Gaurav Doshi, assistant professor in applied economics and a faculty affiliate of the Georgia Tech Energy Policy and Innovation Center researches, among other topics, ways to make the benefits of large electrification projects more transparent.

It’s a chicken and egg situation: Should renewable energy projects launch first hoping that transmission lines to pipe generated power to distant places will follow on their heels? Or should the transmission lines be stood up first as a way to attract investments in renewable energy projects? Which comes before the other? It’s a question that has intrigued Gaurav Doshi, assistant professor at the School of Economics at Georgia Tech, for a while now. His award-winning paper about this research explores the downstream effects of building power lines.

After a bachelor’s and master’s degree in applied economics from the Indian Institute of Technology at Kanpur, Doshi earned his doctorate in the same field from the University of Wisconsin at Madison in 2023. He explored questions about environmental economics as part of his doctoral work.

“Once I started researching energy markets in the U.S., I kept getting deeper and coming up with new questions,” Doshi says. Among the many his work explores: What are the effects of infrastructure policies and how can they help decarbonization efforts? What are some of the unintended consequences policy makers need to think about?

One of his current research projects has roots in his doctoral work. It explores how to quantify the benefits of difficult-to-quantify environmental infrastructure projects. Case in point: Decarbonization will likely lead to more electrification from renewable energy resources and will need power lines to transport this energy to places of demand. The costs for such infrastructure are pretty transparent as part of government project funding. But the benefits are less so, Doshi points out. To develop effective policy, both the costs and benefits need clear visibility. “Otherwise the question arises ‘why should we spend billions of dollars of taxpayer money if we don’t know the benefits?’”

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On April 29, nearly 70 attendees representing 36 organizations from industry, government, academia, and nonprofits gathered at the Middle Georgia Regional Commission for the third Georgia Partnerships for Essential Minerals (GEMs) Workshop, held jointly with the Growing Resilience for America’s Critical Mineral Economy (GRACE) Engine initiative. The workshop marked a pivotal step in the region’s critical mineral strategy, bringing together leaders across sectors to align priorities and accelerate ecosystem development.

Hosted by the Center for Critical Mineral Solutions and Strategic Energy Institute at Georgia Tech in partnership with the Middle Georgia Regional Commission, GEMs-3 highlighted the economic development potential of critical minerals through production and recycling. Critical Minerals such as rare earth elements, gallium, and graphite are materials essential for technologies ranging from electric vehicles, permanent magnets to national defense systems. Building on the industry-led conception of GEMs-1 and road mapping efforts at GEMs-2, this workshop focused on translating strategy into action, with particular emphasis on use-inspired innovation, commercialization, workforce development, community engagement, and strategic investment. 

Keynote speaker Costas Simoglou, director of the Center of Innovation for Energy Technology at the Georgia Department of Economic Development, emphasized the state’s leadership in advanced energy manufacturing and innovation. Sessions highlighted ecosystem capabilities and insights from experts at Southern Company, Chemours, Ginn Technology Group, Savannah River National Laboratory, Georgia Research Alliance, Georgia Cleantech Innovation Hub, Georgia Artificial Intelligence in Manufacturing, Technical College System of Georgia, University of Georgia, Partnership for Innovation, the Supply Chain and Logistics Institute, and the Advanced Battery Center.

Yuanzhi Tang, professor at Georgia Tech and director of the Center for Critical Mineral Solutions, shared an update on the GRACE Engine initiative, which aims to develop a co-located innovation ecosystem that integrates extraction, processing and advanced manufacturing across Georgia. “The GRACE vision is to move from potential to practice,” said Tang, “by building a regional supply chain that is resilient, sustainable, built for speed and benefits all stakeholders.”

Afternoon breakout discussions brought participants together into focused groups to explore commercialization models, community advisory board structures, and pilot program priorities. Participants emphasized the importance of fast-start strategies, shared economic development, and leveraging existing regional strengths and infrastructure.

As Georgia continues to lead in kaolin mining and advanced manufacturing, the GEMs-GRACE platform stands as a model for how states can turn mineral resources and waste streams into new engines of economic opportunity.

