The Georgia Institute of Technology was awarded a grant from the U.S. Department of Commerce’s Economic Development Administration (EDA) as part of its $1 billion Build Back Better Regional Challenge. Georgia Tech is one of 60 entities to be awarded funding to assist communities nationwide in their efforts to accelerate the rebuilding of their economies in the wake of the pandemic.

As a leader in artificial intelligence, manufacturing research, and innovation-led economic development, Georgia Tech will utilize the grant for technical assistance to plan the Georgia Artificial Intelligence Manufacturing Corridor (GA-AIM). Led by Thomas Kurfess and Aaron Stebner in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and in collaboration with local partners, GA-AIM will fill existing technology gaps, build a technological opportunity framework that includes underrepresented communities and rural Georgia counties, and better secure the state’s manufacturing infrastructure.

Georgia Tech’s partners in the effort include the Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs, Spelman College, the Technical College System of Georgia, and the Georgia Department of Economic Development.

“We are truly honored to be awarded this grant to implement our vision for manufacturing excellence in Georgia with our partners in artificial intelligence research,” said Chaouki T. Abdallah, executive vice president for Research at Georgia Tech. “Alongside these important partners, the grant enables us to collaborate to include diverse backgrounds and perspectives in the process of learning, discovery, and creation, furthering Georgia Tech’s mission to expand access.”  

Georgia Tech and its partners will pair artificial intelligence and manufacturing research innovation to better secure the manufacturing ecosystem, expand opportunity to distressed and rural communities and underrepresented groups, and support business growth across the state.

“We are thrilled to help communities work together — in coalitions of government, nonprofits, academia, the private sector, and others — to craft ambitious and regionally unique plans to rebuild their communities,” said Alejandra Y. Castillo, assistant secretary of commerce for the EDA. “These projects will help revitalize local economies and tackle our biggest challenges related to climate change, manufacturing, supply chains, and more. EDA is proud to ignite these plans and help communities nationwide build back better.”

GA-AIM’s partners have created a complementary network of resources that focus on each partner organization’s expertise and mission.

“We have an opportunity to create meaningful impact at the intersection of AI and manufacturing,” said Stebner, who wrote the grant proposal that resulted in the $500,000 grant from EDA.

Kurfess, who serves as the regional economic competitiveness officer for the grant, added, “Bringing together AI and manufacturing will ensure a strong manufacturing base for Georgia that will leverage our well-trained workforce and our strong educational institutions that are participating in this effort. What excites me the most is that AI will augment our workforce, making it more valuable and productive, ensuring job growth for Georgia and the U.S. well into the future.”

The GA-AIM effort takes a multifaceted approach to address its core goals:

Georgia Tech

• Formation of the AI Manufacturing Pilot Facility: Georgia Tech’s Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility will be transformed into the AI Manufacturing Pilot Facility. The new facility allows for government pilot trials, cybersecurity games, and workforce training to innovate, transition, and create a workforce for AI manufacturing technologies without exposing the region’s supply chains to risk.
• Center for AI Commercialization: Two of Georgia Tech’s commercialization programs — VentureLab and I-Corps South — will create a center for the commercialization of AI manufacturing technologies into local and regional startups. Those commercialization efforts will occur through a quarterly cohort-based entrepreneurial training program built on the National Science Foundation’s I-Corps curriculum. The center will also provide training for instructors to build a sustainable workforce and will secure investment funding for these startups.
• AI Manufacturing Community Engagement: The Enterprise Innovation Institute, Georgia Tech’s chief economic development arm, will engage in focused outreach and technical assistance to small and mid-sized manufacturers and minority business enterprises through its Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership and Georgia Minority Business Development Agency Business Center programs. A third Enterprise Innovation Institute program, the Economic Development Lab, will focus on outreach and engagement in distressed and underserved parts of the state, create workforce development programs and implementation strategies, and attract outside investment.
• AI Manufacturing Rural Supply Chain: The Supply Chain and Logistics Institute will study the impact of automation technologies, build automation solutions tailored for rural manufacturers, and create programs that lower the barrier for rural manufacturers’ access to use the AI Manufacturing Pilot Facility.
• AI InVenture K-12 Experiences: To ensure a technically capable workforce in the coming years, Georgia Tech’s InVenture Prize and the Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing will expand their emphasis to rural and underserved areas of the state by piloting a rural regional event with a region-specific prize. They will also create supplemental lessons centered on AI and data science that will be part of a K-12 InVenture Prize curriculum website.

Spelman College

• Virtual Reality for AI Workforce Training Innovation: Spelman’s Innovation Lab will develop virtual reality technology for training or retraining the GA-AIM workforce to make workers comfortable with new technologies before deployment in real-world applications.

Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs

• LaunchPad AI Innovation Studio: The Russell Innovation Center for Entrepreneurs will create the 5,000-square-foot LaunchPad AI Innovation Studio to provide prototyping and proof of concept development of physical products. Black entrepreneurs will be given access to equipment, training, and mentoring. LaunchPad AI will also be open to AI InVenture teams from Atlanta’s K-12 public schools, with special programs designed for startup mentoring and seed funding for K-12 entrepreneurs.

Technical College System of Georgia (TCSG)

• AI Manufacturing Technical Workforce Development: As Georgia’s technical college coordinating organization, the TCSG will design, develop, and implement curricula at community colleges that include apprenticeships at AI-MPF and virtual reality modules from Spelman. The TCSG will also provide regional entry points for dual enrollment and traditional students to AI manufacturing technical education at certificate and degree levels. Graduates will have exit points that lead directly to careers in the industry or provide for the continuation of education and higher degree attainment through articulation agreements among GA-AIM members.

With this grant, Tech becomes a finalist for significantly more funding to implement projects that support an industry sector and help communities withstand future economic shocks.

