Philip Shapira is a Professor in the School of Public Policy at Georgia Institute of Technology and Professor of Management, Innovation and Policy with the Manchester Institute of Innovation Research, Alliance Manchester Business School, University of Manchester. His interests encompass science and technology policy, economic and regional development, innovation management and policy, industrial competitiveness, technology trajectories and assessment, innovation measurement, and policy evaluation. Shapira's current and recent research includes projects that examine nanotechnology research and innovation systems assessment, responsible research and innovation in synthetic biology, and next generation manufacturing and institutions for technology diffusion. Shapira is a director of the Georgia Tech Program in Science, Technology and Innovation Policy and the Georgia Manufacturing Survey. He is co-editor (with J. Edler, P. Cunningham, and A. Gök) of the Handbook of Innovation Policy Impact (Edward Elgar 2016) and (with R. Smits and S. Kuhlmann) of Innovation Policy: Theory and Practice. An International Handbook (Edward Elgar, 2010). Shapira is a Fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science and a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts.

Mary Lynn Realff is an Associate Professor of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology (Georgia Tech). She received her BS Textile Engineering from Georgia Tech and her Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering and Polymer Science and Engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).

Her current research is focused on Effective Team Dynamics for both undergraduate and graduate students. The Effective Team Dynamics Initiative develops curriculum and workshops that enable students to gain the competencies to work effectively in teams and for faculty to gain the competencies to guide students through challenging team dynamics is making a positive impacts at Georgia Tech.

W. Jud Ready is the Deputy Director, Innovation Initiatives for the Georgia Tech ‘Institute for Materials.’  He has also been an adjunct professor in the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech and a principal research engineer on the research faculty of Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI) for over a dozen years. Prior to joining the Georgia Tech faculty, he worked for a major military contractor (General Dynamics) as well as in small business (MicroCoating Technologies). He has served as PI or co-PI for grants totaling ~$17M awarded by the Army, Navy, Air Force, DARPA, NASA, NSF, NIST, industry, charitable foundations and the States of Georgia and Florida. His current research focuses primarily on energy, aerospace, nanomaterial applications, and electronics reliability.

H. Jerry Qi is a professor and the Woodruff Faculty Fellow in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his bachelor degrees (dual degree), master and Ph.D. degree from Tsinghua University (Beijing, China) and a ScD degree from Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Boston, MA, USA). After one year postdoc at MIT, he joined University of Colorado Boulder as an assistant professor in 2004, and was promoted to associate professor with tenure in 2010. He joined Georgia Tech in 2014 as an associate professor with tenure and was promoted to a full professor in 2016. Qi is a recipient of NSF CAREER award (2007). He is a member of Board of Directors for the Society of Engineering Science. In 2015, he was elected to an ASME Fellow. The research in Qi's group is in the general area of soft active materials, with a focus on 1) 3D printing of soft active materials to enable 4D printing methods; and 2) recycling of thermosetting polymers. The material systems include: shape memory polymers, light activated polymers, vitrimers. On 3D printing, they developed a wide spectrum of 3D printing capability, including: multIMaTerial inkjet 3D printing, digit light process (DLP) 3D printing, direct ink write (DIW) 3D printing, and fused deposition modeling (FDM) 3D printing. These printers allow his group to develop new 3D printing materials to meet the different challenging requirements. For thermosetting polymer recycling, his group developed methods that allow 100% recycling carbon fiber reinforced composites and electronic packaging materials. Although his group develops different novel applications, his work also relies on the understanding and modeling of material structure and properties under environmental stimuli, such as temperature, light, etc, and during material processing, such as 3D printing. Constitutive model developments are typically based on the observations from experiments and are then integrated with finite element through user material subroutines so that these models can be used to solve complicated 3D multiphysics problems involving nonlinear mechanics. A notable example is their recent pioneer work on 4D printing, where soft active materials is integrated with 3D printing to enable shape change (or time in shape forming process). Recently, his developed a state-of-the-art hybrid 3D printing station, which allows his group to integrate different polymers and conduct inks into one system. Currently, his group is working on using this printing station for a variety of applications, including printed 3D electronics, printed soft robots, etc.

Professor Mark R. Prausnitz is a Regents' Professor and the Love Family Professor in Chemical and Bimolecular Engineering in the School of Chemical & Bimolecular Engineering. He received his B.S. in 1988 from Stanford University and his Ph.D. in 1994 from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Professor Prausnitz and his colleagues carry out research on biophysical methods of drug delivery, which employ microneedles, ultrasound, lasers, electric fields, heat, convective forces and other physical means to control the transport of drugs, proteins, genes and vaccines into and within the body. A major area of focus involves the use of microneedle patches to apply vaccines to the skin in a painless, minimally invasive manner. In collaboration with Emory University, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, and other organizations, Professor Prausnitz's group is advancing microneedles from device design and fabrication through pharmaceutical formulation and pre-clinical animal studies through studies in human subjects. In addition to developing a self-administered influenza vaccine using microneedles, Professor Prausnitz is translating microneedle technology especially to make vaccination in developing countries more effective. The Prausnitz group has also developed hollow microneedles for injection into the skin and into the eye in collaboration with Emory University. In the skin, research focuses on insulin administration to human diabetic patients to increase onset of action by targeting insulin delivery to the skin. In the eye, hollow microneedles enable precise targeting of injection to the suprachoroidal space and other intraocular tissues for minimally invasive delivery to treat macular degeneration and other retinal diseases. Professor Prausnitz and colleagues also study novel mechanisms to deliver proteins, DNA and other molecules into cells. Cavitation bubble activity generated by ultrasound and by laser-excitation of carbon nanoparticles breaks open a small section of the cell membrane and thereby enables entry of molecules, which is useful for gene-based therapies and targeted drug delivery. In addition to research activities, Professor Prausnitz teaches an introductory course on engineering calculations, as well as two advanced courses on pharmaceuticals and technical communication, both of which he developed. He also serves the broader scientific and business communities as a frequent consultant, advisory board member and expert witness.

Faces of Research - Profile Article

Oliver Pierron joined Georgia Tech in summer 2007. Prior, he was a senior engineer at the R&D center of Qualcomm MEMS Technologies, Inc. in San Jose, California. Pierron's research group investigates the mechanical properties of small-scale materials with emphasis on the degradation properties (fracture, fatigue, creep). The scientific contribution of this research is to develop a fundamental understanding of the degradation mechanisms at the nanoscale while the engineering motivation is to assess and predict the structural reliability of devices and systems fabricated with emerging technologies. An underlying challenge is to develop experimental techniques that permit to accurately measure these properties. Pierron's research is currently sponsored by the National Science Foundation.

Our group is primarily a surface chemistry and physics group which focuses on the use of high-powered pulsed lasers, low-energy electron scattering, micro-plasmas, mass spectrometry and ultrahigh vacuum surface science techniques. We use this "tool-set" as well as some scattering theory to unravel the details of non-thermal processes occurring under a variety of non-equilibrium conditions. Our group is based upon an interdisciplinary approach and thus our research programs span the realm of fundamental investigations in molecular physics, surface physics and chemistry, bio-physics, bio-polymer formation under pre-biotic conditions as well as working in applied areas of relevance to analytical technique developments, atmospheric chemistry, catalysis and molecular hydrogen generation.