Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, Vol. 93 No. 2 Summer 2017

MACHINE LEARNING RESPECT FOR DR. ADLER

REVOLUTION A L U M N I

FROM MOOCs TO MASTER'S DEGREES

M A G A Z I N E

DYNAMIC DUOS TOP FACULTY + TOP STUDENTS

VOLUME

93 NO.2 SUMMER

2017

A BRAND NEW AGE OF LEARNING

GTALUMNIMAG.COM VOLUME 92 NO.2 2016

How the disruption of centuries-old teaching models is helping make a Tech education more affordable, accessible and acclaimed than ever before.Â

“The superior education and ingrained work ethic at Georgia Tech helped me immensely.”

— George P. Reynolds Jr., ChE 1955, MS ChE 1958 George P. Reynolds Jr., ChE 1955, MS ChE 1958, knows the

ingrained work ethic helped me immensely.” That gratitude led

value of an outstanding education and the role of philanthropy

him, along with his wife Nannine, to establish endowments

in creating life-changing opportunities for young people. His

to provide need-based scholarships for undergraduate

career success in the oil industry and his scholarship support for

students who have graduated from small high schools. They

financially challenged undergraduates at Tech are a testament

accomplished this through a combination of outright gifts, a

to both.

charitable remainder trust, and a living trust. “I want to give

Reynolds’ ethos of hard work was apparent from his youth.

As an undergraduate at Georgia Tech, he regularly earned

something back. It really is that simple,” he explained.

Reynolds has also given to Roll Call for the past 60 years

Dean’s List honors, served in various editorial capacities with

and supported intercollegiate athletics and the library. He has

the Blueprint, and was a member of the student chapters of

contributed in other ways as well, serving on both his 40th and

the American Institute of Chemical Engineers and American

50th Reunion Committees.

Chemical Society, all while working several jobs to help pay for college.

After earning two degrees from Georgia Tech, Reynolds

Since his retirement, he and Nannine, a graduate of Sam Houston State University, have traveled extensively. Avid golfers, they enjoy playing around the world, from Scotland and Ireland

enjoyed a 35-year career with Exxon and its affiliates around the

to Thailand. Residents of Kerrville, Texas, they also spend time in

world, which included serving as technical superintendent and

Durango, Colorado, where their son lives.

operations manager in Singapore, refinery manager and vice

Regardless of where he happens to be, George Reynolds

president in Okinawa, and technical manager in Aruba. In 1993,

has not forgotten the lessons or the skills he learned as an

he retired as operations manager for Esso Caribbean and Central

undergraduate, and he wants future generations of students

America in Coral Gables, Florida.

to have the same life-changing opportunities. “Hopefully my

“Georgia Tech was one of the primary reasons for my successful career,” Reynolds said. “The superior education and

support will help students who are not financially privileged — as was my case — to graduate from Tech.”

2 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE Volume 93 2017 Founders’|Council is No. the 2honorary society recognizing donors who have made estate or life-income gifts of $25,000 or more for the support of Georgia Tech. For more information, please contact: 404.894.4678 • founderscouncil@dev.gatech.edu • www.development.gatech.edu

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BUILD A HELLUVA CAREER. CONTINUE YOUR SUCCESS STORY

PUBLISHER’S LETTER Helping Usher in a New Age of Learning UNIVERSITIES EXIST to discover knowledge, build on it and pass it on to future generations. Learning, then, is at the heart of education. Right now, our social, political and economic environments are all changing at a more rapid and intense pace than ever before, so teaching and learning must change as well. At Georgia Tech, we’re driving some of this change and asking ourselves what else we should be doing to keep pace. The Institute has put together the Center for 21st Century Universities, where alumnus and faculty member Rich DeMillo, PhD CS 72, and Provost Rafael L. Bras, as well as an august collection of other faculty members, are looking at these questions. (See pages 28 and 106.)

Technology, of course, is making one of the largest, most disruptive impacts on education today. Companies like Coursera and Udacity and edX have made knowledge of almost every single subject in the universe available online to anyone in the world with an internet connection. These are high-quality courses—Massive Open Online Courses or MOOCs for short— taught by top-notch faculty from many of the best universities in the world, including Georgia Tech. And by and large, the courses are free to users. That’s disruptive.

But there are also variations of this model. Tech was the first university to offer an Online Master’s of Science in Computer Science (OMS CS)—and we offer it for under $7,000. What’s more, there’s no academic distinction between the OMS CS and the residential master’s program. The program has 4,000 students enrolled from all over the world. Tech indeed is helping fill the huge demand in the workforce for highly trained computer scientists, making it easier for those already employed to earn an advanced degree— and for an astonishingly affordable price.

Georgia Tech is building on the success of this program by introducing another

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in-demand offering: an Online Master’s of Science in Analytics. Given the story of Big Data, we suspect this new program will be wildly popular as well. (See page 16.)

Technology may be a prime driver for changing how we learn, but people are even more important. Tech faculty and students are working together to innovate how we teach and learn and to transform the teacher-pupil relationship.

In this issue, we feature six of Tech’s top faculty-student pairs to showcase not only our best and brightest, but also how they spur each other to new heights. (See page 48.)

Other examples of a new age of learning at Tech include flipped classrooms, class projects turned into award-winning entrepreneurial efforts (page 26), music used to spur interest in coding among high-school students (page 38) and much more.

Our people and our expertise in technology are leading to new ways of transferring knowledge to future generations of Yellow Jackets—and even older ones like me. The great thing about a place like Georgia Tech is that this transfer of knowledge never remains static—it’s always on the cutting edge of higher education.

Our president, G.P. “Bud” Peterson, is fond of saying that “the biggest technology transfer that Georgia Tech does is to graduate another class of alumni.” He’s right, and we just added another 3,000 or so to the fold to join the rest of the 152,000 -plus Tech alumni around the globe.

Go Jackets!

JOSEPH P. IRWIN, IM 80 PRESIDENT & CEO GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine Vol. 93, No. 2 PUBLISHER Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80 VP MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS Dawn Churi EDITOR Roger Slavens ASSISTANT EDITOR Melissa Fralick DESIGNER Joshua Baker | joshbkr.com COPY EDITOR Rebecca Bowen STUDENT ASSISTANTS Derek Nalodka and Christine St. Jean EXECUTIVE COMMITTEE Andrea L. Laliberte, IE 82, MS IE 84, Chair Benton J. Mathis Jr., IM 81, Past Chair David Bottoms, Mgt 01, Chair-Elect/Vice Chair of Roll Call Bird Blitch, IE 97, Vice Chair of Finance Jeni Bogdan, Mgt 89, MS MOT 96, Member at Large Elizabeth Bulat Turner, IAML 04, Member at Large James L. Mitchell, CE 05, Member at Large Tyler Townsend, IE 98, Member at Large Joseph P. Irwin, IM 80, President & CEO BOARD OF TRUSTEES Stanley E. Anderson, IM 75; Dorothy B. Autin, ChE 80; Lee A. Baker, IE 90; Julian A. Brown III, Mgt 97; Frank T. Campos, EE 80, MS MoT 96; Catherine C. Davidson, Mgt 89; Richard DeAugustinis, IE 92; W. Keith Edwards, ICS 89, MS ICS 91, PhD ICS 96; D. Shawn Fowler, Mgt 88; Jeffrey V. Giglio, EE 77; Samuel L. Gude III, MBA 08; Julie E. Hall, Phys 99; Cathy P. Hill, EE 84; Lara O’Connor Hodgson, AE 93; Ronald L. Johnson, MS OR 85; Plez A. Joyner, EE 89; Garrett S. Langley, EE 09; Mark E. Ligler, ME 76; Wonya Y. Lucas, IE 83; Robert D. Martin, IE 69; George R. Mason, IE 92; Valerie Montgomery Rice, Chem 83; Thomas J. O’Brien, IE 81; Shantan R. Pesaru CmpE 05; Amy H. Phuong, IA 05, MBA 14; Vicky S. Polashock, ChE 90, Phd ChE 95; William J. Ready, MatE 94, MS MetE 97, PhD MSE 00; John L. Reese III, BC 80; Kary E. Saleeby, NE 77, MS ME 78; Ricardo Salgado, IE 00; John W. Simmons Jr., EE 88; Mayson T. Spellman, Mgt 05; Jocelyn M. Stargel, IE 82, MS IE 86; James F. Stovall IV, CS 01; Kristen M. Thorvig, STC 98; David P. Touwsma, IE 97 ADVERTISING Betsy Maddox (404) 894-0751 betsy.maddox@alumni.gatech.edu GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI MAGAZINE (ISSN: 1061-9747) is published quarterly by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313. Periodical postage paid in Atlanta and additional mailing offices. © 2016 Georgia Tech Alumni Association POSTMASTER Send address changes to: Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313.

TELEPHONE Georgia Tech Alumni Association (404) 894-2391

TABLE OF CONTENTS D E PA RT M E N T S

PHYSICS PHENOMS

Associate Professor Flavio Fenton (right) and recent grad Tim Farmer research zebrafish hearts in the CHAOS Lab.

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Features 48

62

70

DYNAMIC DUOS

MACHINE LEARNING

WHAT TECH TAUGHT ME

Georgia Tech’s innovative teachers and exceptional students are challenging the status quo of higher education.

Welcome to the new age of algorithms, where machines are able to learn and improve skills on their own.

Some of Tech’s top alumni reflect on the most important lessons they learned at Georgia Tech.

Cover Illustration: Keith Negley

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D E PA RT M E N T S

START YOUR ENGINES

Industry veteran Robert Milton, IM 83, is helping United Airlines to plot its course.

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Richard Boll

TABLE OF CONTENTS

10 Around Campus

36 In the World

12 Women of Robotics These Tech scientists are changing the status quo in a male-dominated field.

16 Talk of Tech A survey of some of Tech’s most compelling faculty and student news.

26 Student News A sophomore class project led to a prize-winning invention—and a fledgling company.

28 Ten Questions Find out the ways Rich DeMillo, PhD CS 72, is working to transform higher education at Tech.

38 Cracking the Code A team from Tech uses music to teach teenagers computer programming.

40 Dollars and Sense Robert Milton, IM 83, knows all about the turbulent airline business.

46 On the Job How alumni are solving Atlanta’s traffic problems.

The latest news and views from Georgia Tech

30 On the Field

The scoop on Tech’s studentathletes and alumni 32 Raising Quite a Racket Top 10 tennis star Christopher Eubanks stands out for his strong serve and work ethic.

Ramblin’ Wrecks generating buzz beyond the Institute

74 Alumni House

All about what’s going on at 190 North Avenue 78 Wrecks at Work Jay McDonald, IM 68, shares expert tips for moving your career forward.

80 Alumni Travel Basking in the unexpected treasures of Normandy.

84 Ramblin’ Roll 92 In Memoriam

102 Tech History

Memories and artifacts of Tech’s storied past 102 A Legacy of Respect Professor Emeritus Philip Adler reflects on his five decades at Georgia Tech.

105 Time Machine 106 Back Page A glimpse at how a Tech education may look in 2040.

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FEEDBACK IMPORTANCE OF TRADITIONS I cannot tell you how much I enjoyed reading the ”Institute Icons” feature in the Spring 2017 issue of the Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine (Vol. 93 No. 1). It brought back many happy memories of the time I spent at the North Avenue Trade School.

Whilst reading the article, I felt like I was back at Tech during the 1960s. I am somewhat of a traditionalist myself and feel that it is important to carry on these traditions. These traditions are what makes Tech and separates us from other universities. If possible, let’s see more of these stories in the future so we can all remember that we are Rambling Wrecks and Helluva Engineers!

GORDON WARING, IE 70, MS CE 73 RIVERSDALE, SOUTH AFRICA

ANTARCTIC PREDECESSORS Editor Roger Slavens’ article “The Deep Deep South” in the Spring 2017 Alumni Magazine about Adam West’s Antarctic experience brought back many memories of Tech and the year I spent at that place we called “The Ice.” Thanks primarily to Professor George Sowers, I received my BCE in 1964 and my MS CE in 1965. I arrived in June of that year in Davisville, R.I., to train for four months before

departing for “The Ice.” By October 1965, I was the U.S. Navy’s Officer-in-Charge of Byrd Station. At the time, Byrd was one apex of a more or less equilateral triangle roughly 800 miles on a side with McMurdo and the South Pole at the others. The ice sheet was about 5,000 feet thick.

For roughly six months of complete isolation and four months of total darkness, our only contact was occasional radio communications with McMurdo, and similar contact with loved ones via HAM radio operators in the U.S. During the winter isolation, 18 of us Navy blokes supported the various programs run by 12 U.S. Antarctic Research Program scientists. The main programs were seismology, monitoring radio noise from outer space, the aurora, the weather and one whose purpose we didn’t know. Seabees constructed a satellite facility 11 miles from the main station during the summer we arrived. Two cables were buried perpendicularly in the snow and connected

to equipment in the building where two scientists lived.

Yea rs l ate r, we learned what was happening at the “Long Wire.” A relatively new vessel was gong into service—the nuclear submarine. It could stay submerged for months at a time.

Radio waves were monitored at the Long Wire to aid in developing a means to communicate with the submarines so that they would not have to surface to communicate. The snow simulated water.

Byrd Station was constructed under the snow in eight tunnels covered with steel arches. It had been in existence around five years when we arrived.

Each of the three buildings has a tube extending through the snow to the tunnels. Scientists could reach equipment in the buildings by climbing ladders in the tubes. As a soil mechanics and foundations major, my area of research was to study the settlement and crushing of the steel arches over the tunnels. The vehicle I drove was a Trackmaster (pictured left). It looks much like the Pisten Bully Adam West uses today.

I took my Tech experience from “The Ice” a mere 50 years before Adam began to enjoy his there. I wish him the same good luck I had.

GORDON W. CALLENDER JR., BCE 64, MS CE 65, PHD CE 73 PACE, FLA.

Georgia Tech was represented in Antarctica 60 years before Adam West’s visit. I was executive officer of the USS Nespelen AOG-55 bringing 800,000 gallons of aviation fuel to “The Ice” in 1956 and 1957. We were part of Operation Deepfreeze under the “command” of Admiral Byrd. Our duty stations were McMurdo Sound and Little America V.

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Our crews helped build the living facilities at both locations, and when the large steel storage tanks were completed, we pumped them full and went back to the states for more.

We were crushed in the ice and nearly lost the ship, and had to go to New Zealand for emergency repairs after the two ice breakers broke us out of the frozen channel. Our crews also helped build the Williams Airfield (named after a Cat operator who perished in the ice while bulldozing the field).

PETER JACOBSON, IE 55 RICHMOND, TEXAS

DROWNING IN DETAILS In reading about Drownproofing in the Traditions issue of the Alumni Magazine, I noticed that the young man in the “then” picture is wearing a bathing suit. That picture must have been taken after Freddy Lanoue left, because when I took PT101 under him, no one wore a suit.

I don’t remember whether that was a rule or just a custom, but Coach Lanoue said there was no need to deal with a wet bathing suit. When he sensed discomfort at this practice, he had a pithy way, probably not printable, of disposing of the issue. The tied hands and feet do look authentic in the picture.

In those days, the wall along the swimming pool had a line of numbers that ran the length of the pool. The way Lanoe took roll in the class was to assign everyone a number, which you stood in front of at the beginning of the class. Anyone whose number was not covered was marked absent. Although none probably exists, it would have added interest to your article to see a picture of 40 or so buck naked boys lined up against that wall.

J. FRANK THOMPSON, IM 62, MS IM 63 SAN DIEGO, CALIF.

I feel compelled to write to you for two reasons: First, to tell you how much I enjoyed the Traditions issue that I recently received. But, second, I must take issue with the use of the word “infamous” as an adjective for Freddy

Lanoue’s (or Canoe, as my class called him) Drownproofing class. The first definition for ‘infamous’ is: “Having a reputation of the worst kind.” I do not believe that definition applies to his course and is demeaning.

Recollection of that particular PT course has become one of the high points of my days at Georgia Tech.

Friends are always amazed when I tell them about the course and what all Tech students had to be able to do to complete the course. I was proud to have been able to pass that course, even though it meant having to get rid of my “lash,” the long-haired, “duck-tailed” (or D-A) haircut I had when I started. Mr. Lanoue insisted that my hair had to be above my eyebrows when combed over my face, so I got a crew-cut, popular at the time.

Thank you for the excellent issue. It is a “keeper” and will be shared with my two daughters and the grandchildren.

NOT PESKY AFTER ALL Of all the pesky critters on earth— skeeters, ants, chiggers, gnats and no-see-ems—none is as bad as the yellow jacket. Why that accursed nasty, stinging, persistent insect was chosen as a mascot years ago I did not know until I read the Traditions issue.

Now, it’s a relief to know that the basis was the profusion of yellow colored jackets worn by the fans filling the stadium, and not some malevolent intent to wish pain on others. For the many years I had lived in the Pacific Northwest on Orcas Island, yellow jackets frequently spoiled outdoor barbecues on my deck, and I felt embarrassed that these pests were part of my heritage. Now that I have moved back to Georgia, I can wear the Yellow Jacket emblem with pride and enjoy the company of fellow Tech alumni.

LARRY MCNAIR, CHE 56 BRUNSWICK, GA.

MARK A MILLER, ME 58 CANTON, OHIO

THE FACTS ABOUT “THE WHISTLE” THEFT

[Ed. Note: We probably could have used a better word than “infamous” to describe the class, but we were trying to evoke—with humor—the dread that many former students said they felt before taking it. See the below letter for an example. We fully realize that Drownproofing is a favorite and lasting memory for many alumni.]

Loved this latest issue! Many memories of the traditions (that were new to us undergrads) flooded my thoughts.

Some I had forgotten—the Freshman Cake Race, for one.

I’d like to point out one correction about the Drownproofing. Thankfully for many of my co-ed classmates and I, the course was not mandatory for all students—only the males. We females did have to take three PE classes but were not required to endure the feared Drownproofing class.

Keep up the good work and THWG!

In the Spring 2017 issue of the Alumni Magazine, you stated: “The first whistle from the 1890s was stolen in 1902 and reportedly returned in 1949 and then given to Dean George C. Griffin as a retirement gift in 1964.”

However, that’s simply not the case.

The whistle was given to Dean Griffin in the spring quarter of 1964 by the infamous “Magnificent Seven” who stole it in the fall quarter of 1963. I am a surviving member of the “Magnificent Seven” and was granted a full pardon on the 50th anniversary of the heist in 2013 by Tech President G.P. “Bud” Peterson. We were all members of the Gamma Psi Chapter of Delta Tau Delta Fraternity.

Although the heist was investigated by the Georgia Bureau of Investigation, the “Magnificent Seven” were never identified as a result of our meticulous planning and execution. Thank you for correcting this error.

KARIN BOETTCHER JOHNSON, IE 81 BATESVILLE, IND.

BOB NEIMAN, ME 66 MIAMI, FLA.

Want to get in touch? Send letters to: Editor, Georgia Tech Alumni Magazine, 190 North Ave. N.W., Atlanta, GA 30313, or editor@alumni.gatech.edu. Share your personal news, birth and wedding announcements (with photos!), out-and-about snapshots and in memoriam notices at gtalumni.org/magazine.

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Around Campus

DRIVING FOR THE GREEN In each of the past three years, Tech’s student-driven EcoCAR 3 team has transformed a Chevrolet Camaro into an environmentally friendly, hybrid electric vehicle as part of a four-year competition sponsored by the U.S. Department of Energy and General Motors. This year, the Yellow Jackets placed third overall, and first in the technical categories, against a field of 15 other competing university teams.

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AROUND CAMPUS

Women of Robotics

BY JASON MADERER

How 10 Tech faculty members and students are changing the status quo of a male-dominated field.

ALTHOUGH SHE’S ONLY in her mid40s, Ayanna Howard is the nation’s most senior African-American female roboticist in higher education. It’s another example of the lack of females in the field.

“It always surprises me,” says Howard, the Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. “The medical and biomedical fields are just as technical as robotics, but they don’t

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have as major of a gender gap.”

The good news? While nationwide numbers for robotics aren’t available, the number of women getting undergraduate degrees in computer science is increasing. It was nearly 14 percent in 2009. It’s up to almost 16 percent as of 2015. This past fall, 23 percent of Georgia Tech’s computer science students were women.

Does diversity in robotics truly matter? Howard and her fellow women

GEORGIA TECH graduate engineering programs ranked in the top 10, according to U.S. News

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are quick to say yes.

“If robots are truly being built so everyone can use them, how can roboticists figure out what’s needed for half the population if women aren’t represented very well in the design process?” Howard asked. “Our field must be reflective of the consumer market.”

In a world dominated by men, here are 10 Georgia Tech women changing the field of robotics.

#4

ATLANTA’S RANKING of best university cities in the world, according to Times Higher Education Rob Felt

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1. Kalesha Bullard, PhD student in computer science 2. Sonia Chernova, Catherine M. and James E. Allchin Early-Career Assistant Professor in the School of Interactive Computing 3. Vivian Chu, PhD student in robotics 4. Brittney English, PhD student in electrical and computer engineering

KALESHA BULLARD was teaching math as part of Teach for America (TFA) when a summer research program introduced her to computer science. It changed her career path and eventually brought her to Tech. Now Bullard teaches only one student: Curi, a talking robot. The more it asks, the more it learns.

“I used to focus on how to motivate and engage high school students to help them learn,” Bullard says. “Now I’m teaching a robot how to be an active learner in order to achieve learning goals. Ultimately, I’d like to put a robot in a classroom—a robotic teaching assistant that learns from the human teacher and uses that information to help instruct and engage students.”

Common sense and situated knowledge—these are what drive people to

$211,228

reach for a drawer when looking for a fork, and reach for the right drawer when in a familiar kitchen. Learning and reasoning about such information is common for people, but not for robots. SONIA CHERNOVA’S research seeks to give machines common sense as well.

It’s impossible to pre-program a robot helper with all the knowledge it needs; our world is too diverse, our houses too different. So Chernova is finding ways for robots to learn this information, and to share it with each other.

Chernova asks: “What if robots could share information? ‘In my kitchen, we put cutlery in a drawer next to the sink.

What about yours?’ If they could pass along knowledge, every robot wouldn’t have to learn from scratch, helping to one day enable robots to perform useful tasks even in new environments.

AMOUNT RAISED during Tech’s student Dance Marathon for Children’s Healthcare of Atlanta

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Parents raise children. We need to make sure they don’t have to raise robots too.”

VIVIAN CHU had no plans to get a PhD when she went to work for IBM in 2009.

She didn’t think she was smart enough, but everyone in her research lab insisted otherwise, and now she’s in her fourth year at Tech. Chu teaches robots basic concepts—such as the fact that cups hold liquid and boxes can be lifted—that enable them to complete complex tasks.

“When people find out I work with robots, they always say, ‘You’re so smart.

I could never do that,’” Chu says. “That’s one of my pet peeves. ‘NO. NO. NO! YES, YOU COULD!’ I’m not a genius. But I’ve learned that if you work hard at something, you could do this too.”

EARTH ORBITS COMPLETED by Georgia Tech alumnus Shane Kimbrough while serving as Commander of the International Space Station

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AROUND CAMPUS 5

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5. Karen Feigh, associate professor for the Daniel Guggenheim School of Aerospace Engineering 6. Tesca Fitzgerald, PhD student in computer science.

BRITTNEY ENGLISH loves playing video games but doesn’t get to do it very often. She’s too busy designing them.

Her games, and her custom-built exoskeletons that control them, are for stroke survivors with partial paralysis.

The arm and wrist movements are the same ones used during the patients’ tedious, monotonous rehabilitation.

“Most people struggle with motivation while rehabbing at home,” English says. “Doing the same exercises by playing games is much more enjoyable, and we can look at their scores to see if they’re doing it correctly. It’s one way to return some normalcy and fun to their lives.”

Cars will soon drive themselves on our highways. It will present new challenges for professors such as KAREN FEIGH. She designs computer algorithms and interfaces that allow autonomous vehicles to adjust to human preferences in ways that make drivers feel both safe and comfortable.

“Future cars will operate much more similarly to today’s commercial airplanes,” Feigh says. “The human driver won’t turn a steering wheel, change

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gears or push brake pedals. Instead they’ll tell the car where to go and it will drive them. Between now and then, we will have cars that automate some functions—like maintaining distance from cars in front of them or maintaining location in a lane. These capabilities could improve safety, but often drivers feel uncomfortable using them because the car stops, accelerates and keeps distances differently from what the driver is comfortable with.”

What does a robot do once it learns something? That’s the question that guides TESCA FITZGERALD’S research.

After she moves her robot’s arm to teach it a task, the machine records what it sees and uses the information to solve related tasks in the future.

It’s one way Fitzgerald combines her two fields of study: robotics and human cognition.

“Robots are very good at doing specific things, but why should they use their brains to only do those tasks?”

Fitzgerald asks. “People learn throughout our entire lives and build upon those experiences. Robots should do

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RANKING OF GEORGIA TECH’S Mock Trial team in 33rd American Mock Trial Association (AMTA) National Championship Tournament

the same thing. They need to be dynamic—adjusting to problems and situations they’ve never seen before.”

AYANNA HOWARD has overseen nearly 50 projects in a dozen years at Tech. Her machines have taught children with autism to play Angry Birds and climbed through sand to replicate Martian exploration. Her next initiative will give personalities to telepresence robots.

As one of the nation’s most recognized female roboticists, Howard is always searching for the next socially impactful project.

“I’m always looking for a problem in need of a solution, then seeing if a robot can provide it,” Howard says. “That often brings me to health care. It’s tough, because you have to prove that your solution isn’t just a fun gadget before it can be adopted. What’s success to me?

When our robots are used by patients, then I know we have a great project.”

KAREN LIU isn’t afraid to watch her expensive machines topple on their heads when they’re pushed by her graduate students. Before robots can quickly walk

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AVERAGE STARTING SALARY for a Tech graduate Rob Felt

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7. Ayanna Howard, Linda J. and Mark C. Smith Chair Professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering 8. Karen Liu, associate professor in the School of Interactive Computing 9. Maria Santos, PhD student in electrical and computer engineering 10. Britney Schmidt, assistant professor in the School of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

or run in uncontrolled environments, they must first learn to fall. A lot.