“GA-AIM is in strategic alignment with the EDA’s funding priorities, including manufacturing, workforce development, equity, and technology-based economic development,” said David Bridges, vice president of the Enterprise Innovation Institute at Georgia Tech and co-author of the grant proposal. “With manufacturing employing more than 400,000 people across the state and contributing more than $61 billion in economic activity, it’s critical that we leverage the best ideas and programs through our coalition of partners.”  

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About the Georgia Institute of Technology
The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 44,000 students, representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

About the U.S. Economic Development Administration
The mission of the U.S. Economic Development Administration (EDA) is to lead the federal economic development agenda by promoting competitiveness and preparing the nation's regions for growth and success in the worldwide economy. An agency within the U.S. Department of Commerce, EDA makes investments in economically distressed communities in order to create jobs for U.S. workers, promote American innovation, and accelerate long-term sustainable economic growth.

Writer: Péralte C. Paul I peralte.paul@comm.gatech.edu I 404.316.1210

Media contact: Steven Norris | stephen.norris@comm.gatech.edu| 404.281.3343

When cell phones, electric vehicle chargers, or other electronic devices get too hot, performance degrades, and eventually overheating can cause them to shut down or fail. In order to prevent that from happening researchers are working to solve the problem of dissipating heat produced during performance. Heat that is generated in the device during operation has to flow out, ideally with little hinderance to reduce the temperature rise. Often this thermal energy must cross several dissimilar materials during the process and the interface between these materials can cause challenges by impeding heat flow.

A new study from researchers at the Georgia Institute of Technology, Notre Dame, University of California Los Angeles, University of California Irvine, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, and the Naval Research Laboratory observed interfacial phonon modes which only exist at the interface between silicon (Si) and germanium (Ge). This discovery, published in the journal Nature Communications, shows experimentally that decades-old conventional theories for interfacial heat transfer are not complete and the inclusion of these phonon modes are warranted.

“The discovery of interfacial phonon modes suggests that the conventional models of heat transfer at interfaces which only use bulk phonon properties are not accurate,” said the Zhe Cheng, a Ph.D. graduate from Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering who is now a postdoc at University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (UIUC). “There is more space for research at the interfaces. Even though these modes are localized, they can contribute to thermal conductance across interfaces.”

The discovery opens a new pathway for consideration when engineering thermal conductance at interfaces for electronics cooling and other applications where phonons are majority heat carriers at material interfaces.

“These results will lead to great progress in real-world engineering applications for thermal management of power electronics,” said co-author Samuel Graham, a professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech and new dean of engineering at University of Maryland. “Interfacial phonon modes should exist widely at solid interfaces. The understanding and manipulation of these interface modes will give us the opportunity to enhance thermal conductance across technologically-important interfaces, for example, GaN-SiC, GaN-diamond, β-Ga2O3-SiC, and β-Ga2O3-diamond interfaces.”

Presence of Interfacial Phonon Modes Confirmed in Lab

The researchers observed the interfacial phonon modes experimentally at a high-quality Si-Ge epitaxial interface by using Raman Spectroscopy and high-energy resolution electron energy-loss spectroscopy (EELS). To figure out the role of interfacial phonon modes in heat transfer at interfaces, they used a technique called time-domain thermoreflectance in labs at Georgia Tech and UIUC to determine the temperature-dependent thermal conductance across these interfaces.

They also observed a clean additional peak showing up in Raman Spectroscopy measurements when they measured the sample with Si-Ge interface, which was not observed when they measured a Si wafer and a Ge wafer with the same system. Both the observed interfacial modes and thermal boundary conductance were fully captured by molecular dynamics (MD) simulations and were confined to the interfacial region as predicted by theory.

“This research is the result of great team work with all the collaborators,” said Graham.  “Without this team and the unique tools that were available to us, this work would not have been possible.” 

Moving forward the researchers plan to continue to pursue the measurement and prediction of interfacial modes, increase the understanding of their contribution to heat transfer, and determine ways to manipulate these phonon modes to increase thermal transport. Breakthroughs in this area could lead to better performance in semiconductors used in satellites, 5G devices, and advanced radar systems, among other devices.

The epitaxial Si-Ge samples used in this research were grown at the U.S. Naval Research Lab. The TEM and EELS measurements were done at University of California, Irvine and Oak Ridge National Labs. The MD simulations were performed by the University of Notre Dame. The XRD study was done at UCLA. 

This work is financially supported by U.S. Office of Naval Research under a MURI project. The EELS study at UC Irvine is supported by U.S. Department of Energy. 

Citation: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-021-27250-3

About Georgia Institute of Technology

The Georgia Institute of Technology, or Georgia Tech, is a top 10 public research university developing leaders who advance technology and improve the human condition. The Institute offers business, computing, design, engineering, liberal arts, and sciences degrees. Its nearly 44,000 students representing 50 states and 149 countries, study at the main campus in Atlanta, at campuses in France and China, and through distance and online learning. As a leading technological university, Georgia Tech is an engine of economic development for Georgia, the Southeast, and the nation, conducting more than $1 billion in research annually for government, industry, and society.

Contact: 
Ben Wright 
Communications Manager
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
ben.wright@me.gatech.edu 
 

Supply chain disruptions are not new, but the current disruptions have not only been persistent but have also impacted several industries – and consumers – at the same time. The result has ranged from empty shelves at retail stores to prolonged lead times for consumer products and automobiles.

We sat down with three Georgia Tech Scheller College of Business faculty experts in operations management: Vinod Singhal, Charles W. Brady Chair; Manpreet Hora, associate professor; and Ravi Subramanian, professor. The discussion centered around overarching causes, financial ramifications, and multi-pronged approaches to mitigate the impact of supply chain disruptions in the coming months and year. 

