Georgia Tech and Shepherd Center recently awarded four seed grants totaling nearly $200,000 to researchers focusing on projects that will advance discoveries in neurorehabilitation, including acquired brain injury, spinal cord injury, multiple sclerosis, chronic pain, and other neurological conditions. 

The Georgia Tech-Shepherd Center Seed Grant Program is part of an ongoing partnership between the two institutions that started in 2023 with the goal of advancing rehabilitative patient care and research.

“The seed grant program is intended to stimulate new interdisciplinary research collaborations by providing seed funding to obtain preliminary data or prototypes necessary for the submission of an external grant or industry opportunities,” says Deborah Backus, vice president of Research and Innovation at Shepherd Center. “As two leading research institutions, we know the potential for advancing rehabilitation therapies is even greater when we work together. We look forward to the solutions, treatments, and therapies that emerge from these initial seed grants.” 

Experts from both institutions evaluated and scored seed grant applications based on the research’s innovation, approach, and potential for training opportunities, as well as its anticipated impact, prospects for commercial translation, and strategy for securing continued funding. This year, each awardee team received close to $50,000.

“We are very excited to launch this new seed grant program, which will spur ideas and propel research forward,” said Michelle LaPlaca, professor in the Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering and the Georgia Tech lead of the Collaborative. “The complementary expertise of Georgia Tech and Shepherd Center researchers, combined with the motivation to find solutions for individuals with neurological injury and disability, is a winning formula for innovation.”

"Offering new hope for neurorehabilitation patients requires bringing together interdisciplinary researchers to explore new and creative ideas,” adds Chris Rozell, Julian T. Hightower Chaired professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and the inaugural executive director of the Institute of Neuroscience, Neurotechnology, and Society (INNS) at Georgia Tech. “I'm excited to see the talent at these world class institutions coming together to develop new solutions for these complex problems."

This year’s seed grants were awarded to the following projects:

• Proof of Concept Development of the Recovery Cushion – Stephen Sprigle, professor, School of Industrial Design and School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech; Jennifer Cowhig, research physical therapist, Shepherd Center.
• Paving a Smooth Path from Hospital to Home: A Feasibility Study of an Integrated Smart Transitional Home Lab to Support Stroke Rehabilitation Patients’ Transition to Home – John Morris, senior clinical research scientist, Shepherd Center; Hui Cai, professor in the School of Architecture, executive director of the SimTigrate Design Center, Georgia Tech.
• A Comparative Analysis of Lower-Limb Exoskeleton Technology for Non-Ambulatory Individuals with Spinal Cord Injury – Maegan Tucker, assistant professor, School of Electrical and Computer Engineering and School of Mechanical Engineering, Georgia Tech; Nicholas Evans (AP 2023), clinical research scientist, Shepherd Center.
• Improving Accessibility and Precision in Neurorehabilitation at the Point of Care with AI-Driven Remote Therapeutic Monitoring Solutions – Brad Willingham, clinical research scientist, director of Multiple Sclerosis Research, Shepherd Center; May Dongmei Wang, professor, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering, Georgia Tech.

The inaugural cohort of Georgia Tech’s Research Leadership Academy (RLA), a distinguished group of researchers selected from a highly competitive pool of applicants across campus, has been announced.

These outstanding faculty members were chosen for their exceptional research accomplishments, demonstrated leadership, and ability to drive high-impact, interdisciplinary initiatives. Representing a wide range of academic disciplines, they embody the depth, innovation, and collaborative spirit that define Georgia Tech’s research community.

Over the next year, this inaugural cohort will engage in a dynamic, immersive program designed to cultivate strategic research leadership through mentorship, experiential learning, and cross-campus dialogue. Their work through the RLA will not only strengthen Georgia Tech’s research enterprise but also help shape its trajectory for years to come.

Please join us in celebrating and congratulating these remarkable scholars as they embark on this exciting journey. 

