As diversity, equity, and inclusion continue to be among the nation’s most important focus areas, a Georgia Tech researcher has created a framework to help his peers utilize more equitable data in their energy and environmental engineering studies.

What if everyone in a neighborhood had a voice in redesigning it? How can city planners democratize future smart cities, big data analytics and decision-making by involving citizen participation?

That’s the vision of the Tokyo Smart City Studio, using GPS and other location data to track trends in human behavior. The studio is part of the Eco Urban Lab, directed by Perry Yang. In the Studio, Georgia Tech designers are changing the way we plan cities.

Premature births from cesarean (C-sections) and induced deliveries fell by 6.5% during the first month of the Covid-19 pandemic and remained consistently lower throughout — a likely result of fewer prenatal visits due to efforts to slow the spread of the virus, according to new research from Georgia Tech's School of Economics.  

Even a global pandemic cannot slow the acceleration of new technologies and evolving technologies that has become the disruptive norm of our lives over the past decade.

Big data, global connectedness and the digitization of almost everything are driving a whirlwind of change that touches every aspect of our lives.

Georgia Tech continues to be at the center of that of that maelstrom of progress, pushing the cutting edge, developing and influencing advances and being an insistent voice for ensuring those advances are shared as broadly as possible.

Science is often seen as a meritocracy, where the best work rises to the top along with the researchers who shepherd those advances. A new study co-authored by School of Public Policy Chair Cassidy R. Sugimoto tests that premise at the intersection of race and gender and finds cracks in that façade.

COVID-19 has caught Pinar Keskinocak well prepared. For years, she has studied how societies manage pandemics, and how outbreaks overtax the health care system and wrack supply chains to worsen pandemics. Here she shares her insights.

Empty classrooms and supermarket shelves marked the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. But Keskinocak expects more signs of the times to come – such as pop-up pandemic clinics and the shortage and rationing of medical supplies beyond masks and ventilators.

The four materials science and engineering majors gathered one August morning for their senior design class. It was 8am and they all sipped coffee.

Tyler Quill joked that his dentist would kill him for drinking coffee, knowing how the beverage’s acidity contributes to tooth and enamel erosion.

“Then we started talking about why that happens and how great it would be if we could find a way to fix the problem,” said Quill, who is from Grayson, Ga.

Robots are here. They’ve entered our daily lives and can be found in our homes, hospitals and our streets. 

These robot and human interactions raise a series of questions that the general public and lawmakers must face. 

“When robots start truly engaging with us, what does that really mean?” asked Magnus Egerstedt, the Steve W. Chaddick School Chair and a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “And what does it mean for us to interact with them?”

Crowd science is making possible research projects that might otherwise be out of reach, tapping thousands of volunteers to help with such tasks as classifying animal photos, studying astronomical images, counting sea stars and examining cancer cell images. Also known as “citizen science,” these efforts to involve ordinary people in research projects have attracted interest from policy makers, scientific agencies and others.

Having more choices is generally considered a good thing – until you actually have to choose that one cell phone, one prescription drug plan or one car model from among a dozen or so options. Economists call that problem choice overload, and the frustration it causes can lead to poor decisions.