Georgia Tech students are gaining hands-on research experience at U.S. national laboratories this summer, reinforcing the Institute’s strong and enduring partnerships across the national lab system.

The highly competitive Laboratory Placement program is a paid opportunity offered through the U.S. Department of Energy’s Science Undergraduate Laboratory Internships. It provides students from a wide range of disciplines an opportunity to contribute to cutting-edge research at leading facilities, including Argonne National Laboratory, Ames National Laboratory, Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, National Laboratory of the Rockies, Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Princeton Plasma Physics Laboratory, and Savannah River National Laboratory.

The program’s 2026 cohort includes 16 Georgia Tech students from disciplines such as artificial intelligence, materials science, aerospace engineering, nuclear engineering, chemical engineering, mechanical engineering, and physics. Their research placements reflect the interdisciplinary nature of today’s scientific challenges, with projects covering bioinformatics, high-energy and condensed matter physics, accelerator science, environmental management, and advanced materials.

Many of the internships are closely aligned with national energy priorities, with students working in research areas including nuclear energy, hydrogen and chemical systems, materials for energy applications, plasma and fusion sciences, and complex engineered systems.

“Georgia Tech’s deep engagement with the national laboratory system creates unparalleled opportunities for our students to contribute to the future of energy,” said Yuanzhi Tang, executive director of the Strategic Energy Institute. “By connecting interdisciplinary talent with world-class research environments, we are not only advancing discovery but also shaping the next generation of leaders who will drive secure, sustainable, and resilient energy systems.”

Working alongside national lab scientists, students will not only gain access to world-class facilities but benefit from mentorship and professional networks, while contributing to research critical to national security, economic competitiveness, and a more sustainable energy future. 

“These internships demonstrate the strength of Georgia Tech’s relationships across the federal research ecosystem,” said Robert Knotts, executive director of Federal Relations in the Office of Institute Relations. “They provide a direct pathway for students to engage in public service through mission-driven research at national laboratories — while strengthening connections that are vital to advancing national priorities in energy, security, and innovation.”

Moving a new idea from a research lab to production remains one of industry’s toughest challenges. But at the Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute (GTMI), which leads the nation in translating research into technologies that shape the future of U.S. manufacturing, that gap is being closed by design. This effort was on full display during AMPF Week, a two-day celebration marking the official opening of the newly renovated Georgia Tech Advanced Manufacturing Pilot Facility (AMPF).

Read more »

John Blazeck, associate professor in Georgia Tech's School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE), has won a 2026 Faculty Early Career Development (CAREER) Award from the National Science Foundation (NSF).

The CAREER Award is the NSF’s most prestigious award in support of junior faculty who exemplify the role of teacher-scholars through outstanding research, excellent education, and the integration of education and research within the context of the mission of their organizations.

Blazeck will receive $647,941 over five years for “Creating and evolving antibodies from scratch in yeast.”

Antibodies are key proteins of the immune system that help fight disease. In people, immune cells called B cells create antibodies and then evolve them. B cells take months to do this, which makes it difficult to study antibody creation and evolution, Blazeck explained.

His CAREER project will design a method to evolve antibodies “from scratch” in yeast, which will open new avenues for exploring antibody creation, evolution, and function. 

Read the full story on the School of Chemistry and Biomolecular Engineering's website. 

Eight faculty members have been honored by the College of Engineering for their excellence in research, service, teaching, inventorship, and commercialization.

Candidates for the fifth annual Faculty Excellence Awards were nominated by their peers or submitted self-nominations. Materials were reviewed by a committee of academic and research faculty members within the College. 

Each honoree receives $2,000. The honorees are:

• Akanksha Menon
• Hong Yeo
• Kinsey Herrin
• Lauren Steimle
• Kevin Haas
• Omer Inan
• Scott Hollister
• Kim L. Paige

Read the full story on the College of Engineering website. 

Assistant Professor Vida Jamali is the inaugural recipient of the new Dr. James Robert and Margaret Spencer Early Career Fellowship in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering (ChBE@GT).