1. What caused the supply chain and logistical issues to arise? What effect did Covid-19 play in all of this? Did the influx of stimulus checks and the extension of additional aid to U.S. citizens (rent deferment, etc.) affect the purchase of goods enough to cause the current situation?

All three experts agree there are several factors on both the supply side and the demand side of the supply chain, and logistical challenges that companies and customers are currently facing.

On the supply side, there are issues in global supply chains that are beyond the control of individual companies. A significant one is the congestion at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach in the U.S. Nearly 40 percent of imports into the U.S. flow through these two ports. There are stranded containers that have not been unloaded due to labor shortages, limited unloading capacity, and warehouse space constraints.

For example, a CBS news report on November 11, 2021, indicated that at the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach, about 80 ships carrying more than half a million containers were waiting to unload. Clearing this backlog will take some time. Another related issue that has added to the congestion is the growing number of empty containers that are sitting on ports to be returned back to exporters.

The congestion at ports is being further exacerbated by trucker shortages that could pose a more persistent and long-term challenge for supply chains.

“Moving products from ports to distribution centers, manufacturing plants, and further downstream to retailers was already a concern for many companies even before the pandemic. Now the combination of port congestion and trucker shortage is further delaying the process of bringing products to the right place at the right time,” said Hora.

Shortages of critical components, such as semiconductor chips, have created additional delays for a range of industries. Shutdowns in chip production during the early stages of the pandemic, coupled with increased demand for products such as computers, smartphones, and automobiles has resulted in fierce competition for acquiring chips across industries. For example, the professors noted that during the initial period of the Covid-19 pandemic, semiconductor companies prioritized chip manufacturing to meet the increasing demand for consumer electronics. This, in turn, diverted supply away from automotive production, resulting in substantial delays in cars rolling off assembly lines

The pandemic either amplified the above-mentioned supply chain and logistical issues or brought in unexpected new ones. It necessitated the closure of borders at the national level, and of plants and warehouses at the company level. These closures, in the initial months of the pandemic, followed by new requirements such as social distancing during the opening of facilities affected and slowed down production, warehousing, distribution, and transportation of products.

On the demand side, explained Subramanian, two phenomena occurred that have led to a surge in demand for goods that were already in short supply.

First, during the pandemic, many people were working from home. This curtailed spending on travel, vacations, and demand for experiential goods and services. People had more disposable income, which they diverted to consumer products that were already in short supply.

Second, the global economy and the US, in particular have been turbocharged by trillions of dollars in stimulus during the pandemic. This stimulus, while necessary to deal with the hardships during the pandemic, enhanced the surge in demand for products.

2. Why are some retailers able to deliver goods without an issue?

“Many large retailers, including Walmart Inc., Home Depot Inc., and Target Corp., do not seem to have supply chain and product shortage issues like their counterparts, because they ordered and took delivery of goods earlier than usual this year. They have not only built-up inventories but have enhanced their inventory management practices. Some retailers have also chartered their own ships to counteract delays in transportation,” said Singhal.

They have also moved the unloading of their goods from the ports on the west coast to other ports in the U.S. that are less congested. These retailers have used their clout and deep pockets to get suppliers and logistics companies to prioritize their orders. Their far-flung supply chain networks can identify and work with several suppliers to find options to source items that are out of stock.

3. What are the financial ramifications to the U.S. and to the world for this supply chain issue?

The professors note that large companies have used their clout to deal with the current supply chain issues. Although their costs of procuring supplies have increased, they may be able to pass on some of the cost increase to customers. Some of these companies may see an increase in total sales and total profits in nominal terms although they may experience thinner profit margins. The stock market seems to have incorporated these factors in the valuations and the rising stock market suggests that large companies are expected to do fine financially. For example, the Dow Jones Index has jumped 18 percent this year, S&P 500 is up 25 percent, and Nasdaq has risen 24 percent.

The financial ramifications to smaller retailers and manufacturing firms may be quite negative. As Subramanian explained, these firms do not have the clout and financial resources to work around the supply issues.  Often their sales during the holiday season are critically dependent on receiving a container or two of goods from overseas suppliers. Given the long and uncertain transportation and delivery times, and the high cost of transportation, many small firms may not be able to receive supplies in time for the holiday season and may be left holding unsold inventory or unfinished products. Overall, small firms may take a big hit from the current supply chain issues.

4. Are there any additional issues that consumers may face that they may not be aware of? How will the shortage of goods to retailers affect consumers shopping during the holidays? Is there anything individual consumers can do to help solve the problem?

Consumers can do certain things so that they are not disappointed, said the panel. They should start shopping earlier, expect to pay closer to full price on many products, and not wait for promotions or discounts to make their purchases. They will need to be flexible in their shopping habits and look for substitute products if their desired products are not available. Consumers may also want to prioritize their shopping decisions – for example, ensuring they have the gifts for young children who expect Santa to deliver irrespective of supply chain issues! Likewise, for older parents and relatives, for whom the holiday season is a very special time.  For others, they may want to consider giving gift cards.

5. When do you think this issue will be resolved and how?

“Supply chains getting back to normal will be contingent upon the nature of the underlying supply chain issues. Shipping and retail executives indicate that they expect the West Coast port backlogs to clear in early 2022, when the Lunar New Year shuts many factories for a week in February, thus slowing output and shipments from Asia,” said Singhal.  However, chip shortages may last until 2022 or even extend into 2023. Many chip manufacturers have announced plans to significantly increase their level of capital expenditure but bringing new capacity online can take several years.

This storm of collective issues has brought the importance of supply chain resilience to the forefront. Companies emerging from the pandemic are revisiting or will have to revisit their past approaches to managing supply chains.

