Researchers at Georgia Tech have taken a critical step forward in creating efficient, useful and brain-like artificial intelligence (AI). The key? A new algorithm that results in neural networks with internal structure more like the human brain.

The study, “TopoNets: High-Performing Vision and Language Models With Brain-Like Topography,” was awarded a spotlight at this year’s International Conference on Learning Representations (ICLR), a distinction given to only 2 percent of papers. The research was led by graduate student Mayukh Deb alongside School of Psychology Assistant Professor Apurva Ratan Murty.

Thirty-two of Tech’s computing, engineering, and science faculty represented the Institute at ICLR 2025, which is globally renowned for sharing cutting-edge research. 

“We started with this idea because we saw that AI models are unstructured, while brains are exquisitely organized,” says first-author Deb. “Our models with internal structure showed more than a 20 percent boost in efficiency with almost no performance losses. And this is out-of-the-box — it’s broadly applicable to other models with no extra fine-tuning needed.”

For Murty, the research also underscores the importance of a rapidly growing field of research at the intersection of neuroscience and AI. “There's a major explosion in understanding intelligence right now,” he says. “The neuro-AI approach is exciting because it helps emulate human intelligence in machines, making AI more interpretable.”

“In addition to advancing AI, this type of research also benefits neuroscience because it informs a fundamental question: Why is our brain organized the way it is?,” Deb adds. “Making AI more interpretable helps everyone.”

Brain-inspired blueprints

In the brain, neurons form topographic maps: neurons used for comparable tasks are closer together. The researchers applied this concept to AI by organizing how internal components (like artificial neurons) connect and process information. 

This type of organization has been tried in the past but has been challenging, Murty says. “Historically, rules constraining how the AI could structure itself often resulted in lower-performing models. We realized that for this type of biophysical constraint, you simply can’t map everything — you need an algorithmic solution.”

“Our key insight was an algorithmic trick that gives the same structure as brains without enforcing things that models don't respond well to,” he adds. “That breakthrough was what Mayukh (Deb) worked on.” 

The algorithm, called TopoLoss, uses a loss function to encourage brain-like organization in artificial neural networks, and it is compatible with many AI systems capable of understanding language and images. 

“The resulting training method, TopoNets, is very flexible and broadly applicable,” Murty says. “You can apply it to contemporary models very easily, which is a critical advancement when compared to previous methods.” 

Neuro-AI innovations

Murty and Deb plan to continue refining and designing brain-inspired AI systems. “All parts of the brain have some organization — we want to expand into other domains,” Deb says. “On the neuroscience side of things, we want to discover new kinds of organization in brains using these topographic systems.”

Deb also cites possibilities in robotics, especially in situations like space exploration where resources are limited. “Imagine running a model inside a robot with limited power,” he says. “Structured models can help us achieve 80 percent of performance with just 20 percent of energy consumption, saving valuable energy and space. This is still experimental, but it's the direction we are interested in exploring.”

“This success highlights the potential of a new approach, designing systems that benefit both neuroscience and AI — and beyond,” Murty adds. “We can learn so much from the human brain, and this project shows that brain-inspired systems can help current AI be better. We hope our work stimulates this conversation.”

Solar cells account for approximately six percent of the electricity used on Earth; however, in space, they play a significantly larger role, with nearly all satellites relying on advanced solar cells for their power. That’s why Georgia Tech researchers will soon send 18 photovoltaic cells to the International Space Station for a study of how space conditions affect the devices’ operation over time.

“The main goal here is to improve power generation in space,” said Jud Ready, principal research engineer at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) and Executive Director of Georgia Tech's Space Research Institute. “The limiting factor on the performance of a spacecraft is usually how much power you can produce. Power, size, weight, complexity, cost – all of these are tied closely to the electrical generation of the solar panels.”

Read the story in the GTRI newsroom.

Overwhelmed doctors and nurses struggling to provide adequate patient care in South Korea are getting support from Georgia Tech and Korean-based researchers through an AI-powered robotic medical assistant.

