Todd Sulchek is an associate professor in Mechanical Engineering at Georgia Tech where he conducts fundamental and applied research in the field of biophysics. His research program focuses on the mechanical and adhesive properties of cell and biological systems and the development of microsystems to aid in their study. His research employs tools, including, MEMS, microfluidics, imaging, and patterning to understand or enable biological systems. His interests include cancer diagnostics, stem cell biomanufacturing, novel therapeutics, and ultracheap engineering tools. He is a member of the interdisciplinary Institute for Bioengineering and Bioscience. Dr. Sulchek also holds program faculty positions in Bioengineering and Biomedical Engineering and has a courtesy appointment in the School of Biology. He received his Ph.D. from Stanford in Applied Physics under Calvin Quate and received a bachelors in math and physics from Johns Hopkins. He was a postdoc and staff scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Lab. He joined Georgia Tech in 2008 as an Assistant Professor of Mechanical Engineering. He is a recipient of the NSF CAREER award, the BP Junior Faculty Teaching Excellence Award, the Lockheed Inspirational Young Faculty award, and the 2012 Petit Institute Above and Beyond Award. To date he has published 42 journal papers and has filed or been issued 7 patents. Prof. Sulchek is a strong supporter of undergraduate research, and he participates in a variety of undergraduate education activities including the Undergraduate Research Opportunities Program (UROP) and includes over 8 undergraduate authors in the past year.

Previously a professor of organic functional materials at the Department of Materials, Imperial College of London, Natalie Stingelin joined Georgia Tech in 2016. She focuses her research on the broad field of organic functional materials, including organic electronics; multifunctional inorganic/organic hybrids; smart, advanced optical systems based on organic matter; and bioelectronics. Associate Editor of the Journal of Materials Chemistry, she has published more than 130 papers and 6 issued patents. She is a co-investigator of the newly established EPSRC Centre for Innovative Manufacturing in Large Area Electronics, and she leads the EC Marie-Curie Training Network 'INFORM' that involves 11 European partners. She was awarded the Institute of Materials, Minerals & Mining's Rosenhain Medal and Prize (2014) and the Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS) President's International Fellowship Initiative (PIFI) Award for Visiting Scientists (2015).

Aarn Stebner works at the intersection of manufacturing, machine learning, materials, and mechanics. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty as an associate professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science and Engineering in 2020.

Previously, he was the Rowlinson Associate Professor of Mechanical Engineering and Materials Science at the Colorado School of Mines (2013 – 2020), a postdoctoral scholar at the Graduate Aerospace Laboratories of the California Institute of Technology (2012 – 2013), a Lecturer in the Segal Design Institute at Northwestern University (2009 – 2012), a Research Scientist at Telezygology Inc. establishing manufacturing and “internet of things” technologies for shape memory alloy-secured latching devices (2008-2009), a Research Fellow at the NASA Glenn Research Center developing smart materials technologies for morphing aircraft structures (2006 – 2008), and a Mechanical Engineer at the Electric Device Corporation in Canfield, OH developing manufacturing and automation technologies for the circuit breaker industry (1995 – 2000).

Suresh Sitaraman is a Professor in the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering, and leads the Flexible Hybrid Electronics Initiative at Georgia Tech and directs the Computer-Aided Simulation of Packaging Reliability (CASPaR) Lab at Georgia Tech. He is a Thrust Leader/Faculty Member, Reliability/Mechanical Design Research, 3D Systems Packaging Research Center; a Faculty Member, Georgia Tech Manufacturing Institute; a Faculty Member, Interconnect and Packaging Center, an SRC Center of Excellence, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology; a Faculty Member, Nanoscience and Nanotechnology, Nanotechnlogy Research Center, Institute for Electronics and Nanotechnology; a Faculty Member, Institute of Materials. Dr. Suresh Sitaraman's research is exploring new approaches to develop next-generation microsystems. In particular, his research focuses on the design, fabrication, characterization, modeling and reliability of micro-scale and nano-scale structures intended for microsystems used in applications such as aerospace, automotive, computing, telecommunicating, medical, etc. Sitaraman's research is developing physics-based computational models to design flexible as well as rigid microsystems and predict their warped geometry and reliability. His virtual manufacturing tools are able to simulate sequential fabrication and assembly process mechanics to be able to enhance the overall yield, even before prototypes are built. Sitaraman's work is developing free-standing, compliant interconnect technologies that can mechanically decouple the chip from the substrate without compromising the overall electrical functionality. This work is producing single-path and multi-path interconnect technologies as well as nanowire and carbon nanotube interconnects for electrical and thermal applications, and such interconnect technologies can be employed in flexible as well as 3D microelectronic systems. Sitaraman's research is also developing innovative material characterization techniques such as the stressed super layer technique as well as magnetic actuation test that can be used to study monotonic and fatigue crack propagation in nano- and micro-scale thin film interfaces. In addition, Sitaraman has developed fundamental modeling methodologies combined with leading-edge experimentation techniques to study delamination in the dielectric material and copper interface used in back-end-of-the-line (BEOL) stacks and through-silicon vias as well as epoxy/copper and epoxy/glass interfaces as in microelectronic packaging and photovoltaic module applications. Examining the long-term operational as well as accelerated thermal cycling reliability of solder interconnects, his work has direct implications in implantable medical devices, photovoltaic modules, computers and smart devices as well as rugged automobile and aerospace applications. Through the above-mentioned fundamental and applied research and development pursuits, Sitaraman's work aims to address some of the grand challenges associated with clean energy, health care, personal mobility, security, clean environment, food and water, and sustainable infrastructure