“Her outstanding research accomplishments and contributions to the School and Georgia Tech led to this selection,” said Professor Christopher W. Jones, the John F. Brock III School Chair in ChBE@GT.

The $20,000 in discretionary funding from this one-year fellowship will support Jamali’s research activities focused on developing new tools for in situ liquid-phase transmission electron microscopy, stochastic thermodynamics, and nanoscience-based platforms.

The Spencers established the endowment from which the term fellowship funding comes in 2017. This endowment will eventually lead to the establishment of a professorship in ChBE@GT.

“Bob Spencer is a successful alumnus who has remained connected to our chemical engineering program,” according to Jones. “His family’s gift will allow ChBE@GT to support an early career professor at a critical stage of their development—the crucial years just before their promotion and tenure review. We are grateful for their support and generosity.”

Read Full Story on the ChBE Newspage

As space missions travel farther from Earth, spacecraft must increasingly be able to process and store their own data. Soon, artificial intelligence (AI) could be the primary tool for handling this growing volume of information. NAND flash memory is the current state-of-the-art technology used to store these massive amounts of data, offering storage capacities in the terabit range. It’s the same technology used in laptops, smartphones, and data centers. Ensuring NAND’s reliability in space is critical as these systems increasingly rely on high-density, low-power storage. 

But the radiation in harsh space environments can significantly degrade data stored in NAND flash memory. To counteract this, Georgia Tech researchers have developed a new form of NAND flash memory that can both handle AI and withstand extreme radiation.

This technology uses ferroelectricity, which is when certain materials can hold a permanent, spontaneous electric charge, called polarization. In a recent Nano Letters paper, the researchers show that NAND flash memory made with ferroelectric materials can withstand radiation levels up to 30 times higher than more conventional NAND flash memory. 

“If you send traditional flash memory to space, the radiation interacting with flash memory’s trapped electric charge can easily corrupt the data,” said Asif Khan, an associate professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE). “In contrast, ferroelectric NAND flash storage does not store data as trapped electrical charge, but rather stores it as polarization in the material. And polarization is very resilient to radiation effects.”

Radiation Revelation

The insight that NAND flash-compatible ferroelectric memory could withstand high amounts of radiation surprised the researchers. Ferroelectricity in hafnium oxide — the silicon-compatible material that makes this memory possible — was discovered just 15 years ago, and Khan’s lab has been determining its capabilities for the past decade. The team knew ferroelectricity was radiation-tolerant, but not exactly how tolerant when implemented in NAND flash architectures.

Lance Fernandes, an ECE Ph.D. student and the paper’s first author, built the ferroelectric NAND memory chips in Georgia Tech’s cleanroom, then sent the chips for radiation testing to collaborators at Pennsylvania State University. Those tests revealed just how extreme the technology’s tolerance could be.

The Penn State researchers’ testing showed that ferroelectric flash technology can sustain radiation as high as 1 million rads (radiation absorbed doses) — the equivalent of 100 million X-rays — making it 30 times more durable than traditional memory. This is well within the radiation-tolerance threshold for most spacecraft: Low-Earth orbit satellites require a tolerance of 5 – 30 kilorads, geostationary orbits need 100 – 300 kilorads, and deep space missions top out at 1 million rads. 

“For data storage in space, it’s not enough for memory to work. It has to remain reliable under extreme radiation,” said Fernandes. 

“And what makes our storage especially exciting," added Khan, “is that ferroelectric NAND flash isn't just radiation-tolerant; it also stays reliable even in extremely harsh radiation environments. That's exactly what we need for space.”

From orbiting satellites to future missions surveying Jupiter’s moons, successful space exploration requires electronics that can process abundant AI data and will not fail when communication is delayed. Ferroelectric memory offers a way to keep critical data intact, no matter how harsh the environment.

The work was supported in part by SUPREME, one of seven centers in JUMP 2.0, a Semiconductor Research Corporation (SRC) program sponsored by DARPA. The work was performed as part of the Interaction of Ionizing Radiation With Matter University Research Alliance, sponsored by the Department of Defense, Defense Threat Reduction Agency, under grant HDTRA1-20-2-0002.

