Florian Schäfer leads the “Matter and Information” research initiative for the Institute for Matter and Systems at Georgia Tech. In this role, his research focuses on numerical analysis, computational statistics, multi-agent optimization, and game-theoretic approaches in deep learning. Schäfer is an assistant professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering.

In this brief Q&A, Schäfer discusses his research focus, how it relates to Matter and Systems’ core research focuses, and the national impact of this initiative.

What is your field of expertise and at what point in your life did you first become interested in this area?
I work on using statistical insights for designing algorithms to design physical systems. I can trace my interest in the interplay between physical systems and information processes all the way to high school times, when I was fascinated by the question of what it is that makes us think of some complex physical systems as "computers," but not of others.

What questions or challenges sparked your current research? 
Simulating physics is in many ways like statistical analysis with data produced by computation. My aim is to understand the implications of this perspective for algorithm design in scientific computing.

Matter and systems refer to the transformational technological and societal systems that arise from the convergence of innovative materials, devices, and processes. Why is your initiative important to the development of the IMS research strategy? 
An exciting current development is the two-fold convergence of physical and information sciences: The use of statistical /machine learning approaches for physical simulation and of new physical processes for computation. IMS is the perfect environment pursuing this goal.

What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct? 
The main societal contribution of my research is the efficient and reliable simulation of complex engineering system to aid the development of improved designs.

What are your plans for engaging a wider Georgia Tech faculty pool with the Institute for Matter and Systems research? 
I plan to engage researchers across GT through reading groups and seminars, with the goal of converging on a sufficiently concrete idea for an externally funded project. I hope that this will serve as a nucleus for exploring the use of novel physical processes for computation. 

Noura Howell and Joe Bozeman lead the “Microscale Thermal Tech for Sustainability” research initiative for the Institute for Matter and Systems at Georgia Tech. Their research in this role focuses on sustainable thermoregulation strategies for climate change resilience. Howell is an assistant professor of digital media in the Ivan Allen College of liberal Arts, and Bozeman is an assistant professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering.

In this brief Q&A, Howell and Bozeman discuss their research focus, how it relates to Matter and System’s core research focuses, and the national impact of this initiative.

What is your field of expertise and at what point in your life did you first become interested in this area?

Howell's field of expertise is Human-Computer Interaction, particularly embodied interaction design research and design futuring. Embodied interaction design research is about designing interactions with technologies that involve more of humans' bodies beyond just eyes on a screen and hands on a mouse or keyboard. Thermal perception (feeling warmth and coolness) is an important part of human embodied experience, and designing technologies for thermal perception is an exciting area of design research. Design futuring, Howell's other sub-speciality, offers ways to envision, discuss, and debate future scenarios with technology. So, this proposal uses design futuring to explore alternative futures for thermal technologies for sustainability. 

Howell has been interested in sustainability ever since she was a kid growing up playing in the woods in Florida, picking wild citrus, watching the lizards, frogs, snakes, armadillos, and birds, helping the tortoises cross the road, and canoeing near gators. Howell has been interested in thermal interactions ever since she was a kid in elementary school on the hot Florida playground, touching a hot metal jungle gym bar, and noticing that it felt so hot that it felt cool. Much later, she learned about thermoreceptors in our skin and that this phenomenon is called paradoxical cold, when some cold receptors in our skin respond to high temperatures. 

Bozeman's field of expertise is in sustainable energy development, climate change adaptation/mitigation, and developing equitable solutions for socioecological, urban carbon management, and food-energy-water nexus challenges. Bozeman does life cycle assessment and energy systems modeling for sustainability with a special emphasis on the social receptivity of technological administration.

Bozeman first became interested in this area during his time working for the public sector as a sustainability officer and energy manager. In those roles, he oversaw and addressed many sociotechnical challenges regarding indoor comfort, air quality, and compliance with environmental protection laws. During this period, it became clear to him that more needed to be done in thermoregulation and the systems that facilitate it.

What questions or challenges sparked your current research?

Thermoregulation, or maintaining a healthy body temperature, is essential for survival. Meanwhile, the world is getting hotter, and humans must adapt. When people feel too hot, it can hinder their productivity, and extreme heat can lead to death. HVAC uses too much energy and struggles to accommodate the wide variety of thermal comfort preferences of building occupants, while many people work outdoors.