Having flexibility and slack in supply chains has been a persistent strategy for several companies but this strategy will now need to be more holistic. For example, companies will need to re-think where to source their critical and irreplaceable components. Companies are already deliberating to not only near-shore suppliers of their critical components but also expand this supply base. This may also entail carrying more inventory of such components to meet demand variability and hedge against supply chain disruptions. Another development is manufacturers vertically integrating to design and produce critical components in-house.

Even before the pandemic, companies were investing in technology to digitize their supply chains. This long-term imperative will be prioritized even more as companies aspire for more transparency and traceability of products in their supply chains. Moreover, advanced automation in manufacturing plants and warehousing could ease some of the pain of labor shortages.

“Despite the current supply chain issues, we believe that supply chains will remain global and complex, but there will be renewed thinking in companies to recognize that Black Swan events such as the Covid-19 pandemic can create a multitude of interrelated and cascading supply chain issues that have serious financial implications. And companies will need to blend flexibility, adaptability, and efficiency to develop capabilities to mitigate impacts and remain resilient during such supply chain disruptions,” stated Hora.

With holiday shopping deadlines looming, consumers cannot escape the impact of the global microelectronic chip shortage. From daily news reports about manufacturers unable to complete orders due to the lack of chips, to “out of stock” messages across websites on popular electronics items, one of the impacts of COVID was to lay bare the massive importance of the microelectronic chip in daily modern life, and how a single-location centered manufacturing nexus can upend the consumer market on a massive scale. The combination of these real-world impacts on supply chains, as well as the need to localize semiconductor and chip manufacturing gave Congress the impetus to pass the “Creating Helpful Incentives to Produce Semiconductors for America Act (CHIPS)”. CHIPS seeks to increase investments and incentives to support U.S. semiconductor manufacturing, research and development, and supply chain security.

The Georgia Institute of Technology was the first university to offer a comprehensive curriculum on microelectronics and microsystems design and packaging and, currently, numerous faculty at Georgia Tech are widely known for their work in semiconductor and microelectronics technologies. In December of 2021 Georgia Tech researchers will again showcase how their pushes the boundaries of microelectronics technologies at the IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM).

The School of Electrical and Computer Engineering research teams of Assistant Professor Asif Khan, partnering with Dan Fielder Professor Muhannad Bakir, and Associate Professor Shimeng Yu, partnering with Professor Sung-Kyu Lim and Assistant Professor Shaolan Li, have dominated the 2021 IEDM presentation line-up with a total of 8 accepted papers. With topics ranging from ferroelectric materials for memory, new advances in ALD process, and in-memory computing and 3D reconfigurable architectures, the research presented by these teams is at the cutting-edge of advancing computing power and consumer electronics. In addition to the research presentations, Electrical and Computing Engineering Faculty & Director of the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center at GT will be presenting a short course session on devoted to “Heterogenous Integration Using Chiplets & Advanced Packaging”

Noting the timely nature of these research advancements, Arijit Raychowdhory; Professor and Steve W. Chaddick School Chair in Electrical and Computer Engineering noted, “IEDM is a premier conference in the area of semiconductor devices. Such a strong performance by GT ECE exemplifies the strength of our program, the ingenuity of our students and the innovation driven by our world-class faculty. Sincere congratulations to Professors Khan, Yu Bakir, Lim and Li for their pioneering research in semiconductor logic and memory technologies, that are critical for our nation and our industries.” 

Asif Khan is an assistant professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Tech. He received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering and computer sciences from the University of California, Berkeley in 2015. His work led to the first experimental proof-of-concept demonstration of the negative capacitance effect in ferroelectric oxides. His group at Georgia Tech conceptualizes and fabricates electronic devices that leverage interesting physics and novel phenomena in emerging materials (such as ferroelectrics, antiferroelectrics and strongly correlated systems) to overcome the “fundamental” limits in computation and to address the most pressing challenges in electronics and the semiconductor industry.

Shimeng Yu is currently an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Tech. He received the B.S. degree in microelectronics from Peking University in 2009, and the M.S. degree and Ph.D. degree in electrical engineering from Stanford University in 2011 and 2013, respectively. From 2013 to 2018, he was an assistant professor at Arizona State University. Prof. Yu’s research interests are the semiconductor devices and integrated circuits for energy-efficient computing systems. His research expertise is on the emerging non-volatile memories for applications such as deep learning accelerator, in-memory computing, 3D integration, and hardware security.

Muhannad S. Bakir is the Dan Fielder Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech.  Dr. Bakir and his research group have received more than thirty paper and presentation awards including six from the IEEE Electronic Components and Technology Conference (ECTC), four from the IEEE International Interconnect Technology Conference (IITC), one from the IEEE Custom Integrated Circuits Conference (CICC), and two from the IEEE Transactions on Components Packaging and Manufacturing Technology (TCPMT). Muhannad S. Bakir received the B.E.E. degree from Auburn University, Auburn, AL, in 1999 and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Tech in 2000 and 2003, respectively. His research interests include, heterogeneous microsystem design and integration, including 2.5D and 3D ICs and packaging, electrical and photonic interconnects, and embedded cooling technologies.

Sung Kyu Lim received B.S. (1994), M.S. (1997), and Ph.D. (2000) degrees all from the Computer Science Department at UCLA. During 2000-2001, he was a post-doctoral scholar at UCLA, and a senior engineer at Aplus Design Technologies, Inc. Lim joined the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology an assistant professor. He is currently the director of the GTCAD (Georgia Tech Computer Aided Design) Laboratory and focuses on VLSI and 3D circuit architecture and packaging.

