Effective July 1, Eric Vogel will become the executive director of the Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS), Georgia Tech’s newest Interdisciplinary Research Institute (IRI) that will launch on the same date.

As an evolution of the Institute for Materials (IMat) and the Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology (IEN), IMS aims to enable convergent research at Georgia Tech related to the science, technology, and societal underpinnings of innovative materials and devices. Additionally, IMS seeks to integrate these innovations into systems that enhance human well-being and performance across information and communication, the built environment, and human-centric technologies that improve human health, wellness, and performance.

“Executive Vice President for Research Chaouki Abdallah and I are very excited about the launch of IMS, which positions Georgia Tech for integration of science and technology from atoms to devices, while explicitly drawing in researchers in the social sciences, design, business, and computing,” said Vice President of Interdisciplinary Research Julia Kubanek.

“IMS will ensure relevance across Georgia Tech through its newly configured Internal Advisor and Ambassador Board with representation across all six Colleges and GTRI,” she said. “Additional advisory committees representing IMS employees and facility users will ensure that we don’t sacrifice any of the research excellence for which IEN and IMat are known. With IMS I expect we will be even better positioned to tackle research problems that will have the greatest positive societal impact.”

Vogel will continue in his current position as the executive director of IMat until the launch of IMS. In addition to leading and growing IMat, Vogel is the Hightower Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech’s School of Materials Science and Engineering, and he served as the IEN deputy director prior to leading IMat.

“It is an honor to be appointed executive director of the Institute for Matter and Systems, and I look forward to collaborating with the talented faculty and staff associated with it,” said Vogel. “This opportunity allows us to leverage the core competencies of IEN and IMat while extending our capabilities beyond nanotechnology and materials science. Together, we will be a hub for interdisciplinary research ranging from advanced materials to complex systems that solve global challenges.”

Georgia Tech’s IRIs facilitate collaboration between researchers and students from its six Colleges, the Georgia Tech Research Institute, national laboratories, and corporate entities to tackle critical topics of strategic significance for the Institute as well as for local, state, national, and international communities. IMS will also house and maintain the state-of-the-art Materials Characterization Facility and one of the largest academic cleanrooms in the nation, which offers a broad range of fabrication capabilities from basic discovery to prototype realization.

Before joining Georgia Tech in 2011, Vogel was an associate professor of materials science and engineering and electrical engineering at the University of Texas at Dallas. During this time, he also served as the associate director of the Texas Analog Center of Excellence and led UT Dallas’s involvement in the Southwest Academy for Nanoelectronics.

Prior to UT Dallas, he led the CMOS and Novel Devices Group and established the Nanofabrication Facility at the National Institute of Standards and Technology. Vogel holds a Ph.D. in electrical engineering from North Carolina State University and a B.S. in electrical engineering from the Pennsylvania State University. His research focuses on the development and fundamental understanding of electronic and nanomaterials and devices.

More than 400 people participated in Energy Materials Day on March 27, as researchers and industry leaders came together to discuss and advance energy materials technologies such as solar energy, carbon-neutral fuels, and batteries.

Energy materials are the things — natural, manufactured, or both — that aid the use of energy. They also play a key role in developing cleaner, more efficient energy solutions.

Energy Materials Day was co-hosted by Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI), the Institute for Materials (IMat), and the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center. The event evolved out of last year’s Georgia Tech Battery Day.

“As an engine of innovation in science and technology, Georgia Tech has incredible opportunities and the responsibility to conduct research to benefit society,” said Chaouki Abdallah, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech. “We call this ‘research that matters.’”

Events like Energy Materials Day are part of an ongoing, long-range effort to position Georgia Tech, and Georgia, as a go-to location for modern energy companies. Tech was recently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the top public university for energy research. Abdallah also outlined why Georgia Tech, with more than 1,000 researchers across campus working in the energy space, is a natural fit for events that foster collaboration between the public and private sectors.

“Right here, right now, we have the opportunity to harness our collective powers, our collective knowledge, our collective resources to become a global engine of innovation,” he said.

Plenary speaker Danielle Merfeld, global chief technology officer at QCells, highlighted opportunities for the current and future clean energy infrastructure in the United States.

"At the heart of our discussions today [are these questions]: What is new technology, and how do you make it ... and make it at scale, in an affordable, accessible, and reliable way?” she said.

"... [The] good news is this country has taken a very deliberate step toward creating the most robust industrial policy we've had in decades. ... This is driving opportunity and creating the foundation for manufacturing. So, [we can] use that industrial base of making and consuming power [and] decarbonize the electric grid by 2035...."