Top South Korean research institutes have enlisted Georgia Tech researchers Sehoon Ha and Jennifer G. Kim to develop artificial intelligence (AI) to help the humanoid assistant navigate hospitals and interact with doctors, nurses, and patients.

Ha and Kim will partner with Neuromeka, a South Korean robotics company, on a five-year, 10 billion won (about $7.2 million US) grant from the South Korean government. Georgia Tech will receive about $1.8 million of the grant.

Ha and Kim, assistant professors in the School of Interactive Computing, will lead Tech’s efforts and also work with researchers from the Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology and the Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute.

Neuromeka has built industrial robots since its founding in 2013 and recently decided to expand into humanoid service robots.

Lee, the group leader of the humanoid medical assistant project, said he fielded partnership requests from many academic researchers. Ha and Kim stood out as an ideal match because of their robotics, AI, and human-computer interaction expertise. 

For Ha, the project is an opportunity to test navigation and control algorithms he’s developed through research that earned him the National Science Foundation CAREER Award. Ha combines computer simulation and real-world training data to make robots more deployable in high-stress, chaotic environments. 

“Dr. Ha has everything we want to put into our system, including his navigation policies,” Lee said. “He works with robots and AI, and there weren’t many candidates in that space. We needed a collaborator who can create the software and has experience running it on robots.”

Ha said he is already considering how his algorithms could scale beyond hospitals and become a universal means of robot navigation in unstructured real-world environments.

“For now, we’re focusing on a customized navigation model for Korean environments, but there are ways to transfer the data set to different environments, such as the U.S. or European healthcare systems,” Ha said. 

“The final product can be deployed to other systems and industries. It can help industrial workers at factories, retail stores, any place where workers can get overwhelmed by a high volume of tasks.”

Kim will focus on making the robot’s design and interaction features more human. She’ll develop a large-language model (LLM) AI system to communicate with patients, nurses, and doctors. She’ll also develop an app that will allow users to input their commands and queries. 

“This project is not just about controlling robots, which is why Dr. Kim’s expertise in human-computer interaction design through natural language was essential.,” Lee said. 

Kim is interviewing stakeholders from three South Korean hospitals to identify service and care pain points. The issues she’s identified so far relate to doctor-patient communication, a lack of emotional support for patients, and an excessive number of small tasks that consume nurses’ time.

“Our goal is to develop this robot in a very human-centered way,” she said. “One way is to give patients a way to communicate about the quality of their care and how the robot can support their emotional well-being.

“We found that patients often hesitate to ask busy nurses for small things like getting a cup of water. We believe this is an area a robot can support.”

The robot’s hardware will be built in Korea, while Ha and Kim will develop the software in the U.S.

Jong-hoon Park, CEO of Neuromeka, said in a press release the goal is to have a commercialized product as soon as possible. 

“Through this project, we will solve problems that existing collaborative robots could not,” Park said. “We expect the medical AI humanoid robot technology being developed will contribute to reducing the daily work burden of medical and healthcare workers in the field.”

A longstanding mystery of the periodic table involves a group of unique elements called lanthanides. Also known as rare earth elements, or REEs, these silvery-white metals are challenging to isolate, given their very similar chemical and physical properties. This similarity makes it difficult to distinguish REEs from one other during extraction and purification processes. 

The world has come to depend on lanthanides’ magnetic and optical properties to drive much of modern technology — from medical imaging to missiles to smart phones. These metals also are in short supply, and because they’re found in minerals, lanthanides are difficult to mine and separate.   But that may change — thanks to a Georgia Tech-led discovery of a new oxidation state for a lanthanide element known as praseodymium.  

For the first time ever, praseodymium achieved a 5+ oxidation state. Oxidation occurs when a substance meets oxygen or another oxidizing substance. (The browning on the flesh of a cut apple, as well as rust on metal, are examples of oxidation.)
   
