Dr. Carolyn Conner Seepersad is the Eugene C. Gwaltney, Jr., Chair of the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology.  She joined the School in 2023 as a Woodruff Professor.  Prior to joining Georgia Tech, she served as the J. Mike Walker Professor of Mechanical Engineering and founding director of the Center for Additive Manufacturing and Design Innovation at The University of Texas at Austin.  She earned her BS in mechanical engineering from West Virginia University, BA/MA in Philosophy, Politics, and Economics from Oxford University as a Rhodes Scholar, and her PhD and MS in Mechanical Engineering from Georgia Tech as a Hertz Fellow and an NSF Graduate Research Fellow. 

Professor Seepersad’s research and teaching focus on design for additive manufacturing, simulation-based and data-driven engineering design, and process innovation in additive manufacturing.  She has earned many awards for her work, including the ASME Design Automation Award and the University of Texas Regents’ Award for Outstanding Teaching (the highest teaching award for faculty in The University of Texas System).  She is the author of more than 150 peer-reviewed publications and one book. Her publications have earned Best Paper Awards from the ASME Design Automation Conference, the ASME Design Theory and Methodology Conference, the ASME International Conference on Design Education, and the ASEE Annual Conference and Exposition.

In addition to her academic role, Professor Seepersad is the Editor-in-Chief of the ASME Journal of Mechanical Design, an elected member of the advisory board for the Design Society, a member of SME's Additive Manufacturing Technical Leadership Committee, and a former chair of the ASME Design Engineering Division Executive Committee.  She co-leads the TechMade initiative for design innovation at Georgia Tech. 

Dr. Alam joined the George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering as an assistant professor in January 2026. His primary research interests include efficient algorithms and methods for AI-native engineering applications. His group, Inference Lab, focuses on foundational AI for engineering tasks, physics-integrated AI, and robot learning for unstructured manufacturing tasks. Before joining Georgia Tech, he was a postdoctoral associate at MIT. Dr. Alam has received several national and international awards including Google research scholar awards in Applied science in 2024, Ford Best Paper award at IDECTC 2025, SEIKM Best paper award at IDETC 2025, Best paper award at MSEC 2020.

Xu brings over 20 years of experience in managing laboratory paper machines and pilot testing equipment, along with a robust background in fluid mechanics, material science, and instrumentation development. His professional experience includes significant roles at International Paper, AstenJohnson, and Georgia Tech’s George W. Woodruff School of Mechanical Engineering

Xu's career is marked by innovative research and successful commercialization of new products and processes. At AstenJohnson, he served as a senior research scientist, specializing in forming and press fabrics used in the paper industry. His work led to the commercialization of several new forming and press products, and he managed pilot press stand at AstenJohnson and participated in papermaking trials at different pilot facilities to evaluate the performance of these fabrics.

Prior to AstenJohnson, Xu held positions at International Paper's Corporate Technology Center, where he managed the Microfinishing Lab and Humidity Resistant Liner Lab. His research provided critical insights that influenced the company’s major business decisions. He also developed various unique instruments for different paper mills at International Paper.

Xu earned his Ph.D. in paper science and mechanical engineering from Georgia Tech’s Institute of Paper Science and Technology. His doctoral research focused on the measurement of fiber suspension flow and forming jet velocity profile using Pulsed Ultrasonic Doppler Velocimetry (PUDV). He also holds a B.S. in Material Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University in Beijing, China.

Chuanyi Ji received the B.S. (Honors) from Electronics Department Tsinghua University in 1983, the M.S. from Electrical Engineering, University of Pennsylvania in 1986, and the Ph.D. from Electrical Engineering California Institute of Technology in 1992. She joined the faculty at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute in 1991. She spent a sabbatical year at Bell-Labs Lucent in 1999, and was a visiting faculty at MIT in the fall of 2000. She is an Associate Professor at School of ECE Georgia Institute of Technology, which she joined in 2001. 

Research

• Large-scale data analytics, modeling and learning algorithms in a networked setting
• Both real-world application and methodology development, to quantify resilience, decision making and equity for energy networks and communities
• Work reported as among the pioneering research that learns from heterogeneous data on  operational energy grid, severe weather, and communities (join us)

Distinctions & Awards

• One of the favorite papers published in Nature Energy in the past five years, selected by the editors at Nature Energy, 2021
• Early Career Award, RPI 2000
• NSF Career Award, 1995
• Ming Li Scholarship, Caltech 1989
• Honor graduate, Tsinghua University, 1983