“Events like this are so important to forwarding progress in research and industry,” said Eric Vogel, IMat’s executive director. “It’s important to bring together professionals throughout the industry to keep these lines of communication open.”

The day was divided into three tracks: battery materials and technologies, photovoltaics and the grid, and materials for carbon-neutral fuel production. Attendees were encouraged to listen to talks from all three areas. Each track included academic speakers who shared their research and private-sector speakers who described how technological advancements are affecting the industry.

“With its rich history in energy research, Georgia Tech remains a leader in addressing global energy challenges,” said Tim Lieuwen, executive director of SEI. “The success of Energy Materials Day is encouraging, and I eagerly anticipate continuing these discussions in 2025.”

Jud Ready, a principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), has been selected to join the National Academy of Inventors’ (NAI) 2024 Class of Senior Members – a group of 124 academic inventors from NAI’s Member Institutions who have made significant contributions to innovation and technology.

Holding a dual appointment as Deputy Director of Innovation Initiatives for Georgia Tech’s Institute for Materials, one of Tech’s 10 Interdisciplinary Research Institutes (IRI) focused on advancing materials research and innovation, and with over two decades of experience as an adjunct professor in Tech’s School of Materials Science & Engineering, Ready has established himself as a leader in materials science and engineering.

Read the full story

Energy is everywhere, affecting everything, all the time. And it can be manipulated and converted into the kind of energy that we depend on as a civilization. But transforming this ambient energy (the result of gyrating atoms and molecules) into something we can plug into and use when we need it requires specific materials.

These energy materials — some natural, some manufactured, some a combination — facilitate the conversion or transmission of energy. They also play an essential role in how we store energy, how we reduce power consumption, and how we develop cleaner, efficient energy solutions.

“Advanced materials and clean energy technologies are tightly connected, and at Georgia Tech we’ve been making major investments in people and facilities in batteries, solar energy, and hydrogen, for several decades,” said Tim Lieuwen, the David S. Lewis Jr. Chair and professor of aerospace engineering, and executive director of Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute (SEI).

That research synergy is the underpinning of Georgia Tech Energy Materials Day (March 27), a gathering of people from academia, government, and industry, co-hosted by SEI, the Institute for Materials (IMat), and the Georgia Tech Advanced Battery Center. This event aims to build on the momentum created by Georgia Tech Battery Day, held in March 2023, which drew more than 230 energy researchers and industry representatives.

“We thought it would be a good idea to expand on the Battery Day idea and showcase a wide range of research and expertise in other areas, such as solar energy and clean fuels, in addition to what we’re doing in batteries and energy storage,” said Matt McDowell, associate professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), and co-director, with Gleb Yushin, of the Advanced Battery Center.

Energy Materials Day will bring together experts from academia, government, and industry to discuss and accelerate research in three key areas: battery materials and technologies, photovoltaics and the grid, and materials for carbon-neutral fuel production, “all of which are crucial for driving the clean energy transition,” noted Eric Vogel, executive director of IMat and the Hightower Professor of Materials Science and Engineering.

“Georgia Tech is leading the charge in research in these three areas,” he said. “And we’re excited to unite so many experts to spark the important discussions that will help us advance our nation’s path to net-zero emissions.”

Building an Energy Hub

Energy Materials Day is part of an ongoing, long-range effort to position Georgia Tech, and Georgia, as a go-to location for modern energy companies. So far, the message seems to be landing. Georgia has had more than $28 billion invested or announced in electric vehicle-related projects since 2020. And Georgia Tech was recently ranked by U.S. News & World Report as the top public university for energy research.

Georgia has become a major player in solar energy, also, with the announcement last year of a $2.5 billion plant being developed by Korean solar company Hanwha Qcells, taking advantage of President Biden’s climate policies. Qcells’ global chief technology officer, Danielle Merfeld, a member of SEI’s External Advisory Board, will be the keynote speaker for Energy Materials Day.

“Growing these industry relationships, building trust through collaborations with industry — these have been strong motivations in our efforts to create a hub here in Atlanta,” said Yushin, professor in MSE and co-founder of Sila Nanotechnologies, a battery materials startup valued at more than $3 billion.

McDowell and Yushin are leading the battery initiative for Energy Materials Day and they’ll be among 12 experts making presentations on battery materials and technologies, including six from Georgia Tech and four from industry. In addition to the formal sessions and presentations, there will also be an opportunity for networking.