“Even with the hardware constraints, there’s a lot of things we can do at the algorithmic level to improve the agility of robots,” Liu says. “The most exciting part of my job is the freedom to continuously learn new things with my students. I see myself as a student trying to make sense in this mostly uncharted domain. No one is an expert. We’re all learning together.”

MARÍA SANTOS received a professional music degree in violin while growing up in Spain, but had to sacrifice

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her music training to pursue her undergraduate engineering degree at the Universidade de Vigo. Now she’s found a way to do both. Santos controls swarms of robots while playing the piano, directing them by interpreting the harmonic properties associated with the different chords.

“People are very reluctant to mix robotics with the arts in my home country,” Santos says. “But then I came here and saw people inspired by both fields. Georgia Tech has allowed me to combine the two things I love. I never thought I would have this chance—it’s truly a dream come true.”

NUMBER OF TREES LOCATED on Georgia Tech’s main campus

Maybe it’s surprising to find a roboticist in earth and atmospheric sciences, but some of the foremost questions in planetary science need robots to answer them. BRITNEY SCHMIDT is looking for life beyond Earth, focusing on Jupiter’s icecovered ocean moon, Europa. She and her group build and test robots in Antarctica to one day swim under Europa’s ice.

“We were driving cars for 100 years before we sent rovers to Mars,” Schmidt says. “That’s why we are building underwater and under-ice vehicles and going to the most remote, least understood areas under ice on Earth. We’ve got to push the science and boundaries here first.”

$1MILLION

AMOUNT DONATED by the Mookerji Foundation to the Advanced Technology Development Center

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TALK OF TECH

The Secret to Tech’s Online Master’s Success

BY ELLIS BOOKER

We take a deeper look into what makes the Institute’s low-cost, high-quality online graduate programs so special.

GEORGIA TECH’S ONLINE MASTER of Science in Computer Science (OMS CS)—the world’s first accredited massive, open, online course (MOOC) degree in computer science—has attracted more than 15,000 applications, enrolled more than 4,500 students, garnered numerous awards and been covered in the press more than 1,000 times. Most important, the program graduated 212 students this May, and hopes to have put cap and gown on more than 1,000 total graduates by December, helping to fill the world’s critical need for computer scientists.

The appeal of Tech’s OMS CS starts with its daring, sub-$7,000 price point. Compare that to the $40,000 for a typical master’s degree in computer science at an out-of-state public university, or the FILLING A $70,000 for a priHUGE NEED vate university, and the appeal seems RESEARCHERS SAY obvious.

GEORGIA TECH’S OMS The idea for CS will help fill a nationOMS CS was born al need for computer in 2012, when Sescientists. bastian Thrun, A working paper last founder of MOOC October by Harvard platform Udacity economist Joshua Good(now a partner with man, working with Julia Georgia Tech on the Melkers of Georgia Tech, online computer science masand Harvard’s Amanda ter’s program), came to see Pallais titled “Can Online Zvi Galil, the Institute’s dean Delivery Increase Access of the College of Computing, To Education,” calculated and asked about doing a dethat Georgia Tech’s OMS gree for $1,000. “I told him $1,000 CS could increase the anwon’t do—maybe $4,000,” Galil nual production of U.S. remembers. computer science masBut before heading toward ter’s degrees by at least 7 a launch in January 2014, “the percent.

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faculty had three concerns,” Galil admits. Those concerns, he says, were “quality, quality, quality.”

So Tech administrators and faculty made a philosophic and strategic choice: It would make its online master’s identical to its highly rated residential program. OMS CS students take the same curriculum as their residential peers, and both programs require 30 credit hours (specialties include computing systems, interactive intelligence, machine learning, computational perception and robotics) to graduate.

Zvi Galil, dean of the College of Computing

Deliberately, the graduate diploma has no indication whether the degree was earned online or on campus.

“The sources, homework, projects and exams are identical,” Galil says.

Students watch video lectures and participate with teachers and fellow students via a variety of online forums. (Advanced computing itself will be leveraged in the future to help the program scale, and assist students and teachers. See “Artificial Intelligence Helping in the Classroom” below.)

A related worry was the potential negative impact on Tech’s sterling, U.S. News top 10 computer science brand.

Would a low-cost online degree cause it to be lumped in with the slew of noncredit MOOCs that have appeared in the last several years?

After all, dozens of universities, as well as companies like edX, Udacity and Coursera, offer MOOC courses. (Tech itself offers 29 non-credit courses available

on Coursera, which have attracted 1.6 million students to date.)

Happily, this worry seems to have been unfounded. Research by the Harvard Business Review in 2016 found that 80 percent of those accepted into Tech’s OMS CS program actually enrolled—and the majority of those denied did not pursue a different program. The takeaway is that Georgia Tech’s reputation seemed to matter—significantly.

“Such f igures indicate we are expanding the market, not ‘cannibalizing’ the on-campus MS CS program,” Galil says.

UP NEXT: ANALYTICS The OMS CS has been so successful that this coming fall, Tech’s College of Engineering, College of Computing and Scheller College of Business have collaborated to launch an online master’s degree in analytics. That master’s, an online version of the degree the Institute has been offering for three years on campus, will cost less than $10,000.

The new degree, just like the OMS CS, will duplicate the on-campus academic content, according to Associate Professor Joel Sokol, who directs both the on-campus and online Master of

Science in Analytics.

“We’ve been thinking from the beginning to put analytics online as well,” Sokol says.

The driver? Incredible demand for such an education.

“We can bring 60 to 70 people on campus [for the resident program], but this year we had about 1,000 applications for those seats,” he says. “There’s a lot of unmet demand.”

For the online analytics master’s program, Sokol will start with 250 students, then admit more in the spring.

“It’ll get bigger and bigger,” he says.

Just like the OMS CS, Sokol and others presume that many applicants for the new online degree will be attracted because they live far from Atlanta or—even more likely—have already started their careers, and want to pursue a degree while working.

A DIFFERENT KIND OF STUDENT OMS CS students have proved to be consistently older. The average age is 33-34, or approximately 11 years older than oncampus MS CS students, and a majority (75 percent) are employed full-time. In addition, nearly all of the OMS CS students (94 percent) work while enrolled.

“In 2014, I had this feeling that [Georgia Tech’s] program was the start of something huge, and I wanted in,” says Ellie Ordway-West, an AT&T data scientist and OMS CS graduate.

The low price was a factor, too. “It was inexpensive enough that I could pay for it myself without going into debt,” she says. Like nearly all the OMS

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE HELPING IN THE CLASSROOM EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGISTS sometimes focus on the latest gadgets and gizmos. For instance, recently there has been excitement about the promise of virtual and augmented reality in teaching.

But the real promise is personalizing education for each student, while simultaneously improving our understanding of how best to teach. And this process will help both online and residential students.

“If we’re really improving learning, why wouldn’t we want to help our residential students, too?” asks Nelson Baker, dean of professional education at Georgia Tech.

Baker sees a “blurring of the lines” between online and residential programs, moving toward what he prefers to call “technology-assisted education.”

At Georgia Tech, one novel implementation has been created by Ashok Goel, professor of computer science and

cognitive science in the School of Interactive Computing.

Last year, as the Alumni Magazine previously reported, Goel created an artificial teaching assistant named Jill Watson, based on the IBM Watson platform. Jill has so far proved to be an invaluable asset in answering many questions students have about the classes she’s assisting, and most students don’t even realize she’s not a real-live TA.

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TALK OF TECH CS students, Ordway-West kept working while pursuing the master’s, her second. She also holds a master’s in physics from the University of Missouri-Saint Louis.

An online degree also appealed to Norma Easter, who received her bachelor’s degree in computational media from Tech in 2013, and is now pursuing her master’s. Although Easter lives and works for a mobile developer in Atlanta, she wanted to get her advanced degree while continuing to work. Easter hopes to complete her degree in two to three years.

“What drew me to Tech was that I knew, first-hand, it was very rigorous, with passionate professors,” she says,

AT&T: BACKER AND EMPLOYER AT&T IS NOT ONLY A FINANCIAL BACKER of Tech’s OMS CS efforts— funding the program in two rounds, totaling $3.9 million—it is also the largest employer in the program, with 450 admitted students and 47 graduates to date.

“This program is a blueprint for helping address the shortage of people with STEM degrees,” says Matt Dugan, AT&T’s director of Big Data.

“It expands access to computer science education for students around the work, consumes learning content anywhere at anytime and creates a cost- and time-effective way to enhance our employees’ skill set.”

Dugan also said AT&T has had positive experiences with the students coming out of the program.

“Employees from the program exhibit skills consistent with employees having similar degrees from traditional on-campus programs from other reputable universities, and they work well together in the same teams,” he says.

“What we’ve found is the online discussion forums become a rich source of discussion and learning,” says Joel Sokol. adding that the online program is “just as rigorous” as the on-campus courses she took as an undergrad.

Tech’s own research email survey of OMS CS subscribers found that nearly 99 percent of students enrolled in the program felt it was either a “good” or “excellent” return on their educational investment.

EQUAL ENGAGEMENT Before the OMS in Computer Science debuted more than three years ago, there were understandable concerns that it would be somehow inferior to the face-to-face experience of the residential master’s program.

But those worries have fallen aside, and preliminary research indicates t h a t Te c h ’ s online master’s students perform comJoel Sokol, director of Tech’s offline and online Master’s in parably overall Analytics programs to the on-campus cohort. When the same course is taught concurrently for both OMS CS and on-campus students, sometimes the online students do a little better and sometimes the campus students edge them out.

“What we’ve found is the online discussion forums become a rich source of discussion and learning,” says Sokol.

While a classroom experience lasts an hour “these online forums go on 24/7, and get really rich and deep,” he says.

Along with Udacity’s Piazza portal for student discussions, students themselves have created some 70

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Google Plus groups revolving around their OMS CS studies. “[These students] bring real-life experience,” says Galil, noting that classes on health informatics have attracted physicians, and classes on educational technology have attracted working teachers.

While the current OMS CS is a partnership between Tech, MOOC provider Udacity and AT&T, the new analytics program will be a partnership between Georgia Tech and MOOC provider edX. The analytics program will also benefit from the operational infrastructure created by the OMS CS. Today at Tech there are instructional designers, videographers, simulation experts and graphic artists, all of whom mix freely with the faculty to design the online courses within the degree program.

Nelson Baker, Georgia Tech’s dean of professional education, thinks the OMS CS program’s enrollment may eventually exceed most everyone’s expectations. But he’s quick to put the OMS CS in context, noting that Tech’s remote education programs started in 1977. “This has been a 40-year journey for the Institute,” he says.

“First and foremost we’re improving learning, growing our database about how people learn, both online and on campus,” Baker says, adding that this has placed Georgia Tech into a highly visible position among higher education institutions worldwide.

“Others are watching and following us,” he says, pointing out that he just held a conference with a dozen universities who are eager “to learn our business model and our pedagogy.”

TALK OF TECH

Beautiful Brittain GEORGIA TECH’S BRITTAIN DINING HALL tops Southern Living magazine’s list of the most stunning college dining halls in the South.

The article noted Brittain’s architectural beauty and historical details.

The building, which was completed in 1928, was a joint effort of many of Tech’s departments.

The architecture department designed the building, the ceramics department manufactured the tile for the floor of the tower, the mechanical engineering department supplied the wrought iron for the light fixtures in the main hall, and the textile department made tapestries for the walls.

Southern Living also mentions that one of the dining halls featured in their rankings gives them a feeling of being at the Great Hall at Hogwarts—and we’re pretty sure that we know which one they’re talking about.

STEVEN NORRIS

STARTUPS HAVE A NEW WAY TO ‘ENGAGE’ WITH COMPANIES, GEORGIA TECH A FEW MONTHS AFTER Georgia Tech and the CEOs of 10 leading global corporations announced a new early stage venture fund, Engage Ventures has opened its application process.

Startups can apply for the three-month program at https://engage.vc/. The program is open to startups across the country.

Engage Ventures is the largest-ever strategic grouping of major corporations in an independent venture firm. The 10 founding companies contributing capital, expertise, time and resources in support of Engage include AT&T, Chick-fil-A, Cox Enterprises, Delta Air Lines, Georgia-Pacific, Georgia Power Foundation Inc., Intercontinental Exchange, Invesco Ltd., The Home Depot and

UPS. Executives from these firms will serve as mentors to the companies receiving financial support from the venture fund.

Engage will offer programming and other services through a contract with the Advanced Technology Development Center (ATDC), which was established at Georgia Tech by Georgia lawmakers in 1980 to launch and build technology companies. The program is headquartered in Georgia Tech’s Technology Square.

—LAURA DIAMOND

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MASTERING REAL ESTATE DEVELOPMENT THE COLLEGE OF DESIGN has launched a new Master’s of Real Estate Development program as a multidisciplinary program that brings together construction, city planning, architecture, finance, law and engineering—the cornerstones of real estate development—into one forward-looking graduate degree.

This graduate degree is offered by the School of Building Construction, integrating classes from the schools of Architecture, Building Construction, and City & Regional Planning, to reflect the real-world process that produces built environments. Classes will begin in the fall semester of 2017, and the deadline for applications is July 1, 2017.

“The Master of Real Estate Development is the first degree on campus that recognizes that developers, planners, architects, engineers, construction managers, and owners must collaborate to produce high-quality projects that bring tangible and lasting benefits to the community,” says School of Building Construction Chair Daniel Castro.

By offering this comprehensive approach, Georgia Tech joins a selective group of universities (including MIT, Columbia, the University of Southern California and Arizona State) to offer a graduate degree in real estate development.

“Here at Georgia Tech, we have the capacity to build a program that will not only produce future industry leaders but will set the standard of an integrated approach that addresses all aspects of the development process,” said Steven P. French, the Dean and John Portman Chair of the College of Design.

“Industry leaders tell us that graduates with a comprehensive understanding of the development process are exactly what is needed in the real estate industry today.”

BUSINESS. POWERED

BY TECH. Immersive. Relevant. Transformative. Georgia Tech’s full-time MBA can change your career, and your life, in just 22 months. Consistently ranked among the nation’s you with the knowledge you need to thrive in today’s technologydriven world of business. Learn more at scheller.gatech.edu.

TECH SAVVY. BUSINESS SMART.

TALK OF TECH JUNO SPACECRAFT REVEALS CHAOS, DEEP CLOUDS AT JUPITER

THE JUNO SCIENCE TEAM, which includes Georgia Tech Professor Paul Steffes, has published its first observations of Jupiter. In a paper that now appears in the journal Science, the researchers describe a chaotic scene of ammonia, cyclones and bands of storms that extend far deeper beneath the planet’s clouds than previously thought.

Juno has been circling Jupiter since entering its orbit on July 4, 2016.

The paper outlines findings from Juno’s first pole-to-pole orbit on Aug. 27, when the basketball court-sized spacecraft skimmed within nearly 2,000 miles of Jupiter’s equatorial cloud tops.

While Saturn’s poles are relatively quiet and uneventful, Jupiter’s are unexpectedly tumultuous. Cyclonic storms were seen on both ends of the planet, densely clustered and rubbing together. They’re powered by the heat coming from within Jupiter’s interior.

Juno’s measurements also revealed that the planet’s magnetic field is two times stronger than scientists anticipated. At 7.776 G, it’s more than a magnitude greater than those at Earth’s South Pole.

Steffes, a professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering, is one of the original members of the science team. He’s been receiving measurements from Juno’s microwave radiometer since the fall. The instrument measures radio waves from the planet’s deep atmosphere to provide hints of what Jupiter is made of.

GRAVITATIONAL WAVES KEEP COMING Latest signal arrived from black hole nearly 3 billion light-years from Earth A GRAVITATIONAL WAVE SIGNAL has been detected and confirmed for the third time. In a paper published in the journal Physical Review Letters, researchers describe the collision of two black holes that merged to form a larger black hole located about 3 billion light-years away. That’s the farthest signal yet. The black holes in the prior detections are about 1.4 billion lightyears from Earth.

The latest waves, ripples in space and time that travel through the u n ive r s e at t h e s p e e d o f l i g h t , were detected by the Laser Interfe r o m e te r G rav i ta t i o n a l - wave Observatory (LIGO) on Jan. 4, 2017.

LIGO is an international team of scientists that includes more than a dozen Georgia Tech faculty members, students and postdoctoral fellows.

This third merger created a black hole with a mass of about 49 times our sun. The black hole in the first detection is about 62 solar masses; the second is 21. In all three cases, each of

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the twin detectors of LIGO—located in Louisiana and the state of Washington—detected waves from collisions that produced more power than is radiated as light by all the stars and galaxies in the universe at any given time.

This detection also hints at new information on how black holes spin.

This observation is consistent with that which is expected if the spin of one, or both, of the original black holes was misaligned, meaning it spun in a different direction on its axis from the direction the pair moved around each other.

“As an example, imagine a pair of tornadoes in a clockwise orbit around each other,” says Georgia Tech Professor Laura Cadonati, LIGO’s deputy spokesperson. “Both tornadoes also spin on their own axes. It could be in the same clockwise direction as their orbit or it could be in the other direction. They could also be lying down on their orbital plane or at any angle in between. Black holes could do the same thing.”—JASON MADERER

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TALK OF TECH

City Bike Share Adds Stations On Campus AMID THE WHITE AND GOLD STINGERS and Tech Trolleys on campus, a slew of blue bikes has emerged. As part of the City of Atlanta’s recent expansion of the Relay Bike Share program, Georgia Tech now has six campus hubs where users can grab a bicycle.

Relay launched in Atlanta in 2016 with 100 bikes at 22 stations, including one on Fifth Street in Tech Square. In April, it expanded to 500 bikes and 65 stations.

The service provides short-term bike rentals with checkout and checkin places around the city. The six stations on campus are on Techwood Drive at North Avenue, Tech Parkway near the Student Center Transit Hub, the Clough Commons turnaround, West Campus Housing on Turner Street, on Ferst Drive across from the Campus Recreation Center, and on Fifth Street in Tech Square.

OF COURSE: THE LESSONS OF HIP HOP LMC 3306: SCIENCE, RACE AND TECHNOLOGY Engaging the Lyrics of Outkast and Trap Music to Explore Politics and Social Justice INSTRUCTOR: Joycelyn A. Wilson, assistant professor, hip-hop culture, media, and the global south, School of Literature, Media, and Communication OBJECTIVE: Students should achieve a fundamental understanding of Black expression in trans-global ways for promoting a sense of community, self-awareness and social obligation.

PREREQUISITES: None.

The students in Joycelyn A. Wilson’s “Science, Race and Technology” course had the opportunity to spend last semester examining the music of Outkast, culminating with a visit from Antwan Patton, aka Big Boi, one half of the influential Atlanta rap duo.

“We turned Outkast’s lyrics into a text and we used the narratives to have a larger conversation about social justice,” Wilson says.

While much of the focus was on Outkast, Wilson and her students reviewed

songs across the hip-hop spectrum from Lauryn Hill to Lil Yachty, and explored the messages of politics and social justice within the music.

Wilson says she introduced students to the lyrics first, and then the class listened to the music. “Often we’re attracted to the sound first,” she says. “Then we analyze the words.”

To wrap up the course, Wilson arranged for Outkast’s Big Boi to visit the class and take questions from the students. The

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Grammy-winning artist spent an hour in the classroom fielding questions from students.

For Wilson, offering the class was about making a connection back to the society we live in.

“Studying Outkast, studying trap music, gets us behind the turn up, and gets us deeper into taking the training I have as a scientist or an engineer and [exploring] how I can use it in a way that’s going to benefit my community,” she says.

HONEYBEES’ HAIRY SITUATION

DRONE RACING CHAMPS

WITH HONEYBEE COLONY HEALTH wavering and researchers trying to find technological ways of pollinating plants in the future, a new Georgia Tech study has looked at how the insects do their job and manage to stay clean.

According to the study, a honeybee can carry up to 30 percent of its body weight in pollen because of the strategic spacing of its nearly 3 million hairs. The hairs cover the insect’s eyes and entire body in various densities that allow efficient cleaning and transport.

The research found that the gap between each eye hair is approximately the same size as a grain of dandelion pollen, which is typically collected by bees.

This keeps the pollen suspended above the eye and allows the forelegs to comb through and collect the particles. The legs are much hairier and the hair is very densely packed—five times denser than the hair on the eyes. This helps the legs collect as much pollen as possible with each swipe. Once the forelegs are sufficiently scrubbed and cleaned by the other legs and the mouth, they return to the eyes and continue the process until the eyes are free of pollen.

The Georgia Tech team tethered bees and used high-speed cameras to create the first quantified study of the honeybee cleaning process. They watched as the insects were able to remove up to 15,000 particles from their bodies in three minutes. “ Without these hairs and their

THREE ENGINEERING STUDENTS took home the top trophy at the Collegiate Drone Racing National Championship held at Purdue University in April. It is the first year a national championship has been organized for pilots of unmanned aircraft to compete against each other at the collegiate level.

Twenty-seven universities fielded teams of pilots who navigated obstacle courses flying custom-designed drones. The course was designed for testing both a pilot’s speed and precision.

Georgia Tech was led by aerospace engineering major Nick Willard, who flew in the final race to seal the victory. Willard competes in many non-collegiate Drone Racing League events, and has won racing events televised on ESPN. He is affectionately known by drone racing enthusiasts as “Wild Willy.”

Willard was joined by Seth Ableidinger and Davis Engelman, two mechanical engineering majors, who held strong in preliminary races to put Georgia Tech into a solid team lead.

Their times and rankings, combined with Willard’s, put Georgia Tech into first place among the field.

specialized spacing, it would be almost impossible for a honeybee to stay clean,” said Guillermo Amador, who led the study while pursuing his doctoral degree at Georgia Tech in mechanical engineering.

This was evident when Amador and the team created a robotic honeybee leg to swipe pollen-covered eyes.

When they covered the leg with wax, the smooth, hairless leg gathered four times less pollen.

“If we can start learning from natural pollinators, maybe we can create artificial pollinators to take stress off of bees,” said David Hu, a professor in the Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering and School of Biological Sciences. “Our findings may also be used to create mechanical designs that help keep micro and nanostructured surfaces clean.”—JASON MADERER

YELLOW JACKETS PLAY A STARRING ROLE IN SILICON VALLEY Tech ranks 6th in U.S. for most alumni working at region’s high-tech companies SILICON VALLEY is going White and Gold. If you’re looking to land a job at one of the highly desired tech companies such as Facebook, Amazon, Google or Apple, your diploma from the Georgia Institute of Technology might be your ticket.

Data complied by online recruiting company HiringSolved shows that of the 10

universities Silicon Valley companies hired the most alumni from in 2016, Georgia Tech came in sixth.

In terms of the most-wanted new graduates in 2017, Georgia Tech ranks fourth in America.

The analysis is part of HiringSolved’s larger study to identify the most desired skills for tech employees in 2017. —STEVEN NORRIS

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STUDENT NEWS

Seeing Your Ideas All the Way Through

BY MELISSA FRALICK

How a team of Yellow Jackets turned a sophomore class project into an InVenture Prize-winning startup and fledgling company.

WITH $30,000 IN PRIZE MONEY, a pending patent and interest from medical industry professionals, one might say that the Tech undergraduates behind CauteryGuard are living the entrepreneur’s dream. Over the past 12 months, four students went from exploring ways to re-engineer an existing medical device for a class project, to building a prototype and business model—a path which led them to a string of wins in student invention competitions.

This is all part of the new way that students at Georgia Tech are using their core coursework—from engineering to economics—to create real solutions to real problems, and sometimes even create their own companies.

A little over a year ago, the budding business selling CauteryGuard was just an assignment for BME 2310. The sophomore biomedical design course challenges teams of students to select a medical device they believe could be improved. So Hunter Hatcher, Devin Li and Dev Mandavia identified an opportunity to upgrade an electrocautery device, which uses a hot wire tip to remove unwanted tissue during surgery.

“We chose the product because we

A close-up of the CauteryGuard device

thought it kind of looks like a mini lightsaber,’” Mandavia says.

What the team discovered was that this common surgical implement had a severe weakness. Standard electrocautery devices are shaped like a fountain pen, with a removable cap that covers the hot wire tip. During surgery, this can lead to dangerous situations: Surgeons sometimes burn themselves while attempting to replace the cap, and those who leave the cap off risk igniting flammable materials in the operating room.

The CauteryGaurd team began by researching and devising a new version that reduces these risks by making the hot tip retractable, so that it’s only exposed while it’s in use. At the end of their design course, the students had created a design and a rough prototype to show as proof of concept.

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Though the class had ended, the group felt like they had a good idea and wanted to continue to develop the concept. Friend and classmate Jack Corelli—whose class project had focused on the decidedly less flashy bunion splint—joined the CauteryGuard team for its next phase.

The group enrolled in Georgia Tech’s Idea 2 Prototype, or I2P, course as part of Tech’s new Create X curriculum.

I2P is geared toward student entrepreneurs and is structured like undergraduate research, with funding, equipment and faculty mentorship to help students create real, working prototypes of their inventions.

Martin Jacobson, ID 06, is a design instructor and the machine shop manager in the Coulter School of Biomedical Engineering. He taught the CauteryGuard students’ design course

and then signed on to be their faculty mentor in I2P. Jacobson points out that his students rarely take their design projects past the end of the semester. Out of the roughly 80-100 teams in sophomore design classes, only four or five will continue working to further their concepts. “I2P gives students the opportunity to carve out time for something that, if it was just an entrepreneurial project, would likely get put on the backburner,” Jacobson says.

More so than when he was a student, Jacobson says undergrads today have access to high-quality 3-D printers and laser cutters in Tech’s machine shops to build their ideas. “You can try out 10 different ideas,” Jacobson says.

“Failure is free, so you can play.”