For more information, visit gems.research.gatech.edu.

The Energy Policy and Innovation Center (EPIcenter) at Georgia Tech has announced the selection of six students for its inaugural Summer Research Program. The doctoral candidates, pursuing degrees in electrical and computer engineering, economics, computer science, and public policy, will be on campus working full-time on their dissertation research throughout the summer semester and present their findings in a final showcase. 

EPIcenter will provide a full stipend and tuition for the 2025 summer semester to support the students.

“I look forward to hosting a fantastic cohort of early-career energy scholars this summer,” said Laura Taylor, EPIcenter’s director. “The summer research program will not only help the students advance their research while engaging in interdisciplinary dialogue but also offers professional development opportunities to position them for a strong start to their careers.”

The students will work with EPIcenter staff and be provided with on-campus workshops on written and oral communications. Biweekly meetings over the summer will offer the students an opportunity to share their work, progress, and ideas with each other and the EPIcenter faculty affiliates. In addition, the students will have the opportunity to engage with programs and distinguished guests of the center. 

For students interested in presenting their research at a conference, EPIcenter also will provide travel grants of up to $600 pursuant to having their paper/presentation posted on the EPIcenter website.

"I applied to the Summer Research Program because its structure and community aligned perfectly with my summer plan on dissertation work in energy policy,” said Yifan Liu. “I aim to finalize key dissertation chapters and engage closely with peers and mentors to prepare me for the job market." 

The program offers students an opportunity to promote their work through the EPIcenter communication channels including the website, news feeds, blogs, and the SEI newsletter.

“I am very excited to spend my summer at EPIcenter exploring how battery storage entry affects competition in the electricity market,” said Maghfira “Afi” Ramadhani, one of the student affiliates selected for the summer research program. “Specifically, I look at how the rollout of battery storage in the Texas electricity market impacts renewable curtailment, fossil-fuel generator markup, and generator entry and exit.”

With a variety of backgrounds and perspectives on energy, each of the students in the summer program brings something unique to EPIcenter.

La’Darius Thomas: “My project explores the potential of peer-to-peer energy trading systems in promoting decentralized, sustainable energy solutions. I aim to contribute to the development of energy models that empower individuals and communities to directly participate in electricity markets.”

Niraj Palsule: “I intend to gain interdisciplinary insights interfacing energy transition technology and policy developments by participating in the EPIcenter Summer Research Program.”

John Kim: “I believe the EPIcenter Summer Research Program will deepen my investigation of how environmental hazards disproportionately affect vulnerable communities through research on power outage impacts and lead contamination. This summer, I hope to refine my analysis and complete research on the socioeconomic dimensions of power reliability and environmental resilience.”

Mehmet “Akif” Aglar: "I applied to the EPIcenter Summer Research Program because it offers the chance to work alongside and learn from a community of highly qualified researchers across various fields. I believe the opportunity to present my work, receive feedback, and benefit from the structure the program provides will be invaluable for advancing my research."

About EPICenter

The mission of the Energy Policy and Innovation Center is to conduct rigorous studies and deliver high impact insights that address critical regional, national, and global energy issues from a Southeastern U.S. perspective. EPICenter is pioneering a holistic approach that calls upon multidisciplinary expertise to engage the public on the issues that emerge as the energy transformation unfolds. The center operates within Georgia Tech’s Strategic Energy Institute.

Daniel Molzahn will readily admit he’s a Cheesehead.  

Born and brought up in Wisconsin, the associate professor at the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering attended the University of Wisconsin, Madison, for undergraduate and graduate studies. It was also at Madison that he decided to go into the family business: power engineering. 

Molzahn’s grandfather was a Navy electrician in World War II and later completed a bachelor’s in electrical engineering. He eventually was plant director at a big coal plant in Green Bay. Molzahn’s dad was also a power engineer and worked at a utility company, focusing on nuclear power.  

It was not uncommon for family vacations to include a visit to a coal mine or a nuclear power plant. Being steeped in everything power engineering eventually seeped into Molzahn’s bones. “I remember seeing all the infrastructure that goes into producing energy and it was endlessly fascinating for me,” he says.  