“I think Georgia Tech has a responsibility to help grow a manufacturing ecosystem,” McDowell said. “We have the research and educational experience and expertise that companies need, and we’re working to coordinate our efforts with industry.”

Marta Hatzell, associate professor of mechanical engineering and chemical and biomolecular engineering, is leading the carbon-neutral fuel production portion of the event, while Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, assistant professor in MSE, is leading the photovoltaics initiative.

They’ll be joined by a host of experts from Georgia Tech and institutes across the country, “some of the top thought leaders in their fields,” said Correa-Baena, whose lab has spent years optimizing a semiconductor material for solar energy conversion.

“Over the past decade, we have been working to achieve high efficiencies in solar panels based on a new, low-cost material called halide perovskites,” he said. His lab recently discovered how to prevent the chemical interactions that can degrade it. “It’s kind of a miracle material, and we want to increase its lifespan, make it more robust and commercially relevant.”

While Correa-Baena is working to revolutionize solar energy, Hatzell’s lab is designing materials to clean up the manufacturing of clean fuels.

“We’re interested in decarbonizing the industrial sector, through the production of carbon-neutral fuels,” said Hatzell, whose lab is designing new materials to make clean ammonia and hydrogen, both of which have the potential to play a major role in a carbon-free fuel system, without using fossil fuels as the feedstock. “We’re also working on a collaborative project focusing on assessing the economics of clean ammonia on a larger, global scale.”

The hope for Energy Materials Day is that other collaborations will be fostered as industry’s needs and the research enterprise collide in one place — Georgia Tech’s Exhibition Hall — over one day. The event is part of what Yushin called “the snowball effect.”

“You attract a new company to the region, and then another,” he said. “If we want to boost domestic production and supply chains, we must roll like a snowball gathering momentum. Education is a significant part of that effect. To build this new technology and new facilities for a new industry, you need trained, talented engineers. And we’ve got plenty of those. Georgia Tech can become the single point of contact, helping companies solve the technical challenges in a new age of clean energy.”

Pioneering a new recycling approach led to a big win for Re-Wind USA, a Georgia Tech research team led by Russell Gentry. The team has won the first phase of the Department of Energy's Wind Turbine Materials Recycling Prize, receiving $75,000 and an invitation to compete in the final phase.

"Our innovation for end-of-service wind turbine blades is both simple and elegant – at its core, our technology captures all the embodied energy in the composite materials in the blade," said Gentry, professor in the School of Architecture.

"The Re-Wind Network has pioneered structural recycling, the only of a number of competing technologies that upcycles the material of the blade and preserves the embodied energy from manufacturing," Gentry said.

"Little additional energy is used to remanufacture the blade and the life of the blade, typically 20 years, is extended at least 50 years. This is a win-win solution from an environmental and economic perspective."

Other methods for dealing with decommissioned wind blades involve mechanical grinding and landfilling of subsequent waste, an expensive and energy-intensive process, he said.

Team members include Gentry, Sakshi Kakkad, Cayleigh Nicholson, Mehmet Bermek, and Larry Bank, from the School of Architecture; Gabriel Ackall, Yulizza Henao, and Aeva Silverman, from the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering;  and Eric Johansen, a business consultant from Fiberglass Trusses Inc.

The team is part of the Re-Wind Network, a multinational research and development network which develops large-scale infrastructure projects from decommissioned wind turbine blades. 

Re-Wind's pedestrian bridges, known as BladeBridges, have already captured media attention. Two more BladeBridges are expected in Atlanta in 2024, Gentry said. Re-Wind has also developed, prototyped, and tested transmission poles made from blade segments. The team's other proposals include culverts, barriers, and floats.

The School of Physics’ new initiative to catalyze research using artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning (ML) began October 16 with a conference at the Global Learning Center titled Revolutionizing Physics — Exploring Connections Between Physics and Machine Learning.

AI and ML have the spotlight right now in science, and the conference promises to be the first of many, says Feryal Özel, Professor and Chair of the School of Physics. 

"We were delighted to host the AI/ML in Physics conference and see the exciting rapid developments in this field,” Özel says. “The conference was a prominent launching point for the new AI/ML initiative we are starting in the School of Physics."​ 

That initiative includes hiring two tenure-track faculty members, who will benefit from substantial expertise and resources in artificial intelligence and machine learning that already exist in the Colleges of Sciences, Engineering, and Computing.