After I2P, the CauteryGuard team had a polished prototype that was ready to compete. The team was one of six finalists selected to participate in the 2017 InVenture Prize Competition.

The team won first place as well as the People’s Choice Award, determined by audience votes. The two prizes netted the team $25,000 and a free U.S. patent filing by Georgia Tech’s Office of Technology Licensing valued at approximately $20,000.

CauteryGuard then advanced to compete against teams of student inventors from every college in the Atlantic Coast Conference in the ACC InVenture Prize, where they picked up an additional $5,000 and a vote of confidence by once again winning the People’s Choice Award.

While they made it look easy, Jacobson says CauteryGuard’s InVenture Prize wins reflect the students’ hard work behind the scenes, both in class and on their own time. “They had been working on it diligently for a year,” Jacobson says. “It’s difficult to have focus on a single project for that long.

They’ve done a great job of looking at it under a microscope and polishing it.”

Jacobson says the CauteryGuard team also distinguished themselves by the amount of input, feedback and confirmation they received from medical professionals while refining their

concept. “They’ve talked to five or six dozen surgeons and gotten feedback on how it should be packaged, how they want it to be used, and encouragement from experts in the field,” Jacobson says. “Sometimes there’s not enough time in a one-semester class to figure out the real problem.”

This summer, the group will begin the final component of Create-X called Startup Launch, an intensive two-semester, faculty-led curriculum that helps student entrepreneurs launch their startup businesses. The students will work on gaining FDA approval, securing a utility patent and branding their device.

The students have already received

interest from people who’d like to invest in or buy the product once it’s available. “This summer will give us the best indicator of whether we can turn it into a full business,” Li says.

All of the CauteryGuard team members are now third-year students, and still have a ways to go before “getting out.” They’re all committed to completing their Tech degrees, but may put plans for grad school on the shelf to pursue CauteryGuard full time. “We want to see this through. We have a unique opportunity to take this further,” Mandavia says.

It’s all part of the new reality of becoming a Helluva Engineer.

2017 INVENTURE PRIZE FINALISTS CPR+

Here are the five other teams of undergraduate student inventors who competed in the finals of Georgia Tech’s 2017 InVenture Prize Competition:

Team Members David Ehrlich, Computer Engineering; Ryan Williams, Computer Engineering; and Samuel Clarke, Mechanical Engineering and Computer Science

CPR+ is a CPR mask that tells a user exactly what to do. Even an untrained bystander can perform CPR by using the mask, which dynamically walks the user through each step of the process until emergency medical providers arrive.

INTERNBLITZ (2ND PLACE) Team Members: Murtaza Bambot, Industrial Engineering; and Nathan Dass, Computer Science

GAITWAY Team members: Veronica Young, Industrial Design;

InternBlitz was created as a way to help students find the right internship. Much like the common application for college admission, InternBlitz automatically fills in the information requested on all internship applications, so students only have to worry about items specific to each employer’s application.

PICKAR

and Nora Johnson, Industrial Design

Gaitway is a transportable set of parallel bars that can be used for at-home pediatric physical therapy. The parallel bars currently on the market are designed for adults, so this smaller, transportable set allows physical therapists to bring parallel bars to the correct height for their patient’s needs.

Team Members: Wenqi Xian, Computer Science;

CAPABLE CANE

Sarthak Srinivas, Computer Science; and Cheng

Jeffrey McMichael, Mechanical Engineering

Hann Gan, Computer Science

PickAR is like Google Maps for warehouses.

Using augmented reality technology, PickAR helps employees find and pick orders more quickly and efficiently in warehouses.

The Capable Cane is a walking cane that unfolds into a portable, stable chair. Using a mechanism similar to an umbrella, the cane is small and light while also providing a sturdy and ample seating surface.

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10 QUESTIONS

A Disruptive Force

BY ROGER SLAVENS

Former College of Computing Dean Rich DeMillo, PhD CS 72, now heads up Tech’s efforts to transform higher education.

AS THE HEAD of Georgia Tech’s Center for 21st Century Universities, Richard DeMillo oversees a living laboratory for experimenting on the ways faculty teach and students learn—all in the name of making a Tech education more accessible, affordable and acclaimed.

The former John P. Imlay Dean of the College of Computing, DeMillo played an instrumental role in bringing Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs) to the Institute. Today, nearly two million students across the world are enrolled in Georgia Tech MOOCs, including those working toward their 0nline master’s in computer science degrees.

DeMillo has worked both in academia and in industry, having served as Hewlett-Packard’s first chief technology officer, Bellcore’s head of research, and the National Science Foundation’s director of computer and computational research. His books Abelard to Apple: The Fate of American Colleges and Universities and the sequel Revolution in Higher Education: How a Small Band of Innovators will make College Accessible and Affordable are must reads for higher-education innovators worldwide. For this special issue, the Alumni Magazine just had to pick

the brain of one of the globe’s most esteemed thought leaders on learning.

1.CAN YOU TELL US A LITTLE ABOUT YOURSELF AND YOUR ROLE AT TECH? I earned my PhD here in 1972 before there was a College of Computing, but I came back in 2002 to serve as the [John P. Imlay] Dean. During my time as dean, I got really interested in how the college and the Institute delivers education to students—and how educational technology could vastly improve what we were doing.

Several years later, in 2007, I stepped down to take a sabbatical and that’s when I started envisioning what would eventually become the Center for 21st Century Universities.

2. HOW DID YOUR FIRST ENVISION THE CENTER FOR 21ST CENTURY UNIVERSITIES? At first, I was thinking, naively, that it was going to be a small place where I was going to be left alone to play with new technologies in my own little sandbox. But that was 2008, at exactly the time that the economy was undergoing all these seismic shifts and a lot of them were negatively affecting higher education.

“We want to be able to better serve students coming back into Georgia Tech at various points in their lives and, of course, deliver very different experiences than they had as undergraduates,” DeMillo says.

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3. WHAT SEISMIC SHIFTS? Beyond technologies and the transfer of knowledge that’s core to higher education, I had to also start thinking about the economics of universities, where higher education fits into American society and how the politics of educational policy works. And that turned out to be the basis for this center. Georgia Tech needed an entity that would think deeply about the economic and social and political disruptions that were awaiting higher education and help find ways, in turn, to disrupt age-old educational models.

4. WHY WAS TECH THE RIGHT PLACE TO HOUSE THE CENTER? Georgia Tech has long been a place where you can do things in a very entrepreneurial fashion—where you don’t have to ask for a lot of permission to try things out.

In fact, I’ve never been at a company or an educational institution that allows you the broad latitude that the Institute does, which is surprising considering that Tech is almost twice as large as it was when I was a student. It’s a rare university where anyone on faculty can send an email to the president and get a response within a day. But that’s exactly what happens here and I’m not sure people realize how extraordinary this is.

With the Institute’s leadership, faculty and students aligned so closely to each other, both socially and organizationally, I think it’s one of the secret sauces that makes Tech so successful. In such an environment, the Center for 21st Century Universities was designed to be a place where we would be allowed to try out new

8. HOW CAN YOU MAKE SUCH ENDORSEMENTS OR LABELS OF EXPERTISE STICK? We don’t really have a mechanism at Tech for providing endorsements and badges and certificates that will be recognized by employers and other universities. However, a technology like Blockchain—which is the backbone of digital currency BitCoin—allows both producers and consumers of a value or rating to plug into the same infrastructure and contribute to it. I could see a day when Tech students would sign their emails with a Blockchain ID, and it would act sort of like a Facebook profile, but one validated by Georgia Tech, and assigned value by employers and other institutions.

things without the fear of failure. But if they succeeded, they would matter not only for us but probably for higher education nationally—such as what we’ve done with the Massive Open Online Courses offered at Tech.

5. BESIDES THEIR INCREASED REACH OF INSTRUCTION TO STUDENTS AROUND THE WORLD, WHAT’S SO SPECIAL ABOUT TECH’S MOOCS? It’s not just the online technologies, but also the rethinking of how courses are delivered. It starts with something called “mastery learning.” American educational psychologist Benjamin Bloom of the University of Chicago conducted research that showed that if students were taught using mastery learning techniques and provided personalized, 1:1 tutoring outside class, students performed up to two standard deviations better than those taught using traditional methods.

6. WHAT EXACTLY IS MASTERY LEARNING? Instead of relying on formal lectures that a student may or may not pick up on, mastery learning provides smaller chunks of information, frequent assessments as to whether or not that material is being mastered, and then adaptations along the way

bridge the gap. Since the technologies behind MOOCs allow faculty to increase their productivity and reach more students, we were able to implement mastery learning at scale and make it very affordable. It’s turned out to be a huge development that’s changed the conversation about the costs of higher education, the means for educational delivery and the roles of instructors and students.

7. BEYOND MOOC S , WHAT EDUCATIONAL INNOVATIONS LOOM ON THE HORIZON FOR TECH? I’ll say the thing that’s got us most excited at the moment is the idea of new kinds of degrees and certifications. If you’ve been looking at LinkedIn or any of the places that are providing some form of endorsement for people’s knowledge, skill or expertise, you see the market place is thirsting for more granular information about what students have learned when they get through a particular program.

However, LinkedIn allows anyone to endorse you for being an expert in project management, whether or not you actually are. Faculty members provide endorsements for students, but they never show up on an official transcript.

9. WHAT ELSE DO YOU SEE CHANGING AT TECH? There’s a lot more that I can’t talk about, that’s still under wraps, but generally Tech will be shifting its focus to meeting the needs of lifetime learners. I envision a whole new class of educational products that few have ever talked about before—not degrees, not anything that would be familiar as an educational product— that would represent Georgia Tech’s lifetime investment in the success of our students. We want to be able to better serve students coming back into Georgia Tech at various points in their lives and, of course, deliver very different experiences than they had as undergraduates.

10. ANY LAST IDEAS THAT ARE CLEARLY OUTSIDE-THE-BOX? One idea we think about a lot is: What does it mean for Georgia Tech to have a presence in the world? A physical campus model doesn’t make a lot of sense because you can’t stand up brick-and-mortar schools every place that there’s a congregation of Tech or wannabe Tech students. But there are different ways to think about how learners can be networked and to give them access to a Tech education and Tech facilities.

We’re not exactly sure what the model would be, but it could dramatically change the Institute’s master plan.

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On the Field MAKING THE BIG LEAGUES The Atlanta Braves and their MLB foes aren’t the only teams that get to play baseball in the brand-new SunTrust Park in Cobb County. The Georgia Tech Yellow Jackets and rival Georgia Bulldogs men’s baseball squads had the privilege of squaring off for a special spring game at this innovative facility, which many Tech alumni helped build and bring to completion.

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Danny Karnik

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ON THE FIELD

Raising Quite a Racket

I

BY ROGER SLAVENS

Tech tennis star Christopher Eubanks has stood out in the collegiate ranks with his hard serve—and his even harder work ethic.

IT’S BEEN QUITE A SEASON of accolades and achievements for one of the Institute’s top student-athletes, Christopher Eubanks.

The Yellow Jacket junior recently netted the ACC Men’s Tennis Player of the Year honors for the second year in a row, received Intercollegiate Tennis Association All-American honors and won the 2017 National Division I ITA/Arthur Ashe Leadership and Sportsmanship Award. In fact, Eubanks has been ranked among the top 10 men’s collegiate players since April 2016.

Late this spring, Eubanks also made it to the quarterfinals of the NCAA championships—the furthest he’s ever advanced in the tournament.

And this summer he’ll play in several professional tournaments to test his mettle against the next level of tennis aces.

The Alumni Magazine caught up with Eubanks to find out what drives him as a student-athlete, and what he plans to do for his finale as a senior.

WHAT HAS DRIVEN YOU TO BECOME ONE OF THE TOP COLLEGIATE TENNIS PLAYERS IN THE COUNTRY? It’s probably cliché to say, but hard work and dedication have driven me to do many of the things that I have accomplished so far in college tennis—specifically my drive to not allow anyone else to work harder than me in the sport. Still, if I didn’t have the proper support team behind me, then it would be much more difficult to succeed. Georgia Tech and the Athletic Association have

provided my teammates and me with a tremendous amount of support to help us flourish.

WHY DID YOU CHOOSE TO STUDY AND PLAY AT GEORGIA TECH? Georgia Tech immediately felt like home. And not just because I’m from Atlanta, but also because of the overall feel that I got the moment I stepped on campus. Everyone from the academic advisors to the medical staff to the professors whom I spoke with on campus all made it seem like they wanted to help me become the best version of myself. That, combined with the opportunity to play tennis in my hometown and work with coaches that I felt could develop my game, made the decision a no-brainer.

WHAT HAVE BEEN YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGES IN BALANCING THE ACADEMIC RIGORS AT TECH AND THE COMMITMENT EXCELLENCE AS A TENNIS PLAYER? Balancing being a student-athlete here is definitely difficult. (There’s no getting around that.) But if there’s something Tech has taught me, it’s patience and time management. Having to manage academia with the strenuous practice schedules that I have, as well as the goals that I have set for myself, continues to be challenging but it’s well worth it.

“Balancing being a student and athlete here is definitely difficult,” Eubanks says. “If there’s something Tech has taught me, it’s patience and time management. ”

the

BASELINE

#16

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HOLE IN WHICH alumnus Matt Kuchar hit a hole-in-one during the final round of The Masters

63

THE NUMBER OF student-athletes who graduated from Tech at Spring 2017 commencement

way to get me out of the house was to take me to the courts to watch him practice with my dad, and after they finished up, my dad would work with me. I began to learn to play at about age 2.

WHEN DID YOU GET SERIOUS ABOUT PLAYING TENNIS, AND AT WHAT POINT DID YOU KNOW YOU WERE GOING TO PLAY IN COLLEGE AND PERHAPS EVEN PROFESSIONALLY? As I got older, and my brother went off to college, my dad began to focus more and more on me and really helped provide me with my base and game style that I have today. Not only that, but he also instilled the discipline and work ethic that I have now. For the most part, I’ve always been serious about tennis. I knew it was something that I could be very good at and wanted to do everything in my power to maximize that potential. I always said as a kid that I wanted to play professional, but as I got older, it became more and more obvious that going to college was going to 100 percent be the best play [versus going pro immediately].

That way I could judge how I did at that level, and then decide if it would be smart to take the next step and try the professional ranks afterwards.

WHAT’S BEEN THE MOST IMPORTANT LESSON YOU’VE SO FAR LEARNED AT TECH THAT’S CHANGED YOU AS A STUDENT-ATHLETE? The most important lesson that I’ve learned at Tech recently has been some debunking of leadership myths. I’m a business administration major and I took a class with Bob Thomas at the Scheller College of Business this past semester in which we investigated what makes a person an effective servant leader. The saying goes that you should treat others the way you want to be treated—but that’s not necessarily good. I learned you should treat others the way they want to be treated, which means you have to spend time getting to know them and understand what motivates them. That really rang true for me, and I’m trying to put it into practice since I want to become a better leader.

HOW AND WHEN DID YOU GET INVOLVED IN SPORTS GROWING UP? I am the youngest of two sons, and when I came along, my older brother was already firmly involved in tennis. One

1:47.32 Danny Karnik

NEW 800M Georgia Tech record time set by runner Avery Bartlett

DESCRIBE YOUR STRENGTHS AND WEAKNESSES AS A PLAYER. WHY HAVE YOU BEEN SO DOMINANT IN COLLEGE? HOW DO YOU THINK YOU CAN GET BETTER? I would definitely have to say that my serve and forehand are my two biggest weapons.

Not very many tennis players are fortunate to be as tall as I am [6’7”], so making sure that I continue to make my serve even better has always been a priority and will continue to be a priority.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR YOU? WHAT ARE YOUR ULTIMATE GOALS AS A TENNIS PLAYER? I will be focusing on playing more professional tournaments throughout the summer and into the fall. I have about six pro tournaments lined up as of now for the months of June and July. Hopefully, I’ll be able to use those tournaments as a measuring tool to reinforce that I am not far off from my goal of becoming a full-time pro player—and eventually a perennial top 10 men’s singles star and, hopefully one day, a Grand Slam Champion.

4th

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ON THE FIELD TWO YELLOW JACKETS VIE FOR COLLEGE FOOTBALL HALL OF FAME

TECH ATHLETES SHINE IN CLASSROOM GEORGIA TECH ATHLETICS continues to excel in the NCAA Academic Progress Rate (APR), the annual scorecard of academic achievement calculated for all Division I sports teams. APR measures eligibility, graduation and retention each semester or academic term and provides a clear picture of the academic

performance for each team in every sport.

In the latest APR data, four Georgia Tech teams (women’s cross country, men’s golf, men’s swimming and diving, and women’s volleyball) posted perfect multiyear scores of 1,000, and each of the Yellow Jackets’ 15 programs came in at 963 or higher.

MADDIE PASCHAL ENJOYS SWIMMINGLY GOOD SENIOR YEAR YELLOW JACKET SWIMMER MADDIE PASCHAL, BA 17, excelled in the pool and in the classroom her senior year. She set Tech’s school record in the 100 women’s backstroke at the ACC Championships this spring, and recorded the third-best time on the team in the 200 backstroke while also serving as a member of both the 200 and 400 medley record setting relay teams this season. Paschal also

deservedly earned a spot on the All-ACC Academic Team, after posting a 3.48 cumulative grade point average. Paschal’s senior year culminated in winning the L.W. “Chip” Roberts Award, which is given to the top Tech senior student-athlete in academics, athletics and campus life.

A HELLUVA SEASON FOR MEN’S LACROSSE TEAM FOR THE SECOND YEAR IN A ROW, the Georgia Tech men’s lacrosse team won the SouthEastern Lacrosse Conference championship and advanced to the National Semifinals of the Men’s Collegiate Lacrosse Association (MCLA), compiling a 17-2 record during the 2017 season. In addition, three Yellow Jackets were named to the MCLA All-American First Team: defender Will Byars, attacker Brian Connolly and midfielder Holland Frost.

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FORMER GEORGIA TECH FOOTBALL STARS MARCO COLEMAN, CLS 95, AND CALVIN JOHNSON, CLS 08, are among 75 former NCAA Division I FBS student-athletes included on the ballot for induction to the College Football Hall of Fame in 2018, according to the National Football Foundation (NFF).

Marco Coleman was a three-year starter and two-time first-team all-ACC and All-American selection as an outside linebacker at Georgia Tech from 1989-91. He was a key member of the Yellow Jackets’ 1990 national championship squad and finished his threeyear collegiate career as Tech’s all-time leader in sacks (27.5) and tackles for loss (50).

One of the most successful wide receivers in the history of college and pro football, Calvin Johnson was a three-time all-conference honoree and two-time first-team all-American during his three-year Georgia Tech career (2004-06). He caught 178 passes for 2,927 yards and 28 touchdowns in three seasons as a Yellow Jacket, and still holds six school records. After winning the Biletnikoff Award and Paul Warfield Trophy—both presented to college football’s top wide receiver—as a senior in 2006, Johnson was selected by the Detroit Lions with the No. 2 pick in the 2007 NFL Draft.

The Hall’s Class of 2018 will be announced on Jan. 8, 2018, in Atlanta, prior to the College Football Playoff national championship game at Mercedes-Benz Stadium. Fifteen former Tech student-athletes and three former coaches are already inducted in the Hall of Fame.

In the World

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Roger Slavens

BREAK OUT YOUR JAMS Using the free EarSketch program developed by Georgia Tech faculty, an ordinary personal or school computer can be turned into a recording studio of sorts and teach students how to create their own original music—all through the power of computer programming.

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IN THE WORLD

Using Music to Crack the Code

I

BY MELISSA FRALICK

Tech faculty developed EarSketch to get high-school students across the country excited about computer programming.

IT’S LONG BEEN UNDERSTOOD that music helps us learn. Remember School House Rock? Setting intimidating subjects like grammar with catchy tunes made them easier for generations of kids to digest and retain.

Adjusted for a 21st century curriculum, the same concept has been applied to computer programming with great results by a team from Georgia Tech. Jason Freeman, a professor in the School of Music, and Brian Magerko, an associate professor in the School of Literature, Media and Communication, created a unique software program called EarSketch, which teaches students computer coding by allowing them to compose their own songs.

“Computer science has traditionally been taught in a way that’s very abstract and doesn’t excite a lot of students, and doesn’t really show the power of computing to touch all the different areas of our lives,” Freeman says.

But after surveying high school students, Freeman learned that what they do get excited about is music, with most listening for one to two hours every day.

“Music is a major part of their lives. We wanted to tap into that, in a way they could harness some of that excitement into learning computer science,” Freeman says.

So the idea for EarSketch was born as a way to blend coding with music production, using an interface similar to Apple’s popular Garage Band program.

Geared toward high school students, the program requires no previous experience with music or computer programming—but provides users with a creative way to learn about both.

The building blocks of the software are short snippets of sound known as “loops” that were created by electronic musicians. Freeman says all

the loops in EarSketch were created by professional electronic musicians, including Richard Devine and Young Guru, an audio engineer known for his work with hip-hop artists like Jay Z. Students can then pick and choose from thousands of loops in a music library to make their own songs. But the catch is that in order to put the sounds together, they must write code using either JavaScript or Python, the two coding languages that the software teaches.

“They’re learning a real programming language. It’s not some sandbox they’re learning in, it’s a real language that’s used throughout the industry. They can take those skills directly into another learning environment or eventually into a job,” Freeman says.

All of the loops were designed to fit together, so that the result doesn’t sound totally dissonant, even coming from a novice. In the end, students have composed their own song in a style that they are passionate about, from dubstep to electronica to hip-hop.

“I think contextualizing computing into something very personal and expressive and creative is a really powerful thing to do,” Freeman says.

The program was first created in 2011, and after a few years of pilot studies, it was released online in 2014. The program, which is supported by the National Science Foundation, is free to use.

“Music is a major part of their lives,” Freeman says. “We wanted to tap into that, in a way they could harness some of that excitement into learning computer science.”

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to learn about coding and that it has particularly strong impacts on female students,” Freeman says. “This is important given the long-standing problems we’ve seen with gender balance in the tech industry and in computer science education.”

Pam Whitlock, a computer science teacher at Chattahoochee High School in Fulton County, has incorporated EarSketch into her own AP Computer Science Principles class. She says the musical aspect of the software makes it appealing to students who are intimidated by coding.

“The thing I probably like the best about it is when you have new programmers coming in, they have this preconceived notion of what a programmer is supposed to be like or how challenging it’s supposed to be,” Whitlock says. “But everybody likes music.

Before they knew it, they EarSketch creator Jason Freeman (top) teaches high-school students how to use the software to write code for creating their own, original music. were doing some really In the years since, Freeman says the EarSketch team has complex coding but in a really non-intimidating tool that formed active partnerships with metro Atlanta school districts they were getting really great results from.”

—including Fulton, Gwinnett, DeKalb, Cherokee and Clayton Likewise, Whitlock says EarSketch has also been counties—for teachers to use the program in their classrooms. beneficial for her students who are already computer enCurrently, more than 11,000 students are using EarSketch thusiasts. “EarSketch pushed them to be more creative,” each month, with many of those being high school students Whitlock says. “It really pushed them out of their comin Advanced Placement (AP) Computer Science Princifort zone.” ples classes. Indeed, EarSketch has found an audience well In 2016, EarSketch was highlighted by the Obama Adoutside of Atlanta, with students from approximately 300 ministration’s “Computer Science For All” initiative. schools in all 50 states and more than 100 countries.

Freeman says the researchers behind EarSketch—an Since the software was introduced, Freeman and his team interdisciplinary Georgia Tech team including memhave spent many hours observing in classrooms and studybers from the Center for Music Technology; Center ing how students learn and interact with their software, and for Education Integrating Science, Mathematics and the findings have been quite interesting. According to their Computing (CEISMC); Digital Media; and the College data, before female students begin studying EarSketch in of Computing—are working on the next version of class, they tend to be much less engaged than male students. the software, which will make it easier for students to But by the end of their training, they’ve gained so much in collaborate. these engagement measures that they have either matched “It’s a great example of how projects of this scale are or surpassed their male peers. beyond the expertise of any one person or department,” “What we’ve found through our research with students in Freeman says. “It’s a moving target and we’re always trymetro Atlanta is that this is a really exciting way for students ing to get better.”

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DOLLARS & SENSE

Plane Ambition

I

BY OSAYI ENDOLYN

Robert Milton, IM 83, turned his childhood obsession with airplanes into a career leading some of the world’s biggest airlines. His latest challenge? Helping to get United Airlines on course.

IT’S NOT UNCOMMON for kids to become obsessed with airp l a n e s . A f te r a l l , t h e s e s l e e k , m e ta l m a ch i n e s d e f y g rav i ty a n d s o a r through the heavens. Some of us even dream that, one day, we’ll grow up to pilot them. However, when Robert Milton, IM 83, was a young boy, he didn’t want to have his hands on the throttles of a jet—he wanted to run a major airline.

Thanks to his father, David, IE 58, whose career was in international business, Milton spent his youth living in Europe and Asia—and more than his fair share of time at airports.

If you believe the family lore, which he is more than happy to indulge, Milton says his late mother

would regularly tell people that his first word wasn’t “mommy” or “daddy,” but “airplane.” As a youngster, he was always looking for them in the sky and learned to distinguish a wide variety of airplane types, and the airlines they belonged to, on sight.

One time, at no more than 6 years old, Milton became so upset with his parents, he decided to run away from home—like so many children do. But his threat was different: He packed his luggage and confidently told them he was leaving to catch a flight from Hong Kong’s Kai-Tak airport to Jakarta on Garuda Indonesian Airlines. “I’d never actually flown on that airline,” he says, “but I’d seen their advertisements.”

Milton has definitely racked up a few miles over the decades—in the air and at the helm of several aviation businesses—to achieve his long-held dreams. Just last year, he was named chairman of United Continental

“My whole career, I watched frequent CEO changes at United, as it seemingly lurched from one crisis to another,” Milton says.

“But like anyone who followed and understood this company, I knew its potential was enormous.”

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Holdings, parent company of United Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the world.