Enabling Radiation Hardness in Solid-State NAND Storage Utilizing a Laminated Ferroelectric Stack Lance Fernandes, Stuart Wodzro, Prasanna Venkatesan, Priyankka Ravikumar, Ming-Yen Lee, Minji Shon, Dyutimoy Chakraborty, Taeyoung Song, Sanghyun Kang, Salma Soliman, Mengkun Tian, Jason Yeager, Jackson Adler, Jiayi Chen, Zekai Wang, Douglas Wolfe, Shimeng Yu, Andrea Padovani, Suman Datta, Biswajit Ray, and Asif Khan. Nano Letters 2026 26 (10), 3390-3397

DOI: 10.1021/acs.nanolett.5c05947

Escalating Middle East tensions are rattling global oil markets, and the effects are already showing up in American wallets, affecting everything from travel to food prices. Georgia Tech economists and public policy experts break down what Americans need to know right now.

1. You’re paying more at the pump, and it’s not going away anytime soon.

Gas prices are the most visible sign of the crisis, and the increases are already significant. National average retail gasoline prices are more than $1.20 higher than they were in February, before the conflict escalated.

“Even though U.S. petroleum production often exceeds our consumption, we are not insulated from disruptions in global oil supply because oil is a globally traded commodity,” says director of the Energy Policy and Innovation Center, Laura Taylor. “If supply is restricted anywhere in the world, prices will rise everywhere, including in the U.S.”

Markets expect some relief by fall, with future prices pointing lower than today’s levels. But Tony Harding, assistant professor in the Jimmy and Rosalynn Carter School of Public Policy, cautions, “Prices are likely to remain above pre-conflict levels for the foreseeable future, and temporary relief measures, such as Georgia’s motor fuel tax suspension, will not last forever.”

Taylor puts it plainly: “Wages are not rising faster than prices, so people are feeling the pinch and will continue to do so.”

2. Your summer plans just got more expensive.

The impact does not stop at the gas station. For Americans planning summer travel, the timing of this conflict could not be worse. Matthew Oliver, associate professor in the School of Economics, points to commercial air travel as one of the most exposed sectors.

“Jet fuel prices have roughly doubled in the wake of the current oil price spike, putting immediate upward pressure on airfares,” says Oliver.

The ripple effects extend far beyond travel. 

“Oil is an input into the supply chain of nearly every good at some point,” says Bobby Harris, assistant professor in the School of Economics. “When input costs go up, prices go up.”

3. Expect to pay more at the grocery store.

The connection between Middle East tensions and the American dinner table is more direct than many realize, because petrochemicals are a key feedstock for fertilizer production.

“Higher oil prices lead to higher fertilizer prices, which lead to higher food prices,” says Oliver. 

Combined with existing tariff pressures and tight supply chains, the strain on household budgets is coming from multiple directions at once.

“If the crisis persists, there will be upward pressure on the prices of nearly every physical good,” Oliver adds.

4. The government’s options are limited, and the clock is ticking.

Washington has tools to respond, but none are silver bullets. The Strategic Petroleum Reserve currently holds around 400 million barrels and can release about 4 million barrels per day, roughly 20% of U.S. daily demand.

“I see the Strategic Petroleum Reserve as a tool to buy time during a crisis,” says public policy professor Dan Matisoff. “But if the conflict drags on, we will ultimately be in a more vulnerable position.”

Quick fixes like price caps or demand subsidies carry trade-offs. 

“Subsidies can mitigate the impact of price shocks, but they can also mask important market signals that help balance supply and demand,” says Harding, using Europe’s 2022 energy crisis as a cautionary example.

5. The smartest thing Americans can do right now is think about efficiency.

“People in general tend to undervalue energy efficiency,” says Matisoff. “Think of energy efficiency investments as a sort of hedge or insurance against volatile energy prices.”

That means considering fuel efficiency when buying a car, and looking at heat pumps, electric vehicles, and home energy upgrades when the time is right.

