships for knowledge/data-driven materials design.

Her research seeks to accelerate the discovery of materials with complex properties to solve time-sensitive problems involving green energy production and climate remediation.

Emma obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 2018 from the University of California, Riverside, and her B.S. in Chemistry in 2013 from University of Science and Technology of China. She then spent two years as a postdoctoral scholar in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2018-2020. Before joining Georgia Tech, Emma was an Assistant Professor at City University of New York from 2020-2023.

Dr. Ng is the Love Family Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering and the School of Earth & Atmospheric Sciences at the Georgia Institute of Technology. She earned her Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering from the California Institute of Technology and was a postdoctoral scientist at Aerodyne Research Inc.

Dr. Ng’s research focuses on the understanding of the chemical mechanisms of aerosol formation and composition, as well as their health effects. Her group combines laboratory chamber studies and ambient field measurements to study aerosols and air quality using advanced mass spectrometry techniques. Dr. Ng leads the establishment of the first, high time-resolution, long-term aerosol measurement network in the U.S.: Atmospheric Science and Chemistry mEasurement NeTwork (ASCENT), for characterization of aerosol chemical composition and physical properties, and their impacts on climate, human health, and ecosystems.

Our group is primarily a surface chemistry and physics group which focuses on the use of high-powered pulsed lasers, low-energy electron scattering, micro-plasmas, mass spectrometry and ultrahigh vacuum surface science techniques. We use this "tool-set" as well as some scattering theory to unravel the details of non-thermal processes occurring under a variety of non-equilibrium conditions. Our group is based upon an interdisciplinary approach and thus our research programs span the realm of fundamental investigations in molecular physics, surface physics and chemistry, bio-physics, bio-polymer formation under pre-biotic conditions as well as working in applied areas of relevance to analytical technique developments, atmospheric chemistry, catalysis and molecular hydrogen generation.

Dr. Jennifer Hirsch is an applied cultural anthropologist recognized internationally for fostering university and community engagement in sustainability and climate action. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, she is the inaugural Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities Research & Education (SCoRE), creating a culture of collaboration in which students, faculty, and staff engage in long-term relationships with community, government, and industry partners to build sustainable communities.

Dr. Hirsch’s research and teaching interests focus on: 1) equity in the sustainable built environment; 2) grassroots sustainability innovation; and 3) community leadership in energy equity.

Dr. Hirsch is also a co-founder and lead coordinator of RCE Greater Atlanta – a Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development - officially acknowledged in 2017 by the United Nations University. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgia Tech’s School of City and Regional Planning. She serves on the faculty of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute hosted by DePaul University and on the Board of Directors of AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education).

Before coming to Georgia Tech, Dr. Hirsch worked in Chicago as Associate Director of Study Abroad at Northwestern University; as Urban Anthropology Director at The Field Museum of Natural History; and as an independent consultant with clients such as the City of Cleveland, Enterprise Community Partners, the U.S. Green Building Council, The Institute of Cultural Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Joliet Junior College. Dr. Hirsch received a Bachelor’s degree in American Culture from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

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. Felix J. Herrmann is Georgia Research Alliance Eminent Scholar in Energy and a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology with appointments in the Schools of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences, Computational Science and Engineering, and Electrical and Computer Engineering. Dr. Herrmann will be the 2019 Distinguished Lecturer of the Society of Exploration Geophysicists (SEG). 

Dr. Herrmann holds a M.Sc. and Ph.D. in Engineering Physics from the Delft University of Technology. He completed his postdoctoral studies at Stanford University and MIT before becoming a professor at the University of British Columbia's Department of Earth, Ocean, and Atmospheric Sciences. He joined the faculty of the Georgia Institute of Technology in October 2017. 

During his career, Dr. Herrmann has worked on the development of the next-generation of industrial acquisition and computational imaging technologies designed to improve the image quality in complex geological areas at vastly reduced costs and environmental impact. Aside from driving innovations, by leveraging recent developments in the mathematical and computational sciences, Dr. Herrmann has extensive experience working with industry. At the University of British Columbia, he was the founder and director of the Seismic Laboratory for Imaging and Modelling (SLIM), which hosted the industry Consortium SINBAD. Under his guidance, SLIM became a world leader in the successful integration of transformative scientific developments, such as compressive sensing, randomized linear algebra, and machine learning, into innovative approaches that tackle the most challenging imaging problems. With his move to the Georgia Institute of Technology, Dr. Herrmann plans to broaden his research program to include other imaging modalities. Dr. Herrmann was a long program participant at UCLA's Institute for Pure and Applied Mathematics in the Fall of 2004 and has been involved in public-private partnerships around the world. He serves on the editorial board of Geophysical Prospecting and on the SEG Research Committee.

Marta Hatzell is a professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Prior to starting at Georgia Tech in August of 2015, she was a post-doctoral researcher in the Department of Material Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign. During her post doc, she worked in the Braun Research Group on research at the interface between colloid science and electrochemistry. She completed her Ph.D. at Penn state University in the Logan Research Group. Her Ph.D. explored environmental technology for energy generation and water treatment. During graduate school she was an NSF and PEO Graduate Research Fellow. 

Currently her research group focuses on exploring the sustainable catalysis and separations, with applications spanning from solar energy conversion to desalination. She is an active member of the American Chemical Society, the Electrochemical Society, ASEEP, and ASME. Hatzell was awarded the NSF Early CAREER award in 2019 for her work on distributed solar-fertilizers, attended the 2019 US Frontiers of Engineering Symposium through the National Academy of Engineering, and was awarded the 2020 Sloan Research Fellowships in Chemistry.