Previously, Milton became Air Canada’s CEO in 1999, just seven years after joining the company, and at the time the youngest ever big airline chief executive. Then from 2005-06, Milton served as the youngest ever chairman of the board of governors at the International Air Transport Association, and over the span of his career he has also served on the boards of global airlines such as TAP Portugal, AirAsia (Malaysia) and US Airways.

It has not always been a smooth ride. Milton has led the charge through arguably one of the most difficult times in airline industry history—an industry that’s prone to turbulence as a matter of course. During his time as CEO of Air Canada, he fought off a hostile takeover led

by American Airlines and supported by the Canadian government, and led the company through the terror attacks on 9/11, and the SARS virus outbreak (which hit Air Canada’s key Toronto hub).

The company he now chairs, United Airlines, has hit some particularly rough air of late, much of it due to the ever-increasing scrutiny of air travelers and the ever-growing power of social media and the 24/7 news cycle.

But Milton has never backed down from a challenge, and he’s confident he can help the carrier move forward.

THE GOOD BOOK Long before the board meetings, governmental interactions and shareholder reports, Milton was a teenage kid living in Singapore and armed with an OAG (Official Airline Guide) book.

Decades ago, long before passengers could book flights online, airlines printed their monthly schedules in telephone book-sized catalogs for airlines, travel agents and their top customers—frequent business travelers like Milton’s father. The teenager found something tantalizing about these intricate schedules, and he pored through the books, memorizing all the options.

If someone wanted the best deal going from Jakarta to Amsterdam, he could tell them how to book their ticket. London to Tokyo? Shanghai to Athens? Singapore to New Delhi?

“There weren’t as many flights in those days,” he demures. His attempt at modesty doesn’t distract: The boy

Richard Boll

was a travel-centric Doogie Howser.

“My parents’ friends would call and ask about the best fares, routings, aircraft and airlines,” he says. “I was this geeky, quasi-travel agent that everybody knew they could call to find out the best prices and routings.”

When college came around, Milton had two goals for picking a university. First, he was determined to study in the United States. Second, he wanted to be near one of the two busiest airports in the world—and at that time, in 1978, that meant either Chicago O’Hare or Atlanta Hartsfield. He quickly narrowed his options to the University of Chicago and Georgia Tech.

He gladly accepted the offer at Tech, strangely having never heard from his other choice. Weeks after his classes started in Atlanta, however, a high school boarding house friend back in Singapore telephoned and relayed that a thick envelope had arrived from The University of Chicago. It was an

admissions packet with an offer, sent not by airmail, but by laughably slow seamail. Milton was destined to become a Yellow Jacket.

At Tech, Milton focused on business.

The airline industry may have been his calling, but he was never interested in engineering or flying. To this day, though he’s taken several flight courses on the operation of Airbuses and Boeings for familiarity purposes, Milton is content to leave the piloting to those who love to do it. For him, the joy lives in an airline’s operation. He lives for the intricate details.

There is much to get right, to make an airline work, Milton says. “Fundamentally, while one aspires to run a great operation, accomplishing this is for nought if you don’t fly the right planes to the right places at the right times while charging the right fares all with an all-encompassing obsession for safety.” This jigsaw puzzle was what appealed to Milton.

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DOLLARS & SENSE “Today, so much of the airline business is ruled by optimization algorithms,” Milton says. “When I started, the optimization was done by taking a pencil and paper and drawing lines city by city to schedule each individual airplane.”

AN EARLY START During Milton’s senior year at Tech, his father gifted him enough cash to buy a car. But he skipped the car lot and negotiated a lease on a six-seat airplane instead. Yes, at age 22, he started his own aviation company.

He and his best friend from high school contracted pilots and marketed delivery services, flying small packages for courier companies to smaller cities. “If I had the experience I have today, I would never had started that company,” Milton says. “We had no money and though we endeavored to provide terrific service, ultimately, there was nothing unique about what we were offering.”

Yet, with time, the business grew, and after five years the company flew a total of 25 airplanes. And then Milton sold the operation to a large commuter carrier.

Milton’s early success piqued the interest of others in the industry, and he parlayed that enthusiasm into several consulting roles before meeting Joel Cowan, IM 58, a friend of his father’s. Milton owes a debt to Cowan for introducing him to legendary airline executive Hollis Harris, AE 61, who led three different airlines: Delta, Continental and Air Canada.

“Joel said something like, ‘You’re crazy enough about airplanes to where I have to introduce you to Hollis’,” Milton says. “Hollis Harris was a truly wonderful man, and he gave me the greatest career shot anyone could ever receive, and for this I will be forever grateful.”

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Richard Boll

FLYING NORTH In 1993, Milton followed Harris to Montreal to work with his new mentor at Air Canada. “Hollis also was an airplane nut, and as I look back, I know he took me under his wing to a degree because he was amused by my airline obsession,” Milton says. “He was experienced, wise and sympathetic, but wouldn’t suffer nonsense, delay or inaction.”

Milton says Air Canada, which had only recently been privatized, was already on the verge of a bankruptcy filing when he moved north. Since Harris had to manage ongoing crises with the banks and the government, he gave Milton more and more responsibility. Milton pushed through change, expanding flight schedules and driving up productivity. Harris liked the changes, and with them the profitability that came.

By 1995, Milton became COO of Air Canada, and by 1999, at age 39, he was named CEO. “The best job I’ve ever had was as COO at Air Canada,” Milton admits. “In that role, you don’t have to worry about banks or insurance or government, you just got to run the airline.”

When asked about his proudest recollection of his time at Air Canada, it’s not surprising he goes to puzzle-solving skills. Without hesitation he answers: “Over those so many years, the people of Air Canada got every single passenger to their destination safely.”

Milton retired as Air Canada’s chairman in 2008, at which time he and his family moved to England. The pressures on a big airline CEO are fairly unique, and sensing life was whizzing past, he wanted to spend more time with his family. So, he decelerated a bit and took on roles as an investor and board member of companies owned by friends—roles that didn’t face the constant churn and public scrutiny of running an airline.

A UNITED FRONT Still, he couldn’t stay out of the airline business for too long. With his long, successful track record in the industry, Milton was asked to join the board of United Continental Holdings in March 2016, and to be chairman

shortly thereafter.

For the better part of 20 years, Milton had observed United through the lens of being a partner in Star Alliance.

“My whole career, I watched frequent CEO changes at United, as it seemingly lurched from one crisis to another. But like anyone who followed and understood this company, I knew its potential was enormous,” Milton says.

“Nowadays, as I chat with employees, whether on the ground, or in the air, it is so readily apparent how many wonderful people—truly airline knowledgeable, experienced and capa-

Facebook. Initial responses from United CEO Oscar Munoz were viewed as tepid and evaded the company’s managerial responsibility, which didn’t help matters much.

Milton says his role during such challenges is to shepherd the input of board members. “When things get tough as they have been,” he says, “the chairman and the board must try and find the right balance of involvement, input, support and, if required, direction. I am confident this is what we have been doing, and will do, as we move forward.”

Having weathered more than 30 years in this volatile business, Milton takes the long view and isn’t easily discouraged by the turbulent ups and downs of the airline industry. ble people—comprise our workforce of 87,000 strong. They deserve stability and a coherent strategy, and I am confident that this is exactly what we’re striving to provide today.”

Milton says since the merger of United and Continental, the combined carrier is viewed to have under-performed its peers both operationally and financially, but today’s team is working to dramatically change this.

In today’s age of social media scrutiny, however, he soon remembered how challenging running an airline can be.

Earlier this year, United took a hit from “LeggingsGate,” when two young girls with complimentary company passes were refused boarding privileges because of their attire. More infamously, weeks later, a man refused to deplane so a crewmember could take his paid seat. The man was summarily dragged off the aircraft by Chicago airport security, bloodied and appearing unconscious in a video taken by a fellow passenger.

Both incidents went viral and the public quickly turned on the airline with a vicious outcry on Twitter and

Having weathered more than 30 years in this volatile business, Milton takes the long view and isn’t easily discouraged by the turbulent ups and downs of the airline industry.

In addition to his role chairing United Continental Holdings, he’s found numerous ways to transform his aviation interests into new, fruit-bearing opportunities—as well as opportunities to give back. Milton sits on the board of the Smithsonian National Air and Space Museum, serves as a trustee of the Georgia Tech Foundation, and has invested in low-cost carriers started by friends in both Malaysia and Brazil. Meanwhile, he sponsors up to 10 students annually with full academic scholarships to universities and schools around the world, including Georgia Tech.

Milton has even seen his influence on the airline industry come full circle.

“I recently found out that an employee I hired back in 1983—when we were both setting out on our careers—has just retired as a Boeing 747 captain,” Milton says. “Sometimes the reality of how long I have been at this hits me like a slap to the face.”

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YOUNG ALUMNI

Futures Filled with Promise

BY KRISTEN BAILEY

Three Promise Scholarship recipients just “got out” of Tech debt free and with the world at their feet.

IN 2007, MILTON JAMES was starting high school in Washington, Ga. He didn’t know it, but some people already had students like him in mind for Georgia Tech.

It was students such as James, IE 17, who inspired the creation of the G. Wayne Clough Georgia Tech Promise Scholarship program 10 years ago. Tech Promise makes it possible for academically qualified in-state students with family incomes below $33,300 (150 percent of the federal poverty level) to earn a Georgia Tech degree debt-free.

“I was shocked,” James says of learning he had earned the scholarship. He applied to Tech because he saw it as the most prestigious school in Georgia, not knowing that Tech Promise existed. It would be an ideal solution: As an honor graduate from a school that produced few, James had been encouraged to look at Ivy League universities that could offer hefty financial aid. He also had out-of-state schools scouting him for football. But James wanted to be closer to home to be near his mother, who is on dialysis.

Tech Promise made that possible.

“I knew college was this thing I was supposed to do, but didn’t know how I would do it,” he says.

For HEATHER JOHNSTON, PP 17, the scholarship was a surprise for a different reason. Her sister, Crystal, was already a student and Tech Promise scholar at Tech, so she knew about

the program, but she thought the door had closed as an option for her.

“I wasn’t supposed to have an application in at Tech,” she says. “I was applying Milton James, IE 17 to schools through another financial aid program and you had to withdraw applications from any schools that weren’t part of it. I had called to make sure my application at Tech had Heather Johnston, PP 17 been withdrawn, but then I got my acceptance letter anyway.”

After her sister left for college and her parents split up, Johnston had taken on much of the burden of caring for her Jerry Lin, BME 17 brother and father while also attending high school in Blue Ridge. She worried about leaving them to come to Tech but took the scholarship (and encouragement from her sister) as a sign she had to go. She came to Tech wanting to study something that would let her make a difference.

“I think that’s why I’m interested in recycling. Everything is more valuable when you grow up poor and don’t

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have anything,” she says. “I was interested in issues of economics and the environment, and I can tackle both through public policy.”

JERRY LIN, BME 17, was attracted to Georgia Tech for its prestige. He looked at other schools, but academics and Tech Promise brought him here.

“I knew my family didn’t have a lot of disposable income, and I was kind of on my own with it,” he says. Lin estimates he applied for between 30 and 40 scholarships in high school, thanks to help from high school guidance counselors who sent out lists of opportunities.

“A lot of people just apply only to big name scholarships, and I got one of those, but the smaller local ones stack up even if each one is only a little bit,” he says. “And Tech Promise covered the rest.”

With their debt-free college experiences behind them, these graduates are getting ready for their next chapter.

Lin picked up a minor in scientific engineering and computing, which helped him discover a love for engineering that outweighed his earlier career aspirations in medicine. In the fall, he’ll move to Washington, D.C., to work as a software quality assurance engineer with Applied Predictive Technologies.

As for Johnston, she has had numerous internships, her favorite being a stint in Washington, D.C., through the Energy on the Hill program. Now that she’s applying to full-time jobs, she’s setting new financial goals—long-term, buy her dad a house; short-term, plan a wedding. Johnston’s fiancé, also a Tech graduate, proposed last fall on the roof of Clough Commons.

James graduated after six years at Tech, where he was a member of the Honors Program, the National Society of Black Engineers, and GIFTED ministry. After graduation, James will stay in Atlanta to work at The Home Depot’s corporate headquarters in Smyrna. He plans to stay involved on campus, in particular through Mentor Jackets.

Rob Felt

EVERY GIFT HAS A PURPOSE

Continue the tradition and make a difference for outstanding students, world-class programs, and the value of your Georgia Tech degree.

MAKE YOUR GIFT TO THE 70TH ROLL CALL:

gtalumni.org/giving

ROLL CALL, GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION | 190 NORTH AVE. ATLANTA, GA 30313 | 404-894-0756

The 70th Roll Call ends June 30, 2017.

Volume 93 No. 2 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 45

ON THE JOB

Solving Atlanta’s Traffic Problems

T

BY JOSHUA STEWART

Tech alumni are helping drivers survive the daily commute— and unexpected disasters like the I-85 bridge collapse.

THE NEXT TIME you’re sitting at a red light and cursing at Atlanta traffic, remember: It could always be worse.

In fact, it would be worse for a number of major commuting corridors in the Atlanta area if not for the efforts of two Georgia Tech civil engineering alumni who are involved in a pacesetting state program to make traffic flow more smoothly.

“Sometimes we joke that we only hear about our job when things are bad, not necessarily when things are good,” says Sean Coleman, CE 04, a traffic operations and intelligent transportation systems engineer at design firm Kimley-Horn. “That’s one of the difficulties in what we do—that we’re not going to please everybody. We can’t. Not every signal can be green at all times.”

Maybe not. But with detailed analysis and study of a congested traffic corridor, Coleman and fellow Yellow Jacket and Kimley-Horn engineer Alvin James, CE 01, MS CE 04, can adjust signal timings so traffic flows at its absolute optimum. That means people can get where they’re going just a bit more quickly, even if they still have to sit at a red light from time to time.

“Sometimes we can make a difference for a lot of people very quickly all at once,” Coleman says. “If somebody gets home a couple minutes early every single day, and you

multiply that by thousands and thousands of people on one road, those benefits really add up.”

Coleman and James say the Regional Transportation Operations Program (RTOP), which was created six years ago by the Georgia Department of Transportation, has saved more than $100 million in time and fuel. It also has increased the number of vehicles moving along these corridors at peak times by 20 percent and saved 3.5 million gallons of gas.

It’s also a system that’s designed to adapt on the fly to routine problems in the region’s transportation network or—as in the case of the Interstate 85 collapse in March— outright catastrophes. Teams of people worked through the night after the heavily traveled interstate bridge fell to develop signal-timing plans to handle the traffic detoured around the collapse, Coleman says.

“The traffic dispersion from I-85 among the surface street network would’ve been much more painful and created more of a strain on the network if the GDOT program was not in place,” he says.

CUTTING-EDGE APPROACH Traffic signal timing may not be new, but the GDOT’s RTOP is near revolutionary. Instead of an individual city or county working to optimize signal timing along one of its busy roads, GDOT’s program optimizes them along an entire corridor, regardless of political boundaries. It’s an important difference in a metropolis like Atlanta, where a commuting route may cross through several different cities in two or three counties to get people from the suburbs to employment centers and back again.

“What GDOT is doing is really cutting edge,” James says.

RTOP involves a number of consultant teams working for GDOT on different routes that the agency has designated as regionally significant. Think

“The traffic dispersion from I-85 among the surface street network would’ve been much more painful and created more of a strain on the network if the GDOT program was not in place,” Coleman says.

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Sean Coleman, CE 04, a traffic operations and intelligent transportation systems engineer at Kimley-Horn, works with his colleague Bing Zhang, MS CE 14, to test traffic signal equipment and signal timing databases in the Kimley-Horn Advanced Signal Timing Lab.

major state roads like Peachtree Street in Atlanta or State Route 141 that runs from northeast Atlanta up into Gwinnett County and Johns Creek. Altogether, the program involves more than 1,200 traffic signals in the metro Atlanta area. It also involves more Georgia Tech civil engineers than James and Coleman. Many of the Georgia DOT staff involved in managing and growing RTOP are relatively recent graduates.

The program goes beyond just designing the best signal timing for a route. The engineering teams also install and maintain advanced technology to monitor and improve traffic flow, and they actively manage the corridors each day, watching for problems and making adjustments.

“What this program is doing is squeezing every single ounce out of the system,” Coleman says, “which ends up showing a return on investment that is just gigantic.

Signal timing can see upwards of roughly a 50-to-1 return on investment in terms of what benefits you get when you just optimize what you already have.”

RTOP has worked so well across the region that Colem a n a n d Ja m e s Alvin James, CE 01, MS CE 04, works with other engiare working with neers at Kimley-Horn to optimize traffic signal timing GDOT to take the along entire Atlanta metro area corridors.

Courtesy of Kimley-Horn

same principles and implement them in Downtown Atlanta and the Perimeter area at the top end of Interstate 285. These congested business districts see tens of thousands of workers pour in each day, deal with periods of heavy pedestrian activity, and then transition to residential or entertainment districts in the evening.

“With RTOP, you can help get people into and out of these business districts faster,” Coleman says. “But if that last mile is still a nightmare, it’s not a positive experience.

These traffic programs in Downtown, Midtown and the Perimeter are helping improve that last mile for commuters and residents in their vehicles, on their bikes or on their feet.”

A NATIONAL MODEL Twenty percent more vehicles. $100 million saved in time and gas. A 50-to-1 return on investment. They’re eye-popping numbers that make the approach an easy sell. James says they’re also attracting the attention of other transportation departments around the country who see GDOT’s efforts as a model they can copy.

James and Coleman say that it’s rewarding work that they were well-prepared by their Tech degree to tackle. “Georgia Tech taught me to be a critical thinker and a problem solver and that’s what this is,” Coleman says. “It’s problem-solving the traffic signal system and making improvements that impact people’s lives.”

Adds James: “We go through our design and our calculations and we come up with a game plan of what we want to implement, then we implement it, and we see the almost immediate impacts on traffic. You can literally see your job making a difference.”

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DYNAMIC DUOS THESE SIX GEORGIA TECH FACULTY-STUDENT PAIRS NOT ONLY REPRESENT THE BEST THE INSTITUTE HAS TO OFFER, BUT ALSO ILLUSTRATE HOW OUTSTANDING TEACHERS AND PUPILS CAN INSPIRE EACH OTHER TO VIRTUALLY LIMITLESS HEIGHTS.

BY ROGER SLAVENS

PHOTOGRAPHY BY KAYLINN GILSTRAP, CHRIS CARDER AND BEN ROLLINS

Great teachers don’t merely impart knowledge, they kindle imaginations, inspire confidence and instill the desire to learn more. Meanwhile, the best and brightest students don’t simply earn passing grades, they ask tough questions and challenge their own preconceptions as they gain understanding and experience.

At Georgia Tech, you’ll find countless examples of worldclass faculty and their star pupils who fit these descriptions to a “T”. But the ones who truly stand out are those helping to redefine the traditional teacher-student relationship.

They’re working together on undergraduate research projects, collaborating on papers and presentations, even testing and perfecting new models of learning.

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On the following pages, you’ll meet six Tech faculty members—each nominated by their colleges for their incredible impact as teachers—who in turn each singled out one of their extraordinary students to showcase. And you’ll quickly realize another trait of great teachers and students—how proud they are of each other and their accomplishments.

F

OR ALMOST A DECADE, Professor Mitchell Walker and student Jason Frieman have been doing nothing less than working to put the first human beings on Mars.

Walker oversees Tech’s High-Power Electric Propulsion Laboratory, where he and his student research team study how to use electricity—rather than chemical fuel—to send rockets into and through space. “With electricity you can achieve exhaust velocities which are much higher than you can get with chemicals,” Walker says. “That means you can make a spacecraft go farther or stay in orbit longer using less fuel while also being much cheaper to operate. I think electric propulsion is the future of space travel, and will drive much of what we will see and do in space over the next 20 to 30 years.”

While Walker’s research has garnered a lot of attention and international awards, at his core he realizes his most important work is molding the next generation of aerospace engineers and scientists, like Frieman. Walker teaches both undergraduate and graduate courses on topics such as thermodynamics and compressible flow, low-speed aerodynamics, and—somewhat surprisingly—technical writing. (Walker strongly believes that future scientists need training in how to present their ideas efficiently and effectively.)

“I first met Jason when he was a sophomore in that Thermodynamics and Compressible Flow class,” Walker says. “He was stellar—top of his class, very bright, always energetic, always engaged and interested in doing his own research outside of class.”

Walker soon invited Frieman to join his lab team, which was mostly made up of grad students. “Jason immediately connected with them, and he wasn’t afraid to take on the hard projects and get them done with only a limited amount of guidance,” Walker says. “I knew he was going to have a great future ahead of him—I just needed to make sure I put him in the right environment and provided him with the right training.”

Under Walker’s wing, Frieman flourished at Tech and stayed on after earning his bachelor’s degree to earn both his master’s and, very recently, his doctorate in aerospace engineering. He just accepted a position to work at the NASA Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, where he will be focusing on testing propulsion systems and rockets on the ground before they’re ready for primetime testing in space.

“I hope to be part of a NASA team that mirrors what was done with the Apollo program, but instead of going to the moon we go to Mars,” Frieman says.

Frieman has come a long way in his 10 years studying at Tech. “I remember taking that first class with Dr. Walker as an undergrad, one that most of us thought of as a weed-out class, and I thought I wasn’t going to cut it,” he says. “I did fine—but I realized how much more I still had to learn. Dr. Walker then took me into his lab and opened me up to a whole new way of learning, hands-on, in a place where I could contribute to real scientific progress.”

Of his professor, Frieman says that they were a “very good yin and yang to each other.” Frieman would focus on the detailed tests and tasks in front of him, while Walker would show him the bigger picture, the birds-eye view of why they were doing the research. “Dr. Walker sees everything—how all the pieces are linked together and how we can push this field forward with our research,” Frieman says.

Walker says his focus as a teacher and researcher isn’t about checking off his own personal goals and responsibilities. “The pipeline for the work we’re doing now is a very long one,” he says. “Today’s students are tomorrow’s scientists and engineers who are going to take the work to completion. What I’m focused on is teaching them the fundamentals so they can rise to the next level.”

Perhaps even more critical is teaching students how to handle failure. “In a lab like mine, there are more failures than successes,” Walker says. “These students, if they move forward in the field, are going to have hundreds if not thousands of failures. It’s my job to teach them how to handle these failures and push through until they find success.”

Frieman says Walker has given him countless opportunities for growth during his time at Tech. “I wouldn’t have earned my PhD or be going to work at NASA Glenn without him.”

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Chris Carder

DYNAMIC DUOS

ROCKET SCIENTISTS MITCHELL WALKER, PROFESSOR OF AEROSPACE ENGINEERING JASON FRIEMAN, AE 12, MS AE 14, PHD AE 17 COLLEGE OF ENGINEERING

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A

LGORITHMS RULE DANA RANDALL’S PROFESSIONAL LIFE, but not in the way that many people might expect. Instead of dealing with the nuts-andbolts of traditional data mining and analytics, she instead looks beyond the tactics to tackle more theoretical issues. “My work and research involves the background, foundational science behind developing algorithms and using data,” Randall says.

“It’s often about being able to ask the right questions and making sure we’re collecting the right data.”

As an example, she posits that efforts to optimize a given outcome—like a business decision—may involve a tremendous amount of data. “It might be prohibitively slow to collect, sort and analyze all that data,” she says. “But there might be an approximation to that process—a shortcut of some sort—that could get you close enough to what you’re attempting to do that would be many-fold more efficient. And in this case it could make sense to relax your parameters and not look at every granular bit of data to arrive at your conclusion.”

That’s a lot to digest, but she’s not alone. In fact, in doctorate student Sarah Cannon, Randall has found a kindred spirit and fellow theoretical computer science geek. After earning her bachelor’s degree at Tufts and master’s degree at the University of Oxford, Cannon came to Tech specifically to study in the Institute’s Algorithms, Combinatorics and Optimization program.

Cannon works with Randall on a number of research projects.

“Right now we’re collaborating with some physicists to help them build robotics systems that change shape in a coordinated fashion to achieve a greater, global behavior,” Cannon says. “Using tools from theoretical computer science, we can help them model or predict the behavior of the entire system and understand what will emerge.”

Cannon also serves as a teaching assistant for Honors Discrete Math, a freshman course. “It’s great to see these new students getting really excited about a topic that most people don’t get excited about,” she says.

Her goal is to stay in academia for her career, and she’s watched Randall closely to pick up on her teaching and research leadership techniques. “I want to excel as a teacher,” Cannon says. “The way Dana teaches, interacting with students and getting them engaged and excited about the material, is what I hope to learn to do. ” Last summer, Randall says Cannon took her teaching to a higher level. “We had a very strong undergraduate student and Sarah took it upon herself to mentor her and train her,” Randall says. “We just submitted a joint paper and because of Sarah’s influence, this student got her first taste of being a published academic herself.”

Randall’s praise doesn’t stop there. “Basically, I dream up things to do and Sarah does it all,” she says. “I hit the jackpot—she’s just fearless about research. She’s already earned some of the most prestigious awards in the theoretical computer science field, as well as some for her efforts to promote women in computing, something that’s very important to me.”

Randall serves as the ADVANCE Professor of Computing, and as part of the ADVANCE program, she helps sustain a network of top faculty members at Tech who support the advancement of women and minorities in higher education. “There’s one ADVANCE professor in every college,” Randall says. “It’s really a privilege to get to work with and learn from this group of women, especially when we’re able to turn ideas into policies that will attract more women to campus.”

Already loaded with a full plate as a teacher and researcher, Randall was named the co-executive director of Tech’s Institute for Data Engineering and Science last year. In this role, she’s helping to harness all the data expertise that resides on campus. “It’s a huge advantage for us in that we’re able to put all the pieces together from different areas—our resources and people are really coming together,” she says.