Shaolan Li received his B.Eng. degree with highest honor from the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST) in 2012, and his Ph.D. from UT Austin in 2018, all in electrical engineering. Prior joining Georgia Tech as an assistant professor in 2019, he was a post-doctoral fellow in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at UT Austin from 2018-2019. He also held intern positions in Broadcom Ltd. in Sunnyvale, California, and NXP in Tempe, Arizona during 2013-2014. His research interests are broadly in analog, mixed-signal, and RF integrated circuits. His expertise is in high-performance data converters, ultra-low-power low-cost sensor interface, and novel analog mixed-signal architectures for design automation.

The IEEE International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM) is the world’s preeminent forum for reporting technological breakthroughs in the areas of semiconductor and electronic device technology, design, manufacturing, physics, and modeling. IEDM is the flagship conference for nanometer-scale CMOS transistor technology, advanced memory, displays, sensors, MEMS devices, novel quantum and nano-scale devices and phenomenology, optoelectronics, devices for power and energy harvesting, high-speed devices, as well as process technology and device modeling and simulation. Georgia Tech research teams have a strong track of record in IEDM publications in the recent years, including 8, 4, 9 and 7 papers presented in IEDM 2018, 2019, 2020 and 2021, respectively.

- Christa M. Ernst

By Frida Carrera

After almost a year since the completion of the 2021 InVenture Prize Competition, we caught up with Matt McMullen and Emma Bivings who competed as finalists on the SPOT Harness team, a harness that uses sensors and vibrators to help blind dogs navigate. Their experience in the competition exposed them to multiple experiences, environments, and demands necessary for startups for the first time. As a result, they were able to distinguish their areas of growth, gain valuable insights, and make potential changes in the direction of their product.

Today, Matt is currently a graduate student seeking a master’s in music technology and Emma is a full-time operations management trainee at McMaster-Carr. The team is still developing the SPOT Harness and has even grown its team to five members. Through funding and participating in Georgia Tech’s CREATE-X Startup Launch program, they have been able to launch their company Saving Grace Pet Solutions LLC. They plan to launch SPOT Harness under this company as well as develop other future products.

To future InVenture participants, Matt advises, “Don’t give up on your idea! The most important part of making it the distance is having a team with a passion for your product.”

The SPOT Harness team will be launching a kick-starter soon for preorders ahead of the official market launch of the SPOT Harness for blind dogs. They also advise anyone who has or knows someone who has a dog suffering from vision loss to visit their website to sign up for their newly refined prototype!

Visit their website here: www.savinggrace.tech

To learn more about the upcoming InVenture Prize Competition visit https://inventureprize.gatech.edu/ . Registration closes on Jan. 19.

Karen Fite, who, for the past 18 months has led the Georgia Institute of Technology’s economic development efforts as interim vice president and director of the Enterprise Innovation Institute (EI2), has retired after more than 27 years of service.

David Bridges, director of EI2’s Economic Development Lab (EDL), will assume the interim vice president role effective Jan. 1, 2021.

EI2 is the largest and most comprehensive university-based program of business and industry assistance, technology commercialization, and economic development in the United States. 

Prior to leading EI2, Fite ran the unit’s Business & Industry Services group of programs, comprised of the Georgia Manufacturing Extension Partnership (GaMEP), EI2’s largest economic development offering. The group also includes the Safety, Health, and Environmental Services (SHES), Atlanta MBDA Centers, Contracting Education Academy, Georgia Tech Procurement Assistance Center (GTPAC), and the Southeastern Trade Adjustment Assistance Center (SETAAC) programs.

Before taking on that role, Fite was GaMEP director.

“Over the years at Georgia Tech, I have been privileged to serve in a wide variety of capacities — assisting companies with government procurement, their implementation of quality management systems and Lean Manufacturing protocols, the launch of a Lean Healthcare initiative, creating community economic development research and strategic plans, and directing the GaMEP,” Fite said.

“As interim vice president, I have had the opportunity to interact with virtually every EI2 employee. Working with such a talented group of employees of EI2 has been an honor because across the board they are passionate about their work, dedicated to Georgia Tech’s mission of progress and service by serving clients, and continually looking to innovate, improve, and expand our services to help create long lasting and meaningful impact not only in Georgia and across the country, but around the world.”

Chaouki T. Abdallah, Georgia Tech’s executive vice president for research said Fite was a valued member of his leadership team.

“She has been a very effective and engaging leader,” Abdallah said. “She’s brought me solutions, given me critical feedback and has been an invaluable partner. Georgia Tech is lucky to have had her contributions for so long.”

Fite has a master’s degree in business administration from the University of Miami and a bachelor’s in health systems from Georgia Tech. In 2018, she achieved the faculty rank of principal extension professional, Georgia Tech’s highest professional extension faculty rank.

“We are fortunate to have someone of David Bridges’ caliber who can not only build on Karen’s legacy but also brings a wealth of experience and economic development successes,” Abdallah said.

Bridges, who joined EI2 in 1994, authored, co-authored or contributed to more than 100 economic development grants totaling more than $40 million. He assisted in the formation of the two proof-of-concept units — the Global Center for Medical Innovation, a Tech affiliate in the medical device space, and I3L, a health information technology innovation hub.

Beyond Georgia, Bridges helped catalyze the development of the Soft Landings program to bring companies from overseas to the United States. He also helped to establish the I-Corps Puerto Rico program as the National Science Foundation’s first I-Corps program ever offered to teams from that community.

He also supported the expansion of technology extension programs in Chile and Colombia, built a new program in professional development around innovation and technology commercialization, and expanded Georgia Tech’s presence by helping to build startup ecosystems around the Institute’s international campuses and in Latin America.

Bridges and his EDL team have also implemented ecosystem building projects for numerous countries including Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Panama, Costa Rica, Argentina, Guatemala, South Africa, China, Korea, and Japan.