The conference attendees heard from colleagues about how the technologies were helping with research involving exoplanet searches, plasma physics experiments, and culling through terabytes of data. They also learned that a rough search of keyword titles by Andreas Berlind, director of the National Science Foundation’s Division of Astronomical Sciences, showed that about a fifth of all current NSF grant proposals include components around artificial intelligence and machine learning.

“That’s a lot,” Berlind told the audience. “It’s doubled in the last four years. It’s rapidly increasing.”

Berlind was one of three program officers from the NSF and NASA invited to the conference to give presentations on the funding landscape for AI/ML research in the physical sciences. 

“It’s tool development, the oldest story in human history,” said Germano Iannacchione, director of the NSF’s Division of Materials Research, who added that AI/ML tools “help us navigate very complex spaces — to augment and enhance our reasoning capabilities, and our pattern recognition capabilities.”

That sentiment was echoed by Dimitrios Psaltis, School of Physics professor and a co-organizer of the conference. 

“They usually say if you have a hammer, you see everything as a nail,” Psaltis said. “Just because we have a tool doesn't mean we're going to solve all the problems. So we're in the exploratory phase because we don't know yet which problems in physics machine learning will help us solve. Clearly it will help us solve some problems, because it's a brand new tool, and there are other instances when it will make zero contribution. And until we find out what those problems are, we're going to just explore everything.”

That means trying to find out if there is a place for the technologies in classical and modern physics, quantum mechanics, thermodynamics, optics, geophysics, cosmology, particle physics, and astrophysics, to name just a few branches of study.

Sanaz Vahidinia of NASA’s Astronomy and Astrophysics Research Grants told the attendees that her division was an early and enthusiastic adopter of AI and machine learning. She listed examples of the technologies assisting with gamma-ray astronomy and analyzing data from the Hubble and Kepler space telescopes. “AI and deep learning were very good at identifying patterns in Kepler data,” Vahidinia said. 

Some of the physicist presentations at the conference showed pattern recognition capabilities and other features for AI and ML: 

• Cassandra Hall, assistant professor of Computational Astrophysics at the University of Georgia, illustrated how machine learning helped in the search for hidden forming exoplanets. 
• Christopher J. Rozell, Julian T. Hightower Chair and Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, spoke of his experiments using “explainable AI” (AI that conveys in human terms how it reaches its decisions) to track depression recovery with deep brain stimulation.
• Paulo Alves, assistant professor of physics at UCLA College of Physical Sciences Space Institute, presented on AI/ML as tools of scientific discovery in plasma physics.

Alves’s presentation inspired another physicist attending the conference, Psaltis said. “One of our local colleagues, who's doing magnetic materials research, said, ‘Hey, I can apply the exact same thing in my field,’ which he had never thought about before. So we not only have cross-fertilization (of ideas) at the conference, but we’re also learning what works and what doesn't.”

More information on funding and grants at the National Science Foundation can be found here. Information on NASA grants is found here. 

Lisa Marks is launching the ancient craft of fishing villages into space vehicle design. Her work adapting traditional textile handcraft to modern problems created a unique opportunity for collaboration cleaning up space debris.

According to NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office (OPDO), this debris jeopardizes future space projects. Large objects like rocket bodies and non-functional satellites are the source of fragmentation debris.

The OPDO website says removal of even five of the highest-risk objects per year could stabilize the low Earth orbit debris environment.

A research team with members from the Georgia Tech Research Institute, the Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory, and the Space Systems Design Laboratory has developed a concept using a net to capture and de-orbit large debris.

A mutual connection at Tech's GVU recommended that the team speak to Lisa Marks, assistant professor in the School of Industrial Design, based on her work combining traditional textile with new materials and methods.

Putting Textiles in Space Requires Creative Expertise

“There’s a lot of different projects on space debris happening all around the world,” Marks said, “and there’ve been a few concept papers talking about using a net.”

“But all the drawings of the net are basic concepts, just a square with a few hatches through it. No one has figured out what that net might be.”

Marks researches ways to combine traditional textile handcraft with algorithmic modeling. “I specialize in analyzing the shape of every stitch and how we can use that stitch differently. Can we create new patterns through coding, or make it larger and out of wood?”

“It allows me to think really creatively about how we can use different textiles.”

This innovative, exploratory approach is a natural fit to create a net for a job no has ever done. “There's a lot of technical considerations with this,” Marks said. 