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Ben Rollins

DYNAMIC DUOS

ALGORITHM ACES DANA RANDALL, ADVANCE PROFESSOR OF COMPUTING AND CO-EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE INSTITUTE FOR DATA ENGINEERING AND SCIENCE SARAH CANNON, PHD STUDENT IN ALGORITHMS, COMBINATORICS AND OPTIMIZATION COLLEGE OF COMPUTING Volume 93 No. 2 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 53

I

T SHOULDN’T SURPRISE ANYONE that Flavio Fenton’s CHAOS (Complex Heart Arrhythmias and other Oscillating Systems) Lab is a bit, well, chaotic and messy. After all, Fenton encourages his graduate and undergraduate researchers to undertake any little physics project they desire, even on a whim, even if it’s a tangent.

“One of the things I try do to is allow anyone to touch, learn and do whatever they want in the lab,” says Fenton, who has been a faculty member at Tech since 2012. “Even if a project will likely never turn into a paper or something academically important, we’re here to learn, we’re here to learn how to learn,

and we’re hopefully having fun while we’re doing it.”

Fenton’s approach has earned him awards for teaching at Tech, as well as the respect and love of his students. One of them, recent alumnus Tim Farmer, Phys 17, thrived in the CHAOS lab even though he doesn’t, on first glance, seem like he belongs there.

After a turbulent childhood, and what Farmer describes as a rebellious period as a teenager, he couldn’t do much with the 1.6 grade point average he earned in high school—certainly not get into his dream school of Georgia Tech. So Farmer joined the Navy, and there found the focus and discipline to aim higher, no matter the odds.

“I wanted to do something good with my life, something that would have an impact,” Farmer says.

So he enrolled in engineering at Middle Georgia State University in Macon and immediately excelled. After the urging of his professors to apply for a transfer to Tech, he got in and soon found himself working in Fenton’s CHAOS lab, thanks to PhD student Connor Herndon’s keen eye for talent and commitment.

Farmer has been instrumental in the CHAOS lab’s work studying the physics and math of zebrafish hearts— which are tiny yet share some properties similar to human hearts—and seeing how what they

AGENTS OF CHAOS FLAVIO FENTON, ASSOCIATE PROFESSOR OF PHYSICS, PETIT INSTITUTE FOR BIOENGINEERING AND BIOSCIENCE RESEARCHERS, AND DIRECTOR OF THE CHAOS LAB TIM FARMER, PHYS 17 COLLEGE OF SCIENCES

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Kaylinn Gilstrap

learn about them could be applied to understanding arrhythmias in larger animals, such as humans. For one, Farmer built a lens system for the lab’s camera that helped them view and record the activity of the itty-bitty hearts better.

“We wanted a $20,000 microscope for the work, but Tim was able to piece together a solution for what cost us around $400,” Fenton says. “He just has a special way of identifying a problem or project and then working diligently at it until he solves it.”

Fenton has urged his prized pupil also to participate in writing papers and making presentations about their findings. In fact, Farmer presented at the annual, national American Physical Society (APS)

conference this spring. His work in the classroom, in the lab and with peers from other institutions resulted in numerous offers from other universities to join them as a doctoral student, and he accepted a spot at the University of Southern California, where he’ll start this fall with a focus on high energy, particle physics and gravity.

“Tim has been working really, really hard for a long time—it’s almost like I had another grad student in the lab,” Fenton says. “He definitely has earned this opportunity.”

Fenton has a stellar track record of his students winning awards, getting published, attending conferences, making presentations and generally going

on to do big things after they graduate from Tech.

“When I was in school, my advisor was not too much into that,” Fenton says. “I had no idea there were so many opportunities for students—in fact, the only conference I ever went to as a grad student I paid for myself. So I make sure that my students know what’s available to them, and I push them to take advantage of all of it.”

His recently graduated student certainly appreciates Fenton’s guidance and support. “He’s very enthusiastic about his work, and he generates such a positive atmosphere in the lab,” Farmer says. “It’s something I respect deeply and hope to emulate later in my own career.”

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Kaylinn Gilstrap

DYNAMIC DUOS

OPS EXPERTS

MORVARID RAHMANI, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF OPERATIONS MANAGEMENT HANNAH LEE, MBA 17 SCHELLER COLLEGE OF BUSINESS

A COUPLE YEARS AGO, Morvarid Rahmani was faced with a new directive: Redesign her MBA Operations Management course—one of several core offerings that all MBA students must take—so that she could deliver it in just seven weeks instead of the full 15 weeks (a full semester) she had previously. Some professors might have simply figured out ways to cut down the content to fit in the new period. However, Rahmani instead took the challenge as an opportunity to rethink the entire class and make it even better.

The point of the core classes is to expose MBA students to a wide variety of business topics—to see how they all interconnect—before the students dive into their specific fields of focus. “It was still important to give students a basic overview of operations management, but I had to be more efficient in what content I presented to them and how I presented it,” Rahmani says. “The key was to optimize participation and engagement while having less time for it.”

Rahmani started her new course design by building it on an interactive teaching platform called ForClass, which helped her organize readings, case studies, news stories and multimedia materials so her students could digest them before class. “And when they come into class, the platform lets me know who had read the assignments and how they answered the questions,” she says.

She also set up frequent quizzes and check-ins to gauge how her students were learning, while providing ample opportunities for them to give her feedback on her teaching and what she could do better. “Because it’s mandatory for everyone, and some may feel it is out of their area of interest, I worked hard to keep them engaged in the classroom,” Rahmani says.

Recent graduate Hannah Lee, MBA 17, was in the first cohort of the redesigned classes—all the core MBA courses were scaled down to seven weeks—and she says that Rahmani’s stood out against the rest.

“The new curriculum was very fast paced, but her course was structured in a way that really engaged us and encouraged us to learn about operations management, whether that was our focus or not,” Lee says.

“Professor Rahmani also made herself extremely accessible, not only during class but afterwards. Even more important, she took frequent assessments of the class and was truly interested and invested in student feedback, making changes where necessary.”

Others agree with Lee. Based on overwhelming positive reviews from her MBA students, Rahmani won the 2017 Scheller College of Business Brady Family Award for Teaching Excellence.

Lee adds: “Professor Rahmani was by far my favorite professor during my two years in the Scheller MBA program. She helped me land an internship at The Home Depot and even got me engaged in some research.”

One reason Rahmani was drawn to Lee is because of her non-traditional background. Lee earned her liberal arts degree from Cornell, and had previously served as a member of AmeriCorps, the national nonprofit organization that assigns adults to in-need roles in public service, especially education. “After I served, I was hired by my AmeriCorps host site to help develop operational strategies to connect homeless individuals to sustainable income opportunities,” Lee says. “It was kind of at the intersection of business, health care and law.”

Lee’s desire to apply her MBA education to do social good impressed Rahmani, as did her professional drive. When Lee expressed how she was concerned her background wouldn’t translate to the business world, Rahmani helped her rewrite her resume point by point and advised her on how to talk about her experience and education in a light that would impress potential employers.

It worked. Lee has already landed a job at major technology research firm Gartner. “I wouldn’t have gotten this far without Professor Rahmani,” she says.

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W

AYNE LI doesn’t have the typical background you’d imagine for a college professor. Before joining Georgia Tech, he was an automotive designer for Ford and Volkswagen, and a product designer for home goods retailer Pottery Barn.

Li’s a self-proclaimed gear head who disassembled his first vehicle—a 1964 Mustang—for during high school, and also in his teen years showcased his artwork in galleries in New Orleans and Baton Rouge. It’s not surprising that he holds degrees in both art and engineering.

When Li met Chris Bartlett, he discovered his alter ego of sorts.

Bartlett, too, was a trained artist—a sculptor and metal smith—who also displayed a mechanical bent. He owned and operated a bicycle shop for a couple years, and then landed a position at Louisiana Tech University doing research and development work for a civil engineering lab.

“As I realized that I liked the rigor of R&D work and engineering, I tried to reconcile that with my love of art and people,” Bartlett says.

“That’s exactly what industrial design is—applying design and art and problem solving geared for people. And Georgia Tech had the master’s program that met all those needs.”

After his first year in the program, Bartlett was looking for a summer job and he reached out to Li. “He needed somebody to help him build an automotive lab, somebody who knew cars and knew how to fabricate things,” Bartlett says. “I literally chased him down, introduced myself and passed off my resume to him and he hired me.”

Bartlett was a perfect fit for the demanding project. Like Li, his love and technical knowledge of cars goes way back. “I took apart my first truck before I was legally allowed to drive,” he says.

In 2015, Li and Bartlett started building the lab, which is sponsored by General Motors and built upon a modified 2010 Chevy Malibu interior. “It’s officially called the GM HMI lab, the HMI standing for human machine interface,” Li says. “It allows us to work with students here at Tech to envision how the cars of the future, including autonomous ones, will be designed.”

The GM HMI Lab started off as a driving simulator, says Li, with an emphasis on the design of the car’s interior and how machine and humans (drivers and passengers) interact. “We designed it to test a variety of driving experiences while having the flexibility to change and manipulate the interaction,” Li says. “We’re able to take the car apart—easily—and put it back together in different configurations, such as with or without a steering wheel and with or without pedals, and integrate different interface technologies such as advanced visual displays and even voice controls.”

Li believes that the role of cars in humans’ lives will change dramatically in the future. “With autonomous technologies, cars will be able to do much more than ever before,” he says. “They won’t be unlike a part of the family. You’ll be able to set an alarm and wake your car up with your phone, maybe send it out to McDonald’s for breakfast and even pay for it because it’s equipped with Apple Pay. Meanwhile, you’ve showered and dressed, and when it’s time to head out for work, your Egg McMuffin and coffee are waiting for you.”

Bartlett says the experience—both building the lab and allowing students to test their imaginations against it—showcases Li’s skills as a professor and Tech’s emphasis on collaboration.

“Wayne is a great example of the kind of collaborative educators you find in the School of Industrial Design,” he says. “I wasn’t just brought in to make stuff and solve problems; Wayne and other researchers asked for and valued my opinions on what the lab should do and how it could help students. In some universities, labs become very territorial things, but Wayne made sure the lab wasn’t just his—it belonged to all of us.”

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Kaylinn Gilstrap

DYNAMIC DUOS

GEAR HEADS WAYNE LI, JAMES L. OLIVER PROFESSOR OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN CHRIS BARTLETT, MASTER’S OF INDUSTRIAL DESIGN STUDENT COLLEGE OF DESIGN

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ASSIM JAFARINAIMI is quick to point out that her workspace at Georgia Tech is a “studio” and not a laboratory. “Labs are about the scientific method, while I think studio is a better term for describing the experimentation and getting-your-hands-dirty work with art and design work that we do here,” she says.

“Recently, in this studio, my students and I have been creating art installations for the city of Atlanta,” JafariNaimi says. “We’re working at the intersection of art, philosophy, science, education, digital media and even gaming in thinking how we can address challenging issues—such as advancing social justice or creating more public awareness of science. The city is our material, data is our material, stories are our material.”

For example, this past semester one of JafariNaimi’s studio projects was titled: Sweet Auburn: Birthplace of Ideas, where students examined stories of the civil rights movement and how they shaped social justice issues—past, present and future—in Atlanta. Students then worked on developing different approaches to tell these stories in new ways, such as creating interactive documentaries, through the processes of ideation, critique, prototyping and collaborative design with local communities.

“The project was a counterpart to my class called ‘Critical Theory, Social Justice and Philosophy of Design,’” she says. “We looked at answering such broad topics as ‘What is the nature of justice?’ and ‘What does it mean in relationship to the design of cities, architecture, artifacts and digital media.’ Our discussions and projects ranged from the very philosophical to the very practical, such as how specific features of a city might marginalize certain groups of people, such as those needing public transportation or experiencing homelessness.”

Alyssa Rumsey is one of JafariNaimi’s PhD students. “While a lot of our work resides in the digital media space, it’s not just on digital platforms like social media,” Rumsey says. “Yes, we’re developing mobile apps and websites, but we’re also using affordable, accessible hardware like Arduino and Raspberry Pi computers, and investigating technology like augmented reality where you add digital context—demographic data, history, etc.—to physical reality.”

Rumsey came to Tech specifically because of JafariNaimi’s pioneering work in what many consider an esoteric field. “I was looking at different PhD programs and I found her research online and I knew I wanted to work with her,” she says. “We hit it off immediately, and for me, it’s not the place or program that matters most, it’s the people you work with and learn from.”

Interdisciplinary learning is crucial to Rumsey. She not only earned a Tech bachelor’s degree in history, technology and society from the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts, but also she conducted all of her undergraduate research in aerospace engineering. Such a depth and breadth of knowledge made her attractive to Lockheed Martin, where she worked as a quality engineer and operations specialist for a few years.

“Seeing how airplanes and other things were made was interesting,” Rumsey says. “But I wanted to know the why. And industry wasn’t necessarily the best place for questions, which is why I looked to come back to Tech.”

Of Rumsey, her doctoral advisor has plenty of praise. “She has all this passion and asks hard questions,” JafariNaimi says. “‘Why are we doing this?’ ‘How is it going to impact the people who use it, who design it?’ ‘What are the ramifications ethically and politically?’”

She adds: “These are the design questions that are central to my research and my passions. She was a clear fit.”

But Rumsey says making the transition from the private sector to academia—to become a thinker and a teacher instead of a doer—has been tricky. “At the beginning I had no idea what was going on—the work was just so different,” she says. “But Dr. JafariNaimi’s teaching style and passions really helped me feel comfortable and find my place after that initial shock. I’ve learned a lot about myself and the research I want to do.”

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Ben Rollins

DYNAMIC DUOS

DIGITAL DAREDEVILS NASSIM JAFARINAIMI, MS 03 ID, ASSISTANT PROFESSOR OF DIGITAL MEDIA AND DIRECTOR OF TECH’S DESIGN AND SOCIAL INTERACTION STUDIO ALYSSA RUMSEY, HTS 13, PHD STUDENT IN DIGITAL MEDIA IVAN ALLEN COLLEGE OF LIBERAL ARTS

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What Machine Learning Will Change (HINT: EVERYTHING) Today, computer algorithms poring over vast datasets can derive predictions or models from that data— all on their own. The “programming” paradigm has been upended.

Welcome to the Machine Learning Revolution.

BY ELLIS BOOKER

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Vasilyev Alexandr

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I

IS THAT AN IMAGE of a cat? It’s a simple question for human beings, but was a tough one for machines— until recently. Today, if you type “Siamese cats” into Google’s image search engine, voilà!, you’ll be presented with scores of Siamese cats, categorized by breed (“lilac point,” “totie point,” “chocolate point”), as well as other qualities, such as “kitten” or “furry.”

What’s key here is that while some of the images carry identifying, machine-readable text or meta information, many do not. Yet the search still found them. How? The answer is that the pictures— more accurately, a pattern in the pictures—was recognized as “Siamese cat” by a machine, without requiring a human to classify each instance.

This is machine learning. At its core, machine learning upends the programming model, forgoing the hard coded “if this, then that” instructions and explicit rules. Instead, it uses an artificial neural network (ANN)—a statistical model directly inspired by biological neural networks—that is “trained” on some data set (the bigger, the better) to accomplish some new task that uses similar but yet unknown data.

The data comes first in machine learning. The system finds its own way, adjusting and refining its model, iteratively.

But back to Siamese cats. Computer vision researchers worked on image recognition for decades, but Google effectively perfected it in months once the company developed a machine-learning algorithm. Today, machine-learning facial recognition systems for mug shots and passport photos outperform human operators.

NOT NEW BUT DEFINITELY NOW In fact, machine learning, neural networks and pattern recognition aren’t new. In 1950, a computer program was written that improved its checkers performance the more it played (by studying winning strategies and incorporating these into its own program).

In 1957, the first neural network for computers (the Perceptron) was designed. In 1967, the “nearest neighbor” algorithm, which allowed a computer to do very basic pattern recognition, was created.

Indeed, some would say that Alan Turing’s famous machine that ultimately broke the German “Enigma” code during World War II was an instance of machine learning—in that it observed incoming data, analyzed it and extracted information.

So why has machine learning exploded on the scene now, pervading fields as diverse as marketing, health care, manufacturing, information security and transportation?

Researchers at Georgia Tech say the explanation is the confluence of three things: 1. Faster, more powerful computer hardware (parallel processors, GPUs, etc.)

2. Software algorithms to take advantage of these computational architectures

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WHAT IS MACHINE LEARNING? MACHINE LEARNING is essentially a computer-based algorithm that analyzes a particular set of data and learns from it, with the goal of building generalizable models that give accurate predictions or find patterns about new and unseen similar data. Some excellent examples of machine learning put to practice today include the algorithms that drive Amazon and Netflix’s recommendation systems, Google’s page rank and search results, and even Tesla’s self-driving car technologies.

3. Loads and loads of data for training (digitized documents, internet social media posts, YouTube videos, GPS coordinates, electronic health records, and, the fastest-growing category, all those networked sensors and processors behind the much-heralded Internet of Things).

This digitalization began in earnest in the 1990s. According to IDC Research, digital data will grow at a compound annual growth rate of 42 percent through 2020. In the 2010-20 decade, the world’s data will grow by 50 times, from about one Zettabyte (1ZB) in 2010 to about 50ZB in 2020.

These oceans of data and data sources not only enable machine learning, but also, in a sense, they create an urgent need for it, offering a solution to the human programmer bottleneck.

“The usual way of programming computers these days is, you write a program,” says Irfan Essa, director of Tech’s new Center for Machine Learning. “Now we’re saying, that cannot scale.”

There are simply too many data sources, arriving too fast.

The ability of these systems to quickly and reliably make inferences from data has galvanized the attention of the world’s biggest technology players and businesses, who’ve seen the commercial benefits and opportunities.

“It created a disruption,” says Essa, who also serves as associate dean of the College of Computing, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing and an adjunct professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering.

As Jeff Bezos, CEO of Amazon, put it in his widely circulated April 2017 letter to company shareholders, Amazon’s use of machine learning in its autonomous delivery drones and speech-controlled assistant Alexa is only part of the story.

“Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations and much more,” Bezos wrote. “Though less visible, much of the impact of machine learning will be of this type— quietly but meaningfully improving core operations.”

Two other drivers for the rapid growth of machine learning have been the widely available, open source toolkits (such as Google’s TensorFlow) that can rapidly prototype a machine learning system, and cloud-based storage and computation services to host it.

This April, for instance, Amazon Web Services announced that Amazon Lex, the artificial intelligence service (AI) used to create applications that can interact with users via voice and text—and the technology behind Amazon Alexa—would be available to Amazon Web Services customers.

“You can build a startup very, very fast,” says Sebastian Pokutta, Georgia Tech’s David M. McKenney Family Associate Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School for Industrial and Systems Engineering, and associate director of the Center for Machine Learning (ML@GT). “Before, machine learning was very academic and somewhat esoteric. Now we have a toolbox that I can give a student, and within a week they can create something that’s usable.”

NATURAL LANGUAGE: GOING DEEPER Like image recognition, speech recognition has seen great strides thanks to machine learning. Consider Amazon’s Alexa or Google Home, two darlings in the speech-controlled appliance space.

THE POWER OF FOUR There are four major types of machine learning: 1. SUPERVISED LEARNING: Training data and desired outputs are provided, from which the goal is to learn a general rule that maps inputs to outputs.

2. UNSUPERVISED LEARNING: Training data does not include desired outputs; the system is on its own to discover structure.

3. SEMI-SUPERVISED LEARNING: Training data includes a few desired outputs.

4. REINFORCEMENT LEARNING: The learning system interacts with a dynamic environment.

Examples include autonomous vehicle navigation or playing a game against an opponent.

The program is provided feedback in terms of rewards and punishments as it proceeds.

INSIDE MACHINE LEARNING @ GEORGIA TECH “At Georgia Tech, we recognize machine learning to be a game-changer not just in computer science, but in a broad range of scientific, engineering, and business disciplines and practices,” writes Irfan Essa, the inaugural director of the Center for Machine Learning at Georgia Tech (ML@GT), in his welcome note on the Center’s web page.

Launched in June 2016, ML@GT is an interdisciplinary research center that combines assets from the College of Computing, the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering and the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. Its faculty, students and industry partners are working on research and real-world applications of machine learning in a variety of areas, including machine vision, information security, healthcare, logistics and supply chain, finance and education, among others.

The center truly is a collaborative effort across campus, with 125 to 150 Tech

faculty involved, and more than 400 students, says Sebastian Pokutta, David M. McKenney Family Associate Professor in the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering, and an associate director of ML@GT. “Tech has always had a lot of researchers working on machine learning, but they’d been spread out, working in different departments independently,” Pokutta says. “There wasn’t a real community on campus.”

Echoing Essa’s message, Pokutta says the goal of the Center is straightforward and daring: “We want to become the leader in bringing together computing, learning, data and engineering.”

True, there are other machine learning centers in higher ed—MIT, Columbia, Carnegie Mellon—but most focus on combining computing and statistics.

“One of the unique things about Georgia Tech, since we’re a big engineering school, is our machine learning effort is

really closely embedded with our engineering units,” Essa says. “We’re close to the sensor, close to the processor, close to the actuator.”

This matters because of what is known as “edge computing”: the concept of moving applications, data and services to the logical extremes of a network, so that knowledge generation can occur at the point of action.

The objective is to use Tech’s engineering prowess—and data-driven techniques—to help design the next generation of technologies and methodologies.

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“Machine learning drives our algorithms for demand forecasting, product search ranking, product and deals recommendations, merchandising placements, fraud detection, translations and much more,� wrote Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

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Vasilyev Alexandr

Georgia Tech researchers aren’t competing with these new commercial efforts. “We’re working on things that we hope will be important components of systems in the much longer term,” says Jacob Eisenstein, assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing, where he leads the Computational LinIrfan Essa, director of the Center for Machine Learning at Georgia Tech guistics Laboratory. “As a field right now, we’re the intersection of machine learning and linguistics.”

That said, Eisenstein points out that Google quietly incorporates increasingly sophisticated natural language processing into its search system every few months.

“What I think they’re doing is drawing ideas from the research literature, from the stuff that’s produced at universities

like Georgia Tech,” he says.

Highlighting the market excitement over speech control, Eisenstein notes that five former Tech students are working at Amazon on Alexa development, as are a number of his undergrads and masters students.

So, what sorts of problems are Eisenstein and his colleagues working to solve?

“Imagine you are interested in some new area of research, and could have a system that summarizes the 15 most important papers in that field into a four-page document,” Eisenstein says.

But creating such a system goes far beyond word or phrase recognition. “We know that to understand language, you have to have some understanding of linguistic structure—how sentences are put together,” he explains. Language understanding is hard, from a machine standpoint, because it has very deep, nested structures.

Tackling subjects like language or other complex, non-linear

PRECISION MEDICINE Healthcare offers a rich source of data to machine learning researchers. There are scanned and electronic health records, claims data, procedure results, lab tests, genetics studies, and even telemetry from devices like heart monitors and wearables like Fitbits and smart watches.

A number of Georgia Tech’s researchers are mining this data to better understand health outcomes at scale and to ultimately figure out the right treatment for each individual patient. This is known as individualist or precision medicine.

Jacob Eisenstein, an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing, and Jimeng Sun, an associate professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering, are mining the text in electronic health records to better understand health outcomes at scale.

Today, patients and doctors try rounds of treatments for ailments, looking for the best fit. “There’s a lot of trial and error,” Eisenstein explains. The project hopes to reduce that, by systematizing treatment based on a deeper understanding of patients, treatments and outcomes.

Last year, Sun was part of a group of

researchers who developed a new, accurate-but-interpretable approach for machine learning in medicine.

Their Reverse Time Attention model (RETAIN) achieves high accuracy while remaining clinically interpretable. It is based on a two-level neural attention model that detects influential past visits and significant clinical variables within those visits (e.g., key diagnoses). RETAIN was tested on a large health system dataset with 14 million visits completed by 263,000 patients over an eight-year period and demonstrated predictive accuracy and computational scalability comparable to state-of-the-art methods

such as recurrent neural networks, and ease of interpretability comparable to traditional models (logistic regression).

In other work, Tech professors and students are analyzing data from Geisinger, a hospital network in Pennsylvania, to help predict the risk for sepsis and septic shock in patients before they are admitted to the hospital. Other researchers within the School of Industrial and Systems Engineering’s Health Analytics group are collecting health care utilization data involving millions of individuals for events such as hospitalizations that can be used in estimating the cost savings of preventive care.

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relationships has given rise to a subset of machine learning known as deep learning. A deep neural network is an artificial neural network with multiple hidden layers between the input and output layers.

BLACK BOX PROBLEMS However, those hidden layers give rise to a black box problem.

That is, if the artificial neural network contains hidden layers, its processes aren’t transparent. To take a real-word example: how do we audit the autonomous car’s decision to swerve right, not left?

That’s an area of study for Dhruv Batra, an assistant professor in the School of Interactive Computing. His research aims to develop theory, algorithms and implementations for transparent deep neural networks that are able to provide explanations for their predictions, and to study the effect of developed transparent neural networks and explanations on user trust and perceived trustworthiness.

According to Batra: “We have to be a little careful though, because if we tack on the explanatory piece—‘That’s why I’m calling this a cat’—the system may learn to produce an explanation, a post

hoc justification that may not have anything to do with its choice.”

Other problems range from the practical, “How can we remove human bias when setting up the algorithm?” to the unexpectedly philosophical, “How can we be sure these systems are, in fact, learning the right things?”

Tech researchers are hard at work on these fascinating questions.

Essa admits there’s a lot of hype around machine learning right now. But he notes that people are very good at overestimating the impact of technology in the short term, yet underestimating it in the long run.

If optical character recognition and, increasingly, speech recognition are taken for granted because they “just work,” there are other technologies that are far from perfect.

“And we’d like them to be perfect, which is why research and development needs to continue,” Essa says.

Machine learning may even play a role in improving how Georgia Tech students are taught in the future.

“At Tech we have a lot of educational data,” he says. “How do we now use that data to learn more about and support our student body—learn more about their learning, and provide the right kinds of guidance and support?”

