Ellen is Director of the Master of Science in Urban Design degree, an authority on sustainable suburban redevelopment, and a leading urbanist. Author of over 100 articles, she is co-author with June Williamson of the retrofitting suburbia book series documenting successful retrofits of aging big box stores, malls, and office parks into healthier and more sustainable places. Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Solutions for Redesigning Suburbs, (Wiley, 2009, 2011) received a PROSE award as the best architecture and urban planning book of 2009 and has been featured in The New York Times, Time Magazine, Harvard Business Review, NPR, PBS, TED and other prominent venues. Case Studies in Retrofitting Suburbia: Urban Design Strategies for Urgent Challenges (Wiley, 2020) expands on the first book examining how new retrofits are helping communities disrupt automobile dependence, improve public health, support an aging population, leverage social capital for equity, compete for jobs, and add water and energy resilience. 

Ellen serves on several national boards and committees, is former Chair of the Board of the Congress for the New Urbanism, lectures widely and conducts community workshops. In both her teaching and research she focuses on helping communities address new challenges that they were never designed for – whether that’s through her unique database of successful suburban retrofits or studio classes on anticipating autonomous vehicles, coping with climate change or suburban blight. She taught at UVA and MIT before joining Georgia Tech as Architecture Program Director from 2000-2009.

I am an Assistant Professor at Georgia Tech ISyE. My research concerns the control and operation of decarbonized power systems, particularly with the integration of flexible loads such as electric vehicles. I got my Ph.D. from the University of Oxford in the Energy and Power Group, and completed my postdoc in the GRIFFIN Lab at CU Boulder.

Dr. Kelly Comfort received her Ph.D. in comparative literature with a designated emphasis in critical theory from the University of California, Davis. She joined the Georgia Tech faculty as an Assistant Professor of Spanish in the School of Modern Languages in 2005, became Associate Professor in 2012, and Professor in 2023.

A specialist in Latin American literature and transatlantic modernisms, Dr. Comfort's research agenda focuses primarily on the intersections between Latin American modernismo and contemporaneous turn-of-the-century literary movements in Europe such as aestheticism and decadence.

Dr. Chen is an Assistant Professor in the School of Computational Science and Engineering. Previously he was a Research Scientist at the Oden Institute for Computational Engineering and Sciences at the University of Texas at Austin. Dr. Chen’s research is in the multidisciplinary fields of computational mathematics, data science, scientific machine learning, and parallel computing with various applications in materials, energy, health, and natural hazard. Specifically, his research focuses on developing fast, scalable, and parallel computational methods for integrating data and models under high-dimensional uncertainty to make (1) statistical model learning via Bayesian inference, (2) reliable system prediction with uncertainty quantification, (3) efficient data acquisition through optimal experimental design, and (4) robust control and design by stochastic optimization.

Dr. Andre Calmon is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at Scheller College of Business, the co-director of Sustainable-X, and a Brook Byers Institute Faculty Fellow. Before joining Georgia Tech, he was an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at INSEAD.

Andre’s research uses data, analytics, and mathematical modeling to address sustainability and efficiency issues in innovative business models. More broadly, his research investigates how organizations can use analytics and business model innovation to generate positive social and environmental impact while increasing profits. His work has been published in premier management journals such as Management Science, Manufacturing & Service Operations Management, and Production and Operations Management.

Andre is a renowned educator, and his innovative pedagogy resulted in several award-winning new courses, case studies, and student-led ventures. In particular, the sustainability pedagogical material he developed was the Grand Prize winner of the Page Prize. Furthermore, Andre’s teaching fosters a “classroom-to-startup-to-research” pipeline, and much of his research examines new management challenges faced by startups founded by his former students.

Andre received a Ph.D. in Operations Research from MIT. He also holds an M.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Universidade Estadual de Campinas (Unicamp) and a B.Sc. in Electrical Engineering from the Universidade de Brasília (UnB).

Mr. Caravati is a Principal and Founder of Applied Plasma Arc Technologies, LLC and a Senior Research Scientist and Professional Geologist at the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), the applied research arm of the Georgia Institute of Technology. He received his Bachelor’s degree in Geology from the University of Dayton, Ohio, and a Master of Science in Geology-Hydrogeology track from the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. He earned a Master’s degree in Business Administration (International Business) from the Stetson School of Business and Economics at Mercer University in Atlanta. He began work with GTRI in 2002.

Mr. Caravati served as a Hydrogeologist, Project Manager, and Project Director for a wide range of water resources and water quality projects in the United States, Mexico and England. He has led numerous water resource investigations that included delineating watersheds using aerial imagery and GIS tools, well installation and testing programs, monitoring and field data collection programs, and developing ground water flow and contaminant transport models for predictive studies. Since 2008, he served as Director of the Environmental Safety and Occupational Health Programs at GTRI, and as Program Manager for environmental engineering research for a global services provider. Mr. Caravati also served as a research lead in Georgia Tech’s Plasma Arc Research Facility. 

Mr. Caravati’s areas of research include the design and prototyping of dry sanitation systems; testing of chemical and biological sensor systems for environmental applications; modeling of renewable energy systems for rural areas; water supply and wastewater studies for sustainability and energy efficiency; and water resource investigations for rural watersheds in developing countries. He serves as a Research Advisor to Georgia Tech’s Engineering Students Without Borders chapter, and in 2007 he led or participated in projects in Angola, Bolivia, and Yellowstone National Park, and served in an advisory capacity for projects in Kenya, Japan, Korea, Guam, and Ireland.

Dylan Brewer joined the faculty at the School of Economics in 2019. He received his PhD in Economics with a dual major in Environmental Science and Policy from Michigan State University in May 2019 as well as a Master of Arts degree in Economics from the same institution in 2016. Prior to his graduate studies, Dylan completed a Bachelor of Arts degree with majors in Economics and International Relations at the University of Virginia in 2014. Dylan's research uses the tools of applied econometrics and machine learning to answer questions in energy and environmental economics. He has published research on household energy consumption, the economics of thermostat settings, recycling, electricity demand, machine learning methodology, and air quality among other topics. He teaches courses on environmental economics at the graduate and undergraduate level, and his Principles of Microeconomics course has won awards at Georgia Tech.

Dr. Boukouvala is originally from Piraeus, which is the port of Athens in Greece. As the daughter of an airforce pilot, she travelled a lot with her family. Her first international move was actually to the USA, where she spent one year in Montgomery, Alabama. She later on lived in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia and Crete, Greece, before returning to Athens to get her B.S Degree in Chemical Engineering from the National Technical University in Athens. In 2008, she moved back to the US to obtain a PhD in Chemical Engineering at Rutgers University in NJ. She then worked as a Postdoctoral Associate in both Princeton University and Texas A&M University. In August 2016, Dr. Boukouvala returned to the South East US, as an Assistant Professor in the School of Chemical & Biomolecular Engineering at Georgia Tech. 

Her research interest in Process Systems Engineering (PSE) started during her PhD years, where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Marianthi Ierapetritou, on modeling and optimization of continuous pharmaceutical manufacturing. Her background on optimization and data-driven modeling was enhanced during her years as a postdoc with the late Christodoulos A. Floudas. Dr. Boukouvala is a proud 4th generation member of the academic family tree of the father of PSE, Roger Sargent.