“It must pack incredibly small, weigh very little, and still be strong enough to capture and drag a rocket fuselage. There are considerations just for a material to exist in space. It needs to have low UV reactivity, low off gassing.”

“We need to understand every single little aspect of each of these techniques in order to do this.”

Static Nets Catch Fish; Slippery Nets Catch Rockets

Marks is working with Teflon, using the same knots used for fishing nets, but the non-traditional material means the nets work differently than fishing nets, she said. “These knots are made to be static, because you don’t want fish to get through the nets. But because Teflon is so slippery, the knots move around.”

“I think it will help the net’s strength, because the net will deform around irregular shapes before it breaks. What makes it unsuitable for fishing and annoying to work with becomes a huge benefit for what we need it to do.”

Some traditional handcraft techniques are dying out, and Marks sees projects like this as a reason preserving these techniques is important. “We don’t know what problems we’re going to have to solve in the future, and these crafts can be used in really surprising ways.”

“I would not have thought, ‘Netted filet lace, that’s how we’re going to solve a space problem!’ But if we lose this type of lace, we can’t solve space problems with it.”

Idling at a crossroads no longer, the automotive industry is embracing electrification like never before. With more electric vehicles purchased in 2022 than any year prior, consumers are beginning to follow their lead. Yet, while opportunity abounds, new challenges will require an innovative approach to ensure a sustainable and accessible electric future for all.

With historic investments from major players in the EV space, including Rivian, Kia, and Hyundai, the state of Georgia is uniquely positioned to serve as a leader in this effort. As the state's leading research institute, Georgia Tech is on the cutting edge of the movement. 

The transportation sector is the largest greenhouse gas emitter in the U.S. at nearly 30%, with passenger vehicles accounting for around 80% of the sector's total output1 as of 2019. Electric vehicles are widely regarded as a budding solution to reduce emissions, but even as both demand and production continue to increase, EVs currently account for around 1% of the cars on America's roadways. 

From the supply chain to the infrastructure needed to support alternative-fuel vehicles alongside consumer hesitancy, achieving the goals set by both the public and private sectors — including the Biden Administration's target of EVs making up at least 50% of new car sales by 2030 — will not be easy. Through research and development, policy, and collaboration, Tech experts are working toward finding solutions that will serve as catalysts during this transitionary period for the environment and the way Americans drive.

Check out the full story. 

A team of researchers at the University of Massachusetts Amherst and the Georgia Institute of Technology has 3D printed a dual-phase, nanostructured high-entropy alloy that exceeds the strength and ductility of other state-of-the-art additively manufactured materials, which could lead to higher-performance components for applications in aerospace, medicine, energy and transportation. The research, led by Wen Chen, assistant professor of mechanical and industrial engineering at UMass, and Ting Zhu, professor of mechanical engineering at Georgia Tech, was published in the August issue of the journal Nature.

Over the past 15 years, high entropy alloys (HEAs) have become increasingly popular as a new paradigm in materials science. Comprised of five or more elements in near-equal proportions, they offer the ability to create a near-infinite number of unique combinations for alloy design. Traditional alloys, such as brass, carbon steel, stainless steel and bronze, contain a primary element combined with one or more trace elements.

Additive manufacturing, also called 3D printing, has recently emerged as a powerful approach of material development. The laser-based 3D printing can produce large temperature gradients and high cooling rates that are not readily accessible by conventional routes. However, “the potential of harnessing the combined benefits of additive manufacturing and HEAs for achieving novel properties remains largely unexplored,” says Zhu.

Chen and his team in the Multiscale Materials and Manufacturing Laboratory combined an HEA with a state-of-the-art 3D printing technique called laser powder bed fusion to develop new materials with unprecedented properties. Because the process causes materials to melt and solidify very rapidly as compared to traditional metallurgy, “you get a very different microstructure that is far-from-equilibrium” on the components created, Chen says. This microstructure looks like a net and is made of alternating layers known as face-centered cubic (FCC) and body-centered cubic (BCC) nanolamellar structures embedded in microscale eutectic colonies with random orientations. The hierarchical nanostructured HEA enables co-operative deformation of the two phases.

“This unusual microstructure’s atomic rearrangement gives rise to ultrahigh strength as well as enhanced ductility, which is uncommon, because usually strong materials tend to be brittle,” Chen says. Compared to conventional metal casting, “we got almost triple the strength and not only didn’t lose ductility, but actually increased it simultaneously,” he says. “For many applications, a combination of strength and ductility is key. Our findings are original and exciting for materials science and engineering alike.”