That endless fascination has worked its way into Molzahn’s research today—at the intersection of computation and power systems. 

Read Full Story on the EPIcenter Webpage

The Georgia Institute of Technology will receive up to $2 million to research advanced semiconductor packaging technologies. Georgia Tech was selected as a partner institution by the South Korean Ministry of Trade. 

The Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS), George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and the 3D Systems Packaging Research Center (PRC) will work with Myongji University and industry partners in South Korea on a seven-year collaborative project that focuses on developing core evaluation technologies for advanced semiconductor packaging. 

The project is led by Seung-Joon Paik, IMS research engineer; Yongwon Lee, research engineer in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering; and Kyoung-Sik “Jack” Moon, PRC research engineer. It is funded by the Korea Planning & Evaluation Institute of Industrial Technology of the Ministry of Trade, Industry and Energy in Korea.

The project aims to develop validation technologies for next-generation 3D packaging with strategic globally competitive capabilities. The developed platform will meet the high growing demand for advanced packaging technologies for artificial intelligence, high-performance computing, and chiplet-based semiconductor. As a designated partner, Georgia Tech will play a pivotal role in developing core evaluation technologies. 

The project’s outcomes will contribute to the commercialization of dependable packaging technologies and the resilience of the global semiconductor supply chain.

Imagine unlocking universal immunotherapies and cancer treatments, powerful vaccines, and a deeper understanding of our own immune systems. Georgia Tech’s Andrew McShan is laying the groundwork for these innovations by investigating the previously understudied field of lipids, and how they interact with proteins in the body.

McShan, an assistant professor in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry, has been awarded a $1.4 million CAREER grant from the National Science Foundation (NSF) to support this research.

“Protein-lipid assemblies carry out all sorts of biological functions, and harnessing their interactions could lead to powerful tools and treatments — but historically, they’ve been difficult to study,” McShan says. “Building resources for researchers and making this information accessible are critical steps in developing this field. This CAREER grant will enable me to expand the current knowledge base, while also allowing me to develop a class that will train the next generation of researchers, which is hugely important to me.”

The NSF Faculty Early Career Development Program is a five-year grant designed to help promising researchers establish a foundation for a lifetime of leadership in their field. Known as CAREER awards, the grants are NSF’s most prestigious funding for early-career faculty.

Expanding access

Crucial for nearly all biological processes, lipid-protein interactions play a key role in everything from immune responses to energy storage — but what drives their interactions has historically been difficult to map and understand.

McShan will use the CAREER grant to expand that knowledge base, experimenting in the lab to characterize protein-lipid interactions, and developing computational tools that can predict those interactions. The work will include an in-depth study of how lipids interact with different families of proteins that are important for immune system function.

“Right now, understanding protein-lipid assemblies is expensive in both time and lab materials,” McShan says. “My goal is to create computer models that can predict how these biomolecular interactions occur, what they look like, and how they contribute to cellular functions.”

The new model would allow researchers to quickly and inexpensively ‘experiment’ with molecules on a computer, vastly expanding the amount of research that could be conducted. 

The project builds on McShan’s recent publication in the Nature-family journal Communications Chemistry, which showcased BioDolphin — a first-of-its-kind, comprehensive, and annotated database of protein-lipid interactions that are all integrated into a user-friendly web server and freely accessible to all. 

It’s also adjacent to research funded by a Curci Grant from the Shurl and Kay Curci Foundation, which McShan was previously awarded for research on cutting-edge cancer treatments that involved identifying new cancer lipid signatures in tumor cells, and characterizing known cancer lipid antigens.

Pioneering the future of research

Additionally, the CAREER grant will support McShan’s initiatives to train the next generation of researchers through a new class centered around hands-on laboratory research and peer mentorship. Students will have the opportunity to pick a protein-lipid assembly, study it using computational and experimental biophysical methods, develop testable hypotheses, and — if successful — publish their results in peer reviewed journals.

The class will also pair undergraduate and graduate students into research teams. “I’m excited to see how a peer mentoring approach will add depth to the class,” McShan shares, explaining that graduate students will gain valuable mentoring experience in a collaborative research environment. “This is very different from typical mentoring experiences many graduate students have, which tend to be more along the lines of a TA experience rather than collaborating on hands-on research.”