- Péralte Paul 

The Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute (SCL) is the largest such group in the world, and it provides researchers with many opportunities to help solve global supply chain and logistics problems. The latest addition is the SIReN (Sentient Immersive Response Networks) Lab, dedicated to research leveraging immersive technologies to enhance human capabilities for engineering and managing supply chains and logistic systems.

The SIReN Lab is an associate international laboratory, the result of a partnership between SCL’s Physical Internet Center and IMT Mines Albi, part of the Mines-Telecom Institute in France. The two organizations have historically collaborated on research surrounding artificial intelligence and its interface with these immersive technologies. The SIReN Lab is an extension and formalization of that relationship.

The U.S. arm of the lab is housed in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) and is directed by Benoit Montreuil, Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and professor in ISyE. Montreuil is also co-director
of SCL and director of the Physical Internet Center. The French lab is led by Frederick Benaben, head of the Interoperability of Organizations research team at IMT Mines Albi. Because of the virtual nature of the work, it is possible to have researchers from both labs working on the same experiment, in the same environment, at the same time.

SIReN Lab research is centered around four main types of response networks — demand, health, humanitarian, and crisis — and the human response to them. A demand response network focuses on how the supply network responds to demand and how to prepare for this response, rather than the other way around. The health and humanitarian response networks, which have become increasingly visible due to the Covid-19 pandemic, relate to issues like disaster recovery and various healthcare supply chains.

The French lab has a significant emphasis on crisis response networks, in which a group of people work together to respond to a crisis in a smart, fair, and efficient manner.
“We currently have a crisis management project where 10 people in France and a few in the U.S. are working together at the same time in a digital twin environment,” said Benaben. “For example, we can have everyone in a building where they can fight a fire, but we can also have some of them in a virtual control room exchanging ideas and making decisions. The options are limitless.”

Researchers are using tools such as dashboards, simulations, games, and in some cases virtual or augmented reality to allow participants to see — and in some cases experience — a vivid picture of a situation with other players in the network.

“In augmented reality, we reinforce what participants see with facts, maps, graphs, and other information that enhance what they are experiencing,” explained Montreuil. “In virtual reality, we project the user into a virtual world, which can be a very vivid representa-tion of the current world, or it can be an abstract world. It can be a very powerful tool.”
“When we put someone in an environ-ment where they can touch, learn, train, experiment, and ultimately decide, it changes the way they approach the problem,” added Benaben. 
The French lab launched on Nov. 15, 2019. While the spring 2020 launch of the U.S. lab was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the team already has several projects underway and is fully operational. Eventually, they would like to see additional SIReN labs join the network to further scale the work being conducted.

“We want to become a global leader in making response networks become more sentient and immersive,” said Montreuil. “This is an exciting new approach that we are bringing to ISyE and to the domain.”

The Georgia Tech Supply Chain and Logistics Institute (SCL) is the largest such group in the world, and it provides researchers with many opportunities to help solve global supply chain and logistics problems. The latest addition is the SIReN (Sentient Immersive Response Networks) Lab, dedicated to research leveraging immersive technologies to enhance human capabilities for engineering and managing supply chains and logistic systems.

The SIReN Lab is an associate international laboratory, the result of a partnership between SCL’s Physical Internet Center and IMT Mines Albi, part of the Mines-Telecom Institute in France. The two organizations have historically collaborated on research surrounding artificial intelligence and its interface with these immersive technologies. The SIReN Lab is an extension and formalization of that relationship.

The U.S. arm of the lab is housed in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) and is directed by Benoit Montreuil, Coca-Cola Material Handling & Distribution Chair and professor in ISyE. Montreuil is also co-director
of SCL and director of the Physical Internet Center. The French lab is led by Frederick Benaben, head of the Interoperability of Organizations research team at IMT Mines Albi. Because of the virtual nature of the work, it is possible to have researchers from both labs working on the same experiment, in the same environment, at the same time.

SIReN Lab research is centered around four main types of response networks — demand, health, humanitarian, and crisis — and the human response to them. A demand response network focuses on how the supply network responds to demand and how to prepare for this response, rather than the other way around. The health and humanitarian response networks, which have become increasingly visible due to the Covid-19 pandemic, relate to issues like disaster recovery and various healthcare supply chains.

The French lab has a significant emphasis on crisis response networks, in which a group of people work together to respond to a crisis in a smart, fair, and efficient manner.
“We currently have a crisis management project where 10 people in France and a few in the U.S. are working together at the same time in a digital twin environment,” said Benaben. “For example, we can have everyone in a building where they can fight a fire, but we can also have some of them in a virtual control room exchanging ideas and making decisions. The options are limitless.”

Researchers are using tools such as dashboards, simulations, games, and in some cases virtual or augmented reality to allow participants to see — and in some cases experience — a vivid picture of a situation with other players in the network.

“In augmented reality, we reinforce what participants see with facts, maps, graphs, and other information that enhance what they are experiencing,” explained Montreuil. “In virtual reality, we project the user into a virtual world, which can be a very vivid representa-tion of the current world, or it can be an abstract world. It can be a very powerful tool.”
“When we put someone in an environ-ment where they can touch, learn, train, experiment, and ultimately decide, it changes the way they approach the problem,” added Benaben. 
The French lab launched on Nov. 15, 2019. While the spring 2020 launch of the U.S. lab was postponed due to the Covid-19 pandemic, the team already has several projects underway and is fully operational. Eventually, they would like to see additional SIReN labs join the network to further scale the work being conducted.

“We want to become a global leader in making response networks become more sentient and immersive,” said Montreuil. “This is an exciting new approach that we are bringing to ISyE and to the domain.”

