Ching-Hua Huang, Ph.D., is the Turnipseed Family Chair and Professor in the School of Civil and Environmental Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology. Huang received her Ph.D. and M.S. degrees in environmental engineering from Johns Hopkins University. Huang’s expertise includes environmental chemistry, advanced water/wastewater treatment technology, contaminants of emerging concern, sustainable water reuse, waste remediation and resource recovery. Huang has supervised many research projects sponsored by various agencies, and has published more than 170 peer-reviewed journal papers, book chapters and conference proceeding papers. She is the Associate Editor of the American Chemical Society's Environmental Science & Technology Water and the Editorial Advisory Board member of Environmental Science & Technology. 

Emma Hu joins the School of Materials Science and Engineering at Georgia Tech as an assistant professor. Her group will use quantum mechanical modelling combined with materials informatics to understand the underlying mechanisms of energy harvesting and utilization at the atomic level, and reveal structure-property-performance relationships for knowledge/data-driven materials design.

Her research seeks to accelerate the discovery of materials with complex properties to solve time-sensitive problems involving green energy production and climate remediation.

Emma obtained her Ph.D. in Physical Chemistry in 2018 from the University of California, Riverside, and her B.S. in Chemistry in 2013 from University of Science and Technology of China. She then spent two years as a postdoctoral scholar in the Center for Nanophase Materials Sciences at Oak Ridge National Laboratory from 2018-2020. Before joining Georgia Tech, Emma was an Assistant Professor at City University of New York from 2020-2023.

Dr. Jennifer Hirsch is an applied cultural anthropologist recognized internationally for fostering university and community engagement in sustainability and climate action. At the Georgia Institute of Technology, she is the inaugural Director of the Center for Sustainable Communities Research & Education (SCoRE), creating a culture of collaboration in which students, faculty, and staff engage in long-term relationships with community, government, and industry partners to build sustainable communities.

Dr. Hirsch’s research and teaching interests focus on: 1) equity in the sustainable built environment; 2) grassroots sustainability innovation; and 3) community leadership in energy equity.

Dr. Hirsch is also a co-founder and lead coordinator of RCE Greater Atlanta – a Regional Centre of Expertise on Education for Sustainable Development - officially acknowledged in 2017 by the United Nations University. She is also Adjunct Associate Professor at Georgia Tech’s School of City and Regional Planning. She serves on the faculty of The Asset-Based Community Development Institute hosted by DePaul University and on the Board of Directors of AASHE (Association for the Advancement of Sustainability in Higher Education).

Before coming to Georgia Tech, Dr. Hirsch worked in Chicago as Associate Director of Study Abroad at Northwestern University; as Urban Anthropology Director at The Field Museum of Natural History; and as an independent consultant with clients such as the City of Cleveland, Enterprise Community Partners, the U.S. Green Building Council, The Institute of Cultural Affairs, University of Illinois at Chicago, and Joliet Junior College. Dr. Hirsch received a Bachelor’s degree in American Culture from Northwestern University in Evanston, Illinois and a Ph.D. in Cultural Anthropology from Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

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.

Dr. Joy Harris has a diverse career within the Georgia Institute of Technology (GA Tech). Through her primary appointment as a faculty member in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), she serves as a teacher, mentor, and research advisor to undergraduate students. Within ECE, Dr. Harris focuses on lowering barriers and increasing access to all opportunities within the department. She also serves as faculty director for the Engineering for Social Innovation (ESI) Center, where she creates the space for students to use their technical skills for positive social impact. 

As ESI director, she leads undergraduate service breaks to developing countries; she operates a graduate leadership and development program; and she helps her students increase the operating capacity of non-profit organizations. Dr. Harris formerly served as faculty director of the Global Leadership Living and Learning Community (LLC), where she taught a course in the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals, and she helped her first-year LLC students to successfully integrate into the GA Tech community. Dr. Harris also served as one of the Associate Directors for the CREATE-X entrepreneurship initiative. In this capacity, she helped students increase their entrepreneurial confidence through designing their own career paths and by launching startups. Through all her roles on campus, Dr. Harris enjoys teaching and serving thousands of students throughout the academic year. 

Joy’s educational background includes a bachelor's in mathematics from Spelman College and a bachelor's in electrical engineering from Georgia Tech. She earned her master’s and Ph.D. in electrical engineering at Princeton University and an MBA at Georgia Tech in 2017.