“Higher energy prices increase the value of investing in energy efficiency upgrades to your home and adopting technologies that are less dependent on fossil fuels,” says Harding.

For families navigating uncertainty, both economists and policy experts point to the same practical advice: Reduce your exposure to fossil fuel price swings before the next crisis hits.

A Georgia Tech-led project advancing coastal resilience and ecosystem restoration has been selected for the inaugural Climate Resilience Fund cohort, awarded by Revive & Restore. The award is one of ten in a new $3.4 million fund to leverage genetic rescue for marine and coastal ecosystems under threat from climate shifts.

Led by Joel E. Kostka, Tom and Marie Patton Distinguished Professor and director of Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow (GT²), the research effort will help restore coastal salt marshes through AI-enabled micropropagation and developing probiotics for plants. It is the only salt marsh-focused effort funded nationally in the cohort.

The award supports both the development of more climate-resilient salt marsh plants, as well as new capacity for coastal restoration in Georgia — an effort that aligns closely with GT²’s mission to connect research, innovation, and community needs to address critical environmental and community challenges.

Healthy Coasts

Salt marshes are among Georgia’s most important natural resources, helping buffer communities from storms, support fisheries, and sustain coastal economies. Yet the state currently lacks a reliable source of salt marsh seedlings needed for large-scale restoration.

The funded project addresses that gap by advancing the production of hardier marsh plants and laying the groundwork for a broader restoration economy.

“The opportunity here is to build something that doesn’t currently exist in Georgia — a scalable, science-driven supply of salt marsh plants for safer, healthier coastal communities and ecosystems,” Kostka says. “By combining biotechnology, ecology, and partnerships across the region, we are accelerating coastal resilience while supporting long-term environmental and economic benefits.”

Kostka will work with project co-researchers Else-Marie Ulrika Egertsdotter (Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute) and Caitlin Petro (Georgia Tech Biological Sciences), Heather Joesting (Georgia Southern University), Emily Coffey and Lauren Eserman-Campbell (Atlanta Botanical Garden), and Sydney Williams (University of Georgia and Georgia Sea Grant) — along with several anticipated regional partners, including University of Georgia Marine Institute, GA/SC/NC Departments of Natural Resources, Southeastern Plant Conservation Alliance, and Bald Head Island Conservancy.

The team will create a “Climate-Ready Spartina Toolkit” with automated plant tissue culture, AI-based screening tools, a culture collection that serves as probiotics for plants, a seed bank and library of preserved plant materials, step-by-step instructions for successful growing, and ready for regional deployment.

The project also continues the evolution of Kostka’s collaborative research Egertsdotter and the Georgia Tech Renewable Bioproducts Institute. “RBI shares the goal of using biotechnology to produce climate-resilient plants that benefit society,” Kostka says. “Their expertise in plant tissue culture and automation make this work possible. It also is a great example of collaboration between GT Sciences and Engineering — the automation of plant tissue culture was developed by mechanical engineers in RBI.”

Regional Resilience

The new award builds on growing momentum for Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow and its expanding network of collaborators focused on coastal resilience. Based in the College of Sciences, GT² is designed to align discovery science with technological innovation and data-driven tools to deliver practical solutions for communities across the state.

In April, GT² launched a formal research fund and partnership with the Bald Head Island Conservancy (BHIC), connecting Georgia Tech researchers with BHIC’s Johnston Center for Coastal Sustainability in North Carolina to advance shared work in coastal sustainability, ecosystem health, and environmental resilience.

The partnership combines BHIC’s applied, field-based conservation work with Georgia Tech’s strengths in technological innovation and data analysis, creating new opportunities for graduate research, community engagement, and real-world implementation.

Better Together

These “all hands on deck” approaches reflect a broader strategy to scale tangible solutions across regional ecosystems by connecting researchers and partners with community stakeholders.

“Together, we hope these projects will demonstrate that genetic rescue is a powerful lever for the blue carbon ecosystems that underpin both ecological and human communities in the face of climate change,” said Liv Liberman, Director of Ocean and Climate at Revive & Restore and program manager for the Climate Resilience Fund.  