“This type of class, to my knowledge, hasn’t been offered before, and there’s a lot of research that I’m doing to lay the groundwork for it,” McShan adds. “Hopefully, it can not only introduce students to lipid-based research — something typically lacking in many biochemistry curricula — but also to the type of collaborative mentorship we want to foster in research.”

Origami — the Japanese art of folding paper — could be at the next frontier in innovative materials.

Practiced in Japan since the early 1600s, origami involves combining simple folding techniques to create intricate designs. Now, Georgia Tech researchers are leveraging the technique as the foundation for next-generation materials that can both act as a solid and predictably deform, “folding” under the right forces. The research could lead to innovations in everything from heart stents to airplane wings and running shoes.

Recently published in Nature Communications, the study, “Coarse-grained fundamental forms for characterizing isometries of trapezoid-based origami metamaterials,” was led by first author James McInerney, who is now a NRC Research Associate at the Air Force Research Laboratory. McInerney, who completed the research while a postdoctoral student at the University of Michigan, was previously a doctoral student at Georgia Tech in the group of study co-author Zeb Rocklin. The team also includes Glaucio Paulino (Princeton University), Xiaoming Mao (University of Michigan), and Diego Misseroni (University of Trento).

“Origami has received a lot of attention over the past decade due to its ability to deploy or transform structures,” McInerney says. “Our team wondered how different types of folds could be used to control how a material deforms when different forces and pressures are applied to it” — like a creased piece of cardboard folding more predictably than one that might crumple without any creases.

The applications of that type of control are vast. “There are a variety of scenarios ranging from the design of buildings, aircraft, and naval vessels to the packaging and shipping of goods where there tends to be a trade-off between enhancing the load-bearing capabilities and increasing the total weight,” McInerney explains. “Our end goal is to enhance load-bearing designs by adding origami-inspired creases — without adding weight.”

The challenge, Rocklin adds, is using physics to find a way to predictably model what creases to use and when to achieve the best results.

Deformable solids

Rocklin, a theoretical physicist and associate professor in the School of Physics at Georgia Tech, emphasizes the complex nature of these types of materials. “If I tug on either end of a sheet of paper, it's solid — it doesn’t separate,” he explains. “But it's also flexible — it can crumple and wave depending on how I move it. That’s a very different behavior than what we might see in a conventional solid, and a very useful one.”

But while flexible solids are uniquely useful, they are also very hard to characterize, he says. “With these materials, it is often difficult to predict what is going to happen — how the material will deform under pressure because they can deform in many different ways. Conventional physics techniques can't solve this type of problem, which is why we're still coming up with new ways to characterize structures in the 21st century.”

When considering origami-inspired materials, physicists start with a flat sheet that's carefully creased to create a specific three-dimensional shape; these folds determine how the material behaves. But the method is limited: only parallelogram-based origami folding, which uses shapes like squares and rectangles, had previously been modeled, allowing for limited types of deformation.

“Our goal was to expand on this research to include trapezoid faces,” McInerney says. Parallelograms have two sets of parallel sides, but trapezoids only need to have one set of parallel sides. Introducing these more variable shapes makes this type of creasing more difficult to model, but potentially more versatile.

Breathing and shearing

“From our models and physical tests, we found that trapezoid faces have an entirely different class of responses,” McInerney shares. In other words — using trapezoids leads to new behavior.

The designs had the ability to change their shape in two distinct ways: "breathing" by expanding and contracting evenly, and “shearing" by deforming in a twisting motion. “We learned that we can use trapezoid faces in origami to constrain the system from bending in certain directions, which provides different functionality than parallelogram faces,” McInerney adds. 

Surprisingly, the team also found that some of the behavior in parallelogram-based origami carried over to their trapezoidal origami, hinting at some features that might be universal across designs.

“While our research is theoretical, these insights could give us more opportunities for how we might deploy these structures and use them,” Rocklin shares.

Future folding

“We still have a lot of work to do,” McInerney says, sharing that there are two separate avenues of research to pursue. “The first is moving from trapezoids to more general quadrilateral faces, and trying to develop an effective model of the material behavior — similar to the way this study moved from parallelograms to trapezoids.” Those new models could help predict how creased materials might deform under different circumstances, and help researchers compare those results to sheets without any creases at all. “This will essentially let us assess the improvement our designs provide,” he explains.

“The second avenue is to start thinking deeply about how our designs might integrate into a real system,” McInerney continues. “That requires understanding where our models start to break down, whether it is due to the loading conditions or the fabrication process, as well as establishing effective manufacturing and testing protocols.”

“It’s a very challenging problem, but biology and nature are full of smart solids — including our own bodies — that deform in specific, useful ways when needed,” Rocklin says. “That’s what we’re trying to replicate with origami.”

 

This research was funded by the Office of Naval Research, European Union, Army Research Office, and National Science Foundation.

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-025-57089-x 

Sarah Roney studies oysters — and coastline restoration, wave energy, erosion, blue crabs, and predator chemical cues. A Ph.D. candidate in Georgia Tech’s Ocean Science and Engineering program and a Brook Byers Graduate Fellow, Roney has spent the past four years studying how strategically placing oyster reefs along Georgia’s coast could yield significant benefits.

Georgia’s coastal ecology is being degraded by several threats. Erosion caused by a combination of traffic from water vessels, sea-level rise, increased storm intensity and frequency, and property development, are negatively impacting both coastal living systems and the state’s economy. Tourism, agriculture, recreation, fisheries, property development, and trade (through the Port of Savannah) all rely on healthy coastlines.

Roney’s interest in coastal ecology and oysters drew her to focus her doctoral thesis on this problem. She divided her project into two parts. The first involved understanding how much oyster reefs reduce the erosion caused by wave energy (ship wake) from water traffic. The second part demonstrated a method for making young oysters resistant to predation — increasing their survival rates and that of the reef colonies they call home. Roney focused her research on two major waterways in the Savannah area. The Intracoastal Waterway and the South Channel of the Savannah River, which leads to the Port of Savannah, are both subject to heavy ship and boat traffic. According to Roney’s collaborators at Georgia Tech, 65% of the wave energy lashing the South Channel’s shores is generated by cargo vessels navigating to and from the Port of Savannah. Because traffic along the Intracoastal Waterway is subject to very few speed restrictions, there is plenty of erosive wave energy there also, even though the vessels are almost exclusively small.

Roney chose one site in each waterway to place her reef structures. Mesh bags of oyster shells were seeded with young oysters by personnel working at a University of Georgia Shellfish Research Lab. Roney created her reef structures by placing these bags in a row 15 to 20 meters long and a meter wide. Once established, Roney found that constructed reefs dissipate 40% of the wave energy before it reaches the marsh edge. “This is an experimental pilot study, so the reefs are on the smaller side,” Roney explained. “Reefs as large as 100 meters long may be necessary to protect certain areas — which sounds like a big investment. But because these are living shorelines, they are self-sustaining, and will keep growing and building on themselves.”

Establishing oyster reefs can be challenging, however, because predators feast on young oysters. Blue crabs are among the most voracious. The second part of Roney’s research was to develop a method that improves adolescent oysters’ chances of surviving to adulthood — when they infrequently succumb to predation. Roney and her collaborators at Georgia Tech identified two compounds found in blue crab urine, called trigonelline and homarine, that induce young oysters to devote more energy toward growing their shells, which become 25-60% stronger than normal. Roney found that after four to eight weeks of exposure to these compounds in hatchery conditions, their overall survival rate improved by 30% once placed in a reef. Her method not only helps constructed reefs to become established, but can also help existing oyster reefs become more resilient by slowing, or reversing, their decline.

While coastal restoration projects are not new in Georgia, the techniques Roney developed are relatively novel. Conventional shoreline restoration projects involve excavation, placing gravel beds, and extensive plantings, mostly with sea grasses. Roney has shown that using living shoreline strategies are less intensive and less expensive to establish and are also effective in reducing wave energy in waterways vulnerable to erosion. Perhaps most significantly, these techniques also restore the foundational functions of the ecosystems in which they are placed. The reefs become nurseries, incubating fish, bird, plant, and crustacean species.

Roney engaged several partners over the four years of her project, many in the communities along Georgia’s coast. Over 35 coastal residents, business owners, citizen scientists, and students volunteered their time and resources to help Roney’s project succeed. Roney said, “I think the most rewarding part of the project has been seeing how many people are truly invested in our coastal resources and want oyster reefs to thrive.”

This project isn’t likely to end once Roney earns her PhD. For living shoreline restoration practices to catch on, several other problems require investigation. Roney wants to devise a way to slowly release predator cue compounds into the water near oyster reefs, so baby oysters won’t need to spend as much time in a hatchery before being placed in the wild. Perfecting such a time-release mechanism could also help rejuvenate naturally occurring oyster reefs under threat from erosion and predation.

Roney also wants to try combining constructed oyster reefs with oyster farms, integrating one of the most sustainable ways that protein can be raised with living shoreline restoration. “As the mariculture industry in Georgia grows, there will be lots of opportunities to investigate the possible intersections between the ecological benefits, engineering benefits, and cultural benefits of oyster farming,” Roney said. “Food might be a continuous byproduct of shoreline restoration projects.”

Roney’s research shows that economic development and preserving, or even regenerating, diverse and productive coastal habitats for future generations don’t have to be mutually exclusive propositions.

Roney’s thesis advisor is Marc Weissburg, Brook Byers Professor in the School of Biological Sciences. Kevin Haas, professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering, helped Roney map and measure the hydrodynamic forces in her study zones. The Coastal Resources Division of the Georgia Department of Natural Resources, the National Parks Service, and the University of Georgia Marine Extension and Georgia Sea Grant program provided access, permitting, funding, and resources.

A Georgia Tech doctoral student’s dissertation could help physicians diagnose neuropsychiatric disorders, including schizophrenia, autism, and Alzheimer’s disease. The new approach leverages data science and algorithms instead of relying on traditional methods like cognitive tests and image scans.

Ph.D. candidate Md Abdur Rahaman’s dissertation studies brain data to understand how changes in brain activity shape behavior. 

Computational tools Rahaman developed for his dissertation look for informative patterns between the brain and behavior. Successful tests of his algorithms show promise to help doctors diagnose mental health disorders and design individualized treatment plans for patients.

“I've always been fascinated by the human brain and how it defines who we are,” Rahaman said. 

“The fact that so many people silently suffer from neuropsychiatric disorders, while our understanding of the brain remains limited, inspired me to develop tools that bring greater clarity to this complexity and offer hope through more compassionate, data-driven care.”

Rahaman’s dissertation introduces a framework focusing on granular factoring. This computing technique stratifies brain data into smaller, localized subgroups, making it easier for computers and researchers to study data and find meaningful patterns.

Granular factoring overcomes the challenges of size and heterogeneity in neurological data science. Brain data is obtained from neuroimaging, genomics, behavioral datasets, and other sources. The large size of each source makes it a challenge to study them individually, let alone analyze them simultaneously, to find hidden inferences. 

Rahaman’s research allows researchers and physicians to move past one-size-fits-all approaches. Instead of manually reviewing tests and scans, algorithms look for patterns and biomarkers in the subgroups that otherwise go undetected, especially ones that indicate neuropsychiatric disorders.

“My dissertation advances the frontiers of computational neuroscience by introducing scalable and interpretable models that navigate brain heterogeneity to reveal how neural dynamics shape behavior,” Rahaman said. 

“By uncovering subgroup-specific patterns, this work opens new directions for understanding brain function and enables more precise, personalized approaches to mental health care.”

Rahaman defended his dissertation on April 14, the final step in completing his Ph.D. in computational science and engineering. He will graduate on May 1 at Georgia Tech’s Ph.D. Commencement. 

After walking across the stage at McCamish Pavilion, Rahaman’s next step in his career is to go to Amazon, where he will work in the generative artificial intelligence (AI) field. 