Decarbonizing U.S. electricity production will require both construction of renewable energy sources and retirement of power plants now operated by fossil fuels. A generator-level model described in the Dec. 4 issue of the journal Science suggests that most fossil fuel power plants could complete normal lifespans and still close by 2035 because so many facilities are nearing the end of their operational lives.

Meeting a 2035 deadline for decarbonizing U.S. electricity production, as proposed by the incoming U.S. presidential administration, would eliminate just 15% of the capacity-years left in plants powered by fossil fuels, says the article by Emily Grubert, a Georgia Institute of Technology researcher. Plant retirements are already underway, with 126 gigawatts of fossil generator capacity taken out of production between 2009 and 2018, including 33 gigawatts in 2017 and 2018 alone.

“Creating an electricity system that does not contribute to climate change is actually two processes — building carbon-free infrastructure like solar plants, and closing carbon-based infrastructure like coal plants,” said Grubert, an assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Civil and Environmental Engineering. “My work shows that because a lot of U.S. fossil fuel plants are already pretty old, the target of decarbonization by 2035 would not require us to shut most of these plants down earlier than their typical lifespans.”

Of U.S. fossil fuel-fired generation capacity, 73% (630 out of 840 gigawatts) will reach the end of its typical lifespan by 2035; that percentage would reach 96% by 2050, she says in the Policy Forum article published in Science. About 13% of U.S. fossil fuel-fired generation capacity (110 gigawatts) operating in 2018 had already exceeded its typical lifespan. 

Because typical lifespans are averages, some generators operate for longer than expected. Allowing facilities to run until they retire is thus likely insufficient for a 2035 decarbonization deadline, the article notes. Closure deadlines that strand assets relative to reasonable lifespan expectations, however, could create financial liability for debts and other costs. The research found that a 2035 deadline for completely retiring fossil fuel-based electricity generators would only strand about 15% (1,700 gigawatt-years) of capacity life, along with about 20% (380,000 job-years) of direct power plant and fuel extraction jobs that existed in 2018. 

In 2018, fossil fuel facilities operated in 1,248 of 3,141 counties, directly employing about 157,000 people at generators and fuel extraction facilities. Plant closure deadlines can improve outcomes for workers and host communities — providing additional certainty, for example, by enabling specific advance planning for things like remediation, retraining for displaced workers, and revenue replacements.

“Closing large industrial facilities like power plants can be really disruptive for the people who work there and live in the surrounding communities,” Grubert said. “We don't want to repeat the damage we saw with the collapse of the steel industry in the 1970s and ’80s, where people lost jobs, pensions, and stability without warning. We already know where the plants are, and who might be affected. Using the 2035 decarbonization deadline to guide explicit, community grounded planning for what to do next can help, even without a lot of financial support.”

Planning ahead will also help avoid creating new capital investment that may not be needed long-term. “We shouldn't build new fossil fuel power plants that would still be young in 2035, and we need to have explicit plans for closures both to ensure the system keeps working and to limit disruption for host communities,” she said. 

Underlying policies governing the retirement of fossil fuel-powered facilities is the concept of a “just transition” that ensures material well-being and distributional justice for individuals and communities affected by a transition from fossil to non-fossil electricity systems. Determining which assets are “stranded,” or required to close earlier than expected, is vital for managing compensation for remaining debt or lost revenue, Grubert said in the article.

CITATION: Emily Grubert, “Fossil electricity retirement deadlines for a just transition” (Science, 2020). https://science.sciencemag.org/content/370/6521/1171

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When one or more coronavirus vaccines receives FDA emergency use authorization, it will launch a public health and logistics initiative unlike any in U.S. history. 

Hundreds of millions of doses will have to distributed nationwide and kept cold until healthcare professionals can administer not one, but two doses to each person. And enough skeptical members of the population will have to be persuaded to receive the vaccine to slow virus transmission.

Beyond those challenges, the distribution effort will have to adapt to unexpected and uneven demand; accommodate recipients who may not return on time for a second dose; train hundreds of thousands of staff from clinics, pharmacies, doctor’s offices, and hospitals; prioritize serving high-risk groups first while encouraging others to wait — all while under tremendous pressure to get the much-anticipated vaccines into use as case counts and the death toll continue rising.

“Time is of the essence because the virus is already so widespread,” said Pinar Keskinocak, the William W. George Chair and professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE) and director of the Center for Health and Humanitarian Systems at the Georgia Institute of Technology. “With the pressure on our timeline, knowledge of how quickly the disease is spreading, and the broad U.S. and global need, I can’t think of a comparable public health initiative that has ever been undertaken.”

Shipping and Keeping Hundreds of Millions of Doses Cold

Three vaccines, produced by Moderna, Pfizer and its German partner BioNTech, and Oxford-AstraZeneca, are expected to be available first. The Pfizer-BioNTech vaccine will need to be kept ultra-cold — minus 94 degrees Fahrenheit — on its journey to individual Americans. The Moderna drug won’t have such demanding conditions, but both it and the Pfizer vaccine will tax the existing “cold chain” that keeps vaccines and other temperature-sensitive products in a narrow range of conditions during transport and storage. 

The Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine will have much less stringent requirements and faster ramp-up in capacity, though early testing suggests its efficacy may be lower than the others. That will create tradeoffs between efficacy versus access and speed in distribution.

Plans already exist to get the vaccines from manufacturers to the states, each of which has developed its own distribution plan. Keskinocak worries mostly about “last mile” plans — getting the vaccines to where they will be injected — and getting individuals to those locations.

“Access is going to be a challenge,” she said. “You may be able to get it to locations where it can be distributed, but you have to make sure the people who really need the vaccine can easily access those locations.”