The efforts reflect GT²’s goal of creating pathways from research to implementation, working across sectors to deliver measurable outcomes for the southeastern environment and its communities.

“This award recognizes the kind of integrated, real-world research that GT² is built to deliver,” says Kostka. “We’re bringing together researchers, agencies, and community partners to move from science to scalable solutions — especially along southeastern coasts, where the need is urgent and the opportunities are significant.”

###

About Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow

Georgia Tech for Georgia’s Tomorrow (GT²) is a College of Sciences–based initiative that connects discovery science, innovation, and partnerships to address pressing challenges in environmental and community resilience across Georgia. The initiative works with state agencies, industry, non-profits, and local communities to develop solutions that improve quality of life and strengthen the state’s future. 

About Revive & Restore 

Revive & Restore is a nonprofit conservation organization that develops and promotes genetic rescue technologies to protect and restore endangered and extinct species. Founded in 2012 by Stewart Brand and Ryan Phelan, the organization works across birds, mammals, coral, and marine ecosystems to demonstrate that biotechnology is an essential tool in the conservation toolkit.

The Georgia Tech Master of Science in Human-Computer Interaction (MSHCI) program has another reason to celebrate as it prepares to mark its 30th anniversary later this year.

The Board of Regents of the University System of Georgia awarded the program the 2026 Teaching Excellence Award for Department or Program.

MSHCI program director Dick Henneman and assistant director Carrie Bruce received the award on May 12 during a Board of Regents (BOR) meeting.

Henneman has served as director of the program since 2015, and Bruce has served as assistant director since 2014. The program began in 1996 and has since expanded to be offered by four Georgia Tech schools:

• Interactive Computing
• Industrial Design
• Literature, Media, and Communications
• Psychology 

“As we put our award submission together, it was nice for us to reflect on all our hard work and to understand the impact this program has had on students,” Bruce said. “We recently surveyed alums, and so many said they were thankful for the way this program shaped their careers.”

Under the leadership of Henneman and Bruce, the program has achieved a 99% graduation rate, with about 60 graduates per year, up from about 30 since 2015. Henneman said the program has become one of the most competitive of its kind in the world, with an admission rate under 10%.

“We have some incredibly qualified students who are a part of the program,” he said. “We’ve had a number of graduates move into design management positions, and some have started their own companies.”

Henneman and Bruce said that one thing that distinguishes Tech’s MSHCI program is its close partnerships and alignment with industry. The program has an industry advisory board that keeps students informed about the skills companies value.

“We adapted our core classes quite a bit to ensure that they weren’t just getting the academic version of HCI methods,” Bruce said. “Our program is practical and focuses on what they are going to do when they get into industry.”

Though the program continues to grow, Henneman says it has maintained a sense of community among students, which he says is another thing that sets it apart. Many alumni keep in touch and return to offer industry advice, critique resumes, and conduct mock interviews with current students.

“A lot of times graduate school can be all about the individual,” he said. “As we prepare students to go work in industry, it’s all about collaboration and the people you’re working with and learning how to work on teams.”

Georgia Tech had 21 faculty and researchers recognized in the 2026 Regents Awards. From the College of Computing, Santosh Vempala was named a Regents’ Professor, while Srinivas Aluru and Ellen Zegura had their Regents’ titles renewed.

Researchers have come close to simulating space environments in Earth labs, but the combination of extreme thermal swings, complex cosmic radiation, and sustained microgravity that spacecraft experience make it impossible to capture the real thing perfectly.

Now, in a project led by the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) in collaboration with the Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech) researchers are closing the gap between Earth-based simulations and the true space environment by sending experimental materials to the International Space Station (ISS) for several months of in-orbit exposure. In a rare chance for space research, where most hardware is either left in orbit or burns up on reentry, they are getting those samples back for detailed analysis on Earth.