• Steve Diggle – Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; School of Biological Sciences
• Marta Hatzell – Institute for Matter and Systems; Renewable Bioproducts Institute; Strategic Energy Institute; George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering
• Ada Gavrilovska - Institute for Data Engineering and Science; School of Computer Science
• Margaret Kosal – Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; Strategic Energy Institute; Institute for Matter and Systems; Sam Nunn School of International Affairs
• Sheng Dai – Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; Strategic Energy Institute; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Yuguo Tao – George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; Nuclear and Radiological Engineering; and Medical Physics
• Chris Wiese – Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; Institute for Data Engineering and Science; Institute for People and Technology; School of Psychology
• Mathieu Dahan – Institute for People and Technology, H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• Thackery Brown – School of Psychology
• Charlotte Alexander – Tech AI, Scheller College of Business; Law and Ethics
• Jeff Young – Institute for Data Engineering and Science; Partnership for Advanced Computing Environments; Office of Information Technology
• Meltem Alemdar – Center for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics, and Computing
• Kamran Paynabar – Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute; Institute for Data Engineering and Science; Renewable Bioproducts Institute; H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering
• John A. Christian – Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering
• Farzaneh Najafi – Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience; School of Biological Sciences
• Dave Flaherty – Strategic Energy Institute; School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering
• Eunhwa Yang - Institute for Matter and Systems; Strategic Energy Institute; School of Building Construction
• James Tsai – Strategic Energy Institute; School of Civil and Environmental Engineering
• Jennifer Hirsch – Brook Byers Institute for Sustainable Systems; Center for Sustainable Communities Research and Education; Strategic Energy Institute

Epilepsy, Parkinson’s, Alzheimer’s, Huntington’s disease — as a Jim Pope Fellow, Adam McCallum is dedicated to helping students search for solutions to these and other devastating diseases. McCallum is a translational research advocate in the Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering at Georgia Tech and Emory University, currently ranked No. 2 in the nation by U.S. News & World Report. He hopes to accelerate the commercialization of the most promising biotech advances.  

When McCallum learned about the Jim Pope Fellowship, he saw it as a tremendous opportunity. “Biomedical engineering research has so much potential to be translated into products and solutions that tackle unmet clinical needs, that could be shaped to enhance society in general,” he says. “It’s a collaboration between biology, medicine, and engineering. The Pope Fellowship is a unique opportunity to explore new projects dedicated to entrepreneurship.” 

McCallum is one of five faculty members to receive the Jim Pope Fellowship, which supports faculty in becoming entrepreneurial instructors and mentors in CREATE-X. He hopes to leverage this fellowship to instill entrepreneurial confidence in biomedical engineering graduate students and faculty and help them translate their research into IP and healthcare-focused products to be used in and out of the clinic.

Since being named a fellow, McCallum has applied the funding to attend conferences to learn more about new methods for teaching commercialization and entrepreneurship, develop programming to enhance the student experience, increase student understanding and interest in entrepreneurship, and explore creative new projects he has envisioned while at Georgia Tech.

Establishing a New Commercialization Course

Beginning in the fall, he will teach a new course, Fundamentals of Biotechnology Commercialization, targeting BME graduate students. McCallum developed the curriculum, which begins with an overview of technology commercialization and the commercialization process, followed by modules on IP — how to protect one’s inventions; financing, with a focus on early-stage commercialization funding opportunities; and choosing a commercialization path.

“In the second part of the course, students will simulate a patent filing,” says McCallum. “It’s a really important step in the commercialization process. In future iterations of the course, I would love to have students file real disclosures and provisional patent applications with our Tech Transfer Office and have a licensing associate talk to them about managing the IP.”

BME Innovations Pivotal to Georgia Tech’s IP Ecosystem

McCallum sees Georgia Tech BME researchers as an important driver of innovation, and the Institute’s patent track record reflects their critical role: More than 21% of U.S.-issued patents to Georgia Tech have at least one BME inventor listed, according to the Office of Commercialization. 

In the past year, he has already seen the value of infusing an entrepreneurial spirit into his curriculum. Annabelle Singer (BME) and Levi Wood (ME) were mentored by McCallum while they were developing an audiovisual device to help stimulate brain activity in patients with Alzheimer’s disease and epilepsy. Through this mentorship, Singer and Wood recognized possible use cases and commercialization pathways for their technology.

“Their device has potential applications in a wide range of other neurological conditions — to lessen the impact of these disorders on people in their everyday life,” says McCallum, adding, “I’m excited about Georgia Tech and Emory’s commitment to developing programs to enhance neuroscience and neural engineering research. There’s so much potential in that space, especially for being able to significantly impact diseases like Alzheimer’s, Parkinson’s, and Huntington’s disease, as well as strokes and epilepsy. We are moving in the right direction with being able to improve the efficacy of the modalities to diagnose and treat these conditions.”

According to McCallum, his close connection to CREATE-X has given him a unique opportunity to see the impact of the program on the entrepreneurial endeavors of students and even faculty members. 

“Previous fellows have been very successful with developing new educational programs and courses, as well as creating new spaces to spawn innovation, to instill entrepreneurial confidence in undergraduate students, and I want to use those successes as inspiration to make an impact on graduate student entrepreneurial confidence in BME, with much more to come,” he said.

As one of President Ángel Cabrera's four Big Bets, the drive for entrepreneurial education and opportunities has accelerated at Georgia Tech. In 2023, over a third of all Georgia Tech applicants selected entrepreneurship as an interest. Pope Fellows have a unique opportunity to help students tap into entrepreneurial pathways with CREATE-X, access an abundance of resources, and solve real-world problems. For faculty interested in joining, applications are open for the 2025 Jim Pope Fellowship until Sept. 2. For more information, visit https://create-x.gatech.edu/faculty/jim-pope-fellowship.

Juba Ziani is on a mission to change how the world thinks about data in artificial intelligence. An assistant professor in Georgia Tech’s H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), Ziani has secured a $425,000 National Science Foundation (NSF) grant to explore how smart incentives can lead to higher-quality, more widely shared datasets. His work forms part of a $1 million NSF collaboration with Columbia University computer science professor Augustin Chaintreau and senior personnel Daniel Björkegren, aiming to challenge outdated ideas and shape a more reliable future for AI.

Artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly shapes critical decisions in everyday life, from who sees a job posting or qualifies for a loan, to who is granted bail in the criminal justice system. These systems rely on historical data to learn patterns and make predictions. For example, an applicant might be approved for a loan because an AI system recognizes that previous borrowers with similar credit histories successfully repaid. But when the underlying training data is incomplete or low-quality, the consequences can be serious, disproportionately affecting those from groups historically excluded from such opportunities.

Ziani's research will explore how the economic value of data, combined with the effects of data markets and network dynamics, can lead to incentives that naturally improve dataset robustness. By identifying the conditions under which the supposed efficiency trade-off disappears, Ziani and his collaborators hope to open the door to more reliable and equitable AI systems.

Traditionally, researchers have assumed that making AI-assisted decision-making more robust and representative comes at the expense of efficiency. This assumption treats training data as fixed and unchangeable, which can place limits on the potential of AI systems. But as large-scale data platforms grow and the exchange of data becomes more accessible, the conventional trade-off between robustness and efficiency may no longer apply.

“Our project demonstrates how carefully designing incentives—both for data producers and data buyers—can enhance the quality and robustness of datasets without compromising performance,” said Ziani. “This has the potential to fundamentally reshape the way AI systems are trained and how data is collected, shared, and valued.”

With this work, Ziani aims to advance both the theory and practice of AI and data economics, ensuring that as AI continues to transform society, and does so in a way that is fair, accurate, and trustworthy.

Research into tailored assistive and rehabilitative devices has seen recent advancements but the goal remains out of reach due to the sparsity of data on how humans learn complex balance tasks. To address this gap, a collaborating team of interdisciplinary faculty from Florida State University and Georgia Tech have been awarded ~$798,000 by the NSF to launch a study to better understand human motor learning as well as gain greater understanding into human robot interaction dynamics during the learning process.

 Led by PI: Taylor Higgins, Assistant Professor, FAMU-FSU Department of Mechanical Engineering, partnering with Co-PIs Shreyas Kousik, Assistant Professor, Georgia Tech, George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and Brady DeCouto, Assistant Professor, FSU Anne Spencer Daves College of Education, Health, and Human Sciences, the research will use the acquisition of unicycle riding skill by participants to gain a better grasp on human motor learning in tasks requiring balance and complex movement in space. Although it might sound a bit odd, the fact that most people don’t know how to ride a unicycle, and the fact that it requires balance, mean that the data will cover the learning process from novice to skilled across the participant pool.