PHOTO FINISH: WHY FACEBOOK AND AMAZON WANT TO “SEE” YOUR IMAGES BETTER FACEBOOK’S INTEREST in having machines better assess the billions of images uploaded to its platform—in order to describe, rank or even delete objectionable images—is obvious.

Georgia Tech faculty Dhruv Batra and Devi Parikh—married partners both in life and at work—are assistant professors in the College of Computing’s School of Interactive Computing who are currently serving as visiting researchers at Facebook Artificial Intelligence Research (FAIR).

At Facebook, the duo is working on ways to improve the interaction between human beings, a machine platform and images posted on the social network platform. In April 2016, Facebook began automatically describing the content of photos to blind and visually impaired users. Called “automatic alternative text,” the feature was created by Facebook’s accessibility team. The technology also works for Facebook versions in countries with limited internet speeds or that don’t

allow visual content.

And last December, Batra and Parikh also received Amazon Academic Research Awards for a pair of projects they are leading in computer vision and machine learning. They received $100,000 each from Amazon—$80,000 in gift money and $20,000 in Amazon Web Services credit— for projects that aim to produce the next generation of artificial intelligence agents.

Batra and Parikh are using giant image data sets with human annotations that have been built up at Mechanical Turk, Amazon’s crowdsourcing internet marketplace.

One project, Visual Dialog, led by Batra, aims at creating an AI agent able to hold a meaningful dialogue with humans in natural, conversational language about visual content. Facebook can already generate automatic alternative text for an image, explains Batra. So a user can be told, “This picture may contain a mug, a person, a cat.” The goal, he said, is to go much

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further—to offer not only more information about the image but also engage the user in a dialog.

Training the machine learning algorithm for the task requires a huge data set—as many as 200,000 conversations on the same set of images, each conversation including 10 rounds of questions and answers (or roughly 2 million questionand-answer pairs).

Another project, titled “Counting Everyday Objects in Everyday Scenes,” is led by Parikh, and aims to enable an AI to count the number of objects belonging to the same category. One particularly interesting approach will try to estimate the counts of objects in one try by just glancing at the image as a whole. This is inspired by “subitizing”—an ability humans inherently possess to see a small number of objects and know how many there are without having to explicitly count.

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What

Tech Taught Me COMPILED AND EDITED BY

ROGER SLAVENS

Nearly everyone at Georgia Tech spends the bulk of their time looking forward and Creating the Next. But we felt compelled to ask some of Tech’s top alumni to instead look back—and reflect on their formative times as students at the Institute—and share the answer to a simple, straightforward question: “What is the most important thing you learned at Georgia Tech?” Here are their answers.

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TOM NOONAN ME 83

CYBER SECURITY ENTREPRENEUR, DIRECTOR & INVESTOR

SHOWING YOUR GRIT. “When I entered Georgia Tech, it was the first time in my life that I was on my own— which I soon learned was an enormous but fulfilling responsibility. Competing to achieve in a tough engineering curriculum, working part time to pay the bills, taking leadership roles in community and fraternity organizations all required scheduling, prioritization and mental toughness to focus and do the job well.

Emerging both wiser and stronger from the successes and setbacks experienced at Tech left me secure in my ability to make my own decisions and survive.”

STEPHEN C. HALL IM 67 RETIRED COLONEL OF THE UNITED STATES AIR FORCE

RELYING ON YOUR SELF. “At Tech you were expected to solve problems, produce high-quality results, and do so pretty much on your own. No one was interested in excuses. You were expected to bring your ‘A’ game every day. This turned out to be a most significant life lesson. It was Dr. James Bynum who first instilled in me in Comp 101 this foundation skill that helped enable and sustain me over 46 years of my career. It was the realization that every kid on campus was tops at their high school. It was Saturday morning classes. It was Drownproofing.

It was taking differential calculus so many times that I had more tenure in the course than the person teaching me. It was praying that my 53 average in physics would somehow turn into a C. I’ve carried all these lessons of self-reliance with me throughout my life, thanks to Tech, its faculty, its administrators, its students and its traditions.”

SANDRA MAGNUS

PHD MSE 96

FORMER NASA ASTRONAUT & EXECUTIVE DIRECTOR OF THE AMERICAN INSTITUTE OF AERONAUTICS & ASTRONAUTICS

COLLABORATING WITH OTHERS. “Georgia Tech proved to be a great environment for collaboration. The students in the materials science engineering department, both undergraduate and graduate, worked together to create a supportive community and in doing so we were able to achieve a lot. It was a small department when I attended and we had a real esprit de corps. I really valued that experience and try to recreate something similar when organizing new teams.”

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IVENUE LOVE-STANLEY

ARCH 77

WALT EHMER

ATLANTA ARCHITECT & 2014 AIA WHITNEY M. YOUNG JR. AWARD WINNER

REALIZING ANYTHING IS POSSIBLE. “One of the most important lessons I learned while at Georgia Tech was that through perseverance, sacrifice and an inimitable work ethic, I could master virtually anything—except the art of swimming. I was a non-traditional, 21-year-old freshman (with a degree already) studying in a male-dominated field. So, I availed myself of the wise counsel from two very different and distinct professors, Dr. Dorothy Cowser Yancy and Assistant Dean Joseph N. Smith III of the College of Architecture. Both became life-long friends and instilled in me a life-long love for Georgia Tech as well as an understanding of its unique culture. That understanding continues to help me navigate through the challenges of my profession.”

IE 89

PRESIDENT-CEO OF WAFFLE HOUSE

SHOWING UP AND BEING PRESENT. “The first thing I learned, and maybe the most important: In order to survive Georgia Tech, I had to show up for every class, sit up front and pay attention. It seems simple, but sometimes it’s too easy to not show up, or to not be present. I learned quickly that to survive, and thrive, I had to do this.

Looking back at my time at Tech, I also learned the value of building strong relationships. Part of the extraordinary value of my degree from Georgia Tech is the incredible network of alumni who always seem to be looking out for fellow Yellow Jackets. I owe my career, most of my close business contacts and many of my close friends to the relationships that began when I first set foot on campus.”

WAYNE CLOUGH CE 64 PRESIDENT EMERITUS OF GEORGIA TECH & FORMER SECRETARY OF THE SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION

DEVELOPING SURVIVAL SKILLS. “It really was not one “thing” but several things. 1. That someone had expectations of me, even though I was not the best student. 2.

No matter how hard you worked, there was always a well below to draw from to do more. 3. Discipline, focus and access to old exams helped. 4. Preparing for life with people who were not engineers was not Georgia Tech’s strong suit—you had to do it yourself. Who taught me these things? The first two years [spent in general classes] I learned discipline and survival skills to get by. The next two years in my major, civil engineering, I was fortunate to have inspiring teachers who gave me encouragement to achieve my potential, most notably Carl Kindsvater, Sam Martin, George Sowers, Alexander Vesic, Charles O’Melia and Bill Schultz.”

PAUL BROWN MGT 89 TAKING AN ACTIVE ROLE. “As I look back, it is clear that my time at Tech has had a more profound and lasting change—not just on my career, but also on my life—than anything else I have done. It was a combination of two things—the rigorous academics and the opportunities to lead—that shaped me

CEO OF ARBY’S RESTAURANT GROUP

then and have stayed with me for over 25 years since I “got out.” I came in as a shy and reserved freshman, but I graduated from Tech with a heightened self-confidence thanks to the interpersonal skills I picked up along the way—skills I got from participating in and leading several social and academic organizations.”

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BRIAN WHITED CS 03, MS CS 05, PHD CS 09 ENGINEER & RESEARCHER AT DISNEY ANIMATION & ACADEMY AWARD WINNER

FINDING WHAT MAKES YOU HAPPY. “As an undergrad at Tech, I was all but sure of what I was going to specialize in, but I ultimately ended up switching twice during my final year. It wasn’t until my very last semester of undergrad when I took Professor Rossignac’s computer graphics class that I realized what truly made me happy about

my interest in computer science. Had I never taken that class, my life would be radically different today—I wouldn’t be on the Disney Animation team. We’re always told that life is short, but life is also long and in a sea of wrong answers, it can be easy to latch onto the least-wrong answer if you’ve never encountered the right one.”

SEAN BEDFORD

MERRY HUNTER HIPP

PP 13

EDUCATION POLICY ADVISOR TO GEORGIA GOVERNOR NATHAN DEAL & PRESIDENT OF GEORGIA TECH’S YOUNG ALUMNI COUNCIL

AE 10

LEARNING TO RESPECT OTHERS. “Professor Bill Todd and Dr. Richard Barke taught me to never stop appreciating and respecting the talent of the people around you. Georgia Tech is full of unbelievable innovators and crazy overachievers, and instead of getting competitive, they both taught me to respect my peers and admire the Institute for the unique, awe-inspiring place that it is for so many. Their positive attitudes, passion for Tech, and joy for watching others succeed was such a fantastic example for me and my classmates. I also learned an important lesson from my mom about perseverance. Whenever Tech was tough, she reminded me of the endless opportunities ahead of me; and whenever times were great, she reminded me to never forget that feeling—and that my time on campus as an undergrad was not an end, but rather a beginning of my relationship with Georgia Tech.”

BRIAN TYSON EE 10 PLANNING ENGINEER FOR GEORGIA TRANSMISSIONS SYSTEMS & CHAIR EMERITUS OF THE YOUNG ALUMNI COUNCIL

GOING AFTER THE ‘WHY’ INSTEAD OF THE ‘WHAT.’ “So often I found myself studying long hours and pulling all-nighters for a particular class, only to get to the test and realize that nothing I studied was on the test. But the problem resided in how I studied and attacked problems, and my expectation for the exam. Up until I entered Georgia Tech, I was taught to always answer the ‘what’—the specific details—but rarely took the time to fully understand the concept, the ‘why’. The ‘what’ may get you in the door of an employer, but it’s the ‘why’ that takes your career to the next level. A wise friend once told me, ‘It’s not about having all the answers, it’s about asking the right questions,’ and that message has stuck with me throughout the remainder of my Tech tenure and today. Thank you Tech for providing the perfect mix of gifted peers and unyielding professors that created an atmosphere of humility and reshaped my way of thinking.

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY LAWYER FOR ALSTON & BIRD LLP & RADIO COLOR ANALYST FOR GEORGIA TECH FOOTBALL USING OLD KNOWLEDGE TO SOLVE NEW PROBLEMS. “I’ll always remember a post-test review in my Flight Dynamics class—the test was brutally difficult and went disastrously for most of the class. As our professor, Eric Feron, explained the solution to each problem on the exam, I stared on in silent disbelief, wondering how he could possibly have expected us to come up with those answers.

After receiving the solution to a particularly tough question, a student behind me blurted out: “You never taught us how to do that!” But Professor Feron calmly explained: “You’re right. I didn’t teach you how to do that, but I gave you the tools to figure it out.” Those words have proven to be one of the most profound lessons I’ve ever received. Learning isn’t about memorizing a formula or a set of facts; it’s about training your mind to apply existing knowledge to new problems and create solutions to the unforeseen challenges in life.”

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Alumni House

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WELCOME NEW ALUMNI!

This sea of mortarboards (many of them immaculately decorated) and fancy robes holds just a portion of the 2,400 Yellow Jackets who earned their undergraduate and advanced degrees at the Spring 2017 Commencement ceremonies this May.

Rob Felt

Volume 93 No. 2 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 75

ALUMNI HOUSE

A Swarm of Support Alumni Association’s first-ever Giving Day proves to be a huge success.

WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, proved to be a truly special day for the Alumni Association and for the entire Georgia Tech family, as we sponsored our firstever Giving Day. In just 24 hours, 1,182 alumni and friends—from a total of 48 states and 22 countries—joined together to raise $129,764 for Roll Call, the Institute’s Fund for Excellence.

Roll Call supports student scholarships, top-notch instructors, state of the art facilities and world-class programs.

This was an amazing effort and a true representation of the impact we can have as a unified community. To be sure, the Alumni Association staff, buoyed by several spirited alumni volunteers, had a blast hosting the day’s events. We promoted a number of Giving Day challenge contests on social networks that spread the news far and wide, encouraging alumni to share their photos of their favorite places on campus and themselves, their kids and pets in Yellow Jacket gear—alongside

the #GTgives hashtag—with the best ones scoring some sweet Georgia Tech merchandise.

We’d like to extend a heartfelt thank you to everyone who answered the call and helped make this day an outstanding success. On the opposite

page, check out all the details about this year’s Giving Day, which we hope to build upon and make an annual event—for showcasing how much we love Georgia Tech and for making a lasting impact on future generations of Yellow Jackets.

SAA'S ‘GIFT TO TECH’ GOES TO SUICIDE PREVENTION PROGRAM EVERY YEAR, the Student Alumni Association (SAA) sets aside $5 from each annual membership donation to give back to a worthy effort or project on campus.

This year, students chose to bestow SAA’s Gift to Tech to Tech Ends Suicide Together, presenting the program a gift of $45,000, which includes a $10,000 matching gift from Gary Jones, GM 71, professor of the practice at the Schell-

er College of Business.

Tech Ends Suicide Together is an initiative developed by the Georgia Tech Counseling Center and Division of Student Life. “We’re excited and humbled to have been selected for the SAA Gift to Tech Award,” says Ruperto Perez, director of the Counseling Center. “The significance of the award to support the Tech Ends Suicide Together initiative is beyond measure, as it allows the

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Center to continue working with our campus groups to educate, train and promote suicide prevention at Tech.”

The initiative is based on an international zero-suicide campaign that has been enacted in community healthcare systems around the world to identify individuals at risk for suicide and to provide effective intervention and services to eliminate suicide. Georgia Tech is one of

the first universities in the U.S. to implement a zero suicide initiative.

There are seven core principles for Tech Ends Suicide Together: lead, train, identify, engage, treat, transition and improve. The initiative hopes to connect students, staff, faculty, families, and the community to demonstrate these principles to end suicide at Tech.

For more information, visit endsuicide.gatech.edu.

#GTgives

24 HOURS OF GIVING

BY THE NUMBERS

GIVING DAY

June 7, 2017 $109 AVERAGE GIFT

$129,764 DOLLARS 1,182 DONORS HOW PEOPLE GAVE 6% TEXT 20% VENMO 74% ONLINE

691 FB LIKES

DONORS FROM 48 STATES

22 PARTICIPATING COUNTRIES

468 NEW DONORS TO 70TH ROLL CALL

162 #GTGIVES POSTS

WRECKS AT WORK

Dogs Don’t Chase Parked Cars

BY JAY MCDONALD, IM 68

8 rules to keep your career moving forward through lifelong learning COMPUTER SPEEDS DOUBLE every 18 months, according to Moore’s Law. Although it’s hard to imagine smaller microchips, researchers indicate new developments will allow more powerful computers at even smaller sizes. In fact, during this 21st century, many futurists say our progress will advance 20,000 years in 100 years, comparatively speaking.

Technology developments in artificial intelligence, robotics, cognitive sciences, nanotechnology, neuroscience, energy and medical advancements will change our lives in ways we can barely imagine. Repetitive (human) tasks will continue to be automated, simplified and replaced by machines and software. An ever-increasing amount of information will be available and sorted almost instantly.

A premium will be placed on key skills best done by humans—especially critical thinking.

Here are eight things we a l l n e e d to d o to survive and thrive during this time:

LEADERSHIP LESSONS

ALUMNI CAREER SERVICES is collaborating with the Scheller College of Business to offer a week-long leadership certificate program scheduled for Sept.

19-22. This four-day intensive program led by Georgia Tech faculty will help participants develop new skills in areas such as critical thinking, decisionmaking, financial acumen, strategic effectiveness and personal brand development.

For more information and to register, visit the website at www.gtalumni.org/LDP17 or contact Charlotte Anders by email at charlotte.anders@ alumni.gatech.edu or phone at (404) 385-5421.

1. DON’T CHASE PARKED CARS. D o gs d o n’ t d o it, and neither should you. You need to keep moving and learning throughout your career.

It’s in your best interest to build your personal intellectual property and use curiosity to leverage your value. We all need to become lifelong learners, never satisfied with the status quo. You don’t need all the answers— no one has all of them.

Instead, keep asking great questions and read everything you can with a voracious appetite.

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Take advantage of learning opportunities online, including Massive Open Online Courses (MOOCs), seminars, webinars, workshops and videos—many of them are completely free.

2. BE OPEN TO CHANGE. Change is one of the few constants in life, and to be your best, you must be able to adapt to change and its certainty. The reality is that most of tomorrow’s jobs don’t exist today. Skillsets needed a few years ago are far less relevant now. While graduation is a great accomplishment, it’s merely the beginning of our education, path to success and positive influence on others. Resting on your laurels is not an option.

3. MAKE YOURSELF UNIQUE. As humans, we have untapped reservoirs of thinking power, and yet most of us use our brain potential sparingly. Our mindsets and belief systems can inhibit our potential growth. You must open your mind to new thinking, while embracing growth mindsets with a willingness to value new information and see the opportunities change permits.

4. SEEK THE TRUTH. In an age of instant information and social media, we are often driven by sound bites and data, unsupported by fact or reliable research. It is up to us to seek the truth, to question rigorously and to reach for

deeper understanding. Never in history have we had the resources we now have to learn and think for ourselves.

As influencers and role models, we are responsible for ferreting out the facts and furthering conversations in thoughtful ways. Brains, used properly, have vast memory power and can update their operating systems instantly with new knowledge.

5. DEVELOP HUMAN CONNECTIONS. In a world of advancing technology, smartphones, social media and non-human connections, it is important to develop and grow your human connections.

Jay McDonald Developing emotional intelligence and balancing empathy with logic will be at a premium in the future. Being able to master the things humans can do best will serve us well. Interpersonal relationships, understanding behavior, and being adept at making decisions based on human understanding and thinking will be huge assets.

6. BRIDGE GENERATIONAL DIVIDES. Generationally, we have many different value systems and attitudes in the workplace today, from Boomers to Millennials to Generation Z. Like it or not, we filter much of what we observe and hear through our generational experiences and have a tendency to shape our observations to reinforce our beliefs and biases. We must work collaboratively to understand one

another and to improve, while reshaping our belief systems in congruence with reality.

7. TRUST AND LEARN FROM YOUR PEERS. By working openly with peers, both inside and outside your industry, you can create a trusting, confidential environment to make each other better. By approaching issues without agendas and each bringing their own unique experiences to bear, you add to the benefit of everyone. An effective collaboration is far greater than individual thought.

8. FIND A ROLE MODEL OR MENTOR. Success is dependent on learning from others. All should have role models and mentors.

If you don’t, get one! That said, it’s also your responsibility to be a mentor and role model to someone else. Pay it forward. Help them receive what you’ve been fortunate to have.

If you’re not getting better, you’re going backward. Invest every day in improvement of yourself and of those around you. Your return will be a lifetime of energetic contribution and personal growth, rewarding you with the sense of making a difference and always striving to be your best!

Jay McDonald is a serial entrepreneur, CEO, business owner, author, keynote speaker and leadership adviser. He has spent his career taking businesses and the people who run them to the next level by inspiring a commitment to finding solutions, optimizing value and getting results. He is a past chair of the Alumni Association.

ALUMNI TRAVEL

Unexpected Normandy

BY ROGER SLAVENS

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WHEN MOST OF US THINK OF NORMANDY, we envision the D-Day invasion and the heroic sacrifices made by American and British troops to gain a foothold in Nazi-occupied France during World War II. Stepping onto the sands of Omaha Beach proved to be a truly unsettling, emotional experience for myself and 15 other Georgia Tech travelers, as did our slow strolls through the nearby American Cemetery and the Caen Memorial Museum.

But as we found out on our Alumni Travel tour, Normandy offers much

more than just these remembrances of the Second Great War. The region, after all, is rich with complex history that not only stretches back centuries, but also is still showcased today in its architecture, culture and language.

The name Normandy comes from the Norsemen (northmen) who settled there in the 10th century. Vikings were given the land in exchange for stopping their raids further into Frankish territories and promising to defend it from future invaders. A little more than 150 years later, William

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the First led the Norman conquest of England and became its king, forever tangling England and France together in a love-hate relationship.

Normandy is a land of coastal villages and medieval cities, dairy farms and fish markets, rapeseed fields and cider orchards, rolling hills and river basins. Itâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s special charms invoked the passions of countless artists, including impressionist painter Claude Monet, whose country home and lavish gardens in Giverny deservedly rank among the

2 If you’re itching to travel the world, who better to globe-hop with than your fellow Yellow Jackets? The Georgia Tech Alumni Association has a host of trips (like the ones listed below) scheduled for 2017 and beyond. For more information, or to register for an upcoming tour, visit gtalumni.org/travel.

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1. Honfleur's pretty Vieux bassin. 2. The stunning Mont St. Michel island city, fortress and monastery. 3. Water lillies at Monet's gardens in Giverny. 4. Rows of crosses and grave sites of the soldiers who fell during the Normandy invasion at the American Cemetery.

5. The Les Braves Memorial at Omaha Beach. 6. Travelers fly the Georgia Tech flag.

most visited tourist destinations in the area.

Meanwhile, venerable cities like Rouen provide a welcome counterpoint to rustic landscapes.

The region’s capital contains a gorgeous, (mostly) Gothic cathedral and multiple landmarks to Joan of Arc, who was burned at the stake in the city for crimes of heresy (only to be later canonized as a saint by the Catholic Church). Bayeux, while smaller than Rouen, hosts a spectacular cathedral of its own, as well as plays home to the famed Bayeux Tapestry—which one of our travelers described as one of the world’s oldest comic books. It

tells the story of William the Conqueror in embroidery across a 70-meter-long linen.

No matter the setting, Normandy turned into a land of constant discovery, which included stunning sights, quaint shops and delicious food wherever you turned—from fresh seafood and savory crepes to smooth calvados (local apple brandy) and crème brulee. Indeed, there are countless reasons why we’ve consistently offered up this Normandy trip every two years to our alumni and friends. And two more include our exceptional tour partner AHI Travel and the camaraderie of adventuring with fellow Ramblin’ Wrecks.

Costa Rica’s Natural Heritage Jan. 11-22, 2018, Odysseys Unlimited In this small Central American country kissed by nature, a small-group (max 18 travelers) tour will explore—in relaxed, but comprehensive fashion—four distinct regions, encountering staggering biodiversity from cloud forest to rain forest; Central Valley to Pacific Coast. There’s also a four-day/three-night post-tour extension to Tortuguero National Park for the truly adventurous.

Tanzania Migration Safari Jan. 24-Feb.4, 2018, Orbridge The annual movement of wildebeest and other grazing herbivores across the Serengeti Plains is one of the greatest spectacles of the natural world. This once-in-a-lifetime journey, encompasses this and other incredible wildlife excursions to world-famous national parks and reserves: Arusha National Park, Tarangire National Park, Ngorongoro Crater, Olduvai Gorge and the acacia-dotted savannas of the Serengeti National Park.

Israel Feb. 10-20, AHI Travel Spend eight nights in inspirational Israel, where you can soak in the nation’s rich history and spiritual milestones. Enjoy first-class stays in Tel Aviv, Tiberias and Jerusalem while going on excursions to visit Roman ruins, taste crisp falafels, sail the Sea of Galilee and much more during this small-group experience.

You’ll also gain fascinating insights from interactive talks led by local lecturers and guides.

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CREATING THE NEXT LEADER

Coming September 2017, the Georgia Tech Alumni Association will partner with the Scheller College of Business to offer a customized Leadership Development Program exclusively for Georgia Tech Alumni. This four-day intensive program led by Georgia Tech faculty will help you develop new skills and perspectives to succeed personally and in your organization.

WHY ATTEND To excite, engage, inspire and empower you to make a greater contribution in your business, professional growth and to advance you to the next stage in your career.

WHO SHOULD ATTEND Early and mid-level career professionals on a growth trajectory with increased strategic responsibility.

WHAT YOU WILL LEARN New approaches for driving growth, critical thinking and decision making, negotiation and conflict resolution, nurturing entrepreneurial thinking and behavior.

PROGRAM FORMAT The highly interactive sessions will include lecture, discussion and activities both inside and outside the classroom including a team building exercise. Program will be held at the Executive Education Center, Scheller College of Business.

GTALUMNI.ORG/LDP17

“I have a deep sense of pride in Georgia Tech’s mission. Those who supported Roll Call shaped this school so that I benefitted from a full and rich experience.

It is now my honor and duty to do the same for the next generation of students. Just as my father did with us, I look forward to my family continuing the tradition of pride for our beloved Georgia Tech.”

“Most all I have in this world comes as a result of my Georgia Tech experience … the education I received and the friends I made at Tech and have kept close through the years. I give because of the love I have for this institution and the gratitude I feel for all I have received from my Georgia Tech experience.”

-MAYSON THORNTON MGT 05 BOARD MEMBER, GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

-BERT THORNTON IM 68 BOARD MEMBER,

GEORGIA TECH FOUNDATION

FORMER CHAIR,

Leadership

GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION

The Leadership Circle is the cornerstone of Roll Call - Georgia Tech’s annual fund.

BURDELL SOCIETY

a gift of $25,000

PHOENIX CLUB

$10,000 - $24,999

TRADITIONS CLUB

$5,000 - $9,999

TOWER CLUB

$2,500 - $4,999

CORNERSTONE CLUB

$1,000 - $2,499

We hope you’ll join us and enjoy benefits such as a limited edition tie or scarf and an invitation to the annual President’s Dinner.

www.gtalumni.org/giving

Please send your gift or pledge to: ROLL CALL, GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI ASSOCIATION 190 North Avenue | Atlanta, Georgia 30313-9806 o r c a l l (4 0 4) 8 9 4 - 075 6

RAMBLIN' ROLL

McConville Nominated as Army Vice Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. James McConville, MS AE 90, has been nominated to become the Army’s vice chief of staff and for promotion to the rank of general.

ACCORDING TO THE ARMY TIMES, the nomination has been submitted to the U.S. Senate’s Armed Services Panel.

If confirmed, McConville would receive a fourth star and serve as the officer in charge of the Army’s day-today operations.