The materials are set to launch to the ISS in the near future as part of the Materials International Space Station Experiment 22 (MISSE-22), a testbed attached to the outside of the station. Mounted on the forward-facing side of the ISS to ensure predominant exposure to highly corrosive atomic oxygen, the test samples will spend several months enduring the extreme temperatures, radiation, and reactive environment of low Earth orbit. The team is testing a selection of lightweight, research-grade polymers designed to survive these harsh conditions. Once the samples return to Earth, engineers will examine how they held up and use that data to enhance the strategic of future satellite constellations.

This project represents a collaboration across government, academia, and industry, bringing together GTRI, Georgia Tech, the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), the University of Texas at El Paso (UTEP), a California-based R&D firm Hedgefog Research Inc., and DuPont de Nemours, Inc. The research is also supported by Aegis Aerospace, which owns and operates the MISSE Flight Facility platform aboard the ISS.

Why Space is So Hard on Satellites 

Harsh conditions in low Earth orbit — the region of space extending from approximately 100 miles to over 1,000 miles above Earth, where many satellites and the ISS travel — can darken, roughen, and weaken spacecraft surfaces over time. That damage shortens satellite lifetimes and requires engineers to add extra layers of protection, increasing overall logistical burden and mission costs. 

Optimizing material durability is a strategic necessity, explained Elena Plis, a GTRI senior research engineer and principal investigator for the project, because every additional unit of shielding increases the cost of getting to orbit. To design lighter, more resilient materials, researchers need to examine how they degrade in a true space environment. However, most hardware is built for a one-way trip — designed to operate in orbit and then burn up on reentry, taking that valuable material data with it.

“The beauty of this type of experiment is that the materials return to Earth,” said Plis, who is also an affiliate of the Georgia Tech Space Research Institute. “For many missions, stuff is sent up and never seen again. Being able to test returned samples from real space conditions is unique, and I can’t stress enough how exciting that is for us.”
 

A New Generation of Polymers Head for Space

Instead of relying on familiar spacecraft materials like DuPont’s Kapton — a tough, heat-resistant polyimide plastic film that has coated spacecraft exteriors since the Apollo era — the team is sending up a set of new, lightweight, research-grade polymers. These materials are designed to improve the survivability of assets against space’s unforgiving elements.

Plis and her collaborators started with dozens of candidate materials they developed. To earn a spot on the MISSE-22, a sample has to be transparent or translucent, so light can pass through it, and researchers can examine how its optical properties change in orbit. The materials also have to be tough enough to withstand intense atomic oxygen exposure without fragmenting, which would create debris near the ISS. In the end, only a select number of the team’s materials made the cut.

The MISSE-22 testbed holds multiple experimental polymers. Instead of standard illumination, the team constructed a custom on-orbit polariscope: LEDs beneath each sample shine polarized light up through the material. A small camera system then slides over the top to capture these highly specific optical changes on a set schedule over the course of several months in space.

Using Light to Reveal Space Strain

Using polarized light and machine learning to rapidly analyze color patterns in the images they receive from orbit, the researchers can track how stress inside each sample changes over time. Periodically, the system will cycle through the materials, and the images will be downlinked to Earth.

When the extended mission ends and the samples return, the team will compare those in-orbit measurements with detailed lab tests on the actual pieces that flew. Without returned materials, they would only have images and sensor data to work from. By testing the same samples in the lab, they can check how accurate the remote measurements really are and refine their methods.

If the materials perform as expected, the results could help engineers design satellites that last longer in orbit without carrying so much protective weight —providing a significant technological advantage in space domain awareness and asset longevity.

About the Space Research Institute

The Space Research Institute (SRI) at the Georgia Institute of Technology is an interdisciplinary hub that unites faculty, staff, and students to advance research, education, and collaboration in space science and technology. Bringing together expertise across engineering, science, policy, and the humanities, SRI drives innovative projects in areas such as astrophysics, aerospace systems, astrobiology, and space policy while fostering partnerships with academia, industry, and government. As Georgia Tech’s central nexus for space-related initiatives, SRI is committed to advancing discovery, developing the future workforce, and expanding humanity’s understanding of space and its impact on life on Earth. Learn more at space.gatech.edu.

Author: 

Communications Officer II
Georgia Tech Research Institute 

Media Contact: