Ben Emerson completed his Ph. D. in Aerospace Engineering from Georgia Tech in August, 2013. Since then, Ben has worked as a Research Engineer at the Ben T. Zinn Combustion Lab at Georgia Tech. Ben’s research portfolio includes projects on combustion instabilities, alternative fuels, and combustion system R&D with a core focus and motivation of cleaner combustion. Ben’s research primarily consists of three core competencies, which are experimental combustion system development, combustor diagnostics, and combustion theory and modeling. Ben’s combustion system development work spans a wide variety of applications, from small lab-scale burners to combustor rigs that test full-scale gas turbine combustor hardware. His combustor diagnostics work encompasses the state of the art optical diagnostic techniques for reacting flow field measurements and imaging, and aims to implement those techniques in both laboratory-scale and large-scale rig tests. Finally, Ben’s combustion theory and modeling work is geared towards analysis of experimental datasets, development of reduced-order engineering tools, and the development of a suite of hydrodynamic stability analysis tools. Together, these core competencies form the pillars of Ben’s research, which facilitates the design of cleaner-burning combustion systems.

Alan Erera is a Manhattan Associates/Dabbiere Chair and the Associate Chair for Research in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. He is also the faculty director for the M.S. in Supply Chain Engineering program, Co-Director for Global Transportation in the Supply Chain & Logistics Institute, and Co-Executive Director of the Georgia Tech Panama Logistics Innovation & Research Center.

His research focuses on transportation and logistics systems planning and control, with an emphasis on planning under uncertainty and real-time operational control.  His recent work has addressed dynamic vehicle routing systems for same-day distribution; resilient logistics network design for food supply chains; service network design, linehaul equipment management, and driver scheduling for consolidation freight carriers; robust container fleet management for global shipping companies; and robust and flexible vehicle routing system planning and control for distribution companies. He has written extensively in these subject areas, and has delivered over 100 technical presentations and invited lectures. His research program has been supported by federal agencies (DHS, USDOT, NSF) and major U.S. freight carriers and manufacturing firms.

He received his B.S. Eng. from Princeton University, and his Ph.D. from the University of California, Berkeley.

Russell D. Dupuis earned all of his academic degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He received his bachelor's degree with "Highest Honors-Bronze Tablet" in 1970. He received his master's in electrical engineering in 1971, and his Ph.D. in 1973. His alma mater has honored him with the University of Illinois Alumni Loyalty Award, and the Distinguished Alumnus Award. Dupuis worked at Texas Instruments from 1973 to 1975. In 1975, he joined Rockwell International where he was the first to demonstrate that MOCVD could be used for the growth of high-quality semiconductor thin films and devices. He joined AT&T Bell Laboratories in 1979 where he extended his work to the growth of InP-InGaAsP by MOCVD. In 1989 he became a chaired professor at the University of Texas at Austin. In August 2003, he was appointed Steve W. Chaddick Chair in Electro-Optics at Georgia Tech in ECE. He is currently studying the growth of III-V compound semiconductor devices by MOCVD, including materials in the InAlGaN/GaN, InAlGaAsP/GaAs, InAlGaAsSb, and InAlGaAsP/InP systems.

Biography:

William J. (Bill) Drummond is an associate professor in the College of Design at the Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta, Georgia), and directs the Georgia Tech Master of Science degree in Geographic Information Science and Technology.

He graduated from Duke University summa cum laude and Phi Beta Kappa, majoring in history. He then earned a Master of Divinity degree from Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary and a biblical studies Master of Theology degree from Union Presbyterian Seminary in Richmond, Virginia. After serving for two years as minister of a North Carolina Presbyterian church, he earned a PhD in City and Regional Planning from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. 

He has taught at Georgia Tech since 1987. Over the last several years his courses have included climate change planning, land conservation, sustainable urban development, socioeconomic GIS, programming for GIS, and PhD quantitative research methods.

His current research includes work on population forecasting with advanced time-series models, the relationship between urban form and greenhouse gas emissions, and new methods of estimating building-level and neighborhood-level greenhouse gas emissions.

In his spare time he enjoys running, church activities, and, of course, ACC basketball.

Teaching Interest:

I teach primarily methods and geographic information systems classes, including Socioeconomic GIS, Climate Change Analytics, and a PhD-level statistics class. On occasion I teach Land Conservation, Introduction to Climate Change Planning, and Sustainable Urban Development.

Research Interest:

My primary research interest is in climate change mitigation. I work on climate-related projects funded by the U.S Department of Energy, the Atlanta Regional Commission, the state of Georgia Environmental Protection Division, and the Ray C. Anderson Foundation.

List of Recent Scholarly Work:

My recent scholarly products have been tools and analyses related to climate change.  I am the lead developer for the Drawdown Georgia GHG Emissions Trackers (https://drawdownga.org/tracker), which estimate local GHG emissions at the county and municipal level across the state of Georgia.  I provided technical analyses for the state of Georgia's first climate action plan (https://www.epa.gov/system/files/documents/2024-03/georgia_psverp.pdf) and the Atlanta Regional Commission's Comprehensive Climate Action Plan (not yet publicly available).

Degrees with Year of Award:

Ph.D., December 1989.  University of North Carolina, Chapel Hill, North Carolina, Doctor of Philosophy, Department of City and Regional Planning.  Advisor: Edward J. Kaiser
    
Th.M., May 1980.  Union Theological Seminary, Richmond, Virginia.  Master of Theology.
    
M.Div., May 1979.  Gordon-Conwell Theological Seminary, South Hamilton, Massachusetts.  Master of Divinity, summa cum laude.
    
A.B., May 1975.  Duke University, Durham, North Carolina.  Bachelor of Arts (History), summa cum laude, Phi Beta Kappa.

Professor Doolittle is a native of Jonesboro, Georgia. He graduated from Georgia Tech with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering with highest honors in 1989. He later received his Ph.D. in electrical engineering in 1996 from Georgia Tech. 

His thesis work revolved around identifying the device limiting defects in photovoltaic silicon materials using several custom designed and patented tools. He later worked as a Research Engineer II in the area of compound semiconductor growth with emphasis on wide bandgap semiconductors. He joined the Georgia Tech faculty in 2001. 

During his time at Georgia Tech he has helped develop academic programs in the areas of microelectronic fabrication, materials growth, characterization, and measurement system design. Professor Doolittle consults with industry in the areas of law, materials testing, MBE growth, and test equipment development. 
His hobbies include bible studies, classic cars, playing the guitar, and reading. Most of his free time is spent with his two teenage children.

Dr. Yu Ding is the Anderson-Interface Chair and Professor in the H. Milton School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Tech. Prior to joining Georgia Tech in 2023, he was the Mike and Sugar Barnes Professor of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Texas A&M University. While at Texas A&M, he also served as Associate Department Head for Graduate Affairs of the Department of Industrial and Systems Engineering between 2012 and 2016 and Associate Director for Research Engagement of Texas A&M Institute of Data Science between 2020 and 2023. He received his B.S. in Precision Engineering from the University of Science and technology of China in 1993, a M.S. in Precision Engineering from Tsinghua University in 1996, a second M.S. in Mechanical from Penn State in 1998, and his Ph.D. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of Michigan in 2001.

Dr. Ding is the author of the CRC Press book, Data Science for Wind Energy, and a co-author of the Springer Nature book, Data Science for Nano Image Analysis. Dr. Ding received the 2019 IISE Technical Innovation Award and 2022 INFORMS Impact Prize for his data science innovations impacting wind energy applications. Dr. Ding is a Fellow of IISE (2015) and ASME (2016). He has served as editor or associate editor for several major engineering data science journals, and is currently serving as the 14th Editor in Chief of IISE Transactions, for the term of 2021-2024.

Dr. Deo came to Georgia Tech in August 2007 as an Assistant Professor of Nuclear and Radiological Engineering. Prior, he was a postdoctoral research associate in the Materials Science and Technology Division of the Los Alamos National Laboratory. He studied radiation effects in structural materials (iron and ferritic steels) and nuclear fuels (uranium dioxide). He also obtained research experience at Princeton University (Mechanical Engineering), Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, and Sandia National Laboratories.