As far back as the 1890s, scientists suspected lanthanides might have a 5+ oxidation state, but  lanthanides in that state were too unstable to see, said Henry ”Pete“ La Pierre, an associate professor in Georgia Tech’s School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. Discovering an element’s new oxidation state is like discovering a new element. As an example, La Pierre noted how plutonium’s discovery opened up a whole new area of the periodic table. 

“A new oxidation state tells us what we don’t know and gives us ideas for where to go,” he explained. “Each oxidation state of an element has distinct chemical and physical properties — so the first glimpse of a novel oxidation presents a roadmap for new possibilities.”
 
La Pierre and colleagues at University of Iowa and Washington State University recently discovered the 5+ oxidation state for lanthanides. 

“It was predicted but never seen until we found it,” said La Pierre, corresponding author of the study, “Praseodymium in the Formal +5 Oxidation State,” which was recently published in Nature Chemistry. “Lanthanides’ properties are really fantastic. We only use them commercially in one oxidation state — the 3+ oxidation state — which defines a set of magnetic and optical properties. If you can stabilize a higher oxidation state, it could lead to entirely new magnetic and optical properties.”
 
The researchers’ breakthrough will broaden the lanthanides’ technical applications in fields such as rare-earth mining and quantum technology and could lead to new electronic device architectures and applications. 

“Research in lanthanides has already yielded significant dividends for society in terms of technological development,” La Pierre added.
    
The researchers hope to discover new tools for mining critical REEs, including improving lanthanide separation and recycling processes. When mining these elements, lanthanide elements are frequently mixed together. The separation process is painstaking and inefficient, generating a significant amount of waste. But with increasing global demand for REEs, the U.S. faces a supply issue. Figuring out how to improve lanthanides separation, potentially through oxidation chemistry, will ultimately enhance the supply of these critical elements. 

— Anne Wainscott-Sargent
 
Funding: This research was supported by grants from the National Science Foundation and the U.S. Department of Energy. 
 

Ocean waters are getting greener at the poles and bluer toward the equator, according to an analysis of satellite data published in Science on June 19. The change reflects shifting concentrations of a green pigment called chlorophyll made by phytoplankton, photosynthetic marine organisms at the base of the ocean food chain. If the trend continues, marine food webs could be affected, with potential repercussions for global fisheries. 

“In the ocean, what we see based on satellite measurements is that the tropics and the subtropics are generally losing chlorophyll, whereas the polar regions — the high-latitude regions — are greening,” says first author Haipeng Zhao, a postdoctoral researcher at Georgia Tech working with Susan Lozier, dean of the College of Sciences and Betsy Middleton and John Sutherland Chair at Georgia Tech and Nicolas Cassar, the Lee Hill Snowdon Bass Chair at Duke University’s Nicholas School of the Environment.

Since the 1990s, many studies have documented enhanced greening on land, where global average leaf cover is increasing due to rising temperatures and other factors. But documenting photosynthesis across the ocean has been more difficult, according to the team. Although satellite images can provide data on chlorophyll production at the ocean’s surface, the picture is incomplete. 

The study analyzed satellite data collected from 2003 to 2022 by a NASA instrument that combs the entire Earth every two days, measuring light wavelength. The researchers were looking for changes in chlorophyll concentration, a proxy for phytoplankton biomass. For consistency, they focused on the open ocean and excluded data from coastal waters. 

“There are more suspended sediments in coastal waters, so optical properties are different than in the open ocean,” Zhao explains.  

The satellite data revealed broad trends in color, indicating that chlorophyll is decreasing in subtropical and tropical regions and increasing toward the poles. Building on that finding, the team examined how chlorophyll concentration is changing at specific latitudes. To work around background noise and gaps in data, they had to get creative. 

“We borrowed concepts from economics called the Lorenz curve and the Gini index, which together show how wealth is distributed in a society. So, we thought, let’s apply these to see whether the proportion of the ocean that holds the most chlorophyll has changed over time,” Cassar says.

They found similar but opposing trends in chlorophyll concentration over the two-decade period. Green areas became greener, particularly in the northern hemisphere, while blue regions got even bluer. 

“It’s like rich people getting richer and the poor getting poorer,” Zhao says.

Next, the team examined how the patterns they observed were affected by several variables, including sea surface temperature, wind speed, light availability and mixed layer depth — a measure that reflects mixing in the ocean’s top layer by wind, waves and surface currents. Warming seas correlated with changes in chlorophyll concentration, but the other variables showed no significant associations.

The authors cautioned that their findings cannot be attributed to climate change. 

“The study period was too short to rule out the influence of recurring climate phenomena such as El Niño,” Lozier says. “Having measurements for the next several decades will be important for determining influences beyond climate oscillations.” 

If poleward shifts in phytoplankton continue, however, they could affect the global carbon cycle. During photosynthesis, phytoplankton act like sponges, soaking up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere. When these organisms die and sink to the ocean bottom, carbon goes down with them. The location and depth of that stored carbon can influence climate warming.

“If carbon sinks deeper or in places where water doesn’t resurface for a long time, it stays stored much longer. In contrast, shallow carbon can return to the atmosphere more quickly, reducing the effect of phytoplankton on carbon storage,” Cassar says. 

Additionally, a persistent decline in phytoplankton in equatorial regions could alter fisheries that many low- and middle-income nations, such as those in the Pacific Islands, rely on for food and economic development — especially if that decline carries over to coastal regions, according to the authors.

“Phytoplankton are at the base of the marine food chain. If they are reduced, then the upper levels of the food chain could also be impacted, which could mean a potential redistribution of fisheries,” Cassar says. 

 

Funding: National Science Foundation and NASA.

Citation: “Greener green and bluer blue: Ocean poleward greening over the past two decades,” Zhao H., Manizza M., Lozier S.M. and Cassar N. Science, June 19, 2025, DOI: 10.1126/science.adr9715 

This story by Julie Leibach is shared with the Duke University Nicholas School of the Environment newsroom.

 

The Institute for Matter and Systems (IMS) at Georgia Tech has announced the Spring 2025 Core Facility Seed Grant recipients. The primary purpose of this program is to give graduate students in diverse disciplines working on original and unfunded research in micro- and nanoscale science and engineering the opportunity to access the most advanced academic cleanroom space in the Southeast. In addition to using the labs' state-of-the-art fabrication, lithography, and characterization tools, the awardees will have the opportunity to gain proficiency in cleanroom and tool methodology and access the consultation services provided by research staff members in IMS. Seed Grant awardees are also provided travel support to present their research at a scientific conference.

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

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

The Spring 2025 IMS Core Facility Seed Grant recipients are:

Stretchable Power Sources for Vertically Integrated Bioelectronics
PI: Antonio Facchetti
Student: Sakshi Sharma
School of Materials Science and Engineering

Next-generation 3D Solid-state Neutron Detectors for Nuclear Nonproliferation
PI: Anna Erickson
Student: David Straub
George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Programmable Microchip-based Cytotoxicity Assay for Real-Time Immune Cell Profiling
PI: Fatih Sarioglu
Student: Ahmadreza Rostamzadeh
School of Electrical and Computer Engineering

Experimental Study of Neutron-induced Radiation Damage in Lunar Materials with Key Implications for the Future of Lunar Geochronology
PI: Karl Lang
Student: Shreya Mukherjee
School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences

Enhanced Dielectrophoretic Enrichment and Removal of Microplastics from Drinking Water via Engineered Nonuniform Electric Fields on Microfluidic Chips
PI: Xing Xie
Student: Shuai Wang
School of Civil and Environmental Engineering

When NASA’s PRIME-1 Mission landed on the moon in March, an Intuitive Machine’s lander named Athena ended up on its side. The faulty landing meant the instruments couldn’t drill into the moon to measure water and other resources, as intended. But the mission wasn’t a total loss: PRIME-1’s The Regolith Ice Drill for Exploring New Terrain (TRIDENT) and Mass Spectrometer Observing Lunar Operations (MSOLO) could still operate and gather some data. The mission, led by Georgia Tech alumni who collaborated with Georgia Tech faculty, is already pivotal to future NASA missions.

