Dennis Hess’s research interests are in thin film science and technology, surface and interface modification and characterization, microelectronics processing and electronic materials. His group focuses on the establishment of fundamental structure-property relationships and their connection to chemical process sequences used in the fabrication of novel films, electronic materials, devices, and nanostructures. Control of the surface properties of materials such as dielectrics, semiconductors, metals, and paper or paper board by film deposition or surface modification allows the design of such surfaces for a variety of applications in microelectronics, packaging, sensors, microfluidics, and separation processes.

Robert Harris' background is in semiconductors and microelectronics. He serves as research faculty at the Georgia Tech Research Institute in the Electro-Optical Systems Laboratory and teach in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Georgia Tech. His research focus is on photonic integrated circuits, heterogeneous integration, electronic warfare, and RF electronics.

Dr. Kevin Haas is a Professor and Associate Chair of Undergraduate Programs in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering and Co-Director of the Ocean Science and Engineering Program at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He obtained a BSCE with distinction in 1994 and a MSCE in 1996 from the Ohio State University.  He received his Ph.D. in Coastal Engineering from the University of Delaware in January 2001. Dr. Haas was as a Post-Doctoral Fellow from January 2001 to December 2002 at the University of Delaware.  Dr. Haas started at Georgia Tech in January 2003 on the Savannah campus, earned tenure and promotion in 2009, and moved to the Atlanta campus in 2013. He has been serving as the Associate Chair of Undergraduate Programs since 2018 for CEE. Dr. Haas has served as the Co-Director of the Ocean Science and Engineering Ph.D. program since its inception in 2017, managing the academic program.

Research

Dr. Haas has established a research program at Georgia Tech in nearshore processes (e.g. estuarine tidal flows, modeling waves and currents on the inner shelf, flow in marshes, and ship wake in confined channels) and marine hydrokinetic energy (e.g. tidal, wave, river, and ocean current energy).

Dr. Angshuman Guin, is a Principal Research Engineer in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He returned to his alma mater to become a faculty member in 2007 after working in the industry for a brief period. Dr. Guin’s research is focused on finding an answer to the question: How do we enable and empower systems managers, researchers and users to make effective, data-driven decisions? His research attempts to find answers through innovations in the development of effective means of data collection, quality assurance, and processing to convert these data into informative metrics across a range of time-scales from near real time to decades. Dr. Guin's current research projects at Georgia Tech are broadly in the area of Freeway Operations, Connected and Autonomous Vehicles, Intelligent Transportation Systems (ITS), Transportation Safety, Traffic Simulation and Data Management. Dr. Guin has presented his work in several international conferences and his work has been published in well recognized peer reviewed journals. He also serves on several standing committees of the Transportation Research Board including the committees on Information Systems and Technology, and Human Factors of Infrastructure Design and Operations and, in the past, has served on the committees on Highway Traffic Monitoring and Transportation Safety Management. He has served on the review committee of several journals including the IEEE Transactions on Intelligent Transportation Systems, the ASCE Journal of Transportation Engineering and the Transportation Research Records of the TRB. In addition to maintaining an active research portfolio, Dr. Guin is a strong advocate of translating research into practice and is the co-founder of InstaData Systems, a data analytics company. 

Research

Intelligent Transportation Systems, Freeway Traffic Operations, Transportation Safety, Simulation, Connected and Autonomous Vehicle, Smart Cities, Big Data, Machine Learning and Deep Learning

Subhro Guhathakurta is the Harry West Professor in the School of City and Regional Planning. He joined Georgia Tech in 2011 as the director of the Center for Geographic Information Systems, which was renamed the Center for Spatial Planning Analytics and Visualization (CSPAV), and then the Center for Urban Resilience and Analytics (CURA), under his leadership. He was named chair of the School of City & Regional Planning in 2018 and completed his term in 2021.

Professor Guhathakurta was previously associate director of the School of Geographical Sciences and Urban Planning at Arizona State University (ASU) and among the founding faculty members of ASU’s School of Sustainability. He was instrumental in developing the Urban Modeling and Simulation Lab in ASU’s College of Design. He is an author of 6 books and monographs and over 75 scientific papers. His editorial contributions include books such as "Integrated Urban and Environmental Models: A Survey of Current Applications and Research" (Springer-Verlag, 2003), "Visualizing Sustainable Planning" (Springer 2009), and “The Routledge Handbook of International Planning Education” (Routledge 2019). He was a Co-Editor of the Journal of Planning Education and Research (2012-2016) and is serving on editorial boards of several leading planning journals including the Journal of American Planning Association (JAPA). Prof. Guhathakurta is a recipient of the Mercator Professorship by DFG (German National Science Foundation) to conduct research in visualizing unstructured data at the Technische Universität, Kaiserslautern, Germany. He has held visiting appointments at the Center for Advanced Spatial Analysis (CASA) at the University College London; the International Institute of Information Technology, Bangalore; the Center for Sustainable Urban and Regional Futures at the University of Queensland in Brisbane; and served as a high-end expert for the Institute of Environmental Sustainability at Tongji University, Shanghai, China.

Specialization Area: 

Geographic Information Science and Technology

Teaching Interest:

Professor Guhathakurta's recent teaching roles have primarily focused on the Ph.D. program, where he routinely teaches the course on “urban and regional theory” (CP8300). This class discusses the foundational theoretical propositions of urban growth and development through the lens of emerging urban issues and policy. He has also taught "Introduction to Urban Analytics," “Environmental GIS,” and “Introduction to Land use” in various years.

Research Interest:

As director of a research center (CURA), Prof Guhathakurta's research has involved leading multidisciplinary teams of academics, students, and practitioners to pursue externally funded research in the domains of spatial analytics, planning, and policy. These projects range in size and complexity from small ($50,000 and less) to large, multi-year ($1 million +), sponsored by various local, state, and federal agencies. These projects typically involve both discovery and fundamental contributions to the literature and application development (mostly software tools and data) that are used by stakeholders and other researchers.

List of Recent Scholarly Work:

1. Lieu S. J., Koo, BW, Huang, UJ, and Guhathakurta, S. (2026) Automated Detection and Classification of Bike Lanes Using Multimodal Imagery. Remote Sensing Applications: Society and Environment 41. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.rsase.2025.101817. 
2. Liu, K., Guhathakurta, S., Han, C., Hittinger, E., Phoung, S., & Williams, E. (2025). The Impact of Online Shopping on Retail Building Space and Energy Demand in the U.S. Energies, 18(23), 6178. https://doi.org/10.3390/en18236178.
3. Han, C., Lieu, S. J., Hwang, U., & Guhathakurta, S. (2025). Do streetscapes still matter for customer ratings of eating and drinking establishments in car-dependent cities? Journal of Urban Design, 1–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/13574809.2025.2541953.
4. Han, C., Guhathakurta, S., Hittinger, E., Liu, K., Phoung, S., & Williams, E. (2025). Empirical assessment of the relationship between teleworking frequency and residential energy use in the US: multilevel modeling and time use comparisons. Environmental Research: Infrastructure and Sustainability. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1088/2634-4505/ade3fa.  
5. Lieu S. J., Guhathakurta S. (2025). Exploring pedestrian route choice preferences by demographic groups: Analysis of street attributes in Chicago. Transportation Research Part A: Policy and Practice. 195:104437. doi: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tra.2025.104437. 
6. Lieu, S. J., & Guhathakurta, S. (2025). A novel approach for estimating sidewalk width from street view images and computer vision. Environment and Planning B: Urban Analytics and City Science, 23998083251369602.

Randall Guensler is a Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. After working for the California Air Resources Board for seven years, and completing his Ph.D. in Civil Engineering at the University of California at Davis, Dr. Guensler joined Georgia Tech in 1994. During his years with the State of California, Dr. Guensler worked for four years in Compliance Assistance and for three years in the Executive Office, evaluating the design and implementation of transportation control measures by regional air quality management agencies. Since arriving at Georgia Tech, Dr. Guensler's main research focus has been the development of new monitoring and modeling tools to assess the air quality impacts of transportation policies. Dr. Guensler was the Chairman of the Transportation Research Board committee on Transportation and Air Quality from 1997 to 2002. From 1995 to 2001, Dr. Guensler served on the Environmental Protection Agency's Mobile Source Technical Advisory Subcommittee. Over the past ten years, he has served on various National Academy of Sciences committees and panels charged with the assessment of vehicle emissions impacts and identification of research needs. Dr. Guensler is the director of Commute Atlanta, a $2.3 million joint value pricing initiative sponsored by the Federal Highway Administration and Georgia Department of Transportation. Commute Atlanta includes the collection and analysis of second-by-second vehicle speed, position, and engine operating data from 470 vehicles in representative Atlanta households. The researchers have monitored more than 1.4 million vehicle trips (more than 350,000 vehicle-miles per month). In 2005, the Commute Atlanta households began participating in road pricing experiments (cent/mile pricing, as well as real-time congestion pricing). Dr. Guensler's research team is assessing consumer response to these pricing mechanisms. A secondary focus of the research is the enhancement of monitoring technologies and services to support future transportation planning, safety, and operations policy initiatives. Development of tools for data management, data analysis, and privacy protection became major research activities. Secondary research has also included analysis of speeding, journey to work route choice, trip chaining, activity-based demand, household tripmaking variability, household and vehicle range of travel, long-distance travel, freeway operations, engine load, start and soak distributions, transit bus operations, etc.

Research

Dr. Guensler's research focuses on transportation systems analysis, travel behavior modeling, and sustainable transportation strategies. His work involves the development and application of data-driven methodologies to understand and improve mobility, traffic operations, and environmental impacts of transportation networks. He investigates the integration of emerging transportation technologies and policies to enhance efficiency and sustainability in urban and regional transportation systems. His research actively involves collaboration with students at both undergraduate and graduate levels.

Education

Ph.D., Civil Engineering, Transportation

University of California, Davis

1993

M.S., Civil/Environmental Engineering

University of California, Davis

1989  

B.S., Individualized Engineering (Civil Engineering, Urban Planning, Environ. Studies)

University of California, Davis

1985

Teaching

Dr. Guensler's teaching interests encompass transportation engineering and planning, with an emphasis on traffic operations, transportation systems analysis, and energy/emissions modeling. He engages both undergraduate and graduate students in foundational and advanced courses that address transportation infrastructure, travel behavior, and the societal impacts of transportation technologies. Professor Guensler also integrates quantitative methods and policy considerations into his instruction to prepare students for multidisciplinary challenges in civil engineering.

Publications

1. Lu, H., D. Kim, H. Liu, T. Xia, W. Reichard, M.O. Rodgers, R. Guensler (2024). Sensitivity of AERMOD (v21112) RLINEXT Dispersion Model Outputs by Source Type to Variability in Single Noise Barrier Height and Separation Distance. Atmospheric Pollution Research. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.apr.2024.102318. December 2024.
2. Passmore, R., K.E. Watkins, and R. Guensler (2024). Using Shortest Path Routing to Assess Cycling Networks. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jtrangeo.2024.103864. Journal of Transport Geography. Volume 117. May 2024.
3. Lu, H., and R. Guensler (2024). MOVES-Matrix 3.0: On-Road Energy and Emission Modeling with High-Performance Supercomputing. Research Report from the National Center for Sustainable Transportation. October 2024.
4. Lu, H, D Hunsaker, Z Liu, A Puppala, M McGurk, A Guin, R Guensler, Vehicle Occupancy, Vehicle Throughput, and Person Throughput Assessment of Atlanta’s HOV Managed Lane Facilities, 2025
5. Xu, X, HC Yang, H Laarabi, C Poliziani, A Birky, K Jeong, H Lu, ..., Improving commercial truck fleet composition in emission modeling using 2021 US VIUS data, International Journal of Sustainable Transportation 19 (12), 1162-1180, 2025

Grover’s research activities in process systems engineering focus on understanding macromolecular organization and the emergence of biological function. Discrete atoms and molecules interact to form macromolecules and even larger mesoscale assemblies, ultimately yielding macroscopic structures and properties. A quantitative relationship between the nanoscale discrete interactions and the macroscale properties is required to design, optimize, and control such systems; yet in many applications, predictive models do not exist or are computationally intractable.

The Grover group is dedicated to the development of tractable and practical approaches for the engineering of macroscale behavior via explicit consideration of molecular and atomic scale interactions. We focus on applications involving the kinetics of self-assembly, specifically those in which methods from non-equilibrium statistical mechanics do not provide closed form solutions. General approaches employed include stochastic modeling, model reduction, machine learning, experimental design, robust parameter design, and estimation.

Dr. Grijalva joined the Georgia Institute of Technology in the summer of 2009 as Associate Professor of Electrical and Computer Engineering. He is the Director of the Advanced Computational Electricity Systems (ACES) Laboratory, where he conducts research on real-time power system control, informatics, and economics, and renewable energy integration in power. From 2012-2015, Dr. Grijalva served as the Strategic Energy Institute (SEI) Associate Director for Electricity Systems, responsible for coordinating large efforts on electricity research and policy at Georgia Tech. Dr. Grijalva received the Electrical Engineer degree from EPN-Ecuador in 1994, the M.S. Certificate in Information Systems from ESPE-Ecuador in 1997, and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Electrical Engineering from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign in 1999 and 2002, respectively. He was a post-doctoral fellow in Power and Energy Systems at the University of Illinois from 2003 to 2004. From 1995 to 1997, he was with the Ecuadorian National Center for Energy Control (CENACE) as engineer and manager of the Real-Time EMS Software Department. From 2002 to 2009, he was with PowerWorld Corporation as a senior software architect and developer of innovative real-time and optimization applications used today by utilities, control centers, and universities in more than 60 countries. Dr. Grijalva is a leading researcher on ultra-reliable architectures for critical energy infrastructures. He has pioneered work on de-centralized and autonomous power system control, renewable energy integration in power, and unified network models and applications. He is currently the principal investigator of various future electricity grid research projects for the US Department of Energy, ARPA-E, EPRI, PSERC as well as other Government organizations, research consortia, and industrial sponsors. Research interests: Power system and smart grid computation De-centralized and autonomous power control architectures Ultra-reliable electricity internetworks Seamless integration of large-scale renewable energy Electricity markets design and power system economics