Graduating from Georgia Tech is the summit of an educational trek spanning over a decade. Rahaman hails from Bangladesh where he graduated from Chittagong University of Engineering and Technology in 2013. He attained his master’s from the University of New Mexico in 2019 before starting at Georgia Tech. 

“Munna is an amazingly creative researcher,” said Vince Calhoun, Rahman’s advisor. Calhoun is the founding director of the Translational Research in Neuroimaging and Data Science Center (TReNDS).

TReNDS is a tri-institutional center spanning Georgia Tech, Georgia State University, and Emory University that develops analytic approaches and neuroinformatic tools. The center aims to translate the approaches into biomarkers that address areas of brain health and disease.    

“His work is moving the needle in our ability to leverage multiple sources of complex biological data to improve understanding of neuropsychiatric disorders that have a huge impact on an individual’s livelihood,” said Calhoun.

Georgia Tech professors Michelle LaPlaca and W. Hong Yeo have been selected as recipients of Peterson Professorships with the Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta Pediatric Technology Center (PTC) at Georgia Tech. The professorships, supported by the G.P. “Bud” Peterson and Valerie H. Peterson Faculty Endowment Fund, are meant to further energize the Georgia Tech and Children’s partnership by engaging and empowering researchers involved in pediatrics.

In a joint statement, PTC co-directors Wilbur Lam and Stanislav Emelianov said, “The appointment of Dr. LaPlaca and Dr. Yeo as Peterson Professors exemplifies the vision of Bud and Valerie Peterson — advancing innovation and collaboration through the Pediatric Technology Center to bring breakthrough ideas from the lab to the bedside, improving the lives of children and transforming healthcare.”

LaPlaca is a professor and associate chair for Faculty Development in the Department of Biomedical Engineering, a joint department between Georgia Tech and Emory University. Her research is focused on traumatic brain injury and concussion, concentrating on sources of heterogeneity and clinical translation. Specifically, she is working on biomarker discovery, the role of the glymphatic system, and novel virtual reality neurological assessments.    

“I am thrilled to be chosen as one of the Peterson Professors and appreciate Bud and Valerie Peterson’s dedication to pediatric research,” she said. “The professorship will allow me to broaden research in pediatric concussion assessment and college student concussion awareness, as well as to identify biomarkers in experimental models of brain injury.”

In addition to the research lab, LaPlaca will work with an undergraduate research class called Concussion Connect, which is part of the Vertically Integrated Projects program at Georgia Tech.

“Through the PTC, Georgia Tech and Children’s will positively impact brain health in Georgia’s pediatric population,” said LaPlaca.

Yeo is the Harris Saunders, Jr. Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and the director of the Wearable Intelligent Systems and Healthcare Center at Georgia Tech. His research focuses on nanomanufacturing and membrane electronics to develop soft biomedical devices aimed at improving disease diagnostics, therapeutics, and rehabilitation.

“I am truly honored to be awarded the Peterson Professorship from the Children’s PTC at Georgia Tech,” he said. “This recognition will greatly enhance my research efforts in developing soft bioelectronics aimed at advancing pediatric healthcare, as well as expand education opportunities for the next generation of undergraduate and graduate students interested in creating innovative medical devices that align seamlessly with the recent NSF Research Traineeship grant I received. I am eager to contribute to the dynamic partnership between Georgia Tech and Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta and to empower innovative solutions that will improve the lives of children.”

The Peterson Professorships honor the former Georgia Tech President and First Lady, whose vision for the importance of research in improving pediatric healthcare has had an enormous positive impact on the care of pediatric patients in our state and region.

The Children’s PTC at Georgia Tech brings clinical experts from Children’s together with Georgia Tech scientists and engineers to develop technological solutions to problems in the health and care of children. Children’s PTC provides extraordinary opportunities for interdisciplinary collaboration in pediatrics, creating breakthrough discoveries that often can only be found at the intersection of multiple disciplines. These collaborations also allow us to bring discoveries to the clinic and the bedside, thereby enhancing the lives of children and young adults. The mission of the PTC is to establish the world’s leading program in the development of technological solutions for children’s health, focused on three strategic areas that will have a lasting impact on Georgia’s kids and beyond.