PRIME-1, or Polar Resources Ice Mining Experiment-1, is a combination tool of two instruments: TRIDENT and MSOLO. PRIME-1’s objective is to help scientists determine resources available on the moon, with the eventual goal of sending humans to live there. TRIDENT is a space-rated drill designed and built by Honeybee Robotics that can extract lunar soil up to 3 feet deep. MSOLO is a mass spectrometer that can analyze TRIDENT’s soil samples for water and other critical volatiles. Together, this data can show how viable living on and mining from the moon could be.

Two Georgia Tech alumna, Jackie Williams Quinn and Janine E.  Captain, led the PRIME-1 team for NASA. They had help with computer modeling of PRIME-1’s mass spectrometer data from Georgia Tech’s Regents’ Professor Thom Orlando and Senior Research Scientist Brant Jones in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry. 

Georgia Tech to the Moon

Georgia Tech’s expertise influenced all areas of developing PRIME-1, but perhaps their biggest contribution was the collaboration across disciplines. 

Quinn, a civil engineering graduate, wrote the initial proposal. She also managed TRIDENT’s development, through a contract with Honeybee Robotics, ensuring it was also built to operate in the harsh lunar environment (a process known as ruggedizing). The team worked with Honeybee’s Jameil Bailey, fellow Tech alumnus.

Captain, the MSOLO principal investigator and chemistry Ph.D. graduate, never planned to work at NASA. But her advisor, Orlando, got her interested. 

“What drew me to NASA’s In-Situ Resource Utilization team is that I could apply the instrumentation techniques that I learned in my Ph.D.  to measuring vital things like oxygen on the moon,” Captain said. 

Ruggedization Redux

When it was confirmed in 2008 the moon had water, NASA wondered if humans could one day live there. Having a functional mass spectrometer on the moon was paramount to determining where the water was and how much of it existed. Captain’s team modified a commercial mass spectrometer and tested it in a harsh environment comparable to the moon: Hawaii’s dormant shield volcano, Mauna Kea. Once they demonstrated the mission operation in this environment, they worked to ruggedize an existing one manufactured by instrumentation company INFICON. The team worked with INFICON and through lab tests, they showed that all components of the mass spectrometer functioned in a lunar vacuum environment.  

In Orlando’s lab, his team experimented with lunar material to determine how water interacts with lunar soil. From there, they created a theoretical model that simulated how much water they might find from what PRIME-1 sampled.  

“To create the model, we used the data of how water sticks to the lunar surface — from controlled experiments carried out in our ultra-high vacuum chambers at Georgia Tech,” Orlando said. “We approached the problem from a surface physics point of view in these lab experiments, but then in our model, we were able to connect to the actual mission activity.”

Once PRIME-1 hardware validation testing was finished, NASA was ready to launch.  That’s when things got hairy.

“We don't fully understand everything that happened during the landing, but the fact that PRIME-1 was fully functional is pretty amazing,” Captain said. “We got the data. It was so cool to know that all this work we did was worth it.” 

Moon Milestones

Although they didn’t get the chance to drill into the moon as planned, they can still analyze the data PRIME-1 pulled from the lunar atmosphere. This data includes how the spacecraft may have contaminated the local atmosphere.

“PRIME-1 was the only instrument that got to fully run and check out everything because when the lander fell over, the instrument was on top,” Quinn noted. “They were able to extend the drill all the way out a meter. It was drilling into empty space, but we were able to show that the drill got the signal from Earth, fully extended, and was able to auger and percuss. We were also able to fully operate MSOLO and gather data on gases coming off the lander in its final resting orientation.” 

As the second-leading cause of cancer death in the U.S., colorectal cancer is rising in the number of cases in younger adults. To combat this and offer a less-invasive alternative to a colonoscopy, Wallace H. Coulter Department of Biomedical Engineering Assistant Professor Leslie Chan and her lab has been awarded a grant to develop an innovative diagnostic to detect colorectal cancer through a simple breath test. Read more.