Rusty Roberts is the Director of the Aerospace, Transportation and Advanced Systems (ATAS) Laboratory at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI). ATAS develops advanced systems concepts, builds system prototypes, and performs research on technologies related to aerospace, transportation, power and energy, threat systems, and food processing. A nationally recognized expert in test and evaluation, Roberts has held the position of the President of the International Test and Evaluation Association (ITEA). He also started and presently leads a GTRI-wide test and evaluation initiative that brought together the resources to provide Science & Technology support to the Office of the Secretary of Defense Test Resource Management Center. Mr. Roberts has also worked with U.S. government officials to establish key requirements for the testing of U.S. electronic countermeasures against surface-to-air missile threats and has been able to provide solutions developed by GTRI. Solutions included the threat replica of a medium range surface-to-air missile (SAM) acquisition radar for the U.S. Army and the Advanced Airborne Interceptor Simulator (AAIS) for the U.S. Air Force. He also led the efforts that developed the Missle-on-a-Mountain program at the Electronic Combat Range in China Lake, California. This one-of-a-kind simulation facility has been called a key national asset in testing electronic countermeasures against surface-to-air missle systems. The facility is in high demand by the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, and allied air forces. Prior to joining GTRI, Mr. Roberts served as an active duty U.S. Army Signal Corps officer for ten years, with assignments at Fort Gordon, GA and Kaiserslautern, Germany. His last assignment was at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Electrical Engineering teaching Electronic Circuit Design. During his tour at West Point he became the Course Director for the Senior-level, two-semester electronics course for the Department. Mr. Roberts continued to serve in the Army Reserve after leaving Active Duty while at GTRI. Roberts holds a Bachelor of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from West Point, a Master of Science degree in Electrical Engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, and a Maste

Martin Mourigal received the B.S in Materials from Ecole des Mines de Nancy in 2004. He later received his M.S. and Ph.D. in physics from Ecole Polytechnique Federale (EPFL) located in Lausanne, Switzerland in 2007 and 2011, respectively. He was also a postdoctoral research fellow in John Hopkins University from 2011 until 2014. He joined Georgia Tech in 2015 and is currently an assistant professor in the School of Physics. Mourigal's lab focuses on the study of collective electronic and magnetic phenomena in quantum materials. His research exploits the unique strengths of neutron and X-ray scattering to probe the organization and the dynamics of matter at the nanoscale.In addition to his own lab research, Mourigal is the co-director of the Georgia Tech Quantum Alliance, a university wide program that will work towards solving problems in optimization, cryptography, and artificial intelligence. Mourigal was awarded the Cullen Peck Faculty Scholar Award from Georgia Tech in 2019. He was also awarded the National Science Foundation CAREER Award for excellence as a young educator and researcher in 2018.

Ramprasad joined the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech in February 2018. Prior to joining Georgia Tech, he was the Centennial Term Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Connecticut. He joined the University of Connecticut in Fall 2004 after a 6-year stint with Motorola’s R&D laboratories at Tempe, AZ. Ramprasad received his B. Tech. in Metallurgical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India, an M.S. degree in Materials Science and Engineering at the Washington State University, and a Ph.D. degree also in Materials Science and Engineering at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

Ramprasad’s area of expertise is in the development and utilization of computational and data-driven (machine learning) methods aimed at the design and discovery of new materials. Materials classes under study include polymers, metals and ceramics (mainly dielectrics and catalysts), and application areas include energy production and energy storage. Prof. Ramprasad’s research has been funded by the Office of Naval Research (ONR), the National Science Foundation (NSF), the Department of Energy (DOE), the Army Research Office (ARO), and Toyota Research Institute (TRI). He has lead a ONR-sponsored Multi-disciplinary University Research Initiative (MURI) in the past to accelerate the discovery of polymeric capacitor dielectrics for energy storage, and is presently leading another MURI aimed at the understanding and design of dielectrics tolerant to enormous electric fields.

Ramprasad is a Fellow of the American Physical Society, an elected member of the Connecticut Academy of Science and Engineering, and the recipient of the Alexander von Humboldt Fellowship and the Max Planck Society Fellowship for Distinguished Scientists.

Nancey Green Leigh is a Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning and adviser for the economic development planning, working with masters and doctoral students. Maintaining an active research program, Leigh is currently leading a project entitled "Workers, Firms and Industries in Robotic Regions," funded by the National Science Foundation's Robotics Initiative. She previously led a large scale research effort by three universities focused on sustainable industrial systems for urban regions. Both of these efforts as well as other funded research (brownfields, urban land and manufacturing, resilient infrastructure) contribute to Leigh's long term focus on advancing sustainable development for local and regional economies. As Associate Dean for Research, Leigh is focused on strengthening the research impact of the College of Design. She develops and administers competitive initiatives to support individual and collaborative research by college faculty and affiliated researchers. She oversees the college's seven major research units. She also is engaged in building research connections within Georgia Tech between the College of Design, other colleges and Interdisciplinary Research Institutes, as well as to external funders and collaborators in the public, private and nonprofit sectors. Leigh has published more than 60 articles and four books, Routledge Handbook of International Planning Education (2019 with S.P. French, S. Guhathakurta, and B. Stiftel), Planning Local Economic Development, 6th edition (2017 with E.J. Blakely) adopted for courses in a wide array of universities; Economic Revitalization: Cases and Strategies for City and Suburb (2002 with J. Fitzgerald); and Stemming Middle Class Decline: The Challenge to Economic Development Planning (1994). She was co-editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research from 2012 to 2016, and was elected a Fellow of the American Institute of Certified Planners in 2008.

Dimitri Mavris is a Regents’ Professor, Boeing Professor of Advanced Aerospace Systems Analysis, and an S.P. Langley Distinguished Professor. He also serves as the director of the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory (ASDL) and executive director of the Professional Master’s in Applied Systems Engineering (PMASE). Dr. Mavris received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. in aerospace engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology. His primary areas of research interest include: advanced design methods, aircraft conceptual and preliminary design, air-breathing propulsion design, multi-disciplinary analysis, design and optimization, system of systems, and non-deterministic design theory. Dr. Mavris has actively pursued closer ties between the academic and industrial communities in order to foster research opportunities and tailor the aerospace engineering curriculum towards meeting the future needs of the US aerospace industry. He has also co-authored with his students in excess of 1,000 publications. During his tenure at Georgia Tech, Dr. Mavris has chaired and served in several Technical and Program Committees for the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA) and served on the AIAA Board of Directors and Institute Development Committee. He is the President of the International Council of the Aeronautical Sciences (ICAS). He is the Georgia Tech technical point of contact for the FAA Center of Excellence for Alternative Jet Fuels & Environment (ASCENT), the Georgia Tech site director for the FAA Partnership to Enhance General Aviation Safety, Accessibility, and Sustainability (PEGASAS), and the principal investigator for the Airbus/Georgia Tech Center for MBSE-enabled Overall Aircraft Design and the Siemens Center of Excellence for Simulation and Digital Twin.

Phanish Suryanarayana joined the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology in August 2011. He received his B.Tech. from Indian Institute of Technology, Madras, India in 2005. He obtained his M.S. in Aeronautics from California Institute of Technology in 2006. Subsequently, he received his Ph.D. in Aeronautics from California Institute of Technology in 2011 for his thesis titled "Coarse-graining Kohn-Sham Density Functional Theory". His research interests are in the areas of multiscale modeling, ab-initio calculations, density functional theory, continuum mechanics and smart materials. Overall, he is interested in developing efficient numerical methods for solving problems arising in a variety of fields. On a personal level, Dr. Suryanarayana is a sports enthusiast. He plays badminton, cricket, waterpolo, and ultimate frisbee. He also is an avid gamer (PC) and enjoys playing bridge and other board game

Maryam Saeedifard received the B.S. and M.S. degrees from Isfahan University of Technology, Isfahan, Iran, in 1998 and 2002, respectively, and the Ph.D. degree from the University of Toronto, Canada, in 2008, all in electrical engineering.

From 2007 to 2008, she was with ABB Corporate Research Center, Dattwil-Baden, Switzerland, working in the power electronic systems group. She joined Purdue University in January 2010, where she served as an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Since January 2014, she has been on the ECE faculty at the Georgia Institute of Technology.

Her main research focus has been in the area of Power Electronics and Applications of Power Electronics in Power Systems and Transportation Systems. She has served on the technical program committees of the IEEE Power Electronics Society, IEEE Applied Power Electronics Conference and Exposition (APEC), and IEEE Industrial Electronics Conference (IECON). She is an editor for IEEE Trans. on Sustainable Energy, IEEE Trans. on Power Delivery, and IEEE Trans. on Power Electronics.

Michael’s love of design at all scales is evident in his teaching, research and practice. 

He is a registered architect, director of the Modern Cities Europe Program, and creative director at Gamble + Gamble Architects in Atlanta. From 2015 to 2022, he directed the Master of Architecture program in the School of Architecture.  His design-driven research operates at a variety of scales, from house to city, with emphasis on innovation, alternative energy, and building technology pursued within the context of a larger concern for the creation of healthy, well-conceived environments. He has received numerous awards for excellence in design and scholarship. www.gg-architects.com 

Michael was the first point of contact for the $30 million Living Building gift, a.k.a. Kendeda Building for Innovative Sustainable Design (KBISD), and actively participated in pre-planning and fund acquisition, design competition and team formation, all the way through building execution, implementation and certification.  He also led a series of interdisciplinary design studios that paralleled the effort, and chaired the Academic and Research Council connected to the project.  He is co-author of the novel organizational structure of the living building workgroups, now tested, and currently  serves as chair of the KBISD advisory council and leads the Living Building Pilot Project Program, comprised of faculty, researchers and students from across campus, now in round three of funding. 

Michael’s research has received grants from The Alcoa Foundation, The Kendeda Foundation, Center for Quality Growth and Regional Development, the National Endowments of the Arts, and received First Prize for Research in an international competition sponsored by the Environmental Design and Research Association. Gamble has published essays on the design of the public realm in Harvard Design Magazine with W. Jude Leblanc. 

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.

Matthew McDowell joined Georgia Tech in the fall of 2015 as an assistant professor with a joint appointment in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. Prior to this appointment, he was a postdoctoral scholar in the Division of Chemistry and Chemical Engineering at the California Institute of Technology. McDowell received his Ph.D. in 2013 from the Department of Materials Science and Engineering at Stanford University.

McDowell’s research group focuses on understanding how materials for energy and electronic devices change and transform during operation, and how these transformations impact properties. The group uses in situ experimental techniques to probe materials transformations under realistic conditions. The fundamental scientific advances made by the group guide the engineering of materials for breakthrough new devices. Current projects in the group are focused on i) electrode materials for alkali ion batteries, ii) materials for solid-state batteries, iii) interfaces in chalcogenide materials for electronics and catalysis, and iv) new methods for creating nanostructured metals.