“The ability to produce strong and ductile HEAs means that these 3D printed materials are more robust in resisting applied deformation, which is important for lightweight structural design for enhanced mechanical efficiency and energy saving,” says Jie Ren, Chen’s Ph.D. student and first author of the paper.

Zhu’s group at Georgia Tech led the computational modeling for the research. He developed dual-phase crystal plasticity computational models to understand the mechanistic roles played by both the FCC and BCC nanolamellae and how they work together to give the material added strength and ductility. 

“Our simulation results show the surprisingly high strength yet high hardening responses in the BCC nanolamellae, which are pivotal for achieving the outstanding strength-ductility synergy of our alloy. This mechanistic understanding provides an important basis for guiding the future development of 3D printed HEAs with exceptional mechanical properties,” Zhu says.

In addition, 3D printing offers a powerful tool to make geometrically complex and customized parts. In the future, harnessing 3D printing technology and the vast alloy design space of HEAs opens ample opportunities for the direct production of end-use components for biomedical and aerospace applications.

Additional research partners on the paper include Texas A&M University, the University of California Los Angeles, Rice University, and Oak Ridge and Lawrence Livermore national laboratories.

Story by Melinda Rose, Associate News Editor at UMass Amherst. 

The American Society of Mechanical Engineers (ASME) has honored Georgia Tech aerospace engineering professor George Kardomateas with the Spirit of St. Louis Medal for exemplary work in the progress of aeronautics and astronautics. He is in great company as Daniel Guggenheim, Neil A. Armstrong, John E. Northrup, John W. Young (AE 1952), George W. Lewis, Charles S. Draper, Robert G. Lowey, Michael Collins, and the late Dewey Hodges have also received this premier medal. ASME will present Kardomateas with the medal at the International Mechanical Engineering Congress & Exposition in Columbus, Ohio, October 30-November 3, 2022.

Kardomateas has spent over thirty years improving aircrafts from a structural standpoint. More specifically he investigates ways to ensure that aerospace structures retain their structural integrity. He focuses on the special part of mechanics called fracture mechanics, which studies the conditions for the initiation and propagation of cracks and debonds. “Fracture mechanics and damage tolerance have been very successful in that, nowadays, airplanes don’t usually come down because of structural failure,” explained Kardomateas.

He credits his lifelong scientific triumphs to his education in the United States and Greece, his collaboration with past and present colleagues at Georgia Tech, and the academic system in America. “The environment at Georgia Tech fosters collaboration and innovation. The higher education system provides opportunities through the collegial network in scientific forums where ideas can be exchanged with those inside and outside of your institution.” Former AE School professors, including the late Bob Carlson, and George Simitses, inspired him as colleagues and also acted as mentors to him.

Kardomateas earned a diploma from the National Technical University of Athens in Greece and both his master’s and doctoral degrees from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1989, he joined the School of Aerospace Engineering's faculty at the Georgia Tech. He has authored three books, An Introduction to Fatigue in Metals and Composites, Structural and Failure Mechanics of Sandwich Composites, and Mechanics of Failure Mechanisms in Structures. He is also the editor of six volumes on the topic of failure mechanics of composite and sandwich structures, an associate editor of the Handbook of Damage Mechanics: Nano to Macro Scale for Materials and Structures, as well as the author of about 200 papers published in refereed journals or as parts of books.

In addition to his work at Georgia Tech, he has served the discipline in several capacities. The ASME Fellow has operated as an Associate Editor of the Journal of Applied Mechanics, and the AIAA Journal, as a Contributing Editor of the International Journal of Non-Linear Mechanics and as a guest editor of the International Journal of Solids and Structures and the Journal of Mechanics of Materials and Structures. In addition, he has served as the technical chair of the 2014 ASME Congress, general chair of the 2015 ASME Congress, and the steering committee chair of the 2017 ASME Congress. He was the elected chairman of the Applied Mechanics Division Composites Committee and the program representative of the Aerospace Division Structures and Materials Committee.  Kardomateas has also served in many other panels and committees including as the Chair of the Daniel Guggenheim Medal Award Board, and on the Organizing Committee of the sixth, seventh, tenth and eleventh Institute for Advanced Composites Manufacturing’s International Conferences on Sandwich Structures; he has also served on external evaluation committees for many academic programs.

Currently, the medal winner is working on his next book that focuses on the fracture and fatigue of metallic and composite aerospace structures, which will include his latest research advances in the field.