Using data acquired from human participants, the team will develop a “robotics assistive unicycle” that will be used in the training of the next pool of novice unicycle riders.  This is to gauge if, and how rapidly, human motor learning outcomes improve with the assistive unicycle. The participants that engage with the robotic unicycle will also give valuable insight into developing effective human-robot collaboration strategies.

The fact that deciding to get on a unicycle requires a bit of bravery might not be great for the participants, but it’s great for the research team. The project will also allow exploration into the interconnection between anxiety and human motor learning to discover possible alleviation strategies, thus increasing the likelihood of positive outcomes for future patients and consumers of these devices.

 

Author
-Christa M. Ernst

This Article Refers to NSF Award # 2449160

Research Communications Program Manager

Klaus Advance Computing Building 1120E | 266 Ferst Drive | Atlanta GA | 30332

christa.ernst@research.gatech.edu

In the world of nanotechnology, seeing clearly isn’t easy. It’s even harder when you’re trying to understand how a material’s properties relate to its structure at the nanoscale. Tools like piezoresponse force microscopy (PFM) help scientists peer into the nanoscale functionality of materials, revealing how they respond to electric fields. But those signals are often buried in noise, especially in instances where the most interesting physics happens.

Now, researchers at Georgia Tech have developed a powerful new method to extract meaningful information from even the noisiest data, or when, alternatively, the response of the material is the smallest. Their approach, which combines physical modeling with advanced statistical reconstruction, could significantly improve the accuracy and confidence of nanoscale measurement properties.

The team’s findings, led by Nazanin Bassiri-Gharb, Harris Saunders, Jr. Chair and Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Materials Science and Engineering (MSE), are reported in Small Methods.

Co-lead authors Kerisha Williams, a former MSE Ph.D. student, and Henry Shaowu Yuchi, a former Ph.D. student in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISyE), spearheaded the study. Other collaborators include Kevin Ligonde, a Ph.D. student in the Woodruff School; Mathew Repasky, a former Ph.D. student in ISyE; and Yao Xie, Coca-Cola Foundation Chair and Professor in ISyE.

This research was initiated through Georgia Tech’s Forming Teams and Moving Teams Forward seed grant program, launched by the Office of the Executive Vice President for Research in 2021. Designed to support cross-disciplinary collaboration, the program helps build research teams that align with the growing national emphasis on large-scale, team-based projects. The grant supported early work by Bassiri-Gharb, Xie, and Juan-Pablo Correa-Baena, associate professor and Goizueta Early Career Faculty Chair in MSE.

Read the full story on the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering website.

Georgia Tech has posted its strongest year ever in research commercialization, breaking multiple records for invention disclosures, issued patents, and licensed technologies — clear indicators of the Institute’s expanding role in delivering research-driven innovation to the marketplace.

“Invention is only the beginning. What sets Georgia Tech apart is our ability to move our ideas out of the lab and into the marketplace, where they can make a tangible impact on human life and contribute to our economy,” said Ángel Cabrera, president of Georgia Tech. “This year’s record results show that our researchers aren’t just pushing the boundaries of knowledge — they’re creating marketable solutions with the power to improve everyday lives.”

For fiscal year 2025, Georgia Tech reported:

• More than 460 new invention disclosures — a 30% increase over the previous year and the highest ever recorded by the Institute.
  • 70 invention disclosures for the Georgia Tech Research Institute, marking a 70% increase year over year.
• A 210% increase in technologies licensed, and 140% in total licenses executed, reflecting unprecedented industry interest, with 65 licenses in total.  
• 124 U.S. patents were issued, representing a 20% increase compared to the prior year.
  • According to the most recent rankings from the National Academy of Inventors, Georgia Tech is in the top 15 public universities for U.S. utility patents filed.

This momentum strengthens Atlanta’s position as one of the nation’s fastest-growing innovation economies. Georgia Tech plays a leading role in advancing the region’s ambition to become a top 5 tech hub by connecting world-class research with industry, supporting a thriving startup ecosystem, and fueling talent pipelines that serve emerging sectors like AI, cybersecurity, and clean energy.  

Omer Inan, a Georgia Tech researcher and faculty member, has launched multiple companies with the support of the Institute’s commercialization resources. Cardiosense is a medical AI company that leverages sensors to provide better management of cardiovascular disease. Having just achieved FDA 501(k) clearance, its latest device — CardioTag — is the first multimodal, wearable sensor that simultaneously captures three cardio signals to provide noninvasive solutions for heart health.  