Our project tackles the challenge of sustainable thermoregulation.

Matter and systems refer to the transformational technological and societal systems that arise from the convergence of innovative materials, devices, and processes. Why is your initiative important to the development of the IMS research strategy?

This proposal combines thermal technology and microscale fabrication to innovate sustainable thermoregulation strategies for climate change resilience. This helps advance IMS research strategy in their interdisciplinary areas of microelectronic technologies, built environment technologies, and human-centric technologies. While this project is only a start, sustainable thermoregulation will require transformational technological and societal systems shifts arising from the convergence of innovative materials, devices, and processes, and so this project is a good fit for IMS, and we are very happy to be working on this project under the auspices of IMS.

What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct?

This proposal convenes transdisciplinary expertise across Georgia Tech and beyond to propose agenda-setting visions for future work to establish the significance of this research nexus on more sustainable ways to support people in maintaining a comfortable, healthy body temperature. This is an essential form of climate change resilience and adaptation. This proposal has the potential to impact science, technology, and society through bringing disparate disciplines together to establish a new research area of sustainable, microscale thermoregulation techniques for climate change adaptation. This research promises to conceptually advance the state-of-the-art via design futuring scenarios, future visions of just-around-the-corner possibilities in this new research area.

What are your plans for engaging a wider Georgia Tech faculty pool with the Institute for Matter and Systems research?

We will convene researchers across Georgia Tech and beyond to exchange expertise, brainstorm wild ideas, and synthesize ideas into design futuring scenarios. Stay tuned for interview and workshop opportunities.

George White, senior director of strategic partnerships, has been named a member of the inaugural National Semiconductor Technology Center (NSTC) Workforce Advisory Board (WFAB).

“The appointment to the Natcast Workforce Advisory Board is truly an honor and represents an opportunity for myself and my esteemed colleagues to help increase U.S. competitiveness in this most consequential sector,” said White.

Comprising U.S. leaders focused on growing the semiconductor workforce from the private sector, higher education, workforce development organizations, the Department of Commerce, and other federal agencies, the WFAB will support the efforts of the recently established NSTC Workforce Center of Excellence (WCoE). It will offer critical input on national and regional workforce development strategies to ensure WCoE initiatives are employer-driven, worker-centered, and responsive to real-time industry challenges.

Read the full release from Natcast

Ebenezer Fanijo and David Citrin lead the “Waste Materials Processing” research initiative for the Institute for Matter and Systems at Georgia Tech. Their research in this role focuses on creating innovative construction materials from waste streams to reduce carbon emissions in construction. Fanijo is a professor in the School of Building Construction and Citrin is a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

In this brief Q&A, Fanijo and Citrin discuss their research focus, how it relates to Matter and System’s core research focuses, and the national impact of this initiative.

What is your field of expertise and at what point in your life did you first become interested in this area?
Fanijo - My research focuses on sustainable buildings and civil infrastructure, particularly decarbonizing through low-carbon materials and alternative energy sources. I also specialize in in-situ nanoscale quantification of cementitious materials and metals using advanced characterization techniques. My interest in this field grew during my graduate studies and after attending the First International Conference on Sustainable Production and Use of Cement and Concrete.
Citrin - Several years ago, I supervised a masters project using an automated imaging system to identify construction materials. My core interests are in terahertz imaging and applications of machine learning, so the IMS project brought these two together.

What questions or challenges sparked your current research? 
Fanijo - Buildings account for 39% of global energy-related CO2 emissions and 35% of energy consumption, primarily due to manufacturing, materials, and transportation. Therefore, advanced research into innovative construction materials derived from waste streams is essential to reduce carbon emissions throughout the building lifecycle.

Citrin - The societal problems of how to reuse construction waste is urgent. Identifying those materials that can be reused and separating them from those that are tainted presents fascinating technical problems and is a tremendous challenge.

Matter and systems refer to the transformational technological and societal systems that arise from the convergence of innovative materials, devices, and processes. Why is your initiative important to the development of the IMS research strategy? 
While “construction materials” evokes low tech, in fact, there have been tremendous advances in the materials as well as how they are used.  Connecting such advances with the environmental challenges we face with new technological opportunities to mitigate these problems fits squarely in the remit of the IMS research strategy.