McConville currently serves as the Army’s deputy chief of staff, a role he’s held since 2014.

The 36-year Army veteran was commissioned as an infantry officer after graduating from the United States Military Academy in 1981. He earned a master’s degree in aerospace engineering from Georgia Tech, and was a 2002 National Security Fellow at Harvard University.

McConville has held many command assignments over the years, including stints as commanding general of the 101st Airborne Division and Fort Campbell in Kentucky.

He also served in Iraq and Afghanistan.

McConville is a master Army aviator qualified in the OH-58 Kiowa Warrior, the AH-64D Longbow Apache, the AH-6, AH-1 Cobra and other aircraft.

His many awards and decorations include the Distinguished Service Medal, the Legion of Merit, the Bronze Star and the Defense Meritorious Service Medal.

TIMMONS LEADS DATA CENTER EXPANSION KC TIMMONS, IE 97, is the site manager of Facebook’s Fort Worth, Texas, data center, which will be expanding to five buildings over the next few years. Once complete, it will be one of the largest data centers in the world and will be fully powered by renewable wind energy. Timmons, right, is pictured at the data center with Facebook founder and CEO Mark Zuckerberg, center.

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1970s Gerald D. Cowart, Arch 79, M Arch 85, has been elevated to the American Institute of Architects' prestigious College of Fellows, with formal recognition taking place at the 2017 AIA National Conference April 27-30 in Orlando, Fla. James H. Crocker, EE 71, has been named to the National Academy of Engineering. Each year, the NAE recognizes the nation’s foremost professional engineers, those who have made significant contributions to the field through the pioneering of new technology or the publishing of groundbreaking literature.

Lauralee Cromarty, IM 78, was elected to the Council of Fellows for the Institute for Industrial and Systems Engineering.

Lindsey K. Smith, CerE 77, MS CerE 78, and Glen Hess, CE 83, MS CE 84, met and traded “Tech Tales” while hiking the 34.5 mile Milford Sound Track in New Zealand.

1980s Warren M. Anderson, Chem 80, MS IM 82, AE 84, joined GTRI as a principal research engineer in the Sensors and Electromagnetic Applications Laboratory (SEAL) Air and Missile Defense Division. Anderson lives in Madison, Ala., where he will work at the Huntsville Research Center.

Ashlee T. Cribb, ChE 87, has been named business director for Roseburg’s Solid Wood Business. This newly created role consolidates the reporting of the sales organization, giving the solid wood business a single point of focus for commercial leadership. Son: Matthew Cribb, ME 15.

Paula T. Hammond, MS ChE 88, has been named to the National Academy of Engineering. Each year, the NAE recognizes the nation’s foremost professional engineers, those who have made significant contributions to the field through the pioneering of new technology or the publishing of groundbreaking literature.

Eric L. Pinckney Sr., ME 86, M CP 93, received the YMCA of Metro Atlanta’s Volunteer of the Year award for his service with the Arthur Blank YMCA. He has been a member of the board of directors, serving as a former vice chair and chairman. He also serves as an unofficial liaison between the Y and the university.

Alan Ramsey, IM 87, published his first book, titled "Manifesting Your Dreams," which provides encouragement and empowers readers to engineer their personal greatness. Alan

also received the Distinguished Toastmasters award last summer, which is the highest achievement awarded by Toastmasters International.

1990s Ed Chao, MS EE 93, recently finished his tour of duty with the U.S. Digital Service. The group consists of digital experts that use design and technology to deliver better services to the American people.

CLEM NAMED 2017 ASID DESIGNER OF DISTINCTION STEVEN CLEM, ARCH 76, has been named the 2017 Designer of Distinction by The American Society of Interior Designers.

The award is given annually to an ASID professional member who has established a body of superior work demonstrating creativity, excellence and innovation.

This premier award recognizes personal achievement and social consciousness in the interior design profession.

“Steven Clem is a true visionary who designs without ego and whose accomplishments inspire and teach us how design can make a significant, positive difference in the world,” said ASID CEO Randy Fiser.

Clem’s vision, creativity and leadership have produced beautifully crafted environments that create exceptional experiences, including the Kimball HQ and two showrooms, the Georgia Aquarium, the Woodruff Arts Center, the College Football Hall of Fame and the UPS Headquarters.

His designs are modern, elegant and comfortable, reflecting his innate ability to employ imaginative and innovative solutions in the simplest and most elegant forms.

He has mentored many young interior designers and architects and is recognized as a thought leader in the design industry. Clem’s 39-year career has been with only one firm—tvsdesign—where his work has garnered more 100 design awards.

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RAMBLIN' ROLL

WASHINGTON WINS CULTIVATING ENTREPRENEURS SCHOLARSHIP THE BLACK BURDELL INC. awarded its inaugural Cultivating Entrepreneurs Scholarship to Michole Washington, AM 16. The $1,000 scholarship is designed to help young entrepreneurs with the rising cost of education while helping them to develop and grow their businesses.

Washington recently founded Afrithmetic, a non-traditional tutoring service with a mission to develop and enhance studentsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; confidence with all levels of mathematics while promoting positive personal development.

The Black Burdell Inc. is an Atlanta nonprofit founded by Brandon Miller, BME 14, Darren Sanders, BA 14, Henderson Johnson II, AE 16, MS AE 17, and Milton H. Patton III. The organization aims to promote, support, and cultivate black student entrepreneurs and black-owned businesses.

WEDDINGS

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1. Ahuja Sandeep, M Arch 15, and Patrick Chopson, M Arch 15, on Dec. 18 in India. Upon graduation, the couple started building energy consulting firm Pattern r+d. They live in Atlanta.

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2. Phillip DeKeyser, BC 99, and Katherine M. Browning on Jan. 21 in Mobile, Ala. The couple lives in Mobile.

3. Molly Amanda Lang, Mgt 07, and Charlie R. Wärendh, IE 07, on March 19 in St. Simons Island, Ga. Molly and Charlie reside in San Francisco, Calif.

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RAMBLIN' ROLL BIRTHS

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1. Caroline Johnson, IE 09, and Ryan Johnson, IE 05, welcomed daughter Tess Louise on Aug. 26. Tess joins sister Wynne.

The family lives in Marietta, Ga. 2. Jillian Goodhew, AE 07, and Daniel Goodhew, EE 07, welcomed son Benjamin Leonard on Jan. 27. He joins big brother Joshua at the familyâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s home in New Jersey.

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3. Michelle Dale, CE 11, and Christopher Dale, AE 10, welcomed daughter Caitlin Marie Dale on March 3. Caitlin joins big brother William. The family lives in Huntsville, Ala.

5. Shayla Graham, IE 09, and Andrew Fuller welcomed daughter Kadence Cynthia Fuller on March 27. Kadence joins big brother Keegan. The family lives in Woodstock, Ga.

4. Christine Lavery, BME 07, and Will Lavery III, ME 08, welcomed son Foard Alexander Lavery on Nov. 7. The family lives in Atlanta.

6. Carrie Clark, ChBE 07, and Elliott Clark, CS 08, welcomed son Logan Blaise Clark on Aug. 26. Carrie is a group manager for Clorox and Elliott is a tech lead

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for Facebook. The family lives in San Ramon, Calif.

7. Charles D. Cartwright, MBA 12, and Lauren R. Cartwright, Mgt 07, welcomed daughter Margo Alexandra Cartwright on Dec. 13. The family lives in Dunwoody, Ga.

Stay with the Tech Tradition Jeffery S. Osterlund, MS AE 98, was inducted as an associate fellow into the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics on Jan. 9. Osterlund is the Boeing space and launch vehicle capability integration senior manager within the Space Exploration Division in Houston, Texas.

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2000s Lauren B. Lisowe, Mgt 03, will become the 2017-2018 marketing vice president for the National Association of Junior Auxiliaries (NAJA) on May 6. She will wrap up her year as president of her local chapter, the Junior Auxiliary of Saline County, on April 30.

Michael Varon, ME 09, was hired by Cantor Colburn’s Atlanta office. Cantor Colburn LLP was recently ranked the fastest growing U.S. patent firm over the last ten years.

2010s

(404) 838-2060 sales@gatechhotel.com

Kimm E. Lincoln, Mgt 07, has been named Agency Marketer of the Year by the Atlanta Marketing Association. This award recognizes the best of the best in the marketing industry.

Adithya Mohan, MS AE 08, is now the CIO of an e-learning start-up called Edumob. The company streamlines online learning and also delivers high quality learning material world wide.

Lindsay B. Resnick, HTS 13, was hired as an archivist at Heritage Werks in Suwannee, Ga. Heritage Werks is a leading archival services firm working with large corporations, sports teams and other firms to preserve their history.

Friends Ayanna M. Howard has been selected as one of Atlanta magazine’s 2017 Women Making a Mark, a distinction reserved for a select group of women working to grow and strengthen the metro Atlanta community. Howard was chosen for this award for her outstanding work in robotics research and education at Georgia Tech. This award also recognizes her establishment of Zyrobotics, a startup company spun out of research originating from her lab.

Arkadi Nemirovski has been named to the National Academy of Engineering. Each year, the NAE recognizes the nation’s foremost professional engineers, those who have made significant contributions to the field through the pioneering of new technology or the publishing of groundbreaking literature.



 How should your investment allocation change after retirement?

What percentage of your Social Security benefits may be taxed?

↸ How can you help reduce or avoid estate taxes?

INVITES YOU TO:

CHARTING YOUR RETIREMENT Topics covered during this four-night financial seminar: • Financial Basics • Medicare • Taxes • Investment Strategies • Social Security

• Retirement Goals • Retirement Income • Estate Planning • Risk Management • Retirement Plans

Dates: September 12, 19, 26 and October 3, 2017 Time: 6:30 - 9 p.m.

Location: Georgia Tech Alumni Association Alumni/Faculty House 190 North Avenue NW, Atlanta, GA 30313 To register call: 404.894.0751 or email betsy.maddox@alumni.gatech.edu For more information visit: gtalumni.org/chartingyourretirement

RAMBLIN' ROLL

Chapin Named Dean of FSU College of Social Sciences and Public Policy Tim Chapin, M CRP 94, has been named dean of the College of Social Sciences and Public Policy at Florida State University.

CHAPIN, A LONG-TIME FACULTY MEMBER and administrator who has served as the college’s interim dean since May 2016, was selected for the position following a national search.

Chapin served from 2008 to 2014 as chair of the Department of Urban and Regional Planning and as associate dean for development for two years at the college prior to stepping into the interim dean’s role.

Since joining FSU nearly 20 years ago, Chapin has undertaken research on the effectiveness of Florida’s growth management system and the role of sports facilities in the promotion of urban redevelopment. He is a noted expert on land use and comprehensive planning, growth management and urban redevelopment.

As dean, Chapin said he plans to bolster the reputation of the college’s faculty, who are providing leadership on issues as diverse as protecting coastal communities and environments, strengthening economic markets, understanding changes in American and international politics and assessing the importance of gender, race

and ethnicity in life outcomes.

Over his career, he has secured more than $3 million in outside funding from federal, state and local governments to support his research. Chapin said he is looking forward to securing more funding and continuing to work with the school’s partners to advance the college.

Chapin currently serves as the senior associate editor and review editor for the Journal of the American Planning Association. He holds a bachelor’s degree in sociology from Emory University, a master’s in city and regional planning from the Georgia Institute of Technology and a doctoral degree in urban design and planning from the University of Washington.

TECH ALUMNI LEAD AMERICAN ACADEMY OF HEALTH PHYSICS THREE GEORGIA TECH ALUMNI have taken on top leadership roles in the American Academy of Health Physics. Kyle Kleinhans, HP 85, (center) serves as president; Jay Poston, HP 85, (right) continues as a director; and Scott Schwahn, HP 89, MS HP 90, (left) is the organization’s treasurer. The American Academy of Health Physics is an organization of approximately 1,500 certified health physicists that advances the profession, encourages the highest standards of ethics and integrity, enhances communication among Certified Health Physicists and provides a means for active CHPs to participate in the certification program.

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THOMPSON WINS IOT CHALLENGE DUNCAN THOMPSON, CMPE 10M MS ECE 11, led a team that won the MITRE Unique Identification of Things (IoT) Challenge. Thompson’s team won $50,000 by posting the highest score in the competition. Thompson works for Ciena as a hardware engineer working on verification for optical networking switches.

MITRE created the IoT Challenge, which attracted 130 teams worldwide, to identify innovative ideas for addressing a key security issue inherent in IoT networks—identifying the devices on the network and knowing when changes occur.

The Challenge, which launched in October and ended Jan. 16, was set in a model home network that included a large number of IoT devices, such as door locks, thermostats and lighting controls.

"The Challenge showed that there is no one answer to the problem of IoT security,” said Jeff Schwefler, who created and led the Challenge. “There’s still a lot more work to be done in this area. What we’ve learned already has helped reveal the gaps in our knowledge and where we need to do additional work to identify devices in a real-world network."

Each registered team was given access to radio frequency, or RF, capture data from the model home network. The first recording was a baseline RF capture of the environment. The second recording was a "challenge" RF recording in which IoT devices were added, removed or modified.

Each team needed to answer a series of questions about the baseline and challenge recordings, which allowed MITRE to assess the team’s ability to uniquely identify devices.

JACKET COPY PROFESSOR IN THE ZOO: DESIGNING THE FUTURE OF WILDLIFE IN HUMAN CARE

BY TERRY L. MAPLE, GEORGIA TECH ELIZABETH S. WATTS PROFESSOR EMERITUS [NATURE] Presenting a vision for future zoos and aquariums based on Maple’s 40 years of experience as a zoological leader and university scholar, this work examines how Zoo Atlanta—where Maple served as CEO for 18 years—worked with Georgia Tech scientists to develop an innovative, empirical, ethical zoo that now serves as a model for others around the world. Professor in the Zoo examines how Maple rebranded Zoo Atlanta as a nonprofit organization and restored its credibility to the point where former Atlanta Mayor Andrew Young declared it the most successful privatization of a government facility in Georgia history.

Published a book within the past 18 months? Share the details by emailing us at editor@alumni.gatech.edu.

MOELLER PURCELL CONSTRUCTION COMPANY is pleased to announce

Scott Jennings, (ME ‘89) has joined

Mark Moeller, (Mgt ‘85) and

Dwayne Purcell as a partner in the firm.

Moeller Purcell is a full service design/build general contractor working throughout Metro Atlanta and the Southeast

“Building Trust, Since 1990”

www.moellerpurcell.com

IN MEMORIAM

Henry M. Ireland Aerospace Leader

Henry Maxey “Max” Ireland, EE 56, MS EE 58, of Ormond Beach, Fla., on March 17.

IRELAND WORKED ON THE CUTTING EDGE of anti-ballistic missile technology for nearly 50 years.

Born in Chickamauga, Ga., Ireland enlisted in the Navy after graduating from high school and was admitted to the U.S. Naval Academy in 1953. He went on to receive his bachelor’s and master’s degrees in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech before beginning his long career in aerospace technology.

Ireland was hired as an electrical engineer at the Hughes Aircraft Company and later accepted a position at Martin Marietta Corporation in Orlando, Fla. While there, he served as a director of six programs, including the Sprint Missile program, the Patriot Missile program and the Apache Helicopter Night Vision Fire Control System program. He then spent two and a half years on the island of Kwajalein in the Marshall Islands in charge of the Sprint Missile Flight Test program.

After retiring from the Martin Marietta Corporation, he became president and CEO of the Coleman Aerospace Research Corporation in Orlando. He later established his own aerospace consulting business in which he worked

1940s Bushnell Best, ChE 43, of Saint Petersburg, Fla., on April 5. Navy. WWII. IBM. Brother: Barney P. Best, IM 51.

John I. Cox Jr., IM 49, of Kingsport, Tenn., on Feb. 1. Army Air Corps. Executive vice president of industrial relations, Eastman Co. Alderman, city of Kingsport. President, TriCities Chapter of the American Institute of Industrial Engineers. BlueCross BlueShield of Tennessee Board of Trustees.

William L. Fletcher Sr., PH 44, of Jackson,

Ga., on March 24. Army (2nd Lt.). Son: Van M. Fletcher Sr., CE 81.

James E. “Earle” Holliday, ChE 45, of Roseland, Va., on March 5. Georgia Tech boxer. Sports writer, Georgia Tech newspaper. Navy. WWII. Chemical engineer, Allied Chemical and DuPont. Ski instructor, Wintergreen Resort.

Israel B. “Buddy” Miller, IM 48, of Huntsville, Ala., on March 20. Naval Reserve.

President and board chairman, L. Miller & Son Inc. Director, Tennessee Valley Recycling LLC. President and trustee, Temple B’nai Shalom.

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for 16 years until his retirement.

Ireland enjoyed reading, golfing and traveling. He travelled to five of the seven continents, and lived in Georgia, California, Texas, Alabama, Virginia, Florida and the Marshall Islands.

In 1953, he married Rose Lanier. They were married for 46 years and had four children. He was married to Autumn Cook Ireland for 16 years until his passing. He is survived by his wife, four children, 13 grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

Max was a brilliant man who was loved and respected by many. He often referred to himself as "just a small town farm boy from Chickamauga," when he was, actually, one helluva rocket man.

Ottie C. Mitchell, EE 49, of Eugene, Ore., on March 17. Navy. Korean War. Hughes Aircraft. Professional nature photographer.

Author, “Sierra Paradise, A Photograph Journey through the Sierra Nevada Range.”

Carl G. Moore, ChE 46, of Wilmington, Del., on March 26. Army Reserve Corps. WWII. Research chemist, DuPont. Teaching assistant in Department of Chemistry and Biochemistry, University of Delaware.

Glen R. Nordyke Jr., AE 46, of Baton Rouge, La., on April 8. Kappa Alpha Order Fraternity.

Navy. CEO of Louisiana Domiciled Life Insurance

Co. Commercial artist. Chairman of the board, Better Business Bureau. Louisiana Art and Artists Guild. American Society of Portrait Artists.

William F. DeSoi, IE 51, of Auburn, Maine, on March 26. Army Air Corps. WWII. Manufacturing engineer, General Electric and Trane.

Automated Systems Group, Acco Babcock Inc. Mechanical engineering consultant.

Army (1st Lt.).

Dallas M. Ryle, AE 49, of Marietta, Ga., on March 30. Alpha Tau Omega Fraternity. Army.

Convair Aircraft Co. Vice president of engineering, Lockheed-Georgia. “Honor Role of Inventors” certificate, Lockheed-Georgia.

American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics. Son: Stephen M. Ryle, AE 86.

Charles F. Dewald, IE 52, of Decatur, Ga., on March 14. Vice president of the

Harrison W. Gill Jr., CE 51, of North Chattanooga, Tenn., on March 19. Eagle Scout.

1950s Jackson L. “Jack” Amason, ME 59, of Brunswick, Ga., on March 16. Founder, Sea Gardens Seafood. Grand marshall, Darien Blessing of the Fleet.

Thomas E. Batey, Arch 54, of Maryville, Tenn., on March 28. U.S. Army Corps of Engineers. Hospital Corp. of America. Chairman of the board, Lipscomb University.

John P. Bigger, IM 58, MS IM 60, of Camden, Ala., on March 1. Army.

Robert J. Bitowft Sr., Arch 55, of Palm Coast, Fla., on April 8. Navy. Mercury rocket program, NASA. Manager of airplane engine technology, General Electric Co. Constructor of petroleum refining facilities, Aramco. Broker, KPMG. Developer, Discovery Bay. Peter R. Carlson, AE 66, MS AE 68, of Green Valley, Ariz., on March 8. NASA, Marshall Space Center.

Leonard J. Challain, TE 54, MS TE 55, of Dupont, Wash., on Jan. 9. Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity. Navy (Capt.). WWII. Korean War. Director of R&D, Navy clothing. Director of contract operations, Naval Air Systems Command.

Commander Defense Contract Administration Service, Navy. Purchasing manager of the Fuel Products Division, Parker Hannifin Corp. Cofounder, Batdorf and Bronson Coffee.

Henry A. “Arch” Corriher Jr., MS AM 54, of Atlanta, on March 30. Army Air Corps. Air Force.

WWII. Air Force Reserves (Lt. Col.). Engineering Experiment Station, Georgia Tech. Research engineer in radar, Georgia Tech Research Institute.

Son: Henry A. “Hank” Corriher III, IM 84.

EDWARD E. DAVID

SCIENCE AND TECHNOLOGY LEADER EDWARD E. DAVID JR., EE 45, of Bedminster, N.J., on Feb. 13.

David served as director of the federal Office of Science and Technology under President Richard Nixon, where he helped draft the administration’s proposals for pollution control and alternative energy following passage of the Clean Air Act in 1970.

He struck partnership agreements with foreign governments and private industry, reorganized the federal scientific bureaucracy, and encouraged Nixon to deliver the first presidential message on science and technology.

During his tenure and afterward, when he served on professional and official panels (including some appointed by other presidents), David warned of the challenges that computers posed to personal privacy, advocated a federal communications network linking local emergency services to provide disaster warnings, expressed alarm at a national learning gap in mathematics, and supported ethical standards for research, according to The New York Times.

He also vigorously challenged the prevailing view on climate change.

He and 15 other scientists were listed as authors of an article in The Wall Street Journal in 2012 that said “there is no compelling scientific argument for drastic action to ‘decarbonize’ the world’s economy” and that “aggressive greenhouse-gas control policies are not justified economically.”

Unlike the presidential science advisers who preceded him, David was an industrial scientist. Before serving in government, he was executive director of the communications systems division of Bell Telephone Laboratories, where he worked from 1950 until his presidential appointment in 1970.

He left government for Gould Inc., a technology company, and was president of the Exxon Research and Engineering Company from 1977 to 1986.

He was also the United States representative to the NATO Science Committee, a president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and the founder of a consulting company.

He was the author of several books. With John G. Truxal of the Polytechnic Institute of Brooklyn, he created a layman’s school curriculum titled “Man Made World: A Course on Theories and Techniques That Contribute to Our Technological Civilization,” published in 1968.

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IN MEMORIAM Sigma Nu Fraternity. Navy. Engineering draftsman, Schmidt Engineering Co. Junior engineer, DuPont Co. President, Harrison Gill & Associates, Architects. American Institute of Architects. American Society of Civil Engineers. National Society of Professional Engineers.

Edgar B. Hamilton, IM 55, of Shelby, N.C., on

March 25. Georgia Tech football player. Westinghouse Electric Corp. Army (Lt.). President, CEO and chairman of the board, The First National Bank of Shelby. Citizen of the Year Award, Shelby N.C. President, Shelby Loan and Mortgage Corp.

Leonard O. Hinton Jr., Text 53, of Buford, Ga., on March 29.

WILLIAM CLAY MATTHEWS SR.

BUSINESSMAN AND FOOTBALL LEGEND WILLIAM CLAY MATTHEWS SR., IE 50, of Mount Pleasant, S.C., on March 23.

Matthews was an extraordinary athlete who became the patriarch of the NFL’s “First Family of Football.”

After graduating from Charleston High School in 1945, Matthews enrolled at Georgia Tech, where he was a star athlete competing in four sports: football, boxing, wrestling and swimming.

While at Tech, he won two Georgia Golden Glove heavyweight boxing championships. In football, Matthews was a three-year starter for the Yellow Jackets. His achievements led to his selection to the Georgia Tech Athletic Hall of Fame in 1972.

After Tech, Matthews focused his athletic career on football. He played in the NFL for the San Francisco 49ers from 1950-1955, while serving in the Army's 82nd Airborne Paratroopers as a 1st LT. from 1951-1953.

While at Ft. Bragg, he met his future wife, Daisy E. Crowson. They were married in 1953, and he returned to play for the San Francisco 49ers, becoming a team captain.

After retiring from football, Clay entered the business world and held executive positions at several Fortune 500 companies, including Bell and Howell, where he was COO, Hamilton Beach and Aerojet General, where he was CEO. After losing his wife, Daisy, Matthews married Carolyn Stephenson.

Upon retiring in 1993, Clay and Carolyn returned to his native Charleston, where he spent his retirement years painting, gardening, playing golf and playing his guitar.

One of Matthews’ greatest joys was watching his children and grandchildren compete in sports. He took immense pride in being the patriarch of a football dynasty. Two of his sons and five of his grandsons have gone on to successful NFL careers.

Matthews is survived by his wife, children, stepchildren, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.

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James A. “Buddy” Jones Jr., CE 56, of Tucker, Ga., on March 4. Georgia Tech football player. Sugar Bowl. Orange Bowl. Cotton Bowl.

National Championship. Army. Simons-Eastern Co. Consultant, Kimberly-Clark.

F. Delano Knight, IE 59, of Aiken, S.C., on March 28. Computer infrastructure consultant, Georgia Pacific, Pfizer, Comdisco and Siemens.

David W. Leach, ME 58, of Lexington, Ky., on April 7. IBM. Brother: Joseph E. Leach Jr., CE 51.

Robert B. “Bob” Lightner, EE 51, MS EE 52, of Richmond, Va., on March 14. Electronics technician mate, Navy. WWII. DuPont Co. Project director and supervisor, Reynolds Metals Co. Recipient, Reynolds Gold Award for patents (11 U.S. patents; 14 foreign patents).

John F. McGehee, EE 54, of Perry, Ga., on March 28. Army National Guard. Army Corps of Engineers. Aerospace engineer, NASA. Joseph F. Mole Jr., ChE 54, of Edisto Beach, S.C., on April 10. Lambda Chi Alpha Fraternity. Army. Chemical engineer, Westvaco Paper Co. Daughter: Amanda L. Mole, Arch 88, M Arch 90.

Edward D. Nichols, ME 55, of Atlanta, on March 19. Sigma Alpha Epsilon Fraternity.

Naval Reserves. P.H. Nichols and Co. Fulton County Health Dept.

Thomas G. North Jr., EE 50, of Greensboro, N.C., on March 14. Electronics engineer, Western Electric. AT&T. Navy.

Dwight H. Ross Jr., Cls 58, of Atlanta, on March 22. Staff photographer, Atlanta Journal-Constitution.