Cold chain transportation, tracking, tracing, and storage already exist in most areas, but refrigeration could be challenging for rural areas that may be at the end of the chain, especially for the vaccine requiring very cold temperatures beyond the capability of freezers found in most doctor’s offices and clinics. And cold can sometimes be too cold, Keskinocak said.

“We often think about keeping it cold, but sometimes it may be too cold, which is not good. It’s not just whether the temperature exceeded the required level, but also whether it went below that. It is important to keep the vaccine exactly at the required temperature level.”

Pfizer has developed a shipping container that includes a temperature tracking device — and 50 pounds of dry ice to maintain the right temperature during transit. Because it is contained in small vials and the liquid vaccine is diluted for use, the overall volume being shipped will be relatively small, limiting the number of packages that will be moved and stored, Keskinocak noted.

Ultimately, the cold chain may play a significant role in vaccine effectiveness. Currently, the vaccines being produced by Pfizer/BioNTech and Moderna are reported to have a higher efficacy than the Oxford-AstraZeneca vaccine — but only if they can be maintained at the proper temperatures. The timing, magnitude, and duration of temperature fluctuations during transport and before administration could affect that in ways that may be difficult to assess.

“Our current modeling shows that a vaccine that is less effective but that can be distributed more quickly and more widely might work better in some settings than a more effective vaccine, thereby reducing the total number of infections in the population,” Keskinocak said.

If You Build It, Will They Come?

Expectations are that the nation is hungry for a vaccine to escape the horrors of Covid-19. But a recent Gallup survey shows that only 58% of respondents said they planned to receive the vaccine when it becomes available. Boosting that percentage will require a massive communications effort to overcome vaccine reluctance and concerns fueled by the uneven nature of the U.S. pandemic response.

“If we can get the vaccine to locations where people can access it, and we have the necessary syringes, supplies, and PPE, as well as the healthcare staff to administer the injections, it’s not clear that people will come to receive it in large enough numbers,” Keskinocak said. “That’s one major component missing from a lot of the plans that I see at the state level.”

The communications program will have to run in parallel to the vaccine distribution, and they have to be coordinated so that supply meets demand.

“Public health communication and dissemination of information at the right time and in the right language is going to be at least as important and challenging as the logistics of distributing the vaccine,” Keskinocak said. “Communication is going to shape demand to a large extent. If one is more effective than the other, we will have a mismatch between demand and supply.”

Different demographic populations have different levels of trust for medicine in general and vaccines in particular, she said, so communications campaigns will have to focus on issues of concern to those groups. Unexpected variations in vaccine demand caused by these concerns could also create logistical uncertainties.

“We can try to forecast demand, and ship supplies to those locations,” she said. “But historically, we have seen that demand can exceed supply in one location while inventory builds up in another location. We need to avoid this situation of unmet demand and unused vaccine.”

Another issue will be the two doses necessary for the vaccine. The second dose must be received within a narrow range of time for the two-dose vaccine to be effective. Should a second dose be reserved for every person receiving a first dose, or should the goal be to get as many doses out as possible?

“Some people may never show up to be vaccinated, while others will receive the first dose, but may not come back for the second dose,” she said. 

Getting the Program Started

The first available doses will likely go to healthcare workers and first responders who are on the front lines of battling Covid-19. That is expected to be the easier part of vaccination logistics, and the lessons learned there should help with the much more massive vaccination campaign for high-risk individuals and the general public.

As vaccine production and distribution capacity ramp up, other groups will be next in line. While distributing small batches as manufacturers produce it can create some supply challenges, that also allows the system to more easily adjust to unexpected demand.

Even though distributing and administering vaccines is something the U.S. healthcare system does routinely, the size and timeline of this project are unprecedented, Keskinocak noted.

Beyond the logistical and communications needs, the vaccination program will also have a strong information technology component. Administration will likely be by appointment, and each injection will have to be reported to a vaccine registry to provide a record of which vaccines people have received and when.

Vaccinating People Who May Already Be Immune

It’s estimated that the number of reported Covid-19 cases may be just 10% of the actual number of infections in the U.S. Assuming recovery from the virus confers immunity for some period of time means there may be quite a few people who don’t actually need the vaccine right away to be protected. But there are currently no plans to determine whether recipients are already immune before they receive the vaccine.

“There are a lot of people out there who have some level of immunity to the coronavirus,” Keskinocak said. “The plans I’ve seen don’t include the serological testing that would be needed to identify people with some level of immunity, which could be around 30% of the population by the time the vaccine gets out to the general public.”

Testing for immune antibodies could be done ahead of the vaccination program, but that would create an extra step in a process that is already quite complicated. Healthcare systems such as the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs or certain private insurance plans could include that step, especially if vaccine supplies lag behind demand.

“The big complexity is timing,” she said. “Once vaccines become available, you’ll want to deliver them as quickly as possible to as many people as possible in a very short time frame.”

Annual vaccination campaigns for the seasonal flu set ambitious goals for the population levels they want to reach, but the time challenges will be much greater for the coronavirus vaccine.

“The seasonal flu vaccine becomes available months before the virus spreads broadly, so we have quite a bit of time to administer it before we get into the peak of the flu season,” she said. “We have been in the midst of the Covid-19 pandemic for several months now. We are really late in the game, so we don’t have the luxury of time.”

Keskinocak is cautiously optimistic that the challenges will ultimately be addressed.

“There are certainly still lots of unknowns,” she said. “But the state plans I have seen look reasonable from a supply chain standpoint. Some of the decisions will be made once the states receive the vaccine, and exactly how they do it will be somewhat up to the local jurisdictions. There are still many things that need to be decided to make this unprecedented initiative live up to its goals.”

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Media Relations Contact: John Toon (404-894-6986) (jtoon@gatech.edu)

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