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.

The Raman Group has two main thrusts.  The team utilizes sophisticated tools to cool atoms to temperatures less than one millionth of a degree above absolute zero. Using these tools, they explore topics ranging from superfluidity in Bose-Einstein condensates (BECs) to quantum antiferromagnetism in a spinor condensate.  In another effort the team partners with engineers to build cutting edge atomic quantum sensors on-chip that can one day be mass-produced.

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

Abdallah Ougazzaden received his masters and doctoral degrees in materials sciences and his HDR "Accreditation to Supervise Research" degree from the University of Paris VII Paris (France) in 1986, 1990 and 1996, respectively. From 1999 to 2003, he worked as a Technical Manager in the Materials Growth and Characterisations group at Bell-Labs Lucent Technologies, and with its ICs/Optoelectronics spin-off Agere Systems. From here, Ougazzaden worked for TriQuint Optoelectronics (formerly Agere Systems/Optoelectronics). Prior to joining Bell-Labs he led the MOCVD group at CNET/ France Telecom for more than 8 years and spent a year at Optoplus/Alcatel. From 2003 to 2005 he was a professor at the University of Metz and Deputy Director of Materials, Optics, Photonics and Systems (MOPS) laboratory, a joint lab of the High Engineering School SUPELEC and CNRS in Metz, France. He joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in 2005 as professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering. In 2006, Ougazzaden was appointed to the position of Director of the International Joint Research Unit GT-CNRS at GTL in France and in 2010 he was appointed to the position of director of Georgia Tech-Lorraine. He is co-founder and co-president of the Lafayette Institute, Platform of Technology Transfer, created in 2012. He has authored and co-authored more than 200 international scientific papers and holds 23 patents.

Azad Naeemi received his B.S. degree in electrical engineering from Sharif University, Tehran, Iran in 1994, and his M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical and computer engineering from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, Ga. in 2001 and 2003, respectively.

Prior to his graduate studies (from 1994 to 1999), he was a design engineer with Partban and Afratab Companies, both located in Tehran, Iran. He worked as a research engineer in the Microelectronics Research Center at Georgia Tech from 2004 to 2008 and joined the ECE faculty at Georgia Tech in fall 2008.

His research crosses the boundaries of materials, devices, circuits, and systems investigating integrated circuits based on conventional and emerging nanoelectronic and spintronic devices and interconnects. He is the recipient of the IEEE Electron Devices Society (EDS) Paul Rappaport Award for the best paper that appeared in IEEE Transactions on Electron Devices during 2007. He is also the first recipient of the IEEE Solid-State Circuits Society James D. Meindl Innovators Award (2022). He has received an NSF CAREER Award, an SRC Inventor Recognition Award, and several best paper awards at international conferences.

Regents' Professor and Carter N. Paden, Jr. Distinguished Chair in Metals Processing, Dave McDowell joined Georgia Tech in 1983 and holds a dual appointment in the GWW School of Mechanical Engineering and the School of Materials Science and Engineering. He served as Director of the Mechanical Properties Research Laboratory from 1992-2012. In 2012 he was named Founding Director of the Institute for Materials (IMaT), one of Georgia Tech's Interdisciplinary Research Institutes charged with fostering an innovation ecosystem for research and education. He has served as Executive Director of IMaT since 2013. McDowell's research focuses on nonlinear constitutive models for engineering materials, including cellular metallic materials, nonlinear and time dependent fracture mechanics, finite strain inelasticity and defect field mechanics, distributed damage evolution, constitutive relations and microstructure-sensitive computational approaches to deformation and damage of heterogeneous alloys, combined computational and experimental strategies for modeling high cycle fatigue in advanced engineering alloys, atomistic simulations of dislocation nucleation and mediation at grain boundaries, multiscale computational mechanics of materials ranging from atomistics to continuum, and systems-based computational materials design. A Fellow of SES, ASM International, ASME and AAM, McDowell is the recipient of the 1997 ASME Materials Division Nadai Award for career achievement and the 2008 Khan International Medal for lifelong contributions to the field of metal plasticity. McDowell currently serves on the editorial boards of several journals, and is co-Editor of the International Journal of Fatigue.