What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct? 
One of the greatest components by volume filling landfills is construction waste.  This waste is typically unsorted by material and tainting by hazardous waste is also common, making recycling prohibitively difficult. By sorting the materials in real time and identifying tainted versus untainted waste, we aim to reduce the quantity of such waste landfilled and to reduce the quantities of new materials made by reusing the old.

What are your plans for engaging a wider Georgia Tech faculty pool with the Institute for Matter and Systems research? 
The leads on this project are experts in construction waste and in terahertz imaging.  But what we envisage for this program will ultimately involve image processing and machine learning, materials science and chemical engineering, as well as actively recycling these materials for reuse.

Margaret E. Kosal leads the "Investigating the Future of Metamaterials for National Security and To Avoid Technological Surprise" research initiative for the Institute for Matter and Systems at Georgia Tech. In this role, her research focuses on investigating technical aspects of cutting-edge metamaterials design, synthesis, and development to understand the potential impacts of this type of emerging technology on national security and geopolitics. Kosal is also a professor in the Sam Nunn School of International Affairs.

In this brief Q&A, Kosal discusses her research focus, how it relates to Matter and System’s core research focuses, and the national impact of this initiative.

What is your field of expertise and at what point in your life did you first become interested in this area?
My formal education and background are in the physical sciences (PhD Chemistry); my scholarship, research, teaching, external engagement, and impact are intrinsically interdisciplinary; and I have found a scholarly home and community in the international relations discipline, primarily working in the areas of security and science and technology (S&T) policy.

What questions or challenges sparked your current research? 
With one of my PhD students, I’d previously done research on potential disruptive potential of metamaterials, finding them to potentially be a potentially revolutionary innovation to the power of global and regional hegemons. That work found that revisionist actors, primarily non-state actors, likely will benefit disproportionately from acquiring a metamaterial adaptive camouflage (MMAC) capability but will struggle to do so due to the technical challenge of advanced R&D, particularly in the near and mid-term. The implication found was that status quo powers – who are likely to be the first to develop a viable capability – must emphasize parallel development of countermeasures and limit the negative potential of the technology’s proliferation. With this project, I want to dive deeper into the technical aspects of cutting-edge metamaterials design, synthesis, and development to understand the potential impacts of this type of emerging technology on national security and geopolitics.

Matter and systems refer to the transformational technological and societal systems that arise from the convergence of innovative materials, devices, and processes. Why is your initiative important to the development of the IMS research strategy? 
In November 2016, US Army Lieutenant General HR McMaster, then-Deputy Commanding General for Army Futures and Director of the Army Capability Integration Center (ARCIC) invoked the concept of invisible tanks at meeting on Ground Combat Platforms at the Institute of Land Warfare. I was speaking at the same meeting and commented in my remarks on the need for new capabilities that shift the approach to survivability from protection via mass (which is limiting) to capabilities for active defense and adaptive responses such as via meta-materials. 

Over the last century, the dominant mechanism to achieve parity or asymmetric advantages in land warfare (e.g., maneuver warfare using tanks and other vehicles) has relied on armor and other materials that more effectively absorb kinetic impacts. In the mid-20th Century, the US Air Force shifted to relying on speed and stealth for asymmetric advantage. New conceptual approaches are needed and will have significant implications for conflict, cooperation, and the nature of land warfare. In the case of land warfare (as with air power), materials and systems are fundamental to being able to achieve those asymmetric advantages. The convergence of these innovative materials into existing and new capabilities (vehicles) is likely to result in revolutionary changes to societal systems.

What are the broader global and social benefits of the research you and your team conduct? 
My scholarship significantly contributes to a better and more nuanced understanding of the relationships among science, technology, and security, emphasizing the complex interactions among science, technology, geopolitics, knowledge, innovation, governance (laws and treaties), diplomacy, and institutions. My work explains how these phenomena intersect and impact geopolitics by developing and testing novel analytical frameworks.