"The med tech research I conduct at Georgia Tech delivers new technologies to keep patients with heart failure out of the hospital and enables them to monitor their health status at home,” said Inan. “Now, we are commercializing the technology our lab helped develop, so that this dream of improving the quality of care and life for millions of Americans with heart failure can one day become reality."

“As we look to solidify Georgia Tech’s status as a national innovation hub, we are moving research into the marketplace so it can truly make a difference in people’s lives,” said Raghupathy “Siva” Sivakumar, vice president of Commercialization and chief commercialization officer at Georgia Tech. “We are at a pivotal moment to put Atlanta on the map as a leader in research commercialization and have an opportunity to capitalize on our $1.4 billion in research expenditures that drive meaningful inventions, IP, and industry partnerships.”  

To learn more about the licensing and commercialization process at Georgia Tech, visit licensing.research.gatech.edu.

Available for Media Interviews

Raghupathy "Siva" Sivakumar 
Vice President of Commercialization and 
Chief Commercialization Officer 
Georgia Tech

Omer Inan 
Professor and Regents’ Entrepreneur  
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech

Media Contact: 
Lauren Schiffman       
PressFriendly   
lauren@pressfriendly.com  

Angela Barajas Prendiville   
Director of Media Relations    
Georgia Institute of Technology   
aprendiville@gatech.edu  

 

The idea of people experiencing their favorite mobile apps as immersive 3D environments took a step closer to reality with a new Google-funded research iniative at Georgia Tech. 

A new approach proposed by Tech researcher Yalong Yang uses generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) technologies to convert almost any mobile or web-based app into a 3D environment. 

That includes application software programs from Microsoft and Adobe as well as any social media (Tiktok), entertainment (Spotify), banking (PayPal), or food service app (Uber Eats) and everything in between.

Yang aims to make the 3D environments compatible with augmented and virtual reality (AR/VR) headsets and smart glasses. He believes his research could be a breakthrough in spatial computing and change how humans interact with their favorite apps and computer systems in general.

“We’ll be able to turn around and see things we want, and we can grab them and put them together,” said Yang, an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing. “We’ll no longer use a mouse to scroll or the keyboard to type, but we can do more things like physical navigation.”

Yang’s proposal recently earned him recognition as a 2025 Google Research Scholar. Along with converting popular social apps, his platform will be able to instantly render Photoshop, MS Office, and other workplace applications in 3D for AR/VR devices.

“We have so many applications installed in our machines to complete all the various types of work we do,” he said. “We use Photoshop for photo editing, Premiere Pro for video editing, Word for writing documents. We want to create an AR/VR ecosystem that has all these things available in one interface with all apps working cohesively to support multitasking.”

Filling The Gap With AI

Just as Google’s Veo and Open AI’s Sora use generative-AI to create video clips, Yang believes it can be used to create interactive, immersive environments for any Android or Apple app. 

“A critical gap in AR/VR is that we do not have all those existing applications, and redesigning all those apps will take forever,” he said. “It’s urgent that we have a complete ecosystem in VR to enable us to do the work we need to do. Instead of recreating everything from scratch, we need a way to convert these applications into immersive formats.”

This June, New York City’s government and utility urged households to conserve electricity during an extreme heat wave with temperatures reaching 100 degrees F. People were asked to set air conditioners to 76 degrees, to avoid using more than one air conditioning unit, and to delay using electricity-hungry appliances during peak cooling hours.

The big concern is that when every air conditioning unit is running at full blast, electricity demand can exceed total generating capacity and force the utility to implement rolling blackouts. These rolling blackouts avoid a total system failure but leave people without access to cooling and other electronics as temperatures reach dangerous levels.

As temperatures peak in the United States during the coming weeks, utilities and city governments may follow suit with similar requests for voluntary conservation. Voluntary requests for conservation in the United States are part of the standard energy emergency playbook and go back at least to President Carter’s request for Americans to reduce heating temperatures during the 1977 energy crisis.

So, do voluntary conservation requests work to save energy and prevent blackouts?

Read Full Story on the EPIcenter Newspage