Frank M. “Malcom” Simpson, ME 56, of Santa Rosa Beach, Fla., on March 23. Air Force. Captain, Delta Airlines.

George M. Stevenson, ChE 59, of

Thomas Lux Poet and Teacher

Thomas Lux, of Atlanta, on Feb. 5.

LUX WAS AN ACCLAIMED POET who anchored the Poetry@ Tech program for 15 years. He passed away at age 70 following a lengthy illness.

The New York Times described Lux as “a poet who used spare, direct language to express the absurdities and sorrows of human life.”

His 1994 collection, “Split Horizon,” won the Kingsley Tufts Poetry Award, one of the most lucrative prizes in American poetry.

A native of Northampton, Mass., Lux earned a bachelor of arts in English literature from Emerson College in Boston and attended the University of Iowa. He was Emerson’s poet in residence from 1970 to 1975, and in 2002, the college awarded him an honorary doctor of letters.

Before coming to Georgia Tech as a visiting professor in 2001, he taught around the country at programs including the University of Houston Graduate Writing Program, Boston University Graduate Writing Program, University of Iowa Writers Workshop, Sarah Lawrence College and more.

He was named the Margaret T. and Henry C. Bourne Jr.

Blountville, Tenn., on Jan. 14 . Army.

Superintendent of Acid Concentration Department, Eastman Kodak.

James E. Thornton, ChE 52, of Macon, Ga., on April 13. General manager of the Finishing Division, Bibb Co. J. Kenneth Waid, IE 56, of Carrollton, Ga., on March 29. Former president, West Georgia Area Georgia Tech Club. Sons: Scott Waid, EE 88; J. Steven Waid, ME 95.

Daughter-in-law: Sandra A. Waid, EE 88.

Grandson: Christopher Waid, Cls 21.

Joe L. Watson, Arch 58, of Memphis, Tenn., on March 12. Navy. Korean War. Partner, Awsumb Wage and Watson. City of Memphis Division of Engineering.

Fred Williams, EE 50, of Louisville, Ky., on March 10. Navy. WWII. AT&T. BellSouth.

South Central Bell.

Chair in Poetry at Georgia Tech in 2002, and he served in that capacity until his death.

“Tom Lux was not only a great poet, he was also a great teacher of poetry,” said G. Wayne Clough, president emeritus of the Institute, who was instrumental in bringing Lux to Georgia Tech.

“He brought poets to campus, engaged engineering and business students in poetry, and reached out to the larger community. Tom made our campus a more vibrant place to grow and learn and he will be greatly missed."

In addition to his teaching career, Lux produced a large volume of work. He published 19 books of poetry, including his most recent book, “To the Left of Time,” published last year. His work appeared in more than 55 anthologies, and Lux counted 31 essays among his credited works. He served as panelist or judge more than a dozen times in his career, and he earned a total of 16 awards and grants.

1960s Gerald W. “Jerry” Buran, IE 68, of Ormond Beach, Fla., on March 29. IBM. Worldwide director of sales and marketing, DCA. Brother: Ronald D. “Ron” Buran, ME 59.

James M. Caldwell, MS InfoSci 68, of Highland Village, Texas, on Feb. 27. Air Force (Lt. Col.).

John H. Crouch III, AE 61, of Long Beach, Miss., on Feb. 28. Boeing. Attorney, Paceco Inc. Arkel International. Ingalls Shipbuilding.

NASA, “Silver Snoopy” Award. Editor-inChief, Journal of Space Law. Staff member, Mississippi Law Journal. Commissioner, Long Beach Water Management District. President, Long Beach School Board. President, Harrison County Bar Association. Author, “The Monocacy Legacy” and “When Saturn Hit the Moon: The Saturn V Lunar Impact Story.”

John C. Ganchoff, PhD Chem 63, of Daly City, Calif., on April 3. Chemistry professor, Elmhurst College.

Hugh W. Gaston Jr., EE 63, of Euharlee, Ga., on March 13. Army. Korean War. Lockheed Corp. Brunswick Paper Co. Georgia Pacific. Inland Container. Key engineer, Southern Designs. Quality technical engineer, Mobile, Ala. Engineer, Weatherby Inc. Son: Robert Gaston, MATE 94.

George R. “Rocky” Harper, IM 64, of Coral Gables, Fla., on Feb. 20. Theta Chi Fraternity. Navy. Partner, Paul, Landy, Beiley and Harper PA. Partner, Steel Hector & Davis LLP. Co-founder, Harper Meyer Perez Hagen O’Connor Albert & Dribin LLP. Chairman, international law section of The Florida Bar. Hispanic Business Magazine Legal Elite List. Super Lawyers. Miami Today’s Book of Leaders. Recipient of the

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IN MEMORIAM

Richard “Dick” Alexander Pickens Engineer and Flight Instructor

Richard “Dick” Alexander Pickens, IE 62, of Marietta, Ga. on March 14.

PICKENS WAS AN ENGINEER and a longtime flight instructor who logged thousands of hours in the sky.

Pickens was born in Chattanooga, but spent much of his youth in Marietta, Ga., where he graduated from high school. After his military service in the Korean War, he attended the University of Hawaii before transferring to Georgia Tech, where he graduated with a civil engineering degree.

Pickens worked in Traffic Control tower at Fort Lauderdale International then at Fort Lauderdale Executive airport as a flight instructor for many years.

He worked at Boeing in Seattle for two years before ending his engineering career at Lockheed, where both of his parents had been lifelong employees.

He joined the Lockheed Flying Club (now the LGE

Flying Club), where he held the office of vice president and served as a flight instructor for his entire career.

He was a world traveler of the highest order. He circled the globe with friends, family and flight students, and lived in Africa on two different occasions.

Pickens logged over 20,000 hours in flight, the equivalent of about three years aloft, flying in every prop aircraft available from Hercules C-130 to an ultralight.

He was a longtime and respected member of the Atlanta Hangar of the Quiet Birdmen, and will be missed for his quiet humor and courteous friendship.

1980s

Inter-American Law Review Lawyer of the Americas Award. Adjunct professor, St. Thomas University Law School and University of Miami School of Law. Named “Lawyer of the Americas,” University of Miami Law Review. President, Inter-American Bar Association. Director, Cuban Banking Study Group. Chairman, board of the Historical Museum of South Florida. President, Law Alumni Association.

President, General Alumni Association, University of Miami.

partner, San Marcos Valley LLC. Pioneering member, United States Parachute Assocation. Founding member, “Them Toadsuckers.”

Jack D. Stover, IE 60, of Canton, Ohio, on March 9. Phi Kappa Tau Fraternity. Navy.

Research engineer, Timken Co.

Lucinda R. Seago, Chem 00, of Atlanta, on March 4. Nurse, Farren Care Center. Tutor, Mount Wachusett Community College. Warwick Board of Health.

Charles O. Lawrence, Phys 69, of Vidalia, Ga., on March 1.

1950s

Friends

Donald E. “Nic” Nichols Jr., IM 62, of Deland, Fla., on March 13. Managing

Daniel M. Karlo, GM 72, of Marietta, Ga., on April 10. ABB Control Inc.

Elbert B. Beard Jr., of Atlanta, on March 2.

Honorary alumnus, Georgia Tech. BellSouth.

Robert W. “Bob” Purcell, ME 67, of Newnan, Ga., on March 28. Georgia Tech track and cross country runner.

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Tim J. Milam, Arch 82, of Clinton, Ark., on March 24. Musician, Five by Five.

2000s

Vivian R. Brewer, of Suwanee, Ga., on March 29. Husband: Harold R. Brewer, Phys 49.

Joyce K. Caddell, of Montgomery, Ala., on March 10. Co-founder, John and Joyce Caddell Foundation. Husband: John Caddell, Arch 52.

Elizabeth N. Colson, of Atlanta, on Feb. 2. Internationally recognized teacher of singing.

Husband: Gregory M. Colson, former head of the music department, Georgia Tech.

Cecil B. Day Jr., of Tybee Island, Ga., on March 5. Author, “Day by Day.” Home developer, Atlanta and Tybee Island. City councilman, Tybee Island. Georgia House of Representatives, 16 years. Chairman, Public Safety & Homeland Security Committee. International Conference of Counter-Terrorism in Israel. Author: The Stephens-Day Homestead Exemption. Chaplain for law enforcement officers. Burke Day Public Safety Building, Tybee Island. Father: Cecil B. Day Sr., IM 58. Mother: Deen Day Sanders, honorary alumna. Sister: Kathleen Day, IM 78.

Brother: C. Peyton Day, IM 83.

Marjorie H. Hubbard, of Woodstock, Ga., on March 15. Teacher, Etowah School, New Bethel School and Woodstock Elementary School.

Recipient of the Evelyn Gordy Alumni Loyalty Award, Reinhardt University. Glenn and Marjorie Residence Hall, Reinhardt University. Daughter: Elaine Hubbard, AM 72, MS AM 74, PhD AM 80.

William W. Johnson, of Dunwoody, Ga., on Jan. 9. Associate professor of modern languages, Georgia Tech.

Grace D. Kalb, of Atlanta, on March 2. Southern Bell. Husband: Henry G. Kalb, IM 48.

Joseph W. “Joe” Rogers Sr., of Atlanta, on March 3. Army Air Corps (Capt.). WWII. Vice president, Toddle House Corp. Co-founder, Waffle House. Son: Joe W. Rogers Jr., IM 68.

Howard A. Schmidt, of Muskego, Wis., on March 2. Air Force. Vietnam War (3 Bronze Stars). Chief of Transportation and Deputy Director of Resource Management. Arizona Air National Guard. Special agent, Criminal Investigation Division of the Army Reserves. Police officer, SWAT team, Organized Crime and Drug Enforcement, Special Enforcement Team, Chandler Police Department. Computer Exploitation Team, FBI National Drug Intelligence Center.

Supervisory special agent and director of the

Computer Crime and Information Warfare Division, Air Force Office of Special Investigations.

Established first dedicated computer forensic lab in the federal government. Director of information security, chief information security officer and chief security officer, Microsoft. Appointed by President George W. Bush as the vice chair of the president’s Critical Infrastructure Protection Board. Special advisor for cyberspace security, The White House. Co-creator, National Strategy to Secure CyberSpace. Vice president and chief information security officer, eBay. Appointed by President Barack Obama as cybersecurity coordinator and special assistant to the president for national security affairs.

Co-founder and partner, Ridge-Schmidt Cyber.

Executive director, Software Assurance Forum for Excellence in Code. Chairman, U.S. Chamber of Commerce Cyber Leadership Council.

Chairman of the board, Codenomicon. Professor of the practice, Georgia Tech College of

Computing. Professor of research, Idaho State University. Adjunct distinguished fellow, Carnegie Mellon’s CyLab. Distinguished fellow, Ponemon Institute.

Adelyn S. Stevenson, of Atlanta, on March 10. Food Distribution Administration. Dietician, Vanderbilt University. GE home economist.

Cooking show host, “Cooking Can Be Fun.” Personnel manager in food services and residence halls, University of Missouri. GT Faculty Women’s Club. Honorary Alumna Award, Georgia Tech. Husband: James R. “Jim” Stevenson, former physics professor. Daughters: Alicia L. Steele, MS ICS 87; Maryhelen Stevenson, EE 83; Jana Stevenson-Waln, IE 84.

Mary V. “Jenny” Warnock, of Ocala, Fla., on March 17. Began a children’s day care center.

Cobb County School system. Husband: Bill Warnock, CE 52. Grandson: Tyler Warnock, ME 06.

TARA DEAUGUSTINIS

WIFE, MOTHER AND BUSINESSWOMAN TARA DEAUGUSTINIS, IE 92, of Peachtree Corners, Ga., on May 23.

DeAugustinis was a loving wife, mother, daughter, and friend who cared deeply for her family. She was also a driven business leader and a trusted colleague.

DeAugustinis passed away at age 47 following a brave battle with mesothelioma.

Born in Albany, Ga., she grew up in Florida, Tennessee and Georgia before settling with her family in Norcross, Ga. for high school. She attended Georgia Tech, where she graduated with highest honors and a degree in industrial engineering in 1992.

She began her career right after college, having been recruited directly out of Georgia Tech by Anderson Consulting. After starting her career there, she also worked for Manugistics and JDA Software. In 2008, she started her own independent consulting business so that she could work part time and focus on raising her daughter, Aubrey. Most recently, she worked extensively with close friends and clients at IronPlanet to grow their business.

Known for her very strong faith, Tara was an active member of Perimeter Church and her women's discipleship group. She also loved attending Georgia Tech football, basketball and baseball games to cheer on her beloved Yellow Jackets.

She loved to travel and did so often. In the late 90's, she lived in London with her husband, Rich DeAugustinis, IE 92. She loved spending time with her family in St. John, in the U.S. Virgin Islands, which she called her "happy place,” and which will be the final resting place for her ashes.

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Volume 93 No. 2 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 101

TECH HISTORY

A Legacy of Respect

P

BY MELISSA FRALICK

Many Yellow Jackets swore at legendary management professor Phil Adler during his 38 years of teaching at the Institute, but today most of his former students just swear by him.

PHILIP ADLER JR., HON 92, is a stickler for precision. The longtime Georgia Tech professor spent many hours drilling his management students about the importance of understanding words commonly used in business—even seemingly ubiquitous ones like “strategic” or “time.”

Take, for instance, his examination of the word “respect.”

“What does it mean when you say you respect someone—you think highly of them?” Adler asks. “Are you going to hear a sailor say ‘I look up to the ocean?’ No. But you will hear a sailor say, ‘I respect the ocean.’ What respect means is that you realize something or someone will have an impact on your life. Therefore, you can have positive and negative respect.”

It is perhaps this closer inspection of the term respect that best describes Adler’s relationship to the hundreds of students he taught throughout his nearly 40-year tenure at Georgia Tech.

Known for his high-stakes, no-nonsense teaching style, Adler is the first to admit that he was both feared and beloved by students. “They used to say, ‘we would swear at him in class, but now we swear by him’,” Adler says.

A recent survey conducted by the Georgia Tech Alumni Association asked alumni to name the person who impacted them the most during their time at Georgia Tech.

The results were presented visually in a word cloud, with the names mentioned the most featured most prominently in the largest font.

Adler was, by far, the biggest name in the cloud—bigger than some of the biggest titans of Tech lore, such as Bobby Dodd and George Griffin.

So how is it that a single management professor could

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loom so large in the psyches of so many Georgia Tech alumni?

His former students—including prominent business executives, clergy, professors, entertainers and professional athletes— say it’s because he taught them how to think fast, stay focused and challenge themselves.

THE ACCIDENTAL COLLEGE PROFESSOR Adler is a jack of all trades. In addition to the decades he spent teaching at Georgia Tech, he spent 31 years in the U.S. Air Force (two in active duty during the Korean War), and retired from the reserves as a colonel.

He also worked for Westinghouse, the Department of Defense and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.

He worked for Jimmy Carter, during his terms as both governor of Georgia and president of the United States. He was

“There was no textbook, so if you missed something you were in big trouble,” Stansbury says. “You had to be listening, taking notes and have your hand up at all times.” even a big band singer and a radio personality, including a gig as a staff announcer on the radio station WGST. His resume goes on and on.

But what he didn’t set out to do was become a professor. “I wound up as a college professor simply because I had the opportunity to go for a master’s degree,” Adler says. “I went down to the University of Miami and they gave me a couple courses to teach as part of my fellowship, and it got me involved in teaching.”

After earning his MBA in 1957, Adler taught at the University of Miami for five years and conducted research for the Orange Bowl Festival before returning to Ohio State

University, where he’d been an undergraduate, to work toward a doctoral degree in industrial management.

While still working on his PhD dissertation, Adler accepted the position of assistant professor at Georgia Tech in 1962.

Adler found that his range of positions—from the military, to industry to entertainment—was a boon to his teaching career. His philosophy is that no two situations will ever be exactly the same. By sharing his own life experiences, he could help his management students prepare for what they might encounter in their own professional lives.

In his trademark baritone, Adler explained: “I developed a teaching method based on my Socratic experience and this was the key to it: I would give them my experiences, and they would have those. But then I taught them what to do with them. That would become their knowledge base. The more of my stuff they knew, the more pieces they would have to compare to their new situations,” Adler says. “It was my whole thesis of decision making. The more pieces they have of previous experience from me, and other professors, and life in general, the better.”

Rather than lecturing, Adler taught his students in the Socratic Method, using questions to guide students to the answers.

It wasn’t for everyone. His reputation caused fear in the hearts of many Tech students, but among those who liked his teaching style were true devotees, such as Georgia Tech Director of Athletics Todd Stansbury, IM 84, who took seven of Adler’s courses as a student.

Stansbury recalls the adrenaline rush of “being on the edge of disaster” all the time.

“There was no textbook, so if you missed something you were in big trouble,” Stansbury says. “You had to be listening, taking notes, and have your hand up at all times. You couldn’t just read a textbook and memorize concepts. You had to actually understand them. That’s what made his teaching style so different than what we had experienced in other classes.”

Adler’s students had to be paying attention and ready to be put on the spot at any moment. And once called upon, they needed to answer immediately.

Volume 93 No. 21 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 103

TECH HISTORY “A basic thing my students learned from me was how to behave, think and reach positions of decision in microseconds,” Adler says.

If they were too slow, Adler’s students were likely to hear one of his regular refrains—“You’re not with me!”—before receiving an extra assignment. These punitive papers could be three pages or 30, depending on Adler’s mood. But he rarely gave quizzes, and often gave just one exam during a course.

“They were already getting an exam every minute of every day,” Adler says.

Vicki Davis, Mgt 91, says being in Adler’s classes was a transformative experience. “He put so much pressure on you that when you got through, you knew you could make it,” Davis says. “He taught me how to think and I’m forever grateful.”

Today, Davis is a high school teacher as well as a popular education blogger and podcaster, with a Twitter following of

THE PHIL (ADLER) FILE NAME: Philip Adler Jr. BORN: Cincinnati, Ohio EDUCATION: – B.S. Business Organization, The Ohio State University (1952); – M.B.A., University of Miami (1957); – Ph.D. Industrial Management, Ohio State University (1966); – Honorary Degree, Georgia Tech (1992) – Air War College, U.S. Air Force CAREER HIGHLIGHTS: – U.S. Air Force, Korean War – Colonel, U.S. Air Force Reserves (31 years) – Assistant Professor, College of Management, Georgia Tech (1962-1966) – Associate Professor, College of Management, Georgia Tech (1966-1970); – Professor, College of Management, Georgia Tech (1970-2000) – Joint appointment, Clinical Associate Professor of

Rehabilitation Medicine, Emory University School of Medicine and Georgia Tech (1964-1991) – Safety Management and Organization Consultant, Centers for Disease Control - Management development adviser to Gov. Jimmy Carter – Organization adviser, Office of Management and Budget and Office of the White House Press Secretary for the Jimmy Carter Administration – Radio announcer at WGST and America's Web Radio OTHER PURSUITS: – Board of Trustees, Georgia Tech Athletic Association – Board member, Ferst Center for the Arts at Georgia Tech – Board member, Atlanta Lyric Theater – Transportation columnist, Atlanta Journal-Constitution – Adviser, Phi Delta Theta Fraternity

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more than 143,000.

Davis says she is able to apply many of the concepts she learned from Adler—from how the brain absorbs new information to how scientists and engineers think—to her work as an educator.

“I still have my notes and it’s been over 25 years. I still use what I learned. How many A portrait of a young Phil Adler classes, and how many professors, do you still remember what they said?” Davis asks.

“There is no other Dr. Adler. He is in a class by himself.”

Stansbury recalls another one of Adler’s famous phrases: “People, people, I’m not teaching you for a test, I’m teaching you for the rest of your life.”

He said the principles he learned in Adler’s classes, have in fact, come in handy throughout his life.

“Being able to think on your feet, make split decisions, being under pressure in a meeting setting and being able to deliver has been helpful in our careers,” Stansbury says.

Adler was known as a demanding professor, but he also had a reputation for being available to his students 24/7. He gave them his phone number and permission to call whenever they needed help.

“They could call me at any hour,” Adler says. “They would call me at 3, 4 in the morning and I would tutor them. I was well known for it. They could talk to me anytime and I was happy to do it because that way I knew that they were better prepared. It made my job teaching easier.”

A LASTING LEGACY In five decades, Adler witnessed many changes and took part in many “firsts” for the Institute.

Adler was the first professor to be jointly appointed at Emory University, as a clinical associate professor of rehabilitation medicine, opening the door for the now-extensive partnership between the two universities. He was also the first to teach a course by telephone, a concept that would develop into distance learning at Georgia Tech.

Throughout his tenure, Adler was keenly interested in Yellow Jacket athletics. He was actively involved in recruiting student-athletes and served on the board of the Georgia Tech Athletic Association. In addition to mentoring and teaching a lot of athletes in both men's and women's sports, Adler worked closely over the years with coaches like Bill Curry, Bobby Dodd and Bobby Cremins. “A lot of them went pro, especially my basketball and football students,” Adler says.

Time Machine Adler in uniform while serving in the U.S. Air Force.

“I still have my notes and it’s been over 25 years,” Davis says. “ I still use what I learned. How many classes, and how many professors, do you still remember what they said?

There is no other Dr. Adler. He is in a class by himself.”

Adler was also behind a few key changes to Bobby Dodd Stadium over the years. He was instrumental in creating the stadium’s VIP boxes and lead the move to relocate the marching band from the east stands to the north stands, where they could be heard better.

After retiring from teaching in 2000, Adler remained active at Tech for more than another decade. His presence can still be felt throughout campus.

In 2005, a group of former students and friends raised money to name a wing of the fourth floor in the Scheller College of Business in honor of Adler. An anonymous donor endowed the Philip Adler Jr. Dean’s Scholarship in his name, which funds top Scheller students in perpetuity.

Stansbury says when meeting with alumni, regardless of when they attended Georgia Tech, the topic of Dr.

Adler almost always comes up.

“I don’t know that you’re going to f ind many people that have the breadth of legacy that he has,” Stansbury says. “When you look at graduates of Georgia Tech that have gone through his classes, there’s an incredible amount of success and everyone of us who went through his classes would give credit where credit is due.”

At 86, Adler retains the sharp memory he’s always been known for, with the ability to recall details as granular as where a particular student sat in class. He loves to talk about his former students, and it’s clear that he’s proud of their successes.

Though he’s long been retired, Adler says he still fields the occasional 2 a.m. phone call from a former student turned business executive in need of advice.

“They still call me,” he says.

5 YEARS AGO, IN 2012, the Clough Undergraduate Learning Center is transformed into Google Headquarters for the film The Internship.

•

10 YEARS AGO, IN 2007, the North Avenue Apartment Complex is transferred to Georgia Tech for student housing.

•

25 YEARS AGO, IN 1992, Dean of Students James E. Dull retires after 35 years at Georgia Tech. He came to campus in 1957 as assistant dean and was named dean in 1964.

•

50 YEARS AGO, IN 1967, the Cherry Emerson Biology Building is completed.

•

100 YEARS AGO, IN 1917, Tech’s “Golden Tornado” football squad goes 9-0 and claims the national championship, shutting out its opponents seven times.

•

125 YEARS AGO, IN 1892, fire destroys the Shop Building and its equipment, except for three boxes of tools rescued by students.

Volume 93 No. 2 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 105

BACK PAGE

Tech in 2040: Creating the Next in Education

BY RAFAEL L. BRAS

THE NEXT GENERATION college graduate is expected to have an average of 15 jobs over his or her lifetime. And, half of the jobs that will be available in the next five years don’t exist today. This reality is drastically different than my own professional career path and will look nothing like anything we have seen before.

For more than a year, roughly 70 members of the Georgia Tech community—faculty, staff, students, and alumni—have been on a journey to discover what the future holds for higher education and institutions like Georgia Tech. Officially named the Commission on Creating the Next in Education, the group is seeking to discover what education will look like in five, 10, even 20 years into the future and beyond, but more than that, they are looking at what higher education should be for future learners.

The needs of learners are changing. Workforce demands are evolving.

More so than ever, higher education is expected to create graduates who get jobs, but also to provide education that transcends along one’s career

“We must lead the way and push the boundaries of how we educate, who we educate and what we teach.”

– preparing learners not just for their first job after graduation, but for their third or fourth. Institutions must create new knowledge for industry. They must be a place where new companies are born, and serve as an economic engine. Universities must also be an active citizen organization of their local community and of the world.

So, how does Georgia Tech prepare itself to respond to those demands?

To be an institution of that future, Georgia Tech must look forward and define what’s next. We must lead the way and push the boundaries of how we educate, who we educate and what we teach.

Faced with different students, a changing socioeconomic climate, learning and teaching transformed by science, and the workforce demands for future skills, the goals of the commission include exploration of new ideas in content delivery and nurturing a culture of lifelong learning for undergraduate, graduate, and professional education learners.

As the commission imagines possible futures, they launched an initiative called “GT2040,” an interactive tool designed to get ideas from our closest and best resource—our own community. The ideas have been varied, but have some common threads, including experiential and applications-based learning, collaborative educational experiences, blended and personalized learning, virtual experiences and building on artificial intelligence connections in the classroom, being connected to Georgia Tech from anywhere around the globe, and

106 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | Volume 93 No. 2 2017

increasing diversity among the student body.

We are excited about the possibilities and will develop pilots and projects from many of these ideas as the commission finishes its work later this year, emboldened by the ongoing success of transformational technology including use of virtual teaching assistants like Professor Ashok Goel’s Jill Watson (and others later) in the Knowledge Based Artificial Intelligence course, and full programs like our Online Master’s in Computer Science (OMS CS) and the upcoming Online Master’s in Analytics starting this fall. These are just two examples of how the educational experience can be transformed, changing the way content is delivered and connecting learners all over the world.

Rafael L. Bras is Georgia Tech’s provost and executive vice president for academic affairs.

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Volume 93 No. 2 2017 | GTALUMNI.ORG/MAGAZINE | 107June 1, 2017.

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