What are your plans for engaging a wider Georgia Tech faculty pool with the Institute for Matter and Systems research? 
I’m going to be reaching out directly to GT faculty and GTRI researchers in Engineering and the Sciences. I am also interested in exploring how my research integrates and might further other IMS Research Initiatives (e.g. “Mechanical Metamaterials” (Rocklin/PHYS) and Research Centers (e.g., the Center for Organic Photonics and Electronics).

The Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS) at Georgia Tech has announced the fall 2024 core facility seed grant recipients. The primary purpose of this program is to give graduate students in diverse disciplines working on original and unfunded research in micro- and nanoscale projects the opportunity to access the most advanced academic cleanroom space in the Southeast. In addition to accessing the labs' high-level fabrication, lithography, and characterization tools, the awardees will have the opportunity to gain proficiency in cleanroom and tool methodology and access the consultation services provided by research staff members in IMS. Seed Grant awardees are also provided travel support to present their research at a scientific conference.

In addition to student research skill development, this biannual grant program gives faculty with novel research topics the ability to develop preliminary data to pursue follow-up funding sources. The Core Facility Seed Grant program is supported in part by the Southeastern Nanotechnology Infrastructure Corridor (SENIC), a member of the National Science Foundation’s National Nanotechnology Coordinated Infrastructure (NNCI).

The five winning projects in this round were awarded IMS cleanroom and lab access time to be used over the next year. 

The Fall 2024 IMS Core Facility Seed Grant recipients are:

Manufacturing of a Diamagnetically Enhanced PEM Electrolysis Cell
PI: Alvaro Romero-Calvo
Student: Shay Vitale
Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering

Biomimicking Organ-On-a-Chip Models
PI: Nick Housley
Student: Aref Valipour
School of Biological Sciences                                                            

Single-shot LWIR Hyperspectral Imaging Using Meta-optics
PI: Shu Jia
Student: Jooyeong Yun (School of Electrical and Computer Engineering)
The Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering

Large-area Three-dimensional Nanolithography Using Two-photon Polymerization
PI: Sourabh Saha
Student: Golnaz Aminaltojjari
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Effects of Geochemical Constraints on the Redistribution of Rare Earth Elements (REE) during Chemical Weathering
PI: Yuanzhi Tang
Student: Hang Xu
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

The Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS) at Georgia Tech has selected seven new interdisciplinary research initiatives to receive seed funding. This funding is part of the larger IMS effort to identify and support visionary leaders driving groundbreaking research and innovation.

IMS focuses on transformational technological and societal systems that arise where innovative materials, devices and processes converge. 

“We are excited to support these researchers and their novel ideas,” said Michael Filler, IMS deputy director for Research and Innovation. “Their work exemplifies the spirit of innovation and excellence that IMS and Georgia Tech are known for, and we look forward to seeing the transformative impact of their research.”

The funded initiatives come from four Colleges and 10 Schools across the Institute, and from GTRI. These initiative leads were selected based on their innovative approaches, potential impact, and alignment with IMS’ mission to push the boundaries of science and technology. The winners will receive $10,000, access to state-of-the-art facilities, and other support from IMS to bring their projects to life.

IMS supports interdisciplinary research both in nationally recognized areas of need and those just emerging. It scaffolds research from the ground up, from seed funding for new initiatives to infrastructure support for research programs and embedded support for research centers. These newly announced initiatives are funded at the lowest level of IMS’ three-tiered model. Successful initiatives can receive further funding and/or be elevated to the program level of support.

The 2024 Initiative Leads:

Quantum Engineering | Yan Wang, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and Asif Khan, Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering.

Matter and Information | Florian Schafer, School of Computational Science and Engineering, College of Computing.

Metamaterials for National Security | Margaret Kosal, Sam Nunn School of International Affairs, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Waste Materials Processing | Ebenezer Fanijo, School of Building Construction, College of Design; and David Citrin, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, College of Engineering.

Microscale Thermal Tech for Sustainability | Noura Howell, School of Literature, Media, and Communication, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts and Joe Bozeman, School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering.

Sports Research, Innovation, and Technology | Jud Ready, Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Incentivizing Breakthrough Science | Usha Nair-Reichert, School of Economics and Richard Barke, School of Public Policy, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts.

Learn more